ALBA - Unofficial Forum

Let me recap parts one and two of this series. Our emotions are stopping us from looking and learning from the past where you’ll discover that squabbling in long-standing social movements is inevitable and only common purpose ever lifts people beyond it (give or take the occasional black swan event). That is what we need to learn.

That leaves one final question before we get to the foothills of the mountain we need to climb. As a reminder, nearly one in ten people remain undecided about independence and two out of five people who say they would vote against independence do not hold that view strongly. That is 30 per cent of the population to talk to and we need probably about half of them to get a 60-40 win.

But since we can’t do that when we’re kicking lumps out each other and we won’t be able to stop doing that until we find a common purpose, how do we go about finding a common purpose?

Just in case you think I’m about to dictate one, I’m not. I’m not because me dictating another proposal for uniting the independence movement around action is exactly, precisely the problem. Our problem is messiahs dictating terms. That is why we’re screwed. Messiahs are a myth we invent in retrospect. They aren’t real.

Let me flag up two concepts here – ownership and power. Ownership I am using here to mean the feeling that something abstract somehow belongs to you. Your life is filled with these abstract concepts (like ‘Scottishness’ or ‘X football fan’ or ‘independence activist’) which you think in part belong to you because you are aligned to them and you share and are part of the hopes.

The independence movement has been trained over the last decade to operate without ownership. It was about those with inordinate profile and control making promises that there was a rapid shortcut available – on condition we gave up all ownership of the route to get there. It was them who owned that route and they’d open the gate and traverse the distances quickly – but only when they were good and ready and only if you stayed out of things until then.

Since that there has been a flurry of new ‘look at me! look at me!’ initiatives promising to save us all if, once again, we all give up our own thoughts, accept more lack of ownership and we’d simply get in behind whomever is the new messiah. Nothing is co-produced, everything is dictated, no-one gets any say, and in as far as people are included it seems primarily to give shallow legitimacy to the messiah.

It’s also about power and control. I’m past caring what dreadful character flaw brings this out in those concerned – a desperate desire to believe they’re important, a hankering for being in the history books and having a statue built to them, the sheer joy of adulation from others, money, daddy issues. It doesn’t matter why they do it.

But what it does is it creates a path people are forced onto to, a journey they get no say over, a route they are coerced into taking. Often the people dictating this route are untouchable, can’t be removed or held to account. The people doing the vast majority of the hard work can’t sack the people they’re working for nor can they force them to change.

The wiser people in the movement avoid them altogether, the hopeful snatch at any promise they’re given, the craven seek their own little power base by playing along. At first everyone is smiles and excitement until gradually things happen that they don’t agree with and then, for the first time, they discover their lack of power, their lack of influence – and so they feel their lack of ownership.

It ought to be patently obvious that this isn’t going to work. I mean, can you give me an example of a single unaccountable person or group of people who have achieved anything much outside the wider structures of movements that can shape themselves and hold leaders accountable?

Then the gripes begin. If you lose a vote it can feel crap, but if you are ignored or your views are disrespected because those above you don’t need to listen and there is nothing you can do about it, it digs much deeper than that. Trust is lost, anger emerges.

That’s where we are. It’s most certainly not only about lack of progress, its about lack of ownership, lack of power. People aren’t walking away because they don’t want independence, they’re walking away because they’re tired of cheering at things they get no say over. Why engage if it means nothing?

From day one of the post-referendum world I only ever wanted to try and do things right. We needed a way to unite and continue to talk and to democratise the wider movement. It couldn’t just remain as uncoordinated anarchy forever. I pushed and pushed to get a cross-movement democratic organisation reestablished, precisely to give everyone ownership.

That’s what the Scottish Independence Convention was (is…) – a coalition open to all national and regional independence-supporting organisation. Everyone was free to join and we sought to make our decisions by consensus. Of all the initiatives that the Sturgeon regime put serious effort into harming and marginalising, the SIC was probably up at the top. She could not countenance a democratic power based in the independence movement.

That’s not all that went wrong of course. Coalitions can be a nightmare and negotiating a consensus among a group of strong-minded people is often hellish. Everyone had their own ideas. But this is the hard work of democracy, of movements, of change.

I’m me. I have character flaws that would fill a phone directory. I can be, well, too much. I know I didn’t get everything right in trying to do things through a collegiate, democratic route. I’m not always the best person at it. I get impatient. I carry much blame I have no doubt.

But the truth is that there was such a giant power imbalance and the people with the power were so keen to hoard it that we never really had a chance. A coalition of equals was what we needed, even with all its imperfections. It was a way to formulate a shared plan, a shared direction, a shared hope. It was a way to give the movement ownership and power.

Right now you’re being told that another vote for politicians is all you need to do and one great leader or another will step in and [insert boilerplate copy about restoring trust and persuading people through good government or with some new wheeze or something]. You’re being told that this initiative or that organisation is our only option, our only hope.

Yet an awful lot of us now stand alone wondering what this has all got to do with us. Apparently our role is to ‘knock doors’ and recite a script written by someone else over which we had no say, to shove another fatuous leaflet through a letterbox and tell ourselves we’re at the cutting edge of a national liberation movement.

So I have very clear thoughts on the structure that wins us independence. I know quite a bit about the barriers to 60 per cent support and how to overcome them. I know the broad shape of the messaging structure we should use. This is my professional field and so I have lots of thoughts and a reasonable amount of knowledge.

But it is not for me to demand you follow. The process of creating a shared purpose is almost as important as arriving at one. If we’re serious about uniting, if we’re serious about making proper progress, then we must be serious about process. We must build something together from many minds and many hands and we must feel ownership and we must have some power.

I started this three-parter by telling you that this week has left me cold. I’m shocked about how little I care about this ten-year indyref anniversary, how little I’ve reminisced. It isn’t where I’m at. Where I’m at is an overwhelming desire to stop this stupid shadow war and build.

I don’t want us to share in this process equally because I’m nice, I want it because it’s our best hope of getting anywhere. Victory needs common purpose. Common purpose needs collective ownership. Then and only then can we start climbing that mountain.