As regular readers will know, I’ve been a member of the Alba Party since its formation in spring 2021. I was a member of the Alba NEC between 2021 and 2022, and to the best of my knowledge I’m still a member of the party’s Appeals Committee. One thing that has slightly concerned me over the last two years is the number of global warming denialists, anti-vaxxers and ‘plandemic’ conspiracy theorists who have become Alba members – however that has generally seemed only a minor concern, because such views are clearly not shared by people at the top of the party. Before she was stripped of her column in The National, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh was in fact one of the very few remaining voices of sanity on the subject of Covid to be found anywhere in the Scottish media, and Chris McEleny often spoke out about the issue too. On the subject of climate change, it’s fair to say Alex Salmond places a greater emphasis than many others on technological solutions such as carbon capture, which the Greens (and indeed Robin McAlpine, the author of the Wee Alba Book) regard as essentially a pseudoscience. But there’s no disagreement at all between the Alba leadership and the environmental movement on the urgency of the threat or on the responsibility of all countries to play their part in tackling it.
Today has seen something of a crossing of the Rubicon, though, because Stuart Campbell of Wings Over Scotland has suddenly gone full global warming denialist nutjob, and published a Neil Oliver-style article in which he sneers at the idea that the extreme and life-threatening recent weather conditions in southern Europe are anything out of the ordinary for July, and essentially argues that Scotland and the wider UK should abandon all further efforts to tackle climate change. Campbell is not, of course, a member of the Alba Party, and never has been – he’s a Tory voter in Somerset who a few months ago revealed that he is “ashamed of Scotland” and would not support independence in any new referendum. With near-comical irony, the only political party he has ever attempted to join is the Green Party of England and Wales. Nevertheless, he is unofficially associated with Alba due to his role in editing the Wee Alba Book, and more particularly because of the significant overlap between his readership and Alba membership. I know from personal experience the discomfort and stresses of being an Alba member who is opposed to Campbellism or Wingsism or whatever you want to call it – in my case that’s literally the only type of Alba member I’ll ever have any interest in being, so I just make a virtue of it, but I know of others who bite their tongue for a quiet life. It’s likely that if Campbell expresses a view on something, it’ll be automatically assumed in many quarters to represent either official Alba policy, or at least the centre of gravity within the Alba membership. And that’s dangerous on a day like today.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – if Alba are going to make the transition from small party to major player, they need to position themselves in the sweet spot on the radical end of the pro-independence mainstream. “Radical end” because that’s the purpose of the party’s existence, but “mainstream” because there will always be a severe limit on the support that can be won by a party too closely associated with wacky fringe views or preoccupations. And I’m afraid the views that Campbell has expressed today do belong to that vote-repelling fringe, at least as far as the left-leaning, pro-independence pool of voters in Scotland is concerned. The idea that the UK doesn’t need to do anything on climate because we account for only 1% of global emissions, and the real polluters are the likes of China? Well, any region of 50 million people in China could just as easily draw a circle around themselves and say “we’re not the problem, it’s the rest of the world that’s the problem, so we can just get on with doing whatever we like”. Ultimately all countries have to make a serious effort, because China and Russia are hardly likely to make substantial enough cuts in emissions if they see that the western world can’t be arsed to make any sacrifices at all.
If Campbell’s thuggish behaviour in the past, and some of the extremist views he’s previously expressed, have not been enough for the Alba leadership to consider putting up at least a touch of distance between themselves and him, I’d suggest today ought to give them pause for thought about whether the time has come to start quietly doing that.
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SCOT GOES POP FUNDRAISER 2023: This year’s fundraiser has now been running for well over two months, and it’s been partially successful – it’s around a quarter of the way towards its target figure of £8500. Please bear with me as I plug away at continuing to promote it at the bottom of every blogpost, because there’s very little point in leaving the job half-done – that would mean continuing with the current service for maybe two or three more months and then more or less stopping. We wouldn’t necessarily need to hit the full target figure to avoid that outcome, but substantial progress would need to be made. Why is it a bit harder to raise money these days than it used to be? Obviously it’s partly because of the cost of living crisis, but I think the bigger issue is that it’s far easier for a pro-indy blog to inspire people to donate if it’s pumping out a “purist” message that appeals to one of the two opposite ends of the spectrum – ie. either that the SNP leadership can do no wrong and deserve our unquestioning support, or that the SNP is unremittingly evil and must be totally destroyed. Scot Goes Pop has a much more nuanced analysis that is pretty much bang in the middle between those two extremes. But the glass-half-full way of looking at it is that £2000+ raised means that people still think nuance and independent thinking (alternatively known as “being in the scunnered middle”) have their place. A million thanks to everyone who has donated so far, and anyone wishing to make a donation can do so HERE. Alternatively, direct donations can be made via Paypal (in many ways this is preferable because it cuts out the middle man). My Paypal email address is: jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk
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