The Mountain
I had what I’m sure was a unique plan to celebrate a Yes vote in the Scottish independence referendum. I was going to go up nearest mountain, unfurl a Saltire and plant it right on the peak for all to see. “Mountains?” I hear you ask sceptically. How is that unique in Scotland? There would have been plenty of people with that idea.
Difference was, I was half a world away in Canada.
The mountain I had in mind, Whistler, had once been called the London mountain until it had been changed in the 1960’s to reflect local usage and amusingly “associations with London’s bad weather”. My plan then seemed a very apt metaphor for the surely inevitable victory of the “Yes” campaign over its London backed opposition “Better Together”.
Like all best laid plans though, it didn’t quite work out that way.
Quite by accident I found myself spending most of 2014 living and working in the Canadian resort town Whistler, a couple hours up the Sea to Sky Highway from Vancouver. As someone who had never (and still hasn’t) skied a day in his life, this might seem an odd choice of employment except that in the summer the resort becomes a bike park.
But in truth, it didn’t really matter whether it was a ski slope or a bike park as at that point in my life, I was not in good shape mentally. I had embarked on my trip to Canada to fulfil a lifelong desire to live there, having spent the whole of the previous year working and saving up for it. However, it quickly became an escape route from what at that time was an increasingly unhappy homelife. I had made the mistake of thinking that I could run away from my problems when of course I just brought them with me. I was at that time untreated for my depression which I largely self-medicated with alcohol. Unsurprisingly that didn’t help.
That’s not to say I didn’t have fun. Life as a Whistler Blackcomb “lifty” was great. I met loads of interesting people while working in a stunning location at the height of a hot Canadian summer. Indeed, the mere physical effort of lifting hundreds of bikes off chairlifts every day in hot weather saw me sweat out 20 odd pounds in a matter of weeks, all the more surprising considering my staple diet consisted of an almost daily slice of Misty Mountain Pizza and copious amounts of Pabst Blue Ribbon. (Over in Canada, at $20 a crate it was the cheapest beer I could get, not the £4 a stubby can hipsters pay here in Scotland!) On the surface, I seemed to have things pretty good.
Throughout the summer, I was voraciously following the independence campaign from afar much to the puzzled amusement of my trio of English flatmates who perhaps unsurprisingly couldn’t really fathom why we would want to leave the UK, especially if we were to find ourselves locked out of the European Union. In all fairness, a perfectly valid argument in those pre-Brexit days.
Other people I met really didn’t get my total aversion to being called “British”. Indeed, when challenged by someone about how independence would affect the British Armed Forces, my response was “Fuck ‘em”. With people struggling with the effects of the ruinous austerity policies pursued by the Cameron-Clegg coalition government, I couldn’t understand why anyone would place more importance on armed forces whose sole reason for existing was to continue the quasi-imperialist delusions of grandeur about Britain’s standing in the world rather than looking after it’s subjects (we’re not really “citizens” after all). I still don’t.
Ironically enough, I had grown up with the all too common mentality in Scotland that we as a country and a people were “too wee, too poor and too stupid” to look after ourselves, perennially viewing the SNP with suspicion. I’m not sure when exactly I crossed the independence Rubicon in my mind though I suspect that it had always been there. On some subconscious level, I think we all recognise the absurdity of the argument that we were incapable of running our own affairs especially when you see the absolute mess that Westminster politicians have made of the country in the wake of the Brexit referendum.
Of course, back in 2014 nobody truly thought the UK would be that stupid. The very idea of the country voting itself out of the European Union seemed ridiculous thus it’s little wonder we were so complacent. As September 18th approached, I found myself getting ever more certain that Yes was set to win, not least when in the week before the vote, the polls showed that the Yes campaign had taken a narrow lead. It seemed like a matter of time before my saltire on the mountain plan would come to fruition and I began to grow feverishly giddy at the thought of it. Irrationally so.
I had made sure that I could vote via proxy whilst I was out of the country thus when my mother messaged me late on Wednesday night to tell me that my Yes vote was in, I went to bed truly believing that Yes was a shoe in. Then I saw that big Andy Murray was tweeting that he was going to vote yes, and my belief only grew. I remember turning to my flatmates and telling them that piece of news: “I never liked him anyway.”
The next day was a blur, so much so I can’t really remember if I was at work that day so when the polls back home closed it was around 2pm in Whistler. I recall I had bought a crate of beer (perhaps even 2, it’d be a long night) to have whilst I watched the results filter through on the BBC World service. Of course, things took an ominous turn when as soon as the polls closed the pundits reported that the UK Government was “extremely confident” that the No vote had it in the bag. But hey, they would say, that right?
I whittled away the next few hours as the vote counts began drinking beer with my flatmates who had joined me in front of the television despite their previously indifferent attitude towards the campaign. In truth, I think the blunt reality of the situation had finally dawned on them as after all a yes vote would fundamentally alter the make-up of the country that they called home. England would suddenly be the senior partner in a union of three nations rather than four, a union that had been in place for 307 years. Shit was about to get real.
Then the results started to come in. Clackmannanshire was the first to declare a result where No had won 54% of the vote. “ONE-NIL TO THE ENGLAND” chanted Ben in his dulcet Yorkshire tones. It was pretty funny to be fair and I couldn’t help but laugh. Still early days yet I said but truthfully, I could only see this going one way. Sure enough, I was right.
As the results came in and it became clear that No was going to win, I became increasingly angry, no more so than when South Ayrshire, where I’m from, was announced with a 58% No vote. I fumed about how people could vote that way when things were in such a state due to the austerity imposed on the country by a Westminster government that most Scots didn’t vote for. That given the opportunity to actually vote for our independence peacefully rather than have to violently fight for it like most countries, we would rather stick to a political union that was broken even before Brexit finally confirmed it. Then when John Reid was being interviewed, crowing about the No victory I lost the plot, launching a drunken foul-mouthed invective that took my flatmates aback. Oh shit, he really means it I imagined them thinking.
The only crumb of comfort I got that night was when the result of Glasgow came in and it 53% Yes but even that was offset by the fact that 25% of eligible voters in the city didn’t bother to vote which I simple couldn’t believe. Eventually, I went to bed, crushed.
The next day I was in a bit of a daze, hungover by both the beer and the feeling that we as a nation had blown a once in a lifetime opportunity. I took the bus into Whistler where I overhead two Canadians chuckling about how we Scots had voted no to independence and in that moment, I felt embarrassed to be Scottish. This is how the world views us I thought, a cowardly nation that can’t exist without its bigger neighbour.
I ruefully gazed up to the peak of Whistler mountain where I would have gone had Yes won to pull off my little Saltire stunt. It was almost as if Scotland had climbed near to the top of the independence mountain only to falter at the last stage, scared off by the steep plunge into an uncertain future and the literal and figurative gravity of the situation. Cowed into voting for the status quo out of that most primal motivator. Fear.
This was of course pretty irrational as there were perfectly valid reasons for people voting No but at that time, I didn’t want to hear about it. I think back on some of the angry rants I was posting on social media in the immediate aftermath and cringe with embarrassment and yes, shame. I alienated friends and even family members who had voted the opposite way with some of the stuff I was hitting out with. In hindsight I realise that I had bottled up a lot of anger that I felt about personal things in my life and the referendum campaign had served as an outlet for it. In short, I wasn’t making well thought out, rational decisions but reactive, emotional ones which as we can see all too well today, can start you down the rabbit hole that leads to Trump, Brexit and (Jebus help us) Boris.
Over the next few weeks and months I plunged deeper into a depression. The referendum result was not the sole cause of course, indeed in hindsight I had been depressed long before anything to do to with the referendum but it’s fair to say that it certainly exacerbated it. So much so that I found myself back in Scotland by the end of the year as I was really struggling mentally. It took me another full year to finally go the doctor and admit that I had a problem which I’m glad I did, and I’ve been better for it since.
With the five-year anniversary coming up, it’s fair to say things have changed quite a bit. The whole Brexit shambles has breathed new life into the independence movement with a pro-remain Scotland set to be dragged out of the European Union on October 31, a date which could not be more apt. Of course, the practical questions of how we can ensure our status as a newly independent state within the EU still must be answered not to mention that a second referendum must be won in the first place. But considering the alternative, I’d like to imagine that next time Scotland would vote Yes. With any luck, Scotland will reach the top of that mountain in time.
Then, I’ll have some travel arrangements of my own to make to a certain Canadian mountain, possibly with a Saltire.
That’s one vow that I’d like to keep.
