Politics

Divided Scotland?

September 18, 2014
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This morning’s YouGov poll showed 52 per cent for No and 48 per cent for Yes. Now that one half of the country fundamentally disagrees with the other about the most basic questions of its identity and culture, has the referendum debate caused Scotland to become more divided? The answer to that depends on whom you ask. No campaigners think it has divided Scotland, Yes voters that it has not.

In an unscientific survey of seven polling stations across Edinburgh, this pattern held good. A Yes campaigner on Nicolson Street thought Scotland was not more divided, but the older No campaigner at the voting station on Warrender Park Road thought that it was. The animosity, she said, had been stoked by aggressive behaviour by the Yes campaign, an attitude which she said “started at the top.” For example this morning, she said, placards for the No campaign were torn down by Yes campaigners at Liberton in the south of the city.

An SNP councillor at the polling station on Nicolson Street, though he accepted that Scottish politics often involved what he called “verbals”, disagreed, as did a younger Yes campaigner who said that there were “nutters” on both sides before the referendum—“just look at Rangers and Celtic”—and that they would still be there long after tonight’s result.

Among the No campaigners that I spoke to, in Leith, the west end and the south of the city, I detected a real sense of fear that the country was facing some kind of hostile takeover. Whether or not this is the case, it is significant that people should feel this way. It reflects not only the passion with which the referendum debate has been conducted, but also the extent to which divisions that have opened up in the course of the campaign will persist.