I founded The National 10 years ago. It has not always been easy

Bob Dylan was famously averse to looking back but sometimes it pays to take a peek. I’ve been thinking a lot about that day this week. I’m not sure I quite realised how important it was for me until last Sunday.

Ten years ago that day I pressed the print button on the first issue of The National. I didn’t know how long it would last. Hell, I didn’t even know if we’d get to the end of the week. When I arrived to start work that morning, no-one in the press room could be sure there would be a newspaper to read later that day. We had never even had a dummy run.

I joined some of those people last night at The National’s 10th birthday party and I’m not sure any of us ever considered we might be taking part in those celebrations a decade later. But there we were raising a glass to The National’s past … and its future.

I take a bit of credit for The National’s launch but none at all for the fact that it is still here. I left the editor’s chair the following year and since then, its course has been plotted by others who have worked tirelessly to keep the flame alive. It has grown to be a healthy and rumbustious 10-year-old thanks to their care.

It is down entirely to Callum Baird, the editor who so brilliantly stepped into the breach when I left, Laura Webster, one of the very first women to edit a Scottish newspaper and who remains in the hot seat today, and the very many who have contributed blood, sweat and tears under their tutelage.

They have confronted many challenges which were not foreseen on that launch day and have emerged scarred but stronger for the fight, as has the newspaper itself.

It has its detractors but I think it is fair to say it has proved that an independence-supporting newspaper can produce first-class journalism, can steer a course between believing in a cause but honestly portraying its progress and can earn a key place in the Scottish media landscape.

None of that was certain 10 years ago. It’s not every day you get to launch a newspaper, and the task is not without its risks. I’ll always be grateful to Newsquest for taking those risks and giving us an initial seven days to prove we could survive off its life support system.

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There were plenty of voices warning the company that the chances of success were negligible. There was no shortage of onlookers willing us to fail.

And it was certainly true that the path we had chosen was strewn with potholes, any one of which could have left us a crumpled wreck by the road. We were launching a newspaper when the general consensus was that print was dead.

We did not even have a website with which to stake our claim to a digital future. I still remember the stinging words of a web visionary I admired who described our strategy as “not digital first but digital when we get around to it”.

The fledgeling National was hardly a seven-day operation. It didn’t have a Saturday edition and on Sunday, the only pro-independence voice remained the Sunday Herald.

Let’s say that we left plenty of room to grow.

But there was some sense behind our strategy. The National had to have a physical presence on Scottish newsstands to show we were taking the fight to the established title. We didn’t expect to be reaching the circulation figures of the Daily Record or The Sun, but we wanted to show that we operated in the same battleground. We remembered all too well that wall of anti-independence headlines that greeted Scotland every day in the run-up to the independence referendum. We wanted to show that things would be different the next time.

The National was created not to be a balanced newspaper but to be the newspaper that provided the balance. Ten years later, that remains our job and that still seems to me to be a job worth doing.

Of course, the prospect of a single newspaper refusing to toe the pro-Union line was still enough for our political opponents to suffer paroxysms of hate. They argued that our support for independence rendered our journalism uncritical propaganda in a way that support for Westminster rule did not.

They argued that our eye-catching front pages which aimed to win some attention away from traditional newspapers reduced us to the status of a comic. Yet similarly imaginative front pages in the excellent New European published south of the Border did not attract the same accusation.

We were accused of being an SNP lapdog because I told a Hydro packed full of independence supporters – and potential readers – of The National’s imminent launch. I’ll never forget the cheers that day.

Ten years later, has The National lived up to the promises it made? I think it has, even as the Yes movement has become less united, as the route to independence has become less clear and as the pro-independence majority a Holyrood has become less secure.

And yes, The National has had to navigate a different relationship with some strands of the independence movement with whom it disagrees on certain issues.

That must have been hard for those in charge of the newspaper. Since those early days of the newspaper it has moved forward. It now publishes on a Saturday and on a Sunday. It has an excellent website and a digital reach far in excess of its print circulation. It has also worked hard to engage with its readers through a range of events and the fantastic National roadshow, which has toured throughout the country. And its fierce commitment to independence burns every bit as brightly as it did at its launch.

The National's founding editor Richard Walker (Image: NQ) Its range of pro-independence columnists – of which I am proud to be included – has covered so many aspects of the independence debate, through the years. They have helped tell the story of the Yes movement in all its glory and ambition since 2014.

But The National has always been about more than just independence. It has been about promoting the values which only independence will allow Scotland to fully embrace.

One of The National front pages of which I’ve been most proud was one telling Syrian refugees arriving at Glasgow Airport: “Welcome to Scotland”. Published not long after I left, it assured me that the newspaper was in safe hands.

Then there was a post-Brexit front page urging Europe to keep a light on for Scotland. Then earlier this year there was a powerful front page which detailed the timeline of a year in which Israel had bombarded Gaza, which pleaded with readers: “Don’t look away”.

It's strong, brave journalism like this which has ensured The National has throughout its life punched well above its weight.

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It struck me as strange in the referendum campaign that in a country in which almost half the population supported independence, not a single newspaper backed that view. I’m still not sure why that was the case but I am sure that it is a good thing that is no longer the case.

I don’t know when the next referendum will be. I don’t know how we will get that vote, or what the result will be. I do know that having The National around when Scotland has the opportunity to make its voice heard will be a good thing for democracy.

It has not always been an easy task to be the only national newspaper to satisfy and represent the many different strands of opinion within the Yes movement but it is a job that is vital to prevent that pro-Union mainstream media from going unchallenged.

When we win back our independence, The National will have played a part in securing that victory. Here’s to the next 10 years (at least).