New Scottish Green leaders can make or break the independence cause

The National

24-04-2025

But this impending new beginning has inspired some thinking about where this chapter began – without doubt, the Yes campaign of 2012-2014 – and how that can inform where we go next. Over the past couple of weeks, I've re-read Catch-2014, a retrospective on the referendum by journalist Jack Foster. In it, the failings of 2014 are laid bare.
Far from the common retellings of the Yes campaign's greatest mistakes – lack of currency plan, poor relationships with the business community, or the need for 'unity' above all else – Foster's provides a much more practical account of where we went wrong, and what must change once the chance comes again.
These errors are numerous, and cover issues with all parties involved. But to me, one stands out above all else: the misconception that persists even today, that any group other than the working class, and largely forgotten, communities of Scotland got us to within a whisker of independence.
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It was not Yes Scotland, their hoards of SNP cash, centralised messaging, and managerial approach to the campaign. It was not the few big business leaders who trumped for the Yes side. It was the grassroots – many of whom engaged with the more radical elements of the movement, and many again who have fallen away from electoral politics in recent years – that built the momentum that got Yes to 45%.
Why though, does this matter? In the short term, it may not. Labour are doing as good a job as anyone at once and for all dispelling the myth that any UK Government can be the progressive antidote to the Westminster establishment.
But over the next few years, and if polling continues to tick upwards in favour of Scotland becoming an independent nation, we may find ourselves in a position of returning to full-on campaign mode – and we need to be ready.
What that means is that we cannot repeat the mistakes of the past – and any campaign in favour of independence must reinvigorate the lost activists who have almost entirely drifted away from frontline politics in the years following 2014.
John Swinney waves to the SNP conference after his speech (Image: PA) That will not be done by the SNP. As an electoral machine, the SNP are unmatched in modern Scotland in their success. But their near two decades in government at Holyrood leave them unable to claim the anti-establishment ground they once would have.
That will not be done by a formal Yes campaign – 2014 showed that the gradualist, small-c conservative appeal would only get us so far.
To reinvigorate the thousands of ordinary people who – led in 2014 by the Radical Independence Campaign, among others – knocked on doors in the nooks and crannies of Scotland taken for granted, or otherwise entirely ignored, a group offering leadership and a tangible link to communities must step forward.
With some work, this could be done by the Scottish Greens, and that makes this summer's co-leadership elections even more important than they already are.
In the lead-up to September 2014, the Scottish Greens played a larger part in public debate than they ever had before.
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Other than the SNP, they were the biggest party of independence, and they had a centre-left platform that didn't entirely align with the corporatism of Yes Scotland.
Come the next referendum, we will undoubtedly again play a massive part. But that part we play will in large part be down to who leads us, their anti-establishment credentials, and their ability to win the trust of working-class voters – something, traditionally, Greens have (at best) struggled with.
Those who want an independent Scotland should already be thinking about the politicians they want at the forefront of that campaign, and who they speak to. The sad reality is that there is no alternative left-wing party with a credible offering to the electorate – so it falls to Scottish Greens to step up, and by extension, our leaders.
Unfortunately, Holyrood itself can feel a world away from the housing schemes, isolated villages, and other communities that have been hit hardest by decades of austerity. Indeed, some of that austerity is the fault of Holyrood itself, with our own party complicit in this.
In any future referendum, the Scottish Greens cannot expect to win the trust of working-class communities if we are led by those who were instrumental in cutting council budgets, decimating colleges, and even extracting wealth from Scotland by selling off our country's assets.
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We must learn from the failings of 2014. We must step up where there no longer exists an alternative radical group to convince the public that another Scotland is possible. We must make that case ourselves.
To do that credibly, and to further the cause of independence itself, our next leaders must be rooted in communities.
They must have a track record of standing up for those worst-affected by austerity from both Westminster and Holyrood.
They must be willing to win the trust of working-class Scots in a way we have too often failed to do in the past.
Most importantly, their politics must be radical.
A progressive veneer when it suits us will not be enough – ordinary Scots will see through it.
The grassroots must be where our power comes from, not imposed from Holyrood, making us no different from the Westminster establishment from which we are so desperate to be free.
If another campaign comes about in the coming years, we must give Scotland the best possible chance of winning its independence.
But to win over those needed to do so, we need socialists unashamed in using Scottish autonomy as a tool to break from the hegemony of the uber-rich and powerful.
Without making that case, we stand no chance of getting the groups we need to win any future referendum out onto the streets.
When Scottish Greens vote this summer for its next set of co-leaders, it won't just be the future of our party on the ballot. It will be the future of Scotland – and it's up to us to choose wisely.