There’s been much reflection on the result of referendum on occasion of its ten-year anniversary. However, on the pro-independence side, this has not resulted in resolving some of the significant strategic issues. This is because there’s been the all too easy practice of placing blame upon others for the failure as well as way too little time spent upon critical self-examination.

In a previous piece in The Herald last month, I lambasted the SNP for not understanding the leverage that the cause of independence could gain by adopting a social movement perspective, rather by being just a political party project.

This remains true even with SNP depute leader, Keith Brown, admitting somewhat late in the day that another Section 30 Order will not be granted by Westminster. He told the anniversary event organised by The Herald’ sister paper, The National, that the way forward was a constitutional convention of independence-supporting political parties and organisations.

Read More: Indy needs to become a social movement if it is to succeed

Even if recognition of the virtue of the vitality that a social movement perspective can bring was ever undertaken, another challenge to be confronted is that of ‘the chicken and the egg’ conundrum. In other words, which is more important and should then come first: independence per se or a certain type of independence?

In pro-independence circles, this takes the frequent form of the 'Let’s just get independence first' perspective versus arguing for a particular form or type of independence as the route to gaining the necessary support and mobilisation for independence.

The 'Let’s just get independence first' takes a somewhat simplistic stance by saying that the constitutional argument of letting the people of Scotland decide their own future is the key offer. Thereafter, there can be a debate about what form independence should take and this can then be settled by a democratic decision but only after independence has been gained. In the meantime, arguments about what type of independence is most desirable are regarded, at best, as dilettante diversions and, at worst, as damaging debilitations.

It seems eminently sensible to seek to maximise the level of support for independence by uniting together as many from different, if not also diverse, political points of view as possible. Yet there are a few fundamental flaws with this strategy.

Read More: Tony Blair failed to reinvent Britain - and Keir Starmer will fail too

The first flaw is that people should actually know what the main offer is. This is more than being about transparent. Rather, it is about political honesty. There are four faces for a future independent Scotland: neo-liberalism, social liberalism, social democracy, and socialism. Each of them has drastically different implications for the distribution of wealth and power between social classes in Scotland.

Neo-liberalism is the kind of independence that independence-supporting Tories savour. Social liberalism approximates to what SNP parliamentarians support. Social democracy is what ‘old Labour’ independence-followers favour. Socialism is the proposition Tommy Sheridan once offered, sometimes contemptuously consigned to as ‘Cuba with midgies’. Each of these suggests that different people can support independence for quite different reasons, depending on what best serves their economic interests.

The second flaw is to recall the saying of American senator, William Marcy, nearly two hundreds year ago. He opined of Andrew Jackon’s election as seventh US President in 1829: ‘To the victor, the spoils’. Translated to Scotland, the dominant force for independence prior to gaining independence would determine the nature of independence after it had been gained.

With, hypothetically, the SNP effectively winning on 18 September 2014 and Alex Salmond the victor, this would have meant we would now be ten years down the road to the creation of a capitalist 'Celtic Tiger'. Of note here is that Ireland is just as unequal as Scotland in terms of social and economic inequalities (measured by the Gini coefficient), so hopes of any social justice would have been dashed.

As the ‘Let’s just get independence first’ perspective did hold sway amongst some supporting social democratic or socialist forms of independence, it is also worth recalling the case of Ireland as Britain’s first colony and the struggle there for national liberation.

Shortly before the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, Edinburgh-born revolutionary socialist, James Connolly, addressed the Irish Citizen Army which he helped found a few years earlier in 1913. Connolly told his supporters: ‘In the event of victory, hold on to your rifles, as those with whom we are fighting [alongside] may stop before our goal is reached. We are out for economic as well as political liberty’.

His words were prophetic for though he did not see Irish independence gained, being shot by the British army in Dublin Castle after the rising, the outcome of the ‘war of independence’ of 1919-1921 saw two conservative parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, dominate Irish society for over a hundred years. Ireland became a conventional capitalist country, aided by the Catholic church. This could not have been an outcome further from that which Connolly wished.

The third flaw is that any particular form of independence must mobilise support for its vision, and supporters of this vision must set out their stalls which allow them to do this. For those who wish to see either a social democratic or socialist version of independence, this must mean more than anything else making the vast majority in society substantially better off.

This is not just about achieving far-reaching social justice but recognising that to win a majority for independence means offering the majority of people – the workers or working-class in Scotland – a strong and credible case for doing so. And, once supporting independence, these supporters must be mobilised collectively on the streets and in the workplaces. All this means not hiding your light under a bushel.     

As we know, there was competition last time around to determine what kind of independence would be initiated on 19 September 2014. That argument was ‘won’ by the SNP. But with it now being on the slide, it may not win quite so easily next time around – assuming, of course, there is a next time. That’s where a social democratic or socialist version of independence may help – not only to gain the support for another referendum but to win one and set Scotland down a very different road.

* Professor Gregor Gall is editor of ‘A New Scotland: Building an Equal, Fair and Sustainable Society’ (Pluto Press, 2022, priced £14.99).