Elusive unity

Everybody wants unity. But they all want unity on their terms. Nobody is prepared to make the compromises that solidarity demands.

Perhaps instead of thinking in terms of needing unity in order to act, we might better consider acting in order to create unity. What the independence movement lacks is a core around which it might coalesce. The focus, encouraged by the SNP and much of the ‘old guard’ of the independence movement, has been on creating a ‘vision’ of Scotland with independence restored. But there is not and cannot be a single ‘vision’ on which all agree. A ‘vision’ has a multitude of variables. The more complete and polished a ‘vision’ becomes, the greater the likelihood that certain fixed aspects will alienate those with a different ‘vision’.

The same is true of policy agendas. If unity requires agreement on a policy agenda, then unity is never going to happen. The idea that there is a single ‘vision’ or policy agenda or ‘message’ that will both unite the Yes movement and win support for Scotland’s cause is nothing short of idiocy.

The single greatest cause of disunity in the independence movement is time. Time allowed positions to develop and to become more distinct, discrete, and vigorously defended. There is no way to reverse this process. Reversing it would require that all positions be abandoned. That is just not going to happen. There is no possible synthesis of positions which are mutually incompatible. There are fundamental issues on which any large group of people will inevitably be divided. Such as EU membership, to give just one example.

The original Yes movement was able to achieve the unity it did because we were all focused on the same thing – winning the referendum. Issues such as EU membership did not loom large enough to create divisions because we were all too preoccupied with working towards a Yes vote.

Diversity such as characterised the early Yes movement will always tend to become division over time. There was no opportunity for division to arise until activists had idle time in the wake of the 2014 referendum. With no common purpose on which to focus, and no leadership to maintain that focus, activists turned to other matters.

For ten grinding years, the Yes movement has been devoid of leadership and without a common purpose.

We cannot recreate the kind of unity the Yes movement had in 2013 / 2014. But we can restore that common purpose. Simply saying the common goal is independence won’t cut it anymore. Once again, that was fine when we all thought of independence as the same thing. Which we were able to do because we didn’t think about it very much at all. Once we had the opportunity to do so, ideas of what independence meant began to diverge.

You cannot build an effective single-issue political campaign around a contested concept. I desperately hope that statement needs no further explication. It may seem counter-intuitive, but a campaign to restore Scotland’s independence cannot be built on the idea of independence. Because there is no single shared idea of independence.

What we did before we cannot do again. The place we were in then no longer exists. We cannot return. We are, in a very real sense, starting from scratch. Or at least, we will be when we start. Therein lies the rub. We haven’t started. There has been no start made on building the new movement and the new campaign. We have spent a decade waiting for somebody to do something while our politicians exhibited neither the desire nor the will nor the ability nor the intention to do what we were waiting for.

There cannot be a common purpose until there is a purpose that all can share. There is no question that this purpose must be ending the Union (as opposed to ‘winning’ independence). What is lacking is a credible strategy towards this end being proposed by any of the nominally pro-independence parties. Given such a proposal, I have no doubt that the independence movement will come together to make it work.