Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
For Scotland’s Right to National Self-Determination
[Photo: Thousands of Scottish nationalists protesting the biased coverage of the BBC against Scottish independence on Sunday, September 14th. In addition, in recent months, large protests have also come out against the BBC’s biased coverage of the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza as well as their lack of coverage of a large protest against anti-working class austerity carried out by the British government.]
For Scotland’s Right to National Self-Determination
by Steven Argue
On Thursday, September 18th, voters in Scotland will be voting on whether or not Scotland officially remains a part of the United Kingdom after 307 years of unity with England. Unofficially, whether one votes “yes” or “no”, Scotland will actually remain part of the United Kingdom. The leadership of the “yes” campaign is the capitalist Scottish National Party (SNP). While the SNP claims a “yes” vote to be for independence, the SNP actually have no intention of breaking Scotland from the British Monarchy, NATO, British currency, the European Union (EU), or capitalist oppression and exploitation. Scottish admission into the EU is not guaranteed and is likely to contain draconian measures against the Scottish working class including the austerity and privatization the EU demands of southern European and east European countries.
While having no revolutionary program for the transformation of Scotland, the SNP promises their program of “independence” will transform Scotland through Scottish control of oil revenues. Meanwhile, the North Sea oil supply this program relies on has already reached peak oil and is on decline. In addition, unlike the social spending of oil socialists Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Scottish oil is in private hands and the SNP has no intention of nationalizing it.
Yet, despite these facts, public opinion polls show a recent surge among Scottish voters with the “yes” campaign pulling into the lead with 56% support. This surge, especially among working class voters, can be explained in part by the increased backing the “yes” campaign has been given by the nominally Trotskyist Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party. Meanwhile, the Labour Party’s “no” campaign has been faltering due to the fact that the Labour Party has thoroughly betrayed the working class while the SNP actually stands to the left of Labour. In the Scottish parliament, successful SNP legislation include tuition free university education, free personal care for the elderly, free prescriptions, and a freeze on taxes for municipal services. The so-called Labour Party, on other hand, backs austerity and has no intention of reversing the social spending freezes of the Tories.
Scotland and the Scottish working class have traditionally stood to the left of much of the UK. In addition to social gains made by the nationalists in Scotland, there is also hope that an independent Scotland will preserve the National Health Service (NHS), Britain’s highly advanced socialist healthcare system which is currently on the chopping block of the British national government. The “no” campaign claims that an independent Scotland will not be able to fund the NHS. The “yes” campaign points out the fact that the British national government is presently destroying the NHS through cuts and privatization. They argue that independence may be the only way to preserve the NHS for Scotland.
In reality, the NHS could be preserved or destroyed whatever the outcome of Thursday’s vote. The class struggle, including general strikes, could be used to force the British national government to end its attacks on the NHS. Yet, it is precisely the lack of strong class struggle leadership that has caused much of the Scottish working class to turn to nationalism to remedy at least some of their problems. In attempting win the Scottish working class over to a class struggle perspective, it would be wrong to intervene and tell Scottish workers that they must continue to accept living under the austerity of the British national government.
Arguments that an independent capitalist Scotland will not be able to pay for the NHS can be countered by the argument that with the decline of capitalism, the NHS is in trouble with or without independence in any nation that remains capitalist, whether that be Scotland or the UK. If there is any truth to claims of a projected shortfall of revenue in an independent capitalist Scotland, socialist measures like the nationalization of oil production without compensation would produce the needed revenue for preserving the NHS. Even without oil, the much poorer nation of Cuba, despite (or actually because of) breaking from its wealthy imperialist masters in the United States, has been able to provide good quality socialized health care due to the implementation of a socialist economy.
No matter the future borders, the class struggle and not just independence will play a large role in determining the future of the NHS. Still, claims of a capitalist Scotland not having the needed revenue for the NHS should also be taken with a grain of salt as those claims play into typical stereotypes projected by the English ruling class against the Scottish working class, portraying them as being a drain on British coffers. It is from such claims that Scottish nationalists have made their own projections of their ability to fund social programs, in part through the taxation of oil revenue.
After losing popular support for unity in Scotland, the conservative British government of David Cameron is now trying to buy the votes of the largely economically devastated Scottish working class by promising more social spending in Scotland if the “no” vote wins on Thursday. I must admit, there is something satisfying about hearing a slash and exploit Tory, when Scots have him by the balls, cry out “More social spending!”, but will that be enough to buy Scottish votes? Or will the people see through such a stunt by a paid liar of the upper classes and recognize that he is likely to forget his promises the day after the election passes?
The role of British chauvinism and disdain directed at the Scottish working class should not be underestimated as an important force in the drive for Scottish independence. Likewise, much of the Scottish working class is presently inundated with a self-hate of their own separate Scots language (Scots Leid) which is still spoken regularly by a sizable minority of the population. In addition, a 2010 poll conducted by the Scottish government found 85% of Scots speak Scots Leid to some degree. Instead of taking pride or even neutrality in what is easily defined as a different language, the Scottish working class have been taught to see what they speak as a grammatically incorrect form of English. Sometimes Scots Leid will be permitted in school, but the teaching of it is not taken as seriously as English lessons are. For instance, students will be asked to write a poem in Scots Leid and told not to worry about spelling, whereas similar instructions in an English class would be unheard of. In the media, the use of Scots Leid is generally accepted in less serious genres such as comedy or representations of days gone by, but not used to present anything supposed to command respect or authority like a news story.
A third Scottish language besides Scots Leid and the Scottish dialect of English (which incorporates words from Scots Leid) is Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig). This language is only spoken by a small minority of the population, a little over one percent, but is undergoing some revival.
It is a large measure of oppression that a nationality no longer considers their own language as legitimate. This is largely a result of the Scottish upper classes adopting for hundreds of years English as being the respectable language of Scotland and seeking to purge Scotts Leid from their own personal vocabularies as well as from the national culture. Yet, at the same time, Scotland has not faced the same type of brutal colonial control, discrimination, violence, and exploitation suffered by the Irish Catholic communities under British rule. In fact, Scotland has itself participated in carrying out the oppression of the Irish people, including Scottish troops that carried out the 1914 Bachelors Walk Massacre in Dublin. Scottish troops were also notorious elsewhere in Ireland around that time for giving no quarter to IRA prisoners of war and continued to carry out vicious atrocities and repression in the northern counties during the so-called “Troubles” from 1968 to 1998.
Scotland is itself is a minor imperialist country and the SNP has no intention of breaking from that. While the SNP would get rid of Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles which are stationed in Scotland and aimed at Russia, it has no intention of leaving the anti-Russian NATO pact. As part of that pact the SNP intends to allow nuclear armed NATO vessels to port in Scotland. Currently, as junior partners of U.S. imperialism, the UK and EU have signed onto the U.S. policy, laid out by U.S. foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, of isolating Russia, regime change in Russia, and breaking Russia up into three pieces more manageable for U.S. imperialist control.
Today the Brzezinski doctrine has been playing out with the U.S. sponsored fascist coup in Ukraine in February combined with false allegations made of supposed Russian aggression in Ukraine. These false allegations have been used to excuse U.S. and EU economic sanctions against Russia. Those false allegations have also been used as an excuse for U.S. military advisors and weaponry being used by the Ukrainian government to carry out massive ethnic cleansing of the oppressed Russian nationality in South Eastern Ukraine, killing thousands people and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. It is only due to the heroic armed resistance of rebels against the U.S. sponsored coup, with the fighters in Donetsk and Lugansk beginning to win the war combined with the economic troubles for the Ukrainian nation brought on by war, capitalism, and IMF austerity, that the Ukrainian government has now been forced to end its ethnic cleansing and an 11 day ceasefire continues to hold.
Supposed Russian aggression is also being used as an excuse for the expansion of NATO operations in Europe. Statements of government leaders at the latest NATO summit in Wales made clear that it is the intention of member countries to maintain NATO as an anti-Russian military alliance. The SNP’s intention to remain in NATO shows no real break from British and U.S. imperialist aggression aimed at the people of Ukraine, Russia, Novorossiya, Georgia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Belarus.
Likewise, as a member of the European Union, Scotland will be part of vicious EU economic sanctions aimed against the sovereignty of Russia and Belarus. In addition, the EU serves as a vehicle for powerful European nations to carry out brutal austerity and privatization within its weaker member nations. It due to the refusal of Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, to give in to the EU’s demands of austerity, privatization, and isolation from Russia that he was overthrown in a U.S. sponsored coup that included large numbers of U.S. paid and trained Nazi and far-right protesters in the streets. These imperialist sponsored fascists eventually overthrew the elected Ukrainian government after they used their snipers to open fire on their own men and then blame it on the elected Ukrainian government in February. EU austerity is also devastating a number of EU member countries including Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy.
True Scottish independence would include a full break from the EU, NATO, the British monetary system, and the British Monarchy. It would include the overthrow of capitalism in Scotland to establish a planned socialist economy and establish an internationalist program that calls for the defeat of British, EU, and U.S. imperialism across the globe. The current vote will likely have little impact on whether or not such a program comes into fruition. For these needed changes a proletarian socialist revolution carried out across the Common Isles will be necessary. Ultimately, whether or not the Scottish working class in a future revolutionary uprising desires full independence, full integration into a common country, or federalization as part of a Federation of Socialist Republics of the Common Isles is a fluid decision that is not necessarily decided in advance.
Leninist-Trotskyists have a long tradition of often supporting the right of nations to self-determination. The notion of “self-determination”, however, is often misunderstood. Our support for the right of the Scottish people to determine their own future doesn’t automatically mean we call for a “yes” vote. Self-determination includes the potential decision for the people of Scotland to remain fully part of the UK by voting “no”. The limited potential gains to be achieved through independence cause this author to lean towards supporting a “yes” vote, but what is more important is respecting the decision made by the Scottish people on Thursday and demanding that the British government respect that decision as well.
Any disunity British actions against independence cause within the working class will potentially be made worse by socialist and Labour groupings that side with the British government against Scottish self-determination. To this end, the revolutionary party must champion the rights of the most exploited in society, including the language and independence rights of oppressed nationalities.
Lenin saw many advantages to maintaining unity despite national differences. It was in fact from this desire for unity that he proposed the right of nations to national self-determination including up to the right of nations separate that had been part of Tsarist Empire. While this may seem counter-intuitive, it is often from respect for the right to national self-determination and other national rights that we can begin to build the internationalist unity needed to put the questions of national hatreds to the side to deal with the deeper solutions of abolishing class exploitation and ending the rapid destruction of the planet that the capitalists are currently carrying out for profit.
-Steven Argue for the Revolutionary Tendency
This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news
For a related article from this same author, see:
Why The Russian Revolution is Still Important
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/03/03/18708611.php
by Steven Argue
On Thursday, September 18th, voters in Scotland will be voting on whether or not Scotland officially remains a part of the United Kingdom after 307 years of unity with England. Unofficially, whether one votes “yes” or “no”, Scotland will actually remain part of the United Kingdom. The leadership of the “yes” campaign is the capitalist Scottish National Party (SNP). While the SNP claims a “yes” vote to be for independence, the SNP actually have no intention of breaking Scotland from the British Monarchy, NATO, British currency, the European Union (EU), or capitalist oppression and exploitation. Scottish admission into the EU is not guaranteed and is likely to contain draconian measures against the Scottish working class including the austerity and privatization the EU demands of southern European and east European countries.
While having no revolutionary program for the transformation of Scotland, the SNP promises their program of “independence” will transform Scotland through Scottish control of oil revenues. Meanwhile, the North Sea oil supply this program relies on has already reached peak oil and is on decline. In addition, unlike the social spending of oil socialists Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Scottish oil is in private hands and the SNP has no intention of nationalizing it.
Yet, despite these facts, public opinion polls show a recent surge among Scottish voters with the “yes” campaign pulling into the lead with 56% support. This surge, especially among working class voters, can be explained in part by the increased backing the “yes” campaign has been given by the nominally Trotskyist Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party. Meanwhile, the Labour Party’s “no” campaign has been faltering due to the fact that the Labour Party has thoroughly betrayed the working class while the SNP actually stands to the left of Labour. In the Scottish parliament, successful SNP legislation include tuition free university education, free personal care for the elderly, free prescriptions, and a freeze on taxes for municipal services. The so-called Labour Party, on other hand, backs austerity and has no intention of reversing the social spending freezes of the Tories.
Scotland and the Scottish working class have traditionally stood to the left of much of the UK. In addition to social gains made by the nationalists in Scotland, there is also hope that an independent Scotland will preserve the National Health Service (NHS), Britain’s highly advanced socialist healthcare system which is currently on the chopping block of the British national government. The “no” campaign claims that an independent Scotland will not be able to fund the NHS. The “yes” campaign points out the fact that the British national government is presently destroying the NHS through cuts and privatization. They argue that independence may be the only way to preserve the NHS for Scotland.
In reality, the NHS could be preserved or destroyed whatever the outcome of Thursday’s vote. The class struggle, including general strikes, could be used to force the British national government to end its attacks on the NHS. Yet, it is precisely the lack of strong class struggle leadership that has caused much of the Scottish working class to turn to nationalism to remedy at least some of their problems. In attempting win the Scottish working class over to a class struggle perspective, it would be wrong to intervene and tell Scottish workers that they must continue to accept living under the austerity of the British national government.
Arguments that an independent capitalist Scotland will not be able to pay for the NHS can be countered by the argument that with the decline of capitalism, the NHS is in trouble with or without independence in any nation that remains capitalist, whether that be Scotland or the UK. If there is any truth to claims of a projected shortfall of revenue in an independent capitalist Scotland, socialist measures like the nationalization of oil production without compensation would produce the needed revenue for preserving the NHS. Even without oil, the much poorer nation of Cuba, despite (or actually because of) breaking from its wealthy imperialist masters in the United States, has been able to provide good quality socialized health care due to the implementation of a socialist economy.
No matter the future borders, the class struggle and not just independence will play a large role in determining the future of the NHS. Still, claims of a capitalist Scotland not having the needed revenue for the NHS should also be taken with a grain of salt as those claims play into typical stereotypes projected by the English ruling class against the Scottish working class, portraying them as being a drain on British coffers. It is from such claims that Scottish nationalists have made their own projections of their ability to fund social programs, in part through the taxation of oil revenue.
After losing popular support for unity in Scotland, the conservative British government of David Cameron is now trying to buy the votes of the largely economically devastated Scottish working class by promising more social spending in Scotland if the “no” vote wins on Thursday. I must admit, there is something satisfying about hearing a slash and exploit Tory, when Scots have him by the balls, cry out “More social spending!”, but will that be enough to buy Scottish votes? Or will the people see through such a stunt by a paid liar of the upper classes and recognize that he is likely to forget his promises the day after the election passes?
The role of British chauvinism and disdain directed at the Scottish working class should not be underestimated as an important force in the drive for Scottish independence. Likewise, much of the Scottish working class is presently inundated with a self-hate of their own separate Scots language (Scots Leid) which is still spoken regularly by a sizable minority of the population. In addition, a 2010 poll conducted by the Scottish government found 85% of Scots speak Scots Leid to some degree. Instead of taking pride or even neutrality in what is easily defined as a different language, the Scottish working class have been taught to see what they speak as a grammatically incorrect form of English. Sometimes Scots Leid will be permitted in school, but the teaching of it is not taken as seriously as English lessons are. For instance, students will be asked to write a poem in Scots Leid and told not to worry about spelling, whereas similar instructions in an English class would be unheard of. In the media, the use of Scots Leid is generally accepted in less serious genres such as comedy or representations of days gone by, but not used to present anything supposed to command respect or authority like a news story.
A third Scottish language besides Scots Leid and the Scottish dialect of English (which incorporates words from Scots Leid) is Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig). This language is only spoken by a small minority of the population, a little over one percent, but is undergoing some revival.
It is a large measure of oppression that a nationality no longer considers their own language as legitimate. This is largely a result of the Scottish upper classes adopting for hundreds of years English as being the respectable language of Scotland and seeking to purge Scotts Leid from their own personal vocabularies as well as from the national culture. Yet, at the same time, Scotland has not faced the same type of brutal colonial control, discrimination, violence, and exploitation suffered by the Irish Catholic communities under British rule. In fact, Scotland has itself participated in carrying out the oppression of the Irish people, including Scottish troops that carried out the 1914 Bachelors Walk Massacre in Dublin. Scottish troops were also notorious elsewhere in Ireland around that time for giving no quarter to IRA prisoners of war and continued to carry out vicious atrocities and repression in the northern counties during the so-called “Troubles” from 1968 to 1998.
Scotland is itself is a minor imperialist country and the SNP has no intention of breaking from that. While the SNP would get rid of Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles which are stationed in Scotland and aimed at Russia, it has no intention of leaving the anti-Russian NATO pact. As part of that pact the SNP intends to allow nuclear armed NATO vessels to port in Scotland. Currently, as junior partners of U.S. imperialism, the UK and EU have signed onto the U.S. policy, laid out by U.S. foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, of isolating Russia, regime change in Russia, and breaking Russia up into three pieces more manageable for U.S. imperialist control.
Today the Brzezinski doctrine has been playing out with the U.S. sponsored fascist coup in Ukraine in February combined with false allegations made of supposed Russian aggression in Ukraine. These false allegations have been used to excuse U.S. and EU economic sanctions against Russia. Those false allegations have also been used as an excuse for U.S. military advisors and weaponry being used by the Ukrainian government to carry out massive ethnic cleansing of the oppressed Russian nationality in South Eastern Ukraine, killing thousands people and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. It is only due to the heroic armed resistance of rebels against the U.S. sponsored coup, with the fighters in Donetsk and Lugansk beginning to win the war combined with the economic troubles for the Ukrainian nation brought on by war, capitalism, and IMF austerity, that the Ukrainian government has now been forced to end its ethnic cleansing and an 11 day ceasefire continues to hold.
Supposed Russian aggression is also being used as an excuse for the expansion of NATO operations in Europe. Statements of government leaders at the latest NATO summit in Wales made clear that it is the intention of member countries to maintain NATO as an anti-Russian military alliance. The SNP’s intention to remain in NATO shows no real break from British and U.S. imperialist aggression aimed at the people of Ukraine, Russia, Novorossiya, Georgia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Belarus.
Likewise, as a member of the European Union, Scotland will be part of vicious EU economic sanctions aimed against the sovereignty of Russia and Belarus. In addition, the EU serves as a vehicle for powerful European nations to carry out brutal austerity and privatization within its weaker member nations. It due to the refusal of Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, to give in to the EU’s demands of austerity, privatization, and isolation from Russia that he was overthrown in a U.S. sponsored coup that included large numbers of U.S. paid and trained Nazi and far-right protesters in the streets. These imperialist sponsored fascists eventually overthrew the elected Ukrainian government after they used their snipers to open fire on their own men and then blame it on the elected Ukrainian government in February. EU austerity is also devastating a number of EU member countries including Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy.
True Scottish independence would include a full break from the EU, NATO, the British monetary system, and the British Monarchy. It would include the overthrow of capitalism in Scotland to establish a planned socialist economy and establish an internationalist program that calls for the defeat of British, EU, and U.S. imperialism across the globe. The current vote will likely have little impact on whether or not such a program comes into fruition. For these needed changes a proletarian socialist revolution carried out across the Common Isles will be necessary. Ultimately, whether or not the Scottish working class in a future revolutionary uprising desires full independence, full integration into a common country, or federalization as part of a Federation of Socialist Republics of the Common Isles is a fluid decision that is not necessarily decided in advance.
Leninist-Trotskyists have a long tradition of often supporting the right of nations to self-determination. The notion of “self-determination”, however, is often misunderstood. Our support for the right of the Scottish people to determine their own future doesn’t automatically mean we call for a “yes” vote. Self-determination includes the potential decision for the people of Scotland to remain fully part of the UK by voting “no”. The limited potential gains to be achieved through independence cause this author to lean towards supporting a “yes” vote, but what is more important is respecting the decision made by the Scottish people on Thursday and demanding that the British government respect that decision as well.
Any disunity British actions against independence cause within the working class will potentially be made worse by socialist and Labour groupings that side with the British government against Scottish self-determination. To this end, the revolutionary party must champion the rights of the most exploited in society, including the language and independence rights of oppressed nationalities.
Lenin saw many advantages to maintaining unity despite national differences. It was in fact from this desire for unity that he proposed the right of nations to national self-determination including up to the right of nations separate that had been part of Tsarist Empire. While this may seem counter-intuitive, it is often from respect for the right to national self-determination and other national rights that we can begin to build the internationalist unity needed to put the questions of national hatreds to the side to deal with the deeper solutions of abolishing class exploitation and ending the rapid destruction of the planet that the capitalists are currently carrying out for profit.
-Steven Argue for the Revolutionary Tendency
This is an article of Liberation News, subscribe free:
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news
For a related article from this same author, see:
Why The Russian Revolution is Still Important
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/03/03/18708611.php
Add Your Comments
Latest Comments
Listed below are the latest comments about this post.
These comments are submitted anonymously by website visitors.
TITLE
AUTHOR
DATE
An Additional Point
Thu, Sep 18, 2014 7:31AM
Excellently put
Thu, Sep 18, 2014 7:16AM
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$255.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network