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#yesbecause: a no vote is the real betrayal;

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My journey to yes took almost eight years. It started in a fading post-industrial Midlands town in 2006. I moved to Glasgow in September of that year, and it wasn’t until February of 2014 that I finally admitted to myself that I was going to vote for independence.

I grew up in an area called the Black Country. It took its name from the coal mines, factories and foundries that coloured the skies, making the region “black by day and red by night”. The area has been in decline for decades, and children of my generation grew up seeing parents and grandparents who couldn’t find work. Proud working class people whose careers and skills had been deemed surplus to Thatcher’s requirements.

When I first moved to Glasgow, I was angered to hear people saying that England had benefitted at Scotland’s expense. I offered to take people on tours of Darlaston, Wednesbury or Dudley. I tried to explain just how bad it was in the forgotten areas of England, and argued that people should put aside talk of independence and separation, and unite to take on Westminster. We could make a union to be proud of.

Over the better part of the next eight years my argument became a hollow shell. I saw enough of the problems in Scotland to not want to score cheap points or play ‘poverty top trumps’. In return, I also saw a shifting of the arguments from those in favour of independence, an acknowledgement of the plight of post-industrial England.

Long after I stopped believing we could reform the union, I still held on to a basic position of being a no voter by default. I felt that voting yes would be to turn my back on my family and friends and leave England to rot. Even though it seemed clear to me that we were not “better together”, I still clung to the idea that we should at least be miserable in union. Voting for separation felt like a betrayal.

“Poor people in Glasgow have more in common with people in Manchester or Liverpool,” the argument goes, “than they do with rich land owners in the Highlands.” That’s true enough. But I’m an internationalist, and I think poor people in Glasgow also have more in common with workers in just about any city in the western world than they do with land owners, but we don’t all need to be in the same country to work together.

The harsh truth is that a no vote is the real betrayal. Voting to keep the union together is to continue the decline of post-industrial England. It’s an endorsement of an agenda that is driving these communities into poverty. The U.K. was set up to serve a small minority, and it continues to do so perfectly; the rest of us don’t matter.

Labour activists still argue that we should work together to elect a progressive left wing party and create a better union. Who are they kidding? At every single election since 1955, the popular vote in the U.K. has been against the Conservatives and their Neo-Con ideals. This includes the height of Thatcherism in 1982, when 13 million voted Conservative but 16 million voted for Labour and the Liberals. Year after year, vote after vote, the majority have said they wanted something different. The status quo finds a way to survive each time. Even in 1997, the moment we thought things could be different, we got a land grab for middle England by Tony Blair and New Labour. Thatcherism may have robbed the working class of its hope and unity, but it was the Blairites who took away their voice. These Labour activists seem to overlook that we’ve seen what their party has to offer.

We hear that the English are more right wing than the Scots, and a vote for independence would condemn them to an eternity of Tory rule. In truth, the Conservatives are a niche party: they draw on the same 30% at each election. UKIP draw even fewer votes than that. They both gain ground because the U.K. is built for them and the media protects their interests. What we’re really seeing in England at the moment is that the majority now simply stay at home on polling day, because they’ve stopped believing. Nobody speaks for them, nobody wants their votes. Even the Labour party are playing the game of chasing 30% at the next election, meaning that a change of government in 2015 will still deliver the same policies.

There is a real England, a liberal England, that doesn’t get taught in schools or celebrated in films. It’s an England of Thomas Paine, suffragettes and Cable Street. It’s an England where one million people will march in opposition to a war they don’t want, and where recently 50,000 people gathered in Parliament Square to speak up for those being hit hardest by austerity. That the media completely ignored the protesters shows just how lost we are at the moment. How are the progressive voices of England to be heard if even the BBC chooses to ignore them?

If you’re an English person living in Scotland, I can understand why you might feel a sense of guilt at voting yes on the 18th of September. But when in you’re in that booth, staring down at the two options with a pencil in your hand, think long and hard. We’ve seen the status quo. We’ve seen what Westminster has to offer. I’ve seen my hometown die, almost like a Springsteen song, and I’m sick of it. I turned old enough to vote in 1998, and not one single box I’ve ever ticked since then has had any impact. Now I have the chance to vote in something that will mean genuine change.

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” With those words, and the pamphlet Common Sense, Englishman Thomas Paine fanned the flames of revolution in the colonies of America. We have that chance again. On September 18th we all have it in our power. Independence for Scotland is a unknown quantity, but the union is a proven failure, and it’s hurting people on both sides of the border.

The post #yesbecause: a no vote is the real betrayal; appeared first on [last year's girl].


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