17.10.1996

Revolutionary tactics for Scotland

John Stone of the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International takes up the question of the national question in Scotland, following debates at Communist University ’96

We unequivocally support the formation of a Scottish parliament as a democratic demand - but warn against parliamentarianism and seeing this as a substitute for the class struggle. In any referendum we would advocate a ‘yes’ vote for autonomy/devolution. It is not logical to call for a referendum on a proposed Scottish national assembly if you take a position of opposing it in principle.

For example, the Workers Power group and its international organisation, the League for a Revolutionary Communist International, correctly held a position of not advocating a Welsh assembly in 1992, since a majority was not in favour of it, and correctly saw it as a distraction from the issue of the miners and the pit closure programme at the time. Now they say that devolution in Scotland is a “distraction” and that Blair is playing into the nationalists’ hands by opportunistically supporting it in order to curry favour with disillusioned workers.

Though the description of Blair’s motive is accurate, WP’s understanding of the ‘dangers of nationalism’ is rather typically Anglo-centric and potentially Anglo-chauvinist.  It is even Union Jack-ishly reminiscent of the Tories’ counterattack on Labour’s devolution plans, which they (the Tories) say will open the road to the destruction of the Union. If WP/LRCI are saying no to a Scottish assembly when a clear and overwhelming majority of people in Scotland want it, then they ignore the democratic right of the Scottish working class to decide their national fate.

They also relinquish any possibility of influencing this movement of the class because of their wooden, dogmatic schemes of what workers should be thinking, rather than seeking to find a road to the masses through the transitional method, by relating to their real level of consciousness.

We do not see an orientation supporting such demands for devolution as a ‘gamble with nationalism’ or a ‘dangerous diversion’, provided revolutionaries pose correct tactics, in step with the ascending class consciousness of workers in struggle. It is a democratic and class question of the right of the working class to contest the running of government and parliamentary political rule, and capitalist economic domination over their lives.

The fact they are willing to contest it opens up opportunities for revolutionaries to put propaganda for a Scottish workers’ assembly and other popular organisations of mass rule and scrutiny over the parliamentarians - particularly Labour MPs, who take a stand opposing the Tories now in office or a future Blair government.

We revolutionaries will use a Scottish assembly as a platform to advocate the abolition of the monarchy and for a Scottish workers’ republic as a step that will truly take Scottish, English and Welsh workers towards socialism in a federal all-British workers’ republic with national autonomy for Scotland and Wales.