Letter from Scotland
This is about politics and participation, about creating the solidarity and generating the active energy which is the bedrock and fuel of active participatory citizenship.
In response to Norman’s gloomy prognostics about the future of democracy, I would like to send this letter about what is happening in this adopted country of mine.
Scotland has recently experienced a sense of purpose, participation and solidarity unknown anywhere in the UK at least since the darkest days of World War Two. The 2014 independence referendum generated unprecedented political engagement, public meetings, street events, while social media took over from discredited traditional mainstream sources of information.
It surprised me to hear that Chris Duke supported the independence side. The referendum ran very close but in the end was won comfortably by the No camp, mostly it appears on the basis of fear at the dire consequences threatened if the Yes camp won. However, let’s remember that 45% of Scots or residents braved the terrifying dangers of becoming a self-determining democracy by voting yes, when a year or so before the numbers were barely reaching the upper 30 %.
I was surprised because I am so used to people residing elsewhere (mainly in England I must say) being strongly against a yes vote. I just don’t understand it really. Now we are haggling for a bit of this, a bit of that, when we could have had the whole lot.
By the way I am both French and Scottish by identity and identification, and moved back to Scotland from the Grenoble area about three years ago, albeit with a prior 30 + years working in various educational institutions in Scotland.
So let’s talk about Scotland’s democratic revival.
In 2014 Scotland was offered the possibility of voting itself out of a des-united kingdom where not all are equal under an increasingly remote Westminster rule. In order to save the UK as we know it, all the main parties joined forces, resulting in the slightly surrealistic vision of Labour politicians shoulder to shoulder with the hated Tories. Hated in Scotland, you understand.
The Better Together campaign was cringingly awful. The Yes side, on the other hand, fired people’s imagination, young, old, women, artists, writers, disenfranchised working class and Labour voters. Young people were empowered by the opportunity to vote at 16 and you should have heard how articulate and passionate they were. Who says that young people are apathetic? Not here, they were not.
It can’t be that bad when imagination, creativity is on your side, surely? Instead, the No campaign was all about figures, statistics, doom and gloom, threats, no you can’t, not possible, etc. The seven plagues of Egypt would befall us should we dare to vote yes.
Like many I was already disabused by Labour thanks to its Iraq folly, and its illiberal approach to immigration and asylum-seekers.
People are no fools. Labour now has completely lost its footing in Scotland. It must have felt like they had landed in an alien urban jungle when the bus-load of Scottish Labour MPs were parachuted there just before the referendum to save the day for the Union. They were hounded through Glasgow busy main streets by a yes activist on his bicycle rickshaw with “people of Glasgow your imperial masters have arrived” blaring out of his loudspeaker. The YouTube video went viral as one says, but it was a sad and slightly baffling moment to see those London based politicians caught up in something about which they appeared to have not a single clue.
The independence referendum has awakened a spirit of solidarity, political debate and awareness which we all should be proud of. It shows no sign of abating.
With the oncoming General Election for Westminster, the London media and London-centric parties do not know what to do with this political renewal in Scotland, or with the Scots. 85% of people voted in the referendum, and 67% of Scottish voters still plan to vote for the Westminster election, higher than predictions in England, higher than any previous general elections. We’re the naughty children who dared to want self-determination, and worse, who actually believed it was possible, and now dare to call the shots at the grown-ups’ table. That some academic colleagues find impossible to grasp just how far in political awareness people have come just shows how far they are from the reality of the society in which they live.
PASCAL is about learning cities. Well, I can tell you that Scotland was full of learning cities this summer. Who noticed? People took power for themselves and took to alternative sources of knowledge and information to try and make up their minds and understand the wider forces governing their lives. The genie is out of the box, and no amount of bullying from the Labour or Tory Parties will get it back in. In fact, the more they threaten, the less we listen.
I belong to a Women for Independence group in Alloa, a small town in Clackmannanshire in central Scotland. Clackmannanshire is the smallest county in Scotland, with 25% of its children living in poverty, one of the highest levels in Scotland. The people there who campaigned for independence were just ordinary citizens, many probably ‘working class’ if one looks for social labels. After the referendum they have continued meeting, finding a purpose in setting up a Christmas fundraising hub for the two local food banks, Women’s Aid and other ‘causes solidaires’. They are reinventing the word solidarity, they are the embodiment of community empowerment, even though they would not call it that. In contrast, you have these decision-making talking shops made up of statutory agencies and local government “partnerships” called “community planning” or “Community Alliance”, and no-one in the community could tell you what they are or what they do because they do not speak directly to the communities but through ‘representatives’, whom few know.
Women for Independence have just had its first AGM as a constituted movement. It has 700 affiliated groups across Scotland, from Orkney to the Borders and everywhere in between. There are rumours of a Women’s Party as in Sweden. In the summer of 2014, its first national meeting gathered over a thousand women in Perth, coming from all over Scotland. Women from all backgrounds, able and disabled spoke up for the first time in front of a crowd. Yes, a movement born through social media, grassroots meetings in local cafés, church halls, community centres. Women claimed the public space and found their voice.
Women are organising seminars about economics, led by Margaret Cuthbert, a well-know economist who has written extensively on the Scottish economy and devolution. Andy Wightman, authority on Land Reform and landownership in Scotland, fills community halls. Learning goes on, through the general election campaign, through the Common Weal, the Jimmy Reid Foundation, National Collective (artists for independence), new media outlets like Newsnet, Bella Caledonia, the ferret like Wings over Scotland, and a new newspaper, the National.
Learning is all the rage.
There is an abundance of research projects in the offing about this blossoming thirst for knowledge and debate should one be at all interested, but it seems that most academics are more interested in abstract notions of learning that concrete examples on the ground.
I think society here has changed. There is an engagement in res publica, frightening to those holding power, energising to those challenging it.
I really hope we will upset the applecart at Westminster in the UK General Election in May. This is far from over.
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Norman,
there are so many things wrong with your argument that I don't really know where to start.
May I suggest that your grand-daughter may not represent a whole generation. If we are going to use anecdotal evidence, I can quote the example of my own daughter, 31, who is enthusiastic and very serious about her teaching (art) her students (state school in Scotland) and has always been driven by ideals of social equity and justice, right from the start. I could also quote, anecdotally, the numerous young people I talked to last summer at the height of the referendum campaign to testify how deadly serious they were about politics, the opposite of apathetic. To talk about apathetic youth sounds like the typical disgruntled Daily Telegraph reader or worse, Daily Mail Melanie Philips.
And you are wrong about education I think, at least in my experience: our Scottish education system through the Curriculum for Excellence, by no means perfect of course, is nevertheless doing its utmost to encourage original thinking, interdisciplinary learning, promote equity and respect, and much more. Just read up about it.
Next, I totally disagree with the idea that one can "mobilise large numbers of people to acquire the knowledge and understanding they need to recognize and stop abuse etc..." That is a problematic and paternalistic approach to learning and to people in general, with the subtext that "one" i.e. you, or I , the "educated", can manipulate, motivate or/ and educate the masses because we know better.
That reminds me of the French state who wants to liberate these poor ignorant Muslim women who insist on wearing their Hidjab. We'll liberate you in spite of yourself because it is for your own good, we know what's good for you etc...
My experience since the referendum with local groups sprung from the Yes campaign, has been a humbling one. Some of these women may not have a doctorate or even a degree but they know a thing or two and don't need me to tell them how to think, how to behave, how to fundraise for the local foodbanks (the UK's greatest shame), run a charity shop, or organise a big event. They are all learning together and don't even call it learning. They don't need to be "motivated"; they are quite capable to motivate themselves. They work hard, raise families on limited incomes, care for relatives, and yet still find time to fundraise, meet, discuss, organise. Here's one case study for you. In fact, a PHD student is already on to it.
"Given such apathy in the population as a whole": where is your evidence of such apathy? Are you talking about the UK, France? People in your village? If there is any, is it any wonder when here, the UK government displays such contempt towards ordinary, or worse, vulnerable citizens? I don't particularly think that Corbyn is our saviour, but a lot of people got really enthusiastic in England for him and I can understand them. Labour had become such a spineless entity that it was totally powerless to imagine alternative economics to Osborne's dreadful and criticised (by no less than Christine Lagarde) austerity policies. Labour abstained on the welfare cuts vote! A sorry sight. At least now in England there is a glimmer of an alternative, provided Labour doesn't implode and is capable of governing again. No sight of that right now of course.
Which brings me to your argument about "nationalism". Are you talking about the National Front type of nationalism? But no, you are talking about the 45% of people who got so emotional that they lost their reason and voted yes during the referendum as they dared to dream about self determination. You are talking about the 50% of the population who sent 56 Scottish National Party MPs out of 59 to Westminster, and those equally in need of educating who are telling the polls this week (53-55 %) that they intend to vote for that same - fascist, Stalinist, centralist, take your pick - party for the next Holyrood election. Are you seriously saying that all these people are actually nationalist, right-wing, misguided, blinded by their emotions?
Have you actually spent any time in Scotland recently listening to those Scottish politicians dominating the scene, rather than beleiving everything you read, even in the Guardian? Because one thing has become clear over the last year: it is that very few in the London-based press and media understand what is happening in Scotland, bar a notable few brave journalists who bedded in Scottish society for more than a day, and emerged safe and sound and full of wonder. Even the SNP is hardly recognisable to its old supporters, while its leaders are having to cope with a huge influx of new members, a substantial number of whom are escapees from the Labour Party. These people are eager for social change, social justice, eager to support public services, are anti-privatisation, anti fossil fuels (fracking is a big issue here). They gave a standing ovation to the Scottish Secretary of the STUC, invited for the first time at the SNP conference in October. These people have nothing to do with le Front National you might be thinking about. Yes, the world as you know is upside down. This is not nationalism as you know it, you'll have to revise your definitions. And no, those people have not taken leave of their senses.
If you want case studies, ideas and initiatives you could do worse than to visit the Common Weal at http://www.allofusfirst.org , or the Jimmy Reid Foundation which relaunched the Common Weal concept, or the Nordic Horizons conversations, or the land reform movement, or the work of the new Scottish Rural Parliament, etc etc. Academics are seriously involved too with the Scottish Constitutional Futures Forum http://www.scottishconstitutionalfutures.org/ . There are too many to mention. But one thing is sure, Norman: the out of the box thinkers are alive and busy here, and the world is an an exciting place. Young people are brimming with ideas and energy, even the retirees are at it.
PS: One million people are gathering in Paris on 11-12 December to remind their democratically elected leaders that the civil society is alive and watching what there are doing at the COP21. I'll be there too, on my bike, straight from Scotland. That's apathy for you.