Over a decade has passed since the Scottish referendum on independence, and the issue has faded into the background in spite of a chain of electoral mandates for renewed pressure for a second referendum. Today the issue has been overtaken by austerity at home and dramatic events abroad, but veteran campaigner Jim Sillars has written this call for a renewed campaign and a plea for optimism.

Now in his eighty-eighth year, Sillars has plenty of campaigning experience behind him and says that this will be the last one. His support for Scottish independence goes back to the seventies when he founded the Scottish Labour Party, establishing the connection between the left and independence.

With this move he hopes to kick off a process and a debate that reach out not only to those who have always maintained their enthusiasm for independence but also to those how have been distracted by other political and social developments and those who have never supported independence in the past. Independence, Sillars argues, is not about dislike of the English, but the wellbeing Scots in the context of a dramatically declining UK economy.