LEADING pro-independence campaigners have delivered their verdicts on the SNP’s plans for a £100,000 “hearts and minds” fund to win over voters to independence.
Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp, founder of the Believe in Scotland campaign group, said the move was welcome but warned it “can’t be a one-off project”.
Robin McAlpine, the founder of the pro-Yes Common Weal think tank, told The National that the party was trying to “pacify” members amid a grassroots row about independence strategy ahead of SNP conference next month.
MacIntyre-Kemp said: “The SNP’s announcement is a step in the right direction, but it can’t be a one-off project. The party needs to visibly put independence at the heart of its activities all year round. Believe in Scotland has already been campaigning hard on independence ourselves this year.
“Our campaign on Scotland’s right to choose Scotland’s future has involved the distribution of 75,000 leaflets, billboards in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee, and a petition that has now reached more than 44,000 signatures, with every signature triggering an email to the Prime Minister demanding a referendum.
“In the last two months, Believe in Scotland and our hardworking volunteers have organised local campaign days, with street stalls and leafleting in Elgin, Stirling, Blairgowrie, Glasgow Southside and Musselburgh. We also organised a National Day of Action in August, which saw around 150 leafleting teams campaigning across Scotland on the same day.
“We need the whole movement to get on the front foot. We need the SNP to push even harder and the Greens to join us, so that the three leading independence campaigning organisations are campaigning effectively together for independence.”
He added that the SNP had added “fuel” to grassroots efforts, saying: “A new push from the SNP is more than welcome. Believe in Scotland, our affiliated Yes groups and our volunteers have been keeping the fire burning. More fuel from the political arm of the movement should heat things up a bit more.”
McAlpine told The National that the project reminded him of “seven independence papers, six rebuttal units, five new broadcasting platforms, four summers of independence, three constitutional conventions, two de facto referendums, one citizens assembly and a partridge in a pear tree” that he argued had amounted to nothing.
He said: “As reliably as clockwork the SNP conference comes round, members’ motions on independence are suppressed and instead they are pacified with promises that subsequently get broken. I don’t wake up in the morning wanting to be negative but perhaps the SNP might meet me half way by doing a better job in government and keeping even a single promise on independence.”
McAlpine suggested the SNP should donate the money “to a civic campaign”, adding: “This is the least popular government in the history of devolution, it can no longer get one in three independence supporters to vote for it and the next 10% we need to target have never voted SNP in their lives. If we want to persuade them then we should approach them with a difference face and a different voice.
“This announcement is not about independence but about control. What is good for the cause of independence and what is good for the SNP leadership are not exactly the same thing and the former keeps being sacrificed to the latter.”
