Jeggit Politics, Scotland, Society

Dynamic Struggle

Yet, the SNP campaign of 2012-14 was itself the product of change. On the eve of devolution, in the 1997 general election, Salmond’s SNP won a paltry six seats. It made no impact on the major population centres of the central belt, had no appeal to the socialist heart of Scotland, and failed to attract meaningful numbers from the country’s minority populations. At that election the SNP felt the full force of a New Labour landslide that swept across the whole of the United Kingdom and brought us the painful disappointment that was Tony Blair.

Jeggit Politics, Scotland, Society

Problem of Perception

Our greatest weakness, it seems, is exposed in the solipsistic nature of class in Scotland and in the independence movement. The professional caste of the independence movement imagines itself as having more in common with the bourgeois sensibilities of the unionist establishment currently occupying the nation’s civil society – its business and banking institutions, professions, and universities – than it does with the organic, working class or grassroots mass movement supporting it...

Jeggit Politics, Scotland, Society

Humiliating Our Activists

Saturday is important here because on Saturday a small group of concerned Scottish people went to the border and held up a banner to traffic coming north over the border reading: ‘STAYCATION – KEEP SCOTLAND COVID FREE.’ Not a word of a lie, this is true. It’s all over the internet. Look it up. And almost immediately members of the Scottish government – MSPs and MPs – reacted. And what a reaction! Scotland’s Justice Minister, Humza Yousaf, a man touted by many to be the next First Minister and leader of the Scottish National Party – Scotland’s pro-independence party...

Jeggit Politics, Scotland, Society

Opening the Door to Independence

What matters now – all that matters now – is our actions and our resolve, and all this is perfectly summed up in the fullest expression of our democratic will. Democracy is not the long and tiring journey to independence. It is the key to independence and to everything else of good we wish to see in our country. Right now, there exists a majority in Scotland which believes the best thing for Scotland and for the future of the Scottish people is that this union with England, a union that has never served the interests of the Scots nation and people, should be ended.

Jeggit Politics, Scotland, Society

Pete Wishart’s Three Point Plan

What Pete Wishart is making here, especially when he writes about taking away ‘the whole democratic case of withholding a referendum’ by winning another majority, is a moral argument – and a good moral argument, but a moral argument nonetheless. Absolutely, a democratic majority would morally require the British government to do the right thing. Historically speaking and as our own experience of the British government since 2012 tells us, Britain and ‘the right thing’ seldom appear in the same sentence. As Rob Johns, Professor in Politics at the University of Essex...

Jeggit Politics, Scotland, Society

The Clown Mask on British Racism

In fewer than fifty words he had tied in all the themes of the right-wing threat narrative – everything from terrorism to xenophobia and white genocide – and was leaping on this awful and as yet largely unreported tragedy. So much credit has to be given to the people of Glasgow – well, people make Glasgow – and the whole of Scotland; they didn’t buy his obvious race baiting comment, and in short order told him what to do with his pathetic racist opinions. But, then, this tweet wasn’t directed at Scotland. Farage knows how poorly he’s thought of in our country.

Jeggit Politics, Scotland, Society

Smash England

Obstructed in Scotland by a constitutional framework designed to eternally frustrate independence, and stuck to a state that will – as it has again and again in the past – change the goalposts to benefit the union, it stands to reason that we can achieve infinitely more and faster by stoking division in England than we ever can by trying to unify a Scotland already mentally colonised and socio-politically divided by England. Those of us of a certain generation will remember the words of Robert de Brus, the father of Robert the Bruce, in the film Braveheart...

Jeggit Politics, Scotland, Society

England’s Possession

Regardless of this, however, Scotland is not England’s possession. Scotland and the Scottish nation – its culture, identity, and resources – are the shared heritage and possession of the Scots. The incorporating union of 1707 has always been exactly that to Scotland; the fusion of two distinct kingdoms. But, and from the very beginning, in England the union – which was secured with the bribery of Scots nobles and the threat of invasion – has always been understood as the annexation or absorption of Scotland by England. So, when we hear English people opine about Scottish independence...