Scottish Independence Supporters Regroup After Court Dampens Referendum Plans

A lone Yes campaign supporter walks down a street in Edinburgh after the result of the Scottish independence referendum, in Scotland, on Sept. 19, 2014. PA, Stefan Rousseau/AP Photo

“You’ve got to provide a vision,” says journalist Lesley Riddoch. “It’s the only way any political change happens.”

This is the challenge for pro-independence campaigners like the award-winning Riddoch, born in Northern Ireland to Highland Scots parents, who came out for “Yes” in the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014.

Scots voted “No.”

But the question has not gone away.

Successive pro-independence governments have been voted into Holyrood, Scotland’s devolved government, for a quarter of a century.

Whether the independence question will be asked again soon, and the manner of its asking, is itself a point of conflict between the ruling Scottish National Party and the UK government in Westminster.

Riddoch was one of the organisers of a string of pro-independence rallies—15 in Scotland and six in European capitals—on the day of the Supreme Court ruling in December.

Supreme Court Backs Westminster

The court was asked to decide whether the Scottish Parliament needed permission from the UK to hold another referendum next October as they wished.

The judges’ unanimous ruling was they could not without Westminster’s consent.

Now Nicola Sturgeon, who took over as Scotland’s first minister after the 2014 referendum, says the SNP will make the next general election 10 years after it a “de facto referendum” to force the issue.

“Once the Supreme Court said no—you can’t have an advisory referendum, that was perceived to be a kick in the face and obviously it’s an impediment,” Riddoch told the Epoch Times.

A Scottish independence supporter outside the UK Supreme Court in London, following the decision by Supreme Court judges that the Scottish Parliament does not have the power to hold a second independence referendum, on Nov. 23, 2022. Aaron Chown/PA Media

“Where’s the voluntary union of equals?” she asked.

But there are others who think Sturgeon—whom Riddoch describes as “quite cautious” and lawyerly, expected the outcome as a “force majeure” to resist.

After the court’s ruling Sturgeon stated: “A referendum is the best way to determine the issue of independence ... But if a referendum is blocked then there has to be an alternative, because the only alternative to that is Scottish democracy has no way of expressing itself.”

SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon issues a statement at the Apex Grassmarket Hotel in Edinburgh following the decision by judges at the UK Supreme Court in London that the Scottish Parliament does not have the power to hold a second independence referendum, on Nov. 23, 2022. Jane Barlow/PA Media

Supporters of independence have reason to believe they have the wind in their sails.

Believe in Scotland, a movement Riddoch suggested momentum is coalescing around, points to recent polling showing 56 percent of voters agree Scotland should leave the UK.

But Wendy Chamberlain, deputy leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, rejects this as “cherry picked” evidence.

“It’s telling that the SNP have cherry picked one piece of polling on independence and ignored all the data showing people don’t want a referendum next year,” the MP for North East Fife told the Epoch Times.

She rejected Sturgeon’s notion of making an election about independence alone.

“Politicians don’t get to dictate that an election is about a single issue,” she said, adding, “My constituents are far more likely to get in touch because they can’t get a doctor’s appointment or they are scared for their jobs, not to talk about breaking up the UK.”

The Question of Brexit

Pamela Nash who heads the Glasgow-based pro-UK organisation Scotland in Union, thinks Sturgeon’s high-stakes gamble lacks support.

“The overwhelming majority of polls demonstrate the people of Scotland don’t want another referendum any time soon, don’t want to leave the United Kingdom, and they don’t support the SNP’s so-called ‘de-facto referendum,'” Nash told the Epoch Times.

But there is reason to believe some of those who voted against Scottish independence in 2014 may have switched sides after Brexit, which 70 percent of Scots rejected.

“The truth is,” said Riddoch, “Scotland was an independent nation which entered the treaty of union [in 1707] as a state in its own right.”

She sees Brexit as throwing such ideas into sharper relief. “There is a nation here and it has a shape and a cliff edge, and that is what has motivated many of us to want independence for some time, but Brexit has made it very usefully clear,” she said.

Unionists like Nash say leaving the UK is not the answer.

Nash told The Epoch Times, “Whatever you think of Brexit, breaking up the UK would be infinitely more complex and cause massive economic pain—for example, our trade with the rest of the UK is worth three times more than every EU country put together.”

And Chamberlain is critical of the SNP’s role in the anti-Brexit narrative.

“Anyone who values our place at the heart of Europe should remember that the SNP spent more time trying to beat the Scottish Liberal Democrats in the Shetland by-election than they did on the whole EU referendum. The SNP are simply stringing pro-EU Scots along,” she said.

Detached From Westminster, Not Attached to Independence

Riddoch accepts that a certain amount of fatigue is now influencing voters.

“If you just spoke to any punter out there and asked, ‘is Westminster working?’ they would just laugh at you. But that laughter has been happening for quite a long time.”

She added, “There’s a sort of detachment from any belief that Westminster works but there isn’t yet an attachment to the independence proposition.”

New narratives are needed, she suggested.

That vision would need to be “in tune with the image Scots have of themselves and their country,” media expert Robert Beveridge, a supporter of Scottish independence, told The Epoch Times. “That it is more European, more egalitarian and distinctive from the elephant south of the border.”

The referendum on independence in 2014 was widely held to have been a debate of reason and depth.

Beveridge applauded that but hopes for a more emotive pro-independence campaign in the days to come.

Could that include the kind of slogans that dominated the EU referendum like “take back control”?

Riddoch is emphatic it won’t. “If anything, the demand will be for a lot more detail, that will be the difficult thing. But that is what will be demanded, and it will have to be forthcoming,” she said.

How people view Sturgeon will be key, thinks Beveridge. “The big point is that Sturgeon has been there so long, and some people stupidly crave novelty, and also the compromises of office catch up with you after seven or more years.

“But Sturgeon has proven competence and is head and shoulders above any opposition politician as well as the Tories at Westminster so bring it on,” he added.

For now, though, there is no new referendum, and even just the idea of a “de facto” one is disputed.