"IT’S been a pretty rough year for the Edinburgh University SNP Society,” president Keir Davidson admitted.
The fourth-year politics student from Alloa took on the role in May 2022, with membership at a record low of about 10 students. Unlike with other pro-independence student societies, this was not due to Covid.
There was “a drop in new faces” for the group as universities returned to in-person teaching in September 2021 – a situation the society plans to recover from.
This isn’t easy at an international university such as Edinburgh.
READ MORE: The Glasgow student group fighting for an independent Scotland
Davidson joked: “The best thing about Edinburgh Uni when I came to study here was how diverse it was. The worst thing as president is how few Scottish students there are”.
He told me left-leaning students from the rUK “don’t come near us with a 10ft pole”, instead joining the university’s Labour society.
Hence, the main goal for Davidson’s exec is to branch out and find new members at “collaborative events”. The first of these was a left-wing societies event where students from the university’s Green, Labour, SNP, and Communist societies met for a friendly social and debate.
Davidson hopes another of these will take place along with a trip to First Minister’s Questions. Davidson says the 2014 referendum ignited his passion for independence. The UofE SNP Society was his first opportunity to join a formal pro-indy group.
Part of his reason for doing so was a perceived lack of “working-class representation” at Edinburgh.
“It’s something I’m always pushing the society to campaign on,” he said, “because we’re the party in government … we should be pressuring our own party to continue to produce policies that help to increase working-class representation at universities.”
For Davidson, independence is the best way to achieve this aim and is “a matter of when, not if”. He added: “There’s no point making a new independent Scotland if it just reflects what the UK was. If the money and the influence and the power just move from Westminster to Holyrood then what’s the point?”
READ MORE: The students of Glasgow University's Scottish Nationalist Association
Davidson compared indyref2 to the most recent US midterms where: “Gen Z is going to turn out in a way – that’s significant and will make a big difference, and the student voice is going to be a big part of that”.
Part of Davidson’s work as president is overcoming the fact: “Politics seems so otherworldly to most people, especially young people.”
Summarising his thoughts on the independence movement and the UofE SNP Society’s recovery, Davidson had one message: “Keep the heid.”
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