50 Years Ago: Scots Nationalism (2025)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Today the SNP seems to have left the lunatic fringe behind and appears as a modern, mass political party using the techniques of public relations and advertising industries to give it a new slick image, and the Executive Suit has replaced the kilt as standard dress for the party candidates. Not only does the party have a large and youthful membership of 120,000 but they carry out their propaganda with a style and enthusiasm which leaves the older reformist parties gasping. At the October general election they all but demolished the Liberals, hammered the Tories, and promise it will be Labour’s turn next time. (…)

The nationalists have shown they are fast learners when it comes to political cynicism. They pretend to the workers that should independence come then all the oil revenues will automatically go into the Scottish exchequer and be used mainly for the benefit of the workers. They must know that the United Kingdom would get some of the revenue as part of any deal made over the granting of independence, and that the capitalist class in Scotland would insist that oil revenues be used to reduce the burden of taxation which rests on them.

Will the Labour government’s proposed Scottish Assembly, but still under Westminster, outflank the SNP? This is possible since it is doubtful if the electorate in Scotland want complete independence as various opinion polls have shown. However, as the Assembly will have no more success in abolishing capitalism’s problems than the SNP’s claim that only full independence can succeed, it will probably gain more support.

Should self-government eventually be established the SNP will discover that they cannot will or legislate away those problems of capitalism. No country in the world, no matter how independent or rich in resources, has yet succeeded in eliminating poverty, unemployment, insecurity, etc. For the working class there will be wages while they are working and pensions when they are too old or disabled.

[From the article 'Scots Nationalism - Part 2', from the Socialist Standard, April 1975.]

Cooking the Books: Taking back what control? (2023)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his New Year speech on 5 January, the Labour Leader, Sir Keith Starmer, uttered the following empty promise about what a future Labour government would bring about:

‘A fairer, greener, more dynamic country with an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. And a politics which trusts communities with the power to control their destiny’ (bit.ly/3w3XtKL).

In other words, the same old reformist illusion that a Labour government can change the capitalist economy so that it ‘works for everyone, not just those at the top.’ As if previous Labour governments hadn’t repeatedly tried and failed to do this. They failed because it is a ‘Mission Impossible’ to make capitalism work other than as a profit system for the benefit of the profit-takers and to the detriment of those who work for wages.

Starmer made it quite clear that a future Labour government would accept the profit system, declaring at one point that ‘for national renewal, there is no substitute for a robust private sector, creating wealth in every community’.

He denounced the Tories for practising ‘sticking-plaster politics’ which ‘sometimes delivers relief. But the long-term cure – that always eludes us’. But that is precisely what the Labour Party has always aspired to do. To try to mitigate the effects of capitalism that confront the wage-working class while leaving the cause — the class ownership of productive resources and production for the market with a view to profit — unchanged. In short, to patch up capitalism by sticking plaster over its effects.

But it wasn’t just the Tories that Starmer said were engaged in ‘sticker-plaster politics’ but ‘the whole Westminster system’.

His solution? To carry out yet another re-organisation of local government in Britain: ‘a huge power shift out of Westminster can transform our economy, our politics and our democracy.’ This would change politics to some extent, if only by providing more paid posts for professional politicians, but how will it ‘transform’ the economy?

The economy will remain capitalist, which will mean that those making political and economic decisions, whoever or wherever they are, will still have to take into account that profits must be the priority as the pursuit of profits is what drives the capitalist economy. It doesn’t make any difference who makes these decisions or where.

Starmer is making the same mistake here as the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, who think that the problems of workers in those regions are caused not by capitalism but by the decisions about how capitalism has to be run being taken in London rather than in Edinburgh or Cardiff. He thinks that it will make a difference to the way capitalism works if the decisions are made in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Bristol, etc. instead of in London. But it won’t. And it certainly won’t give those living there ‘the power to control their destiny.’

In a cynical move to win back Brexit voters, he promised a ‘Take Back Control’ Bill that would even be ‘a centrepiece of our first King’s speech’. A stupid title anyway since people never had any control in the first place to take back. Even national governments can’t control the way capitalism works, local mayors and councils even less. It is the other way around. Capitalism controls what governments can do, by obliging them to abide by its economic law of ‘profits first’ on pain of provoking an economic downturn.

It’s why they all fail and why the promises they make are empty. And why changing governments changes nothing, or, to borrow Starmer’s own words, when this happens ‘nothing has changed, but the circus moves on. Rinse and repeat’.

Devolution makes no difference (1999)

From the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The inexorable process of globalisation has increasingly made redundant the question of “national sovereignty”. Yet regional nationalists imagine they can buck the trend without even being against capitalism.

The growth of multinational corporations, some with a turnover exceeding the GDP of most states, has dramatically transformed the role of government as the locus of economic decision-making. Many of the most important decisions are now made, not by politicians, but in the boardrooms of these multinationals. Indeed, this renders increasingly problematic the very notion of a “British capitalist class”; in practice, ownership of “British” capital has become progressively dispersed across the globe, a process facilitated by transnational mergers and buy-outs.

Likewise, the proliferation of trading links between different states has effectively blurred the lines of demarcation between nominally separate national economies. It would be more realistic now to speak of there being a single global economy. Even so, many locally-based businesses are indirectly tied into this economy as subcontractors to multinationals. Not only that, the ever-deepening nexus of international linkages means they cannot escape recessionary perturbations emanating from elsewhere when these impact upon the local economy. At the same time, the limited leeway of governments to ameliorate such localised effects has been correspondingly reduced.

What applies at the national level applies even more so at the regional or subnational. While Wales and Scotland have been given a measure of devolution of power from Westminster, in other parts of the country the struggle to achieve this is still ongoing. This is particularly so in the case of Cornwall. Situated in the far south-west of Britain, Cornwall is likewise part of its “Celtic fringe” with a strong sense of its own identity.

There are a number of organisations which can be loosely described as “Cornish nationalist”. At one extreme are the hard-liners who advocate full independence, some of whom, according to a recent BBC documentary (11 February), have links with paramilitary contacts; the so-called “Cornish Liberation Army”. Evidence of paramilitary activity is scant, the most significant instance of which in recent years occurred in the St Austell areas in the early 1980s. At the other extreme are the more numerically important “soft” nationalists typified by the recently formed “Cornish Solidarity” organisation. Its goal is basically a better deal for Cornwall through greater local autonomy. Soft nationalism extends also to the main UK-based political parties, like the Liberal Democrats, who for historical reasons have long been the dominant political force in Cornwall.

There are other variations amongst the nationalists. Some focus mainly on the Cornish as a supposed ethnic group; others are more inclusive, welcoming anyone into their ranks who live in, and “care about”, Cornwall. Since probably a majority of residents in Cornwall are of non-Cornish extraction—according to one estimate, nearly 70 percent—this would appear to be the more judicious approach to adopt. Nevertheless, it does rather vitiate the notion of Cornwall as a distinct “cultural region”. But this is the lynchpin of the approach of Mebyon Kernow, the largest Cornish nationalist party. In their recent election document, Cornwall 2000—the Way Ahead, they make the following statement:

Cornwall is recognised as a cultural region yet ignored as an economic region. There is a lack of harmony between culture and economics here, but the answer to this imbalance is simple. Base the economic on the cultural region.

Last tin mine

There is little doubt that as an “economic region” Cornwall fares badly. In an article in the Guardian (20 April), the Camborne-Redruth area in particular was portrayed as a scene of post-industrial dereliction “worse than Albania” following the closure there of South Crofty, Europe’s last remaining tin mine. That was surely a gross exaggeration. Nevertheless, with a per capita GDP of only 72.2 percent of the UK average, Cornwall is the poorest county in England, notwithstanding its picture postcard image.

According to Mebyon Kernow, “social deprivation, low wages and high unemployment in Cornwall are in direct proportion to our distance from the decision-making centre in London”. This conveniently overlooks the fact that, in terms of absolute numbers, the greatest concentration of poverty in the UK is actually to be found in London itself, notably in the boroughs of Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets situated within a few miles of Westminster and Whitehall and which have a combined population exceeding that of Cornwall.

Certainly, Cornwall’s remoteness from the major population centres like London has contributed to its relative poverty, but not for the reason Mebyon Kernow suggests. Rather, it has to do with the spatial economics of capitalism itself: the difficulty of gaining access to the large markets “up country” and, associated with this, the inability to capitalise on economies of scale. This is one reason why Cornish wages are so low, to compensate for the additional transportation costs of their employers.

Blaming Cornwall’s plight on the bias of Westminster politicians amounts to a kind of conspiracy theory with little foundation in fact. The government’s proposal to set up a seven-county South-West regional development agency based in Bristol is typically seen by nationalists as yet another example of it ignoring the needs of Cornwall for the sake of administrative convenience. Among the nationalists’ list of demands is the establishment of a Cornish Development Agency—as if, in Cornish hands, things would improve. Tell that to Cornish workers who are exploited just as ruthlessly by their Cornish bosses as by their up-country cousins. But even if a Development Agency were to materialise, with the best will in the world it would not significantly affect the basic economic realities the region faces.

Furthermore, as everywhere else, more and more of the vital decisions affecting the local economy have little to do with Westminster. Thus, the decision last year to close the symbolically important South Crofty mine was taken by its Canadian owners in the context of a precipitous fall in the world price of tin and cheaper production methods abroad.

The case of South Crofty highlights the importance of inward investment to the Cornish economy. By the same token, it exposes the futility of treating it as though it were a self-contained “region”. To look at the world in these terms is to succumb to the myopia of the development planner, too intent upon empire-building to see the larger picture. Capitalism simply does not operate in this way. Most of the big UK chains have outlets throughout Cornwall. Some of the largest concerns are not even based in Britain. SWEB, for example, the main supplier of electricity, is owned by an American company; English China Clays was recently taken over by a French firm.

That said, a striking feature of Cornish economy is the extent of small and medium-sized firms; over 90 percent of firms have a workforce of less than 25. This is partly attributable to the peculiar economic profile of Cornwall and its heavy reliance on tourism, fishing and farming. Even its traditional mining industry has historically tended towards fragmentation.

At its height, in the mid-19th century, the predominant mode of payment was the tribute system rather than conventional wage labour. Small gangs of labourers would contract with landowners to mine the ore, sharing out the proceeds from its sale amongst themselves. It has been argued that the tribute system, coupled with the quietistic influence of Methodism, have been largely responsible for the relative absence of class consciousness among Cornish miners. This impeded the growth of a traditional “Labour movement” in Cornwall while the weak hold of the big landowners on smallholders curbed the influence of Toryism, allowing a unique Cornish style of politics to emerge in the 19th century—a petty-bourgeois cocktail of liberalism and non-conformism.

Maverick millionaire

The economic background likewise helps to explain the marked hostility in Cornwall toward Europe. Many traditional industries have been adversely affected by EU regulations, such as the imposition of quotas on the Cornish fishing fleet, leading to its partial de-commissioning. Similarly, the proposal to join the single currency, insofar as this will deleteriously impact upon small businesses, will particularly hit Cornwall, given the predominance of small-scale enterprises.

It is not surprising under the circumstances that anti-European political parties, like the UKIP, fared so well in the recent European elections in Cornwall. For many years, anti-European sentiments have been regularly aired in the form of full-page weekly advertisement in all the main Cornish papers. The author of this frankly xenophobic rubbish, vacillating confusedly between Cornish and British nationalism, is a maverick millionaire, Mike Robertson (writing under the pseudonym, “Tripehound”) and founder of the home-grown Trago Mills chain.

Such confusion is typical of the nationalists in general: on the one hand, pushing for greater economic assistance for Cornwall from Westminster, on the other, seeking to weaken its links with Westminster. It’s a case of wanting to have your nationalist cake and eat it. This confusion is manifest too with respect to Europe. One of the main aims of the nationalist movement has been to get Objective One Status for Cornwall thereby attracting European grants of up to £500 million over several years. Only those regions with a GDP of less than 75 percent of the EU average could qualify for such funding but until recently, Cornwall was, for statistical purposes, lumped together with its wealthier neighbour, Devon, and thus denied funding. With this obstacle having recently been removed, Cornwall has now finally achieved this aim.

Whether this will make any impact on the extent of poverty in Cornwall is doubtful; more likely it will only exacerbate the degree of social polarisation and hasten the disintegration of what remains of a distinctive Cornish culture, now pitifully parodied by the ubiquitous theme park. That, after all, is the natural tendency of capitalist development.

As Cornwall inexorably succumbs to the imperatives of a McDonald’s culture, its nationalists would do well to reflect. For by striving to promote capitalist development, they have inadvertently assisted this outcome, poisoning, so to speak, the very ground in which their own cultural pretensions are rooted.

Robin Cox

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.