Scotland the brave

The people’s choice in Scotland is at a critical moment – do we opt for uncertain, risky and radical (albeit exciting) change, or the safety and security of what we know and cherish?

It reminds me of 1998, when the people of Ireland, north and south, were faced with voting for or against the Good Friday Agreement, negotiated in  painstaking, mind-numbing detail over two years, with the promise of political accommodation that might lead to greater stability and a reduction in the violence that had stalked our land.

The differences from Scotland today, and N. Ireland then are stark.

Our referendum was post-negotiation, so a lot of the detail on radioactive issues like power-sharing, prisoner release, arms decommissioning and self-determination had been agreed by the political parties and the two sponsoring British and Irish governments, allowing the voter to judge, rather than speculate, as in Scotland, where so much, however positive and inspiring, is only promise, hope and guesswork.

Second, we welcomed the involvement of the UK and Irish leaders in our debate, even though their parties did not organise here; we respected their roles in bringing about the Agreement and in representing their people’s views, even though, as in Scotland, only we could vote. I am surprised how the rUK has been mostly shut out from the Scottish discourse.

Third, the Scottish status quo option is not a grim future of violence and murder, hatred and bitterness, as ours was.

Which is why the ‘more powers’ proposition by the three British political parties, representing the past, present and future parties of the UK government, is so interesting. I don’t see it as a last minute panic-driven bribe; it has been on the cards for months; many of us have been lobbying for it for years.

In March, in an article in the Western Mail, I called for the greater engagement of the devolved Wales and N. Ireland jurisdictions to prepare for ‘the day after’ (the Scottish poll), setting out our wishes for a better redistribution of powers.  I also referenced the north of England, our great cities across the UK, including Belfast and Derry~Londonderry, Glasgow, Dundee, Cardiff, Leeds and Manchester, and showed how to decentralise decision-making to the most local appropriate level.

The timetable, outlined by former Chancellor and PM Gordon Brown, is one that all of the UK can seize with alacrity; we have long argued that the old, centralised state of post-second-world-war welfarism (that created the NHS, the BBC, universal social security and free education) must be flipped from top-down to bottom-up. The great wave of devolution in the late 90s was a promising start – now we must take it yet further downstream.

‘Powers to the People’ is a useful and compelling value-base.  

And it is no longer just about Scotland, it engages all of us across Britain and Ireland in a quest for more responsive, flexible and innovative models of governance, involving civil society, business and the trade unions in creative problem-solving.

I see that a Yes vote is like ‘throwing it all on red’ with crossed fingers. A No vote is now a vote for real change, within a powerful and robust UK State, that has delivered so much for stability in N. Ireland, alongside the flexibility to accommodate political and administrative structures across our shared land border with the South. Wales must be hungry for that opportunity, too?

Let’s enter the debate with enthusiasm and vigour, rather than cynicism and despair.

Quintin Oliver led the YES Campaign in the 1998 Referendum on the Good Friday Agreement and advises Better Together on a No, Thanks vote on 18th September.  He is Director at Stratagem-NI.

The Bevan Foundation has published this article to inform debate – it has no position on the Scottish referendum. Articles from other perspectives have also been commissioned and will be published when received.