I SPENT Friday evening in a theatre being bombarded by agitprop. I know. It sounds pretty boring. Some people would prefer to listen to an orchestra scraping knives across plates than spend a few hours watching actors preach a political message.

But this was Dundee Rep’s reinvention of one of the greatest Scottish political dramas ever performed on stage. Written in 1973 by the late John McGrath, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil electrified the arts scene after it toured village halls across the Highlands with its glorious mixture of song, dance, humour and hard-edged politics. One of these performances, in a community hall in Wester Ross, was even filmed and broadcast on BBC 1’s prime-time Play for Today.

The #Cheviot, as it’s been labelled on Twitter, is a no-holds-barred history of the exploitation of the Highlands by corporate and landed power – from the brutal destruction of the clan system by the British state after Culloden to the invasion of the oil multinationals in the 1960s and 1970s. Along the way, it portrays the cruelty of the Highland Clearances, and ridicules the wealthy aristocrats and their nouveau-riche hangers-on, who colonised vast areas of Scotland to create vainglorious sporting estates so that their posh, alcohol-sozzled pals could shoot easy prey for fun.

I laughed till my sides burst and stood up with the rest of the audience at the end to cheer. The energetic cast stormed through 270 years of Scottish history and economic and cultural exploitation. We would surely not have needed two years of a referendum campaign if we had been able to sit each and every voter in front of this performance.

The play remained true to the original while infusing it with some powerful hindsight. While the first cast were touring Scotland, they had no idea that a report compiled by Professor Gavin McCrone in 1974, detailing the embarrassment of riches an independent Scotland would enjoy from oil, had been deemed by government too incendiary to publish. Extracts from McCrone were incorporated into the Dundee Rep interpretation, underlining the prescience of the original script.

It all got me thinking about how will we win a second independence referendum. There has been a hardening of the core No vote, Unionists till they die, Brexit or no Brexit. But there are many more who are still open to persuasion. Those who voted against independence tended to be cautious, older and more conservative, with a small c. These were the folk with professional jobs and comfortable pensions worried about what they might lose. There was still a bit of a gender gap, although that narrowed during the campaign.

Not all No voters were cut from the same cloth. Some were radical in their politics, loyal, despite everything, to Old Labour sentiments, still identifying with the British working class, and sceptical that independence would deliver radical social change.

Before we talk about whether the best way to win indyref 2 is by prioritising door-knocking over flag-waving, we need to talk about which sections of the No camp can be won over – and about which sections of the Yes camp could turn lukewarm.

Scotland is politically diverse so it’s always going to be a major challenge to build and sustain the type of broad coalition needed to deliver independence. But as the once-dominant labour movement falls to pieces in Scotland, I believe that bolder and more radical politics will attract more doubters than they repel. The currency question illustrated for me the contradiction at the heart of the last campaign.

The official Yes campaign, in tune with the SNP’s white paper commitments, asked people to vote for radical constitutional change while reassuring them that independence would mean pretty much business as usual. But those who wanted business as usual were always going to stick with the safe bet of a No vote.

We rightly emphasised the importance of a positive campaign. But maybe we just went too far. Certainly, the high-ranking strategists shied away from raising grievances. But The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil offers a brilliant exposition of how grievances can be raised without making people groan.

Raising people’s understanding of Scotland’s historical, economic and cultural oppression can only assist the independence movement. Part of the drive to win people to independence is surely to puncture the myth that for 300 years we have been part of a benign and wholesome union.

And the problems aren’t just historical. Once again, we are staring at the prospect of what looks like a decade or more of Tory rule – and this time without even the moderating influences of the European Union.

During the 2014 referendum campaign, the movement took on a life of its own. And where there was dynamic grassroots activity, voters became electrified with excitement at the possibility of change. People who believed that “politicians are all the same” were moved to register and vote. Big urban, previously Labour, heartlands arose from their slumbers to seize the chance to change their old conditions.

They can’t be assumed to be still in the bag – especially if the SNP government starts to get the blame for poverty pay, rising unemployment and austerity-ravaged public services.

I’m glad the SNP has embarked on the kind of listening exercise pioneered by Women for Independence. I hope the wider Yes movement, beyond the SNP, will be part of that exercise. We need radical voices that can connect with those beyond the reach of the more cautious politicians.

The official SNP vision of independence could perhaps be described as moderately centre-left. But it would be in the interests of the movement for the party to at least acknowledge that independence may well become a catalyst for more radical change.

We need to make sure that the working-class and poor of Glasgow, Dundee, North Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire feel moved again to come out in force. The price of reassuring the comfortable that nothing will change could be that those who want, and need, everything to change decide to stay at home on referendum day.