An eight-foot statue of Desperate Dan, the character beloved by generations of readers of the Dandy, and his faithful pet, Dawg, stands in Dundee's High Street, marking the city's most famous, if imaginary, son.
The creation of Dundee-based DC Thomson publishers, the comic sold two million copies a week during the 1950s, though it slumped to just 8,000 each week before it was killed off nearly two years ago.
Dundee knows much about ups and downs. Broughty Ferry, a wealthy district on the Tay and home of the city’s jute mill owners, was once the richest square mile in Britain – built on the labour of Irish immigrants.
In the 1980s, 10,000 manufacturing jobs disappeared with the closure of the city’s shipyards, its carpet-makers and the disappearance of jute.
Today, a regeneration plan is under way, but the Radical Independence Campaign believes post-industrial cities such as Dundee will be the key to ensuring a majority for the Yes side in the September 18th independence referendum.
Leafing through canvass returns, Duncan McCabe claims 48.2 per cent of those already approached in Dundee have said they will be voting Yes; just a fifth say they are voting No, while 36 per cent are undecided – though these figures do not tally with national polls.
The campaign is a loose alliance, including past and present members of the Greens, the Scottish Socialist Party; some from the Communist Party, along with those who are not affiliated necessarily to any party but believe in republicanism and an end to monarchy.
Scotland’s poor
Politicians from the major political parties have failed for years to engage with Scotland’s poor, RIC member Duncan McCabe tells
The Irish Times
: “They’ve ignored people. A pensioner said to me that we were the first people who had knocked on her door for years.
“The economy does underpin everything; people have suffered for so long now . . . the minimum wage, zero-hour contracts, pensions that are the second-worst in Europe.”
Each Tuesday and Thursday, the campaign has up to 20 people out canvassing in districts such as Hilltown and Charlestown from any political grouping, though much work to register voters has been done.
In the hope of getting a Yes vote, the Radical Independence Campaign minimises its differences with the Scottish National Party but it is clear their agendas are not the same.
Seven years on, first as a minority government and then as a majority one, the SNP has become “an official party, an establishment party”, says fellow RIC member, Stuart Fairweather, “They are much like any other party.”
The SNP no longer wants “checks and balances” now it is in control, McCabe says: “We have noted the centralising tendencies that have emerged since they got their overall majority in a parliament that wasn’t designed for an overall majority.” So far, opinion polling suggests the Yes side will lose in September, but McCabe and Fairweather insist their canvassing figures, in Dundee and elsewhere, are evidence a ground war for votes on doorstep will reap a harvest.
Even though the vote is 100 days away, the Radical Independence Campaign is preparing its agenda of demands for the 18 months of negotiations that will be necessary to work out the details of independence, if voters say Yes.
“I have to be honest and say that to some degree that I thought that this was a bit indulgent but I can see why now increasingly that you have to prepare,” says Fairweather, who was a member of the Communist Party in his youth.
If there is a victory, then Scottish first minister and SNP leader Alex Salmond will be unlikely to want to share credit with anyone outside of his party's ranks, particularly people with ambitions to pose a political challenge.
“However, if 60 per cent of people in working-class areas turn out to vote in places where in the past 30 per cent bothered to vote, then it will be very clear to everyone that vote was brought out by an energetic campaign on the ground,” says McCabe.
Fairweather concedes “Better Together” – which has focused on fears about sterling, pensions and the health service – has hit home with voters:
“Some seem almost frightened. They need to be convinced – they almost need permission – to vote Yes.”
