05.06.1997

Deserting the field

Around the left

The ‘Scottish question’ is progressively dominating the agenda in British politics. According to those who support the constitutional status quo, Labour’s referendum on Scottish and Welsh ‘devolution’ will lead to the “break-up of Britain” - even though Blair has made it clear that the new Scottish parliament will have no more powers than an English parish council, thus starkly exposing the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of the UK state.

Fertile ground for the revolutionary left, you would think. An easy opportunity, surely, to agitate against the constitutional monarchy, denounce Blair’s insult of a ‘parliament’ and champion the fight for real democracy - and take revolutionary politics to the Scottish masses. At the very least, revolutionaries should be thinking ‘big time’ now, and endeavour to be imaginative and courageous.

Tragically, and disgracefully, nothing could be further from the truth. Those organisations with a golden opportunity to advance the cause of genuine democracy - ie, Scottish Militant Labour and the Scottish Socialist Alliance - have deserted the field and collapsed before Blair’s sop parliament. By campaigning for a ‘yes, yes’ vote SML/SSA have abandoned the struggle for democracy, and betrayed the Scottish masses’ aspirations.

The latest issue of Scottish Socialist Voice, paper of SML, makes no bones about its craven opportunism and reformism. The headline of the editorial says it all: ‘A step forward’ (May 23) - but not for the working class, comrades.

After resorting to the hoary old opportunist cliché about how revolutionaries must “live in the real world”, SSV informs us that Labour’s proposals “represent a democratic advance”. Not only that, getting a bit carried away by its own opportunist logic it appears, we are told that an elected Scottish parliament “would be infinitely more democratic than the present set up”.

In other words, SML believes that Blair’s parish council parliament, and the bourgeois state in general, can be infiltrated gradually and eventually become a vehicle to ‘deliver’ socialism to the masses - from above. This is made explicit by the comment that the creation of a Scottish parliament “would be a crushing defeat for big business in Scotland and for the ruling class across Britain”. Tell that to Tony Blair or even the monarch, who will still remain sovereign over the Scottish people under Blair’s proposals. No wonder Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group has dubbed SML’s current political stance - though the label misses the mark - as “left monarchist”.

However, SML believes that we should find some comfort in the fact that “Labour has abandoned the idea of a ‘glass ceiling’ to prevent a future Scottish parliament holding a referendum on independence”. Communists do not want to see the break-up of the British working class, nor do we treat the issue of democracy frivolously. Unlike SML, we unambiguously support the right to self-determination while at the same time we intransigently fight against nationalism/separatism and for internationalism.

Michael Collins argued that the partitioning of Ireland, and the creation of a 26-counties Free State, was just a “stepping stone” to a united Ireland. Similarly, SSV declares that it supports the ‘yes, yes’ campaign as it is a “stepping stone to a democratic, self-governing socialist Scotland”.

SML - please remember Michael Collins, remember the working class, remember socialism.

Don Preston