Wings Over Scotland

In the last 24 hours we’ve now asked at least half-a-dozen different people, of various party loyalties and none, if they can explain exactly what crime Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie apparently considers Martin Sime of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations to be guilty of. Curiously, every time we’ve asked the question the conversation has immediately gone dead and stayed that way.

So far as we’ve been able to establish, an SNP adviser called Alex Bell sent Mr Sime an unsolicited email bringing to his attention a poll that showed a large majority of trade union members to be in favour of a second question in the independence referendum, which would provide the option of more powers for the Scottish Parliament while remaining in the Union.

The core question, then, seems to be whether this is an inappropriate position for SCVO to be taking, and therefore whether Mr Sime would be acting inappropriately in receiving such an email (leaving aside for a moment the issue of how he’d be supposed to have avoided receiving it).

To answer that question, first we need to consult the SCVO’s mission statement, which states the organisation’s purpose as “To support people to take voluntary action to help themselves and others, and to bring about social change”.

That’s perhaps a little vague, so instead let’s examine the submission the Council sent to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the subject of the independence referendum and specifically the number of questions therein, which it published in May of this year.

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“3: What are your views on the inclusion of a second question in the referendum and the voting system that could be used?

Although we have no preference for any particular constitutional settlement, we believe that an independence referendum cannot be seen in isolation but is one part of a wider discussion about Scotland’s future.

Given the repeated demonstration in polls of strong public support for further powers, this discussion should include the potential for further devolution. In developing options for debate and consideration on the future of Scotland and where powers lie, the political and referendum process should ideally reflect what the people of Scotland of want to see happen – a popular rather than just political mandate. We therefore believe that all options should be on the table, including forms of further devolution as well as independence.

The third sector has a stake here given that our primary responsibility is to the people and communities that we seek to serve. Given the significant cuts to welfare being proposed at Westminster, some of our member organisations have suggested that elements of welfare should be devolved at the earliest opportunity, although this is not an agreed sector-wide position.

In other areas, such as employability and the crown estate, SCVO’s elected policy committee has agreed that responsibility should be passed to the Scottish Parliament. In light of these discussions we do have some concerns that a binary choice could leave us in the same position as before – bringing no benefit to the communities that we seek to represent.

While we cannot predict the outcome, our aim is that the Future of Scotland process will facilitate a national discussion about what type of Scotland we want to live in and where powers are most appropriately located to deliver this vision.”

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It seems abundantly clear to us that the SCVO has a publicly-expressed view that the Scottish people should be given a full range of choices as to the governance of their country in the referendum. No political party or news outlet represents that view, despite all opinion polls showing it to be a very widely-held one, so it would appear to fall to “third-sector” organisations to do so. The SCVO’s submission expressly and repeatedly states that it does not back any particular position in the referendum, and further that it believes an adequate period of national discussion is required in order to ascertain what arrangement might best align with the Scottish people’s interests.

Despite much effort, we struggle to find anything in this position to object to. The SCVO has an absolute right to consider a two-question referendum the best approach to the constitutional question, and while it’s not a view this blog agrees with – we unequivocally support a single-question Yes/No vote – we respect the reasoning behind the opinion, and appreciate the desirability of having someone speak for the considerable percentage of Scots who currently have no party or media voicing their wishes in the debate.

Therefore, even if Martin Sime had begged the SNP to help his cause, and even if Alex Salmond had personally paid for the Unite poll to be conducted out of his own pocket and hand-delivered it to Mr Sime’s office on a silver platter, we’re at a loss to see how that would have been a situation requiring Mr Sime’s resignation. In highlighting the poll’s findings – had he in fact done so – he would simply have been acting in wholly legitimate furtherance of the SCVO’s publicly-stated goals.

(Indeed, one might fairly suggest that NOT actively seeking out and drawing attention to such data would have been a dereliction of his duty to the SCVO’s members. And we’re also left wondering why Willie Rennie hasn’t also demanded the resignation of Unite secretary Pat Rafferty, if a public body expressing a preference for a second question on behalf of its members is such unacceptable behaviour.)

The only possible conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence is that neither the SCVO or Martin Sime have done anything even remotely improper. Their position on a second referendum question is a matter of open public record, as was the outcome of the Unite opinion poll. For someone – anyone at all – to have pointed the latter fact out to Mr Sime is a natural, obvious and entirely reasonable thing to have done even if the person doing so had ulterior motives, as was likely the case with Mr Bell.

Willie Rennie’s cynical smearing of Mr Sime, therefore, can only be assessed as a piece of inappropriate political opportunism representing a crude attempt to silence dissent through intimidation, and as such should be held in the basest contempt.