By Stan Crooke
The Scottish National Party (SNP) is a bourgeois political party committed to the achievement of an independent capitalist Scotland. And it does not pretend to be anything other than that.
In the Holyrood elections held in May of this year the SNP emerged, albeit by the narrowest of margins, as the biggest single faction within the Scottish Parliament. It won 3% more of the list vote than did the Labour Party, 1% more of the constituency vote than did the Labour Party, and one more seat in the Parliament than did the Labour Party.
An SNP-Labour coalition government was never on the cards, and an SNP-Tory coalition even less so. Talks with the Liberal Democrats about a coalition government collapsed over the question of the SNP’s policy of staging a referendum on Scotland’s constitutional status during its term of office. The SNP therefore now runs a minority administration, albeit with semi-formal support from the two Green MSPs.
From their own point of view, the task confronting SNP leader Alex Salmond and his party is how to build both popular support and also big business support for independence, in preparation for a referendum to be held in 2010.
Only a minority of the Scottish population currently supports independence for Scotland (which makes a mockery of the argument that Scotland is being denied the right to self-determination – but that is a separate argument). Although figures vary from one opinion poll to the next, around one third of the electorate currently supports independence.
Support for Scottish independence is also a minority pursuit amongst the capitalist class in Scotland. The SNP has certainly been able to secure large donations from some of Scotland’s ‘captains of industry’ – £500,000 from Stagecoach co-owner Brian Souter, £100,000 from Kwik-Fit founder Sir Tom Farmer, and £50,000 from Galahad Gold chairman Ian Watson. And in the Holyrood election campaign a hundred Scottish businessmen put their names to a statement in support of the SNP. But this support for the SNP represents a minority current amongst the Scottish capitalist class.
There are three strands to the SNP strategy to build popular support for Scottish independence.
One strand is to implement politically popular measures. In the short term this includes: scrapping bridge tolls, scrapping graduate endowment fees for Scottish students, scrapping prescription charges for the chronically ill, reversing pre-May decisions to close down casualty departments in hospitals in Ayr and Monklands, and introducing a series of pilot schemes for free school meals for the youngest children in primary schools.
Implementing politically popular measures also means being prepared to retreat from politically unpopular measures. When the recent decision of the ruling SNP-Liberal Democrat coalition on Edinburgh City Council to shut down 22 schools, four community centres, and nearly a third of the city’s nursery places provoked a massive wave of protest, the SNP – much to the annoyance of their Liberal Democrat partners – quickly backed down (at least for the time being).
A second strand is best described as implementing the ‘trappings’ of independence, in order to emphasise the ‘otherness’ of Scotland from England. The more Scotland is seen as a distinct entity in its own right, the easier it should be, at least in theory, to win support for a transition from the trappings of independence to the substance of independence.
Thus, for example, the Scottish Executive has been renamed as the Scottish Government, ministers have been rebranded as Cabinet Secretaries, and the Royal Coat of Arms has been replaced by the Saltire on official documents. The Saltire may soon be flown from public buildings throughout the year (whereas, at present, the Union Jack has to be flown on ‘special days’), a separate Scottish civil service is to be created, and a Scottish Broadcasting Commission of Enquiry is to be set up.
Insofar as it is possible to do so, given that foreign policy is a reserved matter for the Westminster government, the Scottish Government has also already been promoting a more pro-European agenda, with Salmond prioritising relations with Brussels (and Belfast, as part of a ‘Celtic axis’) over relations with Westminster. According to Salmond, “the peoples and institutions of the European Union are central to my vision for Scotland,” and Scotland needs to “recapture” its “legacy of engagement” with Europe.
The third strand is to promote what the SNP has termed the National Conversation. This provides the opportunity for the SNP – in the guise of the Scottish Government, given that that the Conversation is being paid for by the latter rather than by the SNP as a political party – to campaign amongst the general population for independence for Scotland.
Thus, in mid-August the SNP government published a document entitled “Choosing Scotland’s Future: A National Conversation: Independence and Responsibility in the Modern World” to launch the Conversation. The paper covers three options: status quo, greater devolution, and independence. According to Salmond, the Conversation is “a debate on Scotland's constitutional future based on the premise that the people of Scotland are sovereign and, in due course, the people will be asked to decide.”
In terms of winning the confidence of the capitalist class in Scotland for its vision of an independent capitalist Scotland, the major problem faced by the SNP is the limited steps it can take, this side of independence, in order to demonstrate its pro-capitalist agenda: economic policy remains a reserved power for Westminster. Even so, the SNP rarely misses an opportunity to emphasise its pro-capitalist credentials.
Whereas in 1991 Salmond declared: “I am quite happy to proclaim my socialism, but that does not make the SNP a socialist party,” by 2007 – and, in fact, long before then – Salmond had shifted to: “I am quite happy to proclaim my social democracy. The SNP is a social democratic party.” But Salmond’s social democracy is not in any way hostile to capitalism. As Salmond stated in another interview: “I am a social democrat and believe in a competitive economy.”
The SNP is committed to “removing or cutting business rates from small businesses” during its current term of office. It has also declared its “overarching priority” to be achieving “faster and more sustainable economic growth.” According to Salmond: “We see barriers to business as barriers to national progress.” In an independent Scotland an SNP government would slash corporation tax in order to give Scotland “a competitive edge” in the globalised economy.
The SNP’s ‘social democracy’ is also broad enough to include a rather less than social democratic wing around Enterprise Minister Jim Mather (who has dismissed increasing income tax rates as “naïve in a knowledge economy”) and Finance Secretary John Swinney (who has promised to cut public sector spending by £1 billion a year), as well as the likes of Mike Russell and Dennis MacLeod. Their book, “Grasping the Thistle”, published in late 2006, argued for privatisation of water, privatisation of trunk roads, the opening up the public s
ector to market forces, the abolition of corporation and inheritance taxes, cuts in income tax, and a voucher-based education system.
How successful the SNP is likely to be, in its own terms, over the next four years (assuming that it survives a full term in office) is far from clear.
There is a limit to how long the SNP can implement even selected populist measures. There are already signs of the SNP retreating from manifesto commitments on issues such as ending student debt (which requires far more than scrapping graduate endowment fees) and reversing the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition’s attacks on the health service (which, again, requires more than keeping open two casualty departments).
It is clear that the SNP government will not be providing local authorities with the funding needed to implement another SNP manifesto commitment – that of cutting class sizes in the early years of primary school. The additional money allocated for Scotland as a whole would not even cover the cost of reducing class sizes in Glasgow alone.
Other SNP policy commitments are guaranteed to prove more controversial. The SNP is committed to freezing the council tax at current levels, for example, which raises the question of how the consequent future shortfall in council spending will be covered. (Certainly not from business rates, as these are going to be cut or scrapped for small businesses.)
In the longer term, the SNP is pledged to replace the council by a flat-rate local income tax. This will benefit the lowest-paid, and will also lead to the highest-paid paying more for local services. But those on an average income will probably also end up paying more – unless local authorities cut jobs and services.
Implementing the ‘trappings’ of independence is unlikely to have more than a limited impact, save on that small minority of the population who understand – and care about – the constitutional difference between the Royal Coat of Arms and the Saltire, or the constitutional significance of flying the Saltire rather then the Union Jack on the Queen’s Birthday.
The SNP’s National Conversation has also been rather less than deafening to date. In the four weeks since the launch of the Conversation, Alex Salmond’s statement on the Scottish Government website has attracted 1,500 comments, the statement from Bruce Crawford (Minister for Parliamentary Business) has attracted 105 comments, and the statement from John Swinney has attracted 69 comments.
(And the vast bulk of those comments consist of various combinations of the phrases “were never asked“, “steam-rollered into”, “300 years”, “second-class”, “at last”, “long overdue”, “well done, SNP”, “proud to be Scottish”, “take control of our destiny”, and “what are they afraid of?”)
Nor is there any sign of the capitalist class in Scotland swinging round to support an independent Scotland: economic analysts generally remain singularly unconvinced by the SNP’s arguments that an independent Scotland would be more profitable than a devolved Scotland.
Of those analysts who do endorse the SNP’s pro-independence arguments, most do so from an essentially Thatcherite standpoint: an independent Scotland would no longer be ‘cushioned’ by subsidies from the British state, and would have to break out of its current ‘dependency culture’ in order to compete effectively in the global capitalist market. (One in four of the Scottish workforce is employed in the public sector. The deficit of public expenditure over total revenue in Scotland is three times higher than in Britain as a whole.)
The SNP’s arguments that income from oil would sustain an independent Scotland look even more shaky. According to a report published by the UK Offshore Operators Association in February of this year, North Sea oil production ran at 2.9 million barrels a day in 2006, compared with 4.5 million barrels a day in 1996. By 2010 output is expected to decline to 2.6 million barrels a day, and to a million barrels a day by 2020. The costs of oil exploration and extraction are also rising rapidly: by 45% over the past nine years, with further increases expected in the years ahead.
More important than passive speculation about how well, or how badly, an SNP minority government is likely to fare in office – with only five months having passed since the SNP’s victory in the Holyrood elections – is the question of how the Left in Scotland will intervene in the changed political landscape. Unfortunately, in the short term at least, the probable answer is: not very effectively.
The residual Labour Left, organised in the Scottish Campaign for Socialism, was unable to find even the half a dozen Labour MSPs needed in order to nominate a left challenger to Wendy Alexander after Jack McConnell’s resignation as Scottish Labour leader.
“Solidarity”, formed as a breakaway from the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), has little or no existence beyond a website. Its main constituent elements – the Scottish equivalent of the Socialist Party, plus the SWP – sank their differences during the Holyrood elections in the hope of getting Tommy Sheridan re-elected. Having failed in that endeavour, there is virtually nothing left to continue to bind them together.
The SSP itself is a weakened force, following on from Sheridan’s destructive split and then the SSP’s electoral wipe-out in the Holyrood elections. Even though Sheridan has long since parted company with the SSP, the appeal by the “News of the World” against the verdict in last years libel trial, plus the likelihood of Sheridan facing perjury charges, will impact negatively on the SSP.
Politically, what is most notable about much of the Left in Scotland is the extent to which basic Marxist ideas about class and class struggle have been replaced, albeit to varying degrees, by an amorphous Scottish populism, frequently tainted by hangovers of Stalinism, in which half-spelt-out notions about ‘pushing the SNP to the left’ increasingly displace the fundamental task of the self-organisation of the working class to achieve its own liberation.
According to the editorial in the last issue of “Scottish Left Review” (SLR), for example, the SNP’s election victory means that “for social progressives in Scotland, suddenly things seem possible. … We are now at the beginning of a new game, and there is more to be won by radicals.” Although, warns the SLR, this may prove to be “a mirage”, political demands which were previously a “wish list” may now be transformed into “a practical programme with a chance of success.”
The SLR is correct to point to the essentially conservative (with a small ‘c’) nature of earlier Holyrood administrations. It is equally correct to point out that the SNP government will implement measures politically unacceptable to its predecessors. But what does the SNP’s goal of an independent capitalist Scotland, out of which flow its various policy initiatives, have in common with socialist class-struggle politics? And what, for that matter, does the SLR’s own “practical programme with a chance of success” amount to?
A rather modest hotch-potch, beginning with “creating an internationally excellent and properly funded research centre for peace and justice in Scotland,” through “ending PFI/PPP by pursuing Public Service Trusts” and “investing significantly more in culture at all levels,” to “establishing Scottish cultural institutes and offices in Reykjavik, Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki” and “creating meaningful links with the Nordic countries.”
On the one hand, explains one article in SLR, Scotland should integrate itself into “the Arc of Prosperity (which exists) from Ireland through Iceland, to Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
On the other hand, explains another article, Scotland should learn from Cuba: “There are very few examples of what a society that is no longer replete with fossil fuels looks like, but Cuba is one. … Rather than the Western approach of regulation and taxation, the government mobilised the Cuban people. Cuba has seen a massive increase in urban agriculture, to the extent that 90 per cent of fruit and vegetables consumed in Havana are grown organically in the city.”
“Solidarity” and the SSP are not as bad as SLR. But they are not a lot better either.
The verdict of “Solidarity” leader Sheridan on the creation of an SNP government was: “For the first time, Scotland has a nationalist government, and more importantly, a left-of-centre government.” In its statement on the SNP’s National Conversation “Solidarity” called on “Alex Salmond and the Scottish Executive, together with trade unions, employers, community councils and local authorities, to ensure that every community in Scotland has a public meeting on the issue over the next three years, and that every workplace has a workplace meeting on the issue.”
The SNP government, trade unions and employers should work together to promote the National Conversation? This is anything but working-class political independence. Even sadder is the statement’s woeful closing plea to Salmond: “I (Tommy Sheridan) hope Alex Salmond will take on board on our suggestion of meetings in every workplace and community in Scotland as a positive and helpful one. Let us make this a real national conversation.”
The SSP is equally enthusiastic about the SNP’s National Conversation: “The SSP welcomes the coming National Conversation on Scotland’s future. Unlike the three London-controlled parties, the SSP is not afraid of a wide-ranging debate, followed by a democratic vote on Scotland’s future. We believe Scotland would be economically, politically, culturally and socially better off making our own decisions and standing on our own two feet.”
The SSP statement concludes with what appears to be a call for collaboration by all pro-independence forces: “We believe that the forces in favour of independence – including the SNP, the SSP, the Greens, the Independence Convention, and Independence First – have a major battle on the hands to win the Scottish people decisively to the cause of Scottish independence.” (The SSP, in any case, already backs the cross-party Independence Convention and the ‘no-party’ Independence First campaign.)
Neither the “Solidarity” statement nor the SSP statement point out the essentially undemocratic nature of the SNP’s National Conversation and its referendum question.
The SNP government knows that it would lose a referendum on independence if one were to be called right now. (In that sense, it is the SNP’s good fortune that it cannot call such a referendum anyway: a proposal to call a referendum would be voted down in the Scottish Parliament.)
In order to build support for independence, and also to increase the pressure on other parties to vote in favour of staging a referendum in 2010, the SNP government has therefore launched a National Conversation – paid for out of the public spending which the SNP is otherwise committed to reducing – in which the SNP will be doing the bulk of the talking, and which culminates in a referendum designed to give the SNP a blank cheque.
The “Choosing Scotland’s Future: A National Conversation” document specifically rejects the idea of two referenda on independence – one mandating the Scottish government to negotiate for independence, and a second one to allow the electorate to vote for or against independence on the terms eventually negotiated.
Instead, the proposed referendum question – “The Scottish Government should negotiate a settlement with the Government of the United Kingdom so that Scotland becomes an independent state” – simply entrusts the SNP to negotiate the terms of independence for Scotland.
(And it is the SNP alone which would be entrusted with such negotiations: Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories are all against independence. Presumably, the SNP’s calculation is that if it were to win a ‘yes’ vote in a referendum in 2010, then it would romp home to an absolute parliamentary majority in the following year’s elections.
After all, if a majority of the electorate votes in favour of independence in 2010, how could it not then vote in 2011 for the only major party committed to achieving it? And even if the SNP ended up with only a minority of seats in Holyrood in 2011, it could, and would, still claim that its pro-independence policy had received a democratic mandate from the majority of the Scottish electorate.
For this reason alone, even socialists who support independence for Scotland should vote ‘no’ in such a referendum: a ‘yes’ vote would be a vote of confidence in the SNP, and a mandate to the SNP for the creation of a capitalist Scotland.)
As an article in the current issue of “Frontline” (originally the magazine of the successor to the “Militant” tendency in the SSP, but now an in-house journal which trades under the name of “an independent Marxist voice in the SSP”) puts it, the current period is “one of the lowest points that the forces of Scottish socialism have been at for a generation.”
But unless the forces of socialism in Scotland think through basic questions about the class nature of the SNP and the SNP government, ridding themselves in the process of their fantasies about the political significance of an independent Scotland, and re-orient to basic class politics, then they are likely to continue to hover around that point for some time to come.
