Elaine C Smith talking to Wee Ginger Dug about “Voices for Scotland” – and much more!

This is a Wee Ginger Dugcast where Paul Kavanagh is talking to Elaine C Smith about her own Journey to Yes, about their reactions to losing the 2014 referendum, about how the Scottish Independence Convention (SIC) has evolved since then, about the large numbers of supporters who have attend SIC events, about the success of the SIC crowdfunder and about what is emerging from that. P4indy is one of the SIC stakeholder groups. One of our National Co-convenors is on the SIC Board and the other co-convenor is on the Executive.

By 25 minutes into the podcast, Elaine is describing the process whereby the SIC Board employed Tangent Ltd to develop a range of possible Yes campaign strategies and then test them among Scots who are neither convinced No voters nor convinced Yes voters. SIC describes this as having “a particular intent to listen to people who haven’t made up their minds about Scottish independence or who support the union but have had their faith undermined by recent events”. It’s called the Voices for Scotland initiative.

Paul and Elaine talk about the best ways to get to those people we need to persuade. What works and what doesn’t?

  • Elaine is definite that we don’t need “shouty men” on platforms! To be fair, we don’t need shouty women either.
  • leafletting, does it really persuade people? they think not.
  • marches are great but maybe more to keep ourselves enthused rather than to persuade others. Mind you it would help if our AUOB marches were properly reported by our Scottish media!
  • we need have lots of conversations
  • peer-to-peer conversations are what persuade and convince people
  • it’s no good to tell No voters that “they were in the wrong”
  • we need to say to people “Your voice matters”

At around 35mins in, Elaine also speaks about how back in 2014 the UK left leaning commentators just didn’t get what was happening up here. They didn’t – and still don’t – understand civic nationalism.

They also talk about the differences between Scotland and Catalonia in terms of independence campaigning. One of the main differences being the Catalonian press and media who are much more supportive of independence than here.

Paul and Elaine agree that the 2014 referendum has normalised the demand for Scottish independence and put it in the centre of Scottish politics. And as they say, we only have to win it once!

Here is the podcast: