'folk have become bolder': optimism for independent scotland undented a year on

On the first anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum, Aileen McKay plans to host a wish tree in Glasgow city centre. A wish tree, for the uninitiated, allows passersby to write

down their hopes for the future and hang them together for others to read. McKay's will focus on the future of an independent_ _Scotland. Depending on your perspective, this represents

the kind of maddeningly twee introspection that sunk the yes campaign, or the type of grassroots, below the radar activism that started the thousands of conversations amongst ordinary Scots

that are on-going a year later. I stumbled across one of the 22-year-old's earlier efforts during the final days of last year's campaign, strung between two saplings by Buchanan

Street subway station by McKay, who had bulk-bought some luggage tags and thought the idea might appeal to late-afternoon shoppers. Contemplating the prospect of a no vote had left her in

tears the night before, she said: "There will be a sense of mourning for the future we could have had." A year on, she still feels the loss of that future keenly – "I

can't lie, the disappointment is still strong" – and her optimism, while undented, is also pragmatic. "In terms of the tipping point beyond 50/50, I think we would secure

independence if there was a vote tomorrow, but I don't think that would be fair. Before there's another referendum that figure needs to be up at 60 or 70%. That change has to

happen over time," says McKay. There is a caricature of independence supporters: all breathlessly waiting for the nod from Nicola Sturgeon to launch themselves into another referendum

campaign. "That's not what I hear from the people I speak to," says McKay. "There's a general understanding that one of the failures of the yes campaign was not

reaching out to people who disagreed fundamentally with us, and our failure to speak a common language with people who have similar ends of a better, more equal society." McKay grew up

in Ardersier, a former fishing village near Inverness, before moving to Glasgow to attend university. She now works as an English tutor while studying for an Master's degree in

comparative literature. She was first old enough to vote in the 2011 Holyrood elections, and cast her ballot for Labour, but alongside so many younger Scots she explains that her real

political awakening came during the referendum campaign. McKay volunteered on street stalls with the group Women for Independence (WFI), which encouraged female voices to comes forward, with

the rubric that "there's no such thing as a stupid question". It's an ethic she believes is now embedded in Scotland's psyche: "I think folk have become

bolder. People had to learn a whole new vocabulary to talk about politics and now they have an ability to ask questions in a way that they didn't before." Mackay notes how

pro-independence groups have continued to campaign on social issues that are no less pressing because Scotland remains in the union, with WFI successfully opposing the building of a

women's super-prison and members of the Radical Independence Campaign organising themselves to stand for Holyrood. McKay resisted the surge to join the SNP after the no vote won the

referendum, and is still not a member of any party, although she voted for the SNP in the general election. "After the referendum I could not have predicted how things would change.

We've taken big steps in the right direction but it's still hard to tell where it will go next." Over the past year, McKay herself has been involved in demos and activism

around Trident, anti-austerity and most recently the refugee crisis. "The relationships I made during the referendum campaign have kept going naturally," she says. "We all

came together around a fundamental agreement and that automatically led to friendships as well as campaigning together." "It's about keeping those conversations going,"

she concludes.