Chapter 7: Fragmentation in the Scottish Independence Movement

After briefly presenting the composition of the Scottish independence movement, this chapter examines the sources of fragmentation within it, at the level of goals, ideology and strategy. All movement organisations share a common goal of independent Scottish statehood, but they understand independence in different ways and support different degrees of independence both from the United Kingdom itself and from two major international organisations, namely the EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). At the level of ideology, the movement organisations all claim to belong to one or both of two ideological families: the nationalist family and the wider left family (including its socialist, social-democratic and ecological branches). If the whole movement is united in its identification with the left, it is however divided in the way it envisages nationalism and positions itself in relation to it. Finally, although the whole movement is united in backing both a legal path to independence and institutional strategies, the most significant sources of fragmentation in the Scottish independence movement have been strategic. Alongside gender self-identification, internal divisions over what strategy to adopt to reach the movement's goal of independence were among the main reasons behind the birth of new parties in the early 2020s. This chapter concludes that assessing the extent to which the Scottish independence movement is united or fragmented is a question that can only be answered in a chronological manner.