In Glasgow, it’s difficult not to conclude that the ‘Yes’ camp has the momentum in these final few days. There are ‘No’ badges, posters and flags around the city, but they’re drowned out by the number of ‘Yes’ posters, and the excitement that ‘Yes’ events are creating. Last night I visited a perfectly jolly ‘Yes’ rally in George Square.
It was a funny sort of rally, as the PA system was only broadcasting remarks to those in the thickest knot of the crowd, rather than anyone at the edges.
The only voice anyone could really hear was from a small trestle table towards the back where the Scottish Socialist Party were asking people to sign petitions to end austerity and build a fairer Scotland. But everyone seemed happy just to mill about in the Square in their ‘Yes’ regalia.
I spoke to a series of ‘Yes’ voters about why they’re backing independence:
After George Square, I visited Airdrie, where ‘NHS for Yes’ was holding a rally with SNP Health Minister Alex Neil, surgeon Philippa Whitford from NHS for Yes, Willie Wilson from NHS for Yes, Michelle Thomson from Business for Independence, and Gordon Martin, the regional organiser for the RMT.
It was an impressive event, not just because the speakers performed well, but because they managed some impressive sleights of hand about the threat to the NHS. They complained that the Scottish press was ‘silent’ about what was happening to the health service in England, suggesting that Scots were not getting due warning about what could come over the border. Whitford spoke at length about ‘little acorns’ in England where patients were already being charged for certain procedures such as cataract operations. The warning was that unless Scotland voted ‘Yes’, they’d be next. She also used Andy Burnham’s campaign on the English NHS to her benefit, adding that whenever she tried to make the same warnings about the service in Scotland, Labour always called her a liar. It’s clear that Labour has been incredibly helpful to the ‘Yes’ campaign’s sleight of hand on the health service: Burnham gives them enough frightening stories, even though health is a devolved issue.
Alex Neil grew steadily redder as he bellowed his address to the room. He raised a ‘boo’ for Gordon Brown, calling him a ‘guilty man’ for starting the process of privatisation in the NHS. And he made some rather interesting claims and promises. The minister congratulated the audience on being in ‘the first country in the world to achieve independence by the democratic means of the ballot box’ (this was interesting in that it was wrong) and that ‘we’re going to win by a mile on Thursday’. Neil also promised that ‘under no circumstances will we voluntarily privatise the health service or impose charges on people for visiting their doctor’. All of these claims are worth testing, but they also appeared utterly convincing.
But the most interesting thing about this rally at the Excelsior Stadium in Airdrie was that when one of the speakers asked those in the packed room to raise their hands if they were undecided voters, no-one did. The choir had dutifully turned up, and were certainly enjoying being preached to. But this event wasn’t winning converts, it was simply galvanising committed campaigners. How many of these rallies and events are doing just that? And will the noise they create encourage onlookers to think that independence is the right thing to do, or will they fall at the final hurdle because they’ve all been talking to one another, rather than voters who really could swing the result?
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