Carolyn Leckie: Inspirational rally made me more confident that one day we will secure independence

I was buoyed up too by the number of women on the platform and in the audience, by the talent of the female entertainers and by the power that women now wield within the movement. The event was both entertaining and inspirational.

I was also heartened by the tone set by Alex Salmond, who proposed that a new referendum should allow diversity its head and should focus less on detailed policies and more on the broad democratic case for self-determination. It was all in illuminating contrast to the dismal, downbeat tone struck at the weekend by Kezia Dugdale, who complained about “the painful scars that are Alex Salmond’s legacy”. Yes, a minority on both sides have engaged in some posturing over the past few years. But that’s the price of mass politicisation. I’d rather people got passionate about politics than about football and the X Factor. Unlike the violent murderous divisions that some UK politicians helped open in the Middle East and beyond, there has been not even been a black eye inflicted in anger, to my knowledge. Kezia may just be too young to remember the violence provoked and on occasion engineered by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, from inner city riots to police cavalry charges against striking miners. These were serious divisions that left real scars that have still never healed decades on.

I’m proud of those who voted Yes in 2014. Some did so from a position of prosperity and were prepared to take a risk for the long-term benefit of Scotland as a whole. People were warned, in screaming headlines day after day, that their families would suffer a collapse in living standards and that their pensions would be worth nothing when they retired. But in their hundreds of thousands, they ignored the threats and voted to make Scotland a better country. They can hold their heads high.

So too can those who rose up against their own economic oppression to cast off their chains. The low paid, the single parents, the young people denied a future, the people battered and bruised by decades of neo-liberalism, seized their chance. Many had dodged the electoral register for most of their adult lives, but were now ready to face the debt collectors so they could vote Yes.

Did they believe that independence would wave a magic wand and transform their lives overnight? No. But independence offered a chance to lift their gaze beyond the immediate horizon of lives spent battling sanctions and capability assessments, and queuing at food banks.

Few people voted Yes because they thought everything would stay the same. Many on the No side did believe they were backing the status quo. They were mistaken. Instead of living happily ever after, everything has changed – and not for the better.

Within months of the independence referendum, we were hurtled back to the days of majority Tory rule in Westminster. The coalition was dire and most people expected that it was Labour’s turn. Instead, we ended up with untrammelled Tory power. Faster than Paul Daniels swiping away a table cover, they have whipped the safety net from millions of vulnerable people. The billionaires piled up an extra £8 billion last year alone, while the rest of us endured austerity.

Scotland is now suffering from a triple onslaught – Tory austerity, Brexit and plunging oil prices. Yet even now, in the teeth of the most dire economic forecasts for a generation, support for independence hovers around 48 per cent. That’s 20 points higher than at the start of the first referendum campaign. We now have a solid phalanx of people prepared to vote independence come hell or high water. And, for the independence movement, in the words of the New Labour theme tune from 1997, things can only get better. We want independence because we need independence. A UK adrift from Europe, with its closest friend and ally possibly about to stick a megalomaniac psychopath in the White House, will be a cruel, nasty place. The UK is already in the grip of a me, me, me culture, imported from across the Atlantic and legitimised during the years of Thatcher, Major and Blair.

Ladders used to be something you used for decorating. Now we have property ladders and career ladders. People kicking others off the ladder to get their foot on the next rung is praised as healthy ambition. Private school pupils are encouraged to boast and blow their own trumpets. There’s no shame in being selfish these days.

That’s the recent drift of the UK – and like millions of others, it’s not a country I want to be part of. Scotland is different, as we often tell ourselves. But do we want it to be just a little bit different or do we want it to be seriously different? Do we want a watered down version of the UK – or do we want a brand new state which can set a shining example to our neighbours and to the rest of the world?

Instead of ladders, I want a platform from which no-one is allowed to fall off and left to scrabble on the ground for the scraps. I want a land where we accept people for who they are rather than for what they do, or for how much money they earn. A society which accepts that not everyone is cut out for the sometimes ruthless world of formal work. A country where we don’t punish people for being ill, disabled or traumatised by enslaving them in lifelong poverty, locking them in prison or simply sneering at their supposed inadequacy.

It was when we incorporated these ideals into our vision of independence that we began to inspire mass support. It was no accident that the Yes heartlands coincided with the big working class, former Labour strongholds.

Those who back independence won’t share the same views on everything. Some individuals of the centre and even of the right voted Yes in 2014 and will do so again. But to successfully navigate the broad highway to independence, the movement has to drive on the left.