So we’ve lost, for now. But who’d have thought, even a year or two ago, that we’d be able to put up this kind of a fight against the combined forces of the British establishment, the British media and all the main British parties? And above all against the filthy, greasy machinery of the Labour Party, that tool for the entryism of the ruling class into working class struggle.

Our immediate priority must be the fight against austerity. In Scotland, we need a serious working-class, anti-austerity, anti-racist, pro-independence party at the centre of that fight. If we can’t build a party like that, we’ll have to make do with a movement.

While we’re doing all this, we have to stay involved in the debates and manoeuvres for post-referendum constitutional change. The unionist parties, if they don’t shatter under the weight of their own  reactionary baggage, will try to use devolution to hijack and de-radicalise our movement and suffocate it beneath the bling of identity politics. We must do the opposite. We must maintain what we have built, and seize every chance to make ourselves stronger.

Photo: George Square, Glasgow, 18 September 2014 © Mr Push, some rights reserved