Joan McAlpine: Formula for independence adds up

“YOU can resist an invading army,” said Victor Hugo, “but not an idea whose time has come.” Succeeding generations of social reformers, revolutionaries, intellectuals and entrepreneurs have drawn inspiration and encouragement from that immortal phrase.

Life-changing movements all start small. Sometimes believers can drill away for decades, trying to break through society’s apparent indifference. Then, all of a sudden, the dam bursts, your idea catches on, and suddenly everyone is fighting to claim they heard it first.

It could be a cultural movement like pop art or rock ‘n’ roll, a network, like Twitter, or a product, like the iPad. Closer to home, it might be the moment we decided we would no longer tolerate other people’s cigarette smoke after passively inhaling without complaint for years.

Or it could be something more profound, such as the Arab Spring of last year or indeed the velvet revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall was dismantled. Often the speed of change is so rapid, commentators, even experts, are taken by surprise.

Now a scientific explanation for the phenomenon so poetically captured by Hugo, the author of Les Miserables, has been published. Researchers at Rensselaer in New York, America’s oldest technological research university, have found that it only takes 10 per cent of the people in a society to be absolutely convinced of an idea for it to spread and turn around the majority.

The scientists, members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to understand how innovations or ideas take hold, and why a niche product can suddenly become mass market, just as a small protest group can become a mass movement.

“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 per cent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas.,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski at Rensselaer. “Once that number grows above 10 per cent, the idea spreads like flame.”

The study was called “Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities”. Scientists developed computer models of various types of social networks into which they then “sprinkled” in some true believers. These people were “completely set in their views and unflappable in modifying those beliefs”. Once interaction took place, change was remarkable.

Those of us who believe that the people of Scotland should make their own decisions are vindicated by these findings, because they offer a scientific explanation of what we are currently living through. But why now? It is almost 80 years since the national party of Scotland was formed. It is 40 years since the SNP began winning seats, first in by-elections, then consistently. Now we run a majority government and after decades painstakingly explaining the benefits of independence, its time has come.

The last week of the election campaign saw a predicted SNP win became a groundswell. The SNP is not of course just about independence, though that is the party’s core objective alongside promoting Scotland’s best interests. But the trust placed in it suggests that the wider public is listening.

We certainly have at least 10 per cent of the Scottish population convinced, so the mathematical formula is in place. Not even the most cynical unionist would deny one in ten the population had an “unflappable conviction” that returning to a state of independence is by far Scotland’s best option. If the pattern observed in those computational models is replicated, the union’s days are done.

And it doesn’t matter that support has not reached 50 per cent yet. The last poll had independence at 38 per cent. More importantly, the trend is upwards. The numbers are growing. More significant still, the bulk of voters are open-minded, the hardcore UK loyalists are tiny in number. No wonder David Cameron is in a flap.

Maybe, like so many of his generation, the Prime Minister has read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. This book – itself an idea whose time had come – has been enormously influential since its publication in 2000. It describes the moment of critical mass which precedes transformation – and how we get there.

Gladwell says: “Ideas and products and messages and behaviours spread like viruses do.” The speed and effectiveness of that epidemic, if you like, depends on the main players. Gladwell, years before the 10 per cent experiment, understood that these key people could be relatively few in number. But he identifies them as individuals who are particularly gifted in their ability to connect with others and share information across widely divergent groups.

But you cannot impose this on a country or a people. Timing and circumstance are everything. The process, says Gladwell, is “sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur”. Gladwell’s book could almost have been written with Scotland in mind. He explains: “It’s about change. In particular, it presents a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does.”

Since its publication, The Tipping Point has become mainstream – received wisdom almost. It is very similar to what is called the “meme”, a term particularly relevant to the internet age when millions of people can become excited about something in the space of a few days. The meme can easily become a fad, however. But Gladwell identified something deep-rooted that builds gradually then, suddenly, is ubiquitous.

Gladwell has since had gone on to explore related aspects of social psychology. In Blink he examines the subliminal messages we send out that can result in opinions being formed in seconds – and then being very hard to shift.

Applied to Scotland, the thesis suggest the unionists cannot win, however much they interfere. Their attempts to focus on the timing of the question may have resonance in the media, but not among the people. They gave the SNP permission to persuade back in May. They want to hear more about our big idea.

And as Victor Hugo might have said, an army cannot halt this process, so a few desperate Westminster politicians will certainly fail.