ANNIVERSARIES are a strange experience. They tend to harvest a plethora of emotions, simultaneously and at times contradictory.

This week’s 10 year indyref anniversary was one such occasion for those of us at its heart. Through the range of emotions I’m sure we all experienced this week and with the benefit of reflection that such time allows, Ive come to realise two emotions were missing.

Excitement and hope. Perhaps it was my youthful exuberance in 2012 as a 16 year old first time campaigner asking folks at community events to sign the Yes Scotland declaration. It could even be the memories of people forming a queuing system around street stalls in the working class areas forgotten by politics to register to vote.

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Perhaps it was later on the campaign helping to organise and bring about the first mass canvass of the campaign to my home area of Easterhouse. Those events still fill me with great pride now 10 years on and the hope and excitement that were synonymous with that time has never quite reached the same levels again.

The nostalgia that’s evident here however is in many ways symptomatic of the issues we now face. From a UK perspective we have finally managed to boot out the Tories. 

The most rotten of governments in office for 14 of my 28 years on the planet. A period of government characterised by cuts, chaos, Covid and corruption.

Yet what’s replaced it is a right wing Labour government as uninspiring as it is contemptuous. Can you imagine this lot having the political ability to drive through past Labour achievements like the national minimum wage or tax credits?

The competence to deliver peace in the north of Ireland or devolution? Even Tony Blair’s new Labour seems radical in comparison to a Keir Starmer (below) administration characterised by the impoverishment of children through the two child benefit cap retention and the freezing of our pensioners as energy bills rise by a further 10% - let’s not forget from staggeringly high levels to start. 

(Image: PA)

An NHS review spearheaded by the private sector, an aggressive rhetoric and drive to deport some of the most vulnerable. Perfect conditions for the far right to operate in when those in charge of such decisions and outlook are deemed by many to be reflective of the left.

It’s hardly then a surprise the likes of Farage and Robinson are managing to tap into an anger and apathy across working class areas. Neither should anyone be taken by ideas of Scottish exceptionalism in this regard with reform on course to land a swathe of MSPs at the next Holyrood election.

The anti-racist demonstration on George Square this month was the easy part - it’s the work we do daily in our communities, workplaces, colleges and universities that will define the battle against the far right. Always has been, always will be.

In Scotland, we have an independence campaign which appears totally lost at sea. Directionless and devoid of strategy on the how we achieve independence and shy of a credible programme to deliver on the why. Still reeling from the Supreme Court fiasco and the de facto referendum mess that came in its aftermath.

On the policy front in day-to-day government, problems arise a plenty. Attacks on universal benefits in full swing as means testing becomes the settled consensus across our political class.

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First goes the winter fuel allowance and the broken promises on free school meals. Next they come for prescriptions. Attacks on concessionary travel to follow and even free university tuition could be on the table.

Policies synonymous with devolution and once held up as examples of the kind of society and country we could deliver with Independence.

Once unthinkable to touch are now seemingly in play and those of us who support the founding principles of universality and the welfare state had best get organised - and soon. With a £500 million pound austerity budget on the way and a programme for government notable only for its absence of anything new or exciting.

(Image: Liam Mclaughlan)

The momentum of 2014 lost, huge opportunities squandered. On the biggest industrial fight of our age with the closure of the Grangemouth refinery we have both governments posted missing in action - refusing to contemplate a worker led plan through nationalisation to save the jobs and a long term transition to a clean green future for the plant that doesn’t see scores of workers thrown on the scrapheap.

In many ways we all share a slice of the responsibility for allowing the momentum and energy of 2014 to evaporate.

I hate to lay blame solely at the feet of anyone however there can be no doubt that the actions of the SNP leadership and Nicola Sturgeon in particular post 2014 and in the decade that follow leave much to be desired. As electorally successful as it was for the party its failed the movement badly.

A culture of deference, unquestioning loyalty, control freakery and politics by press release and sound bite. That’s of course not to begin to touch on the increasing number of live police investigations engulfing the government at almost every level.

The collapse of most of the Yes movement inside the SNP post referendum snuffed out any hope of retaining our greatest strength - the diversity of thought with unity of purpose. The reaction to Brexit in 2016 also suffocated the case for independence into the constraints of the People’s Vote campaign.

Locking the national question in Scotland to that of Europe regardless of the inevitable contradicts therein.

On deficits and budgets, a central bank and the currency requirement, trade and borders with a post Brexit Britain or the simple and inescapable reality that 30% of 2014 Yes voters had opted to vote Leave just two years later.

Less time getting selfies with Alistair Campbell and more time addressing the fundamentals of our case would have been time better spent.

Returning to hope and the passage of time we can cling on to hope that our movement will again begin to look, feel, sound and act like the insurgent force it was in 2014 rather than the cautious managerial governing class controlled movement it’s looked like since in particular 2016.

A movement that can begin to reassert the fundamentals that independence means real change. One that reasserts that we are a disruptive force to those institutions both international and domestic who benefit from the status quo.

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One which governs at Holyrood competently and imaginatively. One which despite the constraints inherent in devolution expands the confidence and life chances of Scotlands working class majority without whom we cannot win independence.

A separate and distinct campaign for independence that operates outside of the structures and direct control of the SNP and that reflects the true breadth of the movement. That puts foreign policy at its heart of a Scotland playing a peaceful and constructive role in the world.

One which says you cannot be a progressive at home while aiding and abetting genocide abroad. Maybe then we can begin to imagine the radicalism, hope and excitement of 2014 over again. Let’s not waste another decade.