Making some progress to an independence referendum

Dave Coull · Making some progress to an independence referendum

This is intended as a contribution to discussion around making progress towards an independence referendum. I’ll be putting forward a few ideas about how to make progress on this, but these are just a personal contribution to the discussion, nothing more. I ask folk to consider them on that basis, and to put forward their own contributions on the same basis.

There are still a few Scottish Nationalists around with the idea that independence can come about by the SNP winning a majority of Scottish MPs or MSPs through the parliamentary electoral system. However, nowadays, most supporters of independence understand that the way to get proper democratic validation for such a major constitutional change is through a referendum. Amongst supporters of the Union, there is, of course, great reluctance to concede any such referendum; but, nevertheless, there is, for at least some of them, a growing, grudging acceptance of the case for a referendum on purely democratic grounds. Given enough of a push, that door will open.

At present, the main implement for making that push is the SIC’s petition. This is aiming at one hundred thousand signatures, which, in my view, would be plenty to give the required push, provided that it is done in the right manner. By “the right manner”, what I mean is, on a non-party-political basis. I believe the SNP alone claims a membership of twelve and a half thousand, so, if each of those members was to get just seven other folk to join them in signing the petition, that would be 100,000. However, this way of going about it may be neither possible nor desirable.

The SIC petition was launched in January, and, as I understand it, the SIC has, up till now, been relying on political parties and other political organisations to get the actual petitioning organised. This seems to me to be a mistake, both on practical and on psychological grounds. On practical grounds, there is no sign of any political party having any great sense of urgency about collecting these signatures. Quite the opposite, in fact! And, on psychological grounds, the petition is, in any case, likely to carry far more weight if it is perceived as genuinely non-party-political. A petition of 100,000 signatures organised on a non-party-political basis would be far more impressive, psychologically, than one of 200,000 signatures organised by a political party.

With this in mind, I recently put to the secretary of the SIC, and to the convenor of the SIC petition steering group, and to other members of that group, some suggestions, which I asked them to pass on to all of their SIC colleagues. I said that I was not a member of the SIC, but I took part in collecting signatures on the SIC petition on the streets of Dundee on Saturday 23rd February. So, since I am actively collecting signatures on the petition, I think that does gives me a right to speak on how the petitioning is organised.

I said that I personally collected 30 signatures on Saturday. So it would only take a few more such efforts, over the next few months, for my own personal total to go over 100. Let’s suppose that there are one thousand people prepared to put in a not-too-strenuous bit of effort to collect signatures on this petition. (This is not an unreasonable assumption, given the membership figures claimed by the SNP, by the Green Party, by the SSP, by Solidarity, and also by organisations such as Independence First etc.) If 1,000 people collect 100 signatures each, that’s 100,000 signatures. So, what I proposed to the SIC is, that they should ask INDIVIDUALS to commit themselves to collecting 100 signatures. Not their parties, not their organisations, but them as individuals. I suggested doing this on the basis “I WILL, IF YOU WILL, SO WILL I”. If people know that other people are also committing themselves to do this, then they are much more likely to do so themselves, and they will encourage each other to keep the commitment. Of course there could be no way of verifying people’s individual totals, but, nevertheless, asking for an individual commitment, and publicising what folk are doing to achieve their individual commitments, is likely to have a more positive effect than just relying on the political parties.

In my view, by doing this, there is no reason why 100,000 signatures could not be collected within six months. The petition could be ready for presenting by September.

I also said to members of the SIC that I was very doubtful of the strategy of "rolling launches". As I understand it, there is supposed to be a "press launch" meeting in Dundee on 5th April. But the first, national, "press launch" was in January. If the press show any interest at all in this, it might be along the lines of "what went wrong with the first launch? Is this a RE-launch?" and "have you been collecting signatures on your petition since it was launched in January, and, if you have, why do you need a re-launch in April?"

If you have some celebrities prepared to turn up for a local "launch", then forget about speeches, get them out on the streets, doing what we did last Saturday in Dundee. Sometimes celebrities think it is enough for them to give their name to a campaign. But, if you can actually get a few celebrities, even relatively minor, local celebrities, out on the streets of a town, with a clipboard and a pen, asking folk for their signatures on a petition, then THAT is worth a photo in local or regional newspapers at least, and, if it's worth a photo, then it's worth a news story to accompany the photo. But speeches at a meeting? Not even worth reporting..........

I also said to members of the SIC that, looking further ahead, in the Summer, it might be worth organising door-to-door collection of signatures. It wouldn't be possible to knock on every door in Scotland, so this would have to be targeted door-to-door canvassing, in specific areas of each of Scotland's major cities, plus selected towns. I said that I thought the SIC as such would have to organise this, and not rely on political parties or other organisations.

Okay, these were my suggestions. And obviously, since I’m suggesting them, I would be prepared to play a part in carrying them out if they were to be agreed on.

I understand that there is to be a meeting in Glasgow this coming Saturday, organised by the Independence First group, to which various other groups have been invited. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the organisation of SIC petitioning. However, the group of which I’m a member, the group which organised the petitioning in Dundee on Saturday, was not invited to that meeting. Mention was made of this event at the Determination meeting two weeks ago, when we decided on street petitioning in Dundee, but, since we had not been invited, nobody was delegated to attend. Nevertheless, it’s possible something useful could come out of the meeting on Saturday. But if a significant number of activists do actually turn up in Glasgow on Saturday, quite honestly, one of the most useful things they could do is to spend at least part of their time, on Saturday afternoon, out on the streets of Glasgow, collecting signatures for the petition.

carol

it makes sense for the petition which is deemed as the 'People's Petition' to be launched through a non political platform such as SIC. I'm in agreement that this petition should be worked by the people on the ground, all united under the Let Scotland Decide banner, putting politics well to the side.

We've now got a ludicrous situation where groups are being encouraged to set up their own online petition, which would be seen as being fine if linked to the 'gopetition' organised by the SIC. What comes across a bit daft is the SNP hosting the Let Scotland Decide Petition through their own website, where's the sense in that? What is wrong with them giving a link to the gopetition?

Dave Coull

Carol wrote "it makes sense for the petition which is deemed as the 'People's Petition' to be launched through a non political platform such as SIC. I'm in agreement that this petition should be worked by the people on the ground, all united under the Let Scotland Decide banner, putting politics well to the side. We've now got a ludicrous situation where groups are being encouraged to set up their own online petition, which would be seen as being fine if linked to the 'gopetition' organised by the SIC. What comes across a bit daft is the SNP hosting the Let Scotland Petition through their own website, where's the sense in that?"

I think it's a big mistake to have the petition on various political websites including that of the SNP. Any supposed gain in numbers of people signing, through doing things this way, would be more than cancelled out by the degree of loss of credibility as a "non-party-political" petition.

carol

agreed