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19 March 2016

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Scotland’s Yes campaign appealed beyond politics and traditional allegiances – Uniting Ireland conference speaker


By Maggie Lennon, Scottish National Party National Council member

● Maggie is a panellist at Monday’s ‘Uniting Ireland’ conference in Derry

Scotland – Maggie Lennon SNP

RADICAL IDEAS require women and men of vision, to be sure, but it is only when that vision inspires and empowers a wider movement that change that might have been unthinkable for generations can come within our grasp.

This is true of the movement towards Scottish independence.

From a group widely portrayed as being on the lunatic fringe in the 1930s-1950s, it grew to a cross-party, cross-community, cross-interest and wide movement for social change that brought self-determination tantalisingly close.

From my perspective, the journey towards an Irish state free from British rule and debate around a united Ireland has a similar pattern of growth – a debate in which already there are green shoots of support growing alongside the traditional fault-lines of anticipated and historical political and religious allegiances. But progress will only come when you break those fault-lines and appeal beyond politics and traditional allegiances, as we did in Scotland.

In Scotland, the narrative was everything.

The case for independence was not framed in the conventional terms of national or ethnic exceptionalism. It wasn’t couthy (cosy and comfortable). Instead, it was a question about national sovereignty addressed as an issue of social change; largely framed in terms of social justice: a better society, escaping Conservative austerity, emulating Nordic communitarianism.

It was positive, it was new, it was (ironically) unifying a people against a Union.

In contrast, the Better Together [pro-Union, anti-independence] proposition for the status quo was seen as negative and fear inducing, and the reporting of it even more so.

Scots indy crowd

The Yes campaign unified because it became extra-political. Something in the message appealed to people from every sort of interest group – from crofters to landowners, men and women, lawyers to teachers, trade unionists to Rangers fans.

There were over 100 interest-based Yes groups and over 50 regional groups that took the debate to every corner to every public and private space. And to have that impact in Ireland there needs to be a similar shift in public consciousness about doing things differently. A shift that says the extraordinary – and for some the unthinkable – is becoming the ordinary and the norm. And you need your narrative.

The former has already begun, both with Sinn Féin’s role in Government in the North and the changes wrought by the results of the Dáil general election. The increase in Sinn Féin’s seats in the Dáil and the coalition of Independents are the start of providing a progressive alternative to the Establishment – what Gerry Adams called “a significant shift in the political landscape” with Establishment parties holding just under 50% of the vote. 

And before that, the state was electrified in the marriage referendum by exactly the people power, DIY activism, grassroots movement based on idealism and a desire for an egalitarian society that gripped Scotland and which will be so necessary for major change.

And your alternative narrative for change has also already begun.

32 Counties road sign

The economic arguments for Irish unity are strong and bear scrutiny, and in that you have an advantage over Scotland where the economic case was portrayed as weak.

In both economic and social terms, if the Six Counties of Northern Ireland didn’t already exist, you wouldn’t invent it as a workable fiscal or community model. And you could do worse for a vision than look to the 1916 Proclamation, where the religious, civil liberties, equal right and opportunities of all citizens were guaranteed – a far cry from what has happened in Northern Ireland in the past and still today.

I do not accept there is anything within the DNA of either republican or unionist, men or women, banker or baker, city dweller or farmer, which could seriously take issue with such principles of equality and opportunity, or the idea of a “commitment to pursuing the prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts, cherishing all of our children of the nation, equally and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority from a majority in the past”.

One of the challenges of a united Ireland will be finding a way to maintain the identities of those who see themselves as British or twin cultured and to understand the challenges and frustrations that an established majority will feel when they become a minority. Yet, ironically, it is those who have been a minority in the North themselves who will be best placed to help others learn how to maintain a cultural identity when power and influence has waned.

I have heard unionists admit to feeling frustrated that their commitment to the Union is being met by policies from that Union damaging to the very people that support it (amongst others).

What is required are conversations which will challenge attitudes and movements across Ireland and in challenging the status quo will create a vision that will answer frustrations, offer hope and a universal commitment to social justice over self-interest; of community over global and in unity over division.

If that story can be told, then maybe all 32 counties under one flag will be able to “strike for her freedom” for the benefit of all.

Derry UI March 2016

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