Scotland Ten Years On from the Indyref
Gerry Hassan
Bella Caledonia, 18 September 2024
Ten years ago today Scotland voted 55% to 45% to remain in the UK union and against independence. This was a momentous, historic watershed under which we are still living, not yet having come to terms with its consequences and continued influence.
Many across the political spectrum, pro and anti-independence, have struggled post-2014. But most of the mainstream politicians who participated in the 2014 campaign, including SNP senior figures and strategists, failed to see the indyref at the time in its wider context – of a Scotland changing not just how it addressed the union, but how it did politics and democracy.
It is no accident that the bigger dynamics that flowed from 2014 beyond independence have been so conspicuously not taken up or championed by the SNP and Scottish Government. They barely understood some of the forces at work which produced the 2014 indyref beyond the SNP’s 2011 victory.
The ten-year anniversary of our date with destiny has been a quiet, understated affair, and this is understandable. The pro-union forces do not want to dwell on this near-death moment for the union. The SNP as the largest political pro-independence force is not in the greatest shape to commemorate or reflect on what was ultimately a defeat – even though it felt at the time like a victory and shifted independence as an idea into the mainstream.
The political environment of the present has contributed to this strange air. The SNP have been in office 17 years. Mired in controversy and an ongoing police investigation, the party is still trying to come to terms with the Sturgeon era and its legacy. Independence, post-2014, has not made the kind of progress and breakthrough that many expected. And to add to the situation, the political advantage now sits for a period with Keir Starmer’s newly elected Labour Government – with a 170 seat plus majority, the highest proportion of Scottish seats for the first time since 2010 and the first UK Labour administration since 2005.
Thinking Deeper about Independence
Many of these factors were evident at last weekend’s Conter conference at Glasgow Caledonian University – ‘2014-2024: Scottish Independence and the British State Ten Years On’. This sold-out event brought together a host of speakers, some drawing from the former Radical Independence Campaign whose leading lights morphed into Conter after the electoral failure of RISE, and included various strands of the left, the SNP, Alba, academia, trade unionists, and campaigners.
Numerous contributors including myself addressed some of the big issues and wider context that independence has conspicuously failed to do post-2014. Academic David McCrone gave an impressive analysis of the Scotland of 25 years of devolution and the independence debate describing the former as ‘the devolution conundrum’ where the Scottish Parliament claims the achievements of Westminster, while blaming its failures on Westminster.
McCrone pointed out that for all the rhetoric of A Claim of Right in the 1980s, Canon Kenyon Wright’s evoking of ‘We are the people’ and reciting of popular sovereignty, that Wright’s conundrum has not been answered: ‘What do we do if that voice we know says No?’ McCrone noted that the Supreme Court judgement on an indyref meant ‘Holyrood is a creation of the British state’ leaving independence in an impasse.
Costas Lapavitsas surveyed the international capitalist order post-2008 and found ‘the left weaker than at any time since 1789’. His tour de force presentation of the rise of state-led financialisation since the banking crisis, and with the shift from the West, concluded that ‘the world looks like pre-1914’ defined by ‘contested hegemony’. The left he surmised must go back to the core principles of ‘what do you do for a living?’ and recognise that the politics of redistribution and rights were not enough.
Closer to home Glasgow University academic Maureen McBride gave a detailed survey of the rise of anti-Irish racism and sectarianism and Orange Order marches, the collusion of authorities and continued hypocrisy of the likes of Glasgow City Council, all of which called for an anti-racist politics to challenge such activities.
The electoral terrain post-2014 was laid out eloquently in a presentation by John Curtice rich in data and insights. On the surface he noted little change in support for independence and the union since 2014, but appearances can be deceptive. In the ten years, and particularly post-Brexit 2016 vote, independence has increasingly become associated with a pro-EU stance, while remaining in the union has with Scotland and the UK remaining outside the EU.
Curtice did not labour this point but it underlined the absence of strategic debate and thinking on independence post-2014, and the refusal of the SNP and others to face up to the hard choices and trade-offs inherent in independence. Instead, the SNP under Sturgeon and her successors has embraced a politics of strategic ambiguity which has avoided addressing such issues and dilemmas in favour of a vague ‘Big Tent’ approach.
Within this context, parts of independence are clearly not in a good place, represented in this conference by the likes of former SNP minister and now Alba member Kenny MacAskill. He argued that everything that he perceived had gone wrong in the past decade was the responsibility of Nicola Sturgeon and Sturgeonism; his view ignoring any wider understanding of dynamics and power. Instead, he portrayed a seemingly omnipotent Sturgeon singularly responsible for not just shrinking and eviscerating the SNP and independence but the Scottish Parliament which McAskill now regards as a marginal irrelevance.
Missing entirely was any acknowledgement of post-2014 how Sturgeon’s ultimately counter-productive leadership was possible. Namely that Sturgeon told people what they wanted to hear, keeping the pretence of progress on the road and illusion that an indyref was just round the corner, and too many people heard what they wanted to hear, in what ultimately became a feedback loop of unreality. MacAskill was even a SNP senior politician, MSP and MP, for much of this period, but in his new Alba iteration he seems conveniently to have forgotten this.
Former SNP and Labour activist Isobel Lindsay gave a historical account of how the SNP had arrived at its present state, noting that she had joined the party in the 1960s when it was known for its ‘democratic structures’ which continued imperfectly up to the second period of Salmond leadership. Lindsay summarised the concentration of power at the top of the party in the Sturgeon era, claiming that ‘Sturgeon’s kitchen cabinet was more like a kitchen scullery’ with disastrous consequences.
A more sociological take came from Stirling University academic Tom Montgomery who drew from research he co-authored into SNP members and the nature of the party post-2014. A wealth of quotes from SNP members cited in the research underlined a party unprepared for the bulge in members post-2014 and which failed to evolve and adapt. Asked by Laura Webster, editor of The National, what one thing should change in the present-day SNP he answered simply: ‘Work out what you are for.’
While Conter were meeting in Glasgow, at the same time Alex Salmond and Tommy Sheridan were speaking to a small crowd in Glasgow’s George Square revving up their revivalist message to an assortment of the faithful. This was followed by an Alex Salmond event at the IMAX Cinema on Glasgow’s Southside which included Wings over Scotland’s Stuart Campbell, former SNP politicians Alex Neil and Fergus Ewing, and broadcaster Bernard Ponsonby.
Unlike ten years ago there is little pretence of any semblance of unity across the independence spectrum. Some may mourn that and yearn for the 2014 feeling. But there can be little common cause with the likes of Salmond, irrelevant electoral forces such as Alba, and toxic forces such as Wings (who has rather conveniently monetised such a politics to maximum self-interest).
The wider mood is understandably understated. There is an element of deflation and even depression on part of independence. ‘Scotland is doomed’ one independence supporter wrote on my Facebook page this week in response to the YouGov poll on independence ten years on and the complexities and challenges. Such sentiments were always part of our political sensibilities.
On the pro-union side, Tory MSP Murdo Fraser on a daily basis seems to proclaim that independence as a cause is ‘over’ and that it is ‘time to move on’. These assertions show a profound misreading on the part of a significant section of pro-union opinion about independence which could in time play to the advantage of self-government.
In the long run to 2014 and after, independence has continually been caricatured by pro-union views as ‘Braveheart Nationalists’, driven by emotion, the past and flags. This misrepresentation is an attempt to dismiss independence as an emotional spasm, but what it also does is underestimate its appeal and logic, and this presents independence with an opportunity. While there has always been a romantic, sentimental appeal to part of independence a more modern set of deliberations has been at play – about democracy, self-confidence, progressive values and revulsion at the British state – which the pro-union caricature ignores.
Ten Years on and The Future of Independence
Ten years on is an appropriate moment for making sense of independence, where it is, where it sits in a longer timeframe, and where it might go in the future if it has the kind of healthy and open debated witnessed at the Conter gathering.
First, the road to 2014 and the indyref cannot just be seen in a narrow framework: the SNP winning in 2007 and 2011, Salmond’s appeal, and Labour’s weakness. The indyref’s long story was against a backdrop of the nature of authority and power changing dramatically in Scotland and the decline in deference and collapse of traditional authority such as the Church of Scotland and Catholic Church – a story commonplace across the West.
Our Scottish expression of this, that I explored in Caledonian Dreaming: The Quest for a Different Scotland in 2014, saw authority and power become more disputed; the old establishment decline and a space emerge to debate how we collectively wanted to decide things as a nation and hence the indyref.
Second, 2014 offered two very different visions of an independent Scotland. As I put in my address on Saturday there was the SNP’s vision: of a bright, shiny, new Scottish state: an embodiment of modernity and progressivism, which was in all respects rather similar to the high hopes of Labour at its peak across Scotland and Britain, but just Scottish-focused and accountable.
Running alongside was a perspective emphasising self-organisation, autonomy and decentralisation – mostly from younger, radical voices – which said ‘we do not trust the state because you have not been there for us in the past 40 years.’ These two versions of independence and Scotland were then and even more so now incompatible; a difference which can no longer be just wished away or submerged.
Third, the Scottish debate is not, as Jim Sillars and Kenny MacAskill framed, just about unionists versus nationalists. This is a lazy trope in some, but bad politics and a misinterpretation in others. As David McCrone pointed out beneath the binaries of Yes and No a whole spectrum of opinions and fluidities need recognition.
A debate framed as unionism versus nationalism is truncated and closes off other perspectives. It reduces the debate to the competing claim of two nationalisms. It also plays into the comforting story of the past couple of decades of Scottish nationalism telling itself how nice, unique and progressive it is, and congratulating itself. In so doing it is debasing the arguments of Tom Nairn, often cited here, but who wrote about the Janus sided nature of nationalism, and articulating a Scottish exceptionalism which does not address power, elites and inequalities in Scotland, who gains and who loses and how this can be rectified.
Fourth, independence must stop portraying progress to independence as somehow ‘inevitable’ and a kind of seamless path from the high of 2014 to a new plateau of victory. The Conter gathering was not guilty of such an approach, but there was even on Saturday a belief that all independence needs to do is focus on shifting from 45% to 55% to win. A much more ambitious approach is needed which talks to a wider Scotland, recognising the many shades of opinion which support No.
Fifth, independence requires embracing hard choices and trade-offs implicit in Curtice’s analysis. An example is the vast majority of independence support today is centred on the political appeal of ‘an independent Scotland in the EU versus a Scotland in the UK outside the EU.’ Trade unionist Cat Boyd perhaps went a little too far on Saturday stressing that independence had to admit the realities of ten years of difficulties under independence to get a fairer Scotland, overstating the extent to which ‘Tartan austerity’ could be sold to voters. But honest debate that addresses the inevitable risks, tensions and pressure points in the early years of independence has to emerge and not be left unsaid.
Sixth, no successful version of independence can prosper in the future without addressing major issues of political economy and capitalism beyond superficial references to Grangemouth. This necessitates addressing the nature and weaknesses of the Scottish economy, issues of Scottish and British capitalism, and the absence of such thinking from the SNP and most, but not all independence. The SNP with its Growth Commission and conventional economics of Kate Forbes, inhabits the same political space as Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Labour, clinging to a broken economic model and outdated, discredited economic ideas.
Finally, independence must recognise the limits of mainstream politics in Scotland and the West. In 2014 independence presented itself as insurgents, even though the SNP were a party of government then as now. This riding of two horses at the same time is an increasingly impossible act to maintain. The SNP are inarguably an insider party of the system and even more a court party in how they disperse power and privilege.
Independence must have two appeals. One has to be conventional, dealing in reassurance, risk and difficult choices but it also has to embrace insurgency and disruption, and challenge the mainstream. This is a world where the mainstream politics of centre-left and centre-right have failed people across the West – and Scotland is no exception. What would a politics of disruption and anti-system activism look like – and how could it be different and more serious and far-reaching that the mostly rhetorical disruption of 2014? This question should at least be asked.
We are ten years on from a watershed moment in Scotland’s history, part of a longer story of a society and nation going through dramatic change in how it sees, conducts and organises itself – and the collective stories it tells. Simplistic interpretations of 2014 and its aftermath – either overly pessimistic and doom-laden, or believing that it will inevitably happen – need to be rejected. These attitudes, as much as Nicola Sturgeon’s control politics, have contributed to the current situation.
Two final thoughts. This longer story of Scotland needs to be more fully understood as do the consequences flowing from it. Authority, power and legitimacy are changing in Scotland and politics, government and independence have to reflect this. If independence does not champion autonomy, self-organisation and wider self-government, the forces of the populist right will attempt to seize and claim this ground, as they have done in England with Farage and Reform. No one should be under the illusion that Scotland is completely immune from such a politics.
Lastly, the strategic choices and work that independence needs to do requires an investigation of the road not travelled from 2014. Namely, a politics which goes beyond party and a movement of marches and banners. Instead, it should involve institution building and undertaking some of the heavy lifting and deep digging independence as a nation-building project has not so far undertaken. This will require a different SNP from the past ten years: one prepared to let go and see itself as one critical element of a wider movement; that change can realistically only begin seriously after the 2026 Scottish elections and another SNP reverse. But the necessary initial steps can be identified and taken in the here and now.
In all this ideas matter, and the social forces and interests which give expression to ideas. Keith Joseph, the intellectual force behind what became known as Thatcherism, knew this well and articulated this in a key speech in 1976 to the Tory conference:
Strategy matters. Policies matter. But behind them all stands the vision. Scorn not the vision; scorn not the idea. Mao said that power grows out of the barrel of a gun. A gun is certainly powerful, but who controls the man with a gun? A man with an idea.
Independence has become one of the defining ideas of Scotland. But it needs vision, detail and set of stories which reach out and speak to people, and in which people see themselves as active agents to aid the wider change that Scotland so desperately needs. Continuity does not cut it; nor does trusting in conventional leaders.
The politics of change and challenging the status quo will define Scotland’s future. Independence has an advantage in this as it represents a break with what has come before; but it cannot be taken as a given. While the pro-union argument is associated with the present-day realities of the UK it is possible that a strategic case for remaking the union with greater democracy, decentralism and reform emerges in the future.
The world is not standing still; nor can independence; and the same is true of the union. The argument of who represents change and a different kind of future has to be made and remade and shaped by a vision, stories and serious ideas.
