[A-List] Scotland: SNP disintegration

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

At one level the apparent acceleration in the disintegration of the Scottish
National Party is not so surprising. The creation of the parliament and
executive has blunted the nationalist sword, and with opportunities for
ambitious politicians to make their Faustian pacts as they further their
careers, political principle reverts to stereotype as a contradication in
terms. Holding as fractious a coalition as the SNP together was always a
thankless task, requiring someone as imposing as Alex Salmond to do it --
although Margaret Thatcher should also take some credit. Salmond's
resignation as party leader only exposed what his leadership had long
hidden -- that the sinews of unity were fast dissolving and that instead
class loyalties were reasserting themselves. This would especially have been
the case post-independence, but with the degree of autonomy now in
possession, there is an understandable degree of ideological vacuum which
other, more fundamental interests, will fill more readily than "one last
push for independence".

However, it is a credit to bourgeois democracy, and an almighty discredit to
the SNP, that, despite the absolutely appalling and disgraceful way New
Labour has treated devolution, the main opposition has been fragmented via
the selective co-optation of the personally ambitious and politically weak,
thereby allowing the continuation of the sad spectacle that is the
executive's deference to Westminster and the elective dictatorship of Tony.
Surely the SNP could have done better than this.

In fact it is a miracle that they did as well as they have done, and, should
anyone think me soft on the Scottish Socialists, they will face the same
test as the SNP, except that judgment of their performance under stress must
be even more exacting. This relates to what, precisely, the party intends to
achieve: is it "independence" as an end in itself, or as a means to an end?
For the SNP it is clearly the former, a few honourable exceptions aside. For
the SSP, however, it must be the latter. Otherwise they risk replicating the
mistakes of Tom Nairn, a famous bourgeois nationalist who makes much of his
former Marxism (or former use of Marxist phraseology) whilst pursuing the
goal of independence -- nothing less (as the SNP used to say). To which
should be added "nothing more either", because anyone reading Nairn's "After
Britain" (Granta 2000) and "Pariah" (Verso 2001) will know that his is, at
best, a  salon socialism in which Scotland, rather like Scandinavia,
occupies a place on what Goran Therborn calls the "decent periphery". In
other words, we'll have a Swedish welfare system as part of our
accommodation with capitalism. As nice as that would be, there is the small
problem of dwindling oil reserves, assuming that these would be relinquished
freely by a grasping British state (assisted by a US state whose ultimate
control was won in 1976 and solidified by Thatcher's first acts as prime
minister -- the privatisation of the British oil industry).

Nairn's analysis of the structural contradictions of the UK state apparatus
is very good and deserves careful reading by those concerned to advance
socialism in the British Isles (i.e., including the Irish Republic). That he
could be so fundamentally wrong about the Ulster Workers' strike in 1974
should not diminish his achievement, which should augment any respectable
historical materialist analysis of the UK state. That his distaste for
Westminster allowed him to interpret the UWC as some kind of proletarian
uprising should not detract from his fundamental contribution, which is to
identify the British state itself as the enemy, and that in order to advance
at all politically and economically, this gigantic, antideluvian obstacle
must, somehow, be removed. And this is the test of the SSP, which must not
fail as has the SNP. For once you have established that this must be the
overriding political goal of socialism in *Britain* (i.e. England, Wales,
Northern Ireland and Scotland), and once you recognise the structural
dependency of the British state upon its US patron, then attitudes towards
Europe must, of necessity, be revised. It is why the so-called SNP
fundamentalists, still spiritually led by the utterly unscrupulous Jim
Sillars (now campaigning in the pages of the "Scottish Sun" against asylum
seekers in a variation on the old anti-Edinburgh joke concerning how to
greet house guests -- "You'll have had your tea"), are wrong to oppose
eurozone membership on the grounds that it institutionalises monetarism, or
that it imposes a monetary straitjacket on Scotland. These have been applied
with far greater vigour by the *Bank of England* (how preposterous to have
to argue this at all) thanks to the generously donated wisdom of US
imperialist gurus like Milton Friedman, for the benefit of the financial
centre that is the *City of London*, or what remains of it, given its status
as a branch office of Wall Street.

Instead, it is for the SSP, or an alternative left party, to work against
the British ideology and expose its service to US imperialism, and to
campaign for complete British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, whilst
reorienting struggle away from a primary Westminster focus towards a
pan-European vista, in partnership with socialist forces in the rest of
Britain and Europe. The ultimate goal in this phase of struggle must be the
disintegration of the British state via the establishment of independent
states called England, Wales and Scotland, together with the reunification
of Ireland, within the European Union.

------

Swinney attacked on all sides in leadership race
SNP leader under attack from across political spectrum
LibDems and Tories squabble over who gets to be opposition
By Douglas Fraser, Political Editor
Sunday Herald - 21 September 2003

John Swinney is coming under pressure from both left and right as he enters
the final strait this week in his battle to retain the SNP leadership, with
his finance spokesman calling for a shift away from the party's left-wing
stance and others claiming the party "lacks a thought-through, clearly
achievable aim".

The SNP finance spokesman, Jim Mather, said: "We want more millionaires, and
any notion that an independent Scotland would be a left-wing country is
delusional nonsense." Most Scots, he said, "have enough experience of
left-wing policies to know that they only make matters worse."

Michael Russell, a former MSP and party chief executive, and one of those
supporting Swinney, writing in the Sunday Herald today warns that this year'
s election campaign has left the party appearing to be "self-absorbed and
fractious - lacking both ideological cohesion and a thought-through, clearly
achievable, modern aim".

There are criticisms too from supporters of Bill Wilson, the grassroots
activist challenging Swinney, that the leadership has acted to bar party
branches from sending delegates to the Inverness conference. Some 28 out of
225 branches were told they could not attend unless they pay subscriptions
and provide membership lists.

Swinney has this weekend proposed an "open dialogue" with other political
parties backing independence, aimed at building a majority for a referendum
bill he intends to table in the Scottish parliament. He has already had
meetings about this with the Greens, but refused to commit to a timetable
for introducing such a bill. The aim is to stress his constitutional,
parliamentary route to independence, for which Bill Wilson is strongly
criticising him in the leadership contest.

"We need to expand the range of people who support the cause of
independence," said Swinney. "Living in the real world, there is no majority
for independence in the parliament, and we've got to create that within
Scotland. I want to encour age other political parties to engage."

The leader's tactic is to present an alternative to a proposed cross-party
convention of those supporting independence, holding its first meeting at a
conference fringe event next Friday. This is being pushed by the left-wing
and fundamentalist part of the SNP, including former leadership candidate
Alex Neil and former leader Willie Wolfe. It will have at its inaugural
meeting Tommy Sheridan of the Scottish Socialist Party, senior citizen MSP
John Swinburne, plus former shipyard union leader Jimmy Reid and
actor/director David Hayman.

The new evidence of competing pressure on Swinney comes from those loyal to
him in the current contest, in a series of articles for Holyrood magazine
which demand that the party either speed up its reforms or shift away from
its left-wing bias. Duncan Hamilton, former Highlands and Islands MSP has
attacked his party's lack of consistency over taxation policy, and called
for it to embrace reform of public services, rather than defending them.

An even greater heresy comes from Kenny MacAskill, arguing that while the
case for independence is now overwhelming, nationalists should admit that
union with England was the best, logical position for Scotland in the past.
MacAskill, a Lothian MSP and the party's transport spokesperson, is expected
to argue at the conference this week that the party needs to be more relaxed
about finding common cause with others - including Conservatives, with whom
the party has a constitutional bar on political deals - to find "coalitions
of interest" that stop short of deals, on such issues as rail services or
taxation powers.