The national media, whether by intimidation or endemic fearfulness, has presented a dangerously distorted view of the campaigns contesting the Scottish Independence referendum. They impose a wholly synthetic balance in their reporting. If they are confronted with an instance of bad behaviour on one side, they attribute generalised, non-specific like-instances to the other side as proof of ‘balance’.
This has made it seem to those not present that this whole campaign has been much of a muchness in the way it has been approached by each of the two contestants.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The presentation of a picture of balance where there is essentially none is no less than a fraud – and a dangerously generous mask for what, on objective evidence, has been no less than organised and persistent thuggery.
Yes, there have been instances of cyber-abuse from ‘No Thanks’ supporters of the union. Yes there has been the odd bit of pro-union graffiti; and there will have been some heckling; but these instances have been few and far between.
The abusive and intimidatory conduct of the Yes supporters is systematic, persistent and routine – and not a matter of isolated sporadic incidents. The characteristics of the two campaigns are not remotely comparable. The major media must try to be more faithful to the reality – and less deceiving.
Everyone has seen the evidence
Anyone watching televised debates on independence before a live audience – as recurringly on Question Time and in the two Salmond-Darling face-offs, has consistent first hand evidence of what we are talking about here.
The ‘Yes’ supporters behave like fanatics – invariably loud, challenging of the contrary view, aggressive in the putting of their own views and questions, clapping in claque those whose stance aligns with their own.
The ‘No Thanks’ supporters are individuals, putting their points, usually without the aggression that characterises the ‘Yes’ supporters’ contributions – but clearly not seeing themselves as a ‘pack’ and equally clearly not hunting like one.
This has not been a campaign where two voices, expressing different views, have been heard in open minded tolerance and interest.
This has been a one-sided tour de force in the fullest sense. That force has been strategically devised and universally applied under advice and licence. The level of totalitarian control freakery in the pro-independence campaign underwrites that; as does the evidence that such behaviour has not only continued unrestrained but has ramped up markedly in physical and verbal thuggishness in the ‘no holds barred’ last run up to the vote, now less than three weeks away.
The Scottish Government has intimidated the media by endless complaints of unfairness; has intimidated organisations, businesses and individuals by reminding them of its extensive powers of patronage – which can be offered or removed and which can impact on business viability; and has threatened people’s employment, with Ministers known to have had people sacked and to have written to employers to question an employee’s personal political stance. Some victims in these categories have publicly testified to their treatment.
That is improper, partisan and politically motivated repression of freedom of speech at the highest level – and yet these hypocrites cry ‘Project Fear’ at every opportunity, when the ‘No Thanks’ campaigners underline the very real risks of independence under the prospectus for which Mr Salmond has asked for a mandate on 18th September.
Public meetings across the country have witnessed straighforward brute thuggery in the merciless shouting down of those speaking in favour of the union. This has not been ‘a robust exchange’. It has been nothing more than the deliberate preventing of the pro-union side from making its position heard. It has been almost universal, in indoor and outdoor sessions – and we ourselves have witnessed many of these occasions.
This has been another way of shutting down freedom of speech. It has left the case for the union largely unheard – and undeveloped. The notion of democracy and certainly the meaning of it, has been fundamentally degraded throughout this gig.
The experience and expectation of intimidation and retribution is one sided
In a tolerant campaign and with the polls consistently showing that the majority [of whatever degree] favour the retention of membership of the Union, one would reasonably expect to see at least an equal percentage of ‘Yes’ and ‘No Thanks’ posters in the windows of private homes, from those who prefer to make their affiliation public.
This has not been the case. There are very few ‘No Thanks’ posters to be seen in people’s windows, with noticeably far more ‘Yes’ posters in evidence. One of the reasons why there are fewer ‘No Thanks’ posters is a well founded anticipation of a stone through the window.
And the contrasting reason why there are far more ‘Yes’ posters and far more open thuggery to shut down audibility – never mind discussion – in public meetings led by the pro Union campaigners – is that the ‘Yes’ camp has no corresponding expectation of facing such bullying and repressive behaviour.
Yesterday saw the former Scottish Secretary, Labour’s Jim Murphy, hit with a volley of eggs in a street session in Kirkcaldy in Fife – by an assailant whose courage seemed less than his convictions in the speed with which he vanished.
Today Mr Murphy has had to suspend his successful one-man 100 towns in 100 days campaign until he has taken police advice in now to deal with safety issues in what he has rightly described as ‘co-ordinated abuse’ deployed by ‘mobs’ to intimidate both himself and undecided voters.
‘No Thanks’ supporters have received gratuitous personal abuse at such meetings – and have been filmed, a suggestively intimidatory action we have seen in action for ourselves.
The verbal violence has been equally appalling. The level of abuse of the most graphic and vicious kind that has been hurled at supporters of the union – even by educated and supposedly responsible public figures, has been shocking in its intensity and in its increasingly personal targeting of individuals.
We have had contact today from someone at a meeting last night – an innocuous low key Scottish Community Alliance get together for folk in Campbeltown where little tables of residents were toured by representatives of both campaigns for private discussion of issues.
At the end of it, in what seemed an impromptu addition, the campaign reps were given a few minutes to think about the issues they had been asked about and what picture this had given them. They were then given a couple of minute each to sum up their experience.
The representative of the ‘Yes’ campaign is said to have jumped into an immediate and scripted delivery in which he turned personally upon the representative of the ‘No Thanks’ campaign, a woman. He apparently used her name and said ‘you and your party are different from the Tories only that they cut both the legs off the disabled where you ask which leg to cut off’. The quite shocking mutilatory physical violence in this imagery and its direct targeting on a particular individual is a deeply unpleasant new gear in what has been an unrelentingly intimidatory pro-independence campaign.
The perpetrator evidently then said that his remark might have been ‘ill judged’. This is a misdirection of the reality. What was said was not born of ill-judgment. It was born of ill-feeling.
Is this the new Scotland on offer?
Everyone has witnessed the rampant ganglike tactics of repression and threat that have characterised the pro-independence campaign. There has been no evidence of the same repetitive organised delivery of such tactics from the pro-union campaign. The occasional individual outrage from that side does not begin to compare with what has been dished up by the ‘Yes’ camp.
It has been utterly primitive, brutalist, consistent, persistent – and successful in largely silencing the contrary view and driving it underground for sheer self-protection.
But when every individual goes into the booth to vote, they are alone. How they cast their votes is confidential.
It will be interesting on 18th August, to see the number of the silent and the silenced. They have suffered a great deal in this unforgiveably intimidatory campaign – and they may well lose to the thuggery.
Where will we go from there?
