I WAS delighted to address the Scottish Independence Convention last Saturday at Glasgow’s Radisson Blu Hotel. The event was packed, and in some ways it reminded me of the first Radical Independence Conference, which we hosted at the same venue in 2012. RIC is coming up for its fifth anniversary, and it was interesting to have an opportunity to revisit its original goals given the rapid political changes since then.

Everyone involved in RIC had their own vision, but I think two main goals brought us together. First, we wanted to present a different style of campaigning focused on the “missing millions” who often feel alienated from politics and might abstain, rather than the middle-class “swing voter” that used to obsess political strategists.

Given the stalemate at Westminster, with three parties committed to austerity, we wanted to highlight the opportunity that 2014 presented for the poorest in society to voice their anger. And we wanted to insist that Scotland didn’t need to repeat all the mistakes of Westminster.

But secondly, we didn’t just want to get the working class out to vote: we didn’t just want to “mobilise” or to be worker ants for Yes Scotland’s message. We recognised that our efforts in the campaign would be pointless unless independence actually improved the lives of ordinary people and, with this in mind, we wanted to hold the mainstream campaign to account. We wanted to turn the referendum into a revolt against alienation, against the interests and powers that control our lives and our politics.

RIC’s tactics worked, then. They helped transform the mainstream campaign and, in turn, the shape of Scottish politics. But 2017 is a different year. A very different year. Three years on, the UK Labour Party leadership is sympathetic to many of our goals, a marked shift in such a short time. Labour are also weaker. In Scotland they’re nowhere. Indeed, Scotland’s opposition is now centre-right and British nationalist to the core.

The Scottish Government is stronger, and the SNP looks invincible in elections. But for how long? Bookies are making Ruth Davidson the odds-on favourite to become our next First Minister after Nicola Sturgeon. They perceive that, if Scotland can’t make the break into independence, the SNP’s sense of invincibility will crumble, leaving the Tories to pounce.

One option here is to batten down the hatches and stay in government as long as possible. But the current trend suggests voters are out to punish political insiders who, on a long enough timeline, are incapable of making real change.

That’s why old social democratic parties across the world are failing. They’re sticking to neoliberal formulas that won’t work while the political right are playing the simple, one-note tune of shutting the borders. And in case I’m misunderstood, let me be clear: globally, the one-note right are winning, and the political centre are clumped together with no legitimate answers. Trump didn’t win last year; Hillary Clinton lost.

Right now, the right have the banner of protest. If we don’t reclaim it, I worry that we’ll suffer the fate of political establishments across the world. We’ll all be punished. And whether you’re SNP, Green or socialist, we’ll all suffer together regardless of who’s really to blame.

So what now?

Often as movements, RIC included, we concentrate on “mobilising” for events. We concentrate on “mobilising” our activists. We concentrate on “mobilising” the vote. And yes, doing these things does bring significant numbers of people into the fight, but they are generally the already committed activists, not the mass of the workforce and community.

Mobilising people, in my view, will fail when we just get the same familiar faces into a room over and over again. We put the same people on the panels, we hear the same messages put the same way, and we go home. That’s what some trade unions and socialist organisations have done for decades, and it’s a case of ever decreasing circles. Some of those organisations are changing their approach now, and so should we.

Five years ago, when we held the first RIC conference, we offered an example of real organising, instead of just mobilising the same faces.

Of RIC’s opening panel in 2012, arguably only one person, Jean Urquhart, was a familiar face in Scottish politics. And Jean had just quit the SNP over Nato. She was a dissident. The rest were disability activists, workplaces activists like me, anti-war activists, and, like the vast majority of Scotland, most of them belonged to no political party.

They weren’t necessarily the loudest people. But they were people with networks. People who were trusted by groups of people that the independence campaign wasn’t talking to. They had knowledge and insight that hadn’t got a hearing in the mainstream campaign. They burst the bubble.

Sadly, I feel like we’ve been losing that sense of renewal. The left and centre-left is starting to look like the same old faces, even though there’s new talent and potential everywhere. We can’t forget the lessons that made us strong. There are lots of well-meaning motions and grand statements by the same people, including, I should add, myself. If we’re just the same old faces, on the same panels, our networks are going to get thinner and thinner.

So let’s find new voices, new experiences, people who haven’t yet found the confidence to become outspoken leaders. Let’s put on events to train them to express themselves in public. Let’s help them speak to their own networks about independence. And let’s renew our movement, because the stakes today are doubly high.

We have to look to where we failed in 2014. Not because we’re sunk in gloom. But because understanding our failures is the key to winning a majority next time.

I don’t think we’re going to win the elite managers, the oil dealers, the hedge fund managers to our cause. If they weren’t convinced by tax cuts before, they won’t be convinced next time. Let’s not forget, that section of Scotland opposed devolution and funded Better Together. They won’t come with us, and bribing them with more tax cuts, like the White Paper proposed, is a dead end.

Let’s look to where we can win. In 2014, we didn’t win the working class. I know people can feel uncomfortable talking about “class”, but it matters. It matters so much if we want independence. Because, let’s remember, the working class are the majority in Scotland and worldwide, the 99 percent who have to work every day and have no choice or individual power over the matter or else are sunk into the subsistence world of benefits. That working class is where our majority lies.

Last time, broadly, the Yes campaign won the most disadvantaged sections of the working class, those who got shafted the hardest by austerity. But people in public-sector workplaces, people in semi-skilled work, many working women, weren’t convinced.

Working people across the world are being won to an anti-establishment protest message because the centre of politics is a graveyard of economic failure. It’s our job to convince people that change is going to happen whatever we do, and the best kind of change is change that’s under our control, not change that is done to us by others. As Howard Zinn once said, you can’t be neutral on a moving train.

So, it was nice to be back with the people who made 2014 special. But the world is changing fast, and next time we’ve got to be nimble and new, because our opponents still have wealth and power on their side. Let’s not forget, we got here as a movement of protest that put new voices centre stage. If we remember these lessons, then next time we’ll win. If we don’t, without that authority of protest and renewal, we’re destined to go the way of all political establishments who get too comfortable.