[Robin McAlpine Blog] My top eight indy myths

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My top eight indy myths

First published by The National

Wah wah wah, it’s no’ fair. You know what makes that noise? A campaign which is about to lose. Spoiler alert; you’re right, it’s no’ fair. Thing is, complaining isn’t going to make it fair, and if you are going to wait for it all to be fair, you’ll need a hobby in the meantime.

This week Laura Pollock spoke to a range of independence supporters and asked them what myths the public hold about independence. My answer was none – they’ve just not been supplied with proper information. The myths that are holding us back are our own, not theirs.

I amn’t really trying to be popular just now (you might have noticed) because I don’t think we’re in a place where telling ourselves bedtime stories is helpful. I also live by a simple, personal rule; to earn the right to criticise others, first you must be truly, honestly critical of yourself. If you don’t sort your own problems then you have a bit of a brass neck offering to solve everyone else’s.

You will I’m sure have your own list of bugbears. Here’s my top eight indy movement myths/excuses/self-pity stories – and why we should retire them.

1. The UK will ignore us no matter what

The UK is no impenetrable fortress. It has lost territories over and over again. The last territory it agreed to give back was… last year, with the promise of final withdrawal from the Chagos islands. To say the UK cannot be overcome is nonsense.

What the UK is not going to do is cross the road to help us. If we’re floating either side of 50 per cent in the polls, giving us anything at all would be an act of enormous generosity. We’re not in a position of strength. We know how the UK behaves when we’re at 45 per cent, we don’t know how it will behave when we’re at 60.

It doesn’t mean they’ll roll over, or not try and delay, or try to ignore us, but if we’re even half competent we should be able to develop a strategy which will overcome this. We greatly underestimate the strength of the position we would be in.

But not trying?That is self-deluding, self-defeating self pity. Honestly, ‘there is no point trying to get public support ‘cos the UK will ignore us anyway’ is junkie patter; weak, sorrowful, pathetic.

2. The media is against us

Has this come as news to you? If so, welcome to the party. In the history of the modern world there was never majority support from a privately-owned media or from a state-funded broadcaster for action which would challenge the interests of the powerful. You think the suffragettes went out for long, boozy lunches with newspaper proprietors to plan shared editorial strategies? You think the Times of India was cheering on Gandhi?

In every single suggestion of how to get to independence there is a prerequisite; we won’t get the chance and none of them will work if we’re not in a position of strength

Powerful vested interests do not help you challenge their power. That is the landscape from which we all start. Complaining about it is pointless; you can go through it, round it, over it or under it. You can even legislate to change it. But if you’re moaning about it you’re wasting everyone’s time.

3. There’s a shortcut

No there isn’t. There is never a shortcut. Occasionally, something falls out the sky (like a Starmer) and clears a new path. But it’s still not a shortcut, it’s just a new path. Scotland is a democracy, thank god. So long as it is, we will not become independent without strong majority support.

I literally don’t care what route to independence you believe in; the referendum route (fair enough), the de facto referendum route (I’m more sceptical), some sort of international legal-based intervention (I am entirely unconvinced), a unilateral declaration of independence (folks, London can turn our electricity grid off – we don’t have a lot of cards…) or any of the other routes I look at in the book I wrote (Direction).

In every single case there is a prerequisite; we won’t get the chance and none of them will work if we’re not in a position of strength. On 19 September 2014 I wrote that we should target 60 per cent support as our next step. That remains true today. Pressure then change, support then technical process, consent then delivery – that’s how the world works. There is no shortcut, not for us.

4. It’s the spies…

I grew up when the Cold War was extremely cold, the child of one of the UK’s leading anti-nuclear activists. Sometimes our phone would make a strange clicking sound. Surveillance is and will always be a fundamental part of any social change movement. We have decades upon decades of evidence of this, from the early racial equality movement through the trade unions, the environmental movement and even Wilson’s Labour government.

Of course the security services will be maintaining a close interest in events in Scotland. What I am much more sceptical about is the idea that they have active saboteurs inside the movement or full-time James Bonds undercover among us. But it doesn’t make any difference either way. One, a good plan works whether the other side knows or not. Two, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

So what do you want to do? Talk about it more?

5. We just need a new messiah…

When people get stuck or impatient or can’t see a way forward, sometimes they bet on a messiah figure – or a benevolent god, a guardian angel or the the lottery. It’s a losing bet. It is debatable whether messiah figures exist at all (Mandela or Gandhi were hardly lone wolves), but if they do they are vanishingly rare.

The occasions where peace fails are always the occasions where one or more parties insist that it can only be achieved through the capitulation of the others, or by expelling or excluding those who won’t

Change is always – always – a team effort. You might have a figurehead or you might not. You might have a steep hierarchy or you might be flat. There are people with brilliant ideas and wonderful skills. But there is never a pied piper that can open a magic door, even if they tell you they can, even if they’re convincing. We work together or we delude ourselves on our own.

Oh, there is one thing worse though – looking round, not seeing a messiah and concluding it must be you.

6. Unity means obedience

Those at the top always think that unity and obedience are the same thing. They are most certainly not. I’ve been in politics and campaigning long enough to have seen endless division and fragmentation and significantly less rapprochement and peace-making.

The occasions where peace fails are always the occasions where one or more parties insist that it can only be achieved through the capitulation of the others, or by expelling or excluding those who won’t. The occasions where peace works is always when all sides accept that they need to give some ground.

7. SNP Baaaad

I do not struggle to understand the desire to defend political parties which are trying to achieve the same thing as you. There is no shortage of attacks on them. And yet, if one of the biggest barriers to Scottish independence among our target voter is their lack of confidence in the political parties and leaders who would have to implement it (and it definitely is), we should listen, not shout them down.

Governmental performance was deteriorating for a long time and we didn’t face it. There are times when you have to defend your own, but there are times when you must look to your own and admit and then say ‘you’re not performing well enough and you need to improve rapidly’. No-one ever had their doubts shouted out of them. No-one ever improved via sycophancy.

8. I don’t know how to do this so it can’t be done…

Referendums – simple, obvious, everyone knows how they work. Life – complicated, messy and complex to deal with. The independence movement craves the clarity and simplicity of a referendum which is never going to come unless we engage with life first. So how do you change people’s minds in their everyday lives?

I don’t know. Or rather, I know a fair bit about this (it’s my profession) but I don’t know it all. No-one does, because life is complicated, messy and complex to deal with. Want a run-through of standard campaign and influence advice and the latest global thinking on how to organise and run campaigns? I know about that. Offer advice on how to convince a 50-year-old tradesman to support independence, I’ll give you a solid suggestion because that is who I know.

Want advice on how to change the thinking of a 16-year-old girl or a 30-year-old ethnic minority immigrant who has to face discrimination at work? I’m definitely not your best source of advice. Our task is to persuade Scotland. It isn’t going to happen because a politician has a clever quip at First Ministers Questions or because the civil service releases another spreadsheet.

It’s going to happen when we have a strategy we share, a plan that makes sense, answers to questions that need answers and a solid, well-designed story to tell – and when we stop all of this endless whining and moaning and excuse-making and start to talk to our target voters.

Source: My top eight indy myths