Referendum reflections; day 1

How do I feel?

Devastated, distraught, down. Angry. Hopeful?

The first three are, I think, pretty natural reactions to ending up on the losing side of a campaign that you have poured your heart into, especially one as emotive as this. I’ve had many friends tell me not to be sad, but unfortunately there is no way I can get to that without a lot of time and space.

Angry is a bit more complicated. It’d be oh so easy to be angry at the majority No vote – after all, it’s superficially a vote to keep Trident, to support the corrupt Westminster government, to endorse inequality and austerity and warmongering and to condemn our poorest to foodbanks through neglect among many other horrendous outcomes. But all I can find for these people (some of whom are friends and family) is frustration. Frustration that they either went for total heart over head – ‘How can we abandon our friends/colleagues/family in the rest of the UK?’ – or wholly bought the line that ‘no matter how bad it is now, it’ll probably be worse with Yes’. The time to counter those arguments is sadly now gone.

My anger is reserved for the politicians and media who have spent the past 2 years (and particularly the past 2 weeks) bullying the voters in Scotland. I used to love the BBC and the Guardian, yet this campaign has made me deeply mistrust even these supposedly liberal/impartial bodies. I guess I was naive to think that more than a handful of journalists might prefer news reporting over personal/editorial slants.

It’s pretty easy to say that the Yes media were equally biased – and yes, on the whole they were. But as I pointed out elsewhere in the campaign, a few small websites versus the entire Media pack is no contest. You had to dig to get Yes propaganda or have particularly vocal Yes friends, whereas you just need a TV or a news website or paper to be confronted with ‘Yes vote equivalent to voting in Hitler’ or similar rubbish. For the majority of voters, this is still how they get information – as I said, no contest.

I’m not suggesting that the ‘scare’ stories were entirely without legitimacy, but they were drowned under personal attacks and threats of reprisal from big business, financial markets and political process. Alongside that, any attempt to engage the legitimate concerns were invariably met with accusations of lies or a refusal to debate. What is that if not bullying on a national level?

I hope the anger will fade with time – I sincerely believe that a majority of No voters marked their box confident that they were doing the right thing for the people of Scotland and further afield; that to fight and change the system from within is the correct path. But I’ll add a proviso, inspired by my great friend and colleague, Phyllis Martin. No voters, you must work to make this Scotland better than it is now, not just rest on your laurels and think that nothing needs to change.

Hopeful? Not yet. I need a little time to let the hurt fade first. I have plans to involve myself in the Scottish Greens, who I think have emerged from this campaign with dignity and increased status. I will sign the petition to try to force Clegg, Cameron and Miliband to uphold their pledge (link below), though sadly I have very little faith here. I think that left-leaning citizens across the UK have been inspired by the campaign, but to those who have offered this inspiration as a way of comforting distraught Yes voters I would say this:

Don’t let this momentum go – we’ve taken it to a natural pause, and you’ve watched with interest. You’ve seen that grass-roots work makes a difference. You’ve seen that the mainstream politicians can be rattled by a campaign based on hope and fairness. Get out there and make sure that it’s not a one-off. We have a general election in less than 8 months, and those in charge of this deeply flawed system need to know that we reject their ways.

Yes to change.

petition link: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/promise-for-Scotland