What in God's name is a "real Yes alternative" when it's at home? It seems to be code for "any pro-independence party that is not the SNP", ie. the idea is that the SNP is no longer 'really' a Yes party, thus giving Liberate Scotland a valid excuse for splitting the Yes vote on the constituency ballot next year, etc, etc. Well, I can tell you this: I've been to all but one of the local SNP branch meetings since rejoining the party in mid-January. At first I wasn't quite sure what to expect, because if you listen to some people you'd think the SNP have been completely taken over at every level by identity politics entryists, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Pretty much everyone at the meetings seems to have joined the party because of independence. They also care about social justice issues, and some talk about subjects they have particular professional expertise about, but independence is the number one priority for one and all.
So a question: how can a party composed of literally tens of thousands of genuine independence supporters not be a "real Yes" party? I suppose the argument might be that there's a disconnect between the "real Yes" members and a "fake Yes" leadership, but even if that was the case, it's surely a statement of the obvious that the party containing the overwhelming majority of the independence movement has the potential to transform itself into a vehicle for independence. If all else fails, one way that could happen is via the next SNP leadership election, whenever it comes up.
As for the much smaller parties that have been designated as "real Yes", it's a matter of record that I was not only supportive of Alba, I was in fact a card-carrying member of the party for well over three years. Towards the end I was not at all happy with Alba's direction of travel and I thought the scale of the party's intervention in a first-past-the-post general election was a dreadful error. But I took the view that this in not America, and in this country you don't (to misquote Katy Perry) "change parties like a girl changes clothes". If you join a party, you've made a commitment, and if that party goes astray, you don't walk away unless there's a very good reason - you instead roll up your sleeves and try to fix the problems, or at the very least try to push for change. That's exactly what I did - I got stuck in, stood in the Alba internal elections, got elected to several committees, and did my absolute level best to insist on due process in the Disciplinary Committee and to give the party a real internal democracy via the Constitution Review Group. All I got for my efforts was to be unceremoniously thrown out of the party on gibberish trumped-up charges that no speaker of any known version of the English language has been able to make head nor tail of. So it's redundant and bordering on offensive to say with a sense of entitlement that I am not living up to some kind of 'duty' to support the Alba Party. The Alba Party made abundantly clear that it did not want my support, and it sent exactly the same message to countless other good independence supporters.
There are two things that Alba is definitely not and never has been. It is not a participative "member-led" party, and it is not a vehicle for delivering independence. It is simply a fan club set up to give status, funding and a platform to a small and exceedingly nasty clique centred around Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh. If you're an independence supporter, do not waste a further second of your time on Alba. It's never going to deliver what you want. It's never going to deliver anything worth having.
As for Liberate Scotland, they've disqualified themselves from the off by bringing the nativist party Sovereignty into the fold, complete with far-right policies on withholding citizenship rights from "non-Scots" on some sort of ill-defined ethnicity criteria, a total ban on "economic migration", and withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights. I don't buy the argument that you shouldn't judge people by the company they keep, because it seems highly unlikely that Barrhead Boy would ever have been so comfortable with an electoral pact with Sovereignty unless he agreed with a fair number of their dodgier policies. Even during his Alba days, one of his hobby-horses was withdrawing voting rights from English people living in Scotland. When I disagreed with him publicly about that, Alex Salmond phoned me up to say he couldn't have two members of "his NEC" in open conflict with each other (funny that - I thought the NEC was an elected body representing Alba members, but apparently not), but he stressed that he vehemently disagreed with Barrhead Boy about narrowing the franchise and asked me to trust him to "sort it out quietly" in some sort of unspecified way. Perhaps in a roundabout sense he actually kept his word on that, judging by the fact that the hard core of blood and soil nutters now seem to be in Liberate Scotland rather than Alba.
So if you want to lecture people on the need to support a credible pro-independence alternative to the SNP, first of all you'd have to actually create such an entity, because at the moment it simply doesn't exist.
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James, you shouldn't have to defend yourself as an independence supporter. It's also silly for people to expect you to support Alba after all that has happened.
ReplyDeleteI have always accepted that the SNP members want independence. The problem has always been their support for the charlatan leadership and thats why I have always said they need to change the leadership.
In my opinion there is, at present, no credible pro Independence Party. Even if Swinney declared a de facto referendum I wouldn't trust him one bit. He would probably try to undermine it. The SNP had two opportunities in recent years to pick a proper independence leader but they chose two members of Sturgeons devolution gang.
THIS! I have no reasons to blame the SNP membership of not wanting independence, but I fear they are being mislead by politicians who have no interest in promoting it (and who have sold their souls to Israel). Their refusal to offer any kind of direction on the issue is telling.
DeleteIf you think the SNP have sold their soul to Israel, I can't imagine what you must think of Alba's revered spiritual godfather Stew "let's stop being beastly to Bibi" Campbell.
DeleteWell said, James. There's a darkness at the heart of Liberate Scotland. Usually sensible people are being led down a very dangerous path. An intervention is required, but how and from where?
ReplyDeleteSGP is far from the first site to be overwhelmed by the Wings hordes. They are beyond all reason. If you asked them to explain why they're doing it, they wouldn't be able to. Campbell tells them to hate Person X or Y, so they hate that person without question. It really is that simple.
ReplyDeleteIt's insane the way Alba and Liberate Scotland, whoever the f*** they may be, are dividing our movement. Time for them to grow up.
ReplyDeleteNaw. Alba on whit 1 or 2% and Liberate Scotland like you said who the feck are they. They’re not dividing the yes community it’s the SNP that destroyed it , or more to the point the Murrells and the gender shite
DeleteThis why I've always opposed the view ' indy first nothing else 'til after'.There has to be democratic and social inclusion content or the tartan fascist bams will be on board shitting on our new country from inside the tent.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. There are some things that can wait until after independence, but weeding out the blood and soil nutters isn't one of them.
DeleteI've had a gutful of these People's Front of Judea micro-splitters who represent the square root of nobody. The irony is that they attack everyone else for being splitters! They're beyond satire.
ReplyDeleteWe can't blame people for feeling frustrated though. The splinter groups are a symptom of the SNP's failure to push for indy in the last decade of very favourable conditions.
DeletePutting so much time and effort into letting male rapists into girl's changing rooms was the final straw for many.
True, but we can blame people for using that "frustration" as an excuse for racism and neo-fascism.
Delete'Real Yes' are groups of independence supporters who don't actually do anything to attempt to deliver Independence but pretend that they are by constantly moaning about the SNP. To be fair, I don't place Alba in that category as a lot of good independence supporters and workers joined it through their belief and support for Alex Salmond. I know that more than a few have since left Alba. I genuinely hope these individuals come back to the SNP. With regard to the others which you named, they are attention seekers and time wasters.
ReplyDelete