As SNP descends into chaos, the independence movement will no longer wheesht – Kenny MacAskill

“We didn’t know at all, We didn’t see a thing, You can’t hold us to blame, What could we do? It was a terrible shame, But we can’t share the blame, On no, not us, we didn’t know.”

The chorus of Tom Paxton’s wonderful song, We Didn’t Know, that condemns silence in the face of wrongdoing and injustice came to my mind listening to the bleating of some senior SNP figures over recent days. The deputy leader eulogising the party’s internal democracy and the Westminster leader unaware for months about the resignation of the party’s auditors.

According to them, it is just some minor blip, ‘nothing to see here sir, just move along’. But instead, it’s a ‘would you accompany us to the station sir’. So, there’s serious allegations requiring answers. More than that, this isn’t just some issue that crept up on them. It’s not a moment of madness concocted by one individual after a recent full moon. Others must have known or consciously done nothing.

It’s a culture that developed under Nicola Sturgeon. It’s not just about the accounts but an authoritarian regime that brooked little dissent, stifled the internal democratic process and sought to neuter and sideline the independence movement.

Tom Paxton's song We Didn't Know seems to sum up many recent comments by SNP figures (Picture: Jemal Countess/Getty Images)

Rather than hectoring various individuals, decrying other independence parties or denying the scale of the issue, there should instead be some humility shown. This has impacted on the movement. Its effects are far wider than simply on the SNP.

I know many who have been stalwarts for our shared cause and who were either not in any party or in one where success was as forlorn as for the old SNP. But they kept the cause alive when the SNP became a fan club or preferred self-ID to self-determination, all the time giving themselves grandiloquent titles or padding their salaries rather than pursuing the cause.

The movement is alive and well, but the days of supine acceptance of SNP diktats are gone, as are the days of being told it’s not now, it’s too soon or just to wheesht. It’s game on – with or without them.

Kenny MacAskill is the Alba Party MP for East Lothian