Don’t let Alex Salmond blind you to the yes campaign’s dark side
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Version 0 of 1. It has long been Scotland’s fate to be romanticised. Now the old habit is being given a new twist. The independence referendum campaign is being romanticised as a born-again democratic moment, even a model of how a new politics can replace the old. To read some accounts, it’s as though all Scotland has become what Bill Clinton once called the Hay festival, a Woodstock of the mind. Only a fool would deny this campaign is extraordinary. It has been incredibly engaging and incredibly engaged. This has been British politics of a sort that none of us has ever witnessed at an election – but then it’s not an election. Voter registration has soared. Turnout is expected to be spectacular by modern standards. And it’s true. Wherever you go in Scotland everyone is talking about it. You hear the conversation in the train, in the shops, in the pubs and on the streets. For a democrat, what’s not to like? But not all of it is good. There has been a dark side to the campaign too. That dark side shouldn’t be exaggerated, but it absolutely mustn’t be ignored either. It is part of the story. The referendum has not just been empowering but divisive. Indeed, the divisiveness may be its more enduring legacy. That’s one of the things about referendums. They bring a simplicity and false finality to the messy nuances of real life. It’s one of the reasons to mistrust them. Scotland’s divisions won’t evaporate in the morning sun as soon as the result is announced. The referendum is of course a huge shared experience. No one who has been part of it will ever forget these weeks. But you would be bold to say it has brought Scotland together. And it is far too soon to say what it has done to Britain. “I’ll be glad when it’s all over,” is an increasing refrain here. True, the bad stuff is rare and is widely scattered. And of course one shouldn’t get too uptight. It’s no surprise that tensions have risen as voting day neared and Ed Miliband got knocked off his stride on Tuesday. Heckling, of which I have heard a lot in the last week, is a necessary part of political life. Even a bit of egg-throwing, of the sort that Labour’s Jim Murphy suffered on the campaign trail, has its place. There is, after all, a lot at stake. So it is important to keep the disturbing bits in perspective. Nevertheless the tensions are part of the story too. And, contrary to what Alex Salmond insouciantly pretends, these are mostly coming from his side. It’s the yes voters who have the swagger, wave the flags, turn out the bigger crowds – and also who talk about quislings and traitors. It’s the no voters who tend to keep their heads down, who prefer not to put posters in their windows just to be on the safe side, and who find themselves on the receiving end of nasty insults and sometimes worse. Like the Glaswegian Labour MP who was beckoned over by a car driver the other day who wound down his window to tell the MP to fuck off back to England. Or the widow of a senior Scottish Tory who was spat on because of her late husband’s politics. Or the lady in Galashiels who was asked what right she had to a vote when she had an English accent. Salmond is not adequately held to account for what his supporters sometimes do. Last weekend, about a thousand nationalist protesters waving saltires held a rally outside BBC headquarters in Glasgow to protest against corporation coverage. An expensively made banner, very professional, called for the sacking of BBC political editor Nick Robinson. Alistair Darling said it was the sort of scene you might expect in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The journalists’ union was properly outraged. But Salmond said the event was “peaceful and joyous”. Imagine the hue and cry that would have followed if Labour or Tory supporters had done such a thing. Today the Daily Telegraph reported that Salmond’s office had been trying to force the principal of St Andrews university to tone down some critical remarks she had made about the consequences of independence on higher education finances. Louise Richardson had commented in March 2013 that it would be “catastrophic” if the university was cut off from the funding it gets from UK national research councils. So Salmond’s office pressured her to issue a “clarification” which they had drafted, saying that “Scottish government has risen to the challenge on fees, in stark contrast to the government south of the border”. Salmond, who in the end controls about half of the university’s funding, made a heated phone call to back this up. Richardson rightly refused. But that’s what nationalism does. It redefines neighbours into otherness in defiance of their shared experience and material interest. The Cumbernauld MP Gregg McClymont has a good line about there being no such thing as a successfully divided island. Think Cyprus, he says. Or Ireland, Sri Lanka or Timor. Why can a newly divided Britain be so certain that it will be different? The answer is it cannot. This week a repentant Ewan Morrison wrote about how he had joined the yes campaign only to find that it was a joyless place, run by a clique and in which questioning was frowned upon and discipline constantly demanded. “Many people are voting yes just to express their frustration at not being able to engage with politics as it is,” Morrison wrote. “They’re voting yes because they want their voice to be heard for the first time. That’s understandable and admirable, but yes is not a debate or a democratic dream, it’s an empty word and an empty political process.” The idea that what has been happening in Scotland is a lively and mutually respectful dialogue is not the whole truth. Historical materialism and nationalism don’t mix. Nationalism offers a reset option from materialist reality. It gives people a blank canvas on which they can paint their fantasy of choice. For some Scottish yes voters, that means a socialist Scotland. For others it means a low-tax tiger economy. For some it means a Scotland powered by renewables. For others it means an oil economy, where energy companies get what they want. An independent Scotland cannot be all these things at the same time. Whatever the result, these are going to be difficult hours and days for a Scotland that Salmond’s nationalism has forced into a division against itself. Magnanimity will be at a premium. The wounds are not irreparable. But they could last longer than many who take a more benign view of these massive events wish to believe. |