Everything IS Different Now



Here's a post by an old friend of mine, John McTaggart, who has shared his thoughts on the Scottish referendum campaign on Facebook.

John was a modern studies teacher in Edinburgh where we first met and amongst other things he now runs a highly successful online teaching and learning facility at:
http://www.modernityscotland.co.uk

But his comments about why 'Everything IS Different Now' certainly struck a chord with me, especially the one about the Labour Party becoming an end in itself.

Everything IS Different Now

A pal of mine, who’s a Better Together supporter, contacted me the other week. ‘What’s happening where you are?’ he asked. ‘

I told him that in all honesty that I didn’t know. I could only go on a) the polls b) my family, friends, work colleagues and general chit chat in my wife’s cafe and c) what I read on my social media.

a) told me the same as my friend b) gave me about 50/50. The vast bulk of my friends are YES. I’ll leave my wife and family to speak for themselves but most of what I overhear in our cafe shows a mixed picture c) social media has some great stuff but some right heidbangers too.

So, who knows? What I do know is that I’ve never known anything like this in my life, outwith the 1984-85 miner’s strike. I know that Scottish society will never be the same again and Scottish politics, whatever the result will be completely changed.

I’m voting Yes. With no doubts and with a lot of hope that the majority of Scots vote the same.

I’m not trying to convince you if you’re undecided to do the same or to have a pop at you if you’re not. That old line about ‘some of my best friends are voting No’ is definitely true. Whoever wins, we’ll still play golf or go for a cycle, then put the world to rights together as always.

If this had happened 30 years ago I’d have been totally different. But Scotland was totally different 30 years ago. It just wouldn’t have happened. The time was not right.

In 1984 Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives had just found their mojo. Seeing off a desperate Argentinian dictator in the Falklands gave them the election win so unlikely a few months before. Now they were ready to take on the ‘enemy within’, the National Union of Miners, and were organised for it. They won again.

Scottish independence was pretty irrelevant to all this. In fact the SNP were a bit of a joke. The SNP were dubbed ‘tartan tories’. The party, in the central belt anyway, seemed to be comprised of strange old men in kilts with weird attitudes or no attitudes towards anything other than this mythical ‘independence’.

But change was happening. Scottish voting habits between Margaret Thatcher’s election in 1979 and now have changed utterly. The Tories, once the most popular party in Scotland (in 1955) have just 1 MP now. The party which is the only one to have won over 50% of the vote in Scotland is lucky to get 15%. And that, arguably, is due to the AMS and STV voting systems, things the Tories have even now yet to admit they approve of. The SNP, not the Tories, Labour, is the most popular party in Scotland.

I still know my own scheme where I was brought up. A working class community which once comprised strong, hard working families has become the home of the 3rd generation unemployed. Instead of people enjoying the rewards of work, perhaps harbouring the hope of higher education for their kids, it now houses, among the terrified pensioners and decent people, the druggies and the alkies. Not just the long term unemployed but the unemployable. I know this sounds a cliché, especially to the middle classes who never knew these communities, but you could go out and leave your door unlocked. Kids were looked after by everyone in the scheme. Women, especially, took a pride in their ‘close’. Working class communities were good places to grow up.

Change probably had to happen. Globalism couldn’t be kept at bay. But the change could have been managed. Instead it was an excuse to atomise people. The resourceful escaped into the middle class. If you lived in a ‘good’ working class area you could buy your home. Then maybe sell it and move out to the burbs. If you think Scotland is Better Together walk the length of Kirkcaldy High Street. You might, if you’re imaginative enough, picture the ghosts of working people spending their wages and conceive of a town throbbing with people laughing and living. Go on Douglas Alexander, Alastair Darling, Ruth Davidson. I dare you. Not when you’re surrounded by your minders and fans. Do it on your own. You’ll see empty buildings. Charity shops. 99p shops. There’s any number of beggars and roaming, crazy people eyeing you up. And that’s during the day. Life expectancies lower than war zones in the middle east. You won’t hang about long. Better Together? Better than what exactly?

Its the legacy of Thatcherism that has driven the Scottish people to independence. Thatcherism was great for the winners but grim for the losers. Thatcherism was rejected by the vast majority of Scots but we had to put up with it then and we deal with it now.

I can understand why the Tories are against independence. They opposed the Scottish parliament and there is a logic in their British nationalism. Ironically it could be said that the Scottish Tories have fared better than Scottish Labour in the referendum. They have a strong leader who at least believes in what she says. Has the Scottish Labour leader played any part in this campaign? While the Tories normally poll 10-13% in Scottish elections, their vote suffers from the First Past the Post system we have in UK elections and part of the Scottish parliament elections. Is there really any point in getting off your backside and voting Tory in most Scottish seats? I’ll bet there’s quite a few Tories in East Renfrewshire who find Labour’s Jim Murphy perfectly acceptable. Given the chance in this referendum they can come out supporting traditional Tory values without having to nail their colours to the still toxic Tory mast. I suspect the real Tory support in Scotland is a fair bit higher than it normally is in elections.

So, to ‘the math’. David Cameron thought he had the referendum in the bag. It would be a skoosh (though I somehow doubt he and George Osborne referred to it in those terms!) So, no devo max on the ballot paper. A straight yes or no and put this Salmond guy to the sword. Better Together have the Tory vote in the bag. Scottish Labour was telt to deliver the Scottish Labour vote. The SNP might get their 30 odd per cent, a few Greens, some Trots and the odd disaffected Labour but that would be it. Game over and back to normal business. The Scottish Liberal Democrats. Did I forget about them?

But it just hasn’t worked out that way. Better Together kicked off first with the line that Scotland is just too wee and insignificant to be independent. Only ‘big’ nations can be prosperous enough to be independent. The oil’s nearly all gone as well. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And by the way, we’re Better Together. You can be Scottish and British. Doesn’t make you a bad person. Some of the smarter ones said, ‘of course Scotland could be independent but why would you want to be?’

Yes Scotland couldn’t win the air war. Only the Sunday Herald backed independence. And their readers are all trendy lefties who ‘ll vote Yes anyway. Better Together could rely on most of the papers that have any decent readership in Scotland; The Record, The Mail, the Express, The Scotsman and the churnalism of the freebies. The Scottish Sun was different. Murdoch doesn’t like Cameron any more and he quite likes Salmond, so it seems. But social media is a whole new ball game. No one yet knows the power of 3rd party referrals and virals in Facebook and social media. Yes Scotland can win the ground war; on the streets, in the schemes and the high streets. Yes Scotland has more activists. While the polls may well be inaccurate, they consistently show a demographic that it is the old and the comfortable who do not want change. The poorer you are and the younger you are the less you fear it. So Project Fear truly kicked in. We love you (honest) but you can’t leave us. Its our pound, not yours. We’ll get businesses to say we’ll leave the country. We’ll get supermarkets to say your prices will go up. Banks to say your mortgages will go up. Who cares how we win this. Winning ugly will do. Just scare enough of them.

I’m not saying Yes Scotland have fought a flawless campaign. I could go on about the White Paper. Alex Salmond did walk into an elephant trap in the first currency debate. But one by one the scare stories of Better Together have been rebutted. So Scotland can’t use the pound? There’s impartial economists who’ll tell you that is total bluff. The Tories put the banks and Asda up to their scare stories about moving and putting up prices. Douglas Alexander can go auto pilot on ‘risk and consequences of independence’ yet is anyone daft enough to think that there are no risks and consequences in voting No? That mortgages and prices won’t ever go up? That the UK wide referendum to leave the EU might go a way Scottish voters don’t want? That the powers promised to Scotland might just never materialise if Better Together get their win?

That Scotland might actually flourish under independence? For every doom merchant there’s plenty of economists saying there’s generations of oil left. Even without oil, Scotland is rich in renewable energies. We have established education and legal professions. We have an intelligent workforce. We have plenty of social problems, the legacy of Thatcherism to sort out but we will have the democratic mechanism, the will of the Scottish people to tackle these head on. No more un-elected peers in the House of Lords, on £300 a day to sign in and out running the country. You may not get the government you want but it will be our government. Like most MSPs, people from our communities, accountable on a daily basis for the decisions they make, not coming back at the weekends and hiding behind their safe opposition seats with most of the real work done by the MSPs.

Above all, for me, we might see an end to the Scottish cringe. That it’s always someone else’s responsibility. I’m not good enough. I know my place. I kent yer faither.

I’m not a ‘nationalist’. And the last thing I am is anti-English or anyone because of their national/ethnic origin. I’m a democrat. I don’t believe in ‘separation’. An independent Scotland, despite the bluster from Better Together, will, because sheer economic and political interests dictates that there will be a new, better union with the rest of the UK and with other nations in the world. Scotland is a rich country. It is just ridiculous to suggest that we could not be a prosperous nation. And people abroad love us! Scotland the brand is just an incredible selling point.

Labour in Scotland should be seizing this opportunity with both hands to set an example for the rest of the UK in how a just and equitable country goes about its business. But No. They confuse the means with the end. Labour has become an end in itself. And to maintain Labour as a going concern, the promise of a more equitable Scotland is to be sacrificed?

Well, a couple of days before we go to the polls the Scottish people have not buckled under the most incredible misinformation and propaganda. I’ve been amazed and heartened at discovering so many people who have thrown off the shackles of party tribalism to vote Yes and elect a new Scotland. There’s no reason why it can’t be a prosperous one. And unless the voting patterns of the last 30 years are reversed we will elect the government to make it a fairer one too.

Popular posts from this blog

SNP - Conspiracy of Silence

LGB Rights - Hijacked By Intolerant Zealots!