Believe in Scotland's Annual Yes Campaign Review

Believe in Scotland is two years old - We reach the undecided and soft No voters and we support local Yes groups across Scotland.

Our second year of campaigning got off to a good start with Believe in Scotland being named the Independence Campaigning Group of the year 2020 by the Scottish Independence Foundation and The National Newspaper. It ended with us having distributed approximately two million individual pieces of independence campaigning materials to Scottish voters.

Thanks to the 120 local Yes groups, thousands of online activists, The National, The Scottish Independence Foundation, The National Yes Network, The SNP, and the Scottish Green Party who worked with us (on specific projects) to make it happen.

Here are just a few of the highlights of Believe in Scotland’s independence campaigning activities in our second year.

Burns Supper - Lockdown had led to the cancelation of most of our events and almost halved our revenues. So, we started the year with our Online Burns Supper which was attended by 550 independence supporters raising more than £4,000 for our planned Yes Billboards campaign. The highlight of the evening was a performance of 'A man's a man for a' that' by Brian Cox, Lesley Riddoch, Eunice Olumide and Alistair Heather, which has now been viewed more than 30,000 times on Facebook alone.

Billboards - Next up came our first of several batches of billboard's, two messages alternating on more than 100 electronic billboards throughout Scotland. Simple and effective messages, first, 'Independence is Normal' and second, pointing out that the 'UK Government pays the worst basic state pension in the developed world'. The latter seemed to really annoy unionists and resulted in multiple complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority and to the Electoral Commission both of which investigated and rejected the complaints - As they always do.