Scottish independence and the SSP

["Richard Fidler" <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Drysdale:

>> Tomorrow, for example, there is a public debate around the position of
scottish independence, currently held by the leadership of the SSP. This
gives some of us an opportunity to question this position at a level that
moves beyond speculation and emotion. Particularly around the existence or
not of the mysterious *scottish identity*. Point...the working class have
no country. Bit like capital, really. <<

Please tell us what is said, Jim, in this debate. I am curious, and I
suspect many others on this list are as well. (In past discussions here,
some of the most fervent supporters of Irish nationalism have questioned
whether there is anything progressive about Scottish nationalism.)

I have read the book by Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCombes, Imagine: A
Socialist Vision for the 21st Century (Edinburgh, 2000). As a whole, it is a
very effective argument in popular language for socialism around basic
class-struggle themes. But Scottish independence, one of the central themes
of the Scottish Socialist Party, the state framework within which it
presents its program, is explicitly addressed in only one of the 21
chapters, scanned below. It raised some questions for me.

Marxists have traditionally (at least since Lenin) upheld the right of
self-determination of nations only for nations or nationalities that are
oppressed in some way: for example through specific measures that
discriminate against nationals through suppression of their language and
culture, or that withhold certain rights for nationals that are accorded to
non-nationals such as the citizens of the dominant nation(s). A case may be
made for state independence where this becomes a form of the struggle for
emancipation from national oppression. Socialists of course seek to link
such struggles to anticapitalism and the need to eliminate the social roots
of oppression.

As I read it, Imagine makes four major arguments for Scottish independence:

1. It is a means of breaking up the existing capitalist and imperialist
state, Great Britain.

2. There is a progressive tradition in Scottish nationalism. While the
institutions typical of Scottish national identity - the Church, the civil
law, the educational system - were and are identified with the capitalist
"elite", the Scottish masses historically retained a powerful yearning for
Home Rule that reflected the existence of anti-imperialist sentiment and an
affinity with Ireland and other oppressed peoples of the Empire.

3. While national sentiment is contradictory and can be reactionary,
xenophobic and parochial, "for many people especially in small stateless
nations such as Scotland, Wales and the Basque country, national identity is
linked with opposition to centralism, regimentation and uniformity". In
Scotland, "the demand for national independence is about opposing nuclear
weaons, standing against inequality, and prioritising public services over
private greed."

4. Scottish independence would help eliminate anglophobia or anti-English
prejudice, which stems from Scotland's "status as a dependent nation". The
socialism of the SSP is multiethnic, inclusive and solidaristic.

But despite a number of references to the oppression of Scotland and the
stifling of its political development, no real argument is made that
Scotland is today oppressed by any concrete measures of the British state.
Rather, the argument is largely opportunist, appealing to a popular culture
with deep historical roots. I am not saying this is wrong. But it does
reflect an approach to nationalism that is less resistant than many Marxists
have been toward nationalism outside the colonial or semicolonial context.
All the more interesting in that Sheridan and many other SSP leaders were
long identified with the Militant tendency, which tended toward economism
and was certainly not sympathetic to small-nation nationalism. (Recall their
confusion even over the national rights of Argentina, a semicolonial
country, in the Malvinas war.)

Anyway, judge for yourselves. Here are Sheridan and McCombes:


The Growling Mongrel
(ch. 17 of Imagine: A Socialist Vision for the 21st Century)

SOCIALISM IS AN internationalist philosophy. In the words of the song,
`Imagine there's no countries, I wonder if you can; nothing to kill or die
for, a brotherhood of man.'

Some time in the future these words will be turned into reality. The
resources of the world will become common international property. People
will look back in horror to the days when the world was divided into
hundreds of warring tribes, each armed to the teeth with tanks, machine
guns, battleships, and fighter aeroplanes. Future generations will be
incredulous at the very notion of scientists and technicians spending their
lives designing and refining weapons capable of reducing the whole planet to
dust. They will look back in astonishment to the dawn of the 21st century,
when the people of one rich country consumed 50 times as much food per head
as the people of one poor country. And they will scarcely believe the
historians when they describe how the planet itself was almost obliterated
from the solar system to satisfy the insatiable greed of a small minority.

Back in the 1840s, the socialist philosophers, Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, first raised the idea of a socialist world. In the days before cars,
telephones, and radios had even been invented, such a vision required a
phenomenal historical imagination. But in the age of the Internet,
high-speed air travel, instantaneous global communications, satellite TV,
and global capitalism, the idea of global socialism can no longer be
dismissed as a flight of poetic fantasy.

So where do we begin? How do we get from here to there? How could a lone
parent in Dundee, a nurse in Glasgow or a factory worker in Fife possibly
participate in such a colossal enterprise as building worldwide socialism?

The fact is, the struggle to transform the planet we live on is as much a
local struggle as it is a global struggle. Worldwide socialism will not be
achieved in one broad sweep; it will be the final product of multiple
movements against capitalism at community, regional, and national level.

The spread of genuine socialism in the future will be just as contagious as
the pro-democracy movement which engulfed Eastern Europe in 1989-90. A
series of local demonstrations in the East German city of Leipzig in late
1989 rapidly spread right across the country, then expanded outwards into
neighbouring states. Within a few months, every Stalinist regime in Eastern
Europe had collapsed. Although the story had no happy ending it nonetheless
demonstrated the lightning speed at which events can reverberate across
international borders.

The struggle for socialism is unlikely to erupt simultaneously across the
globe. Nor will it unfold evenly and uniformly. Because of differing
national traditions and conditions, any future movement against capitalism
is likely to evolve in a fragmented and disjointed fashion, with events in
one country spreading rapidly across international borders.

There is an important socialist dimension to the national question in
Scotland today, and an important national dimension to the struggle for
socialism. Many people support the idea of independence, not because they
are parochial nationalists or anti-English bigots, but because they want
greater control over their own lives and want to move towards a more
egalitarian society.

It is no accident that those most strongly in favour, of an independent
Scotland are young people and working-class people. In general, the people
who want radical constitutional change are the same people who want radical
social change. For a growing number of people in Scotland, the break-up of
the British state means striking out in a revolutionary direction and
burying the past.

Neither is it a coincidence that big business, with the exception of one or
two isolated mavericks, is bitterly hostile towards the idea of
independence. After more than two decades of Thatcherism - first under
Thatcher, then under Major, and now under Blair - the United Kingdom has
been transformed into a free-market paradise with some of the highest profit
levels, the lowest wages, and the most repressive anti-trade-union laws in
the western world.

The cringeing unionism of Scotland's bankers, landowners and wealthy
businessmen conforms to a historical pattern stretching back 1000 years.
Over and over again, almost from time immemorial, Scotland's ruling classes
have worked with the English ruling classes to suppress dissent.

Scotland is one of the oldest nations in Europe. As far back as the 13th
century, the beginning of a national consciousness was forged during the
struggle against the forcible incorporation of Scotland into Edward the
First's feudal kingdom. Under his reign of terror over Scotland, 2000
members of the Scottish nobility - earls, barons, and bishops - signed the
oath of allegiance to the English king. It was left to an outlaw, William
Wallace, and his co-leader, Andrew Murray, to organise a mass movement of
resistance. Their ragged guerrilla armies were made up of the landless
peasantry, the craftsmen, the dispossessed nobility, and the poor.

In contradiction of the mythology propagated by right-wing groups in
America, who elevated the film "Braveheart" into a celebration of Celtic
national-racial purity, Wallace's army included Irish, French, Flemish, and
English immigrants and united Gaelic speaking Highlanders and
English-speaking Lowland Scots.

Only after Wallace had swept through Scotland did the nobility eventually
switch sides. Even then, their support for an independent Scotland was
half-hearted and unreliable. Although Wallace was eventually defeated and
tortured to death, his campaign set Scotland ablaze. The Wars of
Independence raged on for the next 30 years, culminating in the victory of
Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn.

As a result, Scotland became an independent kingdom, while Wales and Ireland
were held in chains as colonial possessions of the English aristocracy. The
victory at Bannockburn enabled Scotland to evolve independently into a
rudimentary nation-state with its own native ruling class and its own
separate national economy.

But by the end of the 17th century, particularly as a result of the
disastrous 'Darien Scheme', a vain attempt to compete with English and
Spanish imperialism by establishing a colony in Central America, the
Scottish ruling class had almost bankrupted the country. The bankers,
landowners, and merchants began to turn to England for economic salvation.

After months of debate, the elite Scottish Parliament, elected by just 4000
people, backed the Act of Union. In effect, they sold Scottish independence
for £400,000 cash, plus lucrative personal bribes and posts in the new
British administration. The writer, Daniel Defoe, working in Edinburgh as an
agent of the English government, wrote, `The great men are posting to London
for places and honours . . . I never saw so much trick, sham, pride,
jealousy and cutting of friends' throats as there is among the noblemen. In
short, money will do anything here.'

Later, Robert Burns wrote:

`What force or guile could not subdue
Thro' many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor's wages
The English steel we could disdain
Secure in valour's station
But English gold has been our bane
Sic' a parcel of rogues in a nation.'

This was no federal union of two sovereign states. The English ruling class
was not interested in forming an equal partnership or union with Scotland.
Although allowed to retain its own church, its own legal system and its own
education system, Scotland was stripped of all political and economic
autonomy.

Outside parliament, Scotland was in uproar. English troops were moved to the
border ready to mount an invasion as riots swept Edinburgh and Glasgow in
protest at the decision to dissolve the Scottish Parliament. One English
government agent in Edinburgh estimated the mood in Scotland at around 50 to
1 against the Union.

Discontent with the union continued to fester for decades. By promising to
restore the Scottish Parliament, Charles Edward Stuart, a French Catholic,
built mass support in the Highlands and passive support even in the
Presbyterian Lowlands as he launched his bid for the British throne in 1745.
The Jacobite Rebellion was only routed after `Bonnie Prince Charlie' marched
into England. Later, with the rise and rise of the British Empire,
Scotland's ruling classes started to turn more and more anglified. During
the 19th century, they even began to drop the term `Scotland' completely,
preferring to describe themselves as `North British'.

By contrast, within radical circles and especially in the emerging Labour
movement, there remained a powerful yearning for Home Rule. This reflected
the existence of an anti-imperialist sentiment and an affinity with Ireland
and other oppressed nations of the British Empire.

In 1820 the Scottish Insurrection led by the weavers under the slogan
`Scotland: Free or a Desert', demanded universal suffrage and Scottish
independence. Keir Hardie's Scottish Labour Party, formed in 1888, included
the demand for Home Rule as the fifth point in an 18-point programme. The
Scottish TUC, formed as a radical breakaway from the British TUC in 1897,
adopted a pro-Home Rule policy in 1914. Eight years later, when ten
independent Labour MPs were elected from Clydeside to Westminster, their
first act was to present a Bill to the House of Commons calling for Scottish
Home Rule.

Around the same period, the heroic Clydeside socialist, John MacLean, called
for an independent Scottish socialist republic. In many ways, MacLean was a
visionary, decades ahead of his time. In the early 1920s, MacLean's tiny
Scottish Workers' Republican Party was the only pro-independence party in
existence . The SNP was not even formed until more than a decade after
MacLean's death and even then remained a marginal force in Scottish
politics, with less than one per cent support for the first 25 years of its
existence .

Today unionism in Scotland is fighting a rearguard action. The closing
decades of the 20th century witnessed a clear long-term trend towards the
break-up of the United Kingdom and the creation of an independent Scotland.

It is a paradox of our times that in the age of global capitalism, when the
ruling powers of the planet seek desperately to break down national
boundaries and form huge trading blocs such as the European Union, the
impulse from below is in the opposite direction.

The rise of nationalism internationally is a contradictory phenomenon. The
fuel that drives the engine of national discontent is a complex mixture of
emotions, grievances, prejudices, aspirations, and ideals. Some of these
sentiments are reactionary, xenophobic, and parochial. Others are saturated
with the spirit of democracy and justice. For many people, especially in
small stateless nations such as Scotland, Wales, and the Basque Country,
national identity is linked with opposition to centralism, regimentation,
and uniformity.

In any nationalist movement, progressive and reactionary ideas invariably
exist side by side. In some parts of the world, the character of nationalism
is predominantly aggressive, tribalistic, and inward-looking. In the
Balkans, nationalism has led to the tearing apart of integrated communities,
ethnic cleansing, and rivers of blood as violent conflict rages over
disputed territories.

That is not the case in Scotland, where the demand for national independence
is about opposing nuclear weapons, standing against inequality, and
prioritising public services over private greed. Contrary to unionist
mythology, pro-independence sentiment and anti-English bigotry are two
entirely different phenomena. Of course, there are Scottish nationalists who
are bitterly anglophobic. But there are also plenty of tartan-clad rugby
fans who will cheerfully belt out anti-English anthems at Murrayfield and
then go to the ballot box and vote for the staunchly pro-union Tory Party.
There are multitudes of football fans who work themselves into a frenzy of
hostility whenever they see a white England football shirt on their TV
screens, and vote for the equally staunch unionist Labour Party.

One of the most powerful arguments in favour of Scottish independence is
precisely that it would remove a central cause of anti-English prejudice.
Scotland's psyche has been forged by its status as a dependent nation,
forced to submit politically to the will of its larger neighbour.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when the Tories won four successive general
elections in Britain, national tension in Scotland began to boil. In a
confused way, anti-English sentiment became mixed together with anti-Toryism
and working-class resentment against wealth and privilege. This was
especially the case in some scenic rural areas, as affluent incomers from
the booming South of England bought over property, driving up property
prices and forcing locals in some instances to live in makeshift huts and
caravans.

New Labour hoped the establishment of a Scottish Parliament would reduce
these tensions. But, because the parliament has no powers over welfare, or
employment, or nuclear weapons, and has only limited fiscal powers, that
sense of political impotence will continue to fester. Especially if, at some
stage in the future the Tory Party returned to government at Westminster,
the embittered backlash in Scotland could make even the resentment of the
Thatcher years appear like a lovers' tiff by comparison.

On the other hand, an independent Scotland with full control over its own
economy, welfare system, and environment could eventually pave the way for
the demise of anglophobia. In the early part of the 20th century, similar
national tensions between the peoples of Norway and Sweden began to ease
after Norway broke free, following a successful independence referendum.
There has since evolved close co-operation among the Scandinavian countries;
for example, the labour movements of the various countries campaign for
common standards of welfare, wages, and conditions. There is also
Scandinavia-wide co-ordination of railway timetables, roads,
telecommunications, airlines, and postal services, even though the
individual states remain politically independent of one another.

An independent Scotland would be forced to take responsibility for its own
actions and could begin to forge a co-operative relationship with England on
a free and equal basis rather than a subordinate relationship based on
coercion and resentment.

Socialists should be prepared to support such a step, even on a
non-socialist basis as promoted by the SNP. At the very least, the creation
of an independent Scotland would begin to dispel the illusion that
Scotland's problems could be solved simply by swapping the Union Flag for
the St Andrew's Flag and replacing a right wing pro-market British
government with a right-wing pro-market Scottish government. Democratic
socialism, stronger today in Scotland than in any other part of the UK,
would then be poised to become the main opposition force, and eventually the
dominant force within an independent Scotland.

That doesn't mean winding up socialism in the meantime to concentrate on the
fight for independence. That would only marginalize socialism and strengthen
the hand of those right-wing nationalists who want to turn Scotland into a
corporate colony with cheap labour, few public services, low business taxes,
and oceans of profit for the transnationals. The strength of socialism in a
future independent Scotland will be determined not just by what happens
after the break-up of Britain, but by how effectively the ideas of socialism
have permeated Scotland in the years leading up to independence.

There is no truth in the accusation that socialists who support the
dissolution of the United Kingdom are anti-English, or anti-England. There
is a difference between being anti-England and anti-United Kingdom. It is
not England that oppresses Scotland and stifles its political development;
it is the British state., which is controlled by a ruling class drawn from
all four parts of the United Kingdom. But because England has seven times
the population of the other three parts of the UK combined, its politics,
economics, and culture have tended to dominate and submerge the rest. At the
same time, national identity in all four parts of the UK has become warped
and distorted - in England by a sense of superiority deriving from its
dominant role in an imperialist state; in Scotland by a permanent sense of
resentment towards its domineering neighbour.

For many people in Scotland, and in England too for that matter, English
national identity can appear insular and backward looking. When John Major
outlined his view of English identity, he painted a romanticised picture of
an Anglo-Saxon Brigadoon, complete with old maids cycling through autumn
mists and rustic men sipping warm beer while watching cricket on the village
green. A more sinister interpretation of English national identity is
conveyed by tabloid newspapers like the English Sun, with their vile
editorials abusing `Krauts', `Frogs', and `Argies', and by the neo-Nazi
cults and the football hooligans who spew imperial-racist mumbo-jumbo that
would insult the intelligence of the average ten-year-old while brandishing
the Flag of St George.

Socialists, naturally, oppose all forms of national chauvinism. It is right
that socialists in England and Scotland stress their internationalist
identity as part of the global working class. But on both sides of the
border, socialists should also battle to rescue the progressive and
inclusive sides of English and Scottish national identity.

In the 1950s, the American socialist leader James Cannon expressed regret
that radicals in the United States had renounced the Fourth of July
celebrations. `It is wrong to confuse internationalism with
anti-Americanism,' he argued. Socialists in England, as well as in Scotland
and Wales, should battle to reclaim the best of their national traditions
from the jingoists and racists.

England is the land of great literary figures, such as Shakespeare, Shelley,
Keats, Milton, Chaucer, Dickens, and many others. More recently, especially
in the 1960s, it became the birthplace of some of the world's greatest and
most innovative popular music. England also has an important radical and
egalitarian tradition, running like a red thread through three centuries.
English schoolchildren have traditionally been force-fed tales of the
imperial adventures of successive monarchs, while the country's radical,
democratic, and revolutionary tradition has been suppressed. This stretches
back to the Levellers and the Diggers, the egalitarian revolutionary groups
of the 17th century, and proceeds through to the Chartists, the militant
struggles to establish the first industrial trade unions, the 1926 General
Strike, and the three dramatic clashes between the National Union of
Mineworkers and the Tories in the 1970s and 1980s.

Today, England is one of the most multicultural countries in Europe, with
over 150 languages spoken on the streets of London alone. Indeed, neither
England nor Scotland conforms to the racially pure myth peddled by fascist
groups in Britain and by the white-supremacist descendants of Scottish
settlers in the southern states of the USA.

Like England, Scotland has changed down through the ages, culturally,
linguistically, and socially. The entire history of the country has been one
of emigration and immigration. From Ireland, Scandinavia, England, Northern
Europe, Eastern Europe, Italy, Pakistan, India, and China, successive waves
of settlers have poured into Scotland over the centuries.

As the novelist William McIlvanney once memorably put it, `The Scots are a
mongrel race.' In Scotland today we have Asian-born Scots, Irish-born Scots,
English-born Scots, Italian-born Scots, and Scottish-born Scots. We have
Gaelic-speaking Scots, Doric-speaking Scots, and English-speaking Scots. We
have Highland Scots, Lowland Scots, and Scots in the Northern Isles whose
historic links are with Scandinavia.

A socialist Scotland would aim to break down prejudices and rivalries within
Scotland, while allowing a large degree of autonomy for any community -
geographical, ethnic, or linguistic - which sought a measure of control over
its own affairs. It would fight for the survival of the Gaelic language and
ensure that everyone who wants to learn the ancient tongue has the
opportunity to do so. In the past, Scotland's native cultural traditions
were brutally suppressed by London governments and their Scottish unionist
allies. Today, the threat to Scots or Gaelic culture tends to come from
media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch, whose worldwide ownership of newspapers
and TV and radio stations enables them to exert a poisonous influence over
the development of culture in all countries, large and small.

But an independent socialist Scotland would not be an isolationist Scotland.
It would not involve rebuilding Hadrian's Wall and quarantining ourselves
from the rest of the world. Instead, a socialist Scotland would be
forward-looking and outward-looking. It would immediately build links with
political, environmental, trade-union, and pro-democracy movements all over
the globe to launch a united worldwide crusade against global capitalism.

The other side of globalisation is that even the slightest crack in the
structure would weaken the entire edifice. The system may today seem
invincible. At the start of the 1980s, Stalinism seemed like an
indestructible monolith. In the mid-1980s, the apartheid regime in South
Africa looked impregnable. The whole history of the 20th century illustrates
that institutions, governments, and social systems which one day appear to
be as permanent as the sun and the moon can the next day become history.

Any serious move towards democratic socialism in the 21st century, in
Scotland or in any other country, would have earth-shattering consequences.
At the very least, a successful challenge to capitalism in Scotland would
attract worldwide sympathy and would help to dramatically accelerate the
advance of genuine democratic socialism internationally.


Richard Fidler
rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx



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