The Old Year Ends. Part One.
As the year expired, an
elderly lady materialised on TV sets across the land. In deference to
centuries of invented constitutional theory, Her Majesty did not
purr. Instead, she gave us a little talk. Her theme was
reconciliation.
This was odd, even by
the traditional standards of the royal house. It displayed a strange
ignorance. It seemed to insist that Scotland in 2014 had endured
terrible scenes of estrangement, anger and upset. HM Queen, like the
rest of the British establishment, seemed to need to believe that
Scotland had gone to war with itself over a vote.
An egg got broken:
that, as best as I could tell, was the casualty figure. Everyone who
was anyone got death threats. In the slapstick of social media,
tempers and spelling sustained some damage. But that was it. Two
million said they'd rather be British; 1.6 million said they'd rather
not; and no one had to call the cops.
So what was Mrs
Windsor on about, exactly, at Christmas? With whom – for grammar
survived – did our 1.6 million require reconciliation? An historian
yet unborn will one day say 18 September 2014 was the day Britain
died. It was the day when close to 45% of the lieges told the nice
old lady that, all things considered, they had their eyes on another
kind of future.
But they did not riot.
They did not, most of the time, fare badly with friends, family, or
colleagues. Though too polite to say so, HM was another who was still
determined to believe things about the desire for self-determination
that are simply – very simply – untrue.
In 2014, people who
really ought to know better called me a Nazi. Some of the old-school
followers of the flag promised me an execution “come the day”.
The nicer opponents just wished me a long spell of unemployment.
Permutations on various uses for eggs and half bricks were plentiful.
Back in the real world, people went about their business, and made
their choices.
The Queen missed that
part. Scotland made its choice in 2014 with enormous dignity, in
enormous numbers, and with great panache. The kids turned out; the
grandparents turned out; folk who'd never vote for any of the usual
local deadbeats turned out. Reconciliation was neither desired nor
required. The community of Scotland voted. And even those who voted
No – especially those who voted No – made a point about their
country. It lives.
Tragically, you will
not find any of that in my forthcoming campaign diary, Memoirs of a
Government Stooge. This was a good year for Scotland, but a bad year
for most versions of my trade. I used to avoid the “parcel o'
rogues” cliché. As it transpires, the gold is still plentiful,
like the stooges, but passable prose is hard to come by. The stooges
should be ashamed, but are not. There's time enough, though, for fun
with them in the years ahead.
That point was missed
this year, by winners and losers alike. The most important day for me
was the day after. I did my share of consoling. A lost vote is scant
recompense to those who were not around in 79. But you have to
remember reality on behalf of those who are less dim than a monarch.
We got a vote on independence? We got almost 45%? So why do you think
our opponents were so very agitated on that morning after, and on
every morning since? They fear something.
Self-determination is
a glacial thing in this country of ours. In 1979, we were robbed of
an “assembly” with no legislative powers worth a damn. In 2014,
we declined Alex Salmond's prospectus of HM Queen, Nato, and a
currency left in the sweaty mitts of George Osborne. We chose to
regard those facts as details while we determined a future. But
anyone who thought all matters were settled in the early hours of 19
September failed to attend to facts.
What do you do,
exactly, with 1.6 million churlish folk? You could demand that they
just “get over it” and go back to voting for their local Jimmy or
Jim. Sitting in the back room of a London tower block, you could
write a long lecture on “anti-politics”, then explain to the
provincials that a vote for self-determination is just another
protest against a “status quo”. There are lots of ways to miss
the point. The status quo ante covers most.
In 2014, Scotland
decided that things could not go on as before. Those who wished to
keep their powers, and their jobs, and – no small detail – their
bonuses from head office, took fright. David Cameron, a Prime
Minister, made stentorian speeches to describe his love for the
churlish sorts. Her Majesty's head of government feared that his
heart would be left in bleeding pieces if the churls got too
churlish. But that didn't work.
The other one, the
Conservative given charge of the Queen's Treasury, decided that
scaring the Jockos would work better. I'd say only this: if George
Gideon Osborne puts that effort on his CV, the Tory Party is in
bother. Still, a few soft nationalists toughened up. A few Scots
asked themselves about the actual negotiable worth of the currency
the Chancellor meant to reserve – with half a dozen constitutional
howlers – as his personal gift. A majority didn't care for that
behaviour. They really didn't care for it.
In 2014, there was a
historic event that had nothing to do with a plebiscite. This part is
complicated. A great many Scots – possibly as many as 1.6 million –
don't know, to this day, quite what they did, or why they did it.
They've heard the shouting. They've seen all the usual media suspects
announcing that the corpse lives, breathes, and walks. But we all
know: on 18 September 2014, the Labour Party in Scotland expired. How
come?
Like many, I get
queasy during this part of the tale. In 2014, one mark of Labour's
decline was that so few in its ranks understood why an alliance with
the Tories would disgust quite so many people, and so deeply. What,
asked their stoats and weasels, time and again, is your problem? If
you followed their logic – feel free to take a crack – a pact
with bankers' hirelings was the only way to ensure justice for all.
Such was their genius.
Labour's role in
Scotland in 2014 was to secure the proles for Britain. There is no
nice way to put it. Threaten their pensions, frighten their children,
make a desert of their future, but – so that message ran – get it
done. These were old pages from an ancient script. The cold numbers
say it worked a treat, on schedule and on target. The revenge taken
on Scottish Labour is, however, another story entirely.
You could tell it in
terms of those astounding SNP membership numbers. You could tell it
by the semaphore of opinion polls, spelling out SOS for Westminster
politics and Ed Miliband. You could even make a story from all the
old comrades hearing last orders for a peerage. None of that would
get you beyond act three in Labour's little tragedy. When push came
to shove, the party that wrote Scotland's story for a century
preferred suicide to the national interest. And, still worse, was
proud of the fact.
We, 1.6 million of us,
just turned our backs. They think we'll be “reconciled” to the
rebranding of honest Jim Murphy? They think we'll be stampeded, as
usual, by the old, rational fear of Tories? Labour is done. We're
over it. In 2014, for or against, we were not dealt with honestly,
from January to September. Those seasons will not be forgotten or
forgiven. Humpty Dumpty can kiss goodbye to his wall, and whatever
else he was sitting on.
If you happened to be
old enough, nevertheless, it made for a strange year. A Scotland
without Labour – Labour rough, foolish, thuggish, compassionate, or
stolidly determined – involved an act of imagination. What were we
without the familiar cast and the usual soap opera? When Johann
Lamont quit as her party's branch office under-manager after the
referendum, she managed – ever the good teacher – to deliver a
lesson and ask a question. If Labour has rendered itself worthless,
what remains?
Strange to report,
some of the smarter girls and boys already had answers scrawled on
the backs of their hands. While the usual dullards filled their
column inches with tales of protest votes and anti-politics, a new
Scottish generation presented itself on behalf of the Common Weal, as
a National Collective, as a Radical Independence Convention. They
were as incoherent, sometimes, as any nascent movement. They were
also a lot of fun. More than that, they cared deeply and thought
hard.
With my own faded
colours up on the sagging mast, I spent most of 2014 wondering what
had become of the British state. Why were its responses so feeble,
its prose so vapid, its tunes so banal? For much of the referendum
campaign, the only noise from the No side seemed to involve a clamour
for “passion” on the United Kingdom's behalf. Time and again they
tried. Time and again, while superannuated stand-ups and hack actors
dumped their love bombs, they failed to manage sense, far less
joined-up sentences.
I found that
revealing. More than once, I caught myself thinking, “Jeez, I could
make a better case for Britain than that”. In the year when we were
being told to honour the carnage inaugurated in 1914, when the
meaning of a United Kingdom forged in unspeakable sacrifice should
have furnished a phrase for the meanest hack, we instead had
self-satisfied jokers cackling that “No means no”. And so Britain
died.
They haven't quite
noticed yet. Her Majesty did her Christmas thing as though normal
service had been resumed. Scottish Labour went on acting as though a
Jim Murphy is the solution, not the name of the condition. But 1.6
million are beyond all that. We've handed in our notice. It's why all
the instant cliches over who really won and truly lost have such
force this winter. That British game, we say, is a bogey.
In England's capital,
there is no shortage of folk turning a bob by explaining that these
are strange days for conventional politics. They employ a couple of
propositions. One says that a loss of trust in “Westminster” has
invigorated those known traditionally as “other parties”. The
antithesis holds that those others have done for the big old parties.
A variant, tricky to prove, says that this is going on all over the
western world.
So think of that, if
you voted Yes in September. When you come to your senses, you'll go
back to voting mostly-Labour. Were you living below the Border, you'd
probably be backing the racist ticket. Your considered response to
307 years of Union was just a spasm, an “anti-Westminster” thing.
You'll get over it. You'll be reconciled. Understood?
There's some truth to
it. As 2014 ends, the parties accustomed to treating Westminster as
their private Hogwarts can barely scrape together two-thirds of the
vote in the average opinion poll. They and their institution are not
held in esteem. Their scandals have given the very business of
political argument a bad name. Coalition government has left many –
let's say – unimpressed, and made the death of Liberal Britain seem
less strange than inevitable.
None of that has much
to do with what happened in Scotland in 2014. In all the chatter over
parties and the usual politics, an essential fact got overlooked. A
new generation got to vote and said, simply, “Why?” Their parents
sentimentality for Labour evaporated. Any deference towards
Conservatives and monarchs and old stories of a scepter'd isles
disappeared. They looked at their country and imagined a better
future. Their opponents just told scary tales.
The Yes voters lost,
of course. There is no point in arguing over it. Equally, no one of a
sound mind believes the 2014 generation will lose twice. Britain's
best efforts turned out to be paltry. This writer expected more, in
spring, than a few hacks turning puce for the sake of the honours
list, or a consignment of party leaders shipped north in a hurry to
placate the locals. For Unionists, the advice is offered free: poor
show.
Those who believed
their country should determine its own future might also wish to look
back on the year ending. Why were so many of our people so easily
frightened? Why were we hemmed in by an argument over bank-notes? Why
did our older folk fall hostage to puerile arguments and barter a
future that was not theirs to trade? And who said, finally, that we
must dodge the heart of the matter?
If you seek the
independence of Scotland, you must be ready and willing to talk about
the country and its people. Your opponents will have plenty to say
about “identity politics” while promoting a British identity.
It's tricky and complicated. It tends to get messy. You have to be
alert to every nuance. But in the end you have to be honest.
In my opinion, the
referendum was lost because too many of us were afraid to say why a
Scot would not want to be British. Too much time was spent attempting
to square a circle: everything would change and yet, somehow, nothing
would change. Currency, monarchs, the telly: it was as though we were
doing no more than rearranging junk in the attic. And too many of us
– this scribbler included – said we'd deal with these little
matters later. That was a mistake.
Despite everything,
1.6 million believed that Scotland's interests could be managed
better in Scotland. They are no worse off for it. The mess emanating
from the Smith Commission will make life difficult for a few years,
but a principle will be secured. In future, no one will ask why a
power should be retained by Westminster. They will ask why it hasn't
been devolved to begin with, as a matter of course.
Long years ago,
sitting in a Glasgow pub with the finest Scottish novelist of my
generation, the question of independence came up. My answer then, as
now, was that it would happen in my lifetime. I didn't anticipate
that we'd be cutting it a little fine, but Willie, cheery as ever,
couldn't see it happening. McIlvanney was the one who called us feart
in 79, after all, and he wasn't wrong. But in 2014, the fear fell
away.
I'll remember that.
They brought up every pop-gun in the armoury and people far younger
than I found all their threats comical. Scotland woke up. Its young
men and women turned the lead of the usual political crap into gold.
They didn't get an answer worth the name from the decayed hulks of
old political traditions, but they kept on asking their questions.
They exposed the rot.
Things are set fair, I
think, for a wee country.
ends