JUST over 30 years ago, on 15 May 1987, the Abolition of Domestic Rates in Scotland Act received Royal Assent. Before that few people had paid much attention to the proposed community charge. The legislation had been stitched up behind closed doors by a cabal of Tory Cabinet ministers, and there was no consultation with the people of Scotland before it was rubber-stamped by an army of English Tory back-benchers at Westminster. In the General Election a few weeks later, the Scottish Tories were slaughtered. More than half of their 21 sitting MPs lost their seats, while their share of the vote fell from 29 to 24 per cent.
But the introduction of the Poll Tax, as it became known, went ahead anyway. Within ten months, the registration forms were delivered to millions of Scottish households. A year later the bills were issued, driving hundreds of thousands of families below the breadline.
That was how things were done in the pre-devolution era. The Scottish NHS, transport, education, local government, land, the environment – all of these were run by one man, handpicked by the Prime Minister. We were 100 per cent powerless.
These days, we hear a lot of criticism from the press and opposition politicians about the supposed lack of transparency of the Scottish Government. Of course, things can always be done better, and no doubt there are valid criticisms to be made.
But let’s also be clear that the difference between what happens now and what happened before 1999 is the difference between broad daylight and dark midnight.
Before the Scottish Government introduced same-sex marriage legislation, it opened a public consultation. More than 77,500 individuals and organisations responded. This year, its public consultation on fracking attracted 60,000 responses.
Every significant piece of legislation passed by Holyrood, from land reform to the smoking ban and the abolition of prescription charges, is preceded by an intense period of public debate, media scrutiny and evidence to parliamentary committees from expert witnesses. Back in the pre-devolution days, we just liked it or lumped it.
For me, that’s the most powerful argument of all for full national independence. Because if that open, transparent, democratic process is the right way to take decisions on health, education, local government and transport, then why shouldn’t we open up everything else to that level of public involvement?
Had we had the power to scrutinise and reject Gordon Brown’s deregulation of the banking system, Scotland could have set an example to the rest of the UK and maybe even avoided the decade of austerity we have suffered ever since.
Had we the same power over benefits for the past 20 years that we have had over university tuition fees, the people of Scotland could have piled pressure on Holyrood to abolish poverty.
Would a widespread public consultation over defence have led to the decision to spend billions upgrading four submarines with the destructive power of more than 1000 Hiroshimas?
And would Scotland have been part of the murderous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have inflamed terrorism worldwide had the decisions been taken in Scotland?
Contrast, even, the process that led to the Scottish independence referendum of 2014 with the EU referendum of 2016.
Before the independence referendum there were two major public consultations in 2010 and 2012, with tens of thousands of responses and numerous parliamentary debates and committee debates. The EU Referendum Bill was drafted hastily in the weeks after the 2015 General Election, railroaded through parliamen to get it done and dusted as quickly as possible –and barely a year later, Britain was on its way out of Europe.
The big questions we need to ask people are these: do you want real political power to shape and change Scotland? Or are you content to stick with our PG-rated parliament while leaving the big decisions on the economy, war and peace, international relations, employment laws, to the grown-ups down in London?
I’M convinced that if the new Yes movement – or whatever it may be called in the future – steers away from the detail of policy to the fundamental principles of autonomy and democracy, we will unite and galvanise the movement, and convince the sceptics.
This week, The Herald carried a column under the headline Why the Yes Movement is Coming Apart. Others have proclaimed “the Death of Yes-ism”. It reminds me of the famous quip by Mark Twain, after he was told a newspaper had mistakenly printed his obituary: “Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
But the ability of the Yes movement to critically reflect on its own strengths and weaknesses shows it is not us who are afraid of democracy. Democracy is the very essence of the independence movement. Our diversity is evidence that we live and breathe it.
Perhaps those who rush to write the obituary of “Yes-ism” should shine a light on themselves. What is it, for example, that makes people who claim to be avowedly federalist and pro-EU prepared to ditch these principles in favour of an isolationist UK in which power and wealth are concentrated in the south-east corner?
When I look around at the diverse Yes movement, I see some people I don’t always agree with and occasionally make me cringe. But when I look at pro-Union forces, which stretch from the Orange Order to the Communist Party of Great Britain, I am clear who should be cringing the most. At least I’m not on the same side as the Scottish Defence League, Ukip, Britain First, Brian Spanner or Donald Trump.
The independence movement is pluralistic and embraces a wide range of views. That’s the way it was in the run-up 2014, and that’s the way it still is. Hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life, bringing with them a rich variety of experiences, are never going to behave like a column of Daleks.
What they have in common is a desire for more autonomy, more democracy, and more diversity. That is an unstoppable force.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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