How the SNP can improve their links with the independence movement

I don’t just mean those contrasting pictures showing the almost delirious joy of the crowds lining the streets of London and the rows of empty seats at screens erected to transmit the event in all its “glory” to towns and cities north of the Border.

It’s hardly a surprise that the monarchy and its surreal traditions are of far less interest to most Scots than to our nearest neighbours. Polls have been showing the different attitudes for decades and Scottish antipathy to the crown is, if anything, growing.

READ MORE: Aberdeen: Outrage over blackface coronation costume

We just don’t care.

What’s becoming more apparent, however, is that monarchists are only too willing to sacrifice the freedoms we cherish on the altar of deference to the pillars of the British establishment.

While Charles made his grumpy way to sit on the Stone of Destiny, the police were busy rounding up and arresting not only protesters but anyone they believed harboured even the vaguest thought of protesting. This was literally George Orwell’s thought police becoming a reality.

It was bad enough marching off protesters for simply carrying placards expressing opposition to the coronation – but the sight of a journalist being arrested for filming the activities of the police was a truly chilling warning of Britain’s descent into a fascist state.

This is now a country where council night safety volunteers can be arrested for handing out rape alarms to women on the grounds that they could have been plotting to commit a public nuisance. There was not a shred of evidence to support such a conclusion, as confirmed by the fact they were all later released without charge.

This is a country in which police need only to cite “intelligence” it had received from unnamed sources to justify such a gross breach of civil liberties.

This is a country where the English police are free to carry out such obviously barking actions without fear of consequences because both the Westminster government and His Majesty’s oppositions have not the slightest intention of curbing dangerously authoritarian police powers.

Voters in England eager to use their votes in the next General Election to restore human rights have no effective ways of doing so.

This is yet another crucial failure by Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. It will not repeal Tory legislation that gives police a free hand in controlling crowds. It will not repeal inhumane laws aimed at deterring refugees from escaping war and poverty by fleeing to the UK. It will not lift a finger to rewind Brexit, the most obvious and damaging example of political and economic self-harm in living memory.

The coronation and the attitudes which have emerged by many of those enthralled by it represent clear and present dangers to civil rights which are happening here and now, not at some unspecified time in the future. This is not scaremongering, it is the only rational response to current events.

With no effective political opposition, there is no way to counter these moves within the Westminster system.

Scotland is lucky in that it has a way out, in the shape of independence, although it is still struggling to find the right way of unlocking the door.

READ MORE: Scottish Labour media boss sees backlash after 'cremate the SNP' tweet

That’s why independence retains such a high level of popular support despite weeks of prolonged attack by innuendo, smears, unsubstantiated claims and wild flights of fantasy which are allowed to go unchallenged. The avalanche of negative stories culminated in a statement by the police that it asked the National Crime Agency to review its investigation into the SNP’s use of £600,000 donated to the campaign for a second independence referendum.

The National Crime Agency specialises in investigating organised crime, a fact that has encouraged widespread bouts of wild speculation based on no facts whatsoever.

That followed the arrest, questioning and subsequent release without charge of the SNP’s former chief executive Peter Murrell and former treasurer Colin Beattie.

Other well-publicised aspects of the police investigation include a search of the home Murrell shares with former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, which was transformed into something resembling a serious crime scene; the “revelation” that the party had bought a mobile home (relevance still unexplained); the “discovery” that Murrell and Sturgeon had holidays in a Portuguese villa he owns with his sister (relevance still unexplained); and the fact that Murrell had loaned the party £107,620 in June 2021 which has still not been fully repaid (relevance still unexplained).

All these facts can be injected into the public domain with no context but plenty of subtext while actual evidence – if indeed any evidence exists – cannot be revealed or discussed because ... you know ... contempt of court.

Despite all this, a Survation poll earlier this week showed that despite this onslaught the SNP has retained a healthy lead over its opponents when it comes to voting intentions for the next general election. Its 38% support was just two points down from early April.

But a poll published on Wednesday showed that the party is still the preferred option of the majority of indy supporters as the vehicle to deliver their dream.

This shows the SNP is a very long way from being dead and buried, as has been predicted by almost every mainstream commentator offered a platform in the media.

The poll brought even better news for supporters of independence.

It showed indy support rising to 48%, a rise of one point since the last poll. It also shows that support for independence is not tied exclusively to the support for the SNP.

Independence supporters took to the streets of Glasgow in their thousands last Saturday. Exact numbers are always difficult to be sure about at these marches but around 20,000 seems a reasonable estimate. That may not be up there with the massive numbers seen before the pandemic but it’s far more than any other political cause could currently muster.

The All Under One Banner (AUOB) march was a welcome sight but although thousands of the marchers may have belonged to SNP branches all over the country the event underlined its still uncomfortable relationship with the upper echelons of the party’s hierarchy.

Sturgeon ignored every AUOB event, speaking at just one indy rally, organised by The National at Glasgow’s George Square in 2019.

Humza Yousaf built no bridges with his decision to attend the coronation in London instead of the Glasgow march.

The argument that as a representative of all Scotland he had a responsibility to attend has some virtue, but still further cements the impression that the SNP leadership somehow feels more kinship with besuited business managers than with the grassroots marchers.

It’s one of those tensions that, as First Minister, Yousaf has to resolve. The SNP must be both a responsible party of government and a radical agent of constitutional change. It must have an appeal which must be wide-ranging enough to sway the soft no voters and indyref majority requires while firing the passion of those for whom independence is an all-inspiring dream.

In the past, the SNP had a tendency to take independence supporters for granted and focus instead on converting and creating new recruits.

There’s certainly sense in that strategy but it doesn’t build the stronger links with the grassroots movement that the First Minister himself has suggested that he wants to connect with more effectively.

He has taken a positive step in that direction with the appointment of Jamie Hepburn as Minister for Independence. That was a very public sign of the importance his new administration puts on the wider movement.

Where do we go from here?

I’d suggest that there is a need for a public show of the SNP’s strengthened relationship with the movement.

If the party is reluctant to put its best and most high-profile speakers on the same platform as members of Alba (and there are understandable reasons for that) then they should explore alternatives, including staging their own march or rally or some other type of mass event.

Unity may be too much to expect from a grouping with the fissures that have developed within the independence movement over the past few years. But we need a joining of forces in a celebratory event which shows in a very public way the full scale and energy of the Yes movement as we figure out the next move towards the ambition we share.