Today’s guest post is from Duncan Thorp, who’s previously written for us about social enterprise and hate in politics. Thanks Duncan!

We’re living in exciting times, Scotland has changed for the better. Nothing’s changed but everything’s changed. The referendum has been recognised by most people as an exercise in peaceful democracy. It’s true.

In terms of the vote itself, the huge level of popular participation and the technical and legal agreements, it was incredible.

97% of the voting population registered to vote. 16 and 17 year olds enfranchised for the first time, an 85% turnout. A true Scotland-wide debate. More information, slogans and facts flowing like never before. All this over an extended timeframe, far longer than any election.

We should genuinely celebrate this achievement. Only with historical perspective will future generations understand how powerful it was, an independence movement without bloodshed is virtually unheard of. A few bad eggs are as serious as it got.

But there’s another side to this exercise in direct democracy. The environment of the wider society that it took part in was very much anti-democratic. The dominant state narrative of Britishness is ever-present in every aspect of our lives. In this context it’s nothing less than a miracle that 45% of those voting wanted independence.

Much of the mainstream corporate media was of course a blatant case of misinformation, bog standard bias or agitprop. Years of daily, unrelenting, anti-independence news from nearly 100% of the print media can’t be dismissed. Broadcasters often struggled with their values and biases in favour of the status quo. Any media “neutrality” simply means that a story includes views from both sides – it doesn’t cover the decisions to include/exclude certain stories in the first place.

Similarly, large corporations making even vague anti-independence statements, while wielding huge economic power over jobs and investment, were leapt on by the mainstream media. The very fact of the unequal economic power balance in favour of big business meant that any potential relocation was a huge threat (genuine or not).

Indeed without straying into silly conspiracy theory territory, it would be naïve to suggest that HM Government and all the apparatus of the British state, were not deployed (under the radar) to save the state itself in its most critical moment of need. Would you lie back and allow your own power to be fragmented and taken away?

It’s also perplexing that the British nationalists of the far-right were absent until after the votes were counted. It was upsetting to see a mob performing Nazi salutes, singing Rule Britannia and burning a Saltire in George Square, Glasgow. They clearly didn’t get the memo about the “war against nationalism”. Where were they in exercising their democratic rights during the campaign?

It’s certainly unfair to suggest that every no voter was simply fooled or voted out of fear. Some were emotionally dependent on the British narrative and some were basically happy with the way the UK had turned out. Many people voted no because they didn’t think that the economic case had been made. They just disagreed with the other side. Acceptance of the referendum result is vital; we can identify flaws while still abiding by it. It’s all relative. We must move on. But getting back in the box is not an alternative. “One Scotland” unity, while well-meaning, is easily abused. Orwell’s Unity is Strength springs immediately to mind because unity is often a code word for compliance and conformity. There’s no place for eat your cereal politics.

There is only wisdom in crowds, not in elite decision-making. The huge participation wasn’t simply because of the subject, it was because we, the people, were making the actual decision ourselves. Unlike in elections, we were not voting to choose other people to make decisions for us. One of saddest things I read on 19 September was Happy Dependence Day, a slogan but also a defiant recognition of the need for autonomy.

We’ve been too conservative in using the powers that The Scottish Parliament already has. By using current and newly devolved powers a real difference can be made. From the missing link of radical devolution to local communities, land reform, community energy and building our own community organisations to real public sector reform. We need creativity and commitment. We also need to drive forward social media and democratic, inclusive, unbiased media. We don’t need alternative media that just reinforces our own views without challenge.

There are many incredible people-led movements across the world and there’s also a wider war against democracy. We should be aware of these many campaigns against elite, minority rule and for direct people power. It’s only with mass and persistent action that fundamental change happens.

While the UK state infrastructure remains powerful, the unionist campaign was temporary. The Indy infrastructure is now thriving. Energised, motivated and determined, they’re going nowhere. Much of this has thankfully gone beyond narrow nationalism and indeed beyond narrow independence. It’s not about the 45%, it’s about the 100%. We now need this to be a democracy movement.

But forget the challenges, the truth is self-evident. Autonomy and authentic, direct democracy is addictive. One taste and people want more. This vote was important but it was just one step as part of an ongoing journey.

In the end it was a fairly even match, but not a question of right and wrong. The results meant tears for some in my living room, but by the end of this afternoon there were two emails in my inbox and three voicemails by people galvanised to do something as quickly as possible. They were no voters, yes voters and non-voters.

There were soft and hard nationalism on both sides, loyalties to structures and institutions and patterns that saw Labour councillors from England and Greens and secessionists from around the world shipped in to fight the good fight.  There was old-nationalist graffiti on polling stations and union flag waving, no-voting Gaelic crofters and yes voting English academics. The thing they shared was a franchise and residency in the same almost-country.

What the referendum has done is give Scotland a greater sense of itself. Calling in those councils one by one mapped the nation. There was a moment when it seemed the future of an entire country might hang on the RNLI lifeboat on Barra.

The last two years have put me back in touch with a country I thought I knew. I visited places I had not seen since I was a child, sometimes for journalistic reasons and sometimes because I simply felt the need to see it afresh.

The day before the vote I was in a tower block in Coatbridge, knocking doors with a Danish film crew and talking to disaffected Labour voters about whether they could be swayed. In the end not enough of them were, but a No does not mean that the empty shop units and discount stores on the town’s main street will suddenly  vanish.  Danny, a stair cleaner and former taxi driver tasked with rinsing down all thirteen floors of the sixties high rise, saw it not as a personal gain but as a step forward for his children’s children.

In the centre of Glasgow, people thronged to George Square in the expectation that something was about to happen. Independence was the question but nobody quite knew what the consequences of either outcome would actually mean.  The Yes/No dichotomy was a battle for different personal futures, but it is the process that means Scotland has changed.

A defining memory is running into Jim Murphy in the grey drizzle of the quayside on East Loch Tarbert, waiting for the boat to Uig. He looked like a city boy uncomfortably forced to spend time somewhere he would much rather not be, standing there without a jacket next to a No Thanks banner designed for a windless community centre in Lanarkshire. It was jammed against a recycling bin for support, bright red against the grey pebbledash of the tourist information.

Until David Cameron visited Shetland to talk about oil as the campaign clock ran down, the most important political visitor had been the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. On the side of the museum in Scalloway is a small plaque commemorating the event. Shetland has been able to use the referendum to argue for itself, but like elsewhere in Scotland the edges have also been put in firmer contact with the centre.

I watched otters diving in Sullom Voe in the shadow of the huge oil terminal, dolphins off Arisaig, and deer in an unharvested field of beans in the shadow of the RBS headquarters, set against the perimeter fence of Edinburgh airport. I climbed the Fintry Hills and saw the turbines scything out of the mist in pure silence, followed a fox down Leith Walk at rush hour and interviewed teenagers and committed treason with schoolkids on the shinty pitch in Fort William by playing football.

I talked to the guys in the changing room at the local swim centre in Scotland shirts with No Thanks badges on. We stood there drying off as the noise of Britney Spears’ Toxic boomed through from the women’s aquafit next door and talked about where Hibs could go next. I climbed Ben Vrackie in deep snow and crouched just below the summit with a group of Glasgow mountaineers talking about land reform, listened to people visiting Eigg hatch plans to buy out a bit of their own local estate and was told by a farmer in the Borders to get off his land.

I saw London-based journalists mispronounce place names and recycle the tropes of the nineties, I sat drinking tea in a Conservative Club listening to someone lament the decline of industry, and I saw a gulf open up between Nationalists and unionist party hacks to be filled by people fowhom the question they were asked was not always the one that needed asking.

This is the new Scotland that the referendum made. This is where we are.