Below we are posting the statement agreed by the RSA Steering Committee in London on Feb. 14th in response to Cameron and Osborne. This is followed by a statement of solidarity sent to republican socialist organisations in Scotland by Steve Freeman, member of the Republican Socialist Alliance and Left Unity Party in England. He was a speaker at the ‘After the UK – the future of 4 nations’ session at the RIC national conference in Glasgow on 23.11.13.
1. WHY A SOCIAL REPUBLIC FOR ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND?
The Tories are facing their Waterloo. As the rivers flood and their credibility sinks the Tories and the whole British Establishment are preparing for their final battle with the people of Scotland. The Prime Minister’s speech at the Olympic Park in East London launched his appeal for the people of England, Northern Ireland and Wales to back the Tory war effort. George Osborne, the Chancellor joined in a co-ordinated pincer movement to sabotage the Scottish economy in the event of a Yes vote. The Hammer of the Scots was soon backed up by the discredited Clegg and the discreditable Miliband.
The SNP government has offered to keep the pound and pay homage to the British monarchy in exchange for control of Scotland’s assets. But with the pound stolen, the obvious retaliation is to end the monarchy and become a republic. But Scottish business, which backs the SNP government, fears a republic will unleash the forces of “people power”.
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2. RESPONSE FROM ENGLAND TO THE NEW THREATS TO THE SCOTTISH PEOPLE
This week has seen the British Establishment step up their war against the SNP government plan for constitutional change to be put to the Scottish people in September 2014.
The Prime Minister’s speech at the Olympic Park in East London (February 7 2014) launched the attack by appealing to the people of England, Northern Ireland and Wales to back the Tory government in this struggle by appealing to British patriotism and commending the bloody history of the British Empire.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (February 13 2014) supported by Clegg and Milibandthreatened to sabotage the Scottish economy by refusing the option of a currency union in the event of a Yes vote. This ‘united front’ of the three main Establishment (or monarchist) parties is the kind of unity which occurs, as in the Falklands war and the Iraq war, when the political class believe the fundamental interests of the state are at stake.
Whatever view we take of the SNP government plan for Scotland there are certain demands which the left in England, Northern Ireland and Wales must support.
We call on the labour movement, trade unions and socialist organisations, and the people of England, Northern Ireland and Wales more generally to support:-
1. The right of the Scottish people to self determination.
a) The right of the Scottish people to a referendum without threats of economic sabotage or covert action sanctioned under the UK state’s Crown Powers.
b) The right of the Scottish people to form an independent sovereign democratic state.
2. A yes vote in the referendum
We will support those in Scotland who are calling for a democratic republican and internationalist approach to the referendum. We note this approach is being taken by the Radical Independence Conference which is critically supporting a Yes vote in September 2014. We will urge support for this approach by all progressive forces in England, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Regardless of the outcome of the referendum organised by the SNP government, we will support those in Scotland who intend to continue the struggle for self determination to secure an independent sovereign democratic social and secular republic with the closest voluntary relations with the people ofEngland, Wales and Ireland.
3. People united
We call on all labour movement, trade unions and socialist organisations in Scotland to support those in England, Northern Ireland and Wales who defend their right to self determination and the sovereign rights of the Scottish people to republican self government.
The prospect of independence for Scotland raises many vital questions related to the constitutional and democratic framework such a new state could create. Ben Wray is a member of the International Socialist Group, an activist in the Radical Independence Campaign and works for the Jimmy Reid Foundation as a researcher. In this article, written in a personal capacity, he examines some of these questions.
In this essay on democracy, I am going to work backwards. I’m going to start by looking at the ideal democracy for a socialist. I’m then going to look at what would be positive, intermediary steps in our current context that would help work towards this ideal future, as well as extending democracy to improve people’s lives in the here and now. I will look at this in the context of the independence referendum next year. Continuing the reverse order, I am then going to look at the SNP’s vision for democracy in an independent Scotland, which is the dominant one within the independence movement, and examine to what extent this will advance the cause of democracy and what the limitations of it are. Finally I’m going to end up at where we are now with Britain’s ‘representative democracy’, which I am going to define as ‘neoliberal democracy’.
The intention of this structure is to show a red thread that runs from our overall goals to our immediate tasks, that connects the socialist theory to the practical realities of our political context. In looking at it this way, hopefully what will become clear is that socialists cannot just engage in propaganda for a socialist democracy, but have to play a leading role in agitating for democratic advancement under capitalism and building coalitions and alliances with others who want to do the same.
This ‘war of position’ strategy, to put it in Gramscian terms, is the only way for socialists to build up the forces and the credibility in which our socialist democratic model will be on the agenda. Democracy is both our goal and our strategy, as Leon Trotsky put it “Socialism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen”. This isn’t to say revolutionary changes aren’t also necessary, but like all previous transformations, the overcoming of capitalism will be part revolution and part transition – such is the dialectic of history.
Socialist Democracy
Democracy is at the heart of the socialist idea. Under capitalism, democracy is limited to a specific political sphere of elections every four or five years, whilst the economic aspects of life are dominated by the dictatorship of capital. Socialism eradicates the division between political and economic spheres of life: workers have democratic control over where they work, students over where they study, communities over where they live, and so on. And it is at this level – worker, student and community participative democracy – where elections take place for delegates to represent them at local, regional, national and international level. Those representatives are immediately recallable and their decisions revocable based on the democratic will of the majority.
How do we decide at what level decisions are made? Quite simply, enfranchisement should be based on the extent to which one is affected by the decision. Local parks affect people most in that particular communtiy, ditto schools, roads, sporting facilities and so on. Decisions over international trade will usually affect those at the national and international level and therefore delegation from community and worker level will be required.
What about when democratic council’s of people contradict? So for example, over pricing of goods which affects workers and consumers? Or the disposal of waste which affects workers, the wider community and the international community in terms of environmental harm? Worker’s councils are not the only form of council that will exist, they will coincide with consumer councils and environmental councils which will seek to come to common agreement, and if they can’t it will be delegated upwards to representative bodies that can come to agreement.
Therefore socialism is about a transformation of democracy, where participative democracy and a new, more accountable form of representative democracy combine into a coherent whole where accountability, responsibility and, ultimately, power starts from the bottom up.
Of course, we do not know exactly what a socialist democracy would look like until we get there. The whole idea is premised upon the creative energies of ordinary people to shape their own future, and therefore it is not just impossible but also contradictory to our methodology to say ‘this is exactly how socialism would work’.
Neither is there one vision for a socialist democracy. My very basic outline above takes more from the ‘participative economics’ school like Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert, but other socialists would have extensive criticism’s of Hahnel and Albert. The details are not important here, what is important is to identify socialism as being about the democratisation of economic, social and political life so that inequalities are undermined by a structure that puts everyone on an even level with equal access and distribution of wealth and power.
Transitional steps
How do we work towards this goal of a socialist democratic model? We should have learned by now that simply to proclaim it will never be good enough. There has been a long tradition of propagandism in the British socialist movement going back to the Social Democratic Federation in the 19th Century who, much to the annoyance of Marx and Engels, shunned struggles in the real world as ‘a distraction’ in favour of study circles and public forums that proposed a socialist future without providing any realistic strategy to get there. More recently, British Trotskyism has raised ‘the programme’ up as the pinnacle in socialist thinking. Trotsky had written ‘The Transitional Program: The Death Agony of Global Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International’ in the context of a struggle between socialists and fascists across Europe during the 1930’s recession and an imminent second world war. Many Trotskyists have followed this model dogmatically, which was specific to Trotsky’s context where socialist revolution was on the agenda, and the results have been continual failure.
Propagandism has failed because it does nothing to relate to the political context as it exists in the real world. It is abstract and utopian and, therefore, entirely unconvincing to the vast majority of working class people.
The majority of people do not make political choices based on ideologies and programmes, but on answers to the most important problems they are facing in the here and now. Our aim therefore should be to find answers that are feasible given the political context and at the same time point the way towards our ultimate goal. If we can prove that our answers are better than others, then they are more likely to listen to what we say the next time we propose something. At the same time, if we can implement some of our transitional measures, they should by their very nature help to empower and embolden working class people to go further.
We therefore need transitional, or intermediary, steps. Steps that may seem very limited compared to our aims but taken in the context of the political situation as a whole, may be perceived as extremely ambitious to most people.
So, what would these transitional steps be specifically in terms of democracy in the context of the Scottish independence referendum?
Industrial Democracy:
The empowerment of workers is the cornerstone of a socialist democratic model, but proposing workers control of all industries is not something that could feasibly happen in the present context of hyper-neoliberal Britain. We therefore have to propose measures which extend the democratic rights of workers and trade-unions and, where possible, propose a model of public ownership which is democratic and bottom-up.
The bare minimum is that workers rights in Britain should be able to match the best standards in Europe. Britain has some of the worst employment rights in Europe and is 26th out of 27 on a measurement of worker-participation, only ahead of Lithuania. A new Jimmy Reid Foundation paper proposes an industrial democracy model for Scotland which includes basic trade-union and employment rights: universal collective bargaining rights for recognised trade-unions regardless of the trade-union density existing in the workplace, full rights to strike and picket, compensation rights over unfair dismissal and employee buy-out rights. It also includes worker-participation and board-level representation rights: day-to-day staff-related affairs would be run by joint committee’s of staff and management and workers and trade-union representatives would be entitled to 1/3rd of seats on company boards with the same rights as other board representatives such as full access to company accounts.
These measures proposed do not fundamentally challenge property relations, but should be seen in the current political context. The situation at Grangemouth for example, where trade-unions were trampled over and workers were lied to and Royal Mail privatisation where the government privatised quicker than workers were able to strike. In this context these proposals are a step towards workers democracy because they mean the idea of workers having a say in how companies are run is registered on the political map. Once workers start becoming used to having a say, it is more likely they are going to want more. Therefore measures which strengthen trade-unions and embolden workers can only be positive.
In terms of public services, Andy Cumbers new book Reclaiming Public Ownershipoutlines extensively how democratisation of public services is not only fairer, but more efficient. In bigger insitutions, like the NHS, where there has been cases of management bullying and worker exhaustion, in NHS Lothian for example, staff councils should elect representatives to sit on the board, along with input from service users who should also have representation. The idea is to build a structure which breeds a culture whereby those who do the work believe they are the ones who shape how it is organised.
Smaller organisations such as mutuals and co-operatives should be encouraged where workers can run enterprises themselves.
Radical Decentralisation
This notion of self-governance should be extended to local democracy. First, in terms of using national resources for the collective interest. For example if you look at the renewables industry, whilst it may only be profitable for companies to organise on a national basis, it is easier and cheaper for many communities to supply their own energy because the wind blows and the sun shines where they live. In Denmark, 80 per cent of the wind energy sector is community owned.
Secondly, in terms of organising the distribution of public services. Local councils in Scotland are not really local and therefore are not really democratic as there are few lines of accountability between the citizen and their representatives. Scotland has the least local ‘local democracy’ in Europe. Subsequently, private capital and local councils are often in league with each other, which is why many are rightly sceptical of a ‘localism’ agenda if it means putting more power in the hands of local councillors.
Instead what we need is radical decentralisation of government, whereby we have a community-led local government allowing people in the area to dictate what their public investment budget is spent on. This is not the big society, which is a cover for cutting budgets and asking the voluntary sector and community activists to deal with the fall-out. It is saying instead that a much larger proportion of taxes should be allocated to people to spend in their communities, which in turn will create more jobs and a bigger tax revenue to re-invest again into their community. This doesn’t mean national government isn’t neccesary to deal with national issues and to redistribute wealth from rich to poor and from wealthy areas to poorer areas. But much of our lives is spent in the community we live, and that should reflect itself in governance terms.
There are healthy precedents for this in Brazil. Cities such as São Paolo and Porto Alegre have organised a section of their public investment budget by ‘participatory budgeting’: Communities meet up to discuss their local investment needs and delegate people to state their case for investment. Over 80,000 people, overwhelmingly from the poorest parts of the city, participated in participatory budgeting meetings in Sao Paolo and they radically improved access to public services in the periphery of the city which had previously been cut off. One of their major focuses was housing, and since they had 40% of the city investment budget they could back it up with action. They reported that:
“In addition to working on slum upgrading in 30 slums…31,000 housing units in 2002 distributed as follows: 9,000 mutirões, 3,000 city center projects, 3,000 risk zones, 1,000 social locations, 5,000 state program, and 10,000 federal program.”
Local democracy has to be transformed into community empowerment, and whilst all the resources of a local area are not going to be in the hands of the community overnight, the budgetary power of the state should as much as possible be in the hands of those it is suppose to be spent to help.
National Government and political parties
Finally, we need to have intermediary measures to address politics at the national level in Scotland. I will discuss the limitations of Holyrood more in the next section, but here what is important is to challenge the dominance of a political class running government forever. Politicians aren’t liked, they aren’t popular and they aren’t trusted. The problem is that the Right currently have a more coherent answer to how to solve this than the Left – have fewer politicians. Cutting back on politics is popular because of the unpopularity of politics, but of course all that would do in this context is put more power into the hands of civil servants, of accountancy firms and of capital. The left needs to have an answer about politics and political parties, and the first part of the answer has to be that we need a citizen’s democracy.
The Electoral Reform Society Scotland (ERS) recently organised an event based on participatory democracy techniques to look at how democracy could be improved. The report mentions many laudable ideas like 50/50 gender balance, but the main idea that came out of it was for a second chamber made up of citizen’s. Their final report, titled ‘politics is too important to be left to politicians’, argued that:
“This ‘National People’s Forum’ would be made up of randomly selected citizens’ who would serve a set term. Various recruitment methods were discussed, ranging from elections to jury selection type methods, to lotteries, perhaps at a constituency level. A further suggestion was that members of the chamber should be recruited from elected town meeting or community councils…Overall, the idea was that sitting in the second chamber would be seen as a form of service to the community…the idea of ‘democratic leave’ was also considered as a means of facilitating participation.”
Creating a citizen’s democracy where candidates serve one term would take out the poison of party politics and bring in more genuine grassroots participation into the national parliament. In British Columbia, a federal state in Canada, they introduced a system similar to that proposed by the ERS to decide on a new electoral system. This citizens’ chamber started off with majority support for the measure proposed by the media, but after a process of deliberation amongst one another and consultation with experts and constituents through town hall meetings they decided on another system which was of a more radical nature.
A citizens’ chamber is a form of ‘mini-public’. A mini-public is when an accurate cross-section of the population is brought together to discuss and debate an issue and come to a decision on it, like jury duty but it can be organised through various means. Wouldn’t mini-publics be a much better form of consultation for politicians than just listening to lobbyists and carrying out the occasional ‘public consultation’ which sets questions in a way to get pre-determined answers? If every parliamentary committee had to seriously consider the verdict of a mini-public which had three months to genuinely deliberate an issue, it gets round the problem of the same voices from the media to lobbyists to civil servants who churn out reason after reason about why radical proposes can’t be done and how they’re unpopular, but they don’t have any serious measure of what people actually think.
There is another aspect to national politics which has to change. There has to be an ideological acceptance that the only way for a democratic society to exist is if there is an equal society. Redistributive measures through taxation, therefore, are essential to create a more equal economic balance of power which can create the only circumstances for a more equal democratic balance of power over the long haul. The evidence for this is laid out in detail in The Spirit leveland there has been no serious intellectual argument against it.
We all know, however, that ideological issues are contested ground, to put it mildly. Socialists will always start from a position of weakness, as the class we aim to stand up for are not in power. Therefore the role of political parties cannot be ignored in the democratic argument. Parties that are not democratic in themselves cannot genuinely claim to support a democratic society. This should not be mistaken for the over simplistic argument that parties must themselves organise in the way they want society to organise, ‘be the change you want to see’, as it is commonly put. This misunderstands the purpose of a party, which is not to find the best way to run their local nursery or university, but to defeat other political parties in a political battle in order to get the sort of democratic changes we want in society on the table. This takes a whole different sort of method to get the desired results than a democratic process which is about running society.
Nonetheless, for socialists to have any chance of competing our standards have to be somewhat higher than the mainstream parties in Scotland. Labour reached new lows in Falkirk when they decided to kick Unite members out and suspend the local parties democratic rights so that Miliband could please the right-wing press. The SNP are little better on this score, known for being hyper-centralised so much so that only a handful of people seem to have any input in their independence strategy (when you ask most SNP MSP’s they seem to have as much idea as I do about what the leadership are doing/thinking). Both SNP and Labour have policy which means if they don’t like a local candidate it is the right of the party centre to eliminate the decision of the local branch and change the candidate.
We need a real people’s party that reflects the demographics of Scottish society. This means far more women, more ethnic minorities and more working class people standing for positions in the national and local leaderships than is the case in the mainstream parties. A worker’s wage as practised by the SSP when they had MSPs at Holyrood is also important. Representatives must also be accountable to the national leadership and to the branch/constituency group they are elected from – rogue MSPs are not an option for the left, they need to be more disciplined than any other section of the party to the democratic decision of their fellow members at local and national level. Clear evidence of failure to be accountable should threaten their candidacy the next time an election comes around, no matter how popular they are. Representatives should set an example with mini-public meetings in their constituency – they should be seeking to find out the answers of their community after deliberation of their policies.
Democratic accountability should not just be held on representatives in a proper’s people’s party. Ordinary members should be responsible for continual renewal of the organisation so that it doesn’t become stagnant. Democracy can’t flourish in a stale environment because it doesn’t reflect an engagement with real social forces anymore, just those who have built up loyalty to a party. Therefore a continual process of engaging new people, attempting to teach them new ideas and skills and at the same time learning new ideas and skills from them is essential.
Finally, there are the policies and political practise of a genuine people’s party. If a party is to claim to believe in the ability of the majority to run society it needs to argue for that in the here and now, as I have outlined above, and do so in creative ways which are engaging, but more importantly it needs to prove in practise that it is going to support self-governance. A people’s party should be actively involved in co-operatives, housing associations and new practical forms of empowerment not because we believe it will overthrow capitalism, and not to recruit to our particular party, but because it is a good example and with good examples comes the possibility for change and learning.
Equally, we have to be willing to build alliances and coalitions with those from other parties to win improvements in democracy; sectarianism towards Labour, SNP, Greens and so on doesn’t show a willingness to put people before political loyalties. Some of the best moments in the SSP was when the party won support for measures on a cross-party basis at Holyrood despite its size, because it showed it could punch above its weight to get measures through which helped working class people.
We evidently don’t have a party with the ambition to do this or the roots to do this on any sort of national scale at the present moment. But the case for a party will not go away just because it hasn’t worked before, because the need for it is glaring – we just have to do it better, with better ideas, better organisation, a better internal culture and better tactics and strategy.
‘Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands’?
The independence referendum presents a context in which the intermediary steps proposed above for Scotland have a chance of getting a hearing. Creating a new Scottish state presents greater opportunities to define its form than the entrenched interests in a British state that has not significantly changed since women won the vote in full in 1928. But the dominant independence vision, set out in the White Paper on independence, comes from the SNP and when it comes to democracy it is not particularly radical.
There are good things. The prospect of worker-participation on boards has been raised. They have made it clear that the first term of an independent Scotland would shape a new constitution, which whilst perhaps not the best way to write a consitution it at least has an element of deliberation between all parties represented.
But the overwhelming democratic argument is the main pitch for the Yes side as a whole: ‘Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands’. Every time the Scottish electorate go to the ballot box, they’ll get the result they voted for, unlike the British system which regularly churns out government’s Scottish voters specifically voted against, like with the present tory-liberal coalition government. The slogan also refers to the fact that Scotland as a nation will have its place in the world, being able to have its distinctive input into international organisations and international debate.
It would be silly for socialists in the independence movement to staunchly reject this argument. It is true that there is a clear distinction between how the Scottish electorate votes and the governments that are elected in Westminster, and therefore that basic democratic deficit should be closed and Scotland will benefit from it closing. Additionally, the proportional representation system is just much more democratic than the first past the post system in Britain because a far greater proportion of the electorate are represented.
But what we should take issue with is the extentto which this argument represents a transformation in democracy. I would argue that such a change is of a quantitative substance, rather than a qualitative one. By this I mean that a Scottish representative democracy in Scotland is more representative and more democratic than the British system, but it will not in and of itself mark a fundamental shift in the form of democracy we have in Scotland. Because of this it will not mark a transformation in how the majority of Scottish people involve themselves in the political process, i.e they involve themselves passively and leave most decisions up to a political class. That will not qualitatively change just because ‘Scotland’s future is in Scotland’s hands’.
Evidence of this is in the launch of the Scottish Parliament in 1997, which was also seen by many as an opportunity for a transformation in democracy. As it has turned out, voter participation in Holyrood elections is as low and often lower than UK elections as a whole. Furthermore, as a Reid Foundation report pointed out recently:
“over 70 per cent of the Scottish population lives on an income lower than the average salary of £24,000. Of those who have influenced parliamentary committee’s (excluding elected politicians) only about three per cent have an income lower than the national average.”
Additionally, private capital’s access to Holyrood could be considered even greater than at Westminster. Lobbying forums like the Scottish Parliament-Business Exchange and the Futures Forum open up parliament to business in a way that other interest groups cannot compete with. The Lobbying Bill going through Holyrood will help to limit this, but the facts of the past decade or so of Holyrood still remain – it has by no means been a transformation in Scottish democracy.
Independence can create a space in which it is possible for a qualitative shift in democracy, but the same class inequality of wealth and power will remain unless the left gets organised to make sure the interests of the majority of Scots are forced to the front of the agenda in a new Scotland. The re-emergence of the left in the independence movement through the Radical Independence Campaign and the Common Weal project can only help that post-referendum process take off.
Britain: neoliberal democracy
Looking at Britain can help to understand what we don’t want to become in an independent Scotland. Britain is one of the oldest ‘representative’ democracies in the world, yet it has slipped far behind democracies the world over in terms of actually representing the will of the people. Stuart Wilks-Heeg, the author of a recent report by Democratic Audit on democracy in Britain, has gone as far as to question “whether it’s really representative democracy any more?”
Wilks-Heeg’s report compared British democracy to other OECD countries on various scales and found it well behind. On all indicators of a democratic systems’ representativeness Britain was in ‘catastrophic decline’.
In another report titled ‘The crisis of the British Regime’, Adrian Cousins takes statistics from various opinion polls to analyse the trust and belief that the public have in British political institutions. The results are stunning.
Two examples will suffice here: The “percentage who ‘almost never’ trust the British governments of any party to place the needs of the nation above the interests of their own political party” has risen from 10% in 1974 to 40% in 2009; whilst the “percentage of respondents who believe there’s a ‘good deal of difference’ between political parties” has declined from 82% to 12%.
Interestingly, whilst trust in politics, banks and the police have hit rock-bottom, trade-unions have remained the most trusted in opinion polls out of the institutions of modern Britain.
More broadly, it’s clear that as neoliberalism has become increasingly hegemonic, democracy has waned. It’s not difficult to see why this would be the case: since profit is king, the need for the mass of society to engage critically with the general organisation of things is unnecessary. The role of the citizen is to be as functional as possible within this framework. So university courses are increasingly departmentalised, so that we bring our children up to be, say, fantastic chemical engineers, but to not know or care about why they are doing the chemical engineering and for whom they are doing it.
Neoliberal politics is, therefore, a tool of governance, not representation. We elect parties who we think will be most effective at managing the capitalist economy, and the problems that come with it. When Blairites endlessly bang on about Labour being ‘a party of government, not protest’ this is what they mean: that the task of politics is to most effectively run a system in which corporations rule the economy, poverty and growing inequality are facts of life, and so on. The ruling ideology is the only possible ideology that can rule.
We should stop calling our Westminster system a ‘representative’ democracy because the government elected does not intend to meet the will of the people and does not receive votes of the overwhelming majority of the people. We should instead call it neoliberal democracy: yes there is a vote once every five years, but the vote is strictly for the party who the electorate believe is best at governing a neoliberal economy. No wonder voting turnout is in steady decline.
Political parties must fit into this neoliberal democratic framework: just as the choices for the electorate are limited to different brands of neoliberalism, so are the competing leaderships within the main parties.
It is complacent and elitist to understand this disengagement as being all down to ‘apathy’, a commonly used term by political people to rationalise how shoddy their democratic system is without having to take any responsibility for its shoddiness. The reality is that many more people than thirty years ago will sign a petition, participate in a boycott or join a demonstration. These same people just don’t believe that the ‘democratic’ system and its political parties are going to really represent their wishes. It’s not so much that people are apathetic about the political system, it’s that the political system is apathetic about them.
Wilks-Heeg puts the increase in political disengagement into its proper context:
“Over time, disengagement skews the political process yet further towards those who are already more advantaged by virtue of their wealth, education or professional connections. And without mass political participation, the sense of disconnection between citizens and their representatives will inevitably grow.”
Inequalities of wealth breed inequalities of political power, and vice-versa. Consequently any transformation in democracy has to be willing to start challenging the division of life between political and economic, democracy and jobs, representation and participation. At the top of the British system, the elite knocked down these divisions a long time ago for themselves: there is a revolving door between the economic elite and the political elite at Westminster. It’s the task of socialists to back policies and actions that will help knock down those divisions for the rest of us.
Conclusion
Socialism is about the empowerment of the working class to govern society. This is easy to believe in, what is much more complicated is to engage in a process that is actually going to help us get there. Our starting point must be to support measures which help empower and embolden the working class right now. Independence is one of them, but in and of itself it is limited unless it’s connected to a more radical project of democratic transformation which begins to break down the division between politics and economics.
The neoliberal democratic model attempts to reduce politics to a game of which fraction of the political class is best at governing a hyper-capitalist global economy. Therefore measures which strengthen the hand of workers, communities and bring citizens into the fold at a national level are helpful to the struggle for a socialist society. As part of the independence movement socialists have to be confident about our view that ultimately we need to eradicate class division and the rule of capital over labour, ordinary people can run society themselves for the good of everybody. At the same time, we have to be willing to listen, engage and build alliances and coalitions alongside other forces who will support more limited reforms in the here and now. As Marx said, ‘democracy is the road to socialism’ and we won’t get very far down that road unless we stand beside other progressive forces to start building towards that better future now.
Norman Lockhart of Tweeddale/Borders SSP looks at how the left can best take up the cause of oppressed groups in society
More or less conscious of the connection for many years socialists have seen a close identity with the struggles of the oppressed and those trying to transform the exploitation of the unfair economy that is the basis for capitalism. So we try to build alliances that can unite the various forces in joint action. However it is worth going beyond the mechanical economic links and also looking at some practical measures that socialists can take to advance this process.
There are also people like Sharon Smith in USA who are developing a wider Marxist appreciation of the oppressed. Generally organisations since the ‘60s have been restricted to seeing that special measures are appropriate in the case of for example Youth, LGBT, Black and ethnic minorities as well as Disabled. However the oppression of the majority gender, Women, is central to addressing the whole issue of oppressed groups for socialists. The consequences of getting it a bit wrong are widespread and severe. This applies in general to working class practice so many unions e.g. RMT, UNISON, UNITE now have some form of internal groupings for women, youth, blacks & gays etc
There has been a big change in trade unions and campaign organisations so that it is common to find recognition of women gay black organisations inside unions that are more or less self organising to ensure their needs are addressed.
Left Failings
It is socialist organisations that have failed to meet our own standards especially in Britain this century.
Some of the most obvious examples have been where individuals have been the highlight of weaknesses in our parties as we have not been able to address them. One of the reasons for this has often been the attitude to internal democracy and the political culture that dominates as a result.
The SSP brought together much of the different positive and negative experiences of comrades originally from different organisations. A few notable examples without attaching details would be the WRP and Healy, Respect and Galloway and of course the SSP and Sheridan all have left a bitter trail of damaged personalities and parties. Now this damage is being repeated in the SWP where the limits on internal democracy have had disasterous consequences for the left’s reputation.
Highs and Lows
Clearly it is not enough to combat the impact of bourgeois ideology and culture to only make technical guarantees of representation both internally and publicly but also take steps to encourage their practical implementation. The SSP executive for the last year has had virtually zero representation of the women only places besides the other posts are overwhelmingly male. The recent conference of the party has not made any significant differences. This in contrast to the time when it had 4 women out of 6 MSPs. A high point that illustrates what is possible and on which more can be built.
Socialist politics often still confines itself to making a mechanical economic connection between class struggle and the obvious allies of the oppressed in capitalist society. Recent history of the left parties in Britain suggests this might be a step forward in consciousness and cadre education.
Forces such as trade unions as well as businesses and parties in society did change in appearance. More genuine attempts meant this was often in structure as well so that gender balance in committees and educational caucus groups became considered a norm of campaigns and organisations.
However during the last 25 plus years we have seen this being reversed or absorbed by capitalism or even become integrated as a part of niche marketing.
Turning it Around
It is worth noting that societies that have started to transform and have paid attention to gender balance have only been successful where it has been a permanently recurring feature of political life.
A small starting measure for consciously trying to transform campaign organisations, parties etc would be to actively encourage the formation of different minority and oppressed caucus for all the groups but particularly to address the set back to women’s liberation since the marked successful changes in late 60s early 70s.
This is only to start a cross gender debate about how to reactivate consciousness raising that also recognises that while it might appear harder in this defensive time it is also when we need to be an attractive option for those about to start fighting back.
A gentle introduction to feminist issues for socialist might be debates stimulated after watching a DVD of the film Dagenham since that dispute was so instrumental in getting Equal Pay on the agenda while the film Vera Drake could stimulate a wider debate about class nature of abortion.
Argentinian artist Syd Krochmalny’s recent project ‘The Naked Soul’ explores different ideas of ‘nakedness’, public space and justice drawing on the case of the Naked Rambler here in Scotland. Dr Sarah Wilson of the University of Stirling writes in this article about some of the surprising responses to Krochmalny’s project and some of the issues it raises in terms of access to ‘public’ space and the fear and self-censure provoked by risk management practices in the workplace.
A recent art performance involving the projection of a video in a public place in Edinburgh raises key questions regarding freedom of expression, ‘public’ space and how it is controlled in contemporary Scotland. The video (‘The Naked Soul’) was made by Argentinian artist, Syd Krochmalny. Syd was invited to Scotland to give two seminars (one at the University of Stirling and one in the University of Edinburgh), an exhibition and to create this art work. After months of discussion, the resultant video draws on Biblical and philosophical texts, poetry and Scottish history to reflect on the case of Stephen Gough, the ‘Naked Rambler’, who spent over 6 years in Scottish prisons. It highlights different ideas of ‘nakedness’, attitudes to the body, imprisonment as a response to bodies seen as out of place, and ultimately of the kind of society Scotland is and could be. Do we want a society in which debate and ideas are valued as, we are often told, during the Scottish Enlightenment? Or one in which notions of ‘freedom of expression’, the ‘public’ and of dialogue are decaying in the wake of an all-encompassing institutional fear of controversy and the bureaucratisation (and potential criminalisation) not only of protest, but of any public gathering?
In the beginning was the word. And the fears provoked by the word. The ‘Naked Soul’ refers to the Greek myth of the origins of justice recounted by Plato. But the inclusion of the word ‘naked’ on our application for permission to project in public was ‘alarming’ to Council officials though I assured them no naked genitalia would be shown. Indeed, much less of the body than in many television programmes and advertisements, than on the covers of lads’ mags freely displayed in most supermarkets, than in the flesh during stag or hen party antics. In conjunction with the word ‘naked’ however, even arms and legs can become dangerous. A visceral fear of ‘offence’, of something ‘inappropriate’ seemed to pervade. It seemed an excuse to veil the fear of nakedness itself.
Don’t Push the Boundaries
Yes ‘freedom of expression is important’ but we don’t want anything that ‘pushes the boundaries’ said one official awkwardly, anything ‘offensive’ or ‘inappropriate’. Our first idea was to project the video onto the statue of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume in the centre of Edinburgh in front of the High Court of Justiciary. This attracted an aggressive response from the sculptor (backed up by implied threats from Edinburgh artistic and legal Establishment ‘heavies’ based on interpretations of Copyright Law that ignored established Scottish customs of hanging traffic cones on public statues and of rubbing Hume’s toe.) The sculptor’s representative suggested that if we didn’t believe in the aura of a work of art such as this sculpture, we should consider projecting onto a poster with the words ‘David Hume’ on it. In spite of having accepted a commission from an organisation with a definite political purpose (the Saltire Society), the sculptor himself employed Kant’s argument of the ‘Kingdom of ends’ and ‘art for art’s sake’ against the idea of temporarily projecting anything not only onto ‘his’ work but also onto the space around it.
Political Debate
The idea of political debate in a public place, or even of public space itself, seemed to be disturbing for artists, public bodies and others. It was suggested that ‘as a matter of courtesy’ we should ask the permission of the courts if the projection were to hit ‘their’ walls. Naïvely, we suggested that the walls of public buildings might be seen as ‘public’ property and not ‘theirs’. ‘That sounds like sedition’ was one response. Commercial suppliers were also frightened of causing ‘offence’. A company of equipment suppliers suggested we do something less ‘political’, concerned that they might lose contracts if they were seen to be ‘involved’. A Council official then suggested that one way to appease local artists and the ultimate local commandment of ‘Thou shall not interfere with the traffic even minutely… except during the commercially successful Festival’ was to transfer the projection to a local cemetery in which no one had been buried for over a century. Of course, this would also be a transfer to a less visible public place. This official in a public institution happily engaged in discussion around the project, but was afraid of censure from superiors concerned to ‘manage’ risk rather than encourage freedom of expression or dialogue. ‘I don’t want to get a call from the local newspaper about this’. No one was unhelpful. Most were interested in the project and wanted to chat. But as employees they knew well the contemporary concern of institutions to avoid anything ‘controversial’. They were scared and preferred to pass the decision onto someone else.
Monument to Thomas Muir, democratic martyr in New Calton Cemetery
But the cemetery which contains David Hume’s tomb was, we realised, a good location for a project related to myths around death and judgment. A liminal place, for souls banished from too public places: Jews originally, transported activists such as Thomas Muir, prostitutes, Naked Ramblers perhaps, and artists wishing to explore certain issues (while still not offending against another British commandment ‘Thou shalt not show willies in public places ..at least not outside of a commercial context’). Sorted we thought, with the blessing of two Council departments. But unbeknownst to us, the cemetery took us outside of the invisible boundary lines of these two departments and inside those of another, according to whom, even though Old Calton Cemetery functions more now as a tourist attraction than as a ‘live’ cemetery; ‘The families of the dead might be offended’. The idea of offence takes multiple forms and multiple spaces then. We’d seen no sign of mourners in amongst the detritus of local drinkers, which we offered to clear. How many people might be the descendants (or the potentially offended) of these people buried over century ago? What kind of offence related to never known ancestors might this be? How far might such offence travel over time? The project was coming to resemble its subject: the banishment of the (nearly) naked body to the margins, the fear of sexuality and death. But still there was no official response, yes or no. The official processes left us hanging despite several phone calls; with the blessing of some departments, but passed to others who did not respond. Was this silence the result of miscommunications….or a type of silence intended to silence, to lead us to self-censure? …..better to not engage in anything ‘controversial’, right? An effective silence too. It was beginning to get to me. I realised that I, too, was scared.
Managing Risk
Our final no came through an unexpected but revealing source. The afternoon before the projection, a university press official phoned the Council media department which suggested the Council did not know of our previous negotiations, or that we had been directed to the Cemetery by Council officials, and stated that the cemeteries’ department’s response was a definite ‘no’ (not that anyone had told us this). Rather than questioning this process or broader theories of freedom of expression or notions of public space, the increasingly cautious and commercialised university, too, preferred to avoid anything ‘controversial’, anything that might tarnish its monolithic, clean ‘brand’. A university officer suggested that the video would be better shown in a more ‘private’ space, such as, in his view, the university itself. The Council media department’s gratitude to the university press office was obvious in an email ‘thanks for the heads up’; two institutions managing the risk posed by employees and their pesky, creative ideas.
Furious, and animated by an Argentinian who could not quite believe that this was happening in the country of Hume and Smith, we went ahead. After the cemetery we projected in the AugustineCentralChurch. In contrast to other institutions, this church honoured its tradition as a place of public dialogue and welcomed us with open arms. Here, at last Syd was shocked and impressed by an Edinburgh institution!
Is Another Scotland Possible?
We are left though with many broad questions at this crossroads in Scottish history. Is another Scotland possible? One in which the body provokes less official fear and revulsion, and in which children are not taught that the naked body is exclusively sexual or something perverted? One in which the many intelligent, creative workers within institutions –whether in the public or private sector- are allowed space to engage with ideas and spaces around them without fear of censure? One in which dialogue is welcomed, rather than ended by risk management practices in institutions relating to (potential) ‘offence’ to a few and the reaction of powerful media outlets? More broadly, can a society administered, explicitly or otherwise, through such a state of fear and self-censure, in which words such as ‘inappropriate’ and ‘controversial’ are used to close down rather than to open debate, be truly democratic? If democracy is constructed through dissensus, then does the aversion to such debate within some Scottish institutions reveal a latent timidity, and from an Argentinian perspective, proto-fascist, spirit at their heart? The spirit of the Scottish Enlightenment may still haunt CaltonCemetery, but it seems to be well buried in today’s institutions and (increasingly privatised) public spaces.
Cat Boyd and James Foley are activists in the International Socialist Group and have played leading roles in the Radical Independence Campaign. In this article, which is taken from the book ‘Time to Choose’ and published online for the first time here, they address the issues around reviving the left in Scotland.
A socialist strategy in Scotland must necessarily involve two parts. The first is a consideration of the objective possibility of and need for an anti-capitalist party in Scotland.[1] This is the question of “political space”: how much room do we have for an alternative at the ballot box when we are squeezed between SNP and Labour? The second is about our own behaviour, the trust we have for each other and our legitimacy with social movements and working class communities. This may be called the subjective factor.
Our position is that there is space for a radical Left alternative in Scotland. There is a crisis in Scottish society, lying somewhere between the nationalisation of RBS/HBOS (economic crisis) and the referendum of 2014 (constitutional crisis). This Scottish crisis presents definite opportunities. But to anticipate and shape this process, we must face up to our own need for reform. Due to the SSP split, the left in Scotland has a toxic reputation that extends far beyond our own ranks. We do not think our own crisis can be resolved by the final defeat or victory of any sector of the left. What is required is a three step detoxification process.
In the short term, we must fight for left unity. This is not just about united action with the Greens, trade unionists, and so on. It means active steps to restore working relations in the post-SSP left. In the medium term, we must regain the trust of protest movements and the wider radical left currents in society: we may call this left renewal. Lastly, there is the broad task, to win the leadership of society in the battle to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. This hegemonic task clearly requires winning over “reformist” voices in the SNP, Labour, and the unions. We call this left realignment. These steps, we wish to argue, depend on each other. But they stem from a reading of objective difficulties in maintaining existing Holyrood alliances.
Space for the Left?
Scottish politics is often thought of as a “village” in which “everyone who is anyone knows everyone else who matters”.[2] Few will deny that there are elites who shape the policy framework in Holyrood. But we also need to remember that Scotland is a capitalist, class society with staggering inequalities of wealth and power. One study, in 2003, showed that two Edinburgh districts have more millionaires than anywhere in Britain but Hampstead, London. “Blackhall is better heeled than Belgravia and Morningside is more upmarket than Mayfair,” reported The Telegraph.[3] Contrast this to the figure that men in the Calton ward of Glasgow live to an average age of 54. With these facts in mind, we dispute any idea that Scotland has a distinctively “collectivist” civil society. The neoliberal trajectory in Scotland, like elsewhere, has led to extreme polarisations of income.[4]
Reversing these trends is the goal of the anti-neoliberal left. The size of this group may be disputed. At the higher end of estimates, 43 percent of Scotland favours government action to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor.[5] In practice, this is unlikely to form part of the platform of either Scottish Labour or the SNP. But this should not lead to the conclusion that this group is liable to switch allegiances to the Left anytime soon. Winning this layer of Scotland to the left is the long-term goal. In the short term, we must seek to win back those who have deserted anti-capitalist politics in recent elections.
It is over-simplistic to attribute the decline of the radical Left in Holyrood to the SSP split alone. Clearly, there are objective socio-economic and political factors to account for. Some argue that the Left was always liable to get squeezed in the battle between the SNP and Scottish Labour, and thus view recent results as inevitable irrespective of contingent factors. Conveniently, this “objective” account draws attention away from our own flaws. There are certainly good reasons to look at objective circumstances. But the thesis is flawed in three respects.
Firstly, the fact that Scottish Labour is consistently positioned to the right of the SNP government puts the identity of trade union politics in question. Trade unions will not jump ship to SNP; such an arrangement would suit neither party. But their current link with Labour is not feasible so long as the neoliberal turn continues. The Left could, and should, play an active role in resolving Scotland’s crisis of working class representation.
Secondly, there is lasting evidence of anti-capitalist and left-of-Labour sentiment in Scotland. A decade ago, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) was able to command 130,000 votes and 6 MSPs. The Greens secured a similar vote, roughly 7 percent, with 7 MSPs. The Iraq factor played a strong role in this. But it is evidence that there is a significant part of the Scottish electorate that can be won to leftist ideas. Anti-war sentiment in Scotland did not emerge from nowhere. It built on frustration with the “village” atmosphere of Scottish politics, especially the failings of Scottish Labour to tackle poverty and class inequality. These frustrations have only intensified recently. While we may disagree on the actions of the SSP in Holyrood, we can surely agree that they had some success in tapping into this current of anger.
Thirdly, the last few years have seen a significant revival of the extra-parliamentary radical Left in Scotland. The student movement against fees and cuts was the precipitating factor. But this has helped to reinvigorate other currents as well, such as feminist, environmental, and international solidarity campaigns. Many of the people involved with these campaigns will strongly disagree with us on the need for political organisation. But we ignore them at our peril. Our belief is that they can play a strong role in revitalising the Left, but only if the existing Left is ready to change its own habits and routines. We have as much to learn from the movements as they have to learn from us.
A crisis of radical Left politics is not peculiar to Scotland. All across Europe, the victories of anti-capitalist forces after Seattle and during the Iraq war have been pushed back for a decade. The organised Left has failed to offer a coherent challenge, system-wide, to the crisis, the bailouts, and the cuts post-2008. But the defeats have not been even. In some nations, the Left has positioned itself well to present a challenge to the dominant austerity narrative. If Syriza in Greece is at one end of the spectrum of left-wing success, Britain has most definitely been at the other end.
For these reasons, we believe there is no reason for fatalism. We are a victim of contingent events, largely of our own making. By contrast, there is a much more protracted, structural crisis of Scottish politics. Qualitatively new forms are likely to emerge from this. We can help to shape this process, by putting poisonous recriminations aside, by participating in grassroots campaigns, and by leading the battle for a break with Britain in 2014.
The Perverse Glocalization of Labour
Scottish Labour is at the centre of the Scottish crisis. Accusations of “machine politics”, of “negative campaigning”, and of “tribalism” are common in all accounts of Scottish Labour. It was widely accepted that Labour had to learn from its Holyrood electoral hammering in 2011. Iain Gray, a “flop” as a leader, was replaced by Johann Lamont last December. Lamont conceded that Labour had an image problem, coming across as “a tired old politics machine which was more about itself than it was about them.” But this dour public face is symptomatic of deeper factors.
Adapting factional local politics and “patronage networks” to demands to “think global” is a particular challenge. Hardly a month goes by without new reports of a hornet’s nest of factional antagonisms and interest group politics in Labour, often, but not always, grouped in the West Coast of Scotland. Most recently, Labour’s chief Scottish spin doctor, Rami Okasha, was suspended amid allegations of “insubordination”. This exposed East-West coast divisions, and also divisions been the Holyrood and Westminster arms of politics.[6] These often express themselves as divisions within groupings, as the recent debacle over candidate selection for the Glasgow Council elections exposed.
At the same time, Scottish Labour is open for business when it comes to the amorphous benefits of “globalization”. It has proved far too intellectually timid to challenge Blairite norms. Gordon Brown summed up this new spirit: “The message London’s success sends out to the whole British economy is that we will succeed if like London we think globally…advance with light touch regulation, a competitive tax environment, and flexibility.”
A consensus held that London was a “model” to imitate for other urban economies. Glasgow City Council, in any case, had long been at the vanguard of neoliberal “urban boosterism” and place-marketing strategies.[7] Thus, when Jack McConnell implored Labour to act as “the party of enterprise” in 2004, he was merely stating conventional wisdom and long-established practice. It is telling that Scottish Labour has not produced critical figures like John McDonnell MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP. They would almost certainly find other political homes in Scotland, perhaps even in the SNP.
There has thus emerged a perverse “glocalization” effect in Scottish Labour. On the one hand, there is a far more ingrained policy consensus in Labour than in any other organisation. The “race to the bottom” in regulation and the virtues of competition were accepted with little resistance. The only qualification was the need to preserve the “cherished values”, lying somewhere between “Britishness” and “social democracy,” of the Labour movement. A very British and very “global” consensus thus prevails. The monetarists won the intellectual debate; but social democracy still has “the right values”. There is no dissent from this flimsy intellectual framework.
But imposing neoliberal demands in practice needs a party machine built on a tough local fabric of council housing, local council employment, and trade unions. Gerry Hassan and Eric Shaw refer to a (mythologised) “Labour Scotland” that services Scottish Labour in this regard.[8] These factors are still largely responsible for Labour’s core base of support in Scotland, despite decades of appeals to “professional” middle class voters through “modernization” policies. Trade unions, to take one key example, are still by far the biggest funders of Scottish Labour. The result is that loyalty to Labour is corrupting local representation with intellectual complacency and widespread factionalism. Although working class voters may be less inclined to vote Scottish Labour, the tissue of representation is still poisoned by its local feuds and its superstitious respect for “global market forces”.
The Lamont Moment
It might be argued that these factors culminated with the diabolical election performance of Iain Gray’s Labour in 2011. But we wish to extend this a step further. The apogee of Labour’s factional-intellectual crisis has arrived only this year, with Lamont’s attacks on universal benefits and Scotland’s supposed “something for nothing culture”.
Two factors have been identified here. The first is a lack of vision about Scottish taxation that Hassan calls “Block Grant conservatism”.[9] The result of thinking of Holyrood in terms of fixed fiscal parameters is to regard funding as a zero-sum game between “middle class benefits” and tackling poverty. Of course, there is no intellectual wriggle room in this straightjacket, since any leeway is likely to lead to further calls for “fiscal autonomy”, a slippery slope to independence.
A second issue is that Lamont is trying to massage internal disputes between roving bands of councillors, MPs, and MSPs.[10] The attack on “freebies” like free education and prescriptions may satisfy the need for daylight between the SNP and Labour in policy terms. But how will the public respond? The problem is that these “freebies” are inexpensive and highly popular.
The assumption that universal benefits are primarily a tax-break for the middle class, and a distraction from fighting poverty, is also highly dubious. Certainly, there is a problem of poverty in terms of direct material deprivation in Scotland. But often the deepest impact of poverty is the humiliation and stigma of it. Means-testing benefits, to save very meagre sums, will do what it always does: pile up bureaucracies and pile on humiliating poverty exams for the most vulnerable in society.
Even if Labour can successfully mount a defence of this policy, which seems unlikely, there is little prospect of any minor “cost savings” getting used to fight a war on poverty, in any sense of the word. Scottish Labour finds itself on the right of the Scottish government on almost every social issue, never mind Trident and war. At the same time, Labour’s roots and its funding base remains in the trade unions. This settlement is surely unstable and fundamental revisions in Scottish politics are possible.
The many hats of nationalism
While the Lamont factor has forced Labour further to the right, it has reigned in some of the more neoliberal tendencies in the Scottish government, at least temporarily. Education Secretary Mike Russell used a 2006 book to claim that Scotland should scrap universal benefits, as part of a sweeping set of cuts to the public sector. He was forced to retract these claims under pressure. “I am more than prepared to say today that my experience of the recession and the loss of 25,000 university places south of the border makes me believe I was wrong.” It would be foolish to read into this a change of heart from the SNP’s small, but influential, free market wing. What it represents is an attempt to unify the shifting imperatives between Scottish government, SNP party organisation, and the Yes Campaign for 2014. How these tensions play out will shape the future alignments of Scottish politics.
With a more or less fixed income from Holyrood’s block grant, Salmond’s team will be under pressure to make cuts as part of the Britain-wide austerity squeeze. There is no escaping this, all things being equal constitutionally. On the basis of its defence of the NHS, its opposition to tuition fees, and its defence of universalism, the SNP government has a legitimate claim to the identity of “real Labour” against New Labour. But this political manoeuvring does not change the social base of Salmond’s power amongst elements of the new middle class, small businesses, unorganised sections of the working class, and nouveau riche “entrepreneurs”. This clash between collectivist “values” and social structure was dramatised over the N30 strikes, in which SNP ministers happily crossed picket lines. The idea that N30 was an act of London-based “vested interests” with no relevance to Scotland was uncritically accepted in some sections of the Scottish broad Left.
Since the SNP membership is not, and cannot be, built out of trade unions, breaches like this are inevitable. However, this does not mean the SNP is a right-wing wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is a party built on the class faultlines of a nationalist platform. There is clearly a very genuine enthusiasm for anti-war and anti-nuclear politics in the SNP ranks. This has been qualified by a sad oversight on Afghanistan, where leaders have stuck to mainstream complacency. But this is a telling contrast with Labour, where any anti-war politics is a dirty secret.
The debate on NATO clearly reveals the fractures of trying to win the public to independence. On the one hand, Yes Scotland repeats the official line: let us not talk about the precise details of a future nation, let us unite for today and all issues can be democratically agreed after 2014. But all the while the media and “civil society” demands answers about “security” after independence. The British establishment is adept at manipulating the politics of fear, and Yes Scotland has no basis to tackle this. Thus, the SNP is buying time with the Left using Yes Scotland’s sterile optimism, while shifting its own positions to make ground to the right in practice. This has already led to a humiliating public spat with the Scottish Green leader Patrick Harvie. This wrangling has resolved itself, for the time being, but serious divisions remain over the function of Yes Scotland.
For the time being, the SNP is still clearly to the Left of Scottish Labour. Only the most dogmatic determinist would pretend otherwise. In a peculiar twist, the SNP got a majority of working class votes in 2011. It even managed to break Scotland’s Catholic community away: 43 percent voted SNP against 36 percent for Labour, testament to its break with a toxic perception of pro-Orange politics. But these factors cannot withstand the elements forever. Divisions have been held off for the time being. But after the 2014 referendum the SNP’s contradictions must start to unravel, or it will move back to the right of Labour under pressure from the pro-market wing of the party.
The Movements
No consideration of the future of the Left can leave aside the question of the extra-parliamentary movements. There are two aspects to consider in this respect: trade unions and protest groups. We would defend the decision to consider these forces separately. Sadly, the evidence of surveys has suggested that these rarely crossover.[11] While there are many honourable counter-examples, we feel these are two separate strands. It goes without saying that it is incumbent on trade union leaders, at the top and the bottom of organisations, to change this.
Trade union adaptation to devolved Scotland has been very uneven. The apparatus of the major, Labour-affiliated unions have been reluctant to acknowledge a Scottish dimension to politics. Many still deny that any substantial changes to the “united British working class” are worthy of consideration, or constitute anything more than a distraction. Labour tribalism is deep rooted in many unions. A huge proportion of trade union officials belong to Labour.[12] Attitudes to devolution have thus often fallen into the same complacent, business-as-usual mode.
However, the STUC has a somewhat different approach. They have a long record of campaigning for devolution, and to some degree have shown willingness to work engage with “Scottish civil society”. This has led, in practice, to a tendency towards “popular front” mobilisations, which are often accused of defining “broadness” by how many priests they can put on a platform. A more radical case is the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), which at one stage considered affiliation to the Scottish Socialist Party. The RMT actually affiliated to the SSP, before the split. Sadly these openings have been the exception, not the rule, and the Left has failed to capitalise on disenchantment with New Labour.
Not surprisingly, trade union officials have been awkward and stilted when responding to 2014. They have not given direct material support to Better Together, an openly reactionary coalition of interests which has been startlingly uncritical of the British status quo. An explicitly pro-British line would be difficult to maintain for the unions. Their core supporters are divided, and the most likely supporters of independence are the manual and routine working class.[13] Thus, the unions have instead played a peculiar game of brinksmanship, flirting with devolution max while claiming to “facilitate debate”. Anecdotally, it is often claimed that many trade union leaders actually support independence, and privately they will vote for it. Of course, they can never state this publically, for fear of breaches with London central offices. But many are keeping their options open in this fluid Scottish conjuncture.
By far the most inspiring recent challenges to Scottish neoliberalism have come from outside the organised Left. There is a broad, confused ecosystem of protest movements that has become a significant factor in its own right. The catalyst for this was a highly successful student-led movement against cuts and fees in Scottish universities. This took its momentum from England, but unlike the English movement it was ultimately successful in forcing the SNP into a dramatic policy u-turn prior to the election. The context of anti-cuts protests was undoubtedly a huge factor in Labour’s heavy defeat in 2011.
A significant consequence has been the radicalisation of a layer of young people against the violent arm of the Scottish state, as campaigns have been mounted to defend student protesters against victimisation. But the youth-led protests have reinvigorated other dormant leftist trends: Palestine solidarity, feminism, and anti-racism to name but a few. Perhaps the most inspiring example was the sight of young activists from Coalition of Resistance and the Hetherington Occupation joining with community campaigners to save the Accord Centre in East Glasgow. Meeting the organisational and intellectual needs of this sort of “movement from below” is precisely the reason for rethinking old habits on the Left.
What needs to happen on the Left
Ironically, both the trade union and the protest movement have reached a similar dead end after the concessions post-N30. It is at a time like this when an organised Left is most needed. Sadly, our authority has been badly tarnished by the aftershock of recent splits. Only a Panglossian optimist would claim that the post-SSP left in Scotland has clarified anything about socialist strategy or tactics. The split has generated a volcano of heat and precious little light. Electoral programs of post-SSP groups have been nearly identical. Any promise that the split would bring new opportunities for the Left to relate to political movements has surely been refuted in practice.
We believe that restoring the health of the Left in Scotland requires three points. Left unity, the restoration of working relationships in the post-SSP fragments, is a logical first step. It is very difficult to build trust in wider society when paranoia and suspicion is rife in our own ranks. Some will object that any future moves towards unity, however desirable, must be made Britain-wide. But this does not take full account of the territorial changes in British governance. The Holyrood system offers far greater opportunities for the Left to gain a purchase in parliament. This may not be the end goal of revolutionary politics. But it is surely desirable to have a permanent voice of opposition to cuts, war, racism, and sexism in public focus.
The referendum in 2014, whatever the result, is another reason for restoring working relations in Scotland without waiting for consent to break out in the rest of the UK. The last thing we want is to end up like Scottish Labour, belatedly forced into accepting the need for Scottish organisation after years of pummelling defeats. Left renewal needs to happen. It is our job to ensure that left dis-unity is not a roadblock to the organisational needs of the movement from below. At present, the organised left has a toxic reputation. Only unity can solve this.
The subjective factor, the modification of habits and “behaviour”, is thus highly important. Objective factors do count. But when opportunities open up to shape the debate, the Left’s intervention will be lacking if we put our own bad blood over the needs of the movement. Even if we profess good intentions, an “end to sectarianism”, etc, we must prove it in practice.
A last factor is that the wider, societal left, i.e. those concerned with fundamentally changing the pattern of wealth and power in society, is fragmented across various organisations. Many belong to no group. To win the respect of this group is contingent on left unity and left renewal. That is to say, trade unionists who wish to see a radical left-of-Labour force will not take us seriously until we have won the right to represent the needs of the movement.
In Holyrood, the centre cannot hold, and things as they stand are liable to fall apart. One way or another, this is the trajectory of the 2014 referendum. The SNP’s credibility as a moderate party of government will come to a head with its credibility as a force of constitutional change. Labour’s base of financial support from nurses, school teachers, and cleaners will conflict with the needs to make Westminster the hub of pro-market politics in Europe.
We are not claiming to offer a blueprint for the sort of party we need in the future. It is merely our intention to say that the patterns of the last five years do not have to recur forever as in Groundhog Day. We can choose to put an end to this. Another five years in the ghetto is unforgiveable. The renewed radical left current in Scotland is already emerging from below, and there is space for it to grow. Unity is about ensuring that the toxic waste of past splits does not poison the future.
Notes
[1] On anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal programs, see Daniel Bensaid (2007), “The Return of Strategy”, International Socialism no. 113. See also Alex Callinicos (2003): An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto (Cambridge: Polity)
[2] Alf Young (2002), “The Scottish Establishment: Old and New Elites”, in Hassan and Warhurst (eds): Tomorrow’s Scotland (London: Lawrence and Wishart) pp. 154
[3] Tom Peterkin (2003): “Edinburgh is UK’s Millionaire Hotspot”, The Telegraph 06/02/03
[4] See Neil Davidson et al. (eds.): Neoliberal Scotland (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press)
[5] The figure for England is 34 percent. See John Curtice and Rachel Ormston (2011): “Is Scotland More Left-Wing Than England”, British Social Attitudes no. 42
[6] Iain MacWhirter (2012): “Scottish Labour’s Battles Could Spell the End for the UK”, Herald 20/09/12
[7] Gordon MacLeod (2002): “From Urban Entrepreneurialism to a ‘Revanchist City’?”, Antipode 34(3)
[8] Gerry Hassan and Eric Shaw (2012): The Strange Death of Labour Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press)
[9] Gerry Hassan (2012b): “Let’s Start the Debate over the Future of Scotland’s Social Democracy”, The Scotsman 29/09/12
[10] Robin McAlpine (2012), “Is this the End of Scottish Labour?”, http://reidfoundation.org/2012/09/is-this-the-end-of-scottish-labour/
[11] Adrian Cousins (2011): “The Crisis of the British Regime: Democracy, Protest and the Unions”, http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/theory/37-theory/14906-the-crisis-of-the-british-regime-democracy-protest-and-the-unions
[12] Mark Irvine (2004): “Scotland, Labour and the Trade Union Movement: Partners in Change or Uneasy Bedfellows?”, in Gerry Hassan (ed): The Scottish Labour Party (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press)
[13] TNS-BRB (2010): “Independence Poll 13th December 2010”
The International Socialist Network is a new group bringing together socialists who have recently left the Socialist Workers Party. In this article Raymond Watt outlines the view of ISN supporters in Scotland concerning the way forward for the left in Scotland.
Since this is the first public article by International Socialist Network supporters in Scotland, it may be useful to introduce ourselves. The ISN (International Socialist Network formed from the recent split in the SWP) is very much in its embryonic stage and therefore we greatly welcome being part of discussions in Scotland and across the UK with other socialists, anti-capitalists and non-aligned activists around the possibilities and way forward for left unity/renewal.
The ISN is based on the principle, revolution from below as the sole means by which socialism can be achieved. It is refreshing that those currently engaged with the network are working to develop our ideas, which come out of Marxist revolutionary politics, on such questions as revolutionary organisation, feminism and left unity – and we recognise that we have much to learn from others in doing so. Marxism should be a living, breathing tradition. This means healthy and open debate, taking a realistic look at the past decades of neo-liberalism, changes in the composition of the working class, identifying the challenges faced by the left in the 21st century and seeking to modify revolutionary theory and practice to meet those challenges. The ISN seeks to be a forum in which such debate takes place and a network of activists committed to revolutionary socialism form below.
The Broader Context
Readers will be aware of the circumstances in which the ISN came to be formed by members of the Socialist Workers’ Party – more information is available here. Rather than rerun that history, we want to take this opportunity to engage with others in developing our understanding of the present period and working through our attitude to concrete issues of left realignment in Scotland.
We start, as most socialists do, from the principle of “fighting in the interests of the working class”. There are those that argue that these interests are best fought through elections, parliaments and governments and those,like the ISN, who believe that this goal can only be achieved through revolution. This is, of course, the division into ‘reformist’ and ‘revolutionary’ strategies that we, and others on the left, became very comfortable debating because it offered us a series of ready-made answers.
Yet, the movements of the first decade of this century from the anti-capitalists of the early 2000s to the ‘Indiginados’, Occupy and anti-austerity protests have forced us out of this comfort zone. These two roads to socialism have faced a direct challenge from many other forms and methods of organising and activity. Many of these new forms of organising emerge from anarchist and self-defined ‘horizontalist’ movements – leading to hasty and counterproductive dismissal of these alternative ways of organizing by those who keep a focus on independent political organisation within the working class and trade union movement as the main strategy for revolutionaries. Many new activists have come into politics through those movements. And therefore it is crucial to understand why over the last couple of decades many more new activists have been attracted by such movements rather than avowedly socialist organisations, whether they be reformist or revolutionary. We agree with Ben Wray of the International Socialist group that this reflects a great weakness on the part of the Marxist left. Of course, the utter capitulation of all mainstream political organisations to neo-liberalism has led to disillusionment with the whole electoral system and any kind of “party organisation’ – not to the generalised apolitical apathy with which middle-class commentators comfort themselves, but nonetheless an enormous challenge for socialists. Furthermore, it is not enough simply to point to the mainstream parties as the source of this disillusion: many activists are repelled by party-based politics not because of a lack of contact with left-wing parties, but because of their own experience within those parties.
Does that just mean we were wrong about revolutionary socialism and organisation? Capitalism is still here, and the problems to which revolutionary socialist organisations were an answer are also still posed. This is not the first time historically that left organisations and working class political representation has been in crisis. As Jules Alford’s article (Some Notes on The British working Class 1900-1914) argues on the ISN web site, that… “There are instructive parallels with the long ‘downturn’ that proceeded the Great Unrest 1910-14 when only one in eight workers held a union card and today when union density in the private sector has fallen so low.” The institutions and consciousness of the class are at a historically low-level and as a result the left is in a critical state and needs to adapt. It is not a pretty picture but we are where we are - or, as Marx put it “the conditions of this new movement must result from the premises now in existence”. Marx, German Ideology (1845). The door to a revival of the left has been opened. It is up to us to decide whether we take the doors off their hinges or re-close them. We have a historical role to play now in the development of a new left movement.
The Scottish Situation
The shift in working class votes from the Labour Party to the SNP has highlighted the continued shift of the Labour Party away from the working class. Recent changes to its internal structures and election processes, and the increasing dominance of a middle class professional elite who control the party, can only further detach working class people from the Labour Party – and we would expect therefore from the notion that Labour can be transformed from within. From its foundation the Labour Party has always pursued the goal of building an electoral machine, with the final result that the party leadership now competes to best serve the interests of neo-liberalism. It is shifting away from being a working class “movement” , with a growing fetishisation of parliament and leadership of civil society functionary bodies. The Labour Party currently sees its aim for working class people as attempting to lift a minority out of the working class (as Joahnn Lamont put it out of the”something for nothing society”) as opposed to building a movement that, in John Maclean’s words, encourages the working class to “ rise with their class not out of their class”.
The SNP electorally has out flanked the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) to the left and over the question of independence the SLP has shot itself in the foot by alignment with the NO Campaign. The STUC’s position was recently stated by General Secretary Grahame Smith rather than engage with the Radical Independence Campaign he argued that “The challenge that matters in Scotland, ‘whether independent or as part of the UK’, will be how wealth is redistributed and that is a question of tax, public services and how we go about improving pay equality in Scotland.” First of all, this is not just a question of tax, services and pay equality but of class struggle – a struggle for which the independence campaign may change the terrain.
The Labour Party & Trade Union Left as Part of the Movement
It would be premature to extrapolate from the current poor state of the Scottish Labour Party the terminal decline of the party as a whole in terms of its relationship to and support within the working class. This leads to the question: should we seek to involve and work with those who view themselves as left-wing activists who exist both within the Labour Party left and/or in the Trade Unions in the discussions over left unity/renewal ?
We would surely have welcomed and indeed tried to win STUC and Scottish Trade Union representation into the Radical independence Campaign so why not encourage those who campaign to regain the Labour Party to a reformist road to socialism, even if we are sceptical of this strategy, into the process of building left unity?
One obvious difficulty would be around the question of winning the unions to a position of breaking the financing of the Labour Party by the trade unions. However, although there exist many such contradictions within the trade union movement - any possibility of raising the levels of trade union membership and increasing its participation within grass roots anti-cuts movements, should certainly be something we would welcome and engage with.
This lays a challange at the feet of those Labour Party and trade union left activists to break with their fears of the radical left and sectarian fears of “the Trots under the bed”. As Sarah Collins stated in (Issue 75) of Scottish Left Review the trade unions must learn to “Dance with the people that brung you. Those on the left are not your enemy”. To date, certain left union officials have been keen to speak on a plethora of “united front” anti-cuts platforms but then never to be seen to positively and actively back such campaigns or encourage their union members to become active in them. The only exceptions are when such activity has been specifically called by their union sector and only if ever raised and discussed within the tight confines of the union offices or branches and with “trusted” reps.
If the trade union left is to play a serious role in the fight against austerity then it must break out of its comfort zone, open its doors to the movement and fight with the anti-cuts movement, not just in words but in day to day action and activity. As John McDonald also states in (Issue 75) of Scottish Left Review “…it is the trade union movement that now needs to step up to the plate to mobilise and support a wider community campaign of resistance and austerity”. However, local community campaigns alone will not be enough to stop the austerity attacks on the working class unless linked to a national co-ordinated campaign which works to bring together both political and industrial action.The trade unions must begin to flex their ‘industrial’ muscle if they are to be viewed by the wider movement as any more than “boardroom” activists. The trade union movement cannot continue to confine itself within the restrictions of anti-trade union laws or wait for the glourious day when some elected Prime Minister miraculously reverses the law . Unite’s setting up of community branches is very welcome, but when Len McLuskey also thinks that Ed Miliband is the political answer to austerity, it does raise the question ; are the community branches a base for recruitment of possible electoral campaigners for Ed Miliband and his brand of austerity lite or a genuine attempt to rebuild fighting unions? It is one thing building branches in the community but quite another to build a union prepared to fight!
The truth remains to be seen in relation to union community branches, but one thing is for sure we cannot afford to go through another 30 years of broken promises from the Labour Party both when it is in power or in opposition neither can we suffer to wait until the “time is right” approach of the trade unions, if we do, we will end up where the Chartists had to begin.
Where next?
We cannot begin to build the left unless we are genuinely prepared to bury many hatchets from the past, for many. This will not be easy for any of us, yet it is essential. Of course, the experiences of the past leave divisions that will not be buried over night. Hence, open political meetings and open discussions on future joint activities must be viewed as a process of rebuilding trust and confidence amongst those who have been active for the last couple of decades and more.
For the International Socialist Network this process of left unity/renewal has the potential to gain pace and growth but only if we assist in creating more open, democratic and less rigid structures which permit those coming into left politics the space to develop new left organisational structures fit for the battles of the 21st century and for regeneration of a new left. This does not mean that we become less ideological but have to become more ideological – in the sense of having a more up-to-date, accurate and fundamental analysis of contemporary capitalism that can guide our struggle.
Questions around the development of theory and its relationship to practice become more crucial, therefore. For too long, the left has been guilty of saying to new activists: “here is our theory and here’s how you will apply it”. Such a dogmatic approach has led on many occasions to wrong practices and ultimately contributed to the failure to retain new activists and grow the left. Hence the type of democratic structure within any new left project must be one which is developed and led from the bottom up. We would rather see 1000 more new grass roots activists fighting for the interests of the class and making mistakes along the way as they cut their political teeth, than a small group thinking they have all the answers.
At the high-point of the Stop the War and anti-capitalist movement in the early 2000s, a left realignment on an electoral basis did occur. In 2003 the left thought it had found the answer with the election of 6 SSP MSP’s and in 2004 Respect in England made important electoral gains. The successes of Rifondazione in Italy soon passed into defeat following party’s compromise with the participation of the Italian state in imperialism – although the current ground being made by Syriza in Greece may provide a more positive example. Just as the organisational formulas of the revolutionary left cannot simply be repeated and replicated, so we should also be cautious about thinking these organisational models, which brought about electoral successes during the aforementioned period, can be repeated as a strategy for helping the left to grow today. Of course a debate on and balance sheet of this period is both welcome and necessary but should not be the central focus and starting point for the future shaping of the left. The relationship between the level of concrete social and political struggles and the electoral process is extremely complex and indirect.
The Potential for Left Unity/renewal
Currently the left in Scotland have two central areas of work, one on the question of independence through the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) and the second through the fight against austerity, via the anti-Bedroom Tax Campaign and other anti-cuts movements, both of which offer an opportunity for the left to work together including those of the left within the trade union movement, the SLP and the SNP. The key to the success of both these Campaigns, will be to ensure that one does not take precedence over the other. We do not wish to predict what the result of the referendum will be nor the resulting impact on Scottish politics, but what we do know is that left unity must be based on going beyond 2014. Therefore it is crucial that we continue to work in other campaigns which involve those not supportive of Scottish Independence.
As Alister Black stated in Issue 20 of Frontline “New generations of activists have no interest in the splits of the past and will be attracted to organisations who are unsectarian and hold socialist unity as a principle. A new electoral list, coalition or party remains necessary to give us the strength to stand up to the neo-liberal onslaught that we will face regardless of the outcome of the referendum.”
At the May Day rally in Edinburgh an activist in the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign stated in conversation that “there are many more people who consider themselves “socialists without a home” than there are with a home”. By this they meant that the current state of existing left organisations and there attitude to one another has disillusioned and prevented activists involved in other campaigns from joining the left.
It is to the activists of a new generation, activists in other campaigns who view themselves as socialists and older activists who are prepared to drop ultra-left sectarianism of the past, that we must listen to.
The ISN in Scotland believes that the potential to build a new left unity movement exists, and currently in Edinburgh roads towards such unity are being slowly but openly and positively discussed. As Marx said “ We have nothing to lose but our chains”.
Frontline hosted a meeting recently which brought together socialists from different backgrounds to look at the question of building left unity in Scotland. In this article Frontline editor Alister Black reflects on the challenges ahead.
As Mayday came around, socialists took to the streets to celebrate international workers day, to campaign against Tory austerity, for international solidarity and for a better world. In Scotland Mayday had another significance this year as it marked 500 days until the referendum on Scottish independence. The referendum has energised activists and is increasingly the context in which protest exists within. The Mayday march in Edinburgh saw a big contribution by independence campaigners following on from similar displays at the Bedroom Tax and anti-Trident demos. Homemade placards can be seen at all these events with the same message – things could be better in an independent Scotland.
The Scottish left is overwhelmingly pro-independence. At the same time there is an understanding that things will not automatically get better if we replace the union flag with the saltire. Change in favour of working people has to be fought for. To achieve change we have to be organised and we have to be united. The Scottish Socialist Party achieved a real step forward for left politics ten years ago when it united most of the Scottish left, built branches across the country and had six members elected to the Scottish Parliament. The SSP succeeded in pulling Scottish politics to the left – elements of the SSP programme such as free prescriptions were taken up by the SNP administration and enacted into law. An effective and united left can pose a real challenge and make a real difference to the lives of working class people in Scotland.
A Tale of Two Cities
Left politics in Scotland is in a very fluid state. The success of the Radical Independence Campaign in bringing the left together is one side of this. The other side is long term activists leaving their parties, of splits and new formations and sometimes of people dropping out of politics altogether. The last issue of Frontline detailed some of these trends. Since it was written we have seen a formal split in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) with a new group the International Socialist Network (ISN) being formed. Other SWP dissidents remain in the party to fight their corner, for now.
Activists in Edinburgh have been able to work together in increasingly cooperative ways. Radical Independence in Edinburgh hosted the biggest rally of RIC’s ‘Peoples Assembly’ tour with 150 packing in to hear speakers and debate. Recent branch meetings have seen crowds of 50 turn up and have been full of enthusiasm, plans are underway to launch local branches across the city. It was RIC in Edinburgh who organised a hugely succesful protest against UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s visit to the city, which brought dozens out on the streets with just a couple of hours notice and made virtually every front page of the national press the following day.
In Glasgow, by contrast, the atmosphere has been described as toxic with conflict arising over the attempt by Tommy Sheridan to make a comeback in Scottish politics on the back of the campaign against the bedroom tax with the help of elements of the SWP. The fallout of the SWP rape scandal has also led to some bitter confrontations.
Is Left Unity Possible?
It was against this background that Frontline organised a fringe meeting at SSP conference which asked ‘is left unity possible in Scotland?’ The SSP conference itself had set a positive tone by passing a motion which called on the party to look into the possibility of a broad left platform for the European elections in May 2014.
Thirteen people attended from five different groups. These were the SSP, including co-spokesperson Colin Fox, the ISG, the ISN, the Republican Communist Network (RCN) and some who were still members of the SWP. The discussion was comradely and participants are to be congratulated for having the courage to come together to discuss these issues.
The meeting was addressed by Gregor Gall, a member of the Frontline editorial board and also an SSP member and by Pete Ramand of the International Socialist Group (ISG). Both outlined the position the left found itself in and the opportunity of the current period for building unity.
Firstly there was general agreement that there is no real programmatic difference between the groups, or at least in the broad demands they would put forward. There was a recognition that the division of the left was unsustainable and that some sort of renewal of the left, drawing on the spirit of the Radical Independence Conference was the way forward.
Identifying issues
The speed, scale and feasibility of unity were areas where differences could be seen. For the ISG and most likely the ISN, the sooner this can be achieved the better. The ISG made clear that they saw themselves as a temporary formation who would be happy to dissolve into a broader group. The ISN perspective seemed to be that left unity was one of their key priorities. This is certainly supported by their activity in England where they have been in talks with Socialist Resistance and the Anti-Capitalist Initiative and have oriented towards the new Left Unity formation.
However many speakers, particularly from the SSP, were concerned that we needed to make sure we did not repeat the mistakes of the past. After all the SSP had formed as a party of left unity, but despite all the constitutional safeguards in place, that unity was wrecked by the split. How, they argued, could we trust those who had taken part in this split without a full accounting for what took place?
Similarly the RCN emphasised the need for a political balance sheet to be drawn up of events – something they argued had not been sufficiently done by either side.
Learning Lessons
Of course as well as the negative lessons of the SSP split it is also important to assess the positive aspects and learn the lessons of how the SSP built. The SSP was able to capture tens of thousands of votes and gain six seats in parliament as well as building dozens of branches across Scotland and attracting the best working class militants to its ranks, including affiliation from the likes of the RMT and Lothians postal workers. It was to the fore in every arena of working class struggle.
The party did not materialise out of thin air or because some of us thought it was a good idea. It emerged from the mass struggle against the poll tax, a struggle which had a positive effect on one of the key groups who led it, Scottish Militant Labour (SML). SML began a process of working with those allies it had encountered in the poll tax struggle. It formed the Scottish Defiance Alliance to campaign against the Criminal Justice Act, and organise illegal protests against it. This group encompassed everyone from anarchists and radical greens to community groups and the Marxist left.
The Defiance Alliance led to the creation of the Scottish Socialist Alliance. Not everyone stayed on board for this development and some who did remained distrustful of the intentions of SML. Relations between groups in the early stages could be antagonistic. It was a process of working together in campaigns, in elections and in meetings and discussions which began to overcome this distrust.
Trust remains a key issue in building left unity today. Activists from all sides need to demonstrate in practical terms that they have rejected the methods of the past, the methods of cynically using struggles as nothing more than an opportunity to recruit to their own brand of socialism, or of building party-front type organisations.
This is not to say that there should not be open debate and discussions about our differences. Far better to have an open and honest discussion than to hide our differences or rely on back-room maneuvers. Building unity is a process and not something we can simply declare.
Next steps
Some meetings have already been hosted by the RCN and these are likely to continue with a broader range of participants. The ISN also stated that they intend to host meetings on the subject and would be inviting participants
Frontline is happy to play its part in this process and we are glad that many of the organisations and individuals involved have offered their perspectives for this issue of Frontline.
There is a long way to go and different views regarding the way forward. However there are some key events coming up. The SSP conference passed a motion calling for a broad left slate for the 2014 European elections. This could be a rallying point for the next stage in rebuilding a serious socialist force in Scotland.
Scottish Socialist Party co-spokesperson Colin Fox reflects on the lessons of the rise of the SSP and the way forward for the Scottish left today.
I attended the Frontline fringe meeting on ‘The prospects for Left unity’ at the Scottish Socialist Party conference in Edinburgh recently and enjoyed listening to Gregor Gall (SSP) and Pete Ramand (ISG) outline the issues facing us. Whilst nothing new arose from the discussion it nonetheless offered a chance to examine the issues afresh with representatives from the SWP, ISG and ISN. So I welcome this further opportunity to calmly consider the position facing those of us committed to building a broad based, mass socialist party in Scotland.
Looking at the left in Scotland today reminds me of Tony Benn’s observation, offered to me as a young socialist some 30 years ago, ‘there are too many socialist parties and not enough socialists.’
In this article I look at the current situation, the lessons of previous successes, the type of programme and model of unity we need, the impediments to unity and offer suggestions on how progress might nonetheless be made, and last but not least, I consider the views some have presented about abandoning the need for a party altogether.Inevitably an article like this can only scratch the surface of this debate, but I offer it nonetheless.
SSP Success
Before I consider all those issues however I feel compelled to focus this discussion on one incontrovertible truth, the Scottish Socialist Party remains the most successful Left unity model in post war Scottish history. That fact seems to be lost on many people, not least those former SSP ‘comrades’ subsequently blinded by their desire to bury us. I would respectfully suggest that instead of writing off the SSP they might be better served studying why we succeeded and what lessons are to be learned from that early experience. No student serious about this discussion would surely dispute that such an exercise offers a treasury of valuable information?
The SSP’s emergence in 1998/9 was no accident. Rather it was the result of a strategic political decision and a lengthy process of deliberation, discussion and agreement. Scottish Militant Labour, the project’s driving influence, began making overtures to others on the anti-capitalist Left in Scotland in 1995/6 about the possibility of a political realignment. This realignment would give voice to substantial sections of the Scottish working class who felt disenfranchised by Labour’s historic lurch to the right. Contact was sought and made with like-minded comrades from the Labour Left, the SNP Left (gathered around Liberation magazine), the Communist Party of Scotland, trade union activists, intellectuals, peaceniks, direct action environmental campaigners and many non-aligned socialists across Scotland. Agreement was reached on a substantial political programme based on shared anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, pro public ownership policies and not least a pro-Independence programme and to enlist SML’s skills base, its finances, its elected representatives, its full time organisers, its weekly newspaper [Scottish Socialist Voice] and its membership to help launch the Scottish Socialist Alliance. We had been heavily involved in campaigns like the Liverpool Dockers Support Group, the Hands off our Water campaign, the Glacier Metals dispute on Glasgow’s Southside and we had worked well together on single issues. Through this Alliance we achieved a remarkable degree of political unity, cohesion and trust around a programme that enjoyed the support of everyone on most key issues. Where there was discord on policy, such as Ireland, we agreed to ‘park’ those debates for the time being having reached the maximum consensual agreement possible.
On top of this programmatic unity we built organisational strength and trust by adopting a groundbreaking constitution which included a series of clauses based on a pluralist and democratic model. Comrades from SML, for example, recognising the need to display unity and respect in action as much as in words, suggested all platforms, tendencies and groups should have equal voting rights regardless of their numerical strength. This was an important commitment designed to emphasise the politically pluralist nature of the new alliance and build the necessary understanding, trust and respect between all the groups involved.
The undoubted success of the SSA – modest at first - developed into the Scottish Socialist Party. This crucial step from a loose alliance to a tighter party was deemed necessary if we were to win a seat in the inaugural Holyrood elections of 1999. We felt this victory was within our reach and we saw the huge electoral opportunity it offered in gaining further political credibility and mass popular support.
Of course not everyone on the Left joined in this left unity project. The Socialist Labour Party of Arthur Scargill for example rejected the idea as they did not support Independence and also opposed the ‘bottom up’ democratic structure of the new party preferring a powerful hegemonic role for Scargill instead. They were nonetheless an important part of the Left in Scotland at that time and went on to stand against the SSP in the 1999 Holyrood elections. Despite polling more votes across Scotland they did not win any seats. Had there been one left candidate in each region we would have won 5 socialist MSP’s.
The Socialist Workers Party also dismissed the SSA/SSP project out of hand. In fact the SWP denounced the SSP as ‘reformist’ and ‘nationalist’ because we called for an independent socialist Scotland. Whereas until recently they have been ambivalent on the issue of Independence at that time they opposed it. They preferred to call for a vote for Labour in 1997. ‘Vote Labour and build a socialist alternative’ was their slogan as we in the SSA were building that very ‘alternative’. To be fair they did change their minds when the SSP won a seat at Holyrood and tripled our membership in the 12 months following.
The SSP continued to operate on this pluralist basis with an unparalleled democratic constitution unmatched anywhere else on the left. We enshrined open platform rights for all registered tendencies including the newly joined SWP with branches meeting fortnightly, elected Regional Committees, a quarterly National Committee and an annual delegate Conference whose decisions were sovereign.
We built the SSP inside and outside Parliament and confounded sceptics inside and outside the left with our progress. We effectively led the anti-war movement in Scotland and were present on every picket line, community fight back and progressive campaign in the land. In 2003 we won 6 MSP’s, secured 131,000 votes for a full-blooded socialist programme and changed the face of Scottish politics entirely.
We soon had 3,000 members in 80 branches organised across 7 regions.
And what are the lessons? That with a pluralist, inclusive, democratic and bold orientation to the masses, in particular to new layers of activists entering the fray, it was possible to build a popular and effective broad, socialist party. This impressive achievement was widely acknowledged and respected.
SSP Lives On
The SSP remains at the heart of an albeit diminished left in Scotland today. Yet there has been a tendency for many on the left to write the SSP’s political obituary over the past few years. And the words of the American author and wit Mark Twain seem most apt here. ‘Rumours of my death’ he famously noted ‘have been greatly exaggerated’.
And as the National Convenor/Spokesman of the SSP throughout the last 8 years I pay tribute to the incredible dedication, unbreakable loyalty and personal nobility of those hundreds of members who stuck with their party, and indeed who joined it afresh, and carried out important groundbreaking work often in the face of ‘tortuous’ provocation. We defended our party in the bourgeois courts, in the bourgeois press, and most importantly of all, in the court of working class public opinion despite being vilified and blackened by almost everyone including so called former ‘comrades’ to a degree non-members can barely imagine.
So I feel duty bound to insist, and here I put it most modestly, that the SSP has a great deal of experience, judgement and knowledge to offer this debate. Those who talk of a ‘post SSP’ political landscape are guilty of wishful thinking. The Scottish Socialist Party, now 15 years old, has every intention of being here in another 15 years!
Despite the obvious setback the Sheridan debacle inflicted on our project, and I will return to that presently, the SSP today remains the only socialist party in Scotland with an elected Councillor(SSP Cllr Jim Bollan in West Dumbartonshire), the only party with a fortnightly socialist newspaper edited, printed and published in Scotland (the Scottish Socialist Voice), the only socialist party with a seat on the Yes Scotland Advisory Board, with a network of full time organisers and branches throughout Scotland, active on the streets, in communities and in the trade unions. Moreover in former MSP’s John McAllion and Campbell Martin we have two figures hugely respected within the Labour and SNP Left respectively. And last but not least we have a profound knowledge of working class struggle in Scotland, both at community and workplace levels, with an unrivalled track record of engaging in such struggles raising our socialist vision and alternatives.
So whilst I have no intention of belittling anyone else’s role, I am sure no one will want to see the SSP denied the respect we are due.
A Better Left in Scotland
All that having been said I entirely accept the Left in Scotland could and should be doing far better. Our shared frustration then must surely compel us to re-examine what progress might be made.
On the positive side there is much that unites us on policy. Nor do we disagree by and large about the possibilities for advancing socialist ideas. I will therefore not take up much space here outlining those possibilities suffice it to say that the worst economic recession in 80 years is forcing many people to draw conclusions favourable to ours. And their widespread experience, of falling living standards and corrupt mainstream politics, opens up minds previously closed to us. Moreover the movements growing in opposition to austerity and the cuts augurs well for the left. And the rising Independence movement provides further substantial possibilities for advance as Stephen Maxwell points out in his book ‘Arguments for Independence’.
Yet whilst we can be positive about the strength of the programme we share and the rise, albeit uneven, in working class consciousness we must all equally recognise that the Lefts divisions often confuse, demoralise and even anger many sections of the working class looking to us for assistance and leadership.
What then are the impediments to progress and how can they be ameliorated?
If ‘we agree on 90% of issues and disagree on 10% ’ how profound is the 10%?
There is certainly a fundamental difference between those of us who believe you start with a socialist party and try to build it and those who aim to transform existing non-socialist parties like Labour or the SNP. Whilst I respect all tactical considerations, for me this ‘entryism’ appears pointless as Labour continues to move further and further to the right and encompass a neo-liberal model that is the antithesis of social democracy far less socialism. So whilst I respect those socialists like Neil Findlay, MSP, who argues (in ‘The Scottish Road to Socialism’ 2013) that since Labour and the SNP enjoy mass support the Left must work inside them otherwise it confines itself to the electoral wilderness, I think this position is just not credible or sustainable. Either way it is certainly no basis for uniting the left in Scotland.
So if the first aim is a common programme, the second is surely an agreed political orientation. And the best way to build an effective broad left party is by orienting to new layers of activists not joining neo-liberal parties.
There is one other issue that cannot be avoided in any honest examination of the prospects for principled, sustainable Left unity in Scotland today. And that is the rather euphemistically referenced ‘Sheridan’ issue. Tommy Sheridan’s decision to sue a tabloid newspaper over stories he knew to be true was foolhardy in the extreme. His demand that all 3,000 members of the SSP traipse into court and perjure themselves for him was worse. But his all out attempt to destroy the Scottish Socialist Party did more damage to the socialist cause here than Margaret Thatcher could ever dream of. And despite a 3 years prison sentence, convicted on several counts of perjury, he has never shown an ounce of remorse. Were he capable of taking responsibility for his actions he might eventually be forgiven. In the meantime he remains an utterly divisive and widely ridiculed political figure. Too many people would not work with him again nor trust him not to wreck the socialist movement a second time.
After examining these impediments what do we find? Is any progress possible? I believe it is. After all we work well together in the Yes Scotland movement, in the Radical Independence Campaign, in Trades Unionists for Independence, in the anti-Trident coalition, in local cuts groups and against the hated ‘bedroom tax’.
European Elections
The SSP is keen for example to engage with others on the left to examine the possibility of presenting a common programme and joint slate for next years European Parliament elections. Now it might be possible and it might not, but we are fully prepared to give the project our best efforts.
Clearly working together in joint campaigns with shared goals is one thing, constructing an organised mass party is quite another. The SSP has developed a comprehensive socialist programme over the years that takes up the rights of working class people and links their immediate concerns and struggles to policies that challenge capitalism and promote socialism. No other group on the left in Scotland has invested as much in such a rounded-out socialist challenge to capitalism that can appeal to broad masses of working class people.
A Party or A Movement?
And this brings me to the question others have posed in this discussion ‘Is such a party desirable’? In my view it is essential. For me there are no realistic or workable alternatives to a party. I hear people talk about how the era of political parties is over, bypassed by events and that single-issue campaigns, networks or groups, like the ‘Occupy’ movement, are the way ahead. And I must say whilst I listen carefully to their case I must confess I have never found it persuasive. Groups, networks and alliances have their place of course but they are transitional. The Scottish Socialist Alliance for example was always clear it would aim to become a party.
And as I understand for example that the SNP has just reached 25,000 members in Scotland it would appear they have found a way forward as a party.
There are in truth no short cuts to party building and no substitute for painstaking effort and patient party organisation. The distilled experience and learning a party collects is invaluable to the socialist struggle. There is a quote Jack Straw celebrated as leader of the National Union of Students. Unfashionably it was from Stalin and went ‘When the political line has been decided organisation is everything’. Dare I say it, there is much sense in Josep Djugashvili’s famous aphorism. To suggest the socialist struggle can be advanced in the face of ruthless capitalism and the state, its political instruments and our political enemies without an organised, disciplined and effective party organisation is to deny history and to prepare for failure.
So whom are we all aiming at in trying to build this new party? For me it’s the new layers of young activists changing their political allegiances and open to democratic, pluralist and above all socialist ideas. And in this regard the Yes movement and the Radical Independence Campaign are key. A ‘Yes’ vote in the 2014 Independence Referendum will transform politics in Scotland and throughout Britain. That prospect offers up enormous opportunities for the left in the run up to the crucial 2016 Holyrood elections where we again have a realistic prospect of winning seats.
And what model of party is required? For me the SSP at its height remains the most successful, democratic, plural and disciplined example I’ve ever seen. Regardless of whether you agreed with it or not it had, and still has, a coherent narrative with a fully worked out anti-capitalist programme. The SSP remains a central feature of the socialist landscape in Scotland and can again provide the basis for building the broad based, mass party of socialism we desire. Our party has seen clear and welcome signs of renewal these past few months. We have seen a tremendous improvement in the numbers attending our public meetings up and down the country for example on ‘The case for an Independent socialist Scotland’ with John McAllion, Campbell Martin, John Finnie, myself and Sandra Webster. More than 100 people have applied to join via our national website in the past two months as our support for an Independent socialist Scotland and our opposition to the bedroom tax and the worst recession in 80 years reaches a wider and wider audience. The Scottish working class badly needs a well-organised mass party of socialism and the SSP has proven it can play that role with aplomb. Toughened by recent experiences, this time we are wiser.
The Scottish Socialist Party remains open to all genuine Left unity initiatives but this must mean more than stitching together tiny groups on the Left. It must involve a rather more ambitious vision attracting those considerable sections of the Left who are not members of any political party.
Notes
‘Scotland’s Road to Socialism, Time to Choose’ [2013] Edited by Gregor Gall, Published by Scottish Left Review Press, Biggar.
‘Scotland’s Economy: the case for Independence’ [2013] Published by The Scottish Government, Edinburgh.
‘Arguing for Independence’ [2012] By Stephen Maxwell, Published by Luath Press Ltd, Edinburgh
Allan Armstrong, of the Republican Communist Network, and Editorial Board member of Emancipation & Liberation, examines the renewed shoots of socialist unity in Scotland, and some of the remaining pitfalls and possibilities.
The quest for socialist unity can often seem a bit like The Labour of Sisyphus. This is the ancient Greek myth about pushing a rock up the hill every day, only for it always to roll back down again. Only in that uphill struggle for socialist unity, there has been an added drama, when many are flattened as the ‘rock’ rolls back once more.
a) The problem of celebrity left politics and the socialist sects
So, what problems confront socialists trying to achieve such unity? We only need to examine the record of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), Socialist Alliance (SA), Respect, Campaign for a New Workers’ Party (CNWP), Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), and the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) to see many of these.
Socialist sects, celebrity left populists, or combinations of both, have created havoc. They have either held back the ascent of the socialist unity ‘rock’, or contributed to its spectacular descent and fragmentation, whenever some upward progress has been achieved.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) or the Socialist Party (SP), controlled the SA, Respect mark I, CNWP and TUSC. Celebrity left populists, Arthur Scargill and George Galloway, made the SLP and Respect mark II their own creatures.
The SSP appeared to be different, though. It had a number of more promising features. However, it eventually split over whether it was to be a party in which all members were considered equal, or whether it was a vehicle for another celebrity left populist – Tommy Sheridan. Celebrities notoriously pursue their own personal interests above all else. They want only adulatory fans, not discerning and questioning equals.
Until the ‘shock, horror’, News of the World revelations, the SSP leadership had strongly promoted Sheridan. They had thought that by promoting a celebrity politician, this would finally help to push that ‘rock’ over the top of the hill.
As a result of ‘Tommygate’, the socialist unity ‘rock’ in Scotland split into two pieces– ‘Continuity’ SSP and Sheridan’s Solidarity. They both ended up rolling back downhill at increasing speeds, knocking into each other on the way, splintering into further fragments. Both can still found at the bottom of the hill today. Each is now preparing to make another ascent, largely oblivious to the lessons of the past.
The SSP leadership has not accounted for its own shortcomings, which contributed to the ‘Tommygate’ fall. It has produced no public balance sheet, and indeed they rejected such a course of action at the 2011 AGM (1). With Solidarity, now all but vanished, they think it is back to business as usual. It is just a case of finding the best issues, and mounting big enough campaigns, to push the SSP ‘rock’ back up that hill again.
The SSP leadership also thinks, that it has finally seen off Solidarity, and found a new helping hand. The SNP leadership has awarded the SSP the official socialist franchise in it’s ‘Yes’ campaign for the 2014 ‘Independence-Lite’ referendum. They think this will soon see them up that hill again.
However, although the Solidarity ‘rock’ has all but disappeared, Sheridan and his fan club (which still includes the SP and the pro-Central Committee wing of the SWP) have now metamorphosed into something else. They have found the anti-‘bedroom tax’ campaign, hoping this will give them a new upward impetus.
Back in the late 1980’s, Scottish Militant Labour (SML) had helped to form the Scottish Anti-Poll Tax Federation (SAPTF). Many local anti-poll tax groups participated in the SAPTF’s campaign of mass defiance. After the defeat of this hated tax, first SML, and then later, the SSP, built on this success. They gained seats in local councils and the Scottish parliament. In the process, they unwittingly launched ‘Tommy’, the celebrity politician.
Hoping for history to repeat itself, Sheridan has now become leader of the Anti-Bedroom Tax Federation (ABTF), with the backing of the SWP and the SP. The idea has been to quickly cobble together a national leadership to pre-empt any more critical voices emerging from newly formed independent minded local groups. These might just question why neither Sheridan, nor the majority of other ABTF office bearers, is directly affected by the tax, and therefore ask - in whose interests is the ABTF being run?
The cynical purpose behind the ABTF is to relaunch Sheridan’s political career. Meanwhile, the ABTF also provides another recruiting opportunity for the SWP and SP. The ABTF national demonstration on June 1st is meant to duplicate the SAPTF’s first Glasgow march in 1989. Only today it is fronted by the politically tarnished ‘Tommy’ and backed by the sectarian SWP, which did not support that earlier march. If the ABTF proves not to be the best vehicle for further career or party-sect advance, then they can move on to something else.
b) The political dawning of new days?
However, there have been growing signs of opposition amongst socialists to these long-standing bad practices. The failings of celebrity politicians have been evident for some time. Nevertheless, they have been given life support, by the activities of the socialist sects.
But many members of these sects have also been experiencing increasing self-doubts. The SP and its Scottish satellite, the SPS, are the much diminished remnants of a once much larger Militant, which has shed Socialist Appeal (still in the Labour Party!), and the International Socialist Movement (ISM) (formed inside the SSP). Furthermore, the SP’s bid, through TUSC, to build up a new Labour Party based on Broad Left trade union officialdom has been dealt a major blow. Recent TUSC supporter, Nick Wrack, of the Independent Socialist Network, has provided an incisive socialist critique (2).
And a growing crisis has also overwhelmed the SWP, after the revelation of its leadership’s blatantly unjust handling of a rape accusation directed against a CC member. This has highlighted the much wider problem of continued male chauvinism and the bureaucratic organizational methods on the Left.
Growing numbers of former and current members of the SSP, Militant/SP, and the SWP, have started to openly question past bad practices. In the process, organisations like the Republican Communist Network (former SSP platform), the International Socialist Group (ISG) and now the International Socialist Network (both coming from the SWP), have been formed. They have become involved, with others, in the first stages of a radical reassessment of the Left’s recent past in Scotland. They have begun discussions about how to achieve principled socialist unity on a higher level than those recent failed projects. Frontline (magazine of the former Scottish Militant/ISM) has also been involved. These are welcome developments.
c) The continued problem of Social Democracy, Left Labourism and Broad Leftism
However, although there are signs that growing numbers of socialists are questioning celebrity politicians, party-sect fronts, the continued sexism and blatant lack of democracy on the Left, other obstacles to principled socialist unity still remain, Foremost amongst these is that deep-seated Scottish legacy of social democracy, claimed by Labour, the SNP, and accepted, in practice, by many claiming to be socialists.
It is not just Tommy and the socialist sects, which have tried to create their own fronts. The STUC and Unite the Union have backed the No2Bedroom Tax Campaign (No2BTC). No2BTC’s somewhat naïve organisers seem to think that bringing the STUC and Unite officials was a positive move, not realising they only come on board to take over. The STUC leadership wants something like its ‘Axe the Tax’ campaign, back in the 1980’s. That represented an earlier attempt to control a growing movement of opposition, and to divert it into electoral support for the Labour Party. It disappeared once a Scottish Labour conference had decided to implement the poll tax.
Playing to form, STUC and Unite officials called off the No2BTCs proposed May 18th demonstration in Glasgow, under pressure from the city’s Labour council. Scottish Labour only wants a campaign which will embarrass the SNP government at Holyrood, not one that mounts the direct action required to take on Cameron and Clegg, and to expose Miliband’s hypocrisy.
The role of the local Unite official in this climb down was revealing. This has just been just one incident in a wider Broad Left offensive promoted by Unite’s General Secretary, Len McCluskey. Unite is the largest union in these islands with over 3 million members. Broad Leftism is designed to derail any moves towards unity on a principled socialist basis, based on independent grassroots working class organisation. Instead, Broad Leftism seeks to divert such challenges into the social democratic schemes of trade union officials and the Labour Party. Above all, control remains in their hands.
Broad Leftism puts its faith in the having the right leaders in place to bring about change. These leaders seek election where they have to, but often get their jobs through appointment. They usually have a strong belief they are far more capable than the rank and file. Therefore they should be suitably rewarded - £122,000 a year plus perks, in McCluskey’s case!
McCluskey is very aware of the continued slippage of support away from Labour, particularly at the grassroots level. This is why he has mounted a campaign to try and win back that support. He gave his union’s backing to Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership election back in 2010. He hoped Miliband would move Labour to the left – in words, if not in deeds. Left social democrat that he is, McCluskey ensured that John McDonnell’s more socialist leadership challenge was killed off. McCluskey arranged for Miliband to be given Unite’s block vote, which secured him the Labour leadership.
However, ungrateful Miliband did not move left. Instead, he began to promote himself as ‘One Nation’ Labour. The only debates at Labour leadership level have been between Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ supporters - or ‘Tory-Lite’ for the middle class (e.g. Harriet Harman and Stephen Twigg); Blue Labour – or ‘UKIP-Lite’ for the working class (e.g. Jon Cruddas and Chuku Umanna); and some unreconstructed Blairites (e.g. Douglas Alexander and Jim Murphy).
With the Con-Dem government’s austerity drive taking its toll on Unite’s members, McCluskey hoped that a Labour leadership in opposition could at least make a few more leftist noises. Miliband, however, knows that Unite’s aspiring full-time officials are not going to abandon their future careers prospects. These are best ensured by a future Labour government – any Labour government.
Miliband, following Blair and New Labour, wants big business support, especially from The City. He is an avid British nationalist and upholder of the UK maintaining its imperial interests in alliance with the US state. Miliband clings on to a belief in a nice capitalism - an illusion, Eric Schmidt, Chair of Google, confidently laughed off.
McCluskey may mount some token protest actions, but the last thing he is going to do is let the rank and file call the shots. He might have seen off the old Right officials in his 2010 General Secretary bid, but Jerry Hicks, the Grassroots Left candidate, emerged in second place, something which has obviously rankled McCluskey.
McCluskey has been involved in a series of manoeuvres to contain any challenges from below. He has already showed his penchant for purely token actions. He made sure that Unite was one of the first unions to break away from the ‘unity’ shown on the public sector pensions strike of November 30th, 2011.
McCluskey wants actions confined to publicity seeking events. He certainly has no intention of challenging the anti-trade union laws (supported by both Tories and Labour). Unite officials sometimes try to divert workers’ actions into parliamentary channels – by making rhetorical attacks on Tories and Lib-Dems (or the SNP in Scotland), or lauding the work of Labour members (including Ian Davidson!!!) on Westminster and Holyrood select committees.
The idea is to pull back support back towards Labour, in preparation for the next Westminster General Election. McCluskey did not want to embarrass Labour in 2015, so he decided to stand for re-election as Unite General Secretary, two years before this was necessary. He hoped that he would face no challenge. However, Jerry Hicks opposed him again. Jerry’s considerably increased his vote, in the face of McCluskey’s disgusting red-baiting campaign, somewhat dented the triumphalist ‘coronation’ he had hoped for.
Nevertheless, McCluskey used his re-election to try and assert his influence on the Labour leadership. Behind-the-scenes, he no doubt pointed to the possible threat to Labour support amongst the working class, highlighted by Jerry’s unexpectedly large vote.
Therefore, McCluskey wrote an article in the New Statesman, calling for Miliband to dump such Blairites as Alexander and Murphy from his Shadow Cabinet. This could only move the Labour leadership a nanometer to the Left, but it would publicly demonstrate McCluskey’s influence.
But, as we have seen, Miliband has the measure of McCluskey and Unite officialdom. Miliband thought that his future election chances would be better advanced by appealing to the Right wing press over this unwanted trade union interference. So he very publicly told McCluskey’s exactly where to get off! A bruised McCluskey claimed he had been misquoted!
Rebuffed for now by Miliband, McCluskey still knows that, in the Broad Left game of seeking influence over Labour, he must continue to build up his machine, and hold down the rank and file.
McCluskey supports appointed not elected union officials. In the North Sea, Unite is involved in sweetheart agreements with the oil companies. These benefit the officials not the members, who may not even know they in the union under these agreements. Unite is absorbing yet another union, the Transport and Salaried Staff Association. This is being done, not with the intention of organising wider more effective action, but to increase the union HQ income, and to provide the Unite leadership with even more patronage opportunities. McCluskey has also attempted to get his favoured candidate, Karie Murphy, former Unison official, selected as Labour candidate in Falkirk.
However, in a bid to buy over, or to deceive some of the more credulous some on the Left, McCluskey has become involved in some Unite ‘outreach’. Superficially, the recent Unite Community initiative appears to be an attempt to organise in working class communities beyond the traditional workplaces. Such social unionism is very much to be welcomed.
What happens, though, if any new Unite Community branch activities go beyond what is acceptable to McCluskey and Labour? The fate of Unite’s ‘Justice for Cleaners’ campaign provides a warning. When London migrant cleaning workers in Unite started to take the more decisive action needed to challenge intransigent companies, a union official viciously turned on them. They had to continue their campaign outside Unite. We may have an inkling of Unite Community officials’ future actions, in the climb down over the No2BTC demonstration in Glasgow on May 18th.
d) The Unite Broad Left, the Labour Party and the UK state
It is also significant that the Red Paper Collective (RPC), which consists of what remains of the Labour Left and the old British Communist Party in Scotland, is a vocal backer of McCluskey and his Broad Left politics. RPC supporter, Neil Findlay MSP, is involved in Unite’s campaigns, continually trying to boost Labour in the process. Just as McCluskey has tried to derail any rank and file socialist challenges in Unite with left rhetoric and bureaucratic manoeuvres; so the RPC wants to divert the growing movement for Scottish self-determination into dead-end attempts to bring about reforms through the UK state under a future Labour Westminster government. They must think we have very short memories! (3)
Indeed, in the face of this very real challenge for greater Scottish self-determination, the Scottish Labour Party has been forced to create its own anti-independence campaign, headed by Gordon Brown. This is because trade unions in Scotland have been less than forthcoming in their support for ‘Better Together’ – the Labour/Tory/Lib-Dem coalition, financed by businessman, Ian Taylor, who also provided funds for a Serbian death squad leader.
Trade union officials in Scotland will now be able to back the opposition to greater Scottish self-determination, by saying that it is Labour, not ‘Better Together’ they support. This duplication, purely for the sake of appearances, must be a bit irksome for the British Labour Party, since like the Tories and Lib-Dems, they also support the existing UK state and its Crown Powers, the City of London, Trident, NATO and all its wars, a clampdown on migrants, and are preparing to dismantle universal benefits and end free student fees. Labour is already in coalition with the Tories in six Scottish local councils.
e) The need for socialists to meet up with the new challenges
So, where lies the social basis for a new principled socialist unity? There are growing number of anti-cuts and anti-‘bedroom tax’ groups, actively basing themselves on local communities. In the Lothians we have such examples as East Edinburgh Save Our Services, Greater Leith Against the Cuts, the Midlothian Campaign Against the Cuts.
These include activists who are well aware of the pitfalls of dependence on celebrity politicians, socialist sects and the Labour Party. Whilst these groups are quite prepared to support any public demonstrations organised by others, they know that their current strength lies in retaining their independence. But many participants are also on the look out for others, who want to develop more links on a democratic and fully participatory basis. Principled socialists can help in this process.
We have also seen the first signs of rank and file movement in the trade unions, willing to defy both the anti-trade union laws and trade union bureaucrats. The latter are either tied into social partnerships with the bosses and the state, or limit their actions to what is acceptable to Labour. The sparks’ successful campaign of strike action and direct action, against the bosses’ attempt to tear up their national agreement (BESNA), was inspirational.
Another battle has emerged against the Blacklist. The nature of this will be hotly contested. Unite’s current official ‘Leverage Campaign’ will not deliver a victory. Those Grassroots Left and rank and file Siteworker activists know they have to push beyond the limits imposed by McCluskey and Unite officials, who do not want to embarrass Labour in the lead up to the next election.
Neither do Unite nor UCATT officials want any public exposure their own officials’ earlier collaboration in the employers’ and state’s blacklists. Only a willingness to expose such odious practices can prevent their re-emergence. And, the imaginative use of independent (unofficial) strike and other direct action, in defiance of the anti-trade union laws, as used in the BESNA dispute, will be the only way that the bosses can be forced to back down.
Jerry Hicks, very much the antithesis of the celebrity-seeker, highlighted some vital socialist principles in his recent rank and file bid to become Unite General Secretary. He stood on the principle of taking the average pay of Unite members, and supporting the election of all union officials, as well as backing independent action, and active defiance of the anti-trade union laws.
This contrasts with Len McCluskey, who believes that he should earn nearly five times his average member’s pay, has the right to appoint union officials, and must observe the laws of the state, no matter how they cripple effective union action. But this sums up social democratic politics – the belief in having the right people in place to impose reforms from above, through use of the existing union, Labour Party and state machinery.
We also have the example of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC). This has been one of the most effective campaigns seen for many years – a fact conceded by pro-Zionist apologists for the apartheid Israeli state. The SPSC has not only brought together socialists from different backgrounds, but has involved Muslims, Jews, Christians and secularists. It has also been scrupulous in challenging any anti-Semitism. It has pushed the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against the Israeli state to the centre of Scottish politics. The SPSC has avoided domination by any socialist sect, celebrity politician, or by trade union officialdom.
However, the arena with the biggest potential is the campaign for Scottish self-determination. It is not often that socialists are in the situation, where the very nature of the existing state is brought into question.
Indeed, it is very clear that the SNP leadership wants to downplay this at all costs. Their ‘Independence-Lite’ proposals are designed only to bring about the changes that would benefit a wannabe Scottish ruling class. They want a junior managerial buy-out of the Scottish component of the UK state, before continuing with business as usual with British Imperial Ltd and the US Global Mega-Corp.
Socialists have the chance to put forward the case for the genuine Scottish self-determination, denied whilst Scotland still remains in the UK under the Crown Powers, the austerity stranglehold imposed by the City of London, and continuing involvement in imperial wars ordered by the British High Command and NATO.
The Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) was initiated by the ISG, but now involves considerably wider forces (4). It has become the arena in which such issues can be raised and linked to the immediate perspective of creating a democratic, secular and social republic. For this to become a reality, RIC needs to become the most effective political voice for all those campaigns mentioned earlier.
Old challenges and new opportunities mean that socialists do need to become united around firm principles. The political dead-ends offered by socialist sects, celebrity left politicians, trade union bureaucrats, the Labour Party and SNP, need to be opposed. There is no social democratic road to socialism, just a return to more rapacious forms of capitalism, as the recent experiences of Papandreou in Greece, Zapatero in Spain, Blair and Brown in the UK, Sigurdottir in Iceland, and the current experiences of Gilmore in Ireland, Berzani and Letta in Italy show, with Hollande in France and Thorning-Schmidt in Denmark, following the same path.
The required socialist principles could be summed up as:-
i) Countering the multi-facetted crisis which capitalism is currently facing, through the active promotion of a socialist alternative (which means seriously beginning to develop a socialism fit for the 21st century).
ii) Opposing the bureaucratic unionism and imperialism of the UK state and its British Left apologists, and the wannabe Scottish ruling class separatism of the SNP within the existing global corporate order, by championing socialist republican ‘internationalism from below’.
iii) Actively dealing with the rampant sexism still found on the Left, and developing new social relationships, which provide emancipation for all.
iv) Ending the sectarian and bureaucratic practices, which have caused so much havoc on the Left, by the development of new democratic and genuinely comradely forms of association.
And hey, why push a socialist unity ‘rock’ up a capitalist ‘hill’ in the first place? We should be creating a far more effective instrument to tunnel into capitalism’s foundations, meet up with others, and take us on to that global commune.
Eddie Cornock writes on the Marxist arguments for independence.
Marxists have an ambivalent attitude towards the national question. On the one hand, they are wary of the dangers of ‘bourgeois nationalism’ whereby the ruling class employ a divide and conquer strategy to split people by language, race, ethnicity, or religion, so as to distract the working class from engaging in a class struggle against their capitalist oppressors. On the other hand, Marxists defend the right of ‘oppressed’ nations to self-determination, up to and including independence, because, as Lenin explained, ‘nothing holds up the development and strengthening of proletarian class solidarity so much as national injustice’. (The Collected Works of V I Lenin, Volume 36, pp 608-609)
On the question of Scottish independence, the Left in Scotland is similarly caught on two minds. There are those in the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) who maintain that independence would disunite the British working class and only go to serve the interests of the bourgeoisie. However, others on the Left, most notably in the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) and the Communist Party of Scotland (CPS), believe that the breakup of the British state is a precondition for securing progressive, socialist change for the residents of these islands since it would open up opportunities for the Left, both in Scotland and south of the Border, to promote a radical political agenda that otherwise would remain excluded from mainstream politics.
In this essay, the following questions will be addressed with the aim of building a Marxist case for an independent Scotland:
• What is Scotland’s current status?
• How did Scotland lose its independence?
• What support has there been for Scottish self-determination?
• What’s the Marxist perspective on the national question?
• Is there a Marxist case for Scottish independence?
Scotland’s current status
Scotland is a country (i.e. a geographical region) that occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain and is part of the sovereign state known as The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). It has a population of just over five million, compared to 52 million for England, 3 million for Wales and 2 million for Northern Ireland which make up the other parts of the UK. Although it lost its status as an independent nation-state when it became a constituent part of the UK over 300 years ago, few if any would deny that Scotland remains a nation.
Under the terms of the Acts of Union of 1707 that created the UK, Scotland’s legal system constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in public and private law from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland. The continued existence of legal, and also educational and religious institutions distinct from those in the remainder of the UK have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and national identity since the Union of Parliaments.
In 1999, a devolved legislature, the Scottish Parliament, was created with tax varying powers (i.e. power to vary (down or up) the basic rate of UK income tax by up to 3p in the pound) and authority over many areas of home affairs following a referendum in 1997. However, as Enoch Powell once observed: ‘Power devolved is power retained’, and consequently the devolutionary settlement for Scotland has had only a limited impact in terms of UK government arrangements and Parliamentary business at Westminster. There remains in place a Secretary of State for Scotland in the Cabinet, and at Westminster, Scottish Question Time, and a Select Committee on Scottish Affairs and a Scottish Grand Committee, both of which have a complement of English Conservative MPs to ensure that party balance reflects the overall balance in the House of Commons.
Be that as it may, in 2011, the Scottish National Party (SNP) won an overall majority at the Scottish Parliament and as a result a referendum on independence is to be held in the autumn of 2014. This will determine whether Scotland becomes once again a sovereign nation-state or remains a constituent part of the UK.
Scotland’s loss of independence
Tradition has it that Scotland emerged as a sovereign kingdom in 843 under the rule of Kenneth MacAlpin although this is now disputed by historians. What is not disputed is that his successors during the Middle Ages ruled a unified kingdom roughly corresponding to the geographic boundaries of modern day Scotland.
When King Alexander III, died in 1286 he left an infant granddaughter, Margaret, Maid of Norway as the heir to the Scottish throne. However, Margaret herself died four years later in a tragic shipwreck en route to Scotland. Following the death of Margaret, an opportunity arose for Edward I of England to place a puppet king, John Balliol, on the Scottish throne. When a rebellion broke out against Edward’s suzerainty, he sent troops to subjugate Scotland.
The resulting Wars of Scottish Independence were fought in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Scotland’s ultimate victory in the Wars of Independence under the leadership of Robert the Bruce confirmed Scotland as a fully independent and sovereign kingdom.
In 1603, King James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English and Irish thrones when his aunt, Queen Elizabeth I, died childless. Although there was a Union of the Crowns, Scotland continued to be ruled as a separate state for the next century.
On 1 May 1707, however, Scotland entered into an incorporating political union with England to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain. This union resulted from the Treaty of Union agreed in 1706 and enacted by the twin Acts of Union passed by the Parliaments of both countries, despite popular opposition and anti-union riots in Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland. Therefore, from 1707, Scotland ceased to exist as an independent sovereign state.
Support for Scottish self-determination
The 1787 massacre of striking weavers by British soldiers in Calton, which then was a village in the outskirts of Glasgow, is generally recognised as marking the beginning of an organised, Scottish labour movement. The Calton weavers’ banner on the day of the massacre showed Scotland’s national hero from the Wars of Scottish Independence, William Wallace, striking down the beast of tyranny.
Scots Wha Hae was written by Robert Burns, Scotland’s Bard, in 1793 to give covert support to those like Thomas Muir of Huntershill who were being persecuted for their republican and nationalist views. It has since been adopted as the SNP party song on account of its strong patriotic sentiments.
Burns deliberately, if obliquely, with Scots Wha Hae set out to support the radical movement against the reactionary Pitt government in London and its despotic manager in Scotland, Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville.
Another indication that there has been a longstanding popular struggle for Scottish self-determination was the Radical War of 1820. This ill-fated insurrection and general strike rallied workers behind the slogan “Scotland Free or a Desert”.
That tradition was carried into the 20th century by the likes of the pioneering trade unionist and politician, James Keir Hardie, who managed to secure a commitment to Scottish home rule from the political parties he helped create, namely the Scottish Labour Party, Independent Labour Party and the British Labour Party.
Perhaps most notably of all, the struggle for worker’s rights and Scottish self-determination was upheld by the Red Clydeside leader and Marxist teacher, John Maclean, who called for an independent Scottish Socialist Workers’ Republic. He believed that workers in Scotland could develop in a revolutionary direction more swiftly than their counterparts in England and Wales since Scottish society had been structured along the lines of “Celtic communism” in the past. He argued that “the communism of the clans must be re-established on a modern basis” and raised the slogan “back to communism and forward to communism”.
An upsurge of Scottish nationalism occurred in the late 1960s and 1970s. This coincided with the discovery of oil reserves in the North Sea that opened up the possibility of a prosperous future for an independent Scotland. However, what is often forgotten is that there was a manifestation of large-scale support for the principle of Scottish self-determination prior to the 1960s. Around two million Scottish people between 1947 and 1950 signed the Scottish Covenant which was a petition to the United Kingdom government to create a home rule Scottish parliament.
The national question
It’s a matter of historical fact that people typically based on shared culture, religion, history, language and ethnicity and living within recognised geographical boundaries have strived successfully to breakaway from the rule of perceived oppressors and form self-governing sovereign ‘nation-states’. Since World War Two, well over a hundred new independent states have joined the international community, most recently in 2011 with South Sudan.
The recognition of national struggles for independence led Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to develop a theory of the national question although it was left to Vladimir Lenin and others later on to provide detailed elaboration and development of the theory.
In the Communist Manifesto, written in late 1847, Marx and Engels explained that the coming into existence of new nation-states was the result of class struggle, specifically of the capitalist class’s attempts to overthrow the institutions of the former ruling class and establish the economic, social and political conditions most conducive to their class needs.
Marx and Engels in their writings produced three themes which were to be important for the future development of the Marxist theory of national self-determination:
1. Only the national liberation of the oppressed nation enables national divisions and antagonisms to be overcome, and permits the working class of both nations to unite against their common enemy, the capitalists.
2. The oppression of another nation helps to reinforce the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie over workers in the oppressing nation-state: ‘A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains’. (Marx & Engels Collected Works, Volume 21 p120)
3. The emancipation of the oppressed nation weakens the economic, political, military and ideological bases of the ruling class in the oppressor nation-state and this contributes to the revolutionary struggle of the working class of that nation-state.
Lenin, building on the foundations laid by Marx and Engels and applying them to the new era of imperialism in the early years of the twentieth century, put great emphasis on the right of oppressed nations to self-determination. Through defending the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, he believed, socialists in oppressor states demonstrated solidarity with workers of oppressed nations and laid the basis for an internationalist, socialist-inspired alliance between the workers of all nations against their common enemy, the capitalist class.
Moreover, Lenin maintained that small nations, as Scotland is, could also play a role in defeating imperialism which he regarded as the highest stage of capitalism:
“The dialectics of history are such that small nations, powerless as an independent factor in the struggle against imperialism, play a part as one of the ferments, one of the bacilli, which help the real anti-imperialist force, the socialist proletariat to make its appearance on the scene.” (The Collected Works of V I Lenin, Volume 22, p357)
Marxists, therefore, support the proliferation of nation-states to the extent that it results in the emancipation of oppressed nations and promotes a growing awareness among workers, both in oppressor and oppressed nations, of their shared interests in opposing the capitalist system. Once capitalism is abolished and there is a transition to socialism, Marxists believe, state structures will gradually be dismantled, resulting in a stateless, classless communist world society.
Arguments for Scottish independence
Tom Nairn, arguably Scotland’s most influential left-wing intellectual of recent times and the author of The Break Up of Britain, famously claimed that the theory of nationalism is Marxism’s greatest failure. What he meant was that although Marxist theory correctly identifies the capacity of nationalism as a divisive, reactionary force that diverts the proletariat from the class struggle against the bourgeoisie it, nevertheless, fails to recognise fully the potential nationalism also has as a progressive force.
A case in point is the issue of the ‘civic nationalism’ (aka as liberal nationalism) championed by the Scottish National Party (SNP) and others in their campaign for a Yes vote at the 2014 Independence Referendum. Is it effectively a form of ‘bourgeois nationalism’ that would serve the purposes of the ruling class by dividing British workers and preventing the working class from uniting against them? Something Marxists would want to oppose. Or does it open up new possibilities to create a fairer, more equal and more democratic society in Scotland that could then act as a beacon for the working class in the rest of the UK? Something Marxists would be inclined to support.
In answer to the first question posed above, if the aforementioned civic nationalism is, as critics on the Left maintain, just another form of bourgeois nationalism then one would expect the business community to be overwhelmingly in favour of Scottish independence. That is not the case as indicated in a speech by Confederation of British Industry (CBI) director-general John Cridland when he said: ‘CBI Scotland council is not convinced of the business and economic case for Scotland seceding from the Union and judges that businesses - Scottish, English, British - would lose out from the fragmentation of our single market.’ (London Evening Standard, 06.09.2012)
In answer to the second question, all three parties (i.e. SNP, SSP and the Scottish Green Party) affiliated to the Yes campaign have a track record of supporting progressive reforms. Moreover, both the SSP and the Greens in particular see themselves as parts of global movements dedicated to advancing progressive causes and can be said to have a broad internationalist outlook rather than a narrow (bourgeois) nationalist focus.
On the issue of Scotland breaking away from the rest of the UK, Marxists cannot argue for independence on the grounds that Scotland is an oppressed nation within the UK since there has been no systematic attempt by the British ruling class, in modern times at least, to deny Scottish people their democratic rights including the right to secede from the UK. However, there are other reasons for supporting Scottish independence from a Marxist perspective, not least that working people in Scotland, in common with those in other parts of the UK, pay a heavy price for being ruled by the British state. The price of remaining in the UK includes the following:
Britain has a permanent seat at the UN Security Council due in no small part to being the fourth highest military spender in the world with expensive nuclear weapons based on the Clyde. The tax money diverted to military spending by our political leaders to maintain the illusion that Britain remains a world power is money denied for much needed improvement of education, health and welfare provision.
Britain is a belligerent state that has been engaged in twenty-two separate wars and conflicts since the end of World War Two. British interventions in the likes of Iraq in 2003 until 2011 and in Afghanistan from 2001 until presently have been largely counter-productive but nevertheless costly in terms of money and more importantly, human suffering and lives.
Successive British governments’ adherence to neo-liberal ideas that free capital flows, a deregulated financial sector and powerful private banks would be good for the economy has proved a costly mistake to the tune of £1.2 trillion. That is the amount incurred by the public purse since 2008 to bail out banks and financial institutions that were on the verge of collapse. As a result of the bailouts creating a financial black hole for the Treasury, an austerity programme has had to be implemented involving massive public spending cuts, job losses and a decline in living standards for working families.
Britain is officially described as a ‘parliamentary democracy’ but, nevertheless, has a political system which includes many features that are far from democratic. For example, we are not citizens but subjects of a hereditary monarch, a Head of State by accident of birth, who is also commander-in-chief of our armed forces; sovereignty or political power in the British state is invested in the ‘Crown in Parliament’ and not with the people; we have an unelected second chamber in the British Parliament, the House of Lords; we have an electoral system that underpins a two-party system which offers voters little real democratic choice and often results in Scotland being ruled by a party decisively rejected by the Scottish electorate. As a consequence of features like those outlined above, there is a ‘democratic deficit’ in Britain which is in addition to the other shortcomings that people living in the UK have to endure.
There are distinct disadvantages of Scotland remaining a part of the British state for the Scottish population as outlined above but for Marxists the vital question is would Scottish independence open up new possibilities for socialist advance not only in Scotland but in the other nations of UK as well?
Scotland has had its own devolved Parliament and government since 1999 and already significant divergences from the rest of the UK are apparent. For example, unlike in England, people living in Scotland benefit from free medical prescriptions, free social care, and no tuition fees for universities as result of Scottish governments coming under stronger pressure to pursue social democratic policies than governments of the UK. Independence would give Scottish governments increased powers to formulate the social democratic policies required to tackle more effectively the complex social and economic problems that currently beset Scotland. The improved capacity to align Scottish government policies with Scotland’s values, needs and opportunities would be one of the greatest benefits of independence.
However, in the event of Scottish independence not only would there be a transformation of the economic, social and political contexts for Scotland but also important consequences for the rest of the UK. For example, Trident would have to leave the Clyde and probably be scrapped on cost grounds; the UK would have a diminished status on the international stage and would likely ‘shrink’ its foreign and security policies; the severe British anti-union legislation would go north of the border, and be undermined south of the border; the loss of the Scottish bloc of Labour MPs would initially favour the Conservatives at Westminster but, nevertheless, could provoke a significant political realignment resulting in a boost to progressive centre-left politics; Wales and Northern Ireland would become a smaller periphery to the UK’s core in England and might well look to establish greater levels of autonomy or even full-scale independence in the case of Wales.
Be that as it may, it is important to note that independence is not the same as ‘separation’. We live in an increasingly interdependent world in which national independence goes hand in hand with international interdependence. An independent Scotland would continue to have close economic ties, cultural links, and bonds of kinship with the other nations of the UK no matter what new constitutional arrangements are made. Moreover, there would be no reason why the ‘unity of the British working class’ could not be maintained through existing trades unions and social movements operating across borders as happens in Ireland and North America. They would have the opportunity to show the way cooperation across national boundaries could and should be pursued to further the interests of working people and their families in the ‘globalised’ world we live in.
Lastly, a widely held misapprehension, including by many on the Left who oppose Scottish independence, needs to be cleared up. While it is true that the SNP, a pro-capitalist party, is the main force driving the campaign for Scottish independence and that some of its policies for an independent Scotland are far from progressive (e.g. low corporate taxation, retention of the monarchy, staying in NATO, retention of the pound sterling and financial regulation from London), a Yes vote cast at the forthcoming independence referendum will NOT be an endorsement for the SNP and its vision for an independent Scotland. It will be a vote for independence and the opening up of a range of possibilities for Scotland in the future.
In the event of a majority Yes vote in 2014, then it is likely a two year period of intense political activity and realignment will ensue, culminating in an historic election at which Scottish voters will deliver their verdict as to which of the competing visions for an independent Scotland they prefer. There is no great certitude that the SNP by 2016 will have retained its present configuration and political identity and even less certainty that it will emerge victorious, happy and glorious after the first election to be held in an independent Scotland for over three hundred years.
Conclusion
From a Marxist point of view the most important question as regards nationalism is whether support for a specific national movement would advance the interests of the working class or not. When a struggle for national independence weakens the forces of imperialism and brings tangible benefits in terms of improved living standards and more democracy to the working class, then socialists should support the cause; when a nationalist movement justifies imperialism and threatens the advances secured by the working class, socialists should oppose it wholeheartedly.
Nationalism, therefore, has to be judged concretely, on the basis of the particular effects that its actions have in a specific context. In the case of Scotland, the choice at the forthcoming independence referendum is stark. Vote No and continue as before inside a neo-imperialist and reactionary British state that imposes legal restrictions on trade unionism, attacks the living standards of working people and provides military and diplomatic back-up for the USA to help maintain a neo-liberal world order. Or vote Yes and begin the dissolution of the UK in the name of political progress and social advance and in so doing help realise the potential for the Left not only in Scotland but across Britain that has for far too long lain largely untapped.
Frontline, an independent Marxist journal from Scotland
