27.03.1997

No to Labour’s sop! Self-determination, nothing less!

Join the Committee for Self-Determination

With militant demonstrations, occupations and strikes planned for the next weeks, most notably in Glasgow, the struggle against Labour local authority cuts in Scotland is gathering pace. The Labour Party is seen more and more as the party of the establishment.

Scottish Socialist Voice (March 2l) describes how a mass meeting of Glasgow Unison members, under the influence of the Scottish Socialist Alliance, agreed to indefinite strike action once the first compulsory redundancy is made. Unison is also calling for joint action with other unions and will strike again on April 3. This will coincide with a mass vigil organised by the SSA at the City Chambers, where the council is to hold its last meeting before the election. Linked to this are plans for occupations of community centres threatened with closure and other action against the cuts.

Outside Glasgow protests have also been held in Paisley, and in Edinburgh and Dundee plans for similar action are underway to coincide with the announcement of the new budgets. Scottish Socialist Voice speaks excitedly of the “chasm that has developed between Blair’s New Tartan Tories and swathes of the working class” (ibid). And there is no doubt that among the organised working class anger and resentment is focused clearly on the Labour Party.

It is also clear that the national question is a major issue within this movement and within the popular consciousness of the masses. The anger against Westminster and the feeling of national resentment are burning issues in today’s Scotland. Taken together, all of this makes for the possibility of a volatile period ahead. It becomes a situation where you can speak of councils of action and a movement that takes on the establishment.

Given the possibilities within today’s Scotland for revolutionary politics, the rightward move of much of the left on the national question is all the more shameful. Scottish Militant Labour, while rejoicing in the “chasm” that has developed between sections of the working class and Labour, wants to bridge that same gap when it comes to the politics of self-determination. Rather than fighting for working class people to take control, not only of their community centres but of their national rights, it wants to channel all the discontent into support for “Labour’s narrow, rigged referendum” - as SML itself describes it.

And despite its polemics against the Scottish National Party in the most recent issue of Scottish Socialist Voice it now says that its preferred option in any referendum which included that question would be for an independent (capitalist) Scotland. At a national council meeting of the SSA last Sunday Alan McCombes, leading member of SML, put forward a resolution that

“should a multi-option referendum be staged without the inclusion of the SSA option, whilst continuing to campaign for our position and policies, we would: (a) campaign for a first-preference vote for ‘independence’; (b) call for a second-preference vote for devolution.”

He justified this for the following reasons: firstly, that the SSA was too weak to ever hope to have its option put on a referendum and, secondly, that independence is far more revolutionary, as it strikes a blow at the British state. Moreover, he believed that if the SSA supported the independence option it could insert socialism into the campaign.

Perhaps it is the last reason that is the most telling. SML is well down the road to nationalism, but still wants to put a socialist gloss on it. The idea that dismantling the bourgeois state through a capitalist breakaway is of any revolutionary or progressive value to the working class is absurd. History, from Poland through to Ireland, has clearly shown us the monster that independence led by capitalism is for the working class. But in a climate where national aspirations are strong SML does not feel it has to go too deep to justify its opportunism. No theory has been put forward by them as to why revolutionaries or the working class should support such a demand. No explanation of how this will suddenly unleash the revolutionary zeal of the Scottish working class. It is all done in the context of the art of the possible. As Tommy Sheridan put it at the same meeting: “We are preparing for outcomes.” What is on offer is what you take. Whatever is the popular consciousness is what you adapt to. Couldn’t be simpler. But where does it get you?

All communists and socialists must have as their fundamental demand the unity of the working class. Nationalism is a nasty and divisive force that lines the working class up with its own oppressors. Therefore in the context of the demand for self-determination the cry of Scottish revolutionaries should be for unity with the English and Welsh working class against the British state. There can be no genuine self-determination without taking on the constitutional monarchy. The democratic deficit that exists today in Scotland and Wales means the need to fight for the sovereignty of the people.

We in the CPGB are campaigning for revolutionary commitment to the Alliance’s founding statement - for a sovereign Scottish parliament. Then the Scottish people can decide, not us. We are not trying to impose our federal republic on the Scottish people and have never attempted to do so. In fact, in contrast to SML we are fighting for the people, not the Labour Party, to decide. But we are Marxists, not nationalists, so we will argue for unity - not disunity - of the working class.

Why should Tony Blair worry when the left is doing his job for him? The Scottish people deserve better than that. They deserve the right to have the genuine self-determination that they clearly desire. That is why any fight for a parliament with full powers must have as its main thrust in this period the militant boycott of Labour’s rigged referendum.

The Committee for Genuine Self-Determination will be mounting a bold campaign to tie in with the militancy of the Scottish movement. We will be fighting to unleash the anger of the masses against the establishment, rather than deliver it up to them. Mary Ward, SSA candidate for Dundee West, will be leading this fight - as will others already committed to the cause of genuine self-determination, nothing less.

Anne Murphy