We failed. The battle has been lost. It was a close fight but a relatively civilised one; only a few scuffles that went beyond the agreed upon conduct. Some of us will be down-heartened, some of us will peel off in disgust. We gave this our all and we came up short. We lost this battle and we must accept it. Some of us are angry and rightly so. We were outnumbered and outgunned but we came so close to victory. But we have consumed our anger and grief and moulded it into determination and resolve. We are not yet done. So we sally forth with gusto, rallying the troops, screaming of how we were conned and tricked and sold out. We face our opposition and scream that there is another battle coming. But they don’t want another battle. For them the battle is over. For them the war is over. We have stumbled out of a two year campaign that has saturated our country with political discourse from the streets to the television. The Yes campaign has awoken large swathes of the apathetic population and instilled hope and belief into the dejected and the disillusioned. Scotland has been given a taste of the possibilities that independence could bring but it has been brought crashing back to reality at the last minute. The referendum is over. We have to accept this and we have to accept that we are no longer in a referendum campaign. I was one of the first to capitalise on the “45” hashtag on Friday after the vote. Scotland had just voted against self-governance and it almost destroyed my belief in political engagement. I lashed out angrily, as I’m sure many of you did, at the people who “sold us out” to corrupt Westminster governments. I felt ashamed to be Scottish. I felt broken. Then, as if some unknown particle within us activated simultaneously, we found resolve. We had come too far to give up now. We were not going back to sleep. We were going to continue the fight. The Yes campaign has done many miraculous things but making Scots believe in themselves enough to get up and continue the fight after such a hammer-blow is the greatest. We were not yet done. Now let me be clear: the Yes campaign is largely intact and so we must utilise its scope and momentum to continue fighting. We must not go back into the box. We must continue to make our presence heard. Independence for Scotland is our ultimate goal and should never be forgotten. Is that clear enough? Good. Even though we are continuing the fight we must pause for a moment before we make any major decisions. Our country democratically rejected the notion of independence. We are no longer in a referendum campaign. We are still within the UK and we have to accept this framework moving forward. 55% of voters were not convinced of our arguments. You can chalk it down to scaremongering or misinformation or BBC coverage but the truth is that our arguments were not powerful enough to overcome these obstacles. The battle we have just lost was fought because we believed independence would offer us the chance to radically change Scotland and give us the tools to tackle its many problems. We campaigned on social justice, on equality, on nuclear disarmament, on increasing our renewable sector and a whole host of others. These beliefs do not go away simply because we lost the vote. If we are to show that we truly believed in the principles, that we truly cared about them, then we must use them as the very foundations of our new movement. We must show that we were more than just talk. We must create a movement that acts on its beliefs and does not just simply discuss them. We must do this within the framework of the UK. While this will be a more difficult and longer road, it does not stop us from improving our communities or working to help the most vulnerable in our society. Independence was not the end. We must stop treating it like it was. Not only must we put our beliefs into practice but we need to reach out with our hands, across the divide, and engage with those who voted No. I know some of us are too angry and hurt for that just now. We feel betrayed by these people. “How could they not see the opportunities of independence? How could they vote for foodbanks and corrupt politicians?” I’ve heard examples such as these – and said many of them myself – over the past week. That anger and hurt will subside though, and when it does we must be ready to listen. At the Glasgow Skeptics talk “After the Referendum”, Spectator columnist Alex Massie made some very good points( I rarely say that about Alex Massie). We, the Yes crowd, spent a large amount of our time speaking to ourselves and congratulating ourselves. We managed to draw a good portion of the electorate into our bubble but we ignored and failed at engaging with the rest. What does that say about us? All those involved in the Yes movement knew it was an inclusive and welcoming community but most of those outside of it did not. We missed a step here and we cannot repeat that mistake moving forward. This takes me to my last and arguably most important point. What comes next, in my mind, needs to overcome the labels of independence. The groups and rallying cries going on – from #the45, #the45plus and now #indyscot – are all rooted in the vote and the referendum. Any attempt to move forward will carry with it that baggage. We must take stock, reflect, analyse and evaluate what we have achieved, where we stand and where we are going. Our long-term goal is to convince enough of the population that running our own affairs is the right way of doing things but the majority of Scotland just rejected that notion. We won’t engage them or convince them that independence is the way forward by reiterating the same arguments that we’ve been putting forward for the past two years. Arguments they rejected little over a week ago. We need to think differently, to debate in a different manner and to organise in a wider, more open and inclusive way. I know some of you don’t see this. You feel the banners of “yes” of “the 45 plus” and others are inclusive and how dare I suggest otherwise. Well wise up. WE may think that – and I personally believe they AREN’T divisive – but this is no longer about what I or you think on this matter. This is about the Yes movement taking their engagement and trying to achieve it on a larger scale. This is about awakening the rest of the population to the town-hall politics that has so invigorated those on the Yes side. Think about this. How many of your conversations with voters were plagued by policy questions? The EU, Salmond, Currency, defence, border posts etc. All of these barriers are now gone. We have more options to engage with those who were on the other side of the vote than ever before. We can bring them into the fold if we do it right, if we do it smart and if we have the ability to represent something greater than the Yes campaign. We can change this country from the inside out, well in advance of any future referendum. The genie is out of the bottle and we need to keep it out. Our next steps need to be about building a solid foundation for our grassroots to grow on. We need solid structures, democratic structures, within Yes organisations which up until now have remained largely undemocratic. Some groups now seem to have a stranglehold on power within the Yes movement. They have such overwhelming influence that they can steer us in a direction that is only really representative of the ideology of the few. Watch for this, challenge this and we will become stronger. We must bring in the voices of the marginalised into this debate. We must knock-down our preconceptions about what our movement was and rebuild it with fairness, equality and democracy at its heart. We cannot emulate the very establishment structures we have campaigned so hard against. We cannot exclude working-class voices from our debates and our writings. We must overcome our own shortcomings if we are to move forward. That starts with tearing down the old ways of doing things – the referendum campaign way of doing things – and starting afresh. We have the people, we have the momentum, we have the drive and determination. Let us truly shape this movement into a movement of radical social change and democratic engagement. Let us not allow it to become a twitching referendum corpse. A new Scotland is rising. Let us rise with it.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 17:28:33 +0000
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