A response to Sandy Wilkie in the National

Sandy Wilkie sent a letter to the National yesterday in which he purported to be taking an ecumenical tone, talking about #OneScotland.  In the same letter however Wilkie lets the mask slip;

"Perhaps [the First Minister] has enough on her plate trying to assimilate the 45ers whose strong views were unleashed by her predecessor; unleashed without any thought as to the genie being let out of that particular bottle?"

Who are these dread democrats?  Hatred and fear of popular politics is most notably associated with the right, and indeed is the foundational conerstone of conservative politics.  If Wilkie is the "left leaning idealist who believes in a federal UK solution" he confesses himself to be one would think this cohort of Scots who want democracy instead of remote Whitehall rule are not very far from Wilkie's position?  If not, why not?  The repeated wild animal metaphors the young Labour activist uses rather give the game away. 

I am not remotely an idealist, but as an internationalist and a socialist, I could only vote YES, campaign for YES, and repudiate the reactionary British state - one of the most venal and imperialistic polities ever created.  My response to the referendum result was to stick an A2 YES poster in the window, because of what this rebellion represents - a left wing rejection of imperialism, chauvinism, backwardness and Tory reaction.  The formal technical arrangements by which Scots get to opt out of the far right consensus that characterises the three Tory parties at Westminster is far less consequential to me than simply that we do, and at the very earliest opportunity, taking control of our natural resources to establish some form of social democratic commonwealth.

Nevertheless the federalist who wants to 'leash' fellow Scottish democrats goes on to qualify his support for "federalism" but invoking the Smith Commission and the need he sees not to suggest it does not go far enough.  This is a body designed to deliver a rehashed Calman Commission, and a settlement so far from Home Rule (defined as the same as Dominion Status within the British Empire) and federalism as to be palpably ridiculous.  This prompts questions about how deep his ostensible federalism runs, because the Smith Commission is a mandate for continued unitary British state and the absolute sovereignty of Whitehall in fiscal and social security affairs, which brings us to his next point. He claims we need to be "taking active responsibility for making things better," yet he refuses to trouble himself with taking responsibility for the contradictions of his position.

For many of us the democracy rebellion - for that's what it remains - is not an academic exercise, as it appears it is for our "federalist" who somehow mananged to reconcile his beliefs with working a 22 hour shift for the campaign against democracy on polling day.  In communities blighted by Whitehall rule this rebellion *remains* a zero sum game.  In August of this year my residents association held an emergency local meeting in response to the escalating humanitarian crisis in our community.  Large numbers of us aren't eating.  The local foodbank was set up following poverty stricken residents needing to steal food from the big Tesco to survive.  At the time of the August meeting we had data to show that during May 623 people around our estate had to rely on food parcels to eat.  Over 60% of our community went on to vote YES.  One month after the right's pyhrric victory in October 623 had become over 1000 relying on food parcels to eat.  This horror continues to escalate.  When will Wilkie, the man who hails from the party which caused this crisis, take some responsibility?

Perhaps because our "federalist" qualifies his left wing credentials by saying he's an "idealist" we maybe need to inject some empiricism.  The British state is starving poor Scots because of conditionality in the benefits system, introduced by James Purnell in 2009 under the last UK Labour government, who was advised by one Blair McDougall at the time.  The system of sanctions and work capability assessments introduced by McDougall and Purnell were found by the SCVO to be not just the primary cause of food poverty but (together with Westminster's labour market regulation: another thing we don't get to 'take responsibility for') the almost exclusive cause of it.  Currently DWP targets state that 5% of all welfare recipients must be sanctioned every two weeks, regardless of circumstance, so the 'conditionality' merely matches the target, as was always intended.  This conditionality (the sanctions regime) is *designed* to starve people in communities like mine, with the only conceiveable aim being to 'discipline' the labour market.  This labour market discipline (and the low wage economy it precipitates) is why there is cross party consensus among the Tory parties of power at Westminster, because this is the point of ideological unity.  This is what the NO campaign was about enforcing in Scotland, so our 'left-leaning federalist' would absolutely *have* to be an idealist to fail to interface with this.  Let me spell it out to Wilkie because he seems too interested in his own idealism to understand the reason we remain in rebellion: the British state is currently starving 2% of Scots as an act of *cross party consensus,* which will be exacerbated by whoever wins the next UK election; there is only one way in which this will not be the case.

That is if the Red Tories - let's call the centre right opposition what they objectively are - are condemned to electoral irrelevance in Scotland and Scots can force the Red Tory Chancellor in waiting to cancel his planned £86billion of cuts, circumscribe the vile right wing extremist Rachel Reeves, and thereby restore food to the table of the 2% of Scots Wilkie has worked 22 hour shifts to immiserate.  NO activists like Wilkie continue to refuse to take responsibility for the misery their selfish right wing actions have caused.  We can all accept when folk mea culpa and admit they got it wrong, and that they now wish to join the fight for democracy.  However the idea that right wing activists should get to lecture us about solidarity and communitarian ethics when their arguments consist of astroturfing, victim blaiming, characterising those whom they claim to share so much with rhetorically as wild animals, British nationalist Schmalz and disingenuous confessions of left wing faith is a vile travesty.  Objectively these British nationalist activists stand for remote far right rule that is causing an escalating humanitarian crisis.  This is a zero sum game Mr Wilkie, and if you want to have any credibibility at all with democrats and not just with privately educated Red Tory councillors it's about time you took some some responsibility and joined us in the fight to end Labour's policy of promoting and escalating starvation in working class communities.

Why a vote for Labour in Scotland is a vote for a colonial relationship and reaction

1. Scotland is a colony.  The Anglo-Scottish Union is a colonial relationship.

2. The Labour Party is the strongest source of fealty to the Union in Scotland.

3. The Labour Party in Scotland is the leading force for reaction. 

1.)



This is how wikipedia defines a colony.  Get sniffy about the source if you like, but its definition seems pretty accurate.

"In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state, distinct from the home territory of the sovereign.[...]Unlike a puppet state or satellite state, a colony has no independent international representation, and its top-level administration is under direct control of the metropolitan state."

Miriam Webster has: "an area that is controlled by or belongs to a country and is usually far away from it."

The reason for maintaining a colony is pretty simple: resource extraction, and to project military force.  It is easier to deploy troops in a territory that is under your jurisdiction than it is to attempt landings or invasions in places which are not.

For the first half of the Union, the '45 clampdown excepted, Scotland was in a state of "semi-independence."  It was not a colony, but the result of a ruling class compact where Scotland was officially annexed on terms.  It was to borrow a fairly exact metaphor a satrapy.

"the Achaemenian Empire[...] established 20 satrapies with their annual tribute. As the head of the administration of his province, the satrap collected taxes and was the supreme judicial authority; he was responsible for internal security and raised and maintained an army. [...] the satraps often enjoyed virtual independence."

A Satrap holds court in S. Afghanistan.  Satrapies enjoyed semi-independence, within an empire.

This semi-independence was characterised by local control and exercise of power.  The institutions involved were the Kirk, and the justiciary (which was in the pocket of the landowning classes and, aware of their own illegitimacy and their fragile position of dual power, was by turns cautious and liberal and reactionary and revanchist).  The Kirk controlled health, education (parish and higher education), welfare, civil law, fines and levies, and even had control over migration.  Labour market regulation, law making, taxation and civil defence were in the hands of the lairds.  Westminster controlled wars and foreign colonies, and so long as the Jocks didn't cause too many problems, who were they to trouble themselves with the administration of Scotland.  Besides which colonies were providing much of the resource extraction.

This period of satrapy status ended when the British state grew in Scotland.  After this point Scotland became more or less a colony in the traditional sense, and ceased to be a satrapy.  It first became a nascent satrapy again in 2007.

The Disruption Assembly of 1843: one of the key moments when Scottish dual power which emerged in 1560 died.

The mechanism for the British state's growth and Scotland's long interregnum was the smashing of the Kirk, and the establishment of ministerial control over Scotland from London.  In 1846 the British state started to build free schools, in competition with parish schools, before long it would annexe the welfare system and health and social care; the landed classes had already undermined the Kirk's migration controls, and were busily undermining Kirk sessions wherever they could.  The context for these moves was the British state's attacks on the power of the Kirk, in which the landowning classes of Scotland had acted with British government support to insist and rule in favour of land owning patronage in the Kirk, in appointing ministers, in opposition to a parish membership ballot.  Before this attack on the Kirk the civil adminstration of much of Scotland by the Kirk meant it had been handled in a different way and according to different priorities.  The Kirk could be a very ideologically intolerant place, but its radical democracy would make Switzerland look centralised.  This attack, faced down by the General Assembly, but later enforced by the Court of Session led to a massive split in the Kirk, known as the Disruption of 1843.  This blew a hole in the dual power of the people against our rulers, and they seized their moment to 'go British' by having a London minister put directly in charge of running the various public services they colluded in having the British state annexe from Scotland.  By 1885, following decades of Scottish elite agitation, there was a secretary of state in charge of running all of the things from an office in London.


This is also about where the former civil servant John Jappy's evidence acts to corroborate the central assumption that Scotland was a satrapy, which became a colony under Scottish ruling class expediancy and British centralising pressure:- 

[That this process should be completed towards the end of the 19th century, during the New Imperialism when Britain was getting a bit skint and plumping for more finance capital is of course entirely coincidental.]

"As a civil servant in London in the 1960s, and being part of the establishment, I always accepted the general view that an independent Scotland would not be able to survive on its own without financial help from the London Exchequer.

However, when in 1968 I was able to closely examine the UK’s “books” for myself in an official capacity, I was shocked to find that the position was exactly the opposite: that Scotland contributed far more to the UK economy than its other partners. And this, of course, was all before the oil boom."

Since then the position has merely been maintained.  Wherever you take the point in Scotland's history from then on wages are low, profit is extracted from Scotland, and is not reinvested back.  An ossified landed class and an absentee bourgeoisie exerts disproportionate influence over much of the countryside, leading to massive deliberate underdevelopment.  The parties of power at Westminster stand for enforcing a policy uniformity across the United Kingdom which does not correspend with action which would challenge these net capital outflows, fiscal transfers, lower wages or iniquitous distribution of land, patronage and power.  Meantime the military industrial complex of the UK treats Scotland as a dumping ground for nuclear waste, unexploded ordinance, industrial waste and its unpopular nuclear arsenal.  This happens while civil servants in London draw up the plans for UK energy infrastructure which leads to the underdevelopment of our great renewable energy potential.  not content with treating Scotland as a cowp the MoD over-extends its veto powers in the planning system with the same effect on the renewables industry, because the UK refuses to buy a modern radar system, and mere economic necessity is a negative externality.  All of this is in frustration of and for the satrapy government which seeks to end the historical underdevelopment which has characterised long stretches of time in Scotland's interregnum. 

Under Labour Scotland returned billions in unspent Scottish Government finance to the UK Treasury (which we already subsidise to the tune of £1.5billion+ annually).  In 2006 they began a concerted effort to privatise all the public services in Scotland.  Their tenure was associated with the demolition of 1 in 40 homes in the country, all of them publicly owned.  Scotland did not support this kind of government, driven by the City of London and Gordon Brown from London.  Power only exists if it is used and Scotland's emergent break from colonial status to accession as a satrapy begain in 2007 and is an unfinished process.

This potential change in status comes out of the simple fact that this is literally the first time in 150 odd years that Scotland has had a government which intends to do things differently from the right wing / British norm in Scotland.  However normal the SNP's aspirations may be in European terms, that fact alone in Scotland make them revolutionary, because success on their own terms would necessitate ending Scotland's colonial relationship, and exposing the nature of Scotland's ongoing tribute payment relationship with Whitehall.

2.)

The principle agent which can bind Scotland to the Union is Labour.  While Scotland sends its 4% of lawmakers to Westminster under a Labour badge, it votes for the UK Labour Party's policy in Britain, with all the implications for not challenging Scotland's colonial relationship within the Union.

Since the defeat of the working class movement which began in 1979 this has meant enforcing neo-liberalism alongside colonialism's asset transfers.  However the leftwing policies of Labour administrations which predate this arguably relied more on such asset transfers because they faced capital flight and were therefore more reliant on natural resources.  In both incarnations in Scotland - an agent of Thatcherism today, and an agent of command and control Labourism in the fading past - Labour has acted to secure the ongoing asset transfer from Scotland to the Whitehall regime.  Indeed Willie Ross' failed "Socialist Plan for Scotland" was essentially logically predicated within Cabinet on addressing the lower wages, higher unemployment and poorer levels of investment and retention of profits.  And *it failed* when Britain needed the cash for being a big boy instead.

A Labour vote from Scotland is basically a vote for this colonial relationship, particularly when we consider the prize.  And here I completely agree with the Tory Unionist enemy.

The Telegraph's Iain Martin echoes my view. 

" Be in no doubt: if Labour is banished from Scotland, the Union will be done for [... The SNP] hope to hold the balance of power in the event of another hung parliament. That way, they might demand yet more powers for the Scottish Parliament or perhaps even another referendum on ending the Union."

Alex Massie, not normally given to fantastic rhetoric, even believes we have lived thru such a crucible moment that it compares to the Easter Rising in terms of Scottish consciousness.

"Pound for pound – or, rather, per capita – the SNP is now the largest political party in Britain. Indeed, it’s the only one that can plausibly claim to be a mass organisation. That’s quite something.The kind of thing that makes one wonder if – just perhaps – next year’s election in Scotland could produce results of the kind seen in Ireland in 1918. John Redmond’s Home Rule bill was passed in 1914 but its implementation delayed by the First World War. Then there was the small matter of Easter 1916 and, most importantly, the British authorities’ cack-handed response to Pearse’s provocation. It all helped to ruin the Irish Parliamentary Party. They lost 61 seats in 1918 as Sinn Fein won a landslide victory in southern Ireland, gaining 67 seats and winning almost 47 percent of the vote."

If the Labour Party were smashed at Westminster, particularly where this led to a confidence and supply agreement with a minority Labour Government, the political Union would effectively be over, and Scotland would gain full satrapy status by default.  The machinery of the Labour Party in Scotland would be crushed, and the idea that people needed to vote Labour to keep the Tories out would also lie dead.  Paul Sinclair is on record as saying he agrees with this analysis, asking why would people feel the need to vote Labour, if they got a better Labour government by not doing so.  If they got a Tory government, it could only be because England rejected Labour, as the SNP have made clear their intentions never to vote for a Tory Government, in which case all the fairies and unicorns "solidarity" talk during the referendum from the NO campaign would be very very exposed indeed, as would the democratic deficit.  So long as Scotland voted SNP in sufficient numbers this contradiction would be fully and completely exposed and the pressure brought to bear on this reactionary compact of a state.

The eventual outcome of such a shift away from the Labour myth of the post-war welfare state is that Scots see Westminster not as a place which determines their Government, but as a place where they send delegates to fight for Scotland, against Whitehall.  Such a nonsense can only last so long, as the essential colonial relationship would be laid bare for everyone to see.

Given that what British policies mean in Scotland, this is indeed a glittering prize.  It is the result of British policies that in the month of October in Maryhill over 1000 people relied on food parcels to eat. A month previously Maryhill had voted YES by the same size of majority as the landslide among Labour Party members that has swept Jim Murphy into power.  It is the result of British polices that demand is being sucked out of the economy to pay for bloodletting, and economic mismanagement sees vital industries placed on pause amidst a youth unemployment crisis.  Starvation, job losses, economic failure and blight caused by a lack of power to change the welfare system, improve employability and borrow to invest.  None of this is rocket science, but none of it is going to change as long as Scotland is shackled into a relationship where the number of food bank users has equalled the number of SNP members at 2% of the population, the Scottish Government is throwing money hand over fist at alleviating suffering caused deliberately by a distant far right government, while having its budget cut by that same government 7% a year, with no ability to borrow money, all while Scotland subsidises the UK exchequer by an average of £1.5billion+ a year.

3.)

Analysis of Labour's remaining core vote (roughly 50% of its 2010 vote), shows it to be the most suspicious of politicians, the most cynical of elected authority, and together with cynics and fans of Westminster there is a strong majority against the Scottish Parliament gaining political prominence.  A majority of Labour's remaining supporters ticked "neither of them" when asked if they trust Westminster or Holyrood most, and 24% wanted most power invested in Westminster.  Like the number of YES voters in Maryhill this amounts to the same mandate Labour Party members just gave Murphy - only a small minority of Labour's remaining support base wants a stronger Scottish Parliament.  The comparable cohort for the 2010 Labour vote who wanted a stronger Westminster was just 15%, and unlike their remaining support base a majority wanted most power at Holyrood.  Their support is increasingly concentrated among reactionary and erratic political cynics.

This is to say nothing of the actions of those who still command this dwindling and increasingly erratic reactionary support.  Jim Murphy as we know won a landslide victory for reaction among the Labour *membership* vote.  Labour has in the region of 7000 members, up from their pre-referendum total, after they recruited 1000 new members based on one of the most reactionary campaigns in recent Scottish history.  These people want to be led by a bullying, hectoring, creepy right wing lunatic because they see him as the man to crush Scotland's democratic aspirations and put its left wing hopes to bed.  A workers party that's lost its way?  Or a party of colonial reaction and empire fealty?

"Graeme Morrice, Labour MP for Livingston, was
guest speaker at the Bathgate Boyne Celebrations
of East of Scotland Orangemen." Reads the Orange
Lodge campaign website British Together. He went
on to pen an article for "Orange Torch" magazine.

There has been some recent online speculation that Scottish Labour's endorsement of such a right wing creep would "push the SNP to the right"; this is a misreading of history.  The current SNP strategy of being a competent centre left government is the continuation of the party's strategy that it first adopted in the fallout from 1979, where then as now the working class had voted YES but the reactionary upper middle class had voted NO to prevent a change in political weather which might affect their London career ladders and perceived vestiges of patronage.

The idea that Labour is going to push the SNP to the right is a nonsense.  Since 2007, when Labour lost the election after its failed bid to privatise all of Scotland's services, it began a campaign of centre right attacks on the SNP and carping.  From a law and order campaign of moral panic, to Johann Lamont's Cuts Commission, thru to Jim Murphy's wonderful ideas about the need for more pensions firms involved in the financing of public services, the Labour Party has been a force on the right day in and day out.  Now that the combined Unionist candidate now rules expect him to pursue the same strategy as Michael Forsyth did, as #creepyjim tries to prove Scotland is indeed a centre right country.  And the SNP don't.  Like they haven't.  Ever.  At any point in government since 2007.  Or since, as a bunch of left wingers, they came up with their current grand strategy in the 70s and 80s.

Apart from anything else, attack where your enemy is not.  The cold war for Scotland we are living thru is not analogous to the Republicrats versus the Democans where each looks for space in the centre.  That just isn't a fit for what is going on.  The SNP's opposition to austerity for example was not drawn up under similar circumstances to Labour's plan to ban migrants from claiming benefits.  The latter is cynical policy stolen from a poll.  The former is the channelling of political conviction from social democratic instinct, thru a council of economic advisors including some of the world's most celebrated anti-austerity economists, until it becomes a serious and empirically backed policy.

There will be no shift to the right with Labour.  Calling for a vote for Labour is calling for the satrapy to be put back in the box marked colony.