TODAY, Edinburgh will witness what may be the largest pro-independence march Scotland’s capital city has ever seen. Among the grassroots independence movement, there is a lot of excitement and expectation about the march, even though its organisation has been mired in difficulties, and it seems the rally which was originally planned to take place after the march will not now go ahead.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the march with the dug as I had intended, as at the very last minute we were asked to take part in the filming of a promotional video for the Scottish Independence Convention, and today is the only available date for it.

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Of course, it’s the dug they really want. I know which of the two of us is more photogenic.

We may not be physically at the march, but we will be there in spirit, and we will at least still be spending the time doing something to promote the cause of independence.

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This is the speech I would have made if I had been asked to be a speaker, if there had been speakers, and if I had been able to attend.

“Opponents of independence are circling their wagons, drawing into defensive positions in order to try to prevent the inevitable. They still try to claim that Scotland settled the independence question in 2014, and there is no need to revisit it. But that would only be true if Scotland had delivered the anti-independence parties a blank cheque in 2014.

It didn’t.

Those anti-independence parties were very keen to tell us that there was no status quo, that we were voting for change within the UK. They don’t get to escape the people’s verdict on the difference between what they promised and what they delivered. They don’t want Scotland to have a vote on its future, because they’re terrified of what Scotland will say.

Tens of thousands of independence supporters will take to the streets of Edinburgh today to demand that Scotland gets a say on its future. They are taking to the streets because they are angry that those who won the independence referendum in 2014 only insist that those who lost it respect its result.

Those who won seem to believe they don’t need to respect the promises and commitment they made to the people of Scotland in order to secure that No vote. It’s because the opponents of independence have failed so dismally and so utterly in delivering their promises that the independence movement in this country remains strong, vital, and capable of putting on a massive public event that opponents of independence could only dream of. The SNP is a competent administration. It’s not perfect, no political party is. It’s leagues ahead of Labour and the Tories, but that’s not saying a great deal. Opponents of independence snark about the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon in the hope that if they can find an SNP story that’s big and bad enough, Scotland will stop having the temerity to think that it can decide its own fate. But make no mistake, the grassroots independence movement is not so large because of anything that Nicola Sturgeon has done.

It’s not powerful and attractive to tens or hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in Scotland because of the actions of the SNP. We are where we are because those who claim to love the UK have traduced their commitments to Scotland, have treated Scotland with dismissive contempt, and have refused to allow Scotland any say or consultation in deciding the future that they have in mind for us.

We are where we are because every single promise made to the people of Scotland in 2014 lies bloodied and broken. We are where we are not because of the successes of the SNP but because of the failures of the British state.

That’s what drives the independence movement, not the SNP, and that’s why the media in this country can publish all the SNPbad stories that they like, but they will make no dent in the popular appetite for an independent Scotland.

The British nationalist parties want us to get back into our shortbread tin, to stay quiet and passive. They want us to sit passively in silence while the powerful in Westminster consume our future and feed us the crumbs. They’re in for a big disappointment. We are a people who are awake. The Scottish unicorn is unchained, the lion’s tongue has discovered its voice.

This country has learned how to hope, how to dream. The people of this country have learned that our fate is in our own hands. We’ve learned that if we want something done, we need to do it ourselves.

And there is something we want done. We want to make a better country. We’re going to make a country which is governed in the interests of the people of Scotland.

Because Scottish independence is nothing more than the radical and dangerous idea that Scotland can and will be a normal country. It’s an idea whose time is here. We are the tide that cannot be stopped.”