The Passing Political Show: Vacancy for a Caretaker (2022)

 

From the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vacancy for a Caretaker 

So Boris Johnson was finally forced to resign. Luck ran out for this ‘likeable rogue’ who was twice elected Mayor of Labour-dominated London, who delivered Brexit for the dodgy financiers who funded the Vote Leave campaign, and who won over dozens of Labour strongholds in the North and the Midlands to the Tories. In the end his lying, his attempts to protect his cronies in trouble, his partying while the rest of us were locked down, turned him into a ‘despicable rogue’ – and an electoral liability for the Tories, which of course is why most of his MPs turned on him.

What was it that attracted many members of the working class to this privileged (Eton and Bullingdon Club) member of the ruling class ?

As most members of the capitalist class were opposed to the UK leaving the EU, to win the referendum on UK membership he had to adopt a populist pose, presenting the campaign for Brexit as a struggle of ordinary people to take back control, not just from the Eurocrats of Brussels but also in opposition to the London-based British Establishment. With some jingoistic beating of drums and waving of flags, it worked. He successfully plotted to overthrow and replace Theresa May as Prime Minister, and fought and won the 2019 general election under the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’. He appointed a Vote Leave cabinet rather than a traditional Tory one, and only got Brexit ‘done’ by signing a protocol on Northern Ireland that he had no intention of honouring and which may yet lead to a trade war with the EU.

His flagship policy was the populist one of ‘levelling up’ the standard of living of Brexit voters in the North and Midlands to that supposedly enjoyed by everyone in London and the South East but that was just the usual, worthless politician’s promise. When a shortage of HGV drivers developed, partly due to Brexit, and their wages rose, he said that a high-wage economy had been one of the aims of Brexit. When later, however, the rise in the cost of living led other workers to demand – and strike – to get higher wages, he opposed this. Just as any government of capitalism, including a Labour one, has to, because all governments have to accept that the capitalist system runs on profits and that profits therefore have to be given priority over wages.

This is why the personality – whether good or bad – of those presiding over the operation of capitalism doesn’t matter. No leader, even if they were a saint (which Johnson certainly isn’t) can make capitalism work for those obliged to work for wages. It is a profit-making system that can only run, and be run, in the interest of the profit-takers. It is this that limits what governments can do. When it comes to the way the economy works, governments are in office but not in power, they are caretakers for capitalism.

This is why workers shouldn’t place their trust in leaders, shouldn’t hand over their responsibility to act for themselves to others who promise to do something for them, as unfortunately most repeatedly do at election times. Leaders can’t do anything for us. It’s the system that must be changed, not those who make up the government. Johnson will be replaced by someone else but it won’t make any difference to our everyday life. Conventional politics is ‘a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’. It’s time we got together democratically, without leaders, to put an end to the class system with production for profit that is the cause of the problems we face and which the politicians falsely claim to be able to solve.

How irrelevant can you get?

In June Nicola Sturgeon announced that the devolved administration in Scotland was asking the UK Supreme Court if it would be legal for them to organise a referendum on Scottish independence in October 2023, nine years after the last one.

Since the SNP is not even pretending to propose a change in the economic basis of society, where the means of life are monopolised by a minority and used to make goods and provide services for sale with a view to profit, we can conclude that their case is that capitalism administered by a government in Edinburgh would be better than capitalism administered from London.

It is hard to imagine a proposition, made by a party with some degree of electoral support, that is so easy to refute. Since capitalism is the cause of the problems that wage-workers and their dependants face, the SNP’s proposed change to the political superstructure of society is not going to make any difference from a working class point of view. The problems faced by those obliged to sell their mental and physical energies for a living will continue under a separate Scottish state whose government will be no more able to solve them than the Westminster government has been.

It can’t even be argued that a separate Scottish state would enhance the limited political democracy that exists (and is desirable) under capitalism. Both Britain and Scotland are established constitutional democracies. It is not like a colony seeking independence. In colonies ruled from abroad the struggle for political independence was waged by a native capitalist class with a view to obtaining its own state. In Scotland there is no such class demanding this. The demand for an independent state is put forward just by some politicians and intellectuals. It is irrelevant even from a capitalist point of view.

The struggle to achieve a separate Scottish state only encourages nationalist illusions and prejudices, further dividing the working class. Even the campaign for a referendum, let alone a referendum campaign itself, has this divisive effect.

It is by no means certain that there will be a referendum. The law says that it can’t take place without the approval of the UK state. It is difficult to see how the Supreme Court could over-rule this. Maybe that is what the SNP is banking on. There has to be a British general election before 2024 and a refusal to give permission to hold a referendum could be a useful issue for the SNP to rally its voters.

If, somehow, the referendum does take place it remains to be seen if a majority will again vote to stay with the devil they know or take a leap in the dark. Socialists won’t be opting for either.

Scots Nationalism - Part 2 (1975)

From the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

Last month we traced the development of modern nationalism in Scotland up till the founding of the National Party of Scotland in 1928.

The incredible hotchpotch of ideas contained in the new organisation soon became a cause for alarm among the more sensible members and drove one, Lewis Spence, to complain that the party was

“… a maelstrom boiling and bubbling with the cross-currents of rival and frequently fantastic theories, schemes and. notions we have people who wanted all Scotland to speak the Gaelic…. some hark back to the hope of a sixteenth-century Scotland regained … still others a Jacobite restoration. A certain group sees in the expulsion of all the English and Irish in Scotland the country’s only chance of survival . All is hubbub, outcry, chaos. There is no plan,. Nothing approaching a serious, practical Scotsman-like policy in -either art or politics. (H. J. Hanham, Scottish Nationalism. p. 154)

Poor Spence, but he should have known. With the loss of interest in Home Rule of the Scottish ruling class and their political sidekicks, the nationalist cause had fallen into the hands of all sorts of cranks, literary and otherwise, who were more concerned with “culture” than economics or social matters. Certainly they had little idea of the history of the toilers’ conditions as could be seen by their constant harking back to a mythical time when “our people were prosperous and contented” before the Union.

Anyway, the party was established and membership was open to all. Tories and Liberals as well as Labourites flocked in and even Lord Beaverbrook showed interest. Inevitably, some of the more opportunist leaders wished to “broaden the base of the party” and after an internal battle the party merged with a Tory splinter group to become the Scottish National Party (SNP) in 1934. From then until the 1950s the party endured the usual Right versus Left squabbling and several splits occurred, the largest of which was the setting up of a rival organisation, the Scottish Convention, in the 1940s.

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.

So the SNP may be poised for victory within the foreseeable future. How have they produced this rags-to-riches transformation? Obviously, their case is an economic one. They have taken advantage of working class discontent over insecurity, unemployment, low living standards, low expectations, and all the other problems which capitalism brings to workers the world over in one degree or another. They were also helped by widespread disillusion with the two major parties and Labour and Tory supporters have deserted to the nationalists in their tens of thousands.

Basically, the SNP is just another reformist party angling for support on a programme of reforms and even styles itself on the Scandinavian social democrats. After their first breakthrough in l968 the party went into a serious decline which lasted until 1970. Then came the discovery of vast quantities of North Sea oil. Now they can outbid all the others by proposing that the wealth from this oil be divided among five million people only, instead of fifty million, and paint a picture of how, given self-government, oil revenues will provide a paradise in Scotland.

Predictably the nationalists claim that their first priority is to launch a “war on poverty” and the party’s manifesto, Scotland’s Future, gives some idea of how they intend to do this.

For example, pensionable couples are told their combined pension will amount to the national minimum wage which, at today’s level, will be £25, with a single pensioner getting £15. So after a lifetime of producing fortunes for the parasite class worn-out wage slaves are to be “rewarded” with this ! Other dramatic SNP proposals include spending an extra 10 per cent on education and on health services, and just what significant difference this will make to working class life is a mystery to us. The important thing to note is that these are merely promises, and politicians have always found these far easier to make than fulfil.

The writings and utterances of SNP spokesmen present a bewildering display of confusion and contradiction and it is difficult to say whether they are more naïve than dishonest. William Wolfe, the party Chairman, claims the class-struggle can be avoided by passing legislation which outlaws “undue concentration of wealth in a few hands”. We wonder if they mentioned this to the capitalist Sir Hugh Fraser when he joined their ranks last year?

The party repeats the hoary old lie “that it is a lack of communications between management and workers that causes industrial strife”. It could not, of course, have anything to do with a fundamental clash of interests like, for example, the workers wanting better wages and conditions and the management, on behalf of the owners, not willing to grant these.

Despite the SNP’s indignant denials the idea somehow persists in some minds that the party is “socialist”. William Wolfe in his book, Scotland Lives, writes that he wants to give

“….the Scottish people opportunities for their own enterprise and capital to be used in giving their fellow Scots employment.” (p. 43)

Obviously, by “the Scottish people” he means owners of capital like Sir Hugh Fraser. Perhaps the latter joined the SNP on reading this passage in Wolfe’s book?

Another leading member, Mrs. Margo MacDonald, was asked in an interview how she reacted to the suggestion that there’s no advantage in replacing English or American capitalists with Scottish capitalists. She replied

“Well there is, actually. In the strict material sense there is. The Scottish capitalists, while still making lots of money, will be creating jobs in Scotland. They will realise that there is a quicker return to be made by, for instance, refining all of the oil in Scotland. So we would be slightly better off. Of course I agree exploitation by Scots is just as immoral in the long run. (Glasgow News, 12th March 1974)

So there it is. For the Scottish capitalist, “lots of money” and a “quicker return”. For the worker, the promise that he will be “slightly better off”.

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. An ominous glimpse of what leading SNP members regard as “prosperity” can be gained from their repeated claim that “Scotland was the wealthiest nation in the world” (Wolfe p. 12) up till the end of the 1914-18 war. How the working class lived in those days does not seem to have even occurred to them.

The SNP see themselves as visionaries but they cannot see beyond the narrow confines of the nation-state, conceived in pre-medieval times and as outmoded as the clan system it replaced. It is the Socialist Party of Great Britain who are the true men and women of vision, who look forward to and struggle for a new world of common ownership and democratic control of society’s resources, and uncluttered with the frontiers and class divisions which go hand-in-hand with “the nation”.

Vic Vanni

Editorial: Towards a Disunited Kingdom (2020)

Editorial from the March 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The turmoil of the Brexit process has exacerbated the fissures within the UK, which threaten to tear it apart. The Scottish National Party leader, Nicola Sturgeon, seized on the fact that the majority of Scottish voters opted to remain in the EU, and is demanding a second Independence referendum. The border between the North of Ireland and the Irish Republic which appeared to be invisible since the Good Friday agreement became a stumbling block in the Brexit negotiations. Sinn Fein wasted no time in pressing for a border poll which they hope will lead to the reunification of Ireland.

The spectre of Scottish independence is nothing new. Scottish workers were badly affected by the economic downturns of the 1970s and 1980s which hit the traditional industries (shipbuilding, coal, steel) particularly hard. Many workers were also dissatisfied with Labour governments. North Sea oil seemed to promise higher living standards. In these circumstances the SNP was able to position itself as the workers’ party. With the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, the then Labour government thought they had seen off the nationalist threat. However, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many workers turned away from the mainstream capitalist parties. In Scotland, this helped the SNP to secure a majority in the 2011 elections for the Scottish Parliament and a landslide in the 2015 General Election.

The Irish border has been in contention since 1921. However, with the repression of the Civil Rights movement in the North of Ireland in the late 1960s, Irish republicanism experienced an upsurge of support. In the 1980s Sinn Féin was able to capitalise on the outrage that the British government’s response to the hunger strikes elicited in Catholic working-class areas. It also managed to gain a foothold by providing welfare services to Catholic workers. With the peace process and the IRA laying down its weapons, Sinn Féin was able to reinvent itself as a workers’ party.

In last December’s general election, the SNP increased its seats in Scotland, whereas the pro-Brexit Conservative Party prevailed in England and Wales. In Northern Ireland, for the first time, Nationalists won more seats than Unionists. Sinn Féin has made a significant breakthrough in last month’s general election in the Irish Republic.

It must be noted that the electoral successes of the SNP and Sinn Féin do not always reflect support for their respective aims of an independent Scotland and a united Ireland, but more often a deep dissatisfaction with the political status quo. Nevertheless, these parties will use their increased leverage to push for their aims.

Do the working class have any interest in whether or not the United Kingdom remains intact? Or should they, as the Left urges them to, support an independent Scotland and a united Ireland? We say no on both accounts as, wherever the boundaries are drawn, workers will still be subject to the vagaries of the global market system and will continue to experience problems such as unemployment and low wages. Workers will need to organise for a socialist society which will abolish borders rather than rearrange them.

Neither ‘Yes’ nor ‘No’ but World Socialism (2014)

From the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In March the Scottish nationalist website Bella Caledonia interviewed ‘veteran left-winger’ Tariq Ali after he called for a ‘Yes’ vote in this month’s referendum in Scotland. We disagree.

‘Scottish Labour politicians claim they speak for internationalism, and often accuse independence supporters of parochialism and petty nationalism. As an internationalist living in London, why are you supporting independence?’

This was first question put to Tariq Ali. It is true that the supporters of Scottish formal ‘independence’ (any meaningful economic independence is impossible in today’s interdependent world) are promoting ‘petty nationalism’ but, as Tariq Ali rightly replied, the Scottish Labour politicians opposed to it are not internationalists. They are British nationalists. But then he played on the ambiguity of the word ‘internationalist’ to argue that to be one didn’t mean you had to be anti-nationalist and so there was nothing incoherent about him supporting Scottish nationalism. This is indeed one meaning of the word – an internationalist as an inter-nationalist who stands for friendly relations between ‘nations’. In other words, someone who accepts the sense and legitimacy of nations, nationalism and the nation-state. It is because of this that we prefer to call ourselves ‘world’ rather than ‘international’ socialists. In our view, the nation-state is a capitalist political form and the nationalism they cultivate divides the world working class. Bella Caledonia took up this in one of their other questions:

‘A lot of socialists would deny that there is something particularly toxic about the British state, and would say that all capitalist states are bad.’

We are not sure whether a lot of people say that all capitalist states are bad, but that’s essentially our position. Tariq Ali conceded that ‘on one level, it can be said that the capitalist economy of these states is more or less the same’ but went on to argue that different states have different peculiarities. The British state, he said, needed ‘modernisation’ by which he meant that the monarchy and the House of Lords needed to be abolished. In fact the main reason why he supports Scottish independence seems to be because he feels that a breakaway by Scotland will help achieve this (the interview is headed ‘Dismantling the British State’). This is similar to the reason Marx gave in the 1860s and 70s for supporting Irish independence but that was 150 years ago and since then the British state has been ‘modernised’, ie the political power that the landed aristocracy wielded in Marx’s day has been broken and the state is now completely controlled by the capitalist class via universal suffrage. In any event, though socialists are interested in there being political democracy, we are not interested in making any capitalist state more efficient and fit for purpose. Tariq Ali finished his answer to this question with the jibe (and non-sequitur): ‘of course, you can argue that since capitalism is now dominant everywhere, then one shouldn’t do anything. But that would be a retreat into total passivity and fatalism.’ A more logical conclusion from accepting that capitalism is now dominant everywhere would be to work for its abolition everywhere, but that’s not Tariq Ali’s view. He wants to retreat into the futility of trying to reform capitalism everywhere, as he made clear in answer to this other question.

‘What’s your views on the Nordic model and other varieties of capitalism? Can Scotland draw on these ideas?’

To which Tariq Ali replied:

  ‘Well, we’re talking about a period in which the capitalist system has triumphed, and the ideas of socialism have suffered a huge defeat globally. So we’re living in a very strange transition period, which may well last until the end of the century. One shouldn’t exclude that. So one has to operate with what exists, and see how capital in its worst aspects can be regulated, how a state can be regulated that works for the benefit of working people.’

Tariq Ali used to be a ‘revolutionary’ Trotskyist, but he’s now an open reformist. Ironically, just like the Labour Party which he rightly has no time for, he argues that the only choice today is between different varieties of capitalism. Yes, a capitalism which spent more on better education, health, housing and other services would be nice – if you could get it. But you can’t, at least not permanently. The post-war Attlee Labour government, which he praises and urges an independent Scottish government to follow, did introduce some reforms which coincided with the general capitalist interest for an educated, healthy and productive (of profit) workforce. But capitalism cannot be ‘regulated’ to work ‘for the benefit of working people’. The priority under capitalism is profit and profit-making and all governments have to accept and abide by this, as the record of all governments including Labour has shown. Some of them set out to improve things for working people but all of them ended up having to give priority to profits even when this meant making things worse for working people by, for instance, holding down wages, worsening services and cutting benefits.

Bella Caledonia did not pose a specific question about what would happen to the standard of living of workers if Scotland broke away, but Tariq Ali himself did in answer to another question:

  ‘I remember when Tony Blair came on his last tour of Scotland, and he said, If you vote for independence, every family will lose £5,000 a year. Who dreamed up that figure?’

While it is true, as Tariq Ali went on to point out, that this is an arbitrary figure and meant to scare people into voting ‘No’, it is an argument that the ‘Yes’ campaign has to face and cannot simply dismiss out of hand. People could become worse off. This is what happened in Ireland when and after it got ‘independence’. Tariq Ali’s reply was that there’s no reason living standards should decline ‘if the economy is properly handled.’ This amounts to saying that at least people wouldn’t be worse off (of course claims that people would be better off are just the usual empty politicians’ promise). That may well be true but in that case what’s all the fuss about? If it’s not going to make any difference to living standards either way why bother taking sides in the referendum? Who needs to care about the result (apart from the Scottish nationalist politicians who would like to be able to strut on the international stage)? Some (such as these same politicians) will reply that that it’s not a sordid, material question but about ‘freedom’ and ‘dignity’. To which we reply: that’s just divisive, nationalist rhetoric. It does not deflect us, and should not deflect other workers in Scotland, from talking up the position ‘Neither Yes Nor No But World Socialism’ and writing this across their ballot paper.

Editorial: SNP Hypocrisy (2012)

Editorial from the February 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politicians on both sides of the border are getting worked up over a referendum on Scottish independence and the media are encouraging the rest of us to get involved. But why should we?

It is of no concern to workers in Scotland whether they are governed from London or by a separate independent government in Edinburgh. This is because the cause of the problems they face is the capitalist economic system of production for profit, not the form of government. And the capitalist economic system would continue to exist in a politically independent Scotland.

The only people to benefit from Scottish independence would be the local politicians, who would be able to award themselves grander titles and grander salaries. For workers on these islands there is a precedent in Ireland, which broke away from the UK in 1922. Can anyone claim that this has made any difference to the position of workers there?

In Scotland’s case not even the local capitalists would benefit. An independent Scotland would have no choice but to stay in the EU and so could not erect tariff walls to protect its capitalists as the Irish government did for a while to try to protect the fledgling capitalist class there.

The fuss, however, does illustrate two general political points. First, about how referendums can be manipulated to try to get the result the organisers want. Wily politician that he is, SNP leader Alex Salmond knows that if the vote is a straight yes or no on independence, the chances are that he will lose. So he wants to put two questions to the electorate,. One on independence. The other on increased powers for the Scottish Parliament, which he knows would have a better chance of being carried. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has made the same calculation and so is seeking to impose a vote on independence only.

The second point is about the relationship between declared goal and immediate aims. It’s a question that concerned the pre-WWI Social Democratic movement too. As well as having socialism as their ‘maximum’ programme they had a ‘minimum’ programme of reforms to be achieved under capitalism. As a result their support came to be built up on the basis of these reforms rather than socialism, and they ended up becoming, in practice, capitalist reform parties, with socialism as a mere desirable long-term aim. Eventually that was dropped too.

The SNP has got itself into a similar situation. Its long-term aim on paper may be Scottish independence but it has built up its electoral support on the basis of being a better administrator of political affairs in Scotland than the Labour Party. Its voters will not have voted for it because they want Scottish independence – which is why Salmond lacks the courage of his convictions.

We don’t want or care about Scottish independence (any more than we care or support a “United Kingdom” or an “independent Britain”) so it’s not our business to advise those who really want this how to best go about getting it. But we do want world socialism and do know that the way to further this cause is to advocate it and it alone and not seek support on any ‘minimum’ programme of reforms.

That way, support for a socialist political party will be support for socialism and not for something less. When a majority for this has evolved, socialists would have no fear of a referendum on the single question of “Capitalism or Socialism?” and would not want, would in fact indignantly reject, a fall-back, second question on, “Do you want a reformed capitalism?” Unlike Salmond, we’d say bring it on.

Sting in the Tail: Labour Sees Stars (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Sees Stars

The main British political parties have long-since been aping the American practice of wheeling-out showbiz stars to support them at elections.

Last month there was a big swing of Scottish "artistes" from Labour to the Scottish National Party. Labour countered by parading their famous faces before the media with comedian Robbie Coltrane topping the bill.

Alas, the show bombed when Robbie fluffed his lines by voicing support for "an Independent Scotland", which is the SNP's policy, instead of Labour's devolution policy.

Serves the Labourites right! What kind of party is it that would even want, let alone seek, the votes of those who would vote for it because some politically clueless entertainer supported It?

Where Power Lies

At a recent Socialist Party meeting a young left-winger claimed that real power lay not with parliament but in the boardrooms of big business. It Is an old, familiar argument but it bears no resemblance to what actually happens.

For example, the Institute of Directors urges the government to cut the standard rate of taxation to 20p and so bring economic recovery. The Confederation of British Industries tells the government that the way to recovery is not through tax cuts but by more government spending, training programmes, etc.

What does the government do in the face of all this boardroom "power"? It simply ignores the I of D and the CBI and steers the course it thinks is best for British capitalism.

& Where It doesn’t

The other leg of the above argument is that real power lies not only in the boardrooms but with the military brasshats.

That this belief is equally wrong can be shown by the latest cuts in the size of the army. These are so large that the House of Commons Defence Committee warned that: -

The reduction might be so great that the force would not be able to cope with crises or even peacetime duties . . .  and effectively police Northern Ireland.

ITV's Oracle 6 March

And what can the brasshats do about It? Nothing except fume with impotent rage as the number of soldiers that they have to play with is cut and cut again. Where does power lie?

Don't Bank On It

Many people have funny ideas about banks. They think banks have unlimited funds to lend, make bigger profits than any other industry and so on.

To these errors is added one from a writer in the February issue of the anarchist paper Freedom. He claims that banks are a "largely risk-free Investment" for British capitalists.

A glance at the current plight of the banking industry shows otherwise. During February Britain's "Big Four" banks, Barclay's, Midland, Lloyd's and NatWest, between them declared another £6 billion in bad debts for 1991 to add to the £4 billion total for 1990.

On top of this their combined profits fell by £700 million, their share prices are depressed and all four predict more hard times to come.

If British capitalists are looking for a risk-free investment then banking certainly isn't it.

Got Your Share?

Since 1979 the number of shareholders has increased from 3 million to 11 million now. This is almost entirely due to privatisation, the flotation of Abbey National, etc., but even so, the proportion of shares held by individuals has fallen from 28.2% to 21.3% during that time.

Now comes an organisation called ProShare which aims to reverse this decline:

The ProShare chairman said yesterday that share ownership was hindered by ignorance, high dealing costs and unfair tax treatment . . .

The Herald 21 February

ProShare plans to educate the ignorant about the risks and rewards in owning shares, press for individual investors to get the same taxation treatment as the big institutions, promote the spread of employee share owning schemes, and more.

Do we have a moral to this story? The Herald obligingly provides one for us:

It all sounds very grand and ambitious. Of course one "black Monday" could undo all the good work.

Dignity of Labour?

The quest for profit is unrelenting in a capitalist society. How unrelenting was shown in The Independent (13 March). German shipowners have been given a trial dispensation by the government on the manning levels of container ships.

And so it is that the glass lavatory has made its debut as a new navigational aid to keep up 24-hour-a-day productivity. A transparent toilet giving panoramic views of both port and starboard has been installed on the bridge of three ships owned by Hapag Lloyd, the large German shipowner. The commanding WC allows crew numbers to be cut to 13 for the 30,000 ton container ships as part of trials for new low-manning arrangements. The requirement to have at least two people on lookout at any time has been suspended as a result.

It is good to see that the workers are not taking this lying down - or rather sitting down. Indeed one of them Knut Schronder, a ship's pilot on the Kell Canal, shows a great deal of awareness about capitalism and how it works.

In a recent letter of protest to the German transport ministry he wrote: "To me this is an expression of utter contempt for human beings. Productivity must be kept up even when shitting. You can’t say clearer than that when declaring your support for an unsocial market economy."

The Scorpion.

The Socialist Party and the Scottish Referendum (2014)

From the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of us don’t own a single square inch of Scotland. It doesn’t belong to us: we just live here and work for the people who do own it. In or out of the Union, that won’t change.

In Scotland, society is run in the interests of those who own the wealth. They argue among each other over billions of barrels of oil, GDP rates, profits and exports, because where the borders lie matters to them. Every border is an opportunity to wring cash out of other property owners.

Scotland will remain dependent upon their whims and interests whatever the outcome of the referendum. 

They’ll try to sway us one way or another with crumbs (or the promises of crumbs) but we’ll only get what they feel they can spare to protect their privilege and wealth. We will remain dependent upon their investments, making a profit for them before we can get our needs and interests met.

The only way to stop this dependency would be for us to take ownership and control of the wealth of the world into our own hands. We could, together, use the wealth of the world to meet our mutual needs and gain the true independence of being able to control our work and our lives in a free and voluntary association of equals.

Though the outcome of this referendum is irrelevant, it is an opportunity for us to tell our fellow workers that this is what we want. We don’t have to suffer in silence, we can go to the polling stations and put ‘NEITHER YES NOR NO BUT WORLD SOCIALISM’ on the ballot paper. Then join The Socialist Party to fight for an independent world.

Editorial: Is it Better to be Exploited by One’s Fellow-countrymen? (2014)

Editorial from the September 2014 issue of the Socialist

Standard

‘If they speak consciously and openly to the working class, then they summarise their philanthropy in the following words: It is better to be exploited by one’s fellow-countrymen than by foreigners.’ (Marx, 1848)

A separate parliament in Scotland would be a capitalist parliament. It would not provide Scottish workers with any greater control over their own lives. Scotland would remain an integral part of international capitalism. An Edinburgh sovereign parliament will leave the workers in exactly the same position as before.

Scottish nationalism is the reaction of one section of the Scottish capitalist class to what they perceive as the declining fortunes of British capitalism and their ‘unequal’ treatment within it. They seek to keep the taxes on North Sea oil revenues and create a corporate tax structure more suited to their own needs. The SNP advocate industrial harmony and an end to class conflict. They entice Scottish workers with offers of a reformist programme and wild promises of more money and a better life. But no natural resources will be put to a sensible or beneficial use until the working class itself has gained control over the use of these valuable and non-renewable resources.

The question of independence threatens relations between English/Welsh and Scottish workers. Scottish workers are asked to place their trust in the local employing class rather than in unity with other workers. United working-class action cannot be easily achieved by insisting that there are supposed national differences in consciousness that distinguish Scottish workers from, say, their English brothers and sisters. And certainly it is not aided by combining with particular Scottish bosses, which lead Scots working people to identify with Scottish businessmen and landowners on the basis of shared ‘nationality’.

Working class unity enables us to combine our tactics for defending our class with the strategy of liberating our class. Socialists do not fall into the trap of the ‘progressive’ facade of nationalism. The success of the right-wing Ukrainian and Russian nationalists shows the danger of believing that radical nationalist slogans always lead to radical results. Scottish nationalism does not strengthen the campaign for socialism or create a united, class-conscious working class, but fragments and weakens it.

To those who are in the ‘Yes’ camp, we are saying independence will not improve your condition one iota. Only class struggle could do that and only with difficulty. Any success or otherwise of any workers’ movement in Scotland depends on close ties with similar movements in England (and elsewhere). At the same time, we are not defending ‘British nationalism’ and the unity of the United Kingdom in any way. That would be an endorsement for the status quo, something we do not support. So we do not argue that the present constitutional arrangement benefits ordinary people either. The liberation for Scottish workers can only come about by overthrowing capitalism itself. If this is not done, no amount of separatism can ever succeed in bringing freedom. Instead of tragically wasting time fostering nationalism, workers should be struggling for a socialist society without national borders.

'Because the condition of the workers of all countries is the same, because their interests are the same, their enemies the same, they must also fight together, they must oppose the brotherhood of the bourgeoisie of all nations with a brotherhood of the workers of all nations.'- Engels, November 29, 1847.

Scottish? English? Who Cares? (2014)

From the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the run-up to the referendum in Scotland in September we begin a three-part series exposing the myths surrounding events in Scottish history.

‘Reive’ is an early English word for ‘to rob’, from the Northumbrian Scots verb reifen, related to the modern English word ‘ruffian’. The reivers also added the words ‘blackmail’ and ‘bereaved’ to the English language.

During the wars between Scotland and England, the lives and livelihood of the people on the borders would be devastated by the contending armies. Crops were destroyed, homesteads burnt and the people murdered or dispersed. Those living in places known as Liddesdale, Redesdale and Tynedale were the most affected as, for reasons of geography, the invaders regularly used these routes. Families on either side of the Border had a lot in common regardless of whether they were Scots or English. It is no coincidence that these people, having their crops regularly destroyed and their livestock stolen, looked for other means of sustaining themselves and their families. They took to reiving.

Royal authority in either kingdom was often weak and there was little loyalty to a feeble or distant monarch. The uncertainty of existence meant that communities or people kindred to each other would seek security through their own strength and improve their existence at the expense of their rivals.

Bishop John Leslie of Ross wrote of the Border Reivers:

‘In time of war they were readily reduced to extreme poverty by the almost daily inroads of the enemy, so, on the restoration of peace, they entirely neglect to cultivate their lands, though fertile, from the fear of the fruits of their labour being immediately destroyed by a new war whence it happens they seek their substances by robberies or plunder and rapine (for they are particularly averse to the shedding of blood) nor do they much concern themselves whether it be from Scots or English that they rob...They have a persuasion that all property is common by law of nature and is therefore liable to be appropriated by them in their necessity.’ (our emphasis)

The Border reivers, nick-named the ‘steel bonnets’, raided along the border from the late 13th century to the beginning of the 17th century. Their ranks consisted of both Scottish and English families, and they raided the entire border country without regard to nationality. Border families practised customs similar to those of the Highland Gaels and although feudalism existed, loyalty to kin was much more important and this is what distinguished the Borderers from other Lowland Scots. Relationships between the Border clans varied from uneasy alliance to open deadly feud. There being much cross-border migration, families that were once Scots now identify themselves as English and vice versa.

The reivers were both English and Scottish and raided both sides of the border impartially, so long as the people they raided had no powerful protectors and no connection to their own kin. When fighting as part of larger English or Scottish armies, Borderers were difficult to control as many had relatives on both sides of the border, despite laws forbidding international marriage by punishment of death. They could claim to be of either nationality, describing themselves as Scottish or English at will. At battles such as Ancrum Moor in Scotland in 1545, Borderers changed sides in mid-battle, to curry favour with the likely victors, and at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh in 1547, an observer (William Patten) noticed that the Scottish and English borderers were talking to each other in the midst of battle, and on being spotted put on a show of fighting. Indeed the Borderers had a much closer allegiance to their family than to their country. Raids were made, not in the name of Scotland or England, but in the name of their family or clan. A Border official, Thomas Musgrave said:  ‘They are people that will be Scottishe when they will and English at their pleasure.’

When a man was killed his whole family became involved in a feud with the family who had done the killing. Reprisals were not just against the killer's immediate family but against anyone with the same surname. Mostly feuds were English against English and Scot against Scot. These feuds could last for generations and families could be engaged in several feuds with several other families. The authorities were reluctant to get involved in feuds because it was their thinking that they could stand back and watch troublesome families kill each other and rid the authorities of problems with these families.

The Debatable Lands lay between Scotland and England, extending from the Solway Firth near Carlisle to Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway, the largest population centre being Canonbie, and which country's sovereignty it lay under was a matter of dispute. Some twelve miles long and three to four miles wide, the boundaries were marked by the rivers Liddel and Esk in the east and the River Sark in the west. For over three hundred years they were effectively controlled by local clans, such as the Armstrongs, who successfully resisted any attempt by the Scottish or English governments to impose their authority and who could alone put 3,000 men in the field. They launched frequent raids on farms and settlements outside the Debatable Lands and the profits enabled them to become major landowners.

In 1530, King James V broke the strength of the Armstrongs by hanging Johnnie Armstrong of Gilnockie and 31 others. In 1551 the Crown officers of England and Wales, in an attempt to clear out the trouble makers, declared that ‘All Englishmen and Scottishmen, after this proclamation made, are and shall be free to rob, burn, spoil, slay, murder and destroy all and every such persons, their bodies, buildings, goods and cattle as do remain or shall inhabit upon any part of the said Debatable Land without any redress to be made for the same.’

Upon his accession to the English throne, James VI of Scotland (who became James I of England) moved hard against the reivers, abolishing Border Law and the very term ‘Borders’ in favour of ‘Middle Shires’, and dealing out stern justice to reivers. He embarked on the so-called ‘Pacification of the Borders’.

James was determined to have a United Kingdom. He proclaimed that ‘if any Englishman steal in Scotland or any Scotsman steal in England any goods or cattle which amount to 12 pence, he shall be punished by death.’ The most blatant offenders were rounded up and served with what was known as ‘Jeddert Justice’ - summary execution. Some families abandoned their reiver connections and found favour with the king and joined in the subjugation of the old reiving families to be rewarded with the lands of their former friends and allies. All Borderers were forbidden to carry weapons and fortified tower houses destroyed. Reiving families were dispossessed of their lands, the people scattered or deported, and many families rounded up and banished to Ireland where they partly made up those who became known as the Ulster-Scots. And there lies another tragic tale of blood-soaked nationalism and unionism!

ALJO