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.” 

Documenting: Scottish Election 2016

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.

Storify: How not to report General Election 2015

Working for a political party means that you're never really off duty. Moments after the potentially damaging #FrenchGate story broke last night, Sean McGivern and I started to create this rebuttal, whilst on a night out in a pub in Leith. Assisted by tweets by journalists that had contacted the French Consul, it was read by over 62,000 people within 8 hours. The story was completely discredited by this morning and hunt for the person who had leaked the story has begun.