Ewan Crawford: When independence is a class above the rest

Future generations will never achieve their full potential unless they control the decision making process writes Ewan Crawford

AS A former pupil of Stewart’s Melville College with an unusual interest in cricket and an upbringing in Edinburgh’s New Town I bow to no-one in my clichéd middle-classness.

Just to ram the point home I now live in what must be called, since I am writing for a newspaper, “the leafy suburbs” of East Renfrewshire, an area I am also compelled to say has the best state schools in Scotland.

But in one respect I deviate from the middle-class norm: I believe passionately in an independent Scotland and can’t really remember a time when I did not.

That isn’t to say independence support is negligible among those perceived to be middle-class, but it has never been as strong in comparison with some other social groups.

The Yes campaign is well aware it needs to make up ground among parts of Scottish society. It’s making a big effort to reach out to women, and the SNP has long confirmed its civic credentials with its welcome for those born outside Scotland, but who have wisely chosen to live and work here.

Academics interested in the origins of nationalism have often looked at Scotland to work out why middle classes were driving independence movements in the 19th century elsewhere in Europe but not in this country.

Various explanations have been put forward including the fact that in professions such as the law and education Scots enjoyed considerable autonomy without formal political independence and that there were few, if any, barriers to advancement among the powerful in London.

But that was then. With the signing of the Edinburgh Agreement yesterday attitudes towards independence are no longer just of academic interest. Decisions have to be made about the future.

When I was growing up in the 1970s despite industrial and political unrest elsewhere in the UK, much of middle-class Edinburgh would have seemed as secure as ever.

This was the time when some of the city’s leading rugby clubs, the FPs, really did admit only former pupils of their associated fee-paying schools. Such was the stability of parts of Edinburgh society that these clubs thrived despite their self-imposed limited playing pool.

My Dad (later a nationalist MP) was also a rugby and football enthusiast but much to my childhood disgust Saturday afternoons at Inverleith or Tynecastle were sometimes swapped for SNP business.

On one occasion I remember a family trip to Rothesay conveniently timed to coincide with the 1972 SNP annual conference.

That early political exposure clearly did not put me off too much and played a major part in my own interest in Scottish independence.

But it also brought home to me that of course the secure Edinburgh that I knew was not typical of the whole city or country.

There was deep inequality that was probably more pronounced than in most other European cities.

Forty years on under successive Westminster governments, far from getting better, that inequality has become markedly worse.

Whatever social background we come from that is surely unacceptable and at the very least should lead to questioning about the form of government that has led to such a situation.

We also now know from extensive academic research that people in more equal countries who are classified as middle-class tend to be healthier and report a better quality of life compared with people on the same incomes in less equal societies.

For personal well-being, if nothing else, it therefore makes sense to change a system.

No-one is saying that independence would automatically be more socially just but we can say, with some certainty from the evidence, that allowing Westminster to control retain control of Scotland’s economic, tax and social policy will mean more of the same.

An independent Scotland presents at the very least the opportunity to shape our country in a way that is more compatible with widely-held social democratic beliefs.

Ultimately, however, time and time again, polls have shown that it will be views on the economy that will determine the outcome of the referendum.

In this respect the former Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy has said: “One of the Labour Party’s jobs is to help working-class parents have middle-class kids. That’s a big part of my politics.”

Although criticised by some on the left, Murphy was rightly speaking about the importance not just of aspirations but about the means of achieving those aspirations.

But despite our country’s natural advantages, ceding decision-making in economic policy to Westminster is making that task harder. The growing gap between London and the rest means that without action job opportunities and investment will continue to flow south to an ever greater degree.

Given this geographic inequality it is not possible to talk about a single British economy and therefore it surely makes no sense to pursue a single, one size-fits-all, economic policy.

In addition, because of the action taken by a Conservative-led government few of us voted for, the social protection for those left behind is also being undermined. In this sense the argument for an independent Scotland is a reaction to political and economic changes that are already happening and which cannot be ignored.

A Yes vote in two years’ time will mean an opportunity to equip ourselves with the competitive tax and other powers all countries need to prosper and that we need in particular to counter the grossly imbalanced UK economy.

It should be remembered that Scottish public finances are in a stronger position than the UK as a whole and we have the lucky prospect of 40 years or more of oil wealth.

That’s got to be worth considering – even down at the FP Club.