Information is not enough

Mike Russell does a fine job of setting out the choice facing the people of Scotland. He is rather stating the obvious when he observes that “the UK political and media establishment, dripping with privilege and disdainful of democracy, will try to stop us making that choice, using all their malign tricks and lies”. Which doesn’t mean this isn’t worth saying. It is not possible to overstate the gravity of Scotland’s predicament. Reminders of this are always warranted however often they are repeated.

He is also correct to point out that the British propaganda machine has previously succeeded in disrupting and distorting the exercise of our right of self-determination with the daily drip of disdain and disinformation growing to a torrent of “malign tricks and lies” in the weeks and months prior to the choice being made. It is again stating the obvious but essential to say that we cannot afford to let them do so again.

Given the precarity and urgency of Scotland’s predicament, it is surely vital to have the fullest possible understanding of the “tricks and lies” by which the British state interferes in Scotland’s exercise of our right of self-determination to the detriment of truth, democracy and the nation. And this is where I fear the SNP falls far short of what is required. The party’s analysis of the 2014 referendum campaign is shallow, lackadaisical and frankly amateurish – leading to a failure to properly comprehend why that campaign played out as it did. At the heart of this failure of analysis lies a deep and abiding reluctance to admit that the No campaign did anything right. And yet they must have done. Because they won!

The word “right” is used here only in the sense of what was effective rather than as a normative judgement. The analysis must be objective if it is to be of any value. The fact that methods and tactics may have been improper is less important than that they had the desired effect. What matters is what works. It doesn’t matter how unethical or immoral or even illegal the methods were if the outcome stands regardless. It could easily be argued that the anti-independence campaign won in 2014 because they knew the result would be unchallengeable no matter how brazenly they flouted norms of behaviour. They won because they admitted little in the way of ethical or moral constraints and only such legal limitations as could not be circumvented. There is no behaviour which cannot be justified in the name of preserving the Union.

By contrast, the Yes campaign was severely limited in what it could do. And further limited by what it chose not to do despite there being no reason not to. The obsession with happy-clappy positivity was as relentless in its way as the grinding carborundum dust of the British propaganda effort. The No campaign was ‘wrong’, but ultimately effective – or effective enough. The Yes campaign was ‘right’, but ultimately ineffective – or not effective enough. However you state it, Yes lost. No won. We need to understand why Yes lost. We also need to understand how No won. Not envisaging the wholesale adoption of the No campaign’s methods and tactics but in order to better inform the Yes campaign for the next referendum.

This is where the SNP’s analysis of the campaign – to whatever extent there was any – fell woefully short of what was required. We don’t need to have been close to the conduct of that analysis to know that it was inadequate. We know from what the SNP has done (and hasn’t done!) in the years since 2014 that the party was proceeding (or not!) on the basis of conclusions drawn from a study of the first campaign that were simplistic, erroneous or absent. If the party had done a proper analysis of the campaign then it would have behaved very differently over the last eight years.

A political campaign is a marketing exercise. This may be particularly true of a single-issue campaign such as the fight to restore Scotland’s independence. (Note the language here. It matters.) Marketing is something close to being a science. Certainly, some aspects of it are highly scientific in that they are based of tried and tested truths about what works and what doesn’t. Buyer behaviour is well understood. Market behaviour is well understood. What works for selling soup or soap also works for selling social and political reform. This is not to say these things are equivalent. Or that what is effective for the material products directly translates into what is effective in selling an idea. But there is a great deal more similarity than many involved in political campaigning are willing to admit. Idealists are perhaps understandably reluctant to think of themselves as flogging goods. Idealists are at home in political movements. They are not always a good fit with political campaigns.

One of the important differences between marketing a product and a political idea relates to what motivates potential ‘buyers’ of either. It is said that people don’t vote what they know, they vote what they feel. This is an essential truth that must be taken on board by any political campaign. In fact, information is considerably more important in relation to the marketing of products than it is with regard to the marketing of political ideas. Think of it this way! Look at any product on the supermarket shelves. Look at the labelling – an essential component of that product’s marketing. Look at the label on the back. It is likely to be a mass of information. The label on the front – the purchaser-facing label – is likely to be very simple by comparison with elements which are visually appealing and emotionally stimulating rather than informative. The label on the back is the appeal to intellect. The label on the front is the appeal to emotion. The label on the back is about what people should know about the product. The label on the front is about how the marketers want people to feel about the product. The latter is vastly more important than the former. That’s why it’s facing the (potential) purchaser.

People purchase products on the basis of their feelings about the product – or brand – to a much greater extent than on the basis of their knowledge of ingredients etc. It’s no different for political ideas. Just as the information on the back of the packet has to be there – for reasons which should be obvious – so a political campaign must be supported by hard information. But just as it’s the label on the front that matters most in relation to products so it is the emotional appeal of the political campaign that most directly and forcefully impacts potential purchasers – or voters. The notion that you can build a successful political campaign solely, or even primarily on ‘hard’ information is false and foolish. The information goes on the back. The bright, simple emotionally appealing label goes on the front. The SNP has always got this wrong.

Mr Russell states that the Scottish Government’s independence publications are important. He says they “need to be distributed (and read) as far and wide as possible as the factual antidote to the fictional defamations”. I have to tell him that they will probably not be distributed as widely as he hopes; they definitely won’t be read by more than a fraction of those reached by the distribution, and they will be no better than a weak antidote to the powerful and plentiful poison of British propaganda.

That propaganda is effective not because of its information content – truthful or otherwise – but because of what it makes people feel. That emotional appeal cannot be countered by an appeal to the intellect. The two work in entirely different ways and the emotional appeal can readily be made powerful enough to overwhelm the small part of the intellectual appeal which actually gets through to the potential purchaser. The potential purchaser is generally averse to the effort involved in absorbing and processing information. They are generally much more inclined to the immediate gratifications of an emotional appeal. Once that emotional appeal hooks the potential purchaser’s attention the inclination to attend to information falls off a cliff.

The No campaign won in 2014 because of the effectiveness of its appeal to the emotional as opposed to the Yes campaign’s appeal to the factual. And that emotional appeal was not to fear, as the term ‘Project Fear’ implies. The emotion exploited by the anti-independence campaign was not fear but doubt. It wasn’t ‘Project Fear’. It was ‘Project Doubt’. A campaign exploiting fear would not have been effective for a number of reasons. Reaction to fear is unpredictable. Fear cannot be maintained – or can only be maintained with great difficulty. There comes a point at which ramping up fear becomes literally incredible. Doubt, on the other hand, is pre-existing, ever-present and self-sustaining. Once the seed of doubt is planted it invariably takes root and grows with little tending. Natural reservations can quite easily be aggravated into disaffecting worries. Doubt needs no rational basis. where there is a point at which scare stories part company with credibility doubts tend to persist. They tend to be resistant to reason. A person can ‘know’ a thing to be either true or untrue yet still ‘feel’ doubt about it.

The British propaganda campaign didn’t have to make people afraid of independence. It only needed to make people have doubts about it. The Yes campaign failed to address this. In fact, the Yes campaign helped generate and aggravate doubt by presenting a mass of information from a plethora of sources which was always confusing and often contradictory. The Yes campaign lacked the emotional appeal that might have countered ‘Project Doubt’ sufficiently to make all the difference that was required to swing the result from No to Yes.

That emotional appeal should have been then and must be now an appeal to something in human nature which is as innate as the sense of caution – the sense of fairness. An appeal based on the inherent injustices of the Union and the ‘natural’ rightness of independence would if done well, overcome all but the severest doubts. If doubt about independence worked as a weapon for the No campaign why would doubt about the Union not work for the Yes campaign?

I have long suspected that Mike Russell is one of those in the upper echelons of the SNP who recognises the need to reframe the constitutional issue and rethink the Yes campaign. As President of the party, however, there is only so much he can say. This suspicion is strengthened when I read the comment with which I close. In Mike Russell’s words I find distinct traces of that appeal to the emotions which will transform the Yes campaign.

We must with clarity and honesty present the facts about the relative decline of the UK and the inevitability of Scotland being dragged further into impoverishment if the Union continues. It is essential we explode the myth of “Great Britain” and look past our nearest neighbour to the normality that exists outside this island. It is imperative that we recognise that the choice is clear and stark – either join in the modern world as an internationally focused EU member or fade away as a powerless adjunct of an isolationist but stridently nationalist England.

Michael Russell: Independence papers will be factual antidote to Project Fear

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