Party like it isn't 1999!
The following is one of those responses to a comment on my WordPress blogsite which turned into a short essay. I reproduce it here as it says something important.
The return of our parliament – even in chains – was the biggest boost Scotland’s cause had ever had. None on the progress the cause made over the subsequent decade would have happened if not for the parliament. The problem with devolution is that it is ridiculously far past its kill-by date. It has been allowed to become bedded-in. It has captured the politicians and political parties.
Time and inadequate custodianship guarantee decay. It will ensure devolution (in the other sense) of any organisation, movement, or cause. Devolution – which from Scotland’s perspective was never more than a staging post on the road to independence – has been allowed to devolve into what the British state always wanted it to be – the ‘final solution’ to the Scotland problem. For all his political acuity, not even Alex Salmond seems to have recognised the danger of allowing devolution to become a settled system. He seemed to supposed devolution could be used to bring about independence. He failed to see that devolution had to be killed in order that independence could take its place. He envisaged a route to independence involving a smooth transition from devolution. He didn’t understand that the move to independence was necessarily and inevitably a disruptive process.
Time and inadequate custodianship guarantee decay.
Not just Alex Salmond, of course. I don’t think anybody read the situation properly back then. Even those who opposed devolution got it wrong. They were so focused on being against it they couldn’t see its potential usefulness any more than the pro-devolution side saw the potential dangers. This, I think Alf will attest, is very much in keeping with post-colonial theory. We were ignorant of our own condition.
Some of us are not so ignorant now. We are painfully aware of our situation. Looking back, we can clearly see the period during which devolution’s usefulness to Scotland’s cause declined while it’s utility to the British state increased. This was the decade between 2008 and 2018. Late 2018 was the latest that devolution should have been ended. From that point on, the independence movement went into decline as the decay due to time and ineffective – or absent – leadership took hold. Ever since then, Scotland’s cause has been fighting for survival.
The nature of that fight has changed. What depressed me most at the AUOB event in Edinburgh was how evident it was that large numbers of people imagine we are still in the same fight we were in 2012-14. For a large part of that crowd, nothing has changed.
The politicians and political parties are different only in the fact that they don’t want things to have changed. They see what being the ‘party of independence’ did for the SNP in the early years of devolution, and they regard this as a surefire recipe for electoral success – and the rewards that it entails. Independence as an electioneering device depends on devolution continuing. This, combined with the fact that so many political actors have built careers within the ‘independence industry’, creates a powerful evolutionary pressure to keep devolution going. Which is easy enough because this suits the British state as well. Like water and electricity, politics tends to take the easiest path.
This is what Scotland’s cause now faces. Excepting only a relatively tiny part of the independence movement, all forces are now pushing and pulling Scotland in the direction of a permanent accommodation with the coloniser. The educated, informed, and aware part of the independence movement must swim against this tide while being hampered by the larger part of the independence movement which remains oblivious to how things have changed. Our cause has been at a standstill for more than a decade. If we don’t get more people swimming in the right direction very soon, we start to go backwards to a very dark place indeed.
The 2026 election is very much more important than most people realise. Like 2018, 2028 is a critical point. Just as the criticality of 2018 should have been recognised three years prior, so the criticality of 2028 needs to be recognised right now. If independence has not been restored by 2028, it may never happen at all. Next year’s election is when the process must be initiated if we are to make it in time.
A very Insightful piece of writing that holds a warning to Scotland as we wander about led by a treacherous donkey ( kept in line by the cesspit) and who recently brayed he would be resolute re tariffs on whisky while facing up to the Orange maniac. No doubt thinking that Trump's Scottish roots would make a difference..nah swiney..ye're dealing with a nutcase.
However I was entertained to see he 'knew how to be firm ' about standing up for whisky...so FM where is your 'firmness ' re INDEPENDENCE FOR SCOTLAND. You hardly bray it..only in passing...if that.
Devolution..so clever..a vicious WHIP to punish Scotland when she dares to think for herself or challenge the cesspit.( unless of course you want to want to put a tax on plastic bags..that's ok..it's not devolved..I think) Try and make a decision without asking PERMISSION of the FOREIGNERS in the cesspit and whhoooosh! down comes the whip on our backs with the words..'THAT'S DEVOLVED TO THE UK GOVERNMENT ..and don't you forget it cringing little scottish turds'
We need a smart totally vicious leader who will grab that whip and destroy it ...as the english government ..who I am delighted to see .. implodes under a sea of deceit, treachery, freebie greed..tax evasion...really any filth you can think of.... while Scotland's agenda for freedom is being swept further and further under the carpet...meantime OUR headlines swamped by the tragic news of another shooting in ANOTHER country..but still zero on OUR tragedy....Scotland still in chains....not a word about our freedom....
For OUR Scotland and her weans ...still in chains.
The author, who it appears shall remain nameless is absolutely correct. There are far too many Scots within and without government circles who seem to have developed our own version of "Stockholm Syndrome". Whether this is a deliberate act or not remains to be determined, but the fact that it exists should be of great concern to those of us who still feel that independence should be front and centre of the SNP manifesto. The fact that the SNP current leadership seems content to only use independence solely as an electioneering "pawn", is evidence enough for me that Swinney and Co, are most definitely complicit (unwittingly or not) in furthering our settled status as "Northern Englandshire", and our continued utilisation as a feeder colony for the far more important South. When Scotland's case is viewed by the UN in terms of our colonisation by Englandshire, it will be interesting to see what the SNP leadership does if the UN decision goes our way.