13.03.1997

Constitutional change on the agenda

Self-determination - nothing less

Last week the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties unveiled their joint proposals for constitutional reform.

They are proposing a whole range of constitutional changes: the short-term abolition of voting rights for hereditary peers, to be followed eventually by a more far-reaching ‘reconstitution’ of the House of Lords; the confirmation of a sop parliament in Scotland and an impotent assembly in Wales; the introduction of proportional representation for elections to the Scottish, Welsh and European parliaments; and the promise of a referendum on general election voting systems. The other changes too will be subject to referenda.

‘Why change things that are working so well?’ was the Tories’ pathetic response. Liberal commentators on the other hand heaped paeans of praise on Robert Maclennan and Robin Cook, the two parties’ main negotiators - “two sensible and decent men”, according to The Independent editorial (March 6). It referred to “a great promise, which deserves to awaken ... interest in a sceptical nation”. The Guardian editorial of the same day described the “agreement between two reforming parties to work together on a common programme” as of “potentially epochal importance for the reform of corrupt British politics”.

It goes without saying that such claims are overstated, to say the least. But John Major’s protestations - that since the country is so well governed all but the smallest tinkering should be ruled out - are equally absurd.

Behind this apparently small-minded lack of imagination lies some very real concerns of the more far-sighted elements of the ruling class. If the unelected, hereditary peers are to be dumped, then why not the unelected, hereditary monarch? And if toothless assemblies are granted to Wales and Scotland, what is to stop the Welsh and Scots demanding real powers?

If the people are granted even a sniff of genuine democracy, why shouldn’t they challenge the whole basis of the constitution itself and start to think of taking direct action to actually control their own lives? So the slippery-slope argument is not without foundation.

In fact, in the long term Labour’s proposals for Scotland do not stand a chance of buying off the Scottish people. Speaking to the Scottish Labour Party conference last weekend, Tony Blair - apparently in all seriousness - likened his proposals for a Scottish parliament co Harold Wilson’s 1964 “historic declaration” for the setting up of the Highlands and Islands Development Board, a promise that Labour fulfilled once in office: “This time I make a larger promise,” he added.

Blair really seems to believe that his plans for a glorified county council will quell the Scots’ passionate desire for self-determination.

Substantial sections of the ruling class have now come to terms with the need for constitutional reform - to help prop up their faltering system. To this some have linked up the national question with the constitutional monarchy itself. The anti-reformers in the Tory Party have certainly done this, threatening the break-up of Britain and the collapse of the constitution. The revolutionary left must make the same link and make this question our own. Far from wanting to prop the system up, we want to see it come crumbling down. We will fight for the abolition of the House of Lords and for proportional representation, but for us what is important is the way we fight for them.

That is why Scottish Militant Labour’s readiness - indeed enthusiasm - to campaign for a ‘yes, yes’ vote in Labour’s proposed two-question referendum is worse than useless. We must fight for what we need - ie, a parliament with full powers and genuine self-determination.

In mobilising workers to fight in this way, we will be nurturing the revolutionary idea that we have unlimited potential which can only be realised through struggle. Relying on step-by-step reforms handed down by our rulers will win us nothing and always leave them in control.

We fight for reforms in a revolutionary way. In doing so the reforms themselves soon become secondary - the fight for power becomes the main question.

While SML is combining its reformism with a newly discovered nationalism, there are others on the left who want to wish away the national question - indeed the whole question of the bourgeois constitution. The fight for democratic reforms is rejected because in themselves they do not go far enough. After all, they say, a Scottish parliament with full powers would by definition be a bourgeois institution. Some groups, such as the Socialist Workers Party, seek instead to channel national discontent back to bread-and-butter, trade union struggles.

But for communists any political struggle directed against the state must, have great positive potential. Far from directing it away from our main enemy back to the fight for a 10% wage increase (a struggle which in and of itself is necessarily confined within capitalist parameters), we aim to intensify it.

Today in Scotland just about every struggle - trade union, environmental or democratic - takes on a national coloration. Our tactics must be to interweave all those struggles and add our own, working class tint.

There can be no answer to the democratic aspirations of the Scottish people within the constitutional monarchy. Our job is to unite these democratic sentiments with those of the Welsh and English. It is through struggle that the Scottish people have had their demands for self-determination heard - the low level of struggle in Wales tells us why Labour offers the Welsh people an assembly even more impotent than the proposed Scottish parliament.

The struggle for democracy terrifies the bourgeoisie, so much so that the Tories completely deny any democratic rights for Scotland. We must make their fears real by uniting the class throughout Britain to turn the constitutional question into a revolutionary one.

That is why our strategy is for a federal republic of Scotland, Wales and England.

Alan Fox