07.12.1995

Conversion on the road to Dundee

Phil Kent contributes to the debate on federalism, explaining the shift in his position

PETER MANSON occasionally twigs me over what he calls “my conversion on the road to Damascus”, though it was actually Dundee. Let me assure him, I am as extreme a centralist as ever. One world, one government, no nations is my aim. But to get there you have to intervene in the politics of the present, drawing out and developing what is in the interests of the working class.

My conversion, as he calls it, was actually a rather homely affair. Central to it was a small meeting organised by the Labour Party over the closure of Dundee Royal Infirmary. The Labour Party wants to close the hospital, reducing the number of hospital beds. Because its agenda is to ensure the election of a Labour government in England, it is unable to defend the interests of people living in Dundee whom it represents. I use the phrase “people living in Dundee”, not Scottish, advisedly because the problems facing ordinary people are universal and only take a nationalist form because of the way state power is organised.

People in Scotland are trying to challenge the way state power is organised. This is a good thing. It is not borne out of nationalistic hate, though if frustrated it could take that turn.

The other thing that struck me was the rudeness of Labour Party supporters at the meeting. They had the body language of people who know they are in the wrong and do not want to discuss it. The problem with supporting the Blair election agenda with its concentration on English political realities is that people who came into politics to help their fellows are being turned into cynical manipulators of the truth: moral bankrupts. Many people and most young people will not have anything to do with politics out of contempt. The only area of politics that is attracting new forces is nationalist politics, because here you can say what you believe to be true and maintain your human dignity.

Of course everyone knows that England is facing the same problems and ordinary English people will eventually react against the system too. All the numerically insignificant populations of Scotland and Wales need to do is lay back and think of England, but this only swells the ranks of the apathetic and dishonest: it does not develop revolutionaries. In any case they are only minorities, if you think of them in national terms. As people fighting for their rights, they are the most active element of the majority: the working class.

Peter demands that those who are in favour of federalism should demonstrate that we are not simply tailing nationalism. Communist politics are dependent on drawing the masses into politics, particularly the young. This can only be done by fighting for what they need in a manner that excites their imagination and offers them a positive role in achieving it. Socialism can only be built by a working class that makes itself into a ruling class through struggle. Not one that walks on and off the stage at the beck and call of philistines claiming that all differences are divisive and only by being as like peas in a pod can we overcome capitalism.

The collapse of the Soviet Union proves that socialism cannot be organised bureaucratically. Only democracy can be the basis for successful social planning. Involving the masses in the fight for democracy is crucial to developing a working class capable of ruling the world without nations.

We already have an electoral strategy and programme to enable us to intervene. It is the same for Scotland as it is for England and Wales. Namely, it exposes the projects of Labour and the SNP for devolution and independence as bogus shams, but also calls for the extension of working class power into every area of life.

Separate parliaments do not have to be parliaments that separate, but can be parliaments that extend the power of our class and undermine the hold of the establishment. It is a policy to simultaneously weaken the hold of capitalism while developing the revolutionary potential of the workers. As it can appeal to workers right across Europe and beyond, it is potentially a basis for international unity and world revolution.