Silly season in Scotland (1989)

Jim Sillars winning the 1988 Glasgow Govan by-election.

From the June 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political scene is really buzzing up in Scotland. The Labourites are in turmoil over the issue of Scottish independence while the Scottish National Party is split because of something called the Constitutional Convention. To add to the fun Militant is up to its old tricks and there is a brand new “socialist" party with the usual stale ideas.

After the last general election when the Tories won only 10 of the 72 seats in Scotland the SNP floated the idea that the anti-Tory forces should join in forming a convention of MP's, councillors, churchmen and trade unionists which would draw up a plan for Scottish self-government within the United Kingdom. This, it was argued, would gain Scotland some protection from unrepresentative Thatcherism.

Preliminary talks in January between the SNP, Labour and the SLD began amicably enough but then the SNP delegation suddenly walked out. They probably felt that, after their Govan by-election victory, the convention no longer had anything to offer them and they should go for outright "Independence Within Europe". This move outraged several prominent SNP members who condemned the leadership for having made a bad error of judgement. The Scots electorate, they said, is so desperate to be rid of Thatcher that they will not forgive the SNP for abandoning the convention.

Isobel Lindsay, a member of the executive, pointed to the immediate drop in SNP support in the opinion polls and added “perhaps even more important . . .  we are alienating Scotland's thinking classes . . .” (Glasgow Herald 7 February 1989). Lindsay is a university lecturer. In the end the walkout was backed by the party’s national council by a big majority but rumblings of discontent continue.

Labour’s Troubles

What about Labour's troubles? The party's neo-nationalist wing, which includes several MP's and leading trade unionists, is openly calling for Labour to lead a Scottish UDI from the United Kingdom should England vote the Tories in again. This revolt forced Neil Kinnock to declare his support for devolution at this year's Scottish Labour Party conference although he didn't even mention it last year, an omission which doubtless had nothing to do with the SNP's low standing in the polls at that time.

Almost obscured by these events is the formation of the Scottish Socialist Party, the latest breakaway from Labour. The new party has about 100 members and believes that the only way for Scots to get rid of Thatcherism is the creation of an independent “socialist" Scotland. Alex Wood, former Labour leader of Edinburgh District Council, and an SSP leading light, gives us his idea of what socialism means.

  He firmly believes the time is right for a socialist approach to Scottish life, such as public housing, free education and a national health service (Glasgow Herald 12 January 1989).

In case anyone is wondering why Wood bothered to leave the Labour Party he says it was because, among other things. Labour has rejected the socialist transformation of society. Since he also tells us that Labour was never a socialist party anyway then what else did he expect?

The SSP says that it will appeal to disenchanted nationalists and on cue they have been joined by Alan Clayton, a prominent SNP member. He denounced the SNP's withdrawal from the convention as "shameful" and told them the correct policy would have been to stay and fight from within it. Why he didn't stay and fight from within the SNP he didn’t say. The SSP will soon follow into oblivion its predecessor, the Scottish Labour Party, formed by Sillars in 1976 and died in 1980.

Mindless Militants

Meanwhile Militant's long-running efforts to take over the Labour Party in Scotland have produced results — all of them bad. Their tactic of flooding local Labour parties with recruits and then using them to deselect Labour MP's and councillors who don’t toe the Militant line has hit a snag. Why? Because the Labour Party will not sit back and let this happen. For example 158 applicants in Pollok have been refused membership and it is Militant members who are getting the push. Three have been expelled in Cumbernauld with more to follow in Livingston and Cathcart. More seriously for them 13 alleged Militant “supporters" in their Pollok stronghold have been suspended and expulsions are a certainty. To rub it in all their candidates for office in Leith were defeated.

These antics make us think of a no-contest between two grossly mismatched boxers. In this corner the Labour heavyweight, and in the other corner the Militant flyweight. No matter how many times the flyweight gets flattened he gets up and comes back for more. He's game but is he wise? Does Militant really think the Labour Party will let them take it over? And what would they do with it if they got it? Do they imagine that significant numbers of Labour voters would vote for Militant policies? Maybe they're just punch-drunk enough to say "yes".

In conclusion, will the present nationalist upsurge in Scotland collapse like the previous one in the 1970's? This is unlikely because of the Thatcher factor. Another Tory victory at the next election along with their continued rejection in Scotland will cause many Labour leaders, activists and supporters to decide that full independence is the only hope. Margaret Thatcher is a better propaganda weapon for the SNP than North Sea oil ever was.

Vic Vanni

Welsh Assembly (1999)

From the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Could the Welsh Assembly be the most important thing that has ever happened to Wales? Brian Walters, writing in the South Wales Evening Post (4 March) suggested it will have a profound effect on our lives since it will have the power to decide what happens to education, health, transport and others.

There seems to be an implication here that decisions on such matters are not already being taken or at least that the decisions will be radically different under the Assembly.

But in the same article, Walters pointed out all the Assembly will be doing is taking over the powers that the Secretary of State for Wales now has. And is there any evidence these powers will be exercised in a fundamentally different way? Or will the Assembly authorities continue to suffer the financial and market constraints any administration anywhere faces? And what about the example of the Republic of Ireland, where all the problems present elsewhere in the British Isles—and sometimes in exacerbated form—have continued after more than 70 years not just of devolution but of independence?

What kind of problems are these? They are the usual ones facing all wage earners in Wales as elsewhere—to do with jobs and job security, housing, health, schooling, violence and general worry about the future. They arise not from particular political or constitutional arrangements but from the way society is organised—on the basis of production for profit and minority ownership of the vast majority of the wealth.

The fact is that even if the new Assembly were to bring decisions closer to home, these decisions would still have to be taken in the overall interests of the profit system. This will happen whichever party happens to win power.

Even if dissatisfaction with this eventually led to a fully independent Wales, such decisions would still be taken on the same basis—only by rulers from Cardiff, not London. The position of wage earners would be the same—it makes no difference where the government which administers the profit system has its headquarters.

So despite all the fuss the Assembly is an irrelevance. It will not give the people of Wales more control over their own affairs. The only change that will do that is a change in the whole social system, replacing competitive production for profit and minority ownership by co-operative production. Neither devolution nor an independent Wales or United Britain can achieve this. It is only feasible in a moneyless, frontierless society which, for those with vision, is the next stage in human social evolution.

Swansea Branch

No Solution in Devolution (1997)

Editorial from the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tony Blair has declared that “the era of big centralised government is over”. Given this, the question that now needs to be asked is: why does a power-crazy government with a huge majority that was prepared to do almost anything to get elected want to devolve power, update the constitution and “democratise” Britain?

The only logical answer is that Tony Blair is looking to the long-term. Because of the intense pressures on government expenditure in Britain (as elsewhere) he knows that real social and economic reform is a non-starter—hence the government’s interest in fripperies like devolution and constitutional reforms. Blair is clearly aiming to preside over a new left-of-centre “consensus” politics that will spell the end of the modern Conservative Party The drive for “democratic renewal” is the linchpin of this strategy, naturally made all the more attractive because it will cost little if anything to implement. It provides a focal point for centre-left campaigns, will isolate the Conservatives (and keep them out of power after PR has been introduced) and it deflects attention away from economic paralysis, social failure and anything else that demonstrates the government’s real impotence.

Through promoting devolution in recent weeks the Prime Minister has cleverly provided a basis for cutting social transfers from the owning class to the poor workers of Scotland and Wales, and to some of the subsidised capitalists there too. The entire debate has emphasised the disproportionate amount of subsidy per capita in Scotland and Wales compared to other poor regions of Britain such as the north-east.

Devolution, particularly in Scotland where the Parliament is to have tax-varying powers, will sooner or later mean a cut in block grants from the Treasury. Furthermore, Blair’s government will be largely absolved of any responsibility over troublesome Scottish social problems and no will no longer have to sink as much money as before into a bottomless pit. (That this was going to happen was spotted months ago by the Conservatives, a party that knows a thing or two about double-dealing and political chicanery.)

This, not by coincidence, is precisely the sort of thinking which led the government to make the Bank of England independent during the summer. It is illustrative of the government’s strategy to raise political smoke-screens and shift responsibility from those aspects of life it thinks it probably can’t affect for the better in any meaningful way (e.g. the economy, social problems in Britain’s regions). By doing this it hopes to coat itself in political Teflon. Whatever goes wrong will not be the government’s fault, but something or somebody else’s. And the small and superficial bits that go right can keep the “forces for democratic renewal” in power for a very long time indeed. That is, of course, unless the working class wake up to the social chaos and political trickery paraded before their eyes daily and organise democratically to do something fundamental about it.