Attempts to control and police the debate and who can participate in it should be resisted. Sometimes when words of caution are sounded about a particular policy which are at first unwelcome the passage of time and events can prove them to be vindicated. We don’t have to look too far to see examples of … Continue reading Back in the fold
My hope is that Now Scotland will use the opportunity of its 6 March assembly to debate and vote on resolutions relating to the constitutional issue. I think it would do Scotland a great service if it were organised as a kind of mock party conference. I would like to see it staging the debates that should be taking place at the SNP's conference.
Plan C proposes that, having repudiated the Section 30 process as an affront to democracy, the SNP should include in the party's manifesto for the coming Holyrood elections a commitment that if elected an SNP Scottish Government will immediately assert the exclusive competence of the Scottish Parliament in all constitutional matters preparatory to proposing the dissolution of the Union subject to a referendum that shall be entirely made and managed in Scotland.
What disturbs me most about this GRA contretemps is the role it has played in creating the very deep fissures within the SNP alluded to by Richard Walker. The nature of the issue; the way GRA reform has been handled by the Scottish Government; the manner in which the reforms have been influenced and defended by a particular clique, all seem designed to polarise opinion. Indeed, it may be impossible to separate cause and effect. But whatever is assigned the status of cause, the effect on the party has been sufficiently deleterious to prompt the question of whether any cause is worth it.
From the political perspective, anyone looking to take renewed hope and revived spirit away from this event was bound to feel let down. But few among the more politically aware entertained such ambition. The height of my ambition was that the conference wouldn't be a total disaster. It wasn't. It was only 'nearly hopeless'. But was it dire?
Never in all the decades of SNP conference resolutions have so many words been used to so poorly disguise such a woeful lack of substance or effect.
Nothing changes unless lines are crossed. The comfortable and complacent sit on their side of the line condemning as dangerous and heretical reformers who dare to cross the line in search of new and better. Lines must be crossed if there is to be even the possibility of change. In every area of human endeavour … Continue reading To the edge of the world
Every moment of every day is a struggle not to succumb to the hopelessness that threatens to overwhelm and extinguish even the anger at the way members are being treated by party leaders and senior managers.
It is absolutely impossible for a movement as massive and diverse and unstructured as the Yes movement to make common cause on matters of policy. Such common cause cannot be achieved even within political parties. How could there be any hope of unifying a movement entirely without internal cohesion or a common ideology or discipline of hierarchy?
The Conference is scheduled. For the next few weeks talk will be of little else. As is the way with these things, most of that talk will be pish, varying only in concentration and pungency. I shall, as ever, endeavour to keep this site as pish-free as possible.
Peter A Bell 