Classism is hardly unique to Scotland, but it has a particular national
character, where rejection of Scottish culture and language is often an elite
trait. To Scotland’s reactionaries, the very Scottishness of the working class
is one of the things that marks it as uneducated and unfit to rule, which only
makes the recent upsurge all the more terrifying to them. Of late, Kenneth Roy
is railing against “mobs” one week and
complaining about the SNP “populism” of allowing
anti-social behaviour on trains the next.
David Leask of the Herald described the BBC Bias demonstrations as “fascistic”, on account of
all the flags being waved. One widely-shared article worried that
the SNP is “Jacobin”, and that
RIC’s People’s Vow risks a rerun of the National Covenant. Journalists on
Twitter regularly speculate that Nicola Sturgeon’s biggest challenge is
reigning in the 65,000 new SNP members, the 45ers, who are assumed to be
impatient fundamentalists.
The fear that mass participation will inevitably end in events akin to
the Terror of the French Revolution, perpetrated by the Jacobins, is the
foundation stone of modern conservatism. It was most famously articulated
by Edmund Burke: “some popular
general … shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself … The moment in which
that event shall happen, the person who commands the army is master of your
whole republic.” In one sense Burke was right, in that Napoleon rose to become
Emperor – but he was also wrong, in that the French Republic remains radically
more democratic and decentralised than Britain to this day.
It is this Burkean impulse that explains why even as Scottish democracy
engages people on a massive scale, some activists are panicking about the danger
of one-party rule. It is the curious relationship between nation and class in
Scotland that explains why waving a Saltire creeping fascism to one person and
a clear expression of popular sovereignty to another.
An alternative to Burke’s view is offered by famed American community
organiser Saul Alinsky. In opposition
to both conservatives and leftists who “lay claim to the precious quality of
impartiality, of cold objectivity” he argued that a true radical is someone
who is a “partisan of the people”, who will “identify themselves with the
people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest
and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests.”
Surely, this is the progressive position to take in the new Scotland. I have watched
in amazement as the majority of the community campaign leaders I have met down
the years, often working class mothers who became involved in politics through
local anti-cuts fights, have flocked to first the Yes campaign and now the SNP.
These are intelligent people and often experienced campaigners. On Facebook,
every day, I see people of all backgrounds engaging in policy, economic and
strategy debates, sharing analysis articles and petitions and encouraging each
other to take action. The democracy movement is no-one’s fool.
The much-derided 45 are not “zoomers” as some journalists would have it,
rather they understand something much supposedly informed comment misses – that
nation and class are intertwined, that the nationalist struggle is about much
more than flags, that the Scottish working class will always be held as
inferior and excluded in the British system. They can see that their nation and
their centre-left government are now locked in an existential fight with the
British State.
Mass politics has become such a rarity that it is unnerving for the
elite, who are used to politics as a polite gentleman’s club. In
Scotland, mass politics waves the Saltire, because repression of Scottish
identity and language is a central feature of class rule in Scotland. Mass
politics is raucous, noisy, and angry. It plays by different rules to elite
politics. These features allow it to reach beyond the ideological limits of
neoliberalism. The return of mass politics warts and all should be welcomed by
all progressives, as there is no real democracy without it.
Scotland, Class and Nation, Alistair Davidson, posted by bellacaledonia on December 7, 2014
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