A NATIONAL Day of Action today marks the beginning of a new grassroots campaign for independence.
Believe in Scotland’s Autumn of Indy Action supported by The National kicks off today with a huge range of events held by 110 Yes groups all across the country.
Yes activists are set to deliver 500,000 leaflets, 50,000 Open Minds newspapers and have also been supplied with more than 100,000 badges, car stickers, mugs, postcards and copies of Scotland The Brief.
The huge nationwide effort involves 11 distribution hubs, 14 volunteer drivers, eight volunteer packers and all the members of the participating Yes groups.
The National is supporting the initiative – including with the 24-page supplement you find inside today’s paper, produced by Believe In Scotland with support from our team, and already distributed to Yes groups across the country.
Speaking about it on our roadshow earlier this week, Believe In Scotland founder Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp said: “This is 24 pages of THE key messages from Scotland The Brief with updated stuff on Scotland, Covid, Brexit, etc.
“Have a look at this, have a read through it, understand how accessible the information is – the information is key to converting undecided, soft Nos, pensioners and older voters to our side. So if you’ve got someone who falls into one of those brackets, saying ‘my heart says yes, I really like the idea of an independent Scotland, but my head says no’, get them a copy of the newspaper and give it to them in person because their head will say yes after they’ve read it.”
Believe In Scotland’s key message throughout the Day of Action is that an independent Scotland’s economy would thrive, and is calling for the basic state pension to be raised to £200 a week.
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MacIntyre-Kemp continued: “The UK has the worst pension in the developed world, not because we can’t afford to pay more but because the Westminster government has taken the political decision not to do so. It prefers to deliberately keep pensions low in order to force wealthier people to buy private pensions and boost the city of London, thus creating widespread pensioner poverty for those unable to pay for private pensions.
“It’s great to see the Yes movement respond in such an unprecedented way to our Day of Action for independence in order to send the clear message that Scotland has had enough of Westminster mismanagement. We need our independence if Scotland is to fulfil its amazing potential.”
To go along with the Day and Autumn of Indy Action, Believe In Scotland has created an interactive map showing which Yes groups are taking part, available at believeinscotland.org online.
The group has also now launched 14 new regional Facebook campaign news pages, and you can find your own via that same website.
National editor Callum Baird said: “The National will be supporting the Autumn of Indy Action, as Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper.
“We aren’t waiting for a starting gun to be fired on indyref2 to start making the case for Yes, as we showed recently with our Yessay contest asking readers to submit essays to help win over undecided voters.
“Gerry Singh’s essay was widely praised by our readers – and that’s just one example of what the Yes movement is doing right now to make the case for independence.
“We think this is an edition of The National our readers won’t want to miss.
“You’ll be familiar with many of the arguments being made in the supplement, but the way they’re presented here offers a great refresher and guide to making the case for Yes.
“We’re encouraging people to buy an extra copy to hand to a friend who might be undecided still on how they’ll vote in indyref2 – these 24 pages today will help win them over.
“Let’s make this Day of Action the start of a great autumn for the indy movement and free Scotland from Westminster.”
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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