MARCH! March! March! The indy movement was on the march again on Saturday, this time back in Glasgow.
This was the first major gathering of the movement since Nicola resigned and the SNP machine virtually imploded.
Clearly, Saturday’s All Under One Banner event was a test of sorts. Was the Yes movement demoralised and downhearted? Were the splits in the indy family now terminal? And what about those opinion polls putting Scottish Labour back in the lead? Would folk stay home and hide under the duvet?
The weather seemed not to help as I arrived in Kelvingrove Park. The skies were west coast grey and my weather app was forecasting rain. But if you intend to build a new nation then a little Scottish drizzle is not going to stop you.
I found the park heaving with chatty, happy independence supporters and their dogs, surrounded by a sea of Saltires. Not so many EU flags this time, though. Then off we went, headed for Glasgow Green.
No sooner had we set off when Mother Nature seemed to smile. By the time the throng had reached downtown the sun was actually shining (a bit). Perhaps Heaven was more pre-occupied with a certain event taking place in London.
But for once the Yessers actually had a bit of luck with the elements. This certainly raised the spirits.
How many were on the march? This is always a fraught question. How do you count a meandering gaggle of indy supporters who constantly move about?
The organisers reckoned around 20,000 which I think is a tad generous. As a lifelong connoisseur of political marches, I’d say the figure was nearer 5000 to 7000.
Actually, that’s bigger than any recent trades union demo in Scotland, so quite creditable given the media battering the movement has been under.
Regardless, when I stood at St George’s Tron I could see an unbroken line of marchers and flags coming down the hill along West George Street from Blythswood Square at the top. Very impressive.
But a more important signal of morale than turnout is – I think – the reaction of passers-by and everyday folk in the street to a demo. Sometimes you get indifference, sometimes hostility.
I remember one woman in Edinburgh in the 1970s shouting at a march of striking building workers: “Bloody students!”
Fortunately, on Saturday in Glasgow the locals out for their shopping were uniformly supportive, judging by the smiles and number of people taking photographs.
We had waves from tenement windows and cheery drinkers coming out from their pubs to wish us well and accept a proffered mini-Saltire. One pub with a cartoon of the Stone of Destiny painted on its front got huge cheers from the marchers in return.
Who was on Saturday’s march? There was definitely a paucity of SNP branch banners. That does not mean to say there were not SNP members on the demo, and there were prominent (though dissident) SNP speakers at the after-march rally on Glasgow Green.
But the party has lost its visibility at AUOB events, even in the rank and file. One suspects that must have something to do with the loss of SNP membership numbers and the ambivalent stance the party leadership has taken to events it does not control directly.
It is a pity the new SNP leadership team did not make a greater effort to mend fences for Saturday’s march.
Michael Russell, the party’s president, has already accepted publicly that there is an urgent necessity to build bridges in our divided movement.
There were plenty of Alba Party badges being worn but no obvious, organised Alba contingent marching in the ranks. There was a vocal Scottish Socialist Party contingent, which provided us with a running denunciation of Tories in general and in particular.
Given the alternative entertainment taking place in London, it was no surprise that the most popular slogan chanted by the demonstrators was “Not My king!”
And there were rousing choruses of “you can stick your coronation up your arse!” throughout the march. This seemed to go down well with onlookers.
So we should conclude that there is indeed a lot of life still in the independence movement grassroots.
The Yes family remains broad-based and self-active to a degree the SNP and Unionist political parties are not.
Judging by the banners carried on Saturday, the Yes movement is well entrenched geographically right across Scotland and especially in its smaller communities.
There were a lot of women on the demo and a satisfactory mix of ages.
True, the faces were mostly white, but I noticed a number of Asian families in national costume.
It is difficult not to conclude this was a cross-section of Scotland demanding its right to popular sovereignty. The contrast with the coronation extravaganza could hardly be greater.
Yet I still have a minnow of a doubt. True, Saturday shows there is still fight and verve and energy in the movement. But the numbers turning out – however you add them up – were still much lower than in the period immediately before Covid.
The movement is still fractured organisationally. And there remain deep divisions over how to progress independence. None of these difficulties can be ignored.
Nor can essentially political problems be papered over by calls for yet more marches (though we should not stop marching). Sheer momentum is not enough, we need direction as well.
What surprises me at the moment is that the new SNP leadership under Humza Yousaf is failing to even consider how this directional vacuum can be filled. I don’t criticise him per se for going to the coronation.
That was tactical and a way of deflecting needless media criticism. Even Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill felt obliged to turn up.
What I criticise Yousaf for doing is not sending a video message to Saturday’s march – modern tech allows you to be in two places at the same time.
That would have been a first step to re-unifying the movement. And I query the fact that our “continuity” FM is pressing on with a legislative agenda that fails to prioritise popular, high-impact, economic matters that might have an influence on the coming Westminster General Election.
As opposed to further alienating the fishing community, for instance.
It almost looks as if the SNP leadership are prepared to sleepwalk into electoral defeat, hoping against hope that a hung Westminster parliament will give them political clout. It won’t. Keir Starmer might be boring, but he is utterly ruthless.
We will only win independence through being united ourselves and by abandoning the current Holyrood predilection for secondary issues in favour of a an equally ruthless Scottish populism.
And – dare I say it – by making government from London unworkable north of the Border.
I love demos and marches. They bring the raw energy of the people themselves into play instead of the bogus pretence that if Holyrood only behaves itself for enough decades, then a London Tory or Labour government might be nice to us.
You can stick your coronation and your Westminster up your arse.
