On Being Turned Off By Party Tribalism

As someone who has long had a healthy distrust for politicians of each and any stripe, I found myself in the unusual position for me - around the time of last year’s Westminster general election - of having a great deal of goodwill towards the SNP.

We’d come out of the independence referendum with a feeling that, with a newly-invigorated communal political awareness, anything might be possible.  I found the referendum campaign a very positive experience.  I enjoyed the fact that political ideas were being discussed in public at a level that just hadn’t been the case in my experience for many years.  Having been active during the anti-Poll Tax campaign and, even further back, the miners’ strike, I would even say the level of engagement more generally outstripped those.

For me politics is not synonymous with party politics.  I’m a firm believer that real politics is when we realise we have the power to do things ourselves, rather than when we relinquish our power to others in the hope that things will be done for us (the definition of disempowerment).  And amongst “others” I include politicians.  So it came as a surprise to me that I found myself with a bit of a political crush on people like Mhairi Black.  They seemed different; they were more like normal people; they appeared to have a decency and sincerity not often visible in other politicians.  I knew I had differences with their party on a number of issues, but I thought “good luck to them: they seem like a breath of fresh air”.  As an independence supporter, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

What people who are party loyalists seem to forget is that most of the rest of us are not party loyalists.  For many of us there is no party that adequately represents our views with their policy platform.  It’d perhaps be unusual if there was: that would require as many parties as electors.  Most people when voting just want a way to best reflect their own views, not necessarily with a great deal of precision.  Maybe your views can best represented by something that's not actually on offer. Voting is usually therefore about finding the “least-worst” option.

It should not be assumed that any vote says “I agree with everything you say”.  It might just be a matter of “well, I like you better than the others”.  Indeed, a lot of people can’t even bring themselves to say that.  I have myself not always voted.  Before last May, it had been decades since I’d previously voted in a Westminster election:  the choice in real terms always seemed to be between a kick in the teeth or a punch in the teeth, and I didn’t see why I should give legitimacy to either.  If they were going to do it anyway, they’d have to do so without me saying “yes please” to one or the other.

But then the post-referendum feeling and the clean sweep at the May election made me think “some of these people actually seem OK”.

So looking at some of the more loyal SNP support in recent months has been depressing.  They seem to demand absolute loyalty for the party from everyone: they seem to think that anyone who campaigned for a Yes vote is now supposed to pledge unquestioning support to everything the SNP does.  Well, I didn’t sign up for that kind of “democratic centralism”.  I never would.  I’m a big fan of the sentiment expressed by Mikhail Bakunin’s aphorism “When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called ‘the People's Stick’”.

The uber-loyalism of the hard-line enthusiasts is a huge turn off.  (And I must stress that the insular dogmatism is from a section of SNP supporters, not all of them). The damage they are doing to the good will that many people, myself included, had towards the SNP is something they really need to think about, especially if they want support for independence to grow.  And grow it must if we want to win next time round.

I’ve never known anyone to be won over by roundly abusing them with one breath and demanding unquestioning adherence with the next.  We need to remember that 55% voted No.  Denouncing them all as dupes and “Yoons” will not win the swing we need. We need to encourage them across, not harden their position where they are. (I hate the term “Yoon”: responding in kind to the derogatory term “Nat” is strategically stupid, as well as depressingly tribal.  If you force people into rigid tribes, why do it when our tribe is smaller?  Would you prefer ideological purity or winning?)

I miss the referendum campaign.  It was hopeful and positive.  It was inclusive.  There seemed to be a general understanding that Yes was not a mono-thought bloc, but that diversity was to be welcomed.  That makes the descent into narrow, intolerant, party loyalty all the more dismal.