The Dream Shall Never Die: 100 Days that Changed Scotland Forever

In the 1979 referendum people in Scotland still listened to the CBI. By 1997 they were ignoring them. By 2014 they were laughing at them.

At the same time Scotland’s economic performance improved. The country now has lower unemployment and, even more crucially, higher employment than the UK average. Indeed outside the south-east of England, Scotland now has the best-performing economy in the country.

Furthermore the second half of the century brought a revival in the arts in Scotland, which gathered pace through the millennium. From crime novels to Turner prizes to chart-topping groups, Scottish art forms flourished as the country moved through the self-government gear box. The balance of opinion in this burgeoning artistic community also favoured radical change or independence.

Against that background the movement towards home rule was irresistible. I committed the SNP to campaign with Labour to secure a double YES vote in the referendum of September 1997. The political price that the late Donald Dewar agreed to pay for securing a united campaign was his explicit agreement that Scotland could progress to independence if the people so willed. Labour, it should be said, made that offer confident that the introduction of proportional representation for the Scottish Parliament would be an insurance policy against any such eventuality.

After a successful referendum campaign, the Scottish Parliament was, in the words from the chair of its most experienced member, Winnie Ewing, ‘hereby reconvened’ in 1999. The ‘recess’ had lasted a mere 292 years!

In the elections of that year the SNP gained more parliamentarians in a single day than in the previous seventy-year history of the party, became the official opposition, and shifted the centre of gravity of Scottish politics irreversibly from Westminster to Scotland.

After a setback in 2003, the SNP, under its new and combined leadership team of Nicola Sturgeon and me, narrowly won the election of 2007, and in the process inflicted on the Labour Party its first defeat in a major Scottish election since 1955.

There followed four years of minority government with a plurality of one seat. This government was to face the challenge of the greatest squeeze on public spending since the Second World War.

However, thanks to the parliamentary skill of the business convener Bruce Crawford and the magician-type qualities of the Finance Secretary John Swinney, the minority government survived to prosper. In 2011 the SNP achieved what had, until then, been thought impossible: an absolute majority in a proportional system specifically designed to prevent that from happening.

This made a referendum on independence, a key manifesto pledge of the SNP, inevitable. In the first term of office the three unionist parties had held the line against the referendum apart from a brief period in 2008 when Wendy Alexander, as Labour leader in the Scottish Parliament, had unexpectedly proposed a referendum herself.

Unfortunately for Wendy, among those most surprised by this development was Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and the drama thus ended with her resignation. This was ostensibly for a minor infraction of donation declarations but in reality it was because of a complete removal of her political credibility by a London leadership team, which included her own brother Douglas, who gave her no support whatsoever.

This episode was a classic example of Labour in Scotland being treated as a London ‘branch office’, in the phrase of Johann Lamont (two Labour leaders after Wendy) in her spectacular resignation eruption of October 2014.

If the election result made a referendum certain, it did not define how exactly such a referendum should be structured. That was to be the subject of delicate negotiation between Downing Street and the Scottish government.

I had previously proposed to David Cameron, after his own election in 2010, that he should spring a political surprise and implement radical devolution for Scotland, often described in the shorthand title of ‘devo max’. This initiative got short shrift from the Prime Minister.

Why this was the case I cannot be certain. It would have been popular with his Liberal allies and allowed Cameron to propose a statesmanlike solution to the West Lothian question,* and one effectively on his own terms.

The best explanation for Tory intransigence lies in the bowels of Westminster history and deep in the entrails of the Conservative interest. From Dublin to Delhi, Westminster governments have a dreadful record of conceding much too little and much too late to restless nations. In the case of Scotland the Tory attitude is further complicated by a proprietorial instinct. Regardless of their near total wipeout in Scottish democratic politics they regard our country as part of their demesne.

David Cameron stands in a long line of Tory prime ministers close to landed interests in Scotland. The Prime Minister’s holiday retreat, the Tarbert Estate on the island of Jura, is popularly believed to be owned by Mr Cameron’s stepfather-in-law, William Astor. In fact, it is owned by Ginge Manor Estates Ltd, a company registered in the Bahamas. The name tells the family story – Ginge Manor is William Astor’s stately home in Oxfordshire.

This interest extends to the very top of the civil service. Many people were perplexed by the apparent willingness of the Head of the Treasury, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, to abandon any vestige of civil service impartiality during the referendum campaign. Some people assume that he was forced into it by a scheming and highly political Chancellor. I doubt that.

Just after the election of 2011, I had a meeting with George Osborne and Sir Nicholas in the Treasury. Normally at these sorts of meetings there is an element of political sparring between the politicians while the civil servants stay suitably inscrutable. This meeting was different. Osborne was full of bonhomie while Macpherson radiated hostility.

I have no means of looking into the soul of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury but my guess is that a background reason for his intense level of politicisation may well lie in his family’s extensive land interests in Scotland.

Whether that is his motivation or not, there is now no doubting his politicisation. In an unwise series of admissions to the inaugural meeting of the Strand Group* on 19 January 2015 Macpherson wallowed in his new-found role as a politician. He defended his decision publicly to oppose independence for Scotland. He said that in such an ‘extreme’ case as the referendum, in which ‘people are seeking to destroy the fabric of the state’ and to ‘impugn its territorial integrity’, the normal rules of civil service impartiality did not apply.

It is interesting to speculate how far Macpherson’s rant could change the relationship between civil servants and politicians if others succumb to this pernicious nonsense. In the past his logic could have led officials to take action against any politician or indeed government ‘destroying the fabric of the state’ by, say, accession to the European Union, or ‘impugning’ its financial integrity by, say, attempting to join the Euro. In the future being ‘extreme’ in Macpherson’s judgement could be, say, advocating the non-renewal of the Trident submarine fleet.

The solution to Macpherson’s dilemma is obvious. He shouldn’t wait for his inevitable seat in the House of Lords. He clearly needs to take his own manifesto to the people directly, by standing for election in the west coast of Scotland, perhaps in Plockton, Wester Ross, near his family estate. His father (a splendid chap by every local account) can give him bed and board while he campaigns to his heart’s content, explaining to the natives what is good for us. At any rate Sir Nicholas should give up now the pretence of being a civil servant.

Macpherson was allowed to get away with it by a subservient House of Commons, united across the parties in their mutual loathing of Scottish independence. Only the independent-minded veteran Labour MP Paul Flynn saw and challenged this behaviour, recognising, for example, the dangerous precedent created by the extraordinary publishing of Macpherson’s ‘advice’ to the Chancellor on sterling. Unfortunately, real Members of Parliament like Flynn are in short supply now in the Palace of Westminster.

In any case, and for whatever reason, Cameron rejected out of hand the idea of a démarche on devo max in 2010.

After the SNP landslide in the Scottish elections of 2011, I made another attempt to revive the devo max argument by means of a third question on the ballot paper, creating a choice between independence, radical devolution and the status quo. Three-way constitutional referendums are not unknown. Indeed the Cabinet Office itself organised one in Newfoundland in 1948.

This has been interpreted by some commentators and many opponents as indicating a lack of enthusiasm for independence on my part. How little do these people know me or my background.

I believe in Scottish independence. My mandate was to hold a referendum with independence on the ballot paper. I have always thought that it is possible to win such a vote. However, as I remarked to the Welsh politician Dafydd Wigley during the referendum campaign, a punter who places an each-way bet still wants his horse to win the race.

Cameron was having none of the three-way referendum. Buoyed by private polling and political advice which indicated a potential YES vote at around a maximum of 30 per cent, he was intent on a shoot-out between YES and NO with no intervening option. Given what was to transpire in the campaign with the last-minute ‘vow’ to Scotland of ‘home rule’, ‘devo to the max’ or ‘near federalism’, there is a certain irony in recalling his hard line of 2011/12.

Cameron’s position was entirely consistent with the traditional Tory attitude in conceding the absolute minimum to Scotland. At the same time, the new Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, fought an internal leadership election arguing that there should be a ‘line in the sand’ against any further devolution proposals.

An agreement with Westminster was necessary to put the referendum beyond legal challenge and, more than that, to have the aftermath of the ballot navigated in a positive manner. The central difficulty that Scottish nationalism has faced throughout its democratic history has not been persuading people that it should happen, but that it could happen.

Therefore, Cameron made his red line in negotiations the requirement for a single question in the belief that NO would score a comfortable victory. My key objective was to secure an agreement which established independence as a consented process after which it could not – and never again – be argued that there is no means by which Scotland can achieve independence.

In contrast to that absolute strategic objective the tactical consideration of having devo max on the ballot paper was very much of secondary importance. There has been some debate as to whether this was a real position of mine or merely a negotiating posture. The truth is it was both.

Initially, in the aftermath of the 2011 election, I had hoped that we could gain substantial traction across the range of civic organisations who favoured devo max. Many of these were grouped around the Devo Plus campaign led by the economically liberal financier Ben Thomson, but there were others active in much of the third sector and the Scottish Trade Union Congress. It was clearly not credible for the SNP government to simultaneously bring forward into a referendum campaign two propositions: independence and devo max. The latter would have had to be the result of genuine work by a substantial body of opinion outside of government and also be radically different from the insipid offering of the unionist parties at the time.

However, a fully fledged proposition for devo max proved not to be possible, and in 2012 I had to come to terms with that reality. I led a Scottish Cabinet discussion on the issue.

On the whole, at least in my second period as SNP leader, since 2004, I have had little difficulty in securing consensus behind my strategy for progress towards independence. It was not always like that. In the days when the SNP were far distant from the independence objective, occasional outbreaks of ideological purity were often a comfortable substitute for progress.

In the 1990s acres of newsprint and many SNP Conference motions were devoted to attempting to interpret every single nuance of my attitude to supporting devolution as a staging post on the way to independence. Eventually I put the matter to the decision of the SNP National Council and successfully committed the party to campaigning YES/YES in the two-question referendum of 1997.

As the Party became increasingly capable of winning, then confidence grew in the likely success of my gradualist strategy. Despite this, by early 2012 I was perplexing some of my colleagues with my continuing support for a third question on the ballot paper. Even Michael Russell, the Education Secretary, who was the joint architect of my step-by-step approach towards independence, contributed powerfully to the discussion, suggesting that it was time to embrace a YES/NO referendum. After I heard them out around the Cabinet table I sprang a surprise by saying: ‘Fine, let’s do that. YES/NO it is then.’

I then confided to my colleagues that we should maintain our public pursuit of the third option, since it would put us in a strong position to negotiate the timing, the framing of the referendum question and votes for sixteen- to seventeen-year-olds – all crucial matters under the control of the Scottish Parliament. I knew that the UK government would concede much else in their anxiety to record a ‘victory’ in their red line.

In other words, my support for devo max on the ballot paper was not initially a negotiating posture, but when it eventually became one it was highly successful.

The Edinburgh Agreement between the Scottish and United Kingdom governments was duly negotiated. The most important clause, and the one that received the most entrenched opposition from the UK negotiators, was the very last one, clause thirty:

Co-operation

30. The United Kingdom and Scottish Governments are committed, through the Memorandum of Understanding between them and others, to working together on matters of mutual interest and to the principles of good communication and mutual respect. The two governments have reached this agreement in that spirit. They look forward to a referendum that is legal and fair producing a decisive and respected outcome. The two governments are committed to continue to work together constructively in the light of the outcome, whatever it is, in the best interests of the people of Scotland and of the rest of the United Kingdom.

And so when David Cameron came to St Andrew’s House on 15 October 2012 with his Secretary of State Michael Moore to conclude the Edinburgh Agreement with Nicola and me, he signed a deal which both sides believed had fulfilled their key objectives. That is, of course, the best sort of deal. They had the YES/NO choice which they believed they would win comfortably. We had a referendum legislated for by the Scottish Parliament and consented by Westminster, establishing for all time a process by which Scotland could become independent.

My remarks at the press conference were designed to move the YES campaign into ultra-positive mode:

Today’s historic signing of the Edinburgh Agreement marks the start of the campaign to fulfil that ambition [of independence]. It will be a campaign during which we will present our positive, ambitious vision for a flourishing, fairer, progressive, independent Scotland – a vision I am confident will win the argument and deliver a YES vote in autumn 2014.

The Edinburgh Agreement allowed for the referendum to be held up to the end of 2014. The proper parliamentary process meant that a year to eighteen months was the necessary preparation time, but basically this left a choice available for the referendum to take place at any point in 2014.

My decision was to go later rather than sooner. It was what I had committed myself to in the election campaign. In addition we were behind in the polls – perhaps not by as much as the Tories believed, but still well behind.

We needed the time to gear up a campaign to take us from the low 30s to over 50 per cent, a seemingly daunting task. However, we also knew from our private polling that the total potential YES support was up to 60 per cent (‘potential’ means the number of people who said they were prepared to vote for independence under certain circumstances).

But away from all the pomp and poignancy of the historic day, there were a couple of moments when I believe the Cameron mask slipped a little. Signs that suggested his absolute confidence of late 2011 was faltering and that his vaunted attachment to Scotland was based on precious little of substance.

I had asked for some private time with Cameron immediately before and after the signing of the Agreement.

Beforehand this was no more than making sure that the television shots of our entrance into my office looked natural. I confess to having arranged the room so that the all-yellow map of the 2011 Scottish election results was immediately behind my seat. I even moved in the Permanent Secretary’s table for us to sit around. In the way these things work in the civil service, it is a rather more impressive piece of furniture than the First Minister’s table! Cameron and I went in together to join our teams and I showed him my John Bellany painting which adorned the First Ministerial room in St Andrew’s House. I mentioned to him that the painting was of Macduff Harbour and pointed out that it was pretty close to where his grandfather had founded a school in Huntly.

‘Ah!’ breezed the Prime Minister. ‘I’ve never actually been there.’

Given the important business to hand, I suppressed my surprise that someone should be so rootless as to never have thought of visiting a place presumably of importance to their family origins. However, of more political significance was the conversation that took place after the Agreement had been signed and the others had left.

The Prime Minister asked me when we were intending to hold the poll. I said the autumn of 2014.

He replied: ‘But that won’t allow enough time before the …’ and then stopped himself.

I took the half-finished sentence to mean that it wouldn’t allow time to negotiate independence before the UK election of May 2015. In other words, he wasn’t so absolutely confident that he hadn’t considered the political implications of a YES vote on Westminster parliamentary arithmetic.

Westminster underrated the importance of the timing of the referendum. Everyone likes to be noticed and 2014 was set to be a huge year for Scotland when we could bask in the international spotlight.

Cameron had a blind spot on this. He believed the centenary of the Great War in 2014 would be of more significance in reminding Scots of the glory of the union.

This attitude betrayed a huge misunderstanding of the Scottish psyche. As a martial nation Scots tend to revere soldiers but oppose conflict. We have no time for politicians who believe, like Cameron, that the anniversary of the bloody carnage of the First World War should be celebrated ‘like the Diamond Jubilee’.

There were more spilled guts than shared glory in the Great War.

Cameron thus overrated the impact of war and underrated the impact of peaceful endeavour. In 2014 Scotland would host the Commonwealth Games, the Ryder Cup, even the MTV awards. It was also the Year of Homecoming.* Into this heady mix there would come a referendum on self-determination.

Once the date was set the challenge was how to create a campaign that would increase support by the 20 percentage points required to win.

One thing was certain. If we fought a conventional campaign then we would conventionally lose. It was Churchill who said of Austen Chamberlain: ‘He always played the game and he always lost.’ We had to ensure that we did not just play the game.

The forces lined up against us were formidable.

Although we had drawn up spending rules to attempt to equalise the playing field, we would be heavily outspent during the campaign. The financial imbalance was partially corrected by the serendipity of Chris and Colin Weir winning the Euromillions lottery jackpot in 2011. The Weirs, longstanding and principled nationalists and also among the nicest people in the country, could be relied upon to help redress the imbalance.

The role of Chris and Colin in facing down the unpleasant media attacks on them is worthy of the highest praise. In the looking-glass world of the old written media it is fair game to attack two ordinary Scots who invest part of their fortune in the future of their country while turning a ‘Nelson’s eye’ to those London-based big business and financial interests who bankrolled the NO campaign. If campaign donations had been restricted, as they should have been, to those on the electoral roll of Scotland, the NO side would have been struggling to finance their own taxi fares.

This old press were almost entirely lined up on the NO side. In 2007 the SNP famously won an election with both of the main tabloids vying with each other to denounce the party. But we won that election with 33 per cent of the vote. To win the referendum we required 50 per cent plus one.

The ability of the press to determine elections has declined even since 2007, but there is a difficulty when it runs against you as a solid phalanx. It determines the media agenda, which has a follow-on impact on broadcasting, a medium that does still influence votes.

The full machinery of the British state was lined up against us. The three main Westminster parties would unite to see off the challenge with their own separate agendas. Luckily, each was vying with the other in a race to be the most unpopular, and the prestige of the Westminster system was at an all-time low. The very unity of the NO campaign was a disadvantage: the image of London Labour high-fiving the London Tory Party was a massive turn-off to Labour voters in Scotland. It still is.

This left social media and grassroots campaigning as areas where we had to excel. We needed to encourage the growth of a myriad of individuals and campaign groups who would be diverse, and therefore unregimented, but would also contribute to the overall campaign. We had to let a thousand flowers bloom.

In addition, many influential and progressive organisations in Scottish society were favourable to the YES campaign and were looking increasingly to Holyrood and not Westminster for their political objectives. The third sector in Scotland was either neutral or, by majority, supportive, given the experience of seven years of SNP government, and the trade union movement was fundamentally unhappy with the NO’s Better Together campaign and was becoming increasingly sympathetic to our cause.

And so the picture, after the signing of the Edinburgh Agreement in the latter part of 2012, was not as bleak as it might have at first appeared. The key to progress was always to be on the positive side of the argument. The referendum question – Should Scotland be an independent country? – gave us that firm platform. It is simply not possible to enthuse people on a negative.

Our first key moment in the campaign was the launch of the White Paper on 26 November 2013. This 670-page document was intended to present independence as a positive but workable vision for the people of Scotland. The launch stood up pretty well to critical examination by the press, and on social media there were hopeful signs that our message was cutting through the usual fog of politics.

That night, in looking at the BBC online reaction, I was struck by an entry from Stevie Kennedy of Mow Cop, a village in Staffordshire: ‘As a Scot living in England with an English wife and kids, I feel British first. Today, though, I see a politician talking and I feel hope kindle in my heart that the UK’s future isn’t all about Westminster and the corrupt industrial–political machinery that controls it regardless of what we vote for. It’s been a long time since I felt hope or any other positive emotion when watching a politician speaking, yet I know the next 10 months will see relentless waves of cynical negativity from the No campaign.’