Scotland: workers’ unity first!

Submitted by Anon on 7 April, 2007 - 11:41

According to the polls, the Scottish National Party is likely to become the biggest party in the Scottish parliament after the election on 3 May.

Opinion polls also show 51% or 52% in Scotland for independence, and the SNP has pledged itself to a referendum on independence, in 2010 or 2011.

It looks as if the rise of the SNP comes from the same sort of disillusion with Blair and Brown that is boosting Cameron’s Tories in England; in Scotland, the Tories come from too low a starting point to grab the benefits of that disillusion.

The SNP has made much of its endorsement from former Royal Bank of Scotland boss George Mathewson, who declared that “the foremost” of his considerations was “that I believe the SNP offers Scotland the best chance of escaping from the dependency culture that is currently all-pervasive at every level in Scottish life”.

For “escaping from dependency culture”, read, cutting benefits and welfare. The SNP has also promised, if it wins independence, to cut corporation tax in Scotland to the lowest level in Europe.

The economic debate about independence revolves around what share of North Sea oil revenue an independent Scotland would get, and what future oil prices will be. Depending on your assumptions about that, you can calculate Scotland as “gaining” or “losing”. What’s clear, though, is that under SNP rule the gains would go to Scottish bosses, and the losses to the Scottish working class.

But, as Joe Middleton of Independence First puts it naively in the Scotsman of 31 March: “The independence cause is of course helped because it can appeal to both the right and left of politics. In fact independence can mean anything to anybody, making it an extremely difficult argument to defeat”.

A demonstration called by Independence First in Edinburgh on 31 March drew only 700 people according to its own supporters, so it can reasonably be said that the feeling for independence is more a “yes, why not?” than enthusiasm for a clearly-defined vision.

Unfortunately, the socialists in Scotland, the Scottish Socialist Party and Tommy Sheridan’s splinter group Solidarity Scotland, have endorsed the class-collaborationist pro-independence blocs Independence First and the Independence Convention. They have responded to the SNP’s pledges mainly by shouting for the independence referendum to be sooner.

The SSP, which remains closer to working-class politics than Sheridan’s personality-based outfit, has tried to distinguish itself from the SNP.

“The SSP opposes the SNP’s increasingly pro-business vision of an independent Scotland, which promises hundreds of millions of pounds in corporate tax cuts to big business. This could only be achieved by plundering our public services.

“The SSP is fighting for a different Scotland. Instead of slashing corporate taxes to the level of the Irish Republic, as the SNP propose, we would slash military spending to Irish levels.

“Nor do we subscribe to the bizarre idea that the Queen should remain the Head of State in an independent Scotland.

“Our call is for a Scottish socialist republic...”

But that begs the question. Would an SNP independent Scotland — with corporate tax cuts and plundered public services — bring us nearer a socialist republic? No. Could a socialist republic conceivably be established in Scotland alone? No.

If the Scottish people want independence, they have a right to it. In practice, since an SNP Scotland would stay in the European Union, the border between Scotland and England would remain pretty open.

But there is no reason why socialists should positively favour an SNP Scotland, or the creation of unnecessary new border divisions in general. A more rational way to resolve the peculiarly botched and complicated political relations between Scotland, England, and Wales – maintain workers’ unity – would be to reorganise the whole island as a democratic federal republic.

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