[…] Campaigns can ebb
and flow like CND or the Anti-War movement. Instead, what we could be looking at
is a potential republican Movement that could unite struggles in the economic, social,
cultural and political/democratic arenas, and provide an inspiration beyond Scotland.
[…] Nevertheless, the idea of RIC developing further as a new republican Movement
will need to be defended against those who would divert it behind largely electoral
schemes. These would most likely end up providing support for the SNP leadership’s
project of gaining complete hegemony over the movement for Scottish self-determination.
Their interests lie in building up a new Scottish ruling class through pro-business
policies and the incremental reform of the existing UK state.
To counter this prospect,
we need a republican Movement that can sustain itself through its participants’
increased awareness of the nature of the UK state; and their better understanding
of the role of the US/UK imperial alliance in underpinning the current global corporate
order. We need a Movement that addresses the needs of the exploited and oppressed.
This will inevitably have to challenge, not only Westminster and Labour, but also
the Holyrood government and the SNP, and those local councils they run or help to
run, as they continue to attack vital services in working class communities and
their employees’ jobs, pay and conditions.
A sustainable Movement
certainly needs to have a clear political analysis of the situation and the obstacles
we face. It has to develop a longer-term strategy. However, it also needs to build
its own independent base of support. This can not be done by depending on the very
institutions it hopes to replace, even if it may be necessary to participate in
these for a time. Nor can it be done jumping into every fleeting campaign or flash
mob event. These tend to draw their support from the angry and perplexed. In their
frustration, they often look to any means to hit back. Yet some of these activities
can be counter-productive, e.g. “We are the 45%” so, in effect, everyone else, “Stuff
You”! […]
It is worth remembering
that we got plenty of populist rhetoric from the SNP government during the referendum
campaign about the need to create a fairer and more just Scotland, with verbal overtures
to Common Weal and the ‘Nordic’ model. However, the only real change during the
period of the campaign was the SNP’s acceptance of NATO, at the heavy prompting
of its leadership, whilst the catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Libya have both
been supported. […]
The SSP experience has
been examined, and some of the lessons to be drawn from it. But the SSP also inherited
some of the problems of a wider British Left, including those from a Trotskyist
background – whether orthodox or dissident. The 2008 Crash demonstrated their continued
dependency on the state. They could not present a coherent societal alternative
to a capitalism facing a multi-faceted crisis, but fell back instead on half-baked
neo-Keynesian national state ‘solutions’. These would not be able stand up to the
pressures of today’s global capitalism. […]
But how do we get over
the problem of people seeing socialism/communism as being merely abstract propaganda
or an unrealisable utopia? […]
The SNP’s own ‘Independence-Lite’
proposals accept the monarchy and hence the UK state’s Crown Powers; the pound and
hence economic subordination to the City of London; participation in the British
High Command and NATO and hence a continued commitment to imperial wars; and the
continuation of the Protestant establishment and hence institutionalised sectarianism
(which nowadays mainly takes the form of anti-Irish racism in Scotland [17]).
In the event of a ‘Yes’
vote, Salmond offered the prospect of a ’Team Scotland’ consisting of the SNP government
and representatives from all the Holyrood unionist parties entering into negotiations
with Westminster. Any ‘Yes’ vote would have been reduced to a negotiating ploy.
The SNP sees its real mandate as coming from being the elected government of Westminster’s
devolved parliament at Holyrood. Any Movement which based itself on the sovereignty
of the people expressed on September 18th, and which promoted a new Constituent
Assembly with popular involvement, would have been strongly opposed by the SNP government.
Now though, after the
‘No’ vote we confront a different ‘Team Scotland’. This one is led by the British
unionist parties, recently allied together as ‘Better Together’. The SNP government
has now joined this other ‘Team Scotland’. John Swinney, its Right wing Holyrood
Finance Minister, has been assigned to cooperate with Lord Smith’s Commission. The
mainstream unionist parties have called upon Lord Smith to outline further possible
devolution options. His lordship is very much part of UK state’s Crown-in-Parliament
set-up – his title is a bit of a giveaway! Any demands for meaningful change in
Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the UK will only be
answered by small-scale concessions, which do not address genuine popular concerns.
[…]
Therefore, the SNP government,
which accepts so much of the existing UK state set-up and the current global corporate
order, will undermine any real Movement for genuine Scottish self-determination,
the better to sidle up to the mainstream unionist ‘reformers’. To do this, they
will demand those involved in the wider Movement fall in behind a campaign to win
the maximum number of SNP MPs at Westminster in 2015 to “hold the unionists’ feet
to the fire” and deliver on their “vows”. Electoral votes and the number of MPs
are the pieces to be played on the Westminster chessboard.
Meanwhile most of the
things which will affect our lives, will be arranged elsewhere, hidden from any
democratic scrutiny by the UK state’s Crown Powers. Furthermore, neither of the
two SNP MEPs opposed the draconian new Transatlantic Trade and Investment Initiative
in the European Parliament. These are designed to subordinate public interests to
those of the corporations. This is partly because the SNP leadership supports global
corporate capital, and partly because they largely accept the anti-democratic and
bureaucratic nature of the current EU set-up. They just want a seat at the top table.
Therefore, one of the
most important jobs for a new Party in Scotland will be to struggle relentlessly
against any attempts by the SNP leadership to derail a new Movement. At the front
of the Movement’s defence should be RIC. […]
This capitalist modernisation
would still accept the existing global corporate order, highlighted by SNP policy
to cut corporate taxes for transnational companies. The SNP may have developed a
slightly more critical attitude towards the City of London, than in the pre-2008
Crash days, when it fawned before the Royal Bank and Bank of Scotland. However,
the role of the Troika in also imposing austerity upon the weakest, has made going
for the euro no more attractive than staying with sterling. The referendum campaign
revealed the lengths the SNP government was prepared to go, rather than opt for
a currency option independent of either sterling or the euro.
The SNP’s wider capitalist
modernisation proposals would also still leave the rUK intact. It would still act
as the domineering power in these islands. And rUK would continue in its junior
partner role to US imperialism. An SNP government would provide continued NATO bases
in Scotland and operational support in the event of future wars, as now happens
in Ireland, which is not even in NATO!
It was only towards the
end of referendum campaign that RIC was able to win some support in England, Wales
and Ireland. Individuals like Tariq Ali, Bernadette McAliskey [20] and Leanne Wood
[21] (President of Plaid Cymru and a Welsh republican) publicly gave their support
and also spoke in Scotland. Members within the new Left Unity Party organised debates
in Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Nottingham. Cat Boyd and Pete Ramand spoke at
a meeting in the Westminster parliament on June 26th organised by opendemocracy
and Red Pepper [22] Allan Armstrong spoke at a meeting in Dublin, and another in
Belfast, alongside Tommy McKearney; and again at a ‘London Says Yes’ rally on September
6th [23], alongside Bernadette McAliskey. A ‘Go For It Scotland’ rally was held
in Cardiff on September 13th which Leanne Wood addressed [24]. People came from
England, Wales and Ireland to Scotland to support the ‘Yes’ campaign, and RIC in
particular.
The ‘Better Together’
campaign was able to build on the pre-existing British institutional and mainstream
unionist party support for the UK. They were able to organise larger rallies in
England. And certainly, the engrained Left unionism of much of the British Left,
or their disregard for the particularly reactionary nature of UK state [25], held
back a bigger Left response in England.
However, one of the results
of the surprisingly large ‘Yes’ vote, and the last minute panic it provoked amongst
the unionist politicians across the UK, is that there are now more people in England,
Wales and Ireland, who understand the need for a break with the whole UK state legacy.
They can see the importance of the Movement in Scotland for genuine self-determination.
They can be reached by going beyond the SNP’s ‘Independence-Lite’ accommodation
to the UK state and to Conservative/Lib-Dem/Labour constitutional tinkering. [...]
'After The September 18th Referendum Vote – A socialist republican response', Allan Armstrong, Emancipation & Liberation, 11 October 2014
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/2014/10/11/after-the-september-18th-referendum-vote-a-socialist-republican-response/
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