I tried to give an elderly neighbour a No Thanks poster the other day but she wasn’t interested. A staunch unionist who had already cast her vote, she would not nail her colours to her window for fear of getting it smashed in.
Out canvassing on Saturday, I approached four young women and offered them stickers. All said they were voting no but were worried about being accosted for their beliefs. I assured them they’d be fine in a group but then, as they disappeared around the corner, I felt a twinge of anxiety.
A female motorist asked me if it was safe to leave a no sign in her car overnight and a pensioner only agreed to wear a badge under her scarf, where it was hidden from view.
One Better Together campaigner revealed he’d been spat at and a friend said a Yes supporter told her 18-year-old daughter, out door-knocking, that he’d rather shoot her than vote no. My own daughter, aged 17, had to beat a hasty retreat when she and a fellow volunteer, also young and female, were confronted by a group of middle-aged men waving Yes badges and shouting “you should be ashamed of yourselves”.
These kinds of anecdotes have become a regular feature of the No campaign and are not the most extreme examples of intimidation. Those who have had their property vandalised or been involved in physical altercations have hopefully taken their complaints to the police.
On a bigger scale, meetings have been disrupted by Yes thugs and pro-UK politicians have grown accustomed to the flak, though it is beyond what they have experienced in their careers to date. Alistair Darling said that, in 35 years of politics, he had never seen anything like it before. Normally, “different parties will smile at each other and get on and talk to the electorate”.
Nationalists speak of the population’s engagement with politics and of their passion; meanwhile, old ladies whisper they are too afraid to speak at all. Anyone in the public eye who dares to back the union risks the wrath of the separatist rent-a-mobs who patrol Scotland, literally and virtually, to unearth ‘traitors’ on the other side of the fence. The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson (professionally neutral) is just the latest in a long line of targets and I hope he has a minder when he returns north to cover the vote.
As The Courier reported on Monday, a sinister campaign of silencing the opposition has seen the defacing or destruction of every single banner supporting a no vote within a 50-mile round trip in central Scotland. In the same journey, not one yes banner had been touched.
‘Vote Yes for intimidation’ could be the catchphrase of the independence referendum, a period in Scottish political history that will be remembered most for its divisiveness. But concern that the scare tactics will continue at the polling booths tomorrow must not deter people from exercising their democratic rights.
In some deprived areas, with traditionally low turn-outs, Yes activists have said they will ‘march’ people to the polling stations in ‘walks to freedom’, an unintentionally ironic reference to Nelson Mandela from a Nationalist party whose bullying and intolerance has more in common with South Africa’s oppressors than its liberators.
There are also disturbing tales of no voters being informed by the SNP that they don’t need to vote at all because not voting will count as a no. The Conservative MSP John Lamont said: “I had two people ask me about this on street stalls but at that point I did not realise that this message was being promoted by the Yes campaign.”
Of course every vote counts, and every voter must follow his or her own instincts. Like all British elections, this is a secret ballot and the decision people make within the confines of the polling booth is theirs alone.
A leading Nationalist, Jim Sillars, warned that there would be “a day of reckoning” for businesses that didn’t toe the Yes line. It was a silly remark he probably now regrets but the threat sent a chill down this unionist’s spine: our future in these zealots’ hands? No, thanks.