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A Mountain To Climb: the Scottish Referendum

13th October 2014

A Mountain To Climb: the Scottish Referendum

Labour Party member and ‘Socialism First’ blogger, Martyn Cook, gives his view on the Scottish Independence Referendum

‘Socialism First’ was a loose ‘blog-based’ grouping (http://socialismfirst.wordpress.com/) of Labour Party, Communist Party of Britain and trade union members who came together in the independence campaign to articulate the case for a ‘No’ vote based on class politics. Much of the territory for supposed left wing arguments were appropriated quite early on in the campaign by the likes of the Radical Independence Campaign or Labour for Independence, who offered, falsely in our view, that a ‘Yes’ vote would lead to a break-up of the neo-liberal establishment and a subversion of the “Westminster elite”.
Scratch below the surface though, and it was clearly a false option. Economic policy would be less accountable with monetary and fiscal decisions taken by the Bank of England, but with even less political representation for Scotland; entry into the EU with a requirement to sign up to all treaty requirements and membership of the nuclear-military alliance NATO were the order of the day.

Much like UKIP’s status as anti-establishment outsider capitalising on general anger at the failure of politics to deliver change, this discontent is being dangerously misdirected into the politics of scapegoating and blaming others. For UKIP it is ‘Europe’, for the SNP and the ‘Yes’ campaign it was ‘Westminster’. It was startling how often the radical left fell in to the trap of blaming ‘Westminster’ as opposed to the economic system that lay underneath it all.

Admittedly, articulating a positive case for the Union proved difficult. The Labour leadership had bounced Scottish Labour into Better Together, a cross-party campaign with the Liberals and Tories; an open goal for anyone wanting to attack Labour for signs of having (further) abandoned its historical principles. Having jettisoned any discussions of class politics and embracing neo-liberal orthodoxy for the best part of three decades, suddenly spouting about notions of solidarity, shared struggle and arguing for the need to redistribute wealth and power sounded either entirely hollow or simply carried no meaning for most voters on the doorsteps.

The ‘Yes’ campaign did manage to inject a sense of energy and interest into politics again, but primarily in the interest of nationalism. There has been an explosion in the SNP’s membership, with significant increases for the Greens and the SSP as well since the No vote was returned.
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It shows how far Labour has to go if it is regain the trust of working class voters, and the mountain we have to climb to revive an explicitly class-based analysis of society and socialist programme as a solution.

Background

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