Social media, political opportunity and Scottish nationalism : the performative politics of the radical left in Scotland

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Social media, Political Opportunity and Scottish

Nationalism

The Performative Politics of the Radical Left in Scotland

By: Maddie Lou Barink (6063594)

Programme: Research Master Social Sciences Interpretive Track Department: Graduate School of Social Sciences

Supervisor: Professor Alex Strating

Second Reader: Professor Conny Roggeband Date Of Submission: 31-August-2016

Place Of Submission: Amsterdam

Word count: 23866

Summary:

An analysis of the Scottish pro-independence left in an era of connectivity. By combining online and offline ethnography with an extensive exegesis of the history of the Scottish left I was able to trace the various factions through time. Taking a dynamic statist approach, this analysis offers a contextual account of the various repertoires of contention mobilised by the Scottish left and the results of these performances. I was able to provide some insights on how social media is used in Scottish politics and its effects, and implications for nationalism.

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Chapter 1: Introduction

On September 18th 2014 an historic event took place. In a national referendum, 3,623,344 people in Scotland answered yes or no to the question “Should Scotland be an independent country?” 44. 7% answered yes and so at the end of a spirited campaign the No’s had the vote. The hopes of people seeking an independent Scotland were dashed. There had been much political effort and resources put into the Yes-campaign, and the polls seemed to be going in favour of independence right before the final vote, but the momentum was not enough to gain a majority. The Scottish First Minister and most ardent campaigner for Scottish Independence, Alex Salmond, stood down and the discussion seemed to be over. But the question of independence still plays a large role in Scottish as well as UK wide politics.

The YES-campaign had successfully galvanised a new generation to engage in politics and brought people who would normally never share a platform together on one issue that transcended others for the time being. After the referendum, the pro-independence parties saw their membership grow immensely, and the results of the UK elections of 2015 saw an absolute massacre of unionist parties in Scotland, with the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) growing from 6 seats in Parliament to 56, winning all but three Scottish constituencies.

The election results seemed to suggest that the fight for independence was far from over. During the referendum, it was the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), the far-left chapter of the independence movement that made the case for a particular kind of Scotland, not just an independent one. RISE was formed in 2015 by a group of RIC alumni with the explicit aim to consolidate the left in Scotland, sharing the dream of a Scottish state that would be explicitly socialist and

internationalist. Growing up in a Dutch society in an English-speaking household, I tended to feel rather isolated from the rest of the country – ‘Dutchness’ was not something I felt comfortable with. My own failure to feel any particular connection to any of the countries I was born a citizen of has often left me pondering what was at the heart of nationalist feelings of belonging. These movements sparked my academic interest; because they represented a form of nationalism I could imagine relating to.

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I argue that the explicitly political nature of this kind of nationalism opens the door to analysing these movements as social/political movements because shared values and membership of the nation become interlaced. I was also particularly intrigued by the explicitly international perspective of the case for Scottish Nationalism. When people hear ‘the resurgence of nationalism’ they often imagine right-wing populists, such as Geert Wilders, Marine le Pen and Nigel Farage, rather than the pro-refugee and the internationalist rhetoric of the Scottish independence movement.

Online politicking is still a fairly new phenomenon and there is a multitude of opinions about its affectivity. Using Sidney Tarrow’s dynamic statist approach to analysing social movements explicated in Strangers at the Gates, I aim to analyse the strategies mobilised by RIC and RISE activists during the referendum, the 2015 UK parliamentary elections and 2016 Scottish Parliamentary elections. During my fieldwork spanning from July 2015 up until February 2016 I was able to see how RISE was formed, which goals it set, how they sought to achieve them, and what they achieved. At the end of my fieldwork what struck me as particularly

interesting was how the historical, ideological, political and personal seems to intersect in nationalist performances.

In the remainder of this chapter, I will introduce my theoretical framework, research questions and research approach. Chapter 2 will trace the far-left section of the independence movement from the first Scottish Parliament Elections in 1999 up to and including the Westminster1 elections of 2015. Starting with a brief overview of the tumultuous history of the Scottish left before the referendum. I hope to do justice to the larger socio-political context in which the beginnings of RISE were conceived. I continue my analysis within the context of the UK General Election.

The third chapter will be my most traditionally ethnographic and aims to show how RISE was formed and how they pursued their goals during the Scottish Parliament elections. I hope to effectively communicate how activists in RISE used social media and reflect on its potential for social movements. I hope to show in what ways social media influenced activists within RISE during its formation and

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2016 Holyrood2 election campaign. In the final chapter, I will summarise my theoretical analysis and suggested avenues for further research. Finally, I will conclude my thesis with a final analysis of my findings.

Theoretical Framework

In Strangers at the Gates Sidney Tarrow argues that the study of contentious politics has become far too focussed on the endogenous analysis of social

movements and thus divorced them from the context and interactions that structure their behaviour. Mobilising resources in a risky fight can stifle a social movement by leaving it bare with no victories to build on, thus Tarrow argues we need to account for what mechanisms trigger mobilisation. Tarrow advocates for taking a dynamic statist approach, which is more focussed on the mechanisms behind mobilisation rather that the internal motivations of social movements. This

approach views state making as a continuous process, rather than a static one. This allows for the specification of shifting political opportunities for actors and sectors because it structures institutions (Tarrow 2012: 83). Tarrow refers to Charles Tilly’s analysis of Contentious Politics in Great Britain (sic)3_{(1995) where this approach} was starting to be developed. Tilly states that we should take ‘long streams of contention’ or ‘contentious episodes’ rather than discreet events to unravel the causal mechanisms and structures at work behind mobilisation. He identifies two analytical terms: Performances and Repertoires of Contention.

Performances are ‘ “learned and historically grounded” ways of making claims on other people which “in short run… strongly limit the choices available to would-be makers of claims” (Charles Tilly in Tarrow 2012: 125). Tilly defines repertoires as “ claim-making routines that apply to the same claimant-object pairs: bosses and workers, peasant and landlords” (Tilly 2008: 14. Tilly compares claim making to improvisational performances such as Jazz and commedia dell’arte. As in these other forms however, the scope for improvisation is not limitless. In this case they are bounded by the state, historical context and political opportunity. The

2

Metonym for Scottish Parliament.

3_{(sic) The title of this book is actually wrong, it states that it is about Great Britain} while it includes analysis of Northern Ireland which should make the title:

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claimants that feature in the independence movement perform their various

repertoires on the National (or Scottish) stage, the State (UK) stage and the Global stage.

Tarrow defines political opportunity as: “consistent – but not necessarily formal, permanent or national signals to social or political actors that either encourages or discourages them to use their internal resources to form social movements.” (ibid: 78). The strength of the definition is that it can include weak and strong groups because it does not just emphasise formal political structures as many other definitions of political opportunity do. It allows smaller social

movements with relatively few ‘internal resources’ to be included and taken seriously and also allows for situations where opportunities are so slim that even larger groups are unable to organise (ibid: 78-80).

The referendum was a contentious event in which various nationalist performances and repertoires were exercised. Anderson defines the nation as “an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign” (Anderson 2006: 7) He explains how the conception of the community as

something national (nationalism) gained ground as traditional communities (such as religious institutions) were beginning to decline. Latin was losing its monopoly on print as capitalists sought to increase their sales by tapping into the vernacular-speaking market (ibid: 43). The result was the standardisation of these ‘national’ languages, increasing mutual intelligibility and allowing people to conceptualise themselves as a linguistic community.

Newspapers and literature not only territorialized these linguistic

communities, they also created a sense of simultaneity (ibid: 24). Many occurrences could be conceived as happening at the same time, which placed one’s own

experience in context of a certain time and place. It also created a sense of

communal history, for example people being able to remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when the Berlin Wall fell. Anderson refers to this as: popular nationalism.

According to Anderson, the state can use its resources to create a sense of sameness and belonging across a (often) heterogeneous nation. Anderson shows how states use tools to maintain or create legitimacy. In the census everybody gains a spot and is forced to define themselves in certain categories, maps give people a

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visual aid to imagine their territory and museums contribute to the naturalization of a national history that never existed as such (ibid: 163-185). The idea of the nation has so strongly penetrated our imaginations that imagining history without

nationalistic terminology is nearly impossible (ibid: 187). Anderson calls these manipulations of sentiments popular nationalist sentiments on which a state is dependent: official nationalism (ibid: 109- 110).

Scottish nationalism has been consistently referred to as a form of ‘civic nationalism,’ rather than ethnic or popular nationalism. Michael Keating, a prominent author on Scottish politics and independence, defines civic nationalism as follows:

“Civic nationalism is a collective enterprise based upon common values and institutions, and patterns of social interaction. The bearers of national identity are institutions, customs, historical memories and rational/secular values. Anyone can join the nation irrespective of birth or ethnic origins, though the cost of adaptation varies.” (emphasis added Keating 1997: 690)

Keating argues that the Scottish case is overwhelmingly rooted in the tradition of civic nationalism4, Keating notes that this does not mean there are no other forms of nationalism in Scotland, however (Keating 1997)

Though these characterisations may represent the feelings of most Scottish nationalists, there is also political nationalism. Here it is not vague ‘shared values’ emerging from the community that drives independence, but a particular ideology. Independence was largely seen as a prerequisite for enacting policies that reflected the shared values of the Scottish population, so there can be some overlap between political and civic nationalism if the ideology lines up with the community. As shown in the graph below, I was able to discern six forms of nationalist repertoires. Official, civic, political, popular (and ethnic) are defined above. Cosmopolitan refers to the ideological commitment to internationalism. How they are performed will become clear throughout this piece.

4

Though much smaller, there is also a pro-Scottish independence right wing in Scotland. They will not be analysed in this thesis, however.

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I have distinguished between two types of repertoires, nationalist repertoires that relate to the different kinds of nationalism performed and

repertoires of action, which refers to the definition given by Tilly above. Though there can be some overlap, I differentiated communal and repertoires of action. The first stresses the need for consistent local engagement in politics and bases its claims and performances on what emerges from this engagement. The second is generally based on ‘human right claims’ and/or a universal ideology (della Porta and Diani 2006: vii, Polletta and Jasper 2001: 284) Performances in the second type of repertoire tend to rely on the temporary moments of contention; the goal is to alleviate anomie based. They gain legitimacy by traditional political validation such as elections.

News media is one of the main institutions that make up the public sphere. Jürgen Habermas defines the public sphere as “a realm of our social life, in which

something approaching public opinion can be formed” (Habermas: 1974 in Franser 2007).” Nancy Fraser stated that in an ideal social sphere, this public opinion generated inclusively. Publicity and ultimately the legitimacy of viewpoints would be dependent upon how well it stands up to critical scrutiny (Fraser 2007: 7). The critical function of the public sphere in a democratic society would be to hold

State DeEined Repertoires Of Nationalism OfEicial Civic Political Cosmopolitan Popular Ethnic

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public officials accountable to its citizens. The public sphere was hence long referred to implicitly in reference to a particular sovereignty.

Of course, the reality of the public sphere does not neatly fit this idealised description. Access to the means of participating in the public sphere was long reserved for the privileged. The news media is dominated by traditional institutions with their own agendas, whether political or commercial. Access to the public sphere was far from inclusive and thus has long been dominated by members of the intellectual, cultural, political and/or economic elite. In practice this means that what was considered ‘news’ was determined by highly educated (predominantly) white males, who are (at least) middle class (Fraser 2007: 8). These were the arbiters of legitimated public discourse within a nation.

The advent of social media and the increasing role it plays in informing the public is conceived at its most utopian as a democratisation of this public sphere. Because Internet access is the only prerequisite for maintaining a social media account, everyone can seemingly contribute to the public sphere equally. The promise of social media is that people who do not fit the traditional mould can engage in discussions on a public forum on their own terms and without needing to be part of any official power structure (such as a political party). Previously

marginalised voices now have a much more accessible platform to share their opinions on. Social media is not just used for politics however, it is also a space where people share their daily lives with friends and family. Some argue that this means that what used to be private is becoming public.

The prevalence of English as new lingua franca of business, diplomacy, academics et cetera and its ubiquity as a second language has enabled its speakers from various disparate parts of the world engage in the emerging ‘trans national public sphere’ (Fraser 2007). This contributes to deterritorialization of the public sphere and discussion on the human rights based claims associated with NSM’s. Personal localised action can become a stage of international solidarity online. This represents a new way for activists to engage in transnational politics, and

contributes to a sense of simultaneity that can be experienced globally rather than bound by vernaculars.

I argue however that what a person’s public social media profile is a self-aware construction of identity. Lauren Langman defines identity as:

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“A reflexive image of one’s self – a narrative, a story of a social actor’s continuity across time and space. It defines a person/group as distinct from others in norms, values, lifestyles, social practices, and aesthetic tastes. Identity locates the actor within the ‘cohort flow’ of history, where biography and collective history/memory intersect, in the current moment and in an imagined future”

This description of identity shows both the symbolic weight of identity and its constructed nature simultaneously. These identity claims are unstable and ‘edited’ to create a more coherent narrative than reality reflects. On public social media platforms, the constructed nature of identity is a daily practice. How one represents oneself is tailored to how the person wants to come across online, this applies to both individuals and organisations.

Throughout this thesis, want to explore the relationship between what repertoires and performances of nationalism and action were performed by actors throughout the referendum campaign, the 2015 UK Parliament elections, and the 2016 Scottish Parliament, The relationship between these mobilisations form a dynamic statist approach the reveal the constraints in opportunity and the internal dynamic that structures these performances both online and off.

Dynamic

Statism

Repetoirs Internal Dynamics Role of Social Media

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The political landscape of the UK and Scotland is complicated and contentious. Because of the amount of acronyms, I have provided a glossary in Annex I on page 75. There is also a detailed timeline with an overview of the major events that form the context of this thesis in Annex II 78.

Research Approach

Case selection

My main reason for selecting RISE was personal interest. However, I think it provides a rather typical case study of the intersection between social movements, neo-nationalism, electoral politics, and new-left movements that are arising in the face of increased austerity policies. I believe any of these topics is relevant to understanding politics in our current epoch. The United Kingdom seems to be at a peak in the cycle of contention (Tarrow 2012). The independence referendum, the UK General elections, the Scottish Parliament elections, and most recently ‘Brexit’, all provide fertile grounds for observing how this social movement create and seize political opportunity (though the latter does not fall within the scope of analysis of this piece).

All too often, researchers are forced to reconstruct events after the fact. But due to the on-going upheaval in the political landscape of the UK, there was an opportunity for me to study a social movement and how it functions as it was happening. Political science can tend to focus on top-down analysis of social movements, nationalism, democratic politics et cetera. Studying social movements ethnographically can give more insight into the processes taking place at the grassroots level and shows how politics works in activists’ everyday lives. Timespan

Table 1 Timespan of Analysis

Time Period Data Gathered

Pre- Independence Referendum 1998 - 2012 Discourse Analysis: Literature Study Independence Campaign 2012 - 2014 Discourse Analysis Literature Study

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Online participant observations from Nov 2014

Post - Independence Referendum 2015 - 2016

Discourse Analysis,

Ethnography (online and off) Field Sites

I first arrived in Glasgow at the end of July 2015. The city has a long history of progressive attitudes and of working class activism. During the period overseen by the infamous Margaret Thatcher, Glasgow suffered the effects of extreme

unemployment and became known as a city with mean streets, razor gangs and drunks (N. Taylor 1990, 2). Between 1971 and 1983 Glasgow lost a fifth of its total jobs (Boyle and Hughes 1991, 219). During the same period there was a debate on devolution, which called the legitimacy of Conservative rule in Scotland into question (Phillips 2005, 64). Then still part of the administrative region of

Strathclyde, Glasgow supported the 1979 referendum on devolution with 54 % of voters saying yes to home rule (Parkhouse and Trotter 1979). Although the referendum ultimately failed due to low voter-turnout, Thatcher’s policies broadened support for home rule after the referendum because:

“Anti-inflationary fiscal mechanisms, designed by Thatcher’s

Chancellors to dampen roaring growth in the south, were experienced as crudely deflationary instruments in industrial Scotland, further speeding the contraction of primary production. Hence political devolution in Scotland came to be viewed as mitigating economic decline by providing the means of matching economic and industrial management to Scotland’s particular needs” (Phillips 2005, 65)

Glaswegian support for home rule only increased in the 1997 referendum on devolution Glasgow city turned out 83.6 % in favour. There seems to be a link between pro-leftist policy and pro-Scottish rule. Unsurprisingly, Glasgow City was one of only five constituencies to vote 53, 5 % yes in the Scottish Independence Referendum.

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Roughly 70% of Scotland’s total population lives within the so-called central belt that included both cities, the stretch of land between them and their satellites. I was able to observe that most (if not all) of the ‘national’ organisation of RISE also took place within Glasgow and Edinburgh. Activist from across Scotland come to

national meetings in these cities. Hence, this is where I spent most of my time physically. Online I was able to remain connected to innumerable activist all across Scotland. The Glasgow centricity of my analysis reflects the more general Glasgow centricity of the movements and activist I analysed.

Discourse Analysis

Bacchi explicates that the ‘analysis of discourse’ explores how certain issues are given meaning within a particular social or political context. This approach to discourse aims to unmask power relations in text that lead to a particular

understanding of issues and events. In the context of social movement research, discourse is an object of analysis, imbued with meanings and power relations that require a thorough understanding of the many different maps to uncover (Bacchi 2005, 199-200). This type of discourse analysis formed an important part of my research. RISE regularly engaged in policy debates. Exploring the choices, they made and how they choose to present them is an important part of figuring out how the movement tries to achieve their goals.

Before entering the field, I wanted to gain as much insight about the movement as I could. Using Lexus Nexus, I searched for articles with tags like: Scottish Independence or ‘Alex Salmond, or references to a particular party or event. I limited what I read to the most relevant for my research, which was not always easy to identify. I started observing various people online in November 2014, it was easier to identify what were relevant articles because my informants shared them online. Though the articles they shared are all viewed from a particular perspective and thus may not accurately reflect reality a sich, it was a quite

effective way of getting a sense of how activists interpret reality.

Meg Mclagen states that discourse analysis in political science can identify crucial political tactics employed through the analysis of how activists use framing. However does little to reveal the social circumstances under which these frames

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emerge (Mclagan 2002, 92-93). I hope to avoid this potential pitfall by virtue of the combination with ethnographic fieldwork. My analysis of the left before the

referendum and during the UK general elections is largely based on interpretations from texts my informants shared on public platforms. Over the course of my

fieldwork, I was able to talk to people about how they used social media; I was also able to verify most of the data I had gathered before living in Scotland through casual conversations with my informants.

Ethnography

There are numerous ways to define the word ‘ethnography’, anywhere from a near synonym to participant observation (Bryman 2008: 408-410) to a vague approach to social research that aims to understand things from an insider’s point of view (Clifford 1983: 130-132). The main component of doing ethnography is prolonged immersion into the field, gathering intimate details about informants’ daily

practices to gain a greater understanding of informants’ lives. This serves to

provide insight into social and cultural practices that reflect this context rather than grand abstract theorisations (Foley 2002, 482). Of course, representing others is fraught with difficulties, and since the 1980’s there has been increased attention to the researcher’s role in the field (Clifford 1983, 118-120).

Within social sciences there are countless variations on how exactly to use, reflect and write up data gathered. In the book: Devolution and the Scottish

Conservatives, Banal activism, electioneering and the politics of irrelevance, Alexander Smith shows that following the reflexive turn in the social sciences, anthropologists have been increasingly concerned with knowledge-making practices (2011: 5). Smith argues that knowledge making practices itself have become a new area in which ethnography can be successfully applied (Smith 2011: 5). Though ideologically opposites, there are some similarities in the way he and I approached the field. He also participated in many of the everyday tasks of running the organisation he was studying. We also both conducted fieldwork during an election campaign. He found that during his research the line between the ethnographer and informants became increasingly blurred.

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Smith considers his informant’s co-authors to a degree, because he came to many of his understandings through open debate with them throughout normal everyday activity rather than in the vacuum of the interview setting. Many of the activists he encountered had been ‘doing politics’ longer than he had studied it and most were also highly educated, thus he was not surprised to find that his

informants had their own valuable analysis on his research questions. Similarly, many of my informants are highly educated and were very able to reflect on my investigation as well as themselves and the actions taken by the movement. I was able to use this to my advantage and treat my research and the emerging final product as co-produced by my informants.

In other words, I aim to approach my field not from a place of absolute authority but much like Petula Sik Ying Ho who states that: “As academics, we consider ourselves knowledge producers but in fact these participants, who are willing to share their stories, have been the real source of knowledge” (Sik Ying Ho 2013, 6). Sik Ying Ho hopes to achieve this by letting the participants speak for themselves more and presenting a less bounded and stable narrative about the research but rather showing the awkward and constantly changing factors that contribute to a certain narrative (ibid 7).

My strategy was to volunteer to help the movement, pamphleteering, making calls, and writing down minutes from meetings, anything that I was able to do, I offered to do. This granted me access to everyone involved in the movement. I was able to sit in on most important meeting and even helped organise many of them myself. I was honest and open with people about my position: I was a researcher conducting research on RISE and political opportunity. At the same time, I became a very familiar face to many within the movement and was

consulted on many choices I was also meant to analyse, though others often backed most of the opinions I shared.

I opted against the use of interviews, ethnographic or otherwise. Originally, I thought I would use interviews to supplement my observational findings where I felt I needed clarification or to explore elements of tactical decision making that may be harder to observe. I also thought that ‘the interview setting’ could provide my informants with an opportunity to reflect on their practices, but in the end I was able to corroborate my findings and observations through candid and open

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the media and giving formal interviews, I began to think that an interview would probably not contribute to my understanding of the subject. My only attempt at a formal interview in the beginning of my research confirmed that interviews were likely to only really give me premeditated responses.

Positionality and Ethics

My research and my data gathering process remained very close to the daily reality of my informants. In the end I opted to try and learn by doing and tried to live like a full time campaigner myself and got very involved in the movement as a result. In the months between RISE’s launch in august 2015 and the first Democracy Conference in December 2015, I attended nearly every local circle meeting, national forum and structure workgroup that was held. Again, at first meaning to observe as much as possible, this however proved futile pretty quickly so after a month or so, I started to drop the pretence of only being a researcher. As a politically engaged person, I do not think I could have avoided getting involved. Staying distant and only observing would have also would have been severely limited in my access to relevant data for answering my research question. I do not necessarily see this as a problem, along with Sandra Harding, I believe any research endeavour worth doing should have normative implications (Harding 1993, 7 (C. A. Taylor 2013)3-74). For my part, I hope to provide some insight on how social movements can create political opportunity. As long as I am as transparent as possible in my research process, I think it can be an enormous contribution.

In Carol A. Taylor’s research on gender performance in classrooms, she claims to have used ‘diffractive methodology’ to conduct her research. Though she gives no concise definition, diffractive methodology seems to refer to a mode of research where data is not just seen as proof for the argument, but also an actor in creating knowledge (Taylor 2013, 689,691-692). I consider the data I use to illustrate my theoretical points to be just that, keen examples that I feel reflect the collective line of the movement as a whole.

When 11 RISE activists (including myself at that point) got stuck in a lift, I posted to my Facebook page: “What do you call 11 socialists trapped in a lift?” and within seconds Scott Macdonald, an SSP member in Edinburgh who was known for

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his online wit replied “12 competing factions.” In the lift we all laughed about it because the plurality of opinions and varying degrees of obsession over purity have always been the subject of ridicule of the left. The fact is all politics is compromise, even amongst ‘comrades’, because of this I have tried to analyse data that the movement produces as a whole rather than the individual opinions to the best of my abilities

Due to the everyday presence I became within the movement, people spoke to me rather candidly. I did however gather a great deal of information from informal inquisitive conversation with my research participants. One of the main problems I have run into while writing was that the movement is not nearly large enough to anonymise my informants simply by changing their name. Anyone involved in far-left politics or even just independence would easily be able to identify whom I was referring to if they considered the timing and location(s) of my research.

Instead of directly attributing information to anyone in particular, I have often opted to discuss these matters more generally and use as many news articles and blog posts as possible for citations. As far as I do use the experience of a particular individual, I am relying on public data they were willing to release. This includes: the various blog posts and status updates put forth by people within the movement on platforms associated with the movement or other coverage. I made these choices in an effort to be sensitive to the privacy concerns of my informants. Especially because of the tumultuous history of the left in Scotland, this was an important concession to make towards my research participants.

The Scots are often said to be born storytellers, I can attest to the veracity of this trope. Their constant recollections of the independence campaign, other political activist, union meetings and other antics were a joy for me to listen to. Politics is a highly performative world; British Politics is particularly known for its dramatic flair. I hope I am able to do the visceral excitement of the period justice whilst providing academic analysis in the next two chapters.

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Chapter 2: Splits, Sickles and Saltires

From Alliances to Splits

Prelude: an overview of the Scottish Pro Independence Left from 1999 to 2012. The Scottish Socialist Party (the SSP) was formed in 1998. Party convenor Tommy Sheridan, was a leading figure in the anti-poll tax campaign, and had also been a Glasgow city council member for Scottish Militant Labour (A main predecessor to the SSP). Alan McCombes, the SSP Press and Policy Coordinator successfully united the fringe behind Sheridan between the devolution referendum in 1998 and the 1999 Holyrood elections.

During Sheridan’s first year serving in parliament, he toured across Scotland meeting activists across the country, holding meetings and popularising socialist ideas. As a result, the SSP saw its membership double over the course of 2000. Throughout his first term as an MSP, Sheridan introduced two bills in Holyrood: The Abolition of Feudal Tenure Act 20005 and the Abolition of

Poindings and Warrants Act 20016. He was also arrested three times for breaching the public peace offenses7 during protest against the Trident nuclear submarine fleet stored at Faslane. Sheridan was a charismatic populist politician; he gained his legitimacy from his personality. He became the most well-known politician in Scotland. The SSP’s popular socialist platform was a success and was rewarded with an additional five seats in Scottish Parliament in the 2003 elections. Although

5 Replaced the feudal system of land tenure with a system of direct ownership.

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Justice/law/17975/Abolition date of access 27/08/16.

6 An Act of the Scottish Parliament to abolish poindings and warrant sales. This act

has been repealed as of 2002. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2001/1/enacted date of access 27/08/16.

7 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/743374.stm date of access 27/08/16.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1360222/Sheridan-held-again-in-Faslane-protest.html date of access 27/08/16.

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publically perceived as the party leader, Sheridan’s actions were guided by a strategy set by the national executive.

The result of these strategies, combined with Sheridan’s populism was 5 extra members of the SSP in the elections of 2003. All of these MSP’s took average wage of a skilled worker; the rest of their salary was donated back into the SSP’s funds. During this second term in parliament, the SSP’s activism was aimed at directly affecting the lives of the local working class. They were able to set up campaigns for free school meals for all children, scrapping prescription charges, and abolition of the council tax. Most of their claims were policy orientated and performed at the Scottish (national level). Their performance represented the communal repertoire and a civic nationalist repertoire, combined.

The success of these campaigns was also evidenced by the Scottish National Party’s 2007 election platform that represented a pivot to the left by the party. This was also the only time the SNP gained an outright majority in parliament; their success was widely attributed to their anti-austerity stance.

The internal structures of the SSP were based on the Bolshevik party, allowing internal factions to organise openly within the party as platforms. These platforms included: the Republican Communist Network (RCN), the Committee for a Worker’s International (CWI, later re-launched as Socialist Party Scotland), the International Socialist Movement (ISM) and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). The latter was founded in England and internationally is part of the International Socialist Tendency, with their Scottish branch affiliating to the SSP in 2001. The SWP can be described as ideologically and organisationally Trotskyist; they ascribe to the political views of Leon Trotsky8_{and had a tight-knit group of organisers and} activists that set the agenda at the national level.

The SWP were openly against independence until the onset of the referendum campaign. They performed their claim making at the UK level. The mobilised a cosmopolitan globalist repertoire of action, countaposing solidarity of the UK working class to what they saw as narrow and parochial Scottish

nationalism.

8_{Leon Trotsky split from the Communist party because he ultimately disagreed with Stalin about the scope of socialism.}

Stalin believed it could be consolidated within the Soviet Union and Trotsky believed it must be implemented worldwide to succeed.

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The SWP were heavily involved in the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) which is the first movement many of my respondents between the ages 27-35 got involved in. Tiina Seppälä studied StWC within the context the broader context of the global anti-war movement. She notes that StWC mainly organised large mass demonstrations opposing the invasions of Afganistan and Iraq (Seppälä 2012: 8). She states that:

“the StWC and … advocate collective political engagement at the national level. They regard pressuring the national government with a strategy of mass mobilisation as the most effective strategy. They readily engage in parliamentary politics through their close political contacts in the Labour Party and the SWP. Their understanding of politics and power is quite traditional in that they seek political change by influencing those in power.” (Seppälä 2012: 8).

The StWC was instrumental in organising the global protests against the Iraq war on the 15th of February 2003. Despite the fact they achieved one of the largest global protests, it did little to stop the war the movement was erected to prevent. As Seppälä states, the movement argues it achieved a great deal, including influencing public opinion both nationally and globally, getting rid of Prime Minster Tony Blair, empowering members and getting people involved in politics. The most outlandish claimed achievement at the global level, is that the movement was able to successfully stop a theoretical war in Iran (ibid: 12).

Seppälä identifies a few of the failing of the StWC, she states that the coalition saw ‘uniting the left’ as an important goal for the movement, this was not a goal shared by other anti war movements (Seppälä 2012: 10). It was an ambitious task in any case, but impossible to achieve if there is disunity within the movement itself. Their most specific aim, Stopping the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism more generally have not been fulfilled.

The problem is that the ‘successes’ of mass mobilisation orientated movements are hard to truly measure unless the goals of the mass movement are specific and targeted. It is hard to argue with the achievements they claim, but at the same time their most specific aim was not fulfilled, so while mass mobilisations on a global scale can penetrate public opinion, its effects on state politics remains ambiguous.

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The Left does ‘The Splits’.

In 2004, Sheridan resigned as the SSP’s convenor, citing his wife’s pregnancy as the reason. However, shortly after his statements it became clear he had been pressured to resign by the national executive of the party because of impending articles from the tabloid News of the World that detailed Sheridan’s extra-marital activities. Because his legitimacy as a leading figure was predominantly based on his personality, Tommy Sheridan had put a lot of effort into building a public persona. Getting caught at swinger’s parties and having his sexual exploits reported nationally was a major blow to the carefully crafted image Sheridan had spent years cultivating. The public humiliation at the hands of a Rupert Murdoch owned media subsidiary was a scandal Sheridan could not help but exploit.

Prior to resigning, Sheridan had confessed to other party members that parts of the stories were true, but others were not and that he intended to sue News of the World for defamation. The News of the World’s reports were backed by a journalist with whom he had an affair as well as photographic evidence. Sheridan wanted people in the SSP to be willing to testify on his behalf if called to court and deny his involvement in any extramarital sex9, even the ones he privately admitted to. Essentially, he asked the entire party leadership to commit perjury. Many within the party refused and pressured Sheridan to resign. Colin Fox was elected as convenor following Sheridan’s resignation.

Sheridan remained in the party and was elected as co-chair on the March 2006 party conference, but also pressed ahead with his legal action. This was finally heard in the summer, with the predictable consequence of SSP leaders forced to give contradictory testimony depending on whether they backed his position. The jury found in his favour, but the case judge immediately ordered a perjury investigation since at least some witnesses clearly must have been lying to make sense of the conflicting evidence. By August Sheridan announced he was leaving the party, famously announcing that the SSP was part of “the mother of all stich ups” and had conspired with MI5 and Rupert Murdoch against him. This served to discredit them as both a leftist organisation and also amounted to accusing them of being secret unionists. He and Rosemary Byrne, both still MSP’s for the SSP, defected and formed Solidarity. This new party was also backed by the SWP

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and the CWI. In 2011, Sheridan was convicted of perjury and sentenced to three years in jail. He was released in 2012. The SSP never fully recovered, and West-Dunbartonshire Council member Jim Bollan has been the only elected official for the SSP since 2007.

The CWI and the SWP backed Sheridan backed Sheridan. In 2011 the SWP faced its own internal troubles as sexual harassment and rape allegations against ‘Comrade Delta’ began to come in in 2011. Comrade Delta is a codename used for Martin Smith, the national secretary of SWP at the time. These allegations

discredited the organisation. Many of its most prominent activists and organisers decided to leave. Thirty-nine of these activists based primarily in Scotland formed the International Socialist Group (ISG) in 2011. They wanted to cooperate with the rest of the political left and felt that the SWP had become too discredited.

This history of splits has left its mark on the Scottish left. Before the referendum, the SSP was a far cry from the formidable political force they had been earlier in the century. The SSP lost all its seats parliamentary representation in the 2007 Holyrood elections, and Sheridan went from being a respected and well-known populist to a fringe figure with a loyal base of ‘loons’ (as my informants referred to them) and the SWP lost many of its activists. All of these struggles were not fought out with much civility. The people who stood behind Sheridan in his trial called the people who turned against him cowards, traitors, secret unionist-MI5 members and most famously ‘scabs’. All in all, the SSP as an organisation and most of the individual active members were unwilling to work with Solidarity and vice versa.

But the newly formed ISG and their active distancing from Sheridan and the SWP represented a group that the SSP might be able to cooperate with. To be an effective force in politics, both the ISG the SSP needed to broaden its activist base. The referendum set the stage for collaboration; suddenly anyone who was pro independence had one goal to work towards: getting the public to vote to become an independent nation. We now turn to this set of contentious performances of nationalism.

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The referendum 2012 – 2014

Tarrow identifies five signals that can indicate opportunities for social movements to mobilise. The first is openings of accesses to power (1). He notes that the relationship between access and mobilisation is not positive or negative but rather curvilinear, neither completely open nor completely closed systems encourage the most mobilisation (ibid: 78). The second is taking advantage of unstable political alliances (2), for example electoral instabilities, which can represent a large opportunity for bringing in underrepresented social groups (ibid: 79). The third is the availability of powerful political allies (3), who can act as gatekeepers to influence the public sphere. The fourth signal is divides between elites (4), which Tarrow argues can widen the ‘circle of conflict’, giving groups outside formal politics marginal power. The firth is avoiding oppression (5), which Tarrow states is a ‘complex factor’ for predicting mobilisations (ibid: 80 ). Like opening of access to power, the relationship may be curvilinear or dependent on the local

effectiveness of effectivity of the repertoire rather than a predictor of mobilisation (ibid).

Using the opportunity structure, I will show which repertoires of nationalism were mobilised and by whom during the independence referendum and Westminster Election, both on and offline. I analyse which nationalist repertoires might be gaining more traction by reflecting on their achievements. I hope to give some insight into why Scotland voted no, and in what ways the 2015 Westminster elections presented a different outcome. I then reflect on what the implications are for Anderson’s concept of imagined communities.

The Actors, Their Performances and Repertoires The Actors

The referendum itself represented an opening in the access to power, for all three nationalist groups. After winning an outright majority in 2011 Holyrood elections, the SNP moved to enact the Scottish Independence Referendum Act 201310, which

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was passed through the Scottish Parliament in agreement with the UK government. After many reformulations, the question that would appear on the ballot read: “Should Scotland be an independent country?” This formulation was considered to be the most neutral by an independent report (Pittock 2012). The stakes were high because the outcome could have permanently shifted the relationship between Scotland and the UK.

Shifting alignment and alliances were seen across the political spectrum during the referendum. The pro-independence left was largely divided between three factions: the SNP (who funded most of the YES campaign), RIC and Hope over Fear. Increasingly disillusioned with the official far left in Scotland, many socialists turned to the Scottish National Party (SNP) who had been pivoting to the left since 2007. During the run up to the independence referendum, new activists became involved in politics. Youth voters who are often associated with more radical politics found themselves organising within the SNP alongside centrists and 60 year-old socialists within the YES movement.

However, there was still a major part of the left that was not politically aligned with the SNP. In 2012 several members of the ISG, the SSP, left wing members of the Scottish Greens and independent leftist campaigners co-founded the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC). What they imagined an independent Scotland could look like may differ extensively between the SNP and RIC as such, but achieving independence was seen as prerequisite to any of them.

The reasoning behind the foundation of RIC was to provide a united far-left voice within the YES campaign. Because various actors had differing degrees of access to nationalist repertoires, there is some overlap between the ways in which these repertoires were performed. For the sake of clarity, I will try and mainly highlight the differences and otherwise refer to the independence movement as a whole.

Tommy Sheridan once again toured Scotland to campaign for independence. Through his ‘non-political’ pro-independence platform, Hope over Fear, Sheridan was able to re-emerge on the political stage and rebuild his public image through campaigning for a Yes. Hope over Fear was of course tied to Solidarity. They organised several very well attended independence rallies, with events that thrived off Sheridan’s flair for public speaking and connecting to large crowds. Hope over

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Fear’s success was seen as a sign that the pro-independence left was far from consolidated in Scotland.

The independence movement as a whole was able to perform the repertoire of civic nationalism on both the state and national lever during the referendum by framing frame key Westminster policies as Non-Scottish where they diverge significantly from Scottish public opinion. Take for instance the renewal of Trident, Britain’s fleet of nuclear submarines, which are stored in a harbour in Scotland. Most people seeking independence vehemently oppose the renewal of Trident. As a whole, Scotland polls against the renewal of Trident because of the risks keenly felt by those living in its blast radius, wasteful spending, and widespread support for nuclear disarmament. Many point towards the risk of storage in Scotland as a disvalue of risks to Scottish citizens versus English, especially considering the population’s opinions on the matter.

The examples of other policies are numerous: The Bedroom Tax, the further privatisation of the NHS, opposition to Tory Austerity and anti-immigration

policies were all references as instances where Scotland politically differed from the rest of the UK and thus legitimised Scotland as a nation state through the

mobilisation of the civic nationalist tradition. The fact is, many of these policies are unpopular in certain sections of society across the UK, but Scotland being a

separate nation allows them to be reframed as increasing political divides, and their effect on Scotland as part of the democratic deficit (which independence would put an end to).

Indeed, for some independence supporters even the weather forecast has become a symbolic site of contention, with the BBC's 2005 choice to adjust the map used in nightly broadcast perceived as minimising the country's geographical size. Echoing an Andersonian focus on the importance of always-politicised cartopgraphy, pro-independence, filmmaker Robert Sproul-Cran argues:

"Why am I so concerned about what seems a trivial issue, and one which the BBC has already addressed? Well I believe it’s far from trivial – and current depictions are still misleading. This has a profound effect on our understanding of who and where we are in the world. It’s recognised that different countries choose different cartographic projections to reflect their sense of themselves. . .Is Scotland big

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enough to make its own way in the world? Our response to that question is based not just on economic statistics, but also on an instinctive assessment of physical size and natural resources. In the coming seven months the BBC needs to make every effort to be seen to be impartial. These weather map animations literally show a south of England perspective. They are biased and misleading."11

The Performance

The SNP has a long history of state making performances on both the UK or state level and the Scottish or national level. The referendum represented an opportunity to legitimise their status as the official arbiters of the state for the SNP. They were able to incorporate all the identified repertoires of nationalism identified in this study, and set the stage for the mobilisation of popular nationalist performance. The year of the referendum was partly decided upon because it coincided with the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, the battle that ended the medieval Scottish wars of independence from English kings. Next to this, Scotland was also set to host the Commonwealth Games of 2014. The celebration of this battle would contribute to Scottish pride. As we can infer from Anderson’s work, creating a sense of historicity is important to the success of a nationalist movement. Creating a convincing

narrative about ‘what a Scotland is and has always been’ is arguably more effective than reasoned arguments. If we look at the rise of right wing popular nationalism, we can see just how effective this still is.

From the YES Buttons that many Scottish Nationalists wore, to decorated-storefronts, the Yes-Campaign encouraged people to manifest their imagined community through material artefacts. There was no escaping the referendum in the streets, especially not in Glasgow. The material manifestations were not limited to physical locations. Online The YES campaign was very successful at creating simple sharable content that was disseminated far and wide. Using applications such as Twibbon to edit their image, people were able to easily show their support for independence. The application ads a small symbol on your profile picture, often designed by individual activists. Even a shallow glance at people’s Facebook profile

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was often enough to identify other allies online. This also resulted in a mass frenzy of connection making, as people with similar political alignments added each other to their social media network sometimes purely based on their profile picture.

The social media landscape in Scotland during the referendum seemed like a never-ending stream of political performance; pictures of protests, meetings, rallies, blog posts, banners, political articles and opinion pieces. But it was not just a politics. There are also boundless cultural memes and tropes on display in

people’s newsfeeds that would be hard to understand if you had not grown up in Scotland or at least another part of the UK (unless you are perhaps a social scientist investigating Scotland for some reason).

The ubiquity of the markers of ‘Scottishness’, meant people could imagine this Scotland, even if they preferred to remain in the UK. An independent Scottish state was no longer a vague and inconceivable reality, it had become imaginable because it had a material and tangible presence that was not merely felt, but experienced (Meyer 2010). Quite apart from the final result, the overt campaign that had both sides of the aisle fighting tooth and nail for every last vote saw the highest turnout recorded in the UK for a referendum or election since Universal Suffrage12. The stage was set and people were performing independence

everywhere, proving convincing enough to shake the foundation of unionism to its core.

The repertoires of both popular and civic nationalism were mobilised by the independence movement as a whole. The SNP were the only representatives of the evolved parliament. They were the only ones that could mobilise state resources to manipulate popular nationalist sentiments to create legitimacy. I argue that as such the SNP were uniquely responsible for the rapid production of the repertoire of official nationalism. Other factions and individuals were able to mobilise and reproduce official nationalism on the national level, but the SNP’s status as representatives of the devolved government constrained RIC’s ability to perform official nationalism on the UK stage was circumscribed by the power of the SNP.

12

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/scotland-referendum-turnout-highest-since-universal-suffrage-introduced-1.1935162 Date of Access 31-08-2016.

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RIC did not limit their political interest to Scotland and the UK. Many tended to keep track of at least other European developments and politics in the US to varying degrees. Most RIC activists were interested in politics more broadly; they had a genuine desire to understand how to tackle political problems and their cause. Similar political struggles in other countries, and how activists involved in them organise, was a source of much fascination. This broader interest in politics meant that RIC was also able to foster new alliances, yet another one of Tarrow’s five signals.

Through official invitations to conferences and informally, participants in RIC kept in contact with movements in other countries. Especially the Catalonian and Basque independence movements were often referred to my respondents as ‘sister movements’. These bonds however were certainly not ‘new’, there had been connections between these small European independence movements before the advent of mass online instant communication. They were however strengthened by it. There are Twitter accounts and Facebook pages like Catalans for YES dedicated to showing cross-border support for their sister movements. These provide another platform that widened post reach13, making it more likely for posts to ‘go viral’. But more than this, the instantaneous nature of virtual communication meant that

activists in sister movements across the world could comment on the state of affairs in Scotland during the referendum instantaneously and as easily as anyone that was actually there. There were also able to share similar experiences from their own political world. I argue that social media has increased the affectivity of

cosmopolitan repertoire of nationalism.

RIC’s cosmopolitan nationalist repertoire had a specifically political ideology at its root. According to then RIC organiser Jonathan Shafi, there was a deliberate choice to make RIC more ‘internationalist’ in nature. Shafi (as he was often affectionately referred to as a nickname) was also a co-founder of the ISG. The internationalist character is connected to the history of Trotskyist organisations he had been part of. Many of the organisers within RIC had come from Trotskyist

13

According to Facebook’s own definition: “Post reach is the number of people who have seen your post. Your post counts as reaching someone when it's shown in News Feed. Figures are for the first 365 days after a post was created and include people viewing your post on desktop and mobile.

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backgrounds. Organisationally however RIC was much less hierarchical, with individual RIC chapters across Scotland all somewhat autonomously operating.

Though RIC were credited with being the ‘true voice of the independence movement’ by the Better Together campaign14_{, and having successfully engaged} hundreds of young activists in politics, many of my respondents who had been active within RIC stated feeling like RIC’s specific role in the YES movement had been severely understated. RIC activists had successfully engaged more working class citizens and contributed to the anti-establishment framing of independence. They were mobilising the civic nationalism that had been part of the independence movement from the start very successfully.

Within RIC, many shared an acute disdain for cultural or ethnic nationalism. On of RIC’s main slogans was “Westminster is for the rich, Scotland can be for everyone.” For the activists that identified with RIC, independence is a means for ‘self-governance’. To them independence was merely a means to the end of socialism, and without an explicitly open border and anti-austerity message, they felt independence was just meaningless pandering to people who feel a moral superiority due to their Scottish descent. Here we can see that RIC combined the civic nationalist and cosmopolitan internationalist repertoire.

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Denouement

Two days before the referendum on the 16th of September the newspaper The Daily Record made history by printing this front page.

Figure 1 The Vow full text in annex III page 82 for accessibility.

The Vow. No two words spoken together were more capable of inspiring such a diverse range of outrage amongst my respondents.

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The Daily Record has openly supported the Labour party since 1955, and during the referendum they had supported the unionist position while

simultaneously speaking out against austerity. They gave both Better Together and YES Scotland the chance to edit an entire addition of The Daily Record right before polling day. This was the result of Blair McDougal's editing for Better Together.

To my informants The Vow was the ultimate culmination of ‘Project Fear’ as the Better Together is called amongst Yes activists, especially more militantly left ones. The origin of the defamatory nickname was surprisingly the result of an office joke15 but it stuck due to the tactics of scaremongering that were mobilised by the Better Together campaign.

The Vow was signed by Prime Minister David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, the then party leaders of the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal

Democrats, respectively. The front page did absolutely everything it could to appeal to the soft-independence Scots both visually and with words. Take for instance the handwritten signatures symbolising the personal commitment of the undersigned politicians and their respective parties. Or the parchment-paper backdrop chosen for the text, invoking images of other historical treaties of the past. This appeal to history was done to stress continuity, and create a sense of safety in the status quo. The only two things on the parchment that are visually jarringly contemporary are the font of the headline and the map of Scotland watermark. The font used for the words THE VOW on top was all-caps bold Helvetica, similar to that used on traffic signs and often deliberately used to create and exert authority. The watermark of the map of Scotland was of course deliberately mobilised to show the respect for Scotland as a nation, while trying to keep it under the protective wing of the UK. The National Health Service (NHS) was always very popular in Scotland, especially among older (former) Labour supporters. But recent cuts to the NHS in England raised concerns over the NHS in Scotland. The SNP was now the party promising not to cut the NHS’s budget and even possibly expanding it, but they claimed to need independence to do so. Independence as a vote for the NHS was a salient argument, especially for disgruntled Scottish Labour voters who lamented the increasingly centrist stance Labour has adopted since Prime Minister Tony

15

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/11/project-fear-started-as-a-silly-private-joke-now-it-wont-go-away Date of Access 31-08-2016

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The Vow promised to deliver the power to control the budget and NHS in a quick and safe way. Repeating safety concerns and planting the seed of doubt over whether an independent Scotland would be able to provide social security was a powerful argument for the severely impoverished. The promise of home-rule nullified part of the democratic deficit arguments made by independence supporters.

Naturally, it sparked major controversy in the last days before the referendum. No one that was a hard-line independence activist believed a single word of this front page. They were however aware that it might be convincing to others. My

respondents almost all point to The Vow as ‘the lie that saved the union’. A survey researching why the Scots voted 'No' revealed some interesting findings. I will discuss part of them and explain why they are relevant for understanding the continued efforts of the Scottish Independence Movement.

The same survey showed that 60.9% of No-voters thought more powers were coming, and that more power was good. After the Vow, the confidence that more powers would be devolved did increase, though not very substantially. The effect of vote choice was minimal on its own, yet compounded with the findings that people who were less willing to accept risk were more likely to vote no, as well as elderly and people who were uncertain of the consequences of independence. It would seem that the Vow presented a comfortable compromise that would combine the positive arguments for independence with the relative safety of staying in the UK, definitely keeping the pound and avoiding other uncertainties (Henderson and Mitchell 2015, 7, 10-12, 19-21).

Despite the performed binary divide between the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ camps during the campaign, voters rather tended to be more in the middle. The survey showed that voters were more pessimistic about the alternative than enthusiastic about their preferred option. I think this shows why many No-voters are still persuadable towards a Yes when their perception of their preferred option gets worse, or the alternative starts looking better.

Towards the end of the campaign, the survey showed that two key

arguments were shifting in their importance. The argument concerning the possible negative effects of independence on the economy started to lose traction, while the

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argument made by the Yes campaign about a more equal division of wealth under an independent Scotland was gaining momentum (Henderson and Mitchell

2015)on, et al. 2015, 21-22). Henderson concludes that if the referendum had taken place later, the result might have been closer.

Reprieve

After losing the referendum, Alex Salmond passed the First Minister torch to his deputy Nicola Sturgeon and (successfully) ran for Westminster MP of Gordon. Salmond is a polarising figure, with the survey cited above showing that 5,2% of No-voters did so because they did not trust Salmond. Yet he was also very popular amongst supporters of independence. He is indisputably a savvy politician, and letting Sturgeon take over thus was also a tactical move; he could remain present as a political force while he minimises his stigma by giving someone new the chance to take over as the main face of Scottish pro-independence politicians. Also, Sturgeon has proved very popular - even outside of Scotland16.

Tarrow’s signals for mobilisation remained similar to the referendum context. The UK elections represented the first big opening of access to power; it was however not nearly as direct an opening for achieving independence as the referendum had been. But the shocking results stumped news outlets across the UK, as opinion polls proved inaccurate. For many in the independence campaign, it seemed like the results could be seen as a referendum on the referendum. I will show how

independence activists were able to use the UK elections as a way to further their goal.

There were also still shifting alliances, with the formation of the Scottish Left Project (SLP) in Winter 2014. This new group consisted mainly of previously unaffiliated activists and the (now disbanded) ISG, who tried to reach out to other socialist factions in Scotland, primarily the SSP. Solidarity did not contest the following years UK elections; Sheridan gave his endorsement to the SNP, which further entrenched parts of the left under the wing of the SNP. The SPS saw this as Sheridan moving away from his previously “principled socialist position” and thus split from Solidarity (Gardham 2015). Though the Greens and the SSP did stand in

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some constituencies, the first-past-the-post voting system that determines the make up of Westminster makes it near impossible for smaller parties to win. Thus the continued efforts of the pro independence left largely served to help the SNP get elected in as many Scottish constituencies as possible.

The Conservatives were already all but wiped off the electoral map on both a Scottish Parliamentary and Scottish UK constituency level. Opinion polls at the time were showing signs of decline in popularity for both Labour and the Lib Dems. The SNP was the main beneficiary, with lifelong Labour supporters switching parties, often forsaking generations of tradition and their hard-line anti-independence stances to lend their support the SNP. The Better Together campaign seemed to epitomise establishment politics at a time where people are increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo. Thus through the SNP’s two year long political performance of nationalism against them, the representatives of establishment politics in Scotland, they were able to mobilise an anti-establishment performance on the UK stage.

Once again, the Scottish independence movement was able to frame key policies as non-Scottish (civic nationalist repertoire). Because the UK elections are heavily covered by the official state media, this repertoire reached far more people who would have otherwise not have been receptive to nationalist performances in Scotland. This immobility on these issues post-referendum was seen as more proof of the democratic-deficit. Especially in lieu of any effective new power being devolved, this creates a sense among Scots that they may not ever be represented within the banner of UK politics (Pittock 2012: 83). The entire independence movement benefitted from the overall majority support on these political issues.

I argue the perception of oppression amongst the general population

increased. The SNP’s performance of nationalism during the referendum campaign had pitted them against all the of the establishment parties on the UK wide political stage. Prime Minister David Cameron referred to the influx of a purely Scottish party into parliament, and referred to the possibility of a Labour/SNP coalition as a “clear and present threat” to the UK (Crace 2015). Meanwhile Labour leader Ed Miliband denied any possibility of working with the SNP, claiming he’d rather have a Tory government than govern with them (Wintour and Watt 2015). This negative attitude from the two main UK representatives of the Better Together

Social media, political opportunity and Scottish nationalism : the performative politics of the radical left in Scotland