This morning I was out having breakfast with several ex-colleagues which I do once every 2 months or so. The topic of conversation invariably gets around to politics and today focused quite heavily on the recent referendum and the possibility of another referendum on Scottish Independence.
The company consists of a range of political views and is quite a good demographic. There is at least one supporter of each of the 5 political parties in Holyrood and there is a good mix of previous No and Yes voters in the Scottish Referendum although all but one voted to Remain in the EU referendum.
Among those who voted No in the Scottish Referendum one of the main reasons that keeps coming up is that of Nationalism and the fact that the SNP should not be railroading the country. When asked what they don't like about our First Minister the answers are always vague and to be fair I have not heard anything yet that convinces me that we are not lucky to have Nicola Sturgeon in charge in such politically hazardous times.
I was today asked to justify Nationalism. I explained that I was not against Nationalism in general but when I stated that I was not a Nationalist and that flag waving held no real place in my life, this confused them greatly. They then asked me how I could be in favour of independence if I was not a Nationalist. I confused them further by telling them it was grassroots democracy that led me to believe in Scotland as an independent nation. It was no surprise that they did not understand the concept.
Grassroots democracy is an absolute fundamental part of being Green for me. Indeed it is one of the four pillars that all green parties are founded upon. Wikipedia describes grassroots democracy as:
" .... a tendency towards designing political processes where as much decision-making authority as practical is shifted to the organization's lowest geographic or social level of organization."When I explained this to them they all seemed to understand and agreed that there did appear to be another reason, other than "Nationalism" that could be argued to allow Scotland to be an independent nation.
At the end of our political conversation I asked the 4 who had previously voted No in the last Scottish referendum if my explanation had allowed them to see independence in another non-SNP light. They all answered Yes and confirmed that this and the recent Leave vote would lead them to reconsider their position if another Scottish Independence referendum were to be run. In fact two out of the four almost committed to changing their vote all together.
I am very worried that if we do find ourselves getting to vote again in a Scottish Referendum in the near future, that the word "Nationalist" will again be used as a derisory term as a stick to poke the voters with. We have to get it out there that Nationalism is not necessarily bad and there are alternative reasons to want to have Scotland facing it's own way in the world.
