Velvet revolution

Alf Young is being unnecessarily negative about the turnout at the first event run by A Future for Scotland, (Perspective, 3 March). Many of us were profoundly disappointed when the promises of “a new way of doing politics” in a devolved Scotland came to nothing.

We were naive but, hopefully, we have learned from our false optimism. We must therefore attempt to ensure that the politicians and their followers do not entirely dominate the referendum debate and the political and democratic processes in the new Scotland: a New Scotland there must be, whichever constitutional arrangement we vote for; a Scotland in which the community of citizens is sufficiently enabled to become much more democratically literate. We must hope that many able, creative and independent-minded citizens from outwith mainstream politics will stand for election.

We can surely have a vision, no matter the outcome of the referendum, for a new form of Scottish democracy in which the term “sovereignty of the people” comes to mean more than another political soundbite.

A referendum vote for change must be for so much more than the politicians can envisage from within their depressingly limited framework. I hope that, in spite of Alf Young’s pessimism, we are witnessing the stirrings of a (velvet) Citizens’ Revolt.

John Milne

Ardgowan Drive Uddingston South Lanarkshire