The un-knowing begins

Observers of the political scene are being treated to the bizarre spectacle of SNP loyalists and apologists frantically trying to deny that John Swinney defined the criterion for a mandate to request a Section 30 order as the SNP winning 65 seats or more. In the event, the SNP fell well short of the line drawn by the party’s leader. Thus, Swinney has handed the British Prime Minister the perfect riposte to a Section 30 order request. All Starmer—or his successor—needs to do is remind Swinney of his own words.

Swinney said a second referendum would allow the SNP to make “Scotland’s energy wealth work for Scotland” and make “fair and equitable” changes to the welfare system.

He said: “It only happens if we have that referendum and we only get that referendum if a majority of SNP MSPs are elected next May.”“

(Emphasis added for the hard of learning.)

Almost the moment the results were in, Swinney did the old switcheroo and it was now an inclusive (nominally) pro-independence majority that represents a mandate. The party loyalists then began the process of rewriting history to read that their beloved leader had never stipulated an SNP-only majority and had always said that the aggregate of votes for all nominally pro-independence parties would constitute a mandate.

As is so often the case, this brings to mind George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, 1984, the central theme of which is encapsulated in the following:

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

In the society Orwell depicts, truth is whatever is presently expedient. Truth is constantly being redefined. Truth is whatever established power says it is.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

Of course, outside fiction, people can’t ‘un-know’ things. Hence the need for the concept of doublethink, or the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accept both as true. John Swinney both said what he said and said what he now wants us to remember he said. The SNP loyalist must be adept at doublethink. Others, not so much.

It’s not only the SNP loyalists. There is a vein of doublethink running through the entire independence movement. For example, the ‘max the Yes’ mob simultaneously maintains that the SNP cannot be made to change its approach to the constitutional issue and that the SNP will change its approach to the constitutional issue if we all vote in a particular way.

I note this phenomenon in passing only to make the point that so much of the ‘thinking’ on the constitutional issue is founded on fallacy and fantasy. The independence movement desperately needs a large injection of realism.

There is a clear divide between what I have termed the independence industry and what we might think of as the real independence movement. It is within the real independence movement that we will find the hard-headed realism and open-mindedness that must inform the liberation struggle going forward. The independence industry asks us to un-know its past record of failure. I won’t do that.