LONDON/ GLASGOW - The campaign for Scotland’s independence referendum went down to the wire on Wednesday ahead of a knife-edge vote that will either see Scotland break away from the United Kingdom or gain sweeping new powers.
The “Yes” and “No” camps mobilised thousands of volunteers to take to the streets across Scotland in a final push to win over undecided voters in a heated debate that has fired up Scots on both sides. Three new opinion polls suggested a very narrow majority against independence but showed that the undecideds could swing it either way with just hours to go before polls open on Thursday at 0600 GMT.
“I’m really optimistic that if we do have independence, we can start building a society that works for all of us,” said 24-year-old Sam Hollick, a “Yes” activist from the Green Party who was campaigning at a stand in Edinburgh blaring a song by Scottish band The Proclaimers. But at a “No” rally in Glasgow, former British prime minister Gordon Brown appealed to Scots’ wartime patriotism and said voting against separation would still mean Scotland gaining much greater local power.
“We fought two world wars together,” he told hundreds of supporters. “There’s not a cemetery in Europe that doesn’t have a Scot, a Welshman, an Irish and an Englishman side by side. When they fought together, they never asked each other where they came from,” he said.
Scottish support for independence has slipped slightly to 48 percent, a Panelbase poll showed on Wednesday, one day before a referendum on whether Scotland should split from the United Kingdom.
The poll, which was not carried out for any media outlet, showed support among Scottish voters for staying in the United Kingdom at 52 percent, when stripping out the 5 percent of people who said they were still undecided.
The last Panelbase survey for the Scottish referendum was published last Saturday, putting support for independence at 49 percent, with pro-unionists at 51 percent. Moreover, former British prime minister Gordon Brown appealed to wartime patriotism at a rally in Glasgow on Wednesday, calling on Scots to reject independence in a momentous referendum less than a day away.
‘We’ll win,’ said Brown, a Scottish ex-leader of the Labour party who has given new drive to the flagging ‘No’ campaign in recent weeks. ‘Voting ‘No’ will deliver faster, safer, better and friendlier change,’ he said, appearing alongside former finance minister Alistair Darling and British comedian Eddie Izzard.
‘We fought two world wars together. There’s not a cemetery in Europe that doesn’t have a Scot, a Welshman, an Irish and an Englishman side by side. When they fought together, they never asked each other where they came from,’ he said. After months of being in the lead, the ‘No’ campaign appeared to sputter in recent weeks, and commentators say Brown has helped give it new energy by promising parliament would offer new powers to the Scottish government with draft laws by January.
‘We are on the eve of the most momentous decision that Scotland has taken If you have any doubt, don’t doubt it and vote yes,’ Darling said at the event. Among the participants at the campaign event, Vicky Greig, a 27-year-old surgeon said the pro-independence Scottish National party were putting out ‘lies’. ‘They intend to monopolise and use the most vulnerable parts of society, the people in need,’ she said. Paul Sweeney, 25, a shipbuilder, said he thought of fellow Britons not as ‘competitors’ but as ‘comrades’.
Few places are as important in Scottish history as Scone, where no less than 42 of the country’s kings were crowned. But like the rest of Scotland, this quiet corner of rural Perthshire, north of Edinburgh, is split down the middle on Thursday’s independence vote. Before the rampaging English king Edward II - the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ - stole their Stone of Destiny in 1296, all Scottish kings were once crowned in Scone on the block of red sandstone. Edward stuck the stone underneath his throne to symbolise the submission of the Scots, though he never quite managed to keep them at heel thanks to a rebel called William Wallace, who got the Hollywood makeover in Mel Gibson’s film Braveheart.
Ever since, English kings and queens have planted their royal posteriors on a throne containing the stone in London’s Westminster Abbey to symbolise their hold on Scotland’s sovereignty. It was last used during the coronation of the current queen Elizabeth II in 1952, before being given back to the Scots in 1996, and is now held in Edinburgh Castle.
The lords of Scone these days are the Murray family, an aristocratic clan whose seat, Scone Palace, was built in the 16th century on the ancient abbey which Edward II sacked. William Murray, Master of Stormont and grandson of the present laird, the Eighth Earl of Mansfield, guides tourists around the site that has become a separatist shrine. But he is ambivalent about the prospect of independence.
On the one hand he believes that ‘if Scotland becomes independent Scone will return to prominence’, arguing that ‘no other place means as much to the Scottish nation’. He, however, will be voting ‘No’. ‘Scotland would be successful as an independent country, but not as successful as it is now,’ he said. But a few minutes down the road in Perth, Alison Rollo, 64, insisted that history has nothing to do with the push for independence - it’s all about the future.
‘We are not so much looking to the past but to the future. If we look back to the past we’d hate the English. We are over that. We don’t hate them,’ she argued. ‘We have forgiven them for everything they’ve done.’ Since women her age are more likely to vote ‘No’, she said, she joined a group called ‘Women for Independence’. Even if the referendum doesn’t pass this time, he claimed ‘there will be another in 10 years’, despite the claims of First Minister Alex Salmond, who is leading the separatist campaign.
One Englishman at least will be voting for Scotland to go its own way. Andrew Parrot, who lives in Perth, said he will also vote ‘Yes’. But taxi driver Kevin Dixon will not be tempted. ‘The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but it might not be.’ He warned the vote would be close. Alistair Scott-Tyrai - who has a Scottish father and an English mother - was undecided for a long time before coming down for independence. ‘It’s a unique occasion,’ he said.