Scottish Independence : Yes (with no illusions) (i)

This is a two-part piece, a polemic,  on why socialists should support a 'yes' vote in Scotland in September. It does not aim to convince people in general to line up behind independence; as it happens I don't think any argument to this effect is possible. There is no such thing as 'people in general'; interests and opinions diverge widely. The kind of reasons that might convince famous homophobe and millionaire Brian Souter to put his not inconsiderable assets behind the 'yes' campaign are very different from those that will be considered here. We'll return to Souter in due course.

This piece is also written by a Labour Party member. It is striking that, whilst the Scottish Left outside Labour has pretty solidly positioned itself in support of independence, the Labour 'Yes' camp is small. If anything this is more true on the Labour Left than for the Scottish Party in general. The balance of pieces in Labour Briefing, for instance, has clearly been pro-union. I dissent from this majority view, although there will be reason to pause and consider why it is the majority view.

At no point do I intend to argue that Scottish independence will transform Scottish society, or British society, beyond recognition, that it will herald in socialism, that it will safeguard the welfare state, or anything else. Over a century ago, in the context of the (still unfinished) Irish struggle for independence, James Connolly penned the purple passage,

If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.

What was true of Ireland then, is true of Scotland now. Political independence will not disentangle Scotland economically from British capitalism, still less from capitalism in general. A good proportion of the country's land would still be owned by English aristocrats and London-based financial institutions the day after a 'yes' vote (and a miserably small proportion of it owned by anyone other than super-rich individuals and institutions) . Regardless of the outcomes of wranglings over currency, whether or not an independent Scotland remained in sterling, its currency would at least be pegged to sterling (and, if nominally independent, vulnerable to speculative attack on this basis) leaving its government a limited amount of wiggle-room with respect to Westminster's economic policy. For the foreseeable future, "Westminster's economic policy" means austerity. As, to pre-empt it being mooted, does "Frankfurt's economic policy".

But the fact that a brand new world isn't at stake in this referendum doesn't mean that nothing is at stake. And I support a 'yes' vote.

Bad Reasons to Oppose Independence

Let's start by dismissing some very bad reasons to oppose independence. One, often repeated, is that Scotland leaving the UK would leave the rest of the Union doomed to perpetual Tory government. This is simply not true. As this blog showed some time ago, here.

Even worse, and frequently heard on the Labour Left, is an appeal to class unity. "The British working class should fight British capitalism together". The problem here is at least two-fold. First, if the existence of state borders renders impossible working class unity against capital then, faced with global capitalism, we might as well all give up and go home now. Second, the idea that all struggles against non class oppression should take a definite back seat to the class struggle is the worst kind of retrograde workerism. It is not even good class politics, since it fails to recognise the intersection between class exploitation and national, gender, racial etc. oppression. All too recently the British Left has seen the horrors that result from suggesting that feminism should take a back seat in socialist politics. Neither should national liberation movements be shelved until the important business of class struggle has been completed.

A less well-defined Labour unionist tribalism is more common than explicit class politics. This has been cynically exploited by the Party machine up north. It is certainly the case, although to a lesser extent than during the heyday of New Labour's Scottish PLP base, that the Labour leadership benefits from unionism in terms of intra-Party power. However, grassroots support for a 'no' vote can't simply be attributed to top-down manipulation - real, and sometimes comical, though that is. It is inevitable that if Labour activists get used on a day-to-day basis to electoral campaigns in which a significant opponent, often the main opponent, is a nationalist party, there will be a tendency for their politics to take on a unionist colouring. The kind of caricaturing and nurturing of a developed dislike which follows on from any kind of persistent political campaign will be directed at the SNP, and via them to nationalism, and to support for independence (these not being quite the same thing). Nothing short of a deliberate injection of politics will halt this slide into unreflective unionism.

To be continued...