Hugh MacDiarmid once said of Robert Burns that “Mair nonsense has been uttered in his name than in ony’s, barrin’ liberty and Christ.” The same could surely be said of democracy. Not least that people still believe (rather touchingly, if a little childlike) that we live in one; and that the great nations of the West have signed up to the ideal. The outrage around the Indy camps that Scotland is being denied her democratic right to vote on self-determination by an authoritarian Westminster is old news. Its also the wrong fight!
Democracy from the Greek, in its purest sense, of course, means Government BY the people. What we have in the West is government OF the people. Admittedly there is more than lip-service paid to this form of government where supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodic free elections. Unless of course you are forming the Government of the UK at the moment, where we really are witnessing the law of diminishing returns in terms of who gets to place the PM at the despatch box.
In Scotland we are nearer the ideal, in that the people are sovereign. But as yet, the ruling from a government, where in England (and in reserved matters) Parliament is Sovereign, is blocking attempts to take the Scottish people’s sovereignty to wherever it might lead. I blame Oliver Cromwell!
So, if Parliament being sovereign is the problem, then the people who make up that parliament – the elected representatives – are also by extension part of the problem. Are parliamentary systems – where sovereignty lies with that corporate body – therefore essentially and fundamentally barriers to real democracy – Discuss?
In my view the short answer is yes. So, what to do?
One of the most encouraging, engaging and potentially far-reaching developments during Indy was the rise, influence and veracity of social movements. Of which Women for Independence was one of the most influential.
So, what we clearly need again is a rise of participating social movements, not just for Indy 2, but beyond, as fundamental structures in a new Scotland.
Social movements are argued to be influential in promoting democracy from below, through mobilizing broader sectors of society and creating a new set of social relationships that lead to the emergence of collective actions, identity and plurality.
Social movements are able to instigate democracy from the bottom up, whereas Political parties tend to be hierarchical and disseminate democracy from the top down.
Social movements can have certain limitations and challenges; because they potentially try to shake the existing political powers, social movements are sometimes repressed by political power, and there is evidence of this in many parts of Europe, most markedly in Spain in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia.
Social movements by the nature of their broad-church appeal are open and collective. We’ve known for a long time in Women for Indy that many women were actively put off by the structures within Political parties, the closed cliques. WFI is famously non-hierarchical, I think the only grass roots movement in the Indy arena where its organising committee is elected by its members.
As a result of that openness, social movements are well served to challenge ways of doing things. They tend to explicitly express their interest in creating a change to the tradition of how things are done in the political, social and economic spheres.
The grass roots Indy movements were interested in seeing Scotland develop in completely new ways. Independence cannot be about being the same county operating as before but under a different flag. We want to see social justice at the centre of its agenda and a firm commitment to human rights, which is currently being eroded by Westminster.
Social movements like WFI create a base for broader popular participation as they are more inclusive of people than the formal political factions or parties. The YES movement in 2014 had Regional YES campaigns reflecting what Indy meant to them, and YES groups for every conceivable group and job sector in society from ‘Crofters for Yes’ to ‘Lawyers for Yes’ – and even a ‘Scottish Conservatives for Yes’. The Labour Party, once the dominant force in Scottish politics, is Unionist in ideology, yet ‘Labour for Yes’ is one of the fastest growing Indy groups.
Social movements are by the very nature the disrupters, the way, ironically, the SNP were, in their early days as a party. But having been in power for 15 years now, they are firmly in the camp of the establishment and it’s showing in their muted policy initiatives and extreme caution around Indy 2.
Moreover, there is a mutual relationship between social movements and democratisation as one favours the other and therefore the same processes that contribute to the establishment of social movements lead to the enlargement of democratisation. And that’s because they reach out to wider sectors of the community including decision makers. Social movements can claim a credibility by showing worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment, which if converted into sustained social action, like some of the campaigns that WFI have led on, can contribute to democratisation in different ways.
In fact, let’s call a spade a dirty big shovel. I’d go as far as to say that a real commitment to democracy cannot be said to exist without a vibrant social movement and a mobilised civil society that includes grassroots and ordinary citizens who have common interests and beliefs regarding specific issues.
We have a cumbersome and not very representative local democracy in Scotland through our Local Authorities, where power and influence does not really lie with the citizens. Recent elections meant just on 50% of the electorate voted, compared to 85% in Indy 1. This is a sign that people are turned off by this sort of politics. Ironically Local Authorities, mostly run on party-political structures, actually have control over many of the day-to-day things that people engage with or worry about. Yet people do not vote. Local Democracy reform is badly need in Scotland, yet it’s in political parties’ interests not to do so, as it’s simply another power base for them.
If we want real democracy we must create, develop and sustain social movements. We should be paying more attention to them than we do to political establishments in terms of really understanding how the people think.
The influencing role of social movements in promoting and enhancing democracy from below, by broadly changing the mechanisms of decision-making through creating a new culture of how people are connected to each other, is a beautiful and powerful thing.
The very lack of specific organizational and leadership structure gives social movements the potential to reach out to wider sectors of the community as an forum for open participation for people who share the same cause, identity and ideology. Beware the social movements that are vehicles for egos and hierarchical power structures.
Open participation enables social movements to disseminate collective action from more mobilized actors to fewer active actors formulating new forms of collective decision-making that establish the foundation of democracy. Social movements should be celebrated, not criticised, for their ability to disrupt the relationships between different power holders.
But what of the relationships that ultimately, they must have with political structures? It is, after all, legislation and acts of Parliament which will legally shape our new world.
But here is a dilemma. It’s true that political parties often grow out of movements. The political party structure is often seen as the way to harness and focus the energy of a social movement to bring about change over a long period. WFI and the Yes movement will get nowhere in a legislative capacity without the Indy-supporting SNP/Green coalition forming the current government of Scotland, for example.
But it seems to me it is always the need to control the vision that leads to political parties being born and this can point to their limitations. They may distil the essence of a movement, but in doing so inevitably change it. Political parties are as much a process of management and control as they are of vision. That is not always a bad thing, if it brings form and order to looser ideas, to provide a practical framework in a democratic country. But when the process meets the passion, there is often trouble and discontent.
It’s in the nature of all politicians to gatekeep and control, but if a political party is to really be radical and sit comfortably with the movements that feed it, then it must give up some of its ownership to the wider movements. They must:
- Give ownership of the campaign to communities.
- Empower, educate and engage.
- Engage with their support and engage with their opposition as WFI do.
- Engage with women, because we are their greatest asset as they lay out an agenda for change in your communities.
- Ask the people what they want – and they must not be fearful of the answers.
- Give the people a voice – and they must listen, and they must have answers for questions not yet thought up.
A mass movement for social change might not be in the end all you need. It may yet come down to political negotiation. But if it’s not all you need, I can assure you without it and without the change it can bring to a cause’s consciousness, conviction and sense of confidence in itself, without the change it can wreak in hearts and minds, success for a merely political venture will be harder, if not nigh-on impossible.
And it’s working. In 2014, more men voted yes than women and a majority of women voted No. The most recent polls now suggest 55% of women would vote yes. So, the gender gap seems to have gone.
And while WFI cannot of course take all the credit it seems that the message of hope and change that we have been promoting is beginning to find a wider audience.
There’s lots to be learned from each other. From activism strategies to engagement ideas for various sectors in society, to networks, to the ideology and democratic basis of demanding self-determination and constitutional change. But the people who have to learn most and quickest are the political elites, and in turn social movement actors must develop an agenda to keep them active and involved long after the glittering prize has been attained, and before it loses its shine.
Based in Glasgow, Maggie is one of the powerhouses of our organisation and has worked on many of our major campaigns and projects, including JusticeWatch and our Womanifesto. She is the Director of The Bridges Programmes, which supports Refugees and Asylum Seekers find relevant and appropriate work placements and shadowing experiences in Glasgow. In addition to this, she is a prolific campaigner and spokeswoman for Human Rights. She initially presented this speech on behalf of WFI, at the Coppeiters Foundation’s conference in Galicia this summer and in their recent publication, she wrote a chapter on movements for self-determination and relationships with the EU.