Indy not gone, still in the making

I found it hard to open the curtains on Friday morning, feeling just numb and dejected.

It's felt like a wake, a weird bereavement-like emotion, the sense of a beautiful opportunity lost. One of my first thoughts was that Trident is now staying where it is. The establishment had won. Somehow the realisation of that just felt crushing.

But life has to go on. Down on George Square that morning a lot of Yes people just wandered around, lost and subdued, talking about the result, and where this massive energy might possibly go now.

John Harris and a cameraman from the Guardian, maybe having overheard some of it, came over and interviewed a few of us for a film piece. We talked broadly about the great Yes movement and how it had lost to fear and a massive establishment network that used every last, shameless intimidation to get its way.

Many voters were instictively for No. But while a great debate was had, it wasn't any true exercise in democracy. No had a political-business elite, threatening banks and financial houses, Cameron's supermarket friends, big oil's policy lobby, and a host of other well-connected interests who knew precisely how to alarm and blackmail people.

How the City and its global friends would have cheered when that first Clackmannanshire result came in. Money talking, the voice of the foodbank underclass put firmly back in its place.

And, of course, it had every part of the media, notably the BBC. None of that issue is going away. A campaign is also now mounting around Yes social media for a mass licence refusal.

For Tariq Ali, No's 'victory was made possible by a Project Fear that required a media campaign of ferocious intensity that even Goebbels might have admired.'

Respects to the Sunday Herald for at least standing its Yes ground.
 
Seemingly aware of all this, John Harris said in his own piece to camera that he too would have voted Yes had he lived here. Commendable. But when I asked them both about the Guardian's own disgraceful support for No (the camera now conveniently inactive) both insisted that the paper should not be criticised, denying that its No declaration had any significance, and that the small editorial circle is not the voice of the Guardian at large. Much better criticising the BBC, they thought.

But why, I persisted, did this 'crusading organ' feel the need to join all the other No establishment media at all? It could have taken a position in favour of Yes. Instead, just as it had protected Blair and postured over wars and 'liberal interventions', it sided with the powerful. Still, they argued, it didn't matter.
 
But it does. The enduring lesson of blind-eye journalism, even from its 'critical' elements: don't bite the hand that feeds.

Later that afternoon, while people still floated around talking, some being soothed with songs and guitars, an ugly Loyalist Unionist crowd, coordinated via social media, was forming at the far end of the square.
 
As it swelled with Union Jacks, sectarian insignia and Nazi salutes, part of the baying mob swirled around and charged into the rest of the square. Caught right in the middle of it, we saw Alex Thomson approach with other camera crews. 'Make sure you get this', I said'. 'I will', he replied. Alas, he didn't, his tweets seeming to convey something of a minor sectarian-fuelled disturbance. And despite Cameron Buttle more readily reporting the mob's "coordinated" charge through the square, the BBC headline led with this disgracefully distorted framing: 'Police separate rival groups in Glasgow'.
 
Prudently, we left, passing the Loyalist hordes now coralled by the police, even their flag-draped cars left abandoned in the street. Like others, we later saw online evidence of them roaming through the city centre, dispensing their hate and violence. A dismal spectacle. And they had warned what carnage would likely have come from a Yes win.

Small consolations occur. A majority of Glasgow said Yes. Dundee and West Dunbartonshire also delivered Yes majorities.

But there's so much still to be faced. How do we overcome the sheer might of that establishment network? Or the unpalatable truth that a substantive rump of an incriminatingly quiet middle class voted out of base self interest? When the alarming spectre of NHS privatisation and TTIP effect deepens, I suspect many will come to regret what they've done.

And what too of that residual left element who campaigned in the halls, streets and online for a No, the most deluded notion of 'class action' we're ever likely to see?

And if they were lacking in strategic understanding and political intelligence, a self reflective note too on the dangers of over-expectation, even when tempered by hope rather than certainty. 

Many will say we've still gained new powers. But 'Devo Vow' was a trick, the already predictable backtracking so apparent. 'Devious max', more like. The continuing, core truth, as intimated to Harris, is that without independence we can't make that real transitional change. We can't build the actual alternative society, the true economic change so many want to see.

All of which has only intensified determination for a Yes, particularly amongst a newly-politicised youth.  

As Irvine Welsh asserts:

Though defeated in the poll, the independence movement emerged far stronger – from the narrow concern of a bourgeois civic nationalist party, to a righteous, vibrant, big-tent, pro-democracy movement. The referendum galvanised and excited Scots in a way that no UK-wide election has done. Like it or not, unless they come up with a winning devo max settlement, every general election in Scotland will now be dominated by the independence issue.

Which takes us into new political scenarios.

The Westminster system was rejected by almost half the electorate, so it's only logical that any new Yes movement should continue to reject its legitimacy.

So much now has to be considered. But it seems to me that there are two broad options for channeling that political energy in the immediate future.

The first is to campaign for mass non-participation at the next UK election, with a high number of abstentions serving to nullify the UK state's political authority.

Right now, I feel strongly disinclined to vote in a Westminster election ever again, 'disenfranchising' myself from an institution, a system, I simply no longer recognise.

The second option is to embrace, expand and mobilise the gathering case for a formal Yes Alliance, one that includes the same broad Yes parties and organisations.

Of the two, the latter may have the greater appeal because, as with Yes Scotland, it drives people to actually create something - electoral numbers - which would stand as another notable demand for independence. But any such entity won't go anywhere unless it encapsualtes that same Yes street, rather than just Yes party, dynamic. 

A big debate over all that will now unfold. Hopefully, another great politics of assertion.
 
And our little healing will continue. It's been helpful being around family and friends, standing in Buchanan Street, and around George Square again yesterday, saying our wee bits, urging others on, taking sustenance from each other, the true mark of community.

Whatever happens, at least one thing's for sure: this beautiful, organic movement for Yes is going on, the collective effort gathered around an emerging #45 identity.
 
On this lovely Sunday afternoon, after all the tumult and disappointment, there's the sun-warming reminder of what Yes has actually achieved, and the assurance of a newly-adapting movement. It's international peace day (my birthday), and I feel peacefully gifted by this inspiring statement from National Collective: How We Won and How We Will Win.