On HOOP, and hope.

Ok, let's talk about Hands Off Our Parliament, and the lessons to be learned. Firstly, huge congratulations to the organisers!

Secondly, we can pull out a big crowd in Edinburgh at short notice on a weekday afternoon. That shows there's a huge appetite to get the Yes movement rolling again.

Thirdly, the average age was about 60. That's not surprising - it was in working hours, many folk with day jobs couldn't be there. But it proves that the idea the old aren't keen on independence is havers.

Fourthly, folk came a long way. I left Auchencairn at 8:00; the friends I met at #HOOP were from Ayrshire, Galloway, Lanarkshire and highland Perthshire. I heard a bunch of folk had come down from Orkney, although I didn't meet them. Folk were very committed: the weather turned out good, but the weather forecast wasn't primising and I left home in condensing fog.

Fifthly, the leadership of the Yes movement won't lead. The only SNP figure I saw was Tommy Sheppard (who did speak); I didn't see any of the leadership of the Independence Convention and I know for a fact Robin McAlpine of Common Weal wasn't there. Full disclosure, when Tommy Sheppard was announced, because sound wasn't good in the wind, I thought they'd said Tommy Sheridan and was actually walking out before I realised I was wrong! My apologies, comrade Sheppard.

Of course there may have been people there I didn't see. It was a big event, and in my current state of very frail mental health I'm not good at recognising people. But if the folk who should be leading this movement really were notable only by their absence, this isn't good.

Worse still, as far as I can see, no significant figure from the SNP, the Greens, the Independence Convention or even Radical Independence has commented on or tweeted about the event either yesterday while it was happening, or this morning in retrospect. No solidarity, no congratulations, no encouragement. Not even criticism. And I think we need to be saying this to our leadership: shit, or get off the pot.

Sixthly, if we're going to do this again on a weekday, a day when Holyrood is in session would be better. We need to be able to lobby our MSPs; we need to show the strength of our support to MSPs; and we need to make it easier for MSPs to join in.

Seventhly, I am certain that it is vital that things like this are not allowed to become party political. Tribalism will kill us. If the Independence Convention won't lead, we need something similar that will.

China Central TV conducting an interview at HOOP

Eighth, we cannot rely on the mainstream media to get our message out to the public. Neither of Scotland's broadcasters seem to have reported the event at all. The National, of course, had good coverage, and the Scotsman had reasonable coverage, but the Herald and Daily Record both played down the event reporting the turnout as 'hundreds'. The Herald in particular focussed on 'noisy' Yes Bikers and alleged anti-BBC chanting. China Central Television apparently gave us coverage, but I doubt much of the Scottish electorate watches that!

Ninth, it was great to see Welsh dragons and Catalan esteladas among the cloud of saltires; I also saw a Palestinian flag. I didn't see anyone else with an EU flag, although I had one; but many people had EU stars on their saltires. I would personally have liked to have seen a Kurdish flag (although I don't know what one even looks like), and it would be good to build solidarity with other small European nations. It's important to make it clear to onlookers and to the media that we're an internationalist, and not a narrowly nationalist, movement.

But dae a wheen o Saltires no luik braw?

Tenth, many folk had dressed for the occasion, which really helped make it feel like a carnival. My gratitude to all of you who did! Indeed, all the news outlets which reported the event at all did use good pictures, showing that the effort of those who dressed up or brought good placards and flags was not wasted. If we cannot get our message across in the words that journalists write, we can still influence through the pictured they use.

Eleventh, yes, of course there was no trouble. That's not who we are. #Yes is positive, #Yes is creative, Yes can turn anything into a party. Let's be proud of that and stay that way!

Finally, thanks again to the organisers. We needed this. We need to be spontaneous. We need to push our self-appointed leaders to lead or get out of the way.

Now is the time

Betty Hutton playing Pearl White in The Perils of Pauline (1947)

There's a trope in early Hollywood: a girl, bound to railway tracks, an oncoming train. That's the situation we're in now: Brexit is the oncoming train, and our Scotland, our Bella Caledonia, is bound to the tracks.

But with what are are we bound? With chains? No: with caution, with timidity. Folk are saying that is isn't certain that with one bound we'll be free. They're right, of course. Folk are saying if she tries to bound free, and fails, we cannae try again for a generation.

Folk - Peter Arnott - are saying, there's no need to worry. We can just let Brexit crash over us. It will cut the non-existent chains, the chains of our timidity, and when it's passed, without any effort on our part, we'll be free. Sans arms, sans legs, but free. And what did we care about Scotland's arms and legs anyway?

Let us be clear what Brexit means to Scotland.

Absent the close trading relationship with Europe, the UK will need very quickly to agree trading relationships with other big, rich markets, and actually there are very few. India and China are big, but not rich; Canada, Australia, New Zealand rich but not big. So the Tories are going to have to do a deal with Trump's United States. They'll need it quick. And they aren't great negotiators.

What does the USA want to sell us? Well, it does want to sell us food, produced to much lower standards than we've been used to. It wants to sell us 'Scotch Whisky' and 'Cornish Pasties', made in Illinois and Nebraska. But most of all it wants to sell us "healthcare". The Tories will not be averse to this: many of them have existing links to healthcare companies. Selling off the health service will not mean just selling off the English health service; the trade treaty will not be between England and the USA, but between the UK and the USA. So that's our health service gone. For ever. Independence after Brexit won't bring it back.

But what did we care about Scotland's health service anyway?

But then, there's the economy. Scotland used to be big on manufacturing. It used, especially, to be big on marine engineering. Not any more. Scotland proudly boasts the world's first floating wind farm - owned and installed by Norwegians using turbines from Germany on towers from Spain. Margaret Thatcher closed down most of our industry for her 'leaner, fitter Britain', and it's never recovered. What manufacturing we have left depends significantly on just-in-time relationships with European partners; and those are going to be savaged by Brexit.

Margaret Thatcher's big idea was that we switch from manufacturing into 'services'; by which she chiefly meant financial services. Well, that's OK, Scotland has always been big on financial services, too! We have the Bank of Scotland, and the Royal Bank of... oh, wait...

Seriously, we do still have some good financial services organisations. But with Brexit, they will lose their 'passporting rights' to Europe, which will take away a big chunk of their market at a stroke.

And the one thing that no-one is talking about is this: less than three years from today, every consignment of goods leaving the UK and every consignment of goods arriving in the UK is going to have to go through customs. Where is the customs infrastructure to handle that? When will it be built? Do you think the current British government is competent to build it, in under three years? Aye, right.

You've seen what happens to the shelves in our supermarkets after one day of snow. Imagine what they'll be like after a month of chaos at the ports. Never mind, let them eat fish.

As a communist, obviously I believe that wealth should be shared equally - and obviously, that means equally across the globe. It is not just that workers in Scotland are paid more than workers in Mumbai or Shenzhen. In the long run that does have to change. But after Brexit, workers in Britain, outside the protective barriers of the EU, will be competing directly against workers in Mumbai and Shenzhen. We're no longer better educated. We no longer have better infrastructure. There is nothing, in a free market, to maintain our historical differentials. If we demand to be paid more, businesses will just move the jobs. Outside the EU, there's nothing to stop them.

But what did we care about Scotland's economy, anyway?

And while there is a degree of justice in this, the sudden, drastic fall in incomes and loss of jobs will be very hard for us in Britain.

Scotland cannot be protected from this. The Scottish Government cannot tax more to maintain public services, if its tax base has collapsed. Brexit means the end not only of our health service, but also of our welfare state. We're going to face a decade of economic collapse - probably two. Civil dissent will be met with repression. In those circumstances, secessionism is just another form of civil dissent, like trades unionism, to be crushed. We saw it in Scotland in the 1980s, we see it today in Catalunya.

I don't know whether you are old enough to have campaigned in the 1979 referendum, or lived through the industrial conflict of the 1980s. I am; I did. Thatcher's government was as hostile to nationalism as to the left. I believe the isolated, xenophobic, bankrupt Britain we face post-Brexit will be far more repressive than Thatcher ever was. Such a regime won't tolerate any further independence referenda. If we do not achieve independence before Brexit, we will not achieve it in the lifetime of anyone now living.

But what did we care about Scotland's civic freedoms, anyway?

Rewind. Cut.

It doesn't have to be like this.

We can have another referendum.

Now.

Yes, it's true that we don't currently have a lead in the polls. We didn't in 2012, when we started the independence referendum campaign. We didn't in 1979, when we started the devolution campaign. In each case, we swung the polls more than 15% over the course of the campaign.

Yes, of course it's true that there's no guarantee we can do that again. But we don't have to. We're already much higher in the polls than we were in 2012, and the trend is positive.

All Scotland needs to bound free, to avoid the train, to keep her arms and legs, her health service, her economy, her labour differentials, her civic freedoms, is confidence. Courage and confidence. Yes, of course it's true that it isn't certain we can do it. We need to have a long campaign, because we didn't keep the Yes Movement going after the 2014 defeat. The Yes Movement isn't like a political party with a permanent membership system and secretariat. But we know from experience that given a long campaign, Yes is a formidable electoral machine.

And seriously, what are you going to say to your starving daughter as you hug her close to try to protect her from the damp and chill of a Scottish winter without fuel, and she asks you "what did you do to try to save Scotland from this?"

Are you really going to say "well, it looked hard, so we didn't try." Really?

Really really?

Nothing comes to those who wait. If we don't forge the future, the future will go to those who are forging it while we wait. The Brexiteers are forging the future. We may not like the future they're forging, but they're doing it very effectively. The climate change deniers are forging the future. The far right are forging the future. They're not waiting. It's their future we will get if we wait.

Independence is not the key political issue of our age. Global warming is more important. Social justice is more important. Ecocide is more important. Peace is more important. Independence is important in as much as it helps towards those goals. But independence, like social justice, like an end to war, like a habitable planet, will not come if we wait. We must forge these things. This is no time for quietism. It is time for action.

Now is the time.