Recent Comments
- ZeitgeistWorker on Shitegeist
- RT Farty Kremlin Party | A Thousand Flowers on Shitegeist
- Javier Sobrino on Scotland and the Basque Country: the struggle for independence
- Gorbachev on Prostitution, the abolition of the victim and post-modernism's defence of the status-quo
- Andy Bowden on Class politics or anti-semitic conspiracies? Why David Icke, Ron Paul and Alex Jones are dangerous to the Occupy Movement.
Tags
afghanistan austerity britain BNP climate change Con Dem coalition demonstration drugs economy edinburgh education elections environment events evil megacorps fascism feminism fighting cuts glasgow greece health internet knobheads Labour Lib Dems moral panic music news police protest racism science SDL sexism sexuality SNP strikes tabloids Tories tv unemployment unions USA war women's rights workers' rightsArchives
- June 2012
- May 2012
- March 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
-
Authors
- admin
- And
- Andy Bowden
- Brogan
- CelticEwan
- David
- Erofeeva
- Euan Benzie
- Frenchie
- ImSpartacus
- Jack
- James McIntyre
- James N
- Kirsty Kane
- Liam M
- Liam T
- lovebug
- LydiaTeapot
- Meghan
- Muzza
- Neil B
- neldo
- Sarah
- Scottish Socialist Youth
- Snowball
- Socialist Pharmacist
- Sophie
- Squeak
- Stuart
- syebot
- TheWorstWitch
- Wavejumper
If the SNP can't even try and get a referendum, then what use are they?
Demonstrating for a Scottish republic in 2004 on Calton Hill
Yesterday brought news that surprised nobody in Scotland: despite what they promised when they were elected three years ago, the SNP aren’t going to be able to give us a say on independence this year.
After decades of arguing for independence, the SNP finally got their shot at power for the first time in 2007. They published a white paper that, we were told, would lead to the people of Scotland getting to vote in 2010 on the future of the country. But yesterday they announced that they won’t even try putting the referendum bill before the parliament to vote down.
Instead the SNP plan to try and get more seats next year and have the power to push through a referendum in the next parliament, which is a bit like a someone who’s gambled all their money away planning to win it back to pay their debts. As things stand, opinion polls make it look like Labour might get in again next year, in which case the SNP will have missed their biggest ever chance to try and advance independence.
The SNP got an electoral surge in 2007, and an important part of that was the collapse of the SSP’s vote. In the previous elections in 2003, the SSP won 6 seats, largely at the expense of the SNP, at that time under the leadership of right wing accountant and Walter the Softy lookalike John Swinney. They were able to win back a lot of those votes four years later because a certain mentalist had messed up the left with his own crazy suicide mission, but more importantly because they took a lot of policies popularised by the SSP (like getting rid of the hated council tax, or scrapping prescription charges) and made them centrepieces of their election campaign. This brought them back the pro-independence left wing vote.
Former SNP leader John Swinney
But three years down the line we can see what the SSP predicted has come true: the SNP have been a bit rubbish. We still have the council tax. They’ve failed on a whole load of things they promised like reducing class sizes. They’re dead chuffed about their Climate Change Bill, but this is kinda undermined by the fact they’ve pressed ahead with building yet another motorway through the heart of working class communities in Glasgow.
And now the SNP, the party who’s whole reason for existing is independence, isn’t going to even try and get a referendum through in this parliament, possibly missing their big chance. It seems “Scotland’s champions” are about as good representatives of their country as Scotland’s football team.
SNP supporters will no doubt claim that they have no choice, and this is in fact a super clever strategic move by the man their party deifies as having the sun shine out of his (not insubstantial) arse, Alex Salmond. But that’s not strictly true. If they were really committed to holding a referendum they could have pushed one through over the heads of all the arsehole unionist politicians who didn’t want the Scottish people to get a say – check out this piece from Joan McAlpine for details of how. Even more radically, they could have tried following the example of Catalonia, where an unofficial vote on independence was organised.
What yesterday’s decision makes clear is that the need is greater than ever for a broad based campaign, not limited to any political party (or indeed merely to supporters of political parties) to demand self-determination for Scotland. It’s an issue of basic democratic rights that the Scottish people get the chance to vote on our political future. As one commenter on another blog put it (splicing together a couple of different comments from the same person):
“When there was a Lab/LibDem administration at Holyrood, I was active, along with others, in campaigning, on a non-party-political basis, for a straightforward, single-issue, referendum on independence for Scotland. We put a petition to the Scottish Parliament, we organised demonstrations, etc. Our position was that we considered it a matter of democratic self-determination that the people of Scotland, regardless of their party-political preferences, should be able to vote yes or no to independence . .
When Alex Salmond took over from Jack McConnell, I continued to campaign. Some folk said this was silly, there was no need to continue to campaign, the SNP government would introduce legislation to hold a referendum long before this parliamentary term was out. Now, who was being silly, those of us who thought pressure should be kept up for a referendum without delay, or those who placed their trust in the politicians? They’re not even going to place the legislation before parliament. They could do so and challenge their opponents to vote it down if they dare, but have even backed out of that . . .
. . . The SNP has abandoned the single most important pledge they gave in 2007. I remain in favour of holding a referendum on independence without delay, as I have been for quite a few years now. But I won’t be voting for the party which promised legislation for a referendum and then came up with one delay after another . . .
. . . In 2007, the SNP promised legislation leading to a referendum on independence “within the lifetime of this parliament”. They very narrowly won the 2007 election because some of us believed that promise. If they had presented such legislation early enough in the lifetime of the parliament, as some of us were urging all along that they should (and being ridiculed for doing so), then either (1) the legislation would have passed, and we would have had our referendum, or (2) the legislation would have been defeated, in which case they could have precipitated an election in which the issue was the refusal of other parties to allow the people a self-determination referendum. By their policy of delay, delay, and more delay, they have squandered a golden opportunity.”
The Scottish Parliament was set up after the farce of the 80s, when Scotland got a Thatcher government which it never voted for. Harsh neoliberal policies that had absolutely no democratic support here threw tens of thousands out of work, decimated working class communities and led to the social collapse that affects parts of Scotland today. The parliament was supposed to make sure that couldn’t happen again, but it’s real test is only just beginning – how will Scotland’s politicians respond to the extreme right economic agenda of the ConDem London government? The fact of the matter is that to truly escape the nightmare of cuts and neoliberalism we need full independence.
Hopes of a Celtic Hutt economy were cruelly crushed by the banking crisis
The problem is that for all their left wing chat, the SNP are still committed to some very right wing ideas about what an independent Scotland would be like, having championed the economic model of small independent countries like Ireland and Iceland that built their economies on financial speculation. This might keep their super rich pals like noted homophobe Brian Souter, or Kwik Fit millionaire Tom Farmer happy, but it’s slightly less appealing to most of us since the banks started to look a bit like Jabba the Hutt after he got strangled with a chain.
The reason most people who support independence want it is to break free of the straitjacket imposed by Tory/New Labour economic policy in London; to find alternatives to running our economy on the basis of giving big corporations and finance capital whatever they want and a bag to put it in, and everyone else can fuck off if they don’t like it.
This is the radical vision of independence the SSP and SSY fight for – a fully independent socialist republic, that uses our resources to truly bring an end to poverty and inequality; that withdraws Scotland completely from the imperialist British state and starts to end the poisonous legacy of the British military and imperialist violence in Scotland; and that plays its part in the global struggle to bring an end to a socio-economic model that looks like it might well bring down civilisation itself. If that’s what you support as well, then make sure that in the next parliament whoever is in power gets some heat and pressure from the pro-independence left, by voting to put SSP MSPs back in.
“The fact of the matter is that to truly escape the nightmare of cuts and neoliberalism we need full independence.”
Independence will not do this. Neoliberalism is characteristic of the current phase of capitalism, it is a product of systemic weakness. It is not something unique to england, to the tories or labour. As your article points out the SNP are a neoliberal party – and they would doubtless pursue an agenda of cuts should they be in power upon independence, as would any of the mainstream parties.
Incidently the SNP are unlikely to ever push hard for indipendence. The basis of their popularity is their ability to extract social democratic concesions from westminster through the peculiar devolution settlement. Much the same is true in catalonia.
Why would independence be a good thing? I not against it but I couldn’t find a single substantial argument in your article for it. The ‘people of scotland’ (I’m not really convinced they are ‘a people’) having ‘self determination’ (parliamentary democracy cant give you that) only makes as much sense as devolution for any one of, say, the counties of england or,say, the isle of sky. And that rational for devolution only makes sense if you think that anything which undermines centralism is counter to the logic of neoliberalism, which it aint.
It’s an article about a news story, not a full explanation of why the SSP support independence, much like how we don’t explain why climate change is bad in every article about something in the news about the climate. I’m sure someone else will be happy to explain to you why we support that, but you can’t blame the article for not covering everything in the world ever
My one quibble about this article is this sentence: “the SNP aren’t going to *be able* to give us a say on independence this year.”
That makes it sound like it was something outside of their control, and that it’s not their fault – when they’ve in fact made a calculated decision to not give us a referendum.
John L: we need independence, because under London rule we are living under an unelected Tory dictatorship.
@John L: I suspect that we’re going to find that we have diverging views about the existence or otherwise of a Scottish nation. I think it’s ridiculous to say Scotland is no different from an English county or the Isle of Skye (with an E on the end). I am convinced that a Scottish people does exist because the vast majority of people in Scotland self-define as that.
Of course I want more than parliamentary democracy, I want real participatory democracy, self-management etc. etc. i.e. a socialist society. But as a step in the right direction Scotland needs to withdraw from the imperialist UK state, and the people of Scotland need to be allowed the right to democratic national self-determination. It’s a pretty simple democratic demand, and not one I pretend goes all the way to establishing the kind of society I’d really like to live in, but nontheless important to say we should get a vote on whether we want to remain part of the union.
The UK was set up just over 300 years ago in order to combine the forces of the Scottish and English ruling classes for more effective colonial exploitation, and it remains a heavily armed (including nuclear armed), imperialist state, with a massive arms industry, finance capital and all the other trappings of what it is: a major player in the imperialist world system. Removing Scotland would fundamentally undermine that position, and would be doing an internationalist service to people around the world.
I understand what neoliberalism is. But it also hasn’t escaped my notice that with the right political will and popular support many countries around the world, particularly in Latin America, have been able to abandon it as a model. Fundamentally there is absolutely no popular support for right wing economic policies in Scotland. The reason it is politically possible to impose them is because of the British political system, and the fact that Scotland carries virtually no weight in that. Removed from that, the Tories become an irrelevance, and indeed the perceived need of the working class to keep voting for Labour to keep them out does to. Resolving the national question once and for all would allow us to fully concentrate on the battle for socialism.
My article if you re-read it doesn’t characterise the SNP as an out-and-out neoliberal party, but rather as a loose coalition which involves some neoliberal people in the leadership. I think that after independence it would be very hard for them to survive in their current form, as there is a significant section of their supporters and activists who would split and be part of a more explicitly left formation. Besides which, it would be very difficult for the neoliberal part of the SNP to stay in power.
Fundamentally our analysis of this question is based on the fact that there is a broad progressive consensus about what direction the majority of Scots would like our society to move in, but we have been unable for a long time to achieve that democratically. There always remained some semblance of a Scottish state, and that has only grown through devolution. We think the whole working of the state in Scotland should be brought under democratic control as a step in the right direction towards achieving more – genuine socialism.
Jack, there is little in your argument i would disagree with – i do think that scotland is a nation and for the simple reason that you mention – that there exists a scottish national consciousness (I dont know why you thought I would disagree with this) and i am for independence for the reason that you stress (the impact it would have upon the function of UK imperialism). I wasn’t so much disagreeing with you as interested to understand your position.
Their is widespread disatisfaction with the neoliberal agenda in scotland, england and indeed much of the world. Im not sure i agree with the idea that the cuts agenda simply issues from westminster and causes discontent in scotland. A radical political agency (such as yourselves) might well resist the logic of neoliberalism (you could only possibly do so for a limited duration), but at the moment no such political element is anywhere near strong enough to do that. An independant scotland would be a neoliberal, cuts ridden nation.
brits should be getting attacked everywhere in Scotland !! Get the english prime minister david cameron tae fuck !! english people are coming to scotland in droves and changing the vote !! those cunts will get a say on Scottish independence. time we stopped playing politics and destroyed unionism in Scotland then the roads open to kickin the english back tae their shithole country
SCOTTISH REPUBLIC !!!! by any means necessary
Um, no.
An independent Scottish republic that tries to kick out any refugees or immigrants – be they Afghan, Chinese, or indeed English – is not a republic I want to be part of.
@john (2010-12-22):
I can’t speak for all the English people who have moved to Scotland, but as an Englishman who recently lived there for three years myself, I can say this:
If Scotland’s government had got its act together on an independence referendum while I was still living there, I would have (a) volunteered to help with the Yes campaign, (b) voted Yes on voting day, and (c) applied for Scottish citizenship the day the republic was established. I might have moved to Scotland simply for a job, but I very soon realised what Jack points out, that “Fundamentally there is absolutely no popular support for right wing economic policies in Scotland” – and after all the lies and sell-outs of the Tory Lites (sorry I meant New Labour), and the general cronyism and unaccountability of Westminster politics, it felt good. And I strongly suspect that I’m not alone amongst English residents of Scotland in feeling like that.
So don’t panic, because at least some of us are on your side.