Article: How the SNP is transforming political campaigning

How the SNP's digital team is transforming the conversation between party and the public and keeping the party at the forefront of modern political campaigning. 

In the Summer of 2014, against the backdrop of Govanhill’s rejuvenated Edwardian public bathhouse, hundreds of people gathered in a celebration - a confident, positive declaration of the sort of Scotland they wanted to live in. The event was held in support of a Yes vote in the Scotland’s Referendum, but this was far from a typical political rally. It was a genuine grassroots movement, organised entirely by volunteers through social media and independent of the usual campaign machinery.

Fast forward to November 2014 and, in the wake of Scotland’s Referendum when the SNP's membership started rocketing towards its current total of 115,102, more than 12,000 people attended the largest indoor political event in British political history at the SSE Hydro. The mixture of speeches, music and film was broadcasted live on YouTube, photographed, videoed, Facebooked and Tweeted by anyone with a mobile phone or a camera.

Each moment captured in its own way the power and influence of digital in modern politics. With its immediacy, accessibility and interactivity, online campaigning is transforming the political landscape and the SNP is at the forefront of this movement.

“Digital is the fastest growing area of political communications,” says Ross Colquhoun, the SNP’s Digital and Political Engagement Strategist. “It can help shape the political agenda faster than any other channel when it is used to publish accessible content and provide instant rebuttals. It’s an unfiltered platform that enables us to have two way communication with party members, supporters and the wider public. In that respect it’s really powerful.”

Ross believes the referendum campaign was undoubtedly a turning point for political campaigning. “It made people think about how campaigning is conducted. There are a lot of different techniques that arrived during the referendum that hadn’t been seen in politics before, predominantly involving social media and types of subversive activism. You now see political parties embracing those types of techniques.

“So, we have the ability to organise in a way we never could have before. We can keep our members informed, hopefully engage them and develop them as activists. But it’s not just about meeting the demands of the party, I see digital as a fundamental platform for encouraging greater participation in politics and providing accessible and accountable governance.

“When Nicola became First Minister, she set out to be the most accessible government Scotland had ever seen. As part of that we’ve run a series of Facebook Q&As where any member of the public can submit their questions and Nicola will reply. They’ve been incredible, she’ll get questions covering everything from her favourite biscuit to the party’s stance on Trident.”

Ross heads a young, enthusiastic digital team based at the party headquarters. The five-strong team comes from a mixture of creative, political, artistic and technical backgrounds. They create ideas, content and projects for the various digital channels to encourage people to join the party and play their part in creating a better Scotland. 

Alex Aitchison, SNP Digital Content Administrator, says: “The team works collaboratively in different areas, ranging from overall direction, to creating content, to analytics. We’ve each grown up as part of the digital generation and we keep on top of how things are developing because that’s where our interests lie. So we’ll often see something new, show it to the rest of the team and then think about how we could make use of it.”

The main channels the team are using include the new website and campaigning platform, NationBuilder, social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Periscope and Vine), infographics, videos, photography and a weekly email update.

The SNP’s website outlines the party’s vision for a fairer and more prosperous Scotland and helps supporter stay informed with the latest news and updates, which can be tailored to their particular interests. Within the site, Policy Base provides a searchable archive of party policies and an events section enables members to organise their own events for supporters, members and the public. There are now two ways that people can sign up to the party – by registering as a supporter they receive latest updates, and by becoming a member they can influence party policy, attend branch meetings and volunteer to help.

Alex says: “The number of people who are using digital as their first point of accessing news is rising. The 16-34 age group is most active on our social media platforms, but the new website is being used by members from across the generations to access the latest updates and policy information in a clear, easily digestible, printable format. Everyone’s excited that they have a new campaign tool, it’s not just younger people.”  

And messages that capture the imagination on social media don’t stop there, as people take them offline and continue to spread the word. “There's a common mistake that people think social media is a bubble, says Ross. “It's an error some political parties and journalists make. Actually social media is just a communications channel like any other. You’ll share something on social media and your followers can share it with theirs, and take that message on to friends and family members offline.” 

The SNP has developed a reputation for really pushing campaigning forward and being innovative in its approach. Ross says: “We’re lucky to have a large and engaged membership and that means we can be a bit more creative online. There’s a great working culture in the party which means that an idea can come from anywhere within the organisation and we want members to submit their ideas and play their part in digital campaigning I’d encourage anyone who thinks they have a new or better way of doing things to get in touch. If it’s the right idea we'll run with it. We have all seen just how big an impact digital can have.” 

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Extract: Tsunami: Scotland's Democratic Revolution

An extract from Iain Macwhirter's latest book Tsunami: Scotland’s Democratic Revolution.

It seemed that a class divide had begun to emerge in what had loosely been called the continuing ‘Yes Alliance’, the various non-SNP groups that had campaigned for independence in the referendum. The reference to an ‘art school clique’ related to criticism that National Collective, the acclaimed arts-based #IndyRef initiative, tended to exclude working class people.

Co-founded by the graphic designer Ross Colquhoun in 2012, the National Collective had mobilised some 4,000 writers, artists, poets, and designers, and organised a series of festivals, including a Yestival, of music, poetry and comedy which lent much-needed colour and energy to the Yes campaign. However, some in the wider independence movement felt that its art was rather conservative, inward-looking, and middle class. As McAlpine himself put it: ‘[working class supporters of Hope over Fear] don’t really do wish trees and coffee mornings and performance poetry and deliberative conferences.’

The rapper Loki, real name Darren McGarvey, inspired a vivid debate on the Nationalist left when he posted a series of video blogs in March 2015 saying that he and working class artists felt excluded from National Collective. In one memorable rant worthy of Malcolm Tucker, he said that National Collective existed only to ‘suck Ross Colquhoun’s big rugby cock’. He later apologised for that remark. For their part, National Collective insisted that there had been no attempt to exclude anybody from the organisation. In fact, they say that they discussed a funding project with him to engage young working class people. The whole point of National Collective was that anyone could participate and there was no attempt to curate any of the material it published or staged.

More seriously, however, Loki also criticised National Collective for being too close to government after it emerged in March 2015 that Ross Colquhoun had joined the SNP payroll as an ‘engagement strategist’. ‘His appointment by Scotland’s ruling party,’ said Loki, ‘is sure to raise questions regarding National Collective’s authenticity as the artistic voice of the Yes movement.’ Loki was joined in the assault on National Collective’s integrity by the Yes-supporting journalist Andrew Eaton Lewis, the former Arts Editor of the Scotsman. While he paid tribute to its member’s creative work and energy, he criticised the Collective for lacking any kind of internal accountability, membership rights, or constitution. It had, he said, a ‘democratic deficit’. 

The truth is National Collective was never a democracy. It was an association of like-minded individuals who came together in an ad hoc way to try to inject some colour into the Yes Scotland campaign, which was, by common agreement, too preoccupied with dry statistics and abstract arguments about currency. Initially the Collective was arguably more like a writing group than a political or arts organisation. But the initiative simply struck the right note at the right time, gathered hundreds of volunteers, and unleashed a huge amount of anarchic creative energy. True, it wasn’t Turner Prize stuff, but they weren’t interested in selling to the arts market or being placed in galleries.

National Collective’s relationship to the SNP was always close since a number of founder members were SNP supporters, but it kept the other organisations, including Yes Scotland, very much at arm's length. It is unfair on the artists, musicians, comedians, writers, fashion designers, and others who gave their time for free to the Yestivals and other events to complain that it was a nationalist front. It wasn’t. Political parties simply aren’t capable of having that much fun for a start. There was perhaps an element of naiveté in believing that the Collective could continue as a free-form, come-as-you-are ‘happening’ when it started raising significant sums of money and had become a national movement. But it never pretended to be a political party. As Christopher Silver, one of National Collective’s prominent members put it on Twitter: ‘The lesson I took from #IndyRef is that it’s better to start your own revolution than wait around for one with an AGM.’

The debate raging in Bella Caledonia soon attracted the attention of political journalists from the mainstream press. Many had never rated National Collective and had been waiting for an opportunity to have a go at it: ‘I don’t care whether National Collective are democrats,’ wrote the Spectator columnist Alex Massie in the Scotsman, ‘I’d just prefer them to be artists.’ He quoted sections of bad poetry that had been published on the website. He might equally have quoted the celebrated Scottish poet Liz Lochhead or the Booker prize-winning novelist James Kelman who contributed to the hardback almanac Inspired by Independence. Or one of Scotland’s leading playwrights, David Greig, who said that National Collective had brought inspiration to the independence debate. 

But for my money the success of National Collective had nothing to do with the arts-world names that it attracted. Any campaign can do that. It wasn’t trying to appeal to the arts establishment or bid for Arts Council grants. What was endearing and new about National Collective was the involvement of unimportant people who were invited to contribute their poetry, thoughts, art, photography, humour, knitting, or whatever, without being subjected to withering criticism. National Collective set itself the task of ‘imagining a better Scotland’, and even the much-derided wish trees did exactly that.

Unfortunately the scorn, accusations of class bias, and political selling out seemed to undermine the confidence of those still involved in the Collective in late 2014/15. It was always on shifting sands based on voluntary effort and changing personnel. Despite its communication skills it seemed to lack the will to mount an effective defence of its work in political or artistic terms, even though its success was never in doubt. It is one of those occasions when some old media PR might have helped. Perhaps even a press conference to address some of the political accusations formally. But it didn’t happen, and within a month, National Collective effectively shut up shop.

The criticism that it was a clique of middle class 'luvvies' was probably the killing blow. Middle-class radicals in Scotland tend to be insecure of their class background. There is no obvious reason for this sensitivity since revolutionaries from Karl Marx to Nelson Mandela have invariably emerged from the middle classes. It’s what you say that matters, not where you come from. But in Scotland there is a degree of class hostility that can be very difficult to manage if you are on the sharp end of it. The dark side of Scotland’s literary strand of proletarian romanticism is a cultural animosity toward people who didn’t grow up on housing estates. Or who don’t sound as if they do. The final irony of the National Collective class row is that Ross Colquhoun was brought up in a single parent household in Edinburgh’s Drylaw estate.

On May 1st 2015, a statement on National Collective laid the movement to rest. ‘To be part of it was exciting, energising, inspiring and beautiful. National Collective belongs to a time and a place and that moment has passed.’ If the implication there was that National Collective had always been time-limited, that wasn’t entirely true. It had never been the Collective’s intention to liquidate itself after the referendum and initially it had ambitious plans to become a permanent non-aligned arts-based organisation. Aware that it had been too urban and lowland-centred, the organisers had planned to develop its network of local groups across Scotland and publish a series of arts-based journals in each of these areas. It sent out questionnaires to its 4,000 odd members and was seeking crowdfunding for this purpose. But, as the controversy surrounding the organisation mounted, these ideas faded. The energy had drained out of the Collective and an organisation that had been built on nothing had to eventually recognise that it had no visible means of support. It is worth however considering its last will and testament:

"National Collective offered a form of participation in politics that was thoroughly imaginative, but also accessible to all. National Collective tapped into the consciousness of a generation for whom the restrictions of ideological and party loyalties can often seem stifling and archaic. National Collective’s central aim, to ‘imagine a better Scotland’, remains just as relevant now that the referendum campaign is over. Its early success was just one example of a wider upsurge in grassroots activity in support of Scottish independence.

However the group was also tapping another seam, namely, the rise of what has been described as the ‘precariat’. The young, often highly educated post-industrial workforce that has become an ever more significant feature of neoliberal economies everywhere. National Collective is what a political campaign looks like when it is instigated and sustained by such people." 

That was a remarkable statement in many ways, both in its maturity and its political wisdom. It was fully aware of its limitations but also confident about its strengths. Of course, it was unreasonable to expect young people with careers to build to give endlessly of their time for nothing. It probably couldn’t have continued without proper funding and some kind of permanent secretariat. And there is much good work continuing by people involved in the venture. Nevertheless, when National Collective was extinguished, a light went out in the independence movement. I wasn’t involved in National Collective in any way and hope someone who was closer than I was to National Collective writes a proper assessment of its achievements. If Scotland is in the middle of a democratic revolution, then National Collective deserves a lot more than a footnote.

The demise of National Collective seemed to epitomise the failure of the continuing Yes movement or alliance to find a collective way forward in the post-referendum era. In place of the infectious enthusiasm and optimism of the referendum, there was now an element of division, rancour, and disillusion. 

Perhaps this is just what always happens to radical movements. Yet it was a strange moment for cultural defeatism. The day National Collective folded the opinion polls were indicating that the SNP was on course to win every seat in Scotland. That, you might think, was an eloquent rebuff to Alex Massie who had said that National Collective’s radicalism was about ‘as subversive as a flat white in Finnieston’. Finnieston is in Glasgow which was the prime focus of the nationalist electoral revolution on May 7th 2015. History may judge that the ‘hipster unco guid’ as he called them, played a not insignificant role in turning the young people of that city to the SNP. 

Purchase the full book here.

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Artwork by Jim Arcola and Vonny Moyes.

Award: The List's Hot 100

National Collective has been awarded second place in The List magazine's 'The Hot 100 2014', a collection of figures who've contributed to the cultural landscape of Scotland during the year.

Article: How we won and how we will win

We know that you are completely exhausted and utterly heartbroken. We are too. On face value we lost, but there is more to the result than meets the eye and this was anything but a fair fight. Two years ago, we started off with Yes on a poll of 25% and yet we ended up with 45%. The sheer resilience of the Yes movement in the face of the full might of the British state, corporate and media power, that was designed to demonise, smear and alienate anyone who chose to side with it will not die down. We’ve been looking straight into the eyes of the British establishment, and we don’t think much of what we see sneering back at us.

From the very beginning, the then ‘Better Together’ turned ‘UKOK’ turned ‘No Thanks’ campaign threw every toy out of the basket, played every dirty trick in the book, and ran a campaign based on negativity and scaring the population into thinking that we were not actually capable of running our own affairs. What we were faced with was a campaign based on stifling engagement, dumbing down politics and deadening thought whilst portraying a No vote as the rational, educated and realistic option.

One of the most heartbreaking moments in the campaign will be a familiar one for many. Knocking on doors and being confronted with an elderly person who had postal-voted No because they were told that they would lose their pension. The No campaign had shamelessly managed to convince people that, in the 14th richest country in the world, we could not afford pensions. The fear tactics employed were sickening. They threw everything under the sun at us, but not once did it dampen our spirits. We canvassed, we danced, we wrote, we sang, we campaigned. And we will continue to do so.

Aside from the fear tactics, this was a campaign aspiring to deaden thought, simplify politics and close minds. #PatronsingBTLady proved an excellent illustration of such, as was the ‘I love my family, I’m saying No Thanks’ billboards, and let’s not forget the ‘independence stresses me out’ stress balls handed out at freshers fayres. This is how they see us. They think we are passive, disinterested, selfish and stupid. In contrast, National Collective toured the country on Yestival, Radical Independence knocked on tens of thousands of doors in a day on their Mass Canvasses, tens of thousands of activists reached out to apathetic communities through local groups, Generation Yes ran open platforms on social media where young people could ask us anything – the entire Yes movement was about encouraging people to think and imagine.

Despite the ‘Better Together’ campaign being what is unquestionably one of the most incompetent political campaigns in the history of British politics, what hindered the steady surge to Yes was a largely compliant mainstream media. For example, a Guardian journalist sent us sarcastic e-mails refusing to publish details of a list of 1,300 prominent artists and creatives who had signed a letter backing a Yes vote and we were constantly demonized as anti-English separatist nationalists and, at times, ‘fascists’ despite many of us being English, and some of us knowing the journalists personally. If they cannot win through an honest factual campaign, what does this say about their case?

Aside from the blatant smearing of anything Yes, sections of the press did something significantly more sinister. They controlled the dissemination of information, closed the space for Yes voices to be heard, and thus facilitated and legitimised the scaremongering onslaught from the No campaign. How many times did you hear that ‘there are just too many unanswered questions’, despite the questions being answered? How many times did you hear that people were voting No because they didn’t like nationalism, despite us not being nationalists? To suggest that British identity is in no way nationalistic derives from a neo imperialist mindset. How many times did you see Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond compared to Dennis Canavan? How many people do you honestly think were aware that Salmond wasn’t the leader of Yes? This was most evident during the last week of the campaign, when we saw the Telegraph stating that voting Yes was an insult to dead soldiers and their families. The establishment’s compliant media was the cherry on top of the cake; a systematic abuse of power.

Did we let this deliberate misrepresentation and demonisation take us down? No. We became the media. Stephen Paton released his #IndyRef Weekly Review, websites like National Collective and Bella Caledonia became a space for underrepresented Yes voices to be heard, and we took to social media to overcome the smear and spread our progressive visions. We should point out here that the Sunday Herald, in supporting Yes, demonstrated courage throughout this movement. It’s not easy to go against the tide of mainstream media opinions and portrayals. The Yes movement should be incredibly proud of our ingenuity and tireless determination and we mustn’t let it dwindle.

Within the political landscape of the No campaign, Scottish Labour provided the front whilst the Tories pulled the strings and supplied the funds. If they were honest democrats, Scottish Labour should have held an election within their party regarding which stance to take on the referendum. The Scottish Green Party for example voted on it, and maintained that members who supported No could speak freely on the matter. This was the first indication that Scottish Labour were about to ostracise those demonstrating autonomy in their party. And boy did that happen. They were openly seen and heard mocking Yes supporting Labour members at their party conference. Something tells us that they may regret these tactics in the near future.

Despite Scottish Labour supporting a No vote, around 38% of their voters supported Yes. The Scottish Labour Party ignored their own supporters, and instead blindly persued an agenda that panders to the Labour Party in Westminster, a party that is out of touch with the people of Scotland and one that they have overwhelmingly rejected. One of the results of this is that we are now witnessing memberships of the SNP, the Scottish Green Party and the Scottish Socialist Party skyrocket overnight. Scottish Labour have risked alienating 38% of their own vote in Scotland to preserve a failing Westminster elite. This highlights how little regard they have for the Scottish political landscape. True power, they believe, lies at Westminster.

Taking all of this into consideration, and acknowledging that we were challenging the full force of the British establishment, their corporate might and their compliant media, we did bloody well. If we were at the forefront of a campaign with that level of influence, power and money, we would see a 55% as an international embarrassment.

Part of the reason that we saw the groundswell of grassroots activism that we did is because there was a deadline, a common shared goal for September 18th 2014. Although the deadline has been removed, we still have that shared aspiration. The question now is how to we encapsulate and maintain the momentum of this progressive, diverse, grassroots movement?

The first means of achieving this is clear. The vast majority of the mainstream media have demonstrated their complete lack of autonomy and level of compliance to the British establishment and the corporate elite. We need to create and preserve alternative media channels. But there is little point in creating them as a protest to the mainstream media. These alternative channels must become the mainstream. To do so requires working together. There are some utterly brilliant and resourceful people in this movement. It’s time to unite.

Secondly, we need to organise ourselves with the common aim of holding Westminster accountable to the promises that they made to us. This starts with their pledges for further devolution. We expect that this won’t happen. 1 in every 4 No voters casted their vote under the promise of further devolution. If these promises fail to transpire, we will seek to secure a date for the next referendum on Scottish independence. We have various options as to how we can help make this happen, and we will update you on this later should it be required.

Thirdly, as stated above, the Yes movement seeks to make people think. It is our duty to continue to create a politically engaged, educated electorate. What Westminster want is a Yes movement that is so utterly deflated that it regresses into the shadows, it stops dreaming, it stops imagining that another Scotland is truly possible. There is a reason why the likes of Rupert Murdoch expressed concern at the influence of progressive Yes groups in Scotland.

We simply cannot afford to let our beautiful movement regress. 1.6 million of us stood up and dared to dream. We lost by the equivalent of the population of a small city. We can win this, we must win this, we will win this. When you get a popular revolution driven by hope and optimism like this, that energy will not dissolve into nothing. It can only grow. In the aftermath of a normal election, the losing party is disheartened and their supporters deflated. The difference here is that the whilst the official No campaign has finished and will no doubt try to delete all evidence of it ever existing, people still make the Yes movement and we will continue to campaign and dream. We will always put hope over fear.

Keep imagining a better Scotland.

Ross Colquhoun and Miriam Brett

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Photograph by Peter McNally