I STARTED Wings Over Scotland because I was sick of hearing things being said on TV and reading things in newspapers that I knew weren’t true, but which absolutely nobody challenged. The most obvious example is the idea that Labour needed Scottish seats to win UK elections – that’s absolute hogwash, but everyone repeated it like a self-evident mantra. Having searched in vain for a website debunking the myths, I realised I’d have to do it myself. I never thought it would become a job.
Wings has been almost entirely airbrushed out of the story of the referendum campaign in the past year, and I always expected it to be – history is written by the media, and the media really hates being the subject of scrutiny rather than the scrutineer.
But it’s just laughably, embarrassingly, petty on a basic journalistic level that not a single feature was written anywhere about the astonishing achievement of a thrown-together team of grassroots volunteers funding and then distributing a 72-page book of detailed, sourced arguments to every corner of Scotland in a few short weeks.
Those people got boxes and van-loads of books to every island, up every remote farm-track in the Borders, to every city and town and village, but the lack of coverage and credit they got for it is a disgrace to anyone calling themselves a reporter.
From May 2011 until September 18 last year I had no idea if we’d win or not. I said from very early on that there wouldn’t be more than 10 points in it either way, but I honestly hadn’t a clue which way it would go. On the 18th itself I was miserable. It was a horrible, damp, foggy day that felt ill-omened from the off, and seemed to last forever. I’ve never known time move so slowly.
On the 19th I felt as wretched as everyone else, and the loyalist thuggery on George Square was sickening. On the Saturday the sun came out and everyone seemed to have been given a bit of a kick in the backside by the violence – I honestly think that’s what re-energised the Yes movement, and it’s never looked back. People were saying: “There’s no way we’re letting those knuckle-dragging scum have the last laugh.”
If Scotland voting to stay in the EU and the rUK votes to leave, the next independence referendum could be sooner than anyone expects. I think 2021 is most likely, if the Tories have just won another UK election and the SNP has a majority in Holyrood again. Both of those things are currently odds-on, but 2020 is a long way off and you don’t know what might happen between now and then.
Nobody seems ever to have talked about it, but I felt way before the referendum that the proximity of a UK General Election, which people thought Labour was going to win, might be what tipped the balance for No.
While we warned for years on Wings that there was no way Ed Miliband was going to be PM, lots of people really believed he would, and I think a significant section of left-wing types thought there was no need for independence if there was a Labour government at Westminster. On current polling, there’s going to be a very different feeling about 2020/21.
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