- Yes campaign lessons… by Neil Scott
What we knew about Kirkintilloch in 2011-14, was that it was a majority Yes for Independence town. Other towns in East Dunbartonshire- Bearsden, Milngavie, Torrance, Lenzie, Bishopbriggs- we weren’t so confident of. After our Yes group was split because of vituperative, entitled, monied Yessers trying to buy off the Yes leadership (literally with thousands of pounds- the Yes Leadership told them to use their money for campaigning) in order to persuade them to ditch the Greens and SSP, the entitled were given Kirkintilloch. All they had to do was nurture its existing Yes vote, add to it and push Bishopbriggs and Lenzie Yeswards.
Kirkintilloch was an open goal. The No campaign had zero traction there. Few activists and no platforms, whereas Yes was massive- three political parties and a huge membership of politically unaligned but motivated people- more activists than we knew, in the early days, what to do with). Surely not even the self proclaimed local entitled Yes leader and their self-proclaimed ‘activist’ sidekicks, who no other local activist had ever heard of, could mess it up.
The first signs of messing stuff up came with their embracing the awful, right wing blogger, Stuart Campbell who I won’t elaborate on as he is best forgotten. The voice of the workers “activist” thought Campbell was radical, pro-working class and a man of the people, rather than the arrogant, nasty fascist that actual activists knew him to be (the Greens and SSP warned of this from the early days of the campaign).
Roll with shit and you’ll get covered, lifetime working class activist Willie had said.
And rolling with a homophonic, transphobic, sexist man who blamed Liverpool fans for their own deaths… was a damning and utter waste of Yes activism- a waste that continued AFTER indyref as Campbell’s maga-like fans dropped their turds at Yes meetings, on Yes stages and in Yes crowds. Waste, waste, waste.
And then came their embrace of Tommy Sheridan, a convicted liar who had paid a PR company to rejig his shattered image post 2011 and help him aboard the Independence campaign train left us utterly incredulous. We socialists managed to keep Sheridan from his first planned meeting in Kirkintilloch- most of the left in that town knew he was a charlatan, a grifter, a liar- and press reports helped to destroy his plans as the left -and most of the town’s working class- wanted nothing to do with him. However, the “activist” and the “entitled” helped build Sheridan’s next meeting in Lennoxtown (already a Yes town by a large majority), where a hall was packed out with his Glasgow/Dundee CWI and SWP buddies, and a few locals, leading to “activist” and “entitled” declaring a triumph. It was certainly a triumph for the Sheridan show- but effort, money and activists were totally wasted on a piece of theatre that brought in pounds for Sheridan and his Squalid Party but did NOTHING to forward the cause of Yes. A waste of Yes activists time… again. Sheridan spraying his self promotional bombast in the faces of his bussed in, cooing fanboi’s and girls while middle class entitled and pretendy working class activist patted themselves on their heads.
The third act was in Kirkintilloch- an act of self sabotage on a scale we really couldn’t believe. As I mentioned, Kirkintilloch was a Yes town- by far. The no campaign had no traction there (and on arrival, Sarwar et al’s battle bus was met with huge pushback (from The SSP and Radical Independence Campaigners) that enraged the future Scottish Labour Starmer minion when it arrived during the final week of campaigning- another story for another time). The “entitled” and the “activist” decided to stage a Yes /No debate… an act of platforming the enemy in a town they had enjoyed, nor could organise no platform before. An self sabotaging act of undermining one’s own campaign on a scale hitherto unseen during the campaign. Labour flew their chief debater in from London (a Lawyer who had once lived in the town). The No campaign pulled out every stop to use this as a bridge to find more support- and the hall was packed out- flooded with Labourites from outside the area. The Yessers, by all accounts, called victory theirs, but NO managed to recruit that night and use their recruits to inject their campaign into the hitherto Yes town in the heart of East Dunbartonshire.
We lost East Dunbartonshire 45/55%.
Roll with shit and you’ll get covered, said Willie.
Stop platforming those who are taking aim at your feet.
