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

Neither party in last night's depressing exercise in presidential politics should convince anyone. Nor should anyone interested in the politics of human emancipation cast their vote on the basis of which of two white male bourgeois politicians performed better in an overgrown student debate in front of the TV cameras. So let's proceed to ignore Messrs Darling and Salmond. The point is to bring about a world where our collective life involves more than sitting in front of one box before deciding which vote to cast into another.

The immediate issue facing Scotland's electorate is not, of course, whether they prefer Darling or Salmond, New Labour or the SNP, but whether they want Scotland to be politically independent. I argued last time why I don't buy arguments commonly advanced on the Labour Left in favour of a 'no' vote. Now I want to consider reasons to support a 'yes' vote.

National liberation

A standard move in the Scottish (and Welsh) Labour circles is to criticise nationalism - possibly with a hint that it promotes anti-English 'racism' (note to self: do future post on why it is simply not possible to be a racist, as opposed to rude/ dickish/ unpleasant, to someone in Britain on the basis of their Englishness). Here's one recent case in point on Left Foot Forward.

The first point to make here is that support for independence is not the same thing as nationalism. The second is that there is a clear and obvious difference between subaltern nationalisms and the nationalisms of world imperial powers, such as England/ the UK, has been. To fail to recognise this is to fail to recognise asymmetries of power and domination, a failure which should prove fatal for left-wing politics.  And there is a strong case that Scotland stands in need of national liberation. Scotland continues as an politico-economic periphery to the UK, frequently subjected to Tory governments for which its populace did not vote. Anti-Scots racism is more common throughout Britain than many care to admit.

That's the present. Nor do I think the past is irrelevant to the argument here - that we should 'move on' from the past, rather than - say - redeem it, is a liberal commonplace that betrays the emotionally dessicated humanity from which a lot of what passes for politics proceeds. I'm reminded of Walter Benjamin's words about being 'nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated grandchildren.' It is OK to vote 'yes' on behalf of those cleared from their land by English aristocrats, those sent from the Isles to the Somme, the schoolchildren caned for speaking Gaelic. Of course, the story of national oppression and human exploitation of which these are part also includes the stories of immigrants from every corner of the earth - the half-starved Irish immigrant, the Bangladeshi seprated from family by immigration laws. And it is a more compelling story for that reason.




Trident

Probably quite a good indicator of the aforementioned national oppression is the fact that the Westminster government uses Scotland as a storehouse for its weapons of mass destruction. It is is everyone's interests, throughout Scotland, throughout Britain, throughout the world, that the Trident programme is upset. Voting 'yes' is an excellent way to achieve this.


Ireland

Britain's still got part of Ireland in its murky hands. The resulting partition messes with Irish politics on both sides of the border. Scotland leaving the union will weaken the union overall, and given the significance of Scottish identity for unionist ideology in the north of Ireland, could be quite significant there.


Class

Workers, as the old slogan has it, have no country. Actually, the old slogan has it that working men have no country, which should be a warning to us that the hard work to be done here lies at the intersections. Whilst it is perfectly true that working class interests are international, it is equally true that those interests, as they find expression here and now, are mediated by, and distorted by, national politics.

Take Scotland. A significant proportion of the working class vote for the SNP. As a consequence of this, along with the comparative strength of old-style social democracy, the SNP pitches itself left-of-Labour. This in spite of the fact that the SNP is a coalition, many of whose members have interests deeply divergent from those of working people, and support political agendas far to the right of Labour. I merely name Brian Souter at this point.

This is to say that the SNP is a classic populist bourgeois nationalist party. And many Scottish workers are tied to it. This provides a case study in support of a general principle: once a national question has been raised, socialists should support its resolution in order to fracture bourgeois nationalist movements and reintroduce class politics. The current SNP wouldn't survive in an independent Scotland - no doubt something called the SNP would survive, like some kind of albannaich  Fianna Fáil. But the coalition of party activists and voters currently grouped around the bundle of charisma and dialectic precision that is Alex Salmond will not survive in the absence of a live national question. We can expect a split to the left, and a regrouping with unions, people from Left groups, and some Labour people. In other words, something looking like a workers party. Ensuring this would need to be a priority for socialists in a newly independent Scotland.

So there you have it, far from being a vote for the SNP, a vote for independence is a vote to split the SNP along class lines. Something we should all support.