HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL: Poll after poll shows that support for independence is way above support for the SNP

Those who nurtured our movement into a political force imbued us with hope. My personal journey began in the heady days of the early 1970s: the first Govan by-election followed by the two 1974 General Elections, where the SNP came within a few thousand votes of winning virtually every seat in Scotland.

The wilderness years of the 1980s and early 1990s were almost biblical, as many of us drifted from active politics but still felt that spark of hope whenever the SNP won a council seat or campaigned with others against the grotesque injustice of the poll tax or the decimation of our industrial heritage.

It was hope that empowered us into supporting a devolved parliament, and despite the disappointment of the early years of the Scottish Parliament, it was hope and the inspiring leadership of Alex Salmond that propelled us into government in 2007. I recall driving over the Erskine Bridge in 2011 when the radio announced that the SNP had achieved the impossible, a majority in the Scottish Parliament. I was 57 years old, and I wept tears of hope. How I wept.

Many tears have been wept since, but hope has never failed me, until last Thursday.

I’d always believed that whatever foibles our SNP politicians might have, that the one common steadfast factor they would have was hope. In one self-indulgent article, Seamus Logan MP killed hope (Using an election as plebiscite referendum is just not going to fly, June 25).

How dare anyone who is paid handsomely by the British state, and entrusted with the hopes of thousands of Scots to proclaim the legitimacy of the sovereignty of the Scottish people, demean that right to the convenience of any British prime minister?

The independence movement, both within the SNP and wider society, is way ahead of so many of the SNP politicians that one wonders what criteria was used by the SNP to approve potential candidates for Westminster and Holyrood, especially when poll after poll shows that support for independence is way above support for the SNP.

If we have reached a stage in our journey to statehood that one man or woman in an alien country can just say no, and our princes of the independence movement don’t have the imagination, intellectual vigour and smeddum to overcome that, then the SNP must sweep these individuals aside.

Independence is not an Oxbridge debate. It’s a necessity to address the poverty visited on our people; the plundering of our assets; the relentless degradation of our living standards and values; the subjugation of global humanity and nature; and above all the destruction of hope.

We elect politicians to deliver independence, not to wait on some Damascene conversion by a foreign government. The big worry is that these politicians pontificate to us when they have made little or no effort to explore and educate themselves on the opportunities international law and unused devolved powers provide to lead us out of this blasted union.

For almost 300 years our unique legal system not just survived but thrived without a dedicated legislature to serve it save for the occasional piece of Westminster legislation. Scots law survived because of the sophistication of our pre-Union common law and the ability and willingness of our judges to apply the principles of our law to society’s changing norms and expectations. In this regard, the absence of a British constitution and codified legal system is a positive pathway to independence. The hurdles are of the mind and not the law.