15.05.1997

For a parliament with full powers

SSA gives up fight for genuine self-determination

Last week the May meeting of the national council of the Scottish Socialist Alliance discussed the election campaign and perspectives for the coming period. Despite a general feeling of disappointment with the final votes, all comrades who spoke expressed the view that the SSA was correct to stand candidates.

Standing in 16 seats across Scotland, the SSA had established a national profile. Hundreds of street stalls, thousands of people canvassed face to face and hundreds of thousands of our election addresses delivered by the post office to every home in the constituencies all contributed to the growing recognition of the Alliance’s name and the spreading of socialist ideas.

The importance of consolidating the SSA organisationally was raised several times with the main tasks being to visit and recruit contacts from the election, and to set up new branches. Linked in with this was the need for tighter coordination nationally, which would be addressed at the June conference.

Comrades from the CPGB argued that in the aftermath of the general election and with the Labour government pushing ahead with its rigged referendum and sop parliament, the SSA should throw itself into fighting for the principled position it adopted at its founding conference - for a sovereign Scottish parliament with full powers. It was in this spirit that we presented a resolution arguing that the SSA should “set up a steering committee, as a matter of urgency, to coordinate our campaign for a parliament with full powers and to push for a multi-option referendum”.

This was in line with the statement from March’s national council on Scottish self-government. The CPGB resolution proposed that a series of meetings, sponsored by the SSA, should be set up in communities and workplaces across Scotland on what type of parliament is needed, the aim being to ensure that the SSA’s message is heard and taken into the working class communities of Scotland.

The unanimity of opposition to this was, to say the least, surprising. Comrades from Scottish Militant Labour and the Scottish Socialist Movement were united in their pessimism and surrender to Labour’s pathetic tinkering on the constitutional question in Scotland.

Taking care not to caricature their positions, the arguments against included: that the debate on the referendum was more or less over, as Labour will publish the bill in a few weeks time; and that the SSA’s time was better spent organising against council cuts and the Job Seekers Allowance.

Yes, these are important issues and I would be one of the first to recognise the tremendous work done by SML and the SSA in organising these campaigns. However, the national question in the form of Labour’s referendum and sop parliament will be at the forefront of political debate both in Scotland and the rest of Britain for the next four months.

It is precisely at such at time that the SSA should be looking to get its distinctive and correct position for a sovereign Scottish parliament with full powers onto the national political agenda and to fight for it in the working class movement, linking the political fight for democracy with the fight against unemployment and council cuts. As many readers will be aware, the CPGB is for an active boycott of Labour’s two-question referendum - a minority view within the SSA. The majority in the SSA prefer to shut up shop until Labour’s sop is safely in place.

There are many in the SSA who recognise that what Labour is offering is not enough, but who will nevertheless critically vote ‘yes, yes’. It is criminal not to campaign vociferously and doggedly for real self-determination in the run-up to polling day.

Our resolution was defeated in favour of an opposing one to join the double ‘yes’ campaign now and to send delegates to the Partnership for a Parliament conference in Edinburgh.

The majority at the NC appear to be saying that the campaign putting forward the SSA’s preferred option is now over and every effort must be put into maximising the ‘yes, yes’ vote. Instead the real battle for them starts in 1999 when the SSA stands for and gets comrades elected to Blair’s parliament via proportional representation. However, there are many forms of PR and we should expect Blair and Dewar to come out with the least democratic, the one most likely to benefit the Labour Party - not the Scottish people, nor the SNP or the SSA.

Genuine self-determination for Scotland is at the core of the SSA’s founding statement. Most Alliance members are only too well aware that the Blair/Dewar proposals are a million miles from this. It is the duty of socialists, communists, revolutionaries to fight for what is necessary, not to restrict ourselves to the art of the possible.

It was that correct method that led us to stand candidates in the general election. All the opinion polls and political commentators predicted to one extent or another a significant Labour win. The mood in the housing estates and on the streets was to get rid of the Tories, through voting Labour, but the SSA still stood candidates - and rightly so.

This method must continue. We must build on the success of the election campaign and continue to make the SSA a distinct pole of attraction to the working class, to socialists and to those fighting for real democracy.

To establish and consolidate itself as an all-Scotland force it must have a national perspective. We are being presented with a golden opportunity by the Blair government. What it is offering is nowhere near what large sections of the population of Scotland want. The SSA should be leading and articulating that discontent, not submerging itself indistinguishably into the official double ‘yes’ campaign which will be drowned by bourgeois politicians from all parties, including the Tories, the trade union bureaucracy and big business.

The Socialist, SML’s sister paper in England and Wales, recognises the importance of the national question combined with the dangers of Labour’s “watered down proposals”. It states:

“Together with general disappointment at the Labour government’s failure to tackle burning social and economic problems, disappointment with a feeble Scottish parliament will fuel demands for independence. Given the lack of a mass socialist alternative at the moment, the Scottish National Party could undoubtedly gain support” (May 2).

We share this analysis. That it is why it is crucial that the SSA, SML and all socialist forces intervene now, not just in ‘bread and butter’ issues, important as they are, but continually fight for a principled position in theory and in practice which can see the working class leading the fight for liberation, rather than remaining a slave to Labour sops or SNP nationalism.

Nick Clarke