9


down the the Scots


betrayal in the starkest terms, but also proposes a solution. Westminster should treat Scotland well, alleviating the poverty and improving the infrastructure, to prevent these still-restless natives feeling short-changed. We all know how that turned out.


1979 saw the first devolution


referendum, with its procession of scare stories interspersed with promises of jam tomorrow. The scare stories are familiar stuff, and there’s a reason for that. The objection was never so much to devolution itself, but to its potential as a slippery slope.


The 40% rule was introduced to thwart


independence, not an Assembly. (And if Scotland had had her own legislature during the Thatcher years, who would bet against us being independent decades ago?)


The Tories and the Labour party


seemed united by the same fear – the fear that the Scottish people were a seething mass of pro-independence sentiment that had to be curbed.


They differed only on how to achieve


that. The Tories wanted to screw down the lid of the pressure cooker to prevent any escape of aspiration; Labour thought this


would only cause a blow-out, perhaps in an SNP landslide at a general election, and believed that a better approach was to allow some steam to escape by way of a devolved assembly.


The Tories had their way for 18 years,


and were not proved wrong. There was no SNP landside, not then. But the pressure was building nonetheless, and along came 1997.


“Devolution will kill nationalism stone


dead!” trumpeted George Robertson. This wasn’t about giving Scotland good governance, or appropriate recognition as an equal partner in the union, it was about easing that pressure cooker.


Nevertheless, some were still thinking


about slippery slopes. Let’s arrange the electoral system so that there is virtually no chance of an overall SNP majority. Let’s sneak through legislation redrawing the sea boundaries. Let’s not devolve broadcasting. Let’s reject proposals to re- vamp the school curriculum to include more Scottish literature, music, art and history. Let’s build an expensive parliament in a hollow rather than use the “nationalist shibboleth” everyone can see. And so on. Think not about what is best for Scotland, think about dissing the Nats!


LANARK


A very busy day for Yes Clydesdale volunteers who manned a stall in Lanark Tolbooth to mark National Women’s Day. A constant procession of local people came to visit, ask questions, grab some leaflets and have a coffee and a chat.


It might have worked forever if the


LibDems hadn’t got too clever in 2007 and refused the coalition the grand plan had envisaged as a means of holding an SNP majority in check.


The very idea of an independence


referendum was such anathema they couldn’t even talk about it. The SNP tried to deliver their referendum bill, but with Labour, Tories and LibDems ranged against them it was hopeless.


It was probably hopeless anyway. A


referendum in 2010 was a long shot, because the voters weren’t ready. Ironically, Wendy Alexander was the only person who actually got it. “Bring it on!” was the logical tactic, but even then the unionist parties couldn’t bring themselves to risk it.


They were far more confident of a Yes


vote than the nationalists were, and by this time they were all in “screw down the lid” mode.


Panic set in in 2011. How could it all


have gone so horribly wrong? The answer is simple. Scots had seen a government that put its best people in Holyrood and didn’t tailor Scottish policy to suit a leadership focussed on winning in the south of England, and they liked it. A lot.


Cue headless chicken mode. You can’t


have a referendum, it’s not constitutional. Yes, have your referendum, have it NOW.


Well, we’re having it, and we’re having it


when we wanted it. And the question is what we wanted and the franchise is what we wanted and we even have a signed agreement to respect the result.


Now we just have to win. There’s the rub. Sixty years (and more)


of systematically keeping the Scottish people in the dark and feeding them shit speaks to one underlying conviction. The conviction that the Scots want independence, and have to be belittled, kept in ignorance of their own country’s wealth and denied the opportunity to vote for what they want, to preserve the integrity of the United Kingdom and keep that wealth flowing to London.


Now, though, received wisdom says the


opposite. We are not planning for a Yes vote because it won’t happen, says Whitehall (even as it issues another Hitchcock horror of a briefing document, just in case). Scots are too canny to fall for slippery Salmond, we know.


Which version is right? At the moment


the polls seem to suggest the latter. But if so, Westminster has spent many decades politicking against a completely imaginary threat.


If their long-term instincts were right


all along, that pent-up desire is still there, weighing things up, gathering its nerve, and getting ready to burst that pressure cooker once and for all.


MORAG KERR


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