23.10.1997
For optimism
Communists must come to a correct assessment of the September 11 referendum in Scotland so as to take the next step forward. There is no room for pessimism, every reason for optimism
The result of the September 11 devolution referendum in Scotland is open to, and has been given, many different interpretations. Tony Blair, Donald Dewar and Peter Mandelson scored a big victory. Obviously. The 74.3% and the 63.5% ‘yes, yes’ vote on September 11 means New Labour’s plan for a ‘modernised’ constitutional monarchy is taking material form.
Scotland will be satisfied with a sop parliament. New Labour MSPs and Downing Street appointees have the prospect of ruling Scotland indefinitely. Dangerous ideas about self-determination or independence can be allowed to gradually recede to the outer fringes of political life. Or so after September 11 trusts Blair. Therefore according to the establishment version of events - New Labour, the bourgeois press, BBC - Scotland voted not only for devolution ... but renewed imprisonment in the United Kingdom.
Naturally other parties and interests backing Scotland Forward put their own spin on the referendum campaign and its result. The pro-Labour left, SWP, etc, highlight their - entirely marginal - role in inflicting another crushing defeat on the Tories. In turn Tory partisans of Scotland Forward see the argument for greater organisational autonomy boosted. Liberal Democrats for their part view with barely concealed anticipation a minor role in government via coalition deals. Finally Scottish nationalists and nationalist socialists celebrate a completely speculative, and hence imaginary, first step towards independence.
Of course, for Blair and co the referendum, from fumbled inception to triumphant end, carried many hazards and perils ... and therefore openings and prospects for others. On May 1 potential votes in Scotland could have been lost - probably they were - through the attempt to placate and thereby win so-called Middle England. The pledge that Scotland would have to leap the hurdle of a referendum was designed for the consumption of worried English - not Scots - voters. The same with Blair’s insulting, but well honed formulation about “sovereignty” remaining with “me as an English MP” (The Guardian April 5 1997). Not surprisingly the general election swing to Labour in Scotland - admittedly a traditional base - was significantly below the average. Despite that the Blair-Mandelson strategy paid off handsomely. What might have been lost was more than compensated for by what was gained.
So what of the September 11 referendum? Unlike the last one, 18 years ago, it was fought from a salient of great strength. In 1979 the minority Labour government of James Callaghan was disintegrating. Devolution was not for the beleaguered cabinet a coherent policy, but a means to survive. A device, not conviction. Inevitably it was ensnared in and compromised by the collapse of Labour’s ‘understanding’ with the trade union bureaucracy (the social contract and then the social concordat). The rank and file rebelled. Here was the winter of their discontent.
Exactly what was at stake on March 1 1979 - referendum day - was far from clear. Leading Tories - for example Lord Home - cleverly muddied the waters by sneakily advancing the idea that a ‘no’ vote would be a vote for a more powerful assembly: one with tax raising powers and PR. The ‘yes’ camp was underfunded and riven with internecine war. Labour refused to “soil its hands” by cooperating with the SNP. To cap it all, thanks to George Cunningham - a Scottish Labour MP with an English constituency - the referendum was encumbered with a unique stipulation: against the expressed wish of four-fifths of Scotland’s MPs there would have to be a 40% majority among the whole electorate. As things turned out 52% voted ‘yes’. However, the turnout was 63.9%. Hence the absolute ‘yes’ vote was 30.8% - according to the blatantly undemocratic rules, a failure by a clear margin. The nationalists soon got vengeance. It was the SNP which tabled the no confidence motion which by a single vote scuppered the Callaghan government.
Blair, in contrast to Callaghan, has a huge parliamentary majority. His ratings, high on May 1, went stratospheric afterwards - helped not least by a skilful ability to fuel, exploit and incorporate the unprecedented manifestation of popular grief experienced with the death of Diana Windsor. As to the Tories, today they are programmeless. All they can do is repackage themselves in preparation to re-fight the last election and cling to the old status quo - loathed by most of Scotland. Moreover they are deeply demoralised - crucially in Scotland where they suffered wipe-out (ie, Canadaisation).
Despite all that, a bloc of Labour MPs might still have rebelled. As in 1979. Doggedly the SNP could have insisted on independence being included as an option The left - that is, the Scottish Socialist Alliance - could have actively exposed the rigged nature of Blair’s referendum. An SSA-organised boycott would then have been well placed to re-ignite the militancy of March 1997 and imbue the masses with a political programme - self-determination and a federal republic. In the event, Tam Dalyell was a lone, and somewhat comical, voice among Labour ranks. The SNP walked into Blair’s take-it-or-leave-it trap. Outmanoeuvred it capitulated. At the 11th hour the SNP joined Scotland Forward and duly delivered its people on September 11. The SSA majority was no better. They liquidated themselves as any kind of independent force. The SSA’s hard won prestige was given as a free gift to underwrite Scotland Forward. Principles and aims were dropped or suspended ... and outrageously elements within the moderate majority sought to witch hunt the militant minority - ie, the CPGB and supporters of the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination.
Rightly Scotland Forward claims both the 74.3% and 63.5% ‘yes, yes’ votes on September 11. The same goes with Think Twice and its 25.7% and 36.5% ‘no, no’ vote. (There was a 60.4% turnout - hence in terms of the total electorate Scotland Forward got 44.88% and 38.35%, and Think Twice 15.52% and 22.05% of the total electorate.) What of the CGSD’s boycott campaign? It is vital for the CPGB - given our programmatic orientation and logistical investment - to arrive at a correct understanding of the referendum and the role we played. How should the 39.6% of the total electorate who abstained on September 11 - a bloc comparable to Scotland Forward’s - be evaluated? Were they overwhelmingly demoralised and sullen, or was there a conscious, and therefore positive, protest element? Were those who abstained from the left or right? Was there a class factor? Was the boycott call correct? Did it succeed or did it fail? Has a political space been created? Can support be measured?
Different views have been expressed in the pages of the Weekly Worker. That is entirely healthy and natural. No serious organisation starts an evaluation with complete unanimity, let alone keeps disputes hidden away. But in my mind some comrades have shown a certain pessimism - which, if not corrected, will, I believe, prove politically damaging.
It has been stated that the Provisional Central Committee somehow “overestimated” the movement for self-determination, that our “predictions” were mistaken (Anne Murphy Weekly Worker September 18). Before the referendum comrade Linda Addison expressed her “utter disbelief” that there should be any attempt to politically characterise - “paint red” - those who abstain (Weekly Worker September 11 1997). Though the main agitational slogan appearing on all CGSD propaganda was ‘Boycott Labour’s rigged referendum!’ the comrade refuses to admit what is blindingly obvious. The CGSD did not want people to vote on September 11. Success, for a very confused comrade Addison, could only be judged in terms of impact on SML and the number of political strikes and mass demonstrations.
This was followed a month later by a tirade against “flippant optimism” and “adventurism”, along with the - totally unfounded - statement that Jack Conrad was claiming “all those that did not bother turning out at all and all those who spoilt their ballot papers” for the boycott campaign (Weekly Worker October 9 1997). If anyone is ‘guilty’ of this charge it is, of course, comrade Dave Craig. He does tend - it is only a tendency - to claim all the abstentionist ‘votes’. Yet though he urges Scottish comrades to chant “49% ...49% ...49%” - ie, the abstention rate in Glasgow at the next SSA meeting, he too refuses to come to any estimate of the impact of the boycott campaign. “It might be three, 33 or 33,333 - or perhaps more,” he blithely announces (Weekly Worker October 16 1997).
Let me first deal with the thesis concerning “overestimation” and “prediction”. The truth is not hard to discover. Neither the PCC nor Jack Conrad’s Blair’s rigged referendum and Scotland’s right to self-determination “predicted” a mass movement. Time and again it has been stressed how things are open ended. That within the limits set by objective conditions the future will be made by people and their practical actions. We therefore eschew clairvoyancy. Fight for what is possible and necessary - that is our motto.
Every action must begin with a statement of what is. Our tactical and strategic approach to the September 11 referendum was based on a sober appraisal of the objective situation and shaped by an analysis of class and political relations. Within the United Kingdom there is for Scotland an inbuilt democratic deficit. There is no right to self-determination. This is no arcane constitutional question. The masses - in particular the working class - seethed with discontent. For 18 years Scotland had voted in Labour MPs but had been ruled by Tory satraps. Every opinion poll up to referendum day showed a substantial body inclined towards a settlement far beyond what was on offer from John Smith and then Tony Blair. Some 30% are recorded favouring complete independence. Undeniably over the last two decades politics in Scotland - from the poll tax to water privatisation - has been coloured by the growing national question.
How should communists approach such a situation? Do they pessimistically weigh up what appears likely - in the manner of a grey insurance assessor? Or do they boldly fight to make things happen? Jack Conrad has been berated for being an ‘organisational optimist’. Frankly I am not quite sure what an ‘organisational optimist’ is. Nevertheless he, and all communists, must surely exude optimism. Optimism multiplies “revolutionary energy” a hundredfold, said Lenin, and that “can perform miracles” (VI Lenin CW Vol 9, Moscow 1977, p103). Even in the darkest hours of reaction, even in the depths of defeat, even at the moment of capitalism’s seeming triumph the task of the communist is to find the way forward. Hence, whatever the conditions, no matter how dire, we aim for the maximum that is possible.
Should we aim for some golden mean? Would that increase fighting activity and passion, fire thought and raise sights? Pessimism is self-fulfilling and self-defeating. Communists brand pessimism as a means to guarantee failure. Pessimism is in fact the antithesis of Marxism. Gramsci - it will surprise some - famously railed against pessimism because it produces “political passivity”, “intellectual torpor and scepticism towards the future” (A Gramsci ‘Against pessimism’ Selections from political writings: 1921-1926 London 1978, p213).
Marxism is a political method, a guide to action,not a bookish classroom exercise. That is why it is vital to win confidence that the chosen path of action is the right one. For over a year before the referendum we fought to persuade comrades and supporters that the boycott call was the correct response to Blair’s rigged referendum. Articles, seminars, debates and schools were devoted to the subject. Selfless work, revolutionary innovation and courage flows from understanding. What goes for the conduct of the boycott campaign applies equally to its aftermath. Though they did virtually nothing, certainly nothing noteworthy or independent, during the referendum campaign the SSA moderate majority claim the ‘yes, yes’ vote as a victory for their nationalist road to socialism. Our comrades must of course explain that socialism can only come via working class self-liberating activity. That voting to strengthen the constitutional monarchy will not bring any kind of socialist advance. But they must do more. It is within the mass that abstained on September 11 that communists can locate the core of a future anti-state movement. If comrades fully grasp this, the real significance of the boycott campaign, their conviction will itself become a weapon. They will be well placed to become a militant majority.
But let us return to method. Our point of departure is a minimum programme which seeks to put the working class into the leadership of the battle for democracy against the existing state. The CPGB is committed - as a minimum - to the right of Scotland’s people to self-determination. Obviously that does not automatically denote independence. Communists are duty bound to work for the closest possible voluntary unity of the peoples of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Today that can best be achieved with a federal republic of England, Scotland and Wales, and a united Ireland. Thus the referendum-boycott campaign was used to promote the idea that self-determination be exercised for a federal republic.
Slogans are the bridge through which we fight to join what objectively exists with our aim of making the working class into a consciously revolutionary class. In Scotland, where the advanced sections of the masses yearned for radical change, the only correct path was to argue - propagandise - for militant methods. Concretely, a boycott of Blair’s rigged referendum. The CPGB was neither seduced nor cowed by the Scotland Forward consensus. Unlike the SSA moderate majority, we, the SSA militant minority, did not passively wait upon events.
Being revolutionary optimists, we aimed to achieve the maximum possible the objective situation necessitated and allowed - wrecking and de-legitimising Blair’s rigged referendum with interventions at mass meetings, use of the bourgeois media, protest stunts, demonstrations, political strikes and a mass boycott on September 11. Suffice to say, we did not know nor claim in advance what would happen. As with Napoleon Bonaparte our approach was simple: ‘First fight, then see what happens’.
The forces at our disposal were, as things turned out, very small (though such was their effect that The Times estimated CPGB membership in Scotland as “below 1,000”). A united front of communists, socialists and left nationalists would have galvanised things. A demonstration called by such a body in Scotland’s proletarian capital city - Glasgow - would have attracted many thousands and given a clear red tinge to the abstention ‘vote’. I agree with comrade Dave Craig: even a demonstration of 2,000 could make a big difference. Tragically almost the entire left fell in behind the Scotland Forward camp. From SLP to SML, from Democratic Left to Spartactist League, from Morning Star to Workers Power, from SWP to Scotland’s nationalist socialists there was abject surrender. Alone, the CPGB and the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination fought against Blair’s referendum for a ‘modernised’ constitutional monarchy. Naturally that did not mean defending the status quo or adopting an “extreme-nationalist” position (The Times September 9 1997). We stood by the SSA’s democratically agreed founding aims. To have done anything else would have been unprincipled. We demanded: ‘A parliament with full powers!’ and ‘Self-determination - nothing less!’
Some Trotskyite and semi-Trotskyite critics believe that the CPGB mechanically copied the tactics of Russia’s Bolsheviks in 1905. Needless to say the charge is unwarranted. In 1905 the Bolsheviks called for a boycott of elections to the first tsarist duma. Events cascaded in their favour. Tsarism was rotting on its feet. War with Japan saw it plunge deeper and ever deeper into crisis. Beginning in January 1905, there was a mounting wave of spontaneous strikes and mass demonstrations. Things culminated in December’s nationwide armed uprising led by the Bolsheviks in Moscow. Against Tsar Nicholas II’s toothless parliament the Bolsheviks did not predict - but counterposed - a constituent assembly born of a proletarian-led democratic revolution.
However, tsarism was able to regain the initiative. Peace was secured with Japan. The imperial army was thereby freed for purposes of internal repression. After nine days of fierce street fighting insurrectionary Moscow was brutally crushed. Ten thousand seasoned and hand-picked troops overcame the resistance of 1,000 guerrillas. Other centres of the revolution quickly followed. Revolutionaries were executed, exiled to Siberia or fled abroad. Order was restored.
The Bolshevik call for a boycott of the tsar’s next round of duma elections in 1906 - for a parliament with even less powers than previously - was both right and wrong. It was right because it was correct to do everything to keep the flame of revolution alive. No revolutionary talks down the mood of the masses. The victory of tsarism and reaction was by no means certain. The parties and factions of the working class were still growing at an enormous pace. Both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks counted their membership in tens of thousands. Yet the boycott was also wrong. In conditions of passivity, in the absence of the revolutionary left, people voted for the Cadets - Constitutional Democrats - a party of the bourgeoisie not entirely unlike our Labour Party. The Cadets were thereby able to gain a temporary hold over democratic opinion. Lenin was quick to realise the mistake. A handful of comrades - because they were popular grass roots leaders - found themselves elected to the duma. Lenin resolutely opposed the demand that they be withdrawn. Instead, alone among the Bolsheviks, he sided with the Mensheviks in wanting to organise them into an effective parliamentary fraction. Furthermore he also recognised that there had to be an immediate change of tactics. The Bolsheviks must energetically contest forthcoming duma elections.
Lenin met fierce opposition. The ‘left’ Bolsheviks around Bogdanov were as a matter of doctrine committed to a boycott. A bitter struggle followed. Suffice to say, Lenin secured a majority. The boycottists were expelled from the faction (not the Party). The Bolsheviks, let it be noted, went on to brilliantly exploit the agitational and propaganda opportunities that came with their duma deputies.
With the formation of the Communist International there began another fight against those who on principle opposed participation in parliamentary elections - Sylvia Pankhurst, Amadeo Bordiga, Anton Pannekoek, etc. Illusions in parliamentarianism could only be overcome using parliament, insisted Lenin. The 2nd Congress of the Communist International formally agreed his stance. Except in the most exceptional circumstances - eg, a revolutionary situation - it is “obligatory”, said the congress resolution, to use parliament and parliamentary elections as “an auxiliary centre” of revolutionary work (A Alder [ed] Thesis, resolutions, manifestos of the first four congresses of the Third International London 1980, p101). That, it should be emphasised, has nothing whatsoever to do with choosing the lesser evil - choosing between Liberals and Tories, Democrats and Republicans ... or one form of monarchy as against another. No, it means communist candidates and independent working class politics. In essence that sums up the CPGB’s approach to September 11.
The notion that a boycott of a catch 22 referendum is synonymous with considering Scotland in the grip of a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation is unsustainable. Would our critics consider it necessary to vote either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in a rigged referendum designed to legitimise the abdication of a senile Elizabeth Windsor in favour of Charles Windsor? One trusts not. Maintaining that boycotting a rigged referendum - the classic device of a dictator - can only be countenanced in a revolutionary situation is not so much dogmatism. It is a pathetic ruse designed to hide capitulation to Blairism.
Undeniably the masses in Scotland were no longer prepared to be ruled in the old way, and the state, as represented by New Labour, was offering no more than a sop. However, true to their method, the opportunists - SWP, SLP, the SSA majority - took the easy road of choosing the lesser evil. In the name of anti-Toryism they tailed Blair and Scotland Forward.
Of course, it was impossible to secure a communist option in Blair’s rigged referendum, ie the federal republic. Independent working class politics could not thereby be directly expressed. But it could find indirect expression. Hence we did not boycott the referendum campaign. Quite the reverse. The CPGB utilised the official campaign in an exemplary fashion by calling for an active boycott of the vote on September 11 and making mass propaganda for self-determination and a federal republic.
In a real sense our campaign began with the May 1 general election. The CPGB’s Mary Ward stood for the SSA in Dundee West on a platform which included the federal republic and the demand for a boycott of Blair’s referendum. Every constituent got the message. In the summer CGSD offices were set up in Osborne Street, Glasgow G1. SSA co-chair Rosie Kane spoke at the CGSD launch press conference as a committed supporter. Our posters appeared everywhere. Tens of thousands of leaflets were distributed throughout the city. In Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh our comrades made powerful interventions at mass Scotland Forward meetings. They were so effective that Paul Vestry, Nigel Smith and other rattled Scotland Forward officials put a quick stop to such events. Imaginative and high profile stunts included one during the Edinburgh festival involving the well known - not to say notorious - Scottish actor, Tam Dean Burn. In spite of what amounted to a news blackout we managed to get extensive coverage in the bourgeois press both local, Scottish and British. Comrades were also interviewed by radio and TV journalists and took part in lively debates on both the radio and TV.
So how should the outcome of our boycott campaign be evaluated? I have already quoted the opinion of various comrades. In essence they consider the success of the boycott campaign purely in terms of points scored against SML and rather indistinct flags (incidentally any impact the on SSA and SML cannot be “accurately weighed”). Veering towards sectarianism it is even suggested that this was all the boycott (sic) ought to have aimed for. Crucially they refuse to claim or couternance any quantitative estimate of the impact of our campaign. There were no political strikes; there were no mass demonstrations. Those who did not vote are supposedly unknowable and, to all intents and purposes, therefore nothing. This is very foolish indeed.
In terms of our campaign let us not forget the other illustrative criteria taken from Lenin in the revolutionary year of 1905 on the difference between an active boycott campaign and “passive abstention”. I reckon that we do not come off too bad. An active boycott “should imply increasing agitation tenfold, organising meetings everywhere, taking advantage of election meetings, even if we have to force our way into them, holding demonstrations, political strikes, and so on and so forth” (VI Lenin CW Vol 9, Moscow 1977, p182). Taking into account our forces and the level of struggle I make it something like three out of five. And that leaves aside the “so on and so forth”! Needless to say the main point that must be emphasised here is that abstentions and spoilt ballot papers have a positive side and in one way or another can be measured. Like all phenomena in the universe they are in principle knowable. Our knowledge at this stage might well not be scientifically exact. It might have to remain at an intuitive or artistic level. But the huge numbers who abstained should in no way be dismissed or thought of as indistinct because the boycott campaign did not get them out onto the streets.
It has been said that Jack Conrad’s - admittedly artistic - assessment of the mass impact of our boycott campaign “in terms of tens of thousands of abstentions and thousands of spoilt ballot papers” is mere “flippant optimism”. If that is the case then my critics must insist that either things are unknowable or the boycott campaign definitely had no mass impact. If our campaign only swayed three or 33 people then we are not and cannot be talking about mass politics (I can name all of them). If we are talking about mass impact then by definition we must do so in terms of thousands and tens of thousands of people. There were 1,574,589 abstentions and 30,999 spoilt ballot papers. Those who acted positively, those who consciously boycotted the referendum might not - at least without months of gathering statistical samples and number crunching - be “accurately weighed”. In terms of scientific exactitude that cannot for the moment be disputed. But that surely does not mean there should be no attempt to come to, and claim, an estimation of them.
Comrade Dave Craig has already done a splendid job in showing that in the urban areas, Glasgow in particular, the abstention ‘vote’ should be considered “largely” in terms of coming from the left and from radical nationalism (Weekly Worker October 16 1997). He is right to say that the political alignment of communists with this mass block is correct. But I go one further than him. Communists not only aligned themselves with the advanced section of democracy in Scotland. Our boycott campaign articulated an existing mass sentiment.
Society and the movement of political ideas below is an extremely complex question. Hence no one is suggesting that the boycott campaign increased the number of abstentions by some crude process of simple addition; say, for every 10 leaflets handed out, one convert. The boycott, like any political campaign aimed at an already convinced mass, worked in molecular fashion.
Ingeneral those who were already opposed to Blair’s rigged referendum from the left were encouraged and empowered. There was an organised boycott campaign. This fact is of enormous social, political and psychological significance. People might have heard about it fleetingly on the radio or TV over breakfast. Perhaps they took in the poster from a car or bus. Maybe they were told about it in garbled fashion by a friend at the local pub. Yet, however they got to know about the boycott campaign, its actual existence gave them heart and direction, and spurred them on to talk to and convince neighbours, workmates, partners, relatives and others. Here was an army of agitators. If they read the letters in the press, picked up one of our leaflets or bought our pamphlet, then they would have been intellectually armed at a qualitatively higher level. They became propagandists too. The boycott campaign had a small official staff. But when we flapped our wings in Glasgow G1 the ripple affected in time the whole of Scottish politics. September 11 shows it.
The people of Scotland were presented with three distinct campaigns. Scotland Forward, Think Twice and the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination. Scotland Forward was supported by the government, the STUC, the Lib Dems, SNP, dissident Tories, sections of big business, most of the Scottish press and media and almost the entire left. Think Twice was in essence a Tory laager. Alone, the CGSD fought for self-determination and a boycott. No one, certainly not Jack Conrad, is claiming “all those that did not bother turning out at all and all those who spoilt their ballot papers” “for the active boycott campaign”. That is an Aunt Sally. But if the CGSD accounted for nothing more than two percent extra abstentions across Scotland - hardly unreasonable, given what CPGB candidates, standing on our full manifesto, scored in European, Westminster and local elections - that gives us the rough figure of 30,000: ie, over one percent of the total poll and over 0.5% of the electorate (I have spoken to a statistician who says that in all probability our impact was far more).
Take Glasgow and Dundee, two cities where we would expect our effect to be concentrated. The turnout was respectively 51.6% and 55.7%. In Dundee we have an established organisation and a proven record of electoral support. What of Glasgow? It is the most leftwing city in Britain. Earlier this year SML’s Scottish Socialist Voice described it as a “city in revolt” (March 27 1997). Obviously militant action has not broken out since the March strikes, demonstrations and occupations. But what about the militant sentiments that gave life to the March events? Bedrock feelings, smouldering anger and latent fighting capabilities amongst the masses have a stubborn existence. Given the chance, communists should do their utmost to revive and re-invigorate, and provide a hegemonic political programme. Between March and September there has after all been a general election, not a general defeat of the working class.
In Glasgow the ‘yes’ vote was in percentage terms higher than anywhere else, 83.6% and 75%. At the same time the actual turnout was the lowest. As noted above, the all-Scotland turnout was 60.4%. How then should the 10% differential between Glasgow and the all-Scotland average turnout be explained? The first-past-the-post effect can be discounted completely. That is, people not voting one way or another because Labour appears to be the preordained winner. Unlike in a general election every vote counts in a referendum. Corruption - which some comrades stress - must have had an impact - but was, it will be recalled, the cutting edge of a hypocritical Tory propaganda campaign. In all likelihood its impact would be seen in extra ‘no’ votes, and then that would be in traditional Tory areas more so than elsewhere. It also needs to be remembered that corruption, sleaze, etc not only concern Glasgow. There is also, for example, Paisley in East Renfrewshire. Gordon McMaster, its newly elected Labour MP, killed himself after being purportedly “smeared” by his colleague, Tommy Graham, MP for neighbouring Renfrewshire West. There has been much mud-slinging, official investigations and suspensions. Nevertheless there was, despite all that, a turnout of 68.2% in East Renfrewshire on September 11 - way above the national average.
Glasgow has by far the largest electorate of any council area. The total abstention was around 240,000. We centred our campaign and fought hardest here. A mere 2.5% swing-effect, from voting to not voting, gives a figure somewhere in the region of 12,000: ie, five percent of the abstentions. Again in my opinion this extremely modest figure underestimates but gives a flavour of our impact.
There is moreover the extra number of spoilt ballot papers, 30,999 in total. Glasgow itself accounted for 1,909 of these on the first question and 2,765 on the second question. According to The Herald, “one of the real mysteries of the poll is the number of rejected ballot papers throughout Scotland” (September 13 1997). Claiming every single spoilt vote would be ridiculous. However, it would be equally ridiculous to imagine we had no effect.
Given our resources and the collapse of almost the entire left into the camp of Scotland Forward, the Campaign for Genuine Self-Determination has to be considered a resounding success. We have to assess ourselves not only against what is necessary, but against where we began. Our politics in Scotland are now national. We have done more than raise a flag. We gave a political voice to the hundreds of thousands in Scotland who view with contempt both the old status quo and Blair’s sop.
Jack Conrad