Читать книгу The Dream Shall Never Die: 100 Days that Changed Scotland Forever - Alex Salmond - Страница 8

I have believed in Scottish independence all of my adult life.

The roots of this are not, as is often assumed, because of my background as an economist, although that undoubtedly helped. It runs much deeper than that.

In fact it was another Alex Salmond – my grandfather – who first sparked this Alex Salmond’s belief in Scotland. This faith was instilled in me on my grandfather’s knee when I was barely more than a toddler.

My wise granda – Sandy to everyone – had a town plumber’s business in Linlithgow. He was in his late sixties and retired when I was young but kept his hand in by taking on odd plumbing jobs. I was his young apprentice, proudly carrying his tools.

As we trudged round the wynds and closes of the royal and ancient burgh my granda filled me with Lithgae folklore and Scottish history and how the two intertwined. He told me, for example, how King Robert Bruce’s men captured Linlithgow castle by the simple expedient of blocking the portcullis with a hay cart.

More than that, he named the families involved: local folk in the town, families that I knew – the Binnies, the Davidsons, the Grants, the Bamberrys, the Salmonds and the Oliphants. Oliphants were the local bakers. In my child’s eye I imagined the boys in the bakehouse making the bread, dusting off the flour and then charging off to storm the palace.

I was taught no Scottish history at school, but years later at St Andrews University I finally learned the history of my own country and discovered that my granda’s oral tradition wasn’t too wide of the mark – if we forgive his artistic licence in the naming of names. Of course my grandfather wasn’t really teaching me history but about life: how ordinary people could make a difference.

To my grandfather an honest man was the noblest work of God, Scotland was a special place on earth and Linlithgow was a very special place in Scotland. With this grounding it never even occurred to me that there was anything that could not be achieved with sufficient commitment and determination.

Robert Burns once wrote that a similar experience in boyhood gave him a Scottish view of the world which ‘will boil alang there till the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest’.

So it shall be with me.

Everything else I have been taught or experienced, from the science of economics to the art of politics, is overlaid on these foundations: the belief that Scotland is a singular place and that the people of Scotland are capable of great things.

*

It was the best of times. It was the best of times.

For many people the Scottish referendum campaign was the best time of their lives, a far too brief period when suddenly everything seemed possible and the opportunity beckoned for the ‘sma folk’ to make a big impact.

We didn’t win the vote but we did show the establishment circus – and its ringmasters Cameron, Miliband and Clegg – that major change is inevitable. The accepted order has been smashed – and it is the people who have achieved it.

There is a scene in the Ridley Scott film Kingdom of Heaven which sums up where we are now. Orlando Bloom, as the knight Balian, is left defending Jerusalem from the Sultan Saladin with no knights and only the dregs of the army. He has a brainwave: unite the remaining people by making them all knights, much to the disgust of the cowardly Jerusalem patriarch who wants to surrender.

‘Do you think that merely by making people knights they will fight better?’ asks the patriarch.

‘Yes,’ replies Balian.

And he was right. Trusting the common people with the future of their city, or their country, makes for better people and in our case for a better Scotland. Those metropolitan commentators puzzled by the surge in the SNP’s fortunes since the referendum should understand this reality.

Once people have had a taste of power they are unlikely to give it up easily. The process of the referendum has changed the country. Many people felt politically significant for the first time in their lives. It has made them different people, better people.

This book seeks to explain that change, how we got here, why the people became enthused, what caused the big swing to YES, how success was just denied and, most crucially of all, what will happen now.

The events in Scotland underline the ability of grassroots movements to take on political establishments in modern democracies. A new and powerful force has been mustered – modern-day knights if you will. And the international community should sit up and pay attention.

*

But now to our referendum tale. Ours is but a new chapter – albeit a crucial one – in a much older story. Scotland is one of Europe’s oldest nations.

In the late twelfth century, when Balian was busy defending the Holy City, Scotland had already been united as a kingdom for 300 years, with Picts and Scots forced together under the threat of Viking incursions. Richard Coeur de Lion never did manage to win back Jerusalem, but his crusade gave William the Lion of Scotland an excellent opportunity to be released from the feudal impositions Henry II had enforced upon him and therefore Scotland. He was able to fly his Royal Standard (the Lion Rampant) with additional pride.

The next affirmation of Scottish independence was somewhat bloodier but the outcome was the same. Robert de Brus did not seal Scottish independence by the storming of Linlithgow castle in 1313, or on the field of Bannockburn in the following year on midsummer’s day, or even in the Arbroath Declaration of six years later, but at the Treaty of Northampton with England in 1328. However, Bannockburn was still one of history’s decisive battles. It both preserved and shaped the nation.

The recognition of Scottish independence at Northampton did not finish the matter, and an uneasy relationship between Scotland and England was the norm for the next 300 years – border warfare tempered by the occasional dynastic nuptial. From a Scottish perspective, for many years, union with the auld ally of France looked more likely than union with the auld enemy of England.

And when crown unity did come in 1603 it was through a Scottish king, James VI, becoming King of England. But Scotland remained an independent nation and it would be another century before the Union of the Parliaments.

When that happened, in 1707, Scotland had a collective history of statehood, stretching back for the best part of a millennium: three times the period that has elapsed since.

Scottish dissatisfaction with the government in London has ebbed and flowed since the Treaty of Union. There have been periods when support for the union was in the ascendancy. However, it is also true that every movement for radical change in Scotland, from Jacobite to Jacobin, from crofting Liberals to the early Labour movement, was overlaid with Scottish nationalism.

Even those famous Scots who are often regarded as pillars of the established order have displayed a sneaking sympathy for the nationalist cause. On the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament are inscribed the words that Walter Scott put into the mouth of Mrs Howden in Heart of Midlothian:

‘When we had a king, and a chancellor, and parliament-men o’ our ain, we could aye peeble them wi’ stanes when they werena gude bairns – But naebody’s nails can reach the length o’ Lunnon.’

The immediate aftermath of the Second World War was a high point of Britishness, which had a bearing on my own upbringing. My late mother, Mary, patriotic Scot though she was, would probably never have countenanced Scottish independence if her son had not become inveigled into the national movement. She was from a middle-class background and her views had been bolstered by the war: the Churchill pride.

My father, Robert, however, thinks rather differently. When I was a young MP, and didn’t know better, I got into a spot of family bother. I made public the contrast between my mother’s and father’s views, revealing the capital punishment remedy my dad said was appropriate for Churchill’s treatment of the miners.

‘Salmond’s father wanted to hang Churchill’ screamed the newspaper headline. I phoned Dad to apologise.

‘Did I teach you naethin?’ said Faither reprovingly. ‘Hingin was owr guid for thon man!’

The skilled working class like my father – from Robert Burns to the 1820 martyrs, and from Keir Hardie to the early trade union movement – have always been open to the great call of home rule.

James Maxton, the Clydesider MP, speaking in Glasgow in the 1920s in support of a Home Rule Bill (and for a Scottish socialist commonwealth), declared that ‘with Scottish brains and courage … we could do more in five years in a Scottish Parliament than would be produced by twenty-five or thirty years’ heart-breaking working in the British House of Commons.’

So it wasn’t a great leap of faith for my dad to move politically from Labour to SNP in the 1960s. Nor was it for the many others who followed suit in the 1970s, forcing the issue of devolution onto the UK agenda.

The failed referendum of 1979 and the election of Margaret Thatcher seemed at first to have reversed the trend, but in reality it accelerated the underlying shift towards home rule.

A great deal of Scottish identity has been preserved for 300 years through the strength of institutions – Scottish churches, Scots law, Scottish education – and now the myriad of third-sector pressure groups that interact with that institutional identity.

Ironically, Margaret Thatcher’s brand of Conservatism set about dismantling many of the key symbols of Britishness. So British Airways became BA, British Petroleum became BP, and British Rail became lots of things.

But Thatcher inadvertently managed rather more than that. A quarter of a century ago she swept into the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and, in an infamous address, exposed the crass materialism of her creed. This was too much for the elders and brethren – and far too much for a Churchill Tory like my mother, who never voted Conservative again.

Margaret Thatcher had combined her visit to the General Assembly with an equally ill-fated visit to the Scottish Cup final, where she managed to unite Dundee United and Celtic fans in an ingenious and very effective joint red card protest.

Shortly thereafter, on 16 June 1988, Hansard records a brash young SNP member from Aberdeenshire, fresh from being restored to the House after expulsion for intervening in the Budget in protest against the poll tax, taunting the Prime Minister about what he described as her ‘epistle to the Caledonians’:

Will the Prime Minister demonstrate her extensive knowledge of Scottish affairs by reminding the House of the names of the Moderator of the General Assembly, which she addressed, and the captain of Celtic, to whom she presented the cup?

Margaret Thatcher had given Scottish nationalism a new political dynamic and accelerated the long-term decline of the Conservative Party in Scotland, where it now commands a mere one-third of its popular support of the 1950s.

Other factors were undercutting support for the union. The Scottish economy had been underperforming the UK average for much of the twentieth century. The reasons were deep and complex but one key factor was the export of human capital. Often it was the best people, the people with get up and go, who got up and went.

When I was a lad, thanks to my grandfather’s grounding, I knew that Scots had invented lots of things. He proudly showed me the plaque to David Waldie, born in Linlithgow and pioneer of chloroform, on the wall of the Four Marys pub. He told me that he had worked on the discovery with James Simpson of nearby Bathgate.

I soon discovered that, even beyond Linlithgow and Bathgate, Scotland seemed to have invented just about everything worth inventing – television, telephone, tarmacadam, teleprompter, etc. – and they are just a few examples beginning with the letter ‘t’!

It took me some time further to realise that Scotland’s creative grandeur is not just down to natural ingenuity but springs from our most important invention of all: long before the Treaty of Union, Scotland legislated for compulsory universal elementary education at parish level. Indeed if we look at the list of great Scottish inventors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries almost all of them were people of humble origins, because almost all people had received an education. Few flowers in Scotland were born to blush unseen.

In no other society on earth, with the possible exception of Prussia, which embarked on this mission two centuries after Scotland, would such ‘lads of pairts’ have had the educational grounding to advance in business, science and medicine.

From the most developed education system in the world sprang the Scottish Enlightenment and out of the Enlightenment came the scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs who established Scotland as the pre-eminent industrial economy of the world by the end of the nineteenth century.

For most of the last hundred years Scotland was still producing the scientists and innovators but, by and large, they weren’t staying in the country. Scotland started to export its human capital to a ruinous degree.

However, towards the end of the twentieth century things started to change.

In the 1980s, when I was working as an economist, I used to do a party trick during lectures by asking the class to write down the six top industrialists or business people in the country. The names provided were invariably a familiar litany of minor aristocrats, most of whom were running their companies less well than their fathers or grandfathers.

But by the end of the century there had been a significant shift. The most highly regarded business people in the country were no longer those who turned silver spoons into base metal but working-class Scots who had either built their own businesses or run companies on their own merits.

Thus the likes of Brian Souter, Jim McColl, Tom Hunter, Tom Farmer, Martin Gilbert, Roy McGregor and David Murray became the best-known entrepreneurs in the land. What’s more, these people were popular and were often deeply influenced by the philosophy and philanthropy of another great Scot, Andrew Carnegie.

They were also generally sympathetic to either independence or at least home rule, and none of them rated the traditional unionist business organisations like the CBI. This directly affected Scottish politics.

In the 1979 referendum people in Scotland still listened to the CBI. By 1997 they were ignoring them. By 2014 they were laughing at them.

At the same time Scotland’s economic performance improved. The country now has lower unemployment and, even more crucially, higher employment than the UK average. Indeed outside the south-east of England, Scotland now has the best-performing economy in the country.

Furthermore the second half of the century brought a revival in the arts in Scotland, which gathered pace through the millennium. From crime novels to Turner prizes to chart-topping groups, Scottish art forms flourished as the country moved through the self-government gear box. The balance of opinion in this burgeoning artistic community also favoured radical change or independence.

Against that background the movement towards home rule was irresistible. I committed the SNP to campaign with Labour to secure a double YES vote in the referendum of September 1997. The political price that the late Donald Dewar agreed to pay for securing a united campaign was his explicit agreement that Scotland could progress to independence if the people so willed. Labour, it should be said, made that offer confident that the introduction of proportional representation for the Scottish Parliament would be an insurance policy against any such eventuality.

After a successful referendum campaign, the Scottish Parliament was, in the words from the chair of its most experienced member, Winnie Ewing, ‘hereby reconvened’ in 1999. The ‘recess’ had lasted a mere 292 years!

In the elections of that year the SNP gained more parliamentarians in a single day than in the previous seventy-year history of the party, became the official opposition, and shifted the centre of gravity of Scottish politics irreversibly from Westminster to Scotland.

After a setback in 2003, the SNP, under its new and combined leadership team of Nicola Sturgeon and me, narrowly won the election of 2007, and in the process inflicted on the Labour Party its first defeat in a major Scottish election since 1955.

There followed four years of minority government with a plurality of one seat. This government was to face the challenge of the greatest squeeze on public spending since the Second World War.

However, thanks to the parliamentary skill of the business convener Bruce Crawford and the magician-type qualities of the Finance Secretary John Swinney, the minority government survived to prosper. In 2011 the SNP achieved what had, until then, been thought impossible: an absolute majority in a proportional system specifically designed to prevent that from happening.

This made a referendum on independence, a key manifesto pledge of the SNP, inevitable. In the first term of office the three unionist parties had held the line against the referendum apart from a brief period in 2008 when Wendy Alexander, as Labour leader in the Scottish Parliament, had unexpectedly proposed a referendum herself.

Unfortunately for Wendy, among those most surprised by this development was Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and the drama thus ended with her resignation. This was ostensibly for a minor infraction of donation declarations but in reality it was because of a complete removal of her political credibility by a London leadership team, which included her own brother Douglas, who gave her no support whatsoever.

This episode was a classic example of Labour in Scotland being treated as a London ‘branch office’, in the phrase of Johann Lamont (two Labour leaders after Wendy) in her spectacular resignation eruption of October 2014.

If the election result made a referendum certain, it did not define how exactly such a referendum should be structured. That was to be the subject of delicate negotiation between Downing Street and the Scottish government.

I had previously proposed to David Cameron, after his own election in 2010, that he should spring a political surprise and implement radical devolution for Scotland, often described in the shorthand title of ‘devo max’. This initiative got short shrift from the Prime Minister.

Why this was the case I cannot be certain. It would have been popular with his Liberal allies and allowed Cameron to propose a statesmanlike solution to the West Lothian question,* and one effectively on his own terms.

The best explanation for Tory intransigence lies in the bowels of Westminster history and deep in the entrails of the Conservative interest. From Dublin to Delhi, Westminster governments have a dreadful record of conceding much too little and much too late to restless nations. In the case of Scotland the Tory attitude is further complicated by a proprietorial instinct. Regardless of their near total wipeout in Scottish democratic politics they regard our country as part of their demesne.

David Cameron stands in a long line of Tory prime ministers close to landed interests in Scotland. The Prime Minister’s holiday retreat, the Tarbert Estate on the island of Jura, is popularly believed to be owned by Mr Cameron’s stepfather-in-law, William Astor. In fact, it is owned by Ginge Manor Estates Ltd, a company registered in the Bahamas. The name tells the family story – Ginge Manor is William Astor’s stately home in Oxfordshire.

This interest extends to the very top of the civil service. Many people were perplexed by the apparent willingness of the Head of the Treasury, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, to abandon any vestige of civil service impartiality during the referendum campaign. Some people assume that he was forced into it by a scheming and highly political Chancellor. I doubt that.

Just after the election of 2011, I had a meeting with George Osborne and Sir Nicholas in the Treasury. Normally at these sorts of meetings there is an element of political sparring between the politicians while the civil servants stay suitably inscrutable. This meeting was different. Osborne was full of bonhomie while Macpherson radiated hostility.

I have no means of looking into the soul of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury but my guess is that a background reason for his intense level of politicisation may well lie in his family’s extensive land interests in Scotland.

Whether that is his motivation or not, there is now no doubting his politicisation. In an unwise series of admissions to the inaugural meeting of the Strand Group* on 19 January 2015 Macpherson wallowed in his new-found role as a politician. He defended his decision publicly to oppose independence for Scotland. He said that in such an ‘extreme’ case as the referendum, in which ‘people are seeking to destroy the fabric of the state’ and to ‘impugn its territorial integrity’, the normal rules of civil service impartiality did not apply.

It is interesting to speculate how far Macpherson’s rant could change the relationship between civil servants and politicians if others succumb to this pernicious nonsense. In the past his logic could have led officials to take action against any politician or indeed government ‘destroying the fabric of the state’ by, say, accession to the European Union, or ‘impugning’ its financial integrity by, say, attempting to join the Euro. In the future being ‘extreme’ in Macpherson’s judgement could be, say, advocating the non-renewal of the Trident submarine fleet.

The solution to Macpherson’s dilemma is obvious. He shouldn’t wait for his inevitable seat in the House of Lords. He clearly needs to take his own manifesto to the people directly, by standing for election in the west coast of Scotland, perhaps in Plockton, Wester Ross, near his family estate. His father (a splendid chap by every local account) can give him bed and board while he campaigns to his heart’s content, explaining to the natives what is good for us. At any rate Sir Nicholas should give up now the pretence of being a civil servant.

Macpherson was allowed to get away with it by a subservient House of Commons, united across the parties in their mutual loathing of Scottish independence. Only the independent-minded veteran Labour MP Paul Flynn saw and challenged this behaviour, recognising, for example, the dangerous precedent created by the extraordinary publishing of Macpherson’s ‘advice’ to the Chancellor on sterling. Unfortunately, real Members of Parliament like Flynn are in short supply now in the Palace of Westminster.

In any case, and for whatever reason, Cameron rejected out of hand the idea of a démarche on devo max in 2010.

After the SNP landslide in the Scottish elections of 2011, I made another attempt to revive the devo max argument by means of a third question on the ballot paper, creating a choice between independence, radical devolution and the status quo. Three-way constitutional referendums are not unknown. Indeed the Cabinet Office itself organised one in Newfoundland in 1948.

This has been interpreted by some commentators and many opponents as indicating a lack of enthusiasm for independence on my part. How little do these people know me or my background.

I believe in Scottish independence. My mandate was to hold a referendum with independence on the ballot paper. I have always thought that it is possible to win such a vote. However, as I remarked to the Welsh politician Dafydd Wigley during the referendum campaign, a punter who places an each-way bet still wants his horse to win the race.

Cameron was having none of the three-way referendum. Buoyed by private polling and political advice which indicated a potential YES vote at around a maximum of 30 per cent, he was intent on a shoot-out between YES and NO with no intervening option. Given what was to transpire in the campaign with the last-minute ‘vow’ to Scotland of ‘home rule’, ‘devo to the max’ or ‘near federalism’, there is a certain irony in recalling his hard line of 2011/12.

Cameron’s position was entirely consistent with the traditional Tory attitude in conceding the absolute minimum to Scotland. At the same time, the new Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, fought an internal leadership election arguing that there should be a ‘line in the sand’ against any further devolution proposals.

An agreement with Westminster was necessary to put the referendum beyond legal challenge and, more than that, to have the aftermath of the ballot navigated in a positive manner. The central difficulty that Scottish nationalism has faced throughout its democratic history has not been persuading people that it should happen, but that it could happen.

Therefore, Cameron made his red line in negotiations the requirement for a single question in the belief that NO would score a comfortable victory. My key objective was to secure an agreement which established independence as a consented process after which it could not – and never again – be argued that there is no means by which Scotland can achieve independence.

In contrast to that absolute strategic objective the tactical consideration of having devo max on the ballot paper was very much of secondary importance. There has been some debate as to whether this was a real position of mine or merely a negotiating posture. The truth is it was both.

Initially, in the aftermath of the 2011 election, I had hoped that we could gain substantial traction across the range of civic organisations who favoured devo max. Many of these were grouped around the Devo Plus campaign led by the economically liberal financier Ben Thomson, but there were others active in much of the third sector and the Scottish Trade Union Congress. It was clearly not credible for the SNP government to simultaneously bring forward into a referendum campaign two propositions: independence and devo max. The latter would have had to be the result of genuine work by a substantial body of opinion outside of government and also be radically different from the insipid offering of the unionist parties at the time.

However, a fully fledged proposition for devo max proved not to be possible, and in 2012 I had to come to terms with that reality. I led a Scottish Cabinet discussion on the issue.

On the whole, at least in my second period as SNP leader, since 2004, I have had little difficulty in securing consensus behind my strategy for progress towards independence. It was not always like that. In the days when the SNP were far distant from the independence objective, occasional outbreaks of ideological purity were often a comfortable substitute for progress.

In the 1990s acres of newsprint and many SNP Conference motions were devoted to attempting to interpret every single nuance of my attitude to supporting devolution as a staging post on the way to independence. Eventually I put the matter to the decision of the SNP National Council and successfully committed the party to campaigning YES/YES in the two-question referendum of 1997.

As the Party became increasingly capable of winning, then confidence grew in the likely success of my gradualist strategy. Despite this, by early 2012 I was perplexing some of my colleagues with my continuing support for a third question on the ballot paper. Even Michael Russell, the Education Secretary, who was the joint architect of my step-by-step approach towards independence, contributed powerfully to the discussion, suggesting that it was time to embrace a YES/NO referendum. After I heard them out around the Cabinet table I sprang a surprise by saying: ‘Fine, let’s do that. YES/NO it is then.’

I then confided to my colleagues that we should maintain our public pursuit of the third option, since it would put us in a strong position to negotiate the timing, the framing of the referendum question and votes for sixteen- to seventeen-year-olds – all crucial matters under the control of the Scottish Parliament. I knew that the UK government would concede much else in their anxiety to record a ‘victory’ in their red line.

In other words, my support for devo max on the ballot paper was not initially a negotiating posture, but when it eventually became one it was highly successful.

The Edinburgh Agreement between the Scottish and United Kingdom governments was duly negotiated. The most important clause, and the one that received the most entrenched opposition from the UK negotiators, was the very last one, clause thirty:

Co-operation

30. The United Kingdom and Scottish Governments are committed, through the Memorandum of Understanding between them and others, to working together on matters of mutual interest and to the principles of good communication and mutual respect. The two governments have reached this agreement in that spirit. They look forward to a referendum that is legal and fair producing a decisive and respected outcome. The two governments are committed to continue to work together constructively in the light of the outcome, whatever it is, in the best interests of the people of Scotland and of the rest of the United Kingdom.

And so when David Cameron came to St Andrew’s House on 15 October 2012 with his Secretary of State Michael Moore to conclude the Edinburgh Agreement with Nicola and me, he signed a deal which both sides believed had fulfilled their key objectives. That is, of course, the best sort of deal. They had the YES/NO choice which they believed they would win comfortably. We had a referendum legislated for by the Scottish Parliament and consented by Westminster, establishing for all time a process by which Scotland could become independent.

My remarks at the press conference were designed to move the YES campaign into ultra-positive mode:

Today’s historic signing of the Edinburgh Agreement marks the start of the campaign to fulfil that ambition [of independence]. It will be a campaign during which we will present our positive, ambitious vision for a flourishing, fairer, progressive, independent Scotland – a vision I am confident will win the argument and deliver a YES vote in autumn 2014.

The Edinburgh Agreement allowed for the referendum to be held up to the end of 2014. The proper parliamentary process meant that a year to eighteen months was the necessary preparation time, but basically this left a choice available for the referendum to take place at any point in 2014.

My decision was to go later rather than sooner. It was what I had committed myself to in the election campaign. In addition we were behind in the polls – perhaps not by as much as the Tories believed, but still well behind.

We needed the time to gear up a campaign to take us from the low 30s to over 50 per cent, a seemingly daunting task. However, we also knew from our private polling that the total potential YES support was up to 60 per cent (‘potential’ means the number of people who said they were prepared to vote for independence under certain circumstances).

But away from all the pomp and poignancy of the historic day, there were a couple of moments when I believe the Cameron mask slipped a little. Signs that suggested his absolute confidence of late 2011 was faltering and that his vaunted attachment to Scotland was based on precious little of substance.

I had asked for some private time with Cameron immediately before and after the signing of the Agreement.

Beforehand this was no more than making sure that the television shots of our entrance into my office looked natural. I confess to having arranged the room so that the all-yellow map of the 2011 Scottish election results was immediately behind my seat. I even moved in the Permanent Secretary’s table for us to sit around. In the way these things work in the civil service, it is a rather more impressive piece of furniture than the First Minister’s table! Cameron and I went in together to join our teams and I showed him my John Bellany painting which adorned the First Ministerial room in St Andrew’s House. I mentioned to him that the painting was of Macduff Harbour and pointed out that it was pretty close to where his grandfather had founded a school in Huntly.

‘Ah!’ breezed the Prime Minister. ‘I’ve never actually been there.’

Given the important business to hand, I suppressed my surprise that someone should be so rootless as to never have thought of visiting a place presumably of importance to their family origins. However, of more political significance was the conversation that took place after the Agreement had been signed and the others had left.

The Prime Minister asked me when we were intending to hold the poll. I said the autumn of 2014.

He replied: ‘But that won’t allow enough time before the …’ and then stopped himself.

I took the half-finished sentence to mean that it wouldn’t allow time to negotiate independence before the UK election of May 2015. In other words, he wasn’t so absolutely confident that he hadn’t considered the political implications of a YES vote on Westminster parliamentary arithmetic.

Westminster underrated the importance of the timing of the referendum. Everyone likes to be noticed and 2014 was set to be a huge year for Scotland when we could bask in the international spotlight.

Cameron had a blind spot on this. He believed the centenary of the Great War in 2014 would be of more significance in reminding Scots of the glory of the union.

This attitude betrayed a huge misunderstanding of the Scottish psyche. As a martial nation Scots tend to revere soldiers but oppose conflict. We have no time for politicians who believe, like Cameron, that the anniversary of the bloody carnage of the First World War should be celebrated ‘like the Diamond Jubilee’.

There were more spilled guts than shared glory in the Great War.

Cameron thus overrated the impact of war and underrated the impact of peaceful endeavour. In 2014 Scotland would host the Commonwealth Games, the Ryder Cup, even the MTV awards. It was also the Year of Homecoming.* Into this heady mix there would come a referendum on self-determination.

Once the date was set the challenge was how to create a campaign that would increase support by the 20 percentage points required to win.

One thing was certain. If we fought a conventional campaign then we would conventionally lose. It was Churchill who said of Austen Chamberlain: ‘He always played the game and he always lost.’ We had to ensure that we did not just play the game.

The forces lined up against us were formidable.

Although we had drawn up spending rules to attempt to equalise the playing field, we would be heavily outspent during the campaign. The financial imbalance was partially corrected by the serendipity of Chris and Colin Weir winning the Euromillions lottery jackpot in 2011. The Weirs, longstanding and principled nationalists and also among the nicest people in the country, could be relied upon to help redress the imbalance.

The role of Chris and Colin in facing down the unpleasant media attacks on them is worthy of the highest praise. In the looking-glass world of the old written media it is fair game to attack two ordinary Scots who invest part of their fortune in the future of their country while turning a ‘Nelson’s eye’ to those London-based big business and financial interests who bankrolled the NO campaign. If campaign donations had been restricted, as they should have been, to those on the electoral roll of Scotland, the NO side would have been struggling to finance their own taxi fares.

This old press were almost entirely lined up on the NO side. In 2007 the SNP famously won an election with both of the main tabloids vying with each other to denounce the party. But we won that election with 33 per cent of the vote. To win the referendum we required 50 per cent plus one.

The ability of the press to determine elections has declined even since 2007, but there is a difficulty when it runs against you as a solid phalanx. It determines the media agenda, which has a follow-on impact on broadcasting, a medium that does still influence votes.

The full machinery of the British state was lined up against us. The three main Westminster parties would unite to see off the challenge with their own separate agendas. Luckily, each was vying with the other in a race to be the most unpopular, and the prestige of the Westminster system was at an all-time low. The very unity of the NO campaign was a disadvantage: the image of London Labour high-fiving the London Tory Party was a massive turn-off to Labour voters in Scotland. It still is.

This left social media and grassroots campaigning as areas where we had to excel. We needed to encourage the growth of a myriad of individuals and campaign groups who would be diverse, and therefore unregimented, but would also contribute to the overall campaign. We had to let a thousand flowers bloom.

In addition, many influential and progressive organisations in Scottish society were favourable to the YES campaign and were looking increasingly to Holyrood and not Westminster for their political objectives. The third sector in Scotland was either neutral or, by majority, supportive, given the experience of seven years of SNP government, and the trade union movement was fundamentally unhappy with the NO’s Better Together campaign and was becoming increasingly sympathetic to our cause.

And so the picture, after the signing of the Edinburgh Agreement in the latter part of 2012, was not as bleak as it might have at first appeared. The key to progress was always to be on the positive side of the argument. The referendum question – Should Scotland be an independent country? – gave us that firm platform. It is simply not possible to enthuse people on a negative.

Our first key moment in the campaign was the launch of the White Paper on 26 November 2013. This 670-page document was intended to present independence as a positive but workable vision for the people of Scotland. The launch stood up pretty well to critical examination by the press, and on social media there were hopeful signs that our message was cutting through the usual fog of politics.

That night, in looking at the BBC online reaction, I was struck by an entry from Stevie Kennedy of Mow Cop, a village in Staffordshire: ‘As a Scot living in England with an English wife and kids, I feel British first. Today, though, I see a politician talking and I feel hope kindle in my heart that the UK’s future isn’t all about Westminster and the corrupt industrial–political machinery that controls it regardless of what we vote for. It’s been a long time since I felt hope or any other positive emotion when watching a politician speaking, yet I know the next 10 months will see relentless waves of cynical negativity from the No campaign.’

I have never met Mr Kennedy, but he sums up really well the position facing us going into 2014. On the plus side we were inspiring the people with a new vision. The difficulty would be sustaining it against the avalanche of ‘cynical negativity’ which he so rightly expected.

The most consistent and regular polling was carried out by YouGov, asking the same question as the one that would appear on the ballot paper.

In August 2013, according to the first YouGov poll, the NO side were 30 points ahead: 59–29. By the end of the year, after the launch of the White Paper, their lead had shrunk to 20 per cent: 52–33.

Through the spring and into the summer of 2014 the YouGov polls still recorded NO leads of between 14 and 20 per cent. However, the previous ‘don’t knows’ were generally moving to YES at around 2–1. That group of undecided voters was around 15 per cent at the end of 2013, 10 per cent in the first half of 2014 and then a mere 5 per cent by August 2014.

At first sight, the effective stability in the polls in the first half of 2014 did not look like good news for the YES campaign. However, a deeper examination tells us otherwise.

In quick succession in mid-February the unionist forces fired their biggest guns. First George Osborne, hand in glove with Danny Alexander and Ed Balls, ruled out a currency union, while José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, popped up on BBC’s Andrew Marr Show to say that it would be ‘difficult, if not impossible’ to secure the approval of member states for an independent Scotland’s accession to the European Union.

This heavy artillery, which was meant to finish the argument, misfired. The first bombardment, on the currency, looked high-handed, with former First Minister Henry McLeish and even Gordon Brown expressing open or private doubts about the tactic.

The second barrage was regarded with even more incredulity. Sir David Edward, a former judge at the European Court of Justice and a unionist to his fingertips (albeit one who is increasingly despairing of the europhobic politics of Westminster), was moved to directly counter Barroso’s bureaucratic bombast, arguing that the latter’s comparison of Scotland and Kosovo was little short of preposterous.

Neither Osborne’s ‘sermon on the pound’ nor Barroso’s lecture on Europe cut the mustard. They were meant to close out the game but did not have the desired impact. Indeed in the case of the currency the effect was, on balance, counterproductive. And when big guns are fired too early it is sometimes difficult to reload in time.

The launch of the White Paper caused the first big shift to YES. After that, for the first six months of 2014, there was effectively a standoff between the fear-mongering of the NO side and the aspiration of the YES side. As we moved into the last 100 days, the grassroots campaign took off and momentum shifted towards YES.

And so battle was joined and the referendum decided. Of course it is possible to win a battle and lose a war, just as it is possible to lose a referendum and still win the end game. In the aftermath of the ballot the losing YES side have emerged looking like winners while the winning NO side are looking like losers. The full consequences of the Scottish referendum are only just beginning to be understood.

*

Politicians can so often sound mechanical, robotic even: pre-programmed with policies and beliefs. Possessing none of the necessary emotion that makes life worth living.

I believe that the referendum was Scotland’s democratic hour, the moment of fundamental reassessment. A time when many people realised that, collectively, they could be more significant than they had ever previously believed. The moment to change, to influence. Rather than just listening to the weather forecast, the people got to decide what the weather should be.

I didn’t have to see the world differently. My upbringing had grounded me with that same belief all of my life. I have always been fortunate to have had that at my core. There are now many more people in Scotland in that position.

The great impenetrable edifices, the blocks to progress – Westminster, the Labour establishment – are still there, but they have started to crumble and the people sense it.

I have my family history to thank for my convictions. Both of my parents eventually reached the same conclusion on Scottish independence in their own separate ways. As my father tells it, his moment of conversion happened during an exchange with a Labour canvasser on the front doorstep. Faither was asked how he would be voting.

‘Labour,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘Always have.’

‘That’s great,’ said the canvasser before inquiring about my mum’s voting intention.

‘No hope for her,’ said Faither. ‘She’s a Tory.’

‘Not a problem,’ said the Labour man. ‘Just as long as she doesn’t vote for those Scottish Nose Pickers!’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Faither. ‘My best pal’s in the SNP.’

‘They’re all nose pickers,’ said the canvasser.

Dad: ‘No, they’re no’!’

Canvasser: ‘Aye, they are.’

Half an hour later and they’re still at it – but, by this time, it wasn’t just my dad’s friend the canvasser was insulting. He was running down the whole of Scotland.

Finally Faither – ever thrawn – finished the fraught conversation.

‘Look, when you arrived I told you I’d vote Labour as I have done in every election. I will now vote SNP in every election. I want you to remember that this is what you have achieved tonight.’

This exchange – which probably took place during the West Lothian by-election in 1962 – bears a striking similarity to Labour’s attitude in the referendum.

It’s not just that they campaigned side by side with the Tories, it’s the fact that they were running down Scotland alongside them too, shoulder to shoulder, hand in glove.

And you don’t have to be a member of the SNP to be angry when someone is belittling your country.

My dad has voted SNP for the past fifty years on the back of that conversation. Fifty years! And the Labour Party think they’ll be able to wash their hands and, over the next few months, move on from what they’ve done.

As for my late mum, her route was rather different and more recent – and it was more about a mother’s love than a political conversion, despite her distaste for high Thatcherism.

In the 1990s, during my first term as SNP leader, I was conducting a press conference in London when it became clear that the Labour-supporting Daily Record wanted to have a pop at me by ‘exposing’ Mum as a Tory. If he can’t convince his own mother, why should people listen to him? That kind of thing.

I knew they were going to doorstep her and phoned with a warning. ‘Leave it to me,’ she said.

The Record duly turned up to quiz her on her Conservative leanings. ‘That’s true,’ she said, ‘but all in the past. I’m actually very disappointed in Mr Major and can tell you – and this is exclusive – that I will now be voting in the same direction as my husband – and my son.’ Then The Times arrived, to whom she said she was papering the bathroom and didn’t have the time to talk. Finally the Scotsman was rebuffed on the basis that she had already turned down the London Times!

Meanwhile, down in London, cut off from the turmoil and worried sick about the press persecution of my poor mother, I phoned home repeatedly for updates. Eventually my dad answered. ‘Listen, will you stop phoning, your mum hasn’t had as much fun since the Blitz!’

There you have it. That is the well from which I flowed.

*

This is my story of the last 100 days of the referendum.

By definition it is a story told from my vantage point. I know a great deal more about the YES campaign than I do about the NO campaign. It also tells the story from the point of view of the leader of the campaign.

Quite deliberately, the YES campaign was diverse and grassroots-based. I didn’t try to control all aspects of our campaign activity. To have attempted to do so would have been to nullify our greatest advantage: our ability to mobilise vast numbers of people. Rather, we tried to get our message and themes across and, by relaying them through a cast of many thousands, see them impact on the wider community.

None of that removes the responsibility that comes with leading a movement. The mistakes (and there were a few) were my responsibility and mine alone.

Would I do a few things differently with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight? Of course I would. However, my grandfather taught me not to dwell on the past but to learn from it.

Thus on the whole, and that is the only way you can judge these things, the Scottish summer of 2014 saw the most exhilarating, positive and empowering campaign ever to impact on democratic politics. It achieved a greater amount with fewer resources than any election campaign, not only that I have ever been part of, but have ever heard of. I am proud to have been a part of that experience.

It was, for me, the best of times and the best of campaigns. I hope my granda would have been proud.

* The political shorthand for the question of parity between Scottish MPs voting on English matters but English MPs not being able to vote on Scottish domestic issues. It was so called because it was most frequently raised by the indefatigable Tam Dalyell, MP for West Lothian in the 1970s, who used the examples of Blackburn in his constituency and Blackburn, Lancashire, to illustrate the point. Dalyell was well aware that the original concept was first mooted by Gladstone in the Irish home rule debates of the 1880s. The name ‘West Lothian question’ was then coined by the Ulster Unionist MP Enoch Powell in a response to a Dalyell speech, when he said: ‘We have finally grasped what the Honourable Member for West Lothian is getting at. Let us call it the West Lothian question.’

* The Strand Group is a forum and seminar series of the Policy Institute at King’s College London. It aims to explore how power operates at the very centre of government. The Group’s events bring together senior figures from the worlds of governance, civil service, business, journalism and academia past and present to discuss the most pertinent government and political issues of the day. The group’s establishment within the Policy Institute has been complemented by the appointment of new Visiting Professors including Sir Nicholas Macpherson. In his lecture Macpherson defended the Treasury’s role in the referendum, stating that ‘Her Majesty’s Treasury is by its nature a unionist institution. The clue is in the name.’ Given that the present monarchy is not itself a ‘unionist institution’, having been established more than a century before the Treaty of Union, we can safely assume that Professor Macpherson is not Visiting in History!

* Scotland’s Homecoming years in 2009 and 2014 were a series of special events designed to generate interest from around the world in Scotland, particularly, but not exclusively, from those of Scottish ancestry. The first of these celebrated the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, which provided a theme for many of the events, while the second coincided with the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup. Both years are judged to have been highly successful in attracting additional visitors.