Wings Over Scotland

When I was a child I was taught of a long-ago battle. It was a monumental battle, an invading army and a defending one, swords and shields, bows and arrows. The attackers were somehow both bad men and good and the defenders lost, their king dead in sight of the sea.

When I grew up, I realised that the defenders were not of my country, they were of what was then my country’s neighbour; the attackers from yet farther still. I felt a degree of confusion, that I should have been taught something that was not of my country’s past, but the past of my country’s neighbour.

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As far back as I can recall, I haven’t believed in anything.

I’ve had no over-riding passion for change, I’ve felt jaded and disconnected from the establishment, from the institutions. Westminster and the political scene of the UK was framed by a “they’re all the same” mentality. All I saw was greed and corruption in people who didn’t represent my view of the world, but that’s just how it is, right? It’ll always be the same, we can’t change it.

But maybe we can.

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I believe in representative government. I believe people should be able to vote for the person/party whose stated priorities and policies most closely reflect their own.

I believe a party that is elected on a manifesto should have a legal obligation to act in line with that manifesto. I believe that if politicians lie to the public or Parliament, they should face criminal prosecution.

I don’t believe any of those things are unreasonable. And they’re also the main reasons I’ve been convinced to vote Yes in the independence referendum.

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[We’ve got something special for those of you who can’t make it to the march in Edinburgh today (or are reading en route). Julie McDowall pens the Herald’s brilliant online dating blog, but there’s a lot more to her writing than that.]

There is a groove on my skull. I can run my fingertip along it.

On your first day in a call centre they present you with a headset. You might chuckle when you first wear it, pretending to be Madonna or a helicopter pilot. But the chuckles die at the end of the shift when you lift the metal band and ruffle your hair, feeling the dent on your head.

And it can hurt, so you start to unclamp the contraption between calls and hang it round your neck, but a manager is soon gesturing wildly at you with the ‘hood up’ signal. Get that metal band clamped back onto your head. You may not remove it.

After a few years, a permanent line is engraved on your skull. You are branded.

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[Over the coming months we aim to bring you the breadth and depth of the Yes vote under our “Perspectives” tag, because there’s no such thing as a “typical” Yes supporter. Yesterday we heard from 15-year-old Saffron Dickson. Today it’s the turn of one of the many English people living in Scotland who want out of the UK too.]

I saw a poll last week that gave the Yes campaign for an independent Scotland a 1% lead. The last time I looked, the No camp had had it by a country mile. Is this phenomenal turnaround any kind of surprise? Not in the slightest.

In an era of such abject political mediocrity, Alex Salmond stands out like a giant redwood among a field of saplings. It’s hard to imagine how far behind he would have to be for the No campaign to feel truly confident of success. A few weeks before the last Scottish Elections he was 20 points adrift, but when the ballots were counted he won by a country mile.

I’m no kind of betting man, but if I was, it would be a no-brainer as to where punt my cash. Not only is Salmond the standout politician of his generation in terms of getting ballots into boxes, the lineup who are going try to take him down aren’t even close to being in the same league. All of which makes it seem more than likely that Scotland will be its own nation in a year’s time.

It occurred to me the other day that I’ve now spent a third of my life up here as a “white settler”. I’m now a well and truly established immigrant. My English roots, though, don’t deny me the chance to have a vote on Scotland’s future and, unless something changes in a big way, that vote is almost certainly going to be Yes.

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[15-year-old Saffron Dickson’s passionate, articulate contribution to a Radio 5 debate in Glasgow this week captured the hearts of everyone in the independence movement. She’ll have a vote in the referendum a year from today, and we asked her to tell us why she’ll be using it to say Yes. These are her words.]

As a young person living in Scotland, I believe wholeheartedly that Scotland is the most beautiful and prosperous country I know of. I realised this at a very young age, I might add. The site of the ‘Better Together’ campaign never really appealed to me.

I’ve always made a point of never believing or following anything I can’t fully intellectualise, so the Yes campaign was the only way for me. Living with a strong political family, I’ve always had an interest in politics, but rest assured I’m not voting Yes based on family. I’ve debated this vigorously, and my heart and my head just want what’s best for Scotland.

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Whenever there’s a discussion of women’s voting intentions in the referendum, it’s striking how quickly it all slides into stereotyping. Maybe that’s inevitable when you set out to examine the collective motivations of a group of diverse individuals who basically have one characteristic in common. Sometimes it feels like asking what all red-haired or right-handed people think.

Attempting to speak for all women, then, is a bit like herding cats. So let’s not try.

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The most interestingly consistent trend of recent opinion polls has been a significant movement away from the No vote to the Don’t Know camp. Almost every one conducted in the last few months has shown the proportion of the population intending to vote against independence dropping below 50%, but the Yes campaign has only picked up a minority, with the rest now firmly undecided.

The significance of this shift shouldn’t be underestimated. Once someone’s opinion starts to change, more often than not it tends to keep moving in the same direction, unless there’s a fundamental alteration in the reasons that caused it to start. And with the anti-independence side showing no signs of abandoning their campaign of relentless negativity, that seems unlikely.

However, it also shouldn’t be OVER-estimated. A crucial section of the populace has signified its willingness to be persuaded, but if it’s to turn the headline figures around YesScotland still has to finish the job. In order to understand how that might be achieved, we need to examine the fundamental tenets of Unionism.

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My first contribution to Wings Over Scotland appeared last May and gave an account of my then-current undecided stance on Scottish independence. Savaged mercilessly in the comments as “A bit of a long-winded ‘don’t know'”, in summary we learned three things from it: I’m crap at making decisions, the media coverage of the issue upsets me, and I wasn’t convinced of anything changing for the better after a Yes vote.

Nine months later, only one of those feelings has altered.

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I’ll make a confession: I don’t think Scotland needs independence. I’m not certain full independence is the most desirable option. At this stage in the debate, on Wings Over Scotland, that might be a quite contentious assertion. But last year, on numerous talkboards and comment threads, starting with that statement frequently saw me being called a “cybernat”, an “SNP stooge” or in one instance, “Salmond’s stormtrooper”.

That was because the statement always came with a “but”: “…but we do need control of welfare” or “…but we do need fiscal autonomy”“. And the “but” never went down well.

Full fiscal autonomy was the reason I voted Liberal Democrat in 2007. It had much to recommend it over the SNP’s full independence policy, both for Scotland and the rUK. It would have been a gradual approach that wouldn’t have scared many horses, north or south of the Tweed. It was an “I do want independence but am too polite to say so, in a very British way” kind of option.

It could have passed barely noticed by the UK media. Friends and family in England would have responded to your declaration of being a “full fiscal autonomy supporter” with a weary eye-roll and “Do shut up about Scottish politics, dear”. Independence, even if virtually synonymous in the detail, instead attracts “What? You want to rip my country apart, literally destroy 300 years of history and rob me of my entire identity, you evil separatist nat bastard?”

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The political is the personal. Nobody comes out of the womb with a view on the merits of the free market versus state interventionism – opinions are formed by someone’s experiences and environment. So where do “cybernats” come from? Speaking as one myself, and quite a recently-minted one at that, let me see if I can explain it.

I wasn’t indoctrinated into the Nationalist cause as a child – my parents are pro-Union (but I’m working on that). My upbringing was British, and I was proud of it. So what went wrong with the United Kingdom that now in adult life I disavow the very notion of Britishness and strive to bring that same UK to an end?

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