I took this photograph a week or so before the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum. The placard, leant on a rucksack on an autumn pavement, was part of a spontaneous political demonstration in the centre of Glasgow for a Yes vote in the Indyref, as it became known. There were no Yes campaign stewards, virtually no police, just people out on the streets with songs, music, posters, placards, saying what they wanted Scotland’s future to be. It wasn’t the first or last such gathering. As the political and cultural commentator Neal Ascherson put it in his poignant, confident article soon after the result of the Referendum,
[T]his long campaign has changed Scotland irrevocably. Campaign? I have never seen one like this, in which it wasn’t politicians persuading people how to vote, but people persuading politicians. At some point in late spring, the official yes campaign lost control as spontaneous small groups set themselves up and breakfast tables, lounge bars, bus top decks and hospital canteens began to talk politics. What sort of Scotland? Why do we tolerate this or that? Now, in Denmark they do it this way…
And that sense of radical, creative possibility was all around us, in movements such as Women for Independence, Lawyers for Yes, Academics for Yes, Common Weal, Bella Caledonia, Radical Scotland:
[1] And there is an English wing to the SNP – Quinn, B. (2015). Surge in English SNP members: ‘the core message is very attractive’, The Guardian, 17.7.15.
[2] See Tacitus, Agricola, XXX.
[3] Where Scott satirises the the historical novelist’s apparent freedom, moving between fiction and history:
‘”Let me see – What think you of a real epic? – the grand old-fashioned historical poem which moved through twelve or twenty-four books – we’ll have it so – I’ll supply you with a subject – The battle between the Caledonians and Romans – The Caledoniad; or, Invasion Repelled – Let that be the title – It will suit the present taste, and you may throw in a touch of the times.”
“But the invasion of Agricola was not repelled.”
“No; but you are a poet – free of the corporation, and as little bound down to truth or probability as Virgil himself – You may defeat the Romans in spite of Tacitus.”’
[4] Morgan, E. (1984). Sonnets from Scotland, Glasgow, The Mariscat Press, 52. The coin features in the cover artwork, by Alasdair Gray.
[5] See Fenton, J. (2004) ‘Uncommon Currency’, The Guardian, 28.2.04, 24, where Fenton cites Bataille.
[6] Technically, as a number of commentators have noted, the old Scots parliament died in 1707, at the exact moment when the Earl of Seafield touched the new Union Act with the royal sceptre of Scotland. See Dalgleish, G.R. (2007). Of medals, maces and monarchy: symbols of authority (and otherwise) and the new Scottish Parliament. In Culture, Nation and the New Scottish Parliament, edited by Caroline McCracken-Flesher, , Lewisburg, Bucknell University Press, 129-40; 135.
[7] Verger, J. (1992). Patterns. In A History of the University in Europe, General Editor Walter Ruegg. Volume 1, Universities in the Middle Ages, edited by H. de Ridder-Symoens, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 35-65; 47-49.
[8] See, eg, de Hamel, C. (2013). The European medieval book, in The Book: A Global History, edited by Michael F. Suarez, S.J. & H.R. Wooudhuysen, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 59-79; 67-8.
[9] There are no HE fees in Scots universities for Scots students: the Scottish government has taken a stand again against the marketization of HE and supports the idea of HE as a public good. See Scottish Government (2010). Building a Smarter Future, Edinburgh, Scottish Government. As a consequence, where for example part-time student numbers are crashing in England and Wales, they remain relatively steady in Scotland.
[10] See, eg, Will Hutton for only the latest bad news on the subject:
‘[U]niversities are finding that more students want to do degrees more likely to deliver high salaries; little by little, they are being transformed from centres of rounded academic teaching and research excellence across the gamut of subjects to high-class employment agencies.’
Hutton, W. (2015). Growing student debt is entrenching unfairness for a whole generation, The Observer, 09.08.15, 34.
[11] BIS (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) (2011). Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System. Cm 8122. Norwich, The Stationery Office. Students are defined as consumers (6.10), and the Higher Education Funding Council for England and Wales, HEFCE, is given a role as a ‘consumer champion for students and promoter of a competitive system’ (Exec Summary, 14). Given this, the report’s sub-title is deeply, dismally wrong.
demos journal acknowledges the Ngambri and Ngunnawal people on whose lands this journal is made and imagined. Sovereignty of these lands was never ceded. Always Was Always Will Be Aboriginal Land.
Web Design by Rio Ramintas
Build by Charlotte McLachlan
demos journal © 2026. All Rights Reserved.
