Scottish independence
The yes generation, 10 years after vote
Steven Campbell was 17 and still a high school pupil during the Scottish independence referendum campaign of 2014. “It didn’t matter what clique you were in, everybody was talking about the referendum and everyone had an opinion,” Campbell recalls. “For the first time young people were included in the conversation and the choice was about the rest of our lives.”
Now a student nurse and chair of Young Scots for Independence, the youth branch of the SNP, Campbell is reflective: “2014 captured a generation but then it felt like not just the SNP but the entire political system in Scotland and UK-wide failed to capitalise on that.”
The independence referendum wasn’t just a seismic event for Scotland, it marked a historic moment for young voters – the first time that the franchise had been extended to 16- and 17-year-olds in the UK – and subsequent polling showed they were more likely to vote yes to independence.
As the 10th anniversary of the referendum falls this week, what became of that engagement, and of the young people at the forefront of the yes campaign?
“We still don’t get many young people elected to parliaments or councils – we only have one MSP under 30 – and when you do they get targeted to an extreme level on social media,” says Campbell. “No wonder it puts people off.”
Young people’s support for independence has increased since 2014. Opinium polling published in the Sunday Times found almost two-thirds of 16- to 34-year-olds want to leave the UK, compared with fewer than a third of over65s. Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, told the paper that this “independence generation” made him “very optimistic” about winning a second referendum.
But recent internal polling for the SNP, also reported in the Times, found that younger voters rejected the party at the general election.
“I’m not surprised young people are drifting away from the SNP or any party after what’s happened in politics across the UK over the last few years,” says Kirsten Thornton, who was a 19-year-old law student when she co-founded Generation Yes with the aim of convincing teenagers of the merits of independence.
“One of the biggest problems we had in 2014 was young people saying that politicians didn’t care about normal people and were only out for themselves,” says Thornton, who now lives in Spain and works in global mobility. “The scandals of recent years have made it much harder to counter that.”
Purely in terms of turnout the lowering of the voting age was “definitely a success”, says Jan Eichhorn, a senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh who has been researching young people’s participation in politics. The turnout in 2014 among 16- and 17-year-olds was much higher than that for 18- to 24-year-olds, and this engagement “translated into early adulthood”. But turnout remains low – fewer than half of 18- to 24-year-olds voted in the last election, according to Ipsos.
Ellie Koepplinger, who was chosen to join the advisory board of Yes Scotland at the age of 16, says: “No one talks about politics in the
‘For the first time young people were included in the conversation’
Steven Campbell SNP youth activist
pub these days. It’s symptomatic of having a Conservative government we didn’t vote for for the best part of 15 years, and also being pulled out of the EU against our will.”
Consequently, she says, there’s “a real lack of trust”. “Looking forward to independence, we have this opportunity to build the country that we want, to make it sustainable and equitable – but who do we trust to actually enact that?”
Koepplinger, a strategy consultant, points out that “folks are a lot more cognisant of the work it’s going to take to get there, but it’s absolutely still on the horizon.”
She adds: “For a lot of us, it’s almost a metaphor for growing up. We’ve entered the workforce, we’ve entered our adult lives, and we’ve seen the barriers to our personal independence – in the job market, the housing market – and now we want to build a future for our children that’s going to treat them with the respect and dignity that we deserve.”