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

I have never met Mr Kennedy, but he sums up really well the position facing us going into 2014. On the plus side we were inspiring the people with a new vision. The difficulty would be sustaining it against the avalanche of ‘cynical negativity’ which he so rightly expected.

The most consistent and regular polling was carried out by YouGov, asking the same question as the one that would appear on the ballot paper.

In August 2013, according to the first YouGov poll, the NO side were 30 points ahead: 59–29. By the end of the year, after the launch of the White Paper, their lead had shrunk to 20 per cent: 52–33.

Through the spring and into the summer of 2014 the YouGov polls still recorded NO leads of between 14 and 20 per cent. However, the previous ‘don’t knows’ were generally moving to YES at around 2–1. That group of undecided voters was around 15 per cent at the end of 2013, 10 per cent in the first half of 2014 and then a mere 5 per cent by August 2014.

At first sight, the effective stability in the polls in the first half of 2014 did not look like good news for the YES campaign. However, a deeper examination tells us otherwise.

In quick succession in mid-February the unionist forces fired their biggest guns. First George Osborne, hand in glove with Danny Alexander and Ed Balls, ruled out a currency union, while José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, popped up on BBC’s Andrew Marr Show to say that it would be ‘difficult, if not impossible’ to secure the approval of member states for an independent Scotland’s accession to the European Union.

This heavy artillery, which was meant to finish the argument, misfired. The first bombardment, on the currency, looked high-handed, with former First Minister Henry McLeish and even Gordon Brown expressing open or private doubts about the tactic.

The second barrage was regarded with even more incredulity. Sir David Edward, a former judge at the European Court of Justice and a unionist to his fingertips (albeit one who is increasingly despairing of the europhobic politics of Westminster), was moved to directly counter Barroso’s bureaucratic bombast, arguing that the latter’s comparison of Scotland and Kosovo was little short of preposterous.

Neither Osborne’s ‘sermon on the pound’ nor Barroso’s lecture on Europe cut the mustard. They were meant to close out the game but did not have the desired impact. Indeed in the case of the currency the effect was, on balance, counterproductive. And when big guns are fired too early it is sometimes difficult to reload in time.

The launch of the White Paper caused the first big shift to YES. After that, for the first six months of 2014, there was effectively a standoff between the fear-mongering of the NO side and the aspiration of the YES side. As we moved into the last 100 days, the grassroots campaign took off and momentum shifted towards YES.

And so battle was joined and the referendum decided. Of course it is possible to win a battle and lose a war, just as it is possible to lose a referendum and still win the end game. In the aftermath of the ballot the losing YES side have emerged looking like winners while the winning NO side are looking like losers. The full consequences of the Scottish referendum are only just beginning to be understood.

*

Politicians can so often sound mechanical, robotic even: pre-programmed with policies and beliefs. Possessing none of the necessary emotion that makes life worth living.

I believe that the referendum was Scotland’s democratic hour, the moment of fundamental reassessment. A time when many people realised that, collectively, they could be more significant than they had ever previously believed. The moment to change, to influence. Rather than just listening to the weather forecast, the people got to decide what the weather should be.

I didn’t have to see the world differently. My upbringing had grounded me with that same belief all of my life. I have always been fortunate to have had that at my core. There are now many more people in Scotland in that position.

The great impenetrable edifices, the blocks to progress – Westminster, the Labour establishment – are still there, but they have started to crumble and the people sense it.

I have my family history to thank for my convictions. Both of my parents eventually reached the same conclusion on Scottish independence in their own separate ways. As my father tells it, his moment of conversion happened during an exchange with a Labour canvasser on the front doorstep. Faither was asked how he would be voting.

‘Labour,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘Always have.’

‘That’s great,’ said the canvasser before inquiring about my mum’s voting intention.

‘No hope for her,’ said Faither. ‘She’s a Tory.’

‘Not a problem,’ said the Labour man. ‘Just as long as she doesn’t vote for those Scottish Nose Pickers!’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Faither. ‘My best pal’s in the SNP.’

‘They’re all nose pickers,’ said the canvasser.

Dad: ‘No, they’re no’!’

Canvasser: ‘Aye, they are.’

Half an hour later and they’re still at it – but, by this time, it wasn’t just my dad’s friend the canvasser was insulting. He was running down the whole of Scotland.

Finally Faither – ever thrawn – finished the fraught conversation.

‘Look, when you arrived I told you I’d vote Labour as I have done in every election. I will now vote SNP in every election. I want you to remember that this is what you have achieved tonight.’

This exchange – which probably took place during the West Lothian by-election in 1962 – bears a striking similarity to Labour’s attitude in the referendum.

It’s not just that they campaigned side by side with the Tories, it’s the fact that they were running down Scotland alongside them too, shoulder to shoulder, hand in glove.

And you don’t have to be a member of the SNP to be angry when someone is belittling your country.

My dad has voted SNP for the past fifty years on the back of that conversation. Fifty years! And the Labour Party think they’ll be able to wash their hands and, over the next few months, move on from what they’ve done.

As for my late mum, her route was rather different and more recent – and it was more about a mother’s love than a political conversion, despite her distaste for high Thatcherism.

In the 1990s, during my first term as SNP leader, I was conducting a press conference in London when it became clear that the Labour-supporting Daily Record wanted to have a pop at me by ‘exposing’ Mum as a Tory. If he can’t convince his own mother, why should people listen to him? That kind of thing.

I knew they were going to doorstep her and phoned with a warning. ‘Leave it to me,’ she said.

The Record duly turned up to quiz her on her Conservative leanings. ‘That’s true,’ she said, ‘but all in the past. I’m actually very disappointed in Mr Major and can tell you – and this is exclusive – that I will now be voting in the same direction as my husband – and my son.’ Then The Times arrived, to whom she said she was papering the bathroom and didn’t have the time to talk. Finally the Scotsman was rebuffed on the basis that she had already turned down the London Times!

Meanwhile, down in London, cut off from the turmoil and worried sick about the press persecution of my poor mother, I phoned home repeatedly for updates. Eventually my dad answered. ‘Listen, will you stop phoning, your mum hasn’t had as much fun since the Blitz!’

There you have it. That is the well from which I flowed.

*

This is my story of the last 100 days of the referendum.

By definition it is a story told from my vantage point. I know a great deal more about the YES campaign than I do about the NO campaign. It also tells the story from the point of view of the leader of the campaign.

Quite deliberately, the YES campaign was diverse and grassroots-based. I didn’t try to control all aspects of our campaign activity. To have attempted to do so would have been to nullify our greatest advantage: our ability to mobilise vast numbers of people. Rather, we tried to get our message and themes across and, by relaying them through a cast of many thousands, see them impact on the wider community.

None of that removes the responsibility that comes with leading a movement. The mistakes (and there were a few) were my responsibility and mine alone.

Would I do a few things differently with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight? Of course I would. However, my grandfather taught me not to dwell on the past but to learn from it.

Thus on the whole, and that is the only way you can judge these things, the Scottish summer of 2014 saw the most exhilarating, positive and empowering campaign ever to impact on democratic politics. It achieved a greater amount with fewer resources than any election campaign, not only that I have ever been part of, but have ever heard of. I am proud to have been a part of that experience.

It was, for me, the best of times and the best of campaigns. I hope my granda would have been proud.

* The political shorthand for the question of parity between Scottish MPs voting on English matters but English MPs not being able to vote on Scottish domestic issues. It was so called because it was most frequently raised by the indefatigable Tam Dalyell, MP for West Lothian in the 1970s, who used the examples of Blackburn in his constituency and Blackburn, Lancashire, to illustrate the point. Dalyell was well aware that the original concept was first mooted by Gladstone in the Irish home rule debates of the 1880s. The name ‘West Lothian question’ was then coined by the Ulster Unionist MP Enoch Powell in a response to a Dalyell speech, when he said: ‘We have finally grasped what the Honourable Member for West Lothian is getting at. Let us call it the West Lothian question.’

* The Strand Group is a forum and seminar series of the Policy Institute at King’s College London. It aims to explore how power operates at the very centre of government. The Group’s events bring together senior figures from the worlds of governance, civil service, business, journalism and academia past and present to discuss the most pertinent government and political issues of the day. The group’s establishment within the Policy Institute has been complemented by the appointment of new Visiting Professors including Sir Nicholas Macpherson. In his lecture Macpherson defended the Treasury’s role in the referendum, stating that ‘Her Majesty’s Treasury is by its nature a unionist institution. The clue is in the name.’ Given that the present monarchy is not itself a ‘unionist institution’, having been established more than a century before the Treaty of Union, we can safely assume that Professor Macpherson is not Visiting in History!

* Scotland’s Homecoming years in 2009 and 2014 were a series of special events designed to generate interest from around the world in Scotland, particularly, but not exclusively, from those of Scottish ancestry. The first of these celebrated the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, which provided a theme for many of the events, while the second coincided with the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup. Both years are judged to have been highly successful in attracting additional visitors.

The Run-Up

As the 100-day campaign approached, the scene was set and the political temperature was rising.

Thursday 5 June 2014

A game of Top Trumps with the US President. Think I may have won.

I’ve just announced the judge-led inquiry into the Edinburgh trams project. I fully expect this probe into the controversial project to lead the Scottish news.

My Chief of Staff, Geoff Aberdein, threatens to put my gas at a peep. He comes bounding into my office in the Scottish Parliament.

‘Obama’s come out for NO,’ he says.

‘What did he actually say?’ I ask.

‘He said NO,’ says Geoff.

‘Geoff, what did he say and where did he say it?’

‘Well, he was standing with Cameron at a press conference and he said that the UK was a strong ally which should be unified but it was up to the folks up in Scotland.’

‘Good,’ I reply.

‘How can it possibly be good?’ asks Geoff.

‘Three reasons – one he was standing beside Cameron. Two: Scotland likes to be talked about and three: these “folks” up here are nothing if not thrawn.’

I add: ‘So we say, one: Cameron begged for the support. Two: America had to fight for their freedom whereas we have a democratic opportunity. And three: it is indeed up to the “folks up in Scotland”.’

‘Anything else?’ says Geoff. ‘Add Yes We Can,’ I smile.

Staying in the Sofitel at Heathrow so that I can get to Normandy for the D-Day commemorations, at some unearthly hour tomorrow morning.

Dinner with John Buchanan, my security officer, and Joe Griffin, my principal private secretary. Also there is the really excellent Lorraine Kay, from my private office, who has just flown in from the USA. An English by-election sees the Tories hold from UKIP with the Lib-Dems losing their deposit. Much being made of the continuing tribulations of Nick Clegg.

Friday 6 June

Find myself on an RAF flight back from the D-Day commemorations in Normandy with Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband. Brings to mind a version of the balloon game and who should be pushed out of the plane first. Probably neither of them. They both have their uses.

Appropriately enough this has been, if not quite the Longest Day, then a pretty long one. I’d caught an early plane from RAF Northolt with Clegg (remarkably cheerful) and Miliband (remarkably pleasant).

It is, of course, undoubtedly the case that Nick is putting on an act for Ed’s benefit – to show how unruffled he is by the slings and arrows of outrageous by-elections. Meanwhile Ed is on his best behaviour, as there is little or nothing in his current performance to suggest that Labour will be able to govern alone.

There is no purpose in politics in offending someone, at least unnecessarily.

In turn, I am really cheerful (at least for 7 a.m.). I want to give the impression that, despite the 20-point-plus leads for NO in the referendum polling, I might just possibly have something up my sleeve.

Also there are the Welsh First Minister, Carwyn Jones, and Peter Robinson of Northern Ireland, for once and for obvious reasons, without Martin McGuinness.

We are taken across the Channel in a very comfortable BAe jet from the Royal Flight, which I would strongly recommend to all air passengers. Laughingly make a note to self: if things go well perhaps we could get one of these – Scotforce One!

I’m offered a very nice breakfast, but it’s too early for me. Anyway, I think: the food’ll be much better in France. Our flight was certainly easier than the one which the parachutists put up with on D-Day.

In virtually no time at all we are at Caen airport heading towards the prefecture where the delegates are assembled for the first of several church services.

The highlight of the first service is the consecration of a massive bell in the middle of the Bayeux cathedral. I meet my first veteran of the day, from Southport, who asks me if I am the one who is ‘causing all the trouble’. At least he says it with a twinkle in his eye.

On the walk from the cathedral to the cemetery for the second service the townspeople clap the D-Day veterans as they march forward in the sun. It is the first of a number of moving moments.

Foolishly having turned down some factor 50, and even more foolishly with no hat on, I am baked in a warm sun at the cemetery. However, the day is enlivened by some chats with the old soldiers from around the Commonwealth who are in robust form. And all of whom have brought their headgear.

I meet John Millin, son of Piper Bill, who featured in the film The Longest Day, and whose statue adorns Sword Beach. John tells me a couple of things.

First, despite sporting a set of bagpipes he is actually no piper but had promised his dad on his deathbed that a Millin would play at the unveiling of the Sword Beach statue. So he is able to play ‘Highland Laddie’, one of his father’s tunes from D-Day, and pretty well nothing else.

He also discloses the real sequence of events on D-Day. Millin did not actually volunteer for a suicidal piping recital, but when ordered by Lord Lovat to play a tune demurred, pointing to the King’s regulations aimed at stopping the demise of pipers in active combat.

‘Ah,’ breezed Lovat, ‘that’s English war office and doesn’t apply to us Scots – so just play.’ Bravely, Piper Bill followed this direct order and, with comrades falling like flies all around him, he miraculously escaped without a scratch.

The next day they asked some captured German snipers: ‘Why didn’t you shoot the piper?’

‘He was obviously a madman,’ they replied, ‘and the Wehrmacht is not in the business of shooting lunatics.’

So, not quite as represented in the film but a cracking story. Come to think of it, rather better than in the film.

Piper Bill’s role is duly celebrated in a pretty good pageant which is the centrepiece of the French commemoration at Sword Beach. Trouble is, they start an hour and a half late and have a dozen veterans lined up to meet the various heads of state, who all insist on arriving one by one.

The prospect of our heroes surviving D-Day only to be struck down by sunstroke at the commemorative pageant is too awful to contemplate. Fortunately someone has the presence of mind to get some umbrellas for shelter, although a French TV producer keeps pinching the veterans’ water bottles because she thinks they are ruining her best shots.

While we wait I take the opportunity to have a quick word with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is sitting just opposite me.

I start by suggesting that, given the President’s pronouncements, I might expel John from the Scottish caucus – the group in Congress that Senator Jim Webb has brought together to promote the Scottish interest.

He seems to think this suitably funny and tells me that we have a ‘big day’ coming up and that ‘it’ (presumably Obama’s statement) is ‘the least we could say’.

Things are just starting to get really interesting when Carwyn Jones comes up to get a photo and all revealing chat stops. Kerry’s last words to me are ‘Good luck’.

After Sword Beach we are back to Caen, where all heads of state take off in strict protocol order, Airforce One first. This means that the very pleasant Prince Albert of Monaco takes off before the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chief of the General Staff and me.

We board a Hercules transport plane. The trip back is rather like the closing scene of Where Eagles Dare, with the top brass, Ed, Nick, Carwyn and me, sitting with our backs to the fuselage – and me wondering who should be jettisoned first.

Back to Northolt in double quick time before Joe and I fly on to Aberdeen. The crew are good sorts and for the final leg I am in the jump seat in the cockpit. They tell me that they did most of their flying time in Afghanistan, where the Hercules was the ideal aircraft: it has near-vertical take-off with a light load. This stops bandits being able to shoot at you – which seems like a pretty unanswerable argument.

Despite the best efforts of the crew and a very rapid flight straight up the North Sea to Aberdeen, the taxiing around the airport takes time and a dash to Inverurie mart has me arriving at 10.30 p.m. – quick enough for people to see me making the effort but not in time to address the Taste of Grampian dinner.

This is a great pity, since I had intended to open my speech with the line: ‘I apologise for my late arrival but Airforce One delayed my Hercules taking off from the D-Day landings at Caen airport!’

Saturday 7 June

A day at home preparing for the 100-day sprint to the line.

I have some time to think about Cameron’s pleas to everyone and their auntie for help against independence and about some people being daft enough to respond.

After the Obama ‘intervention’ we had been wondering who else Cameron and his crew would be successful in persuading to speak against us. We’d heard reports of the Foreign Office briefing against us and we expected that all significant leaders had been asked for their view. Galling, since we pay those people’s salaries.

But my hunch is still that it is good for YES and that is what I shall certainly suggest to Andrew Marr tomorrow.

Apparently Andrew Neil is tweeting that because I am on Marr then Nicola cannot be on the Politics Show – an illustration of the double-think that is now par for the course for the BBC. Clearly if one SNP politician is on one network programme, then we have exhausted our quota for the day.

Sunday 8 June

Use the interview on Marr to launch a further challenge to the Prime Minister to debate with me directly – First Minister to Prime Minister. He won’t, of course, but that is no reason for not issuing the challenge.

Interviewed down the line from the Marcliffe Hotel, my favourite hotel in Aberdeen. Indeed it is everyone’s favourite hotel in Aberdeen.

As it happens I helped Andrew with one of his first big stories in journalism.

Wind the clock back to 1982 and I was at the heart of the SNP 79 Goup’s* industrial campaign, and British Leyland at Bathgate was in terminal trouble. I had accumulated a great deal of material on how truck models were being systematically withdrawn from Bathgate to prepare for rundown and closure.

However, from the less than dizzy heights as assistant economist of the Royal Bank of Scotland, I was hardly in a position to release it myself. My solution was to give the story to a young Scotsman journalist – Andrew – who ran a very good three-part series based on the information.

As part of the job, Andrew came into 36 St Andrew’s Square to interview me. Behind my desk I had a framed copy of the first-day cover of a magazine called Radical Scotland, which featured a cartoon illustrating a quote from historian Tom Nairn: ‘Scotland will be free when the last Church of Scotland minister is strangled by the last copy of the Sunday Post!’

The depiction of a slightly panicky and very baldy meenister was not meant to be taken seriously.

Some six years later, when I was in Westminster, one of Andrew’s great friends, the Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill, interviewed me and started his profile by suggesting that I was a very unusual Royal Bank economist, since behind my desk there was a copy of a Church of Scotland minister being strangled by a newspaper!

This led the local Conservative Association in Banff and Buchan to release a press statement saying that I wished to assassinate ministers of religion. The Press and Journal, delivered in those days to just about every home in my constituency, then put this nonsense on their front page.

As a newly elected member I was perhaps oversensitive about reputational issues, and a defamation action followed to bring the local Tories to heel, masterminded by my great friend and lawyer, Peter Chiene.

All of which is a reminder that stuff and nonsense in politics did not start with social media – it just makes it more immediate and more widespread.

Monday 9 June

Today is the day that the media has designated as the official launch of the 100-day campaign and so it is redolent with political opportunity. For my part I end up doing some personal polling in a golf club bar – and come away thinking we really can do this, despite the gap.

Nicola kicked it all off this morning with an all-women Cabinet and public question-and-answer session in Edinburgh. I take over in the afternoon and go back to Aberdeen to cover Sky and the BBC network.

I do the Sky piece from Nigg Bay Golf Club in Aberdeen, a municipal course with great views over Aberdeen harbour. Cheekily, someone – one of the green keepers I’m told – has hung a union flag on a fence in a vain attempt to get it into camera shot.