16.03.1995

Labour - daftness devolved

THE MAIN political question for many in Scotland is how to regain control over their affairs. Everything is decided in London and decided badly.

The Labour Party conference in Inverness is peddling devolution as the answer. It is a popular policy. But, as Linsey Keenan of the M77 protest said, “It could turn out to be like Strathclyde Regional Council writ large”. “Useless, morally corrupt and walks all over people,” Mary Ward added.

Tony Blair is all for it: “Devolution isn’t daft. It isn’t impossible within a unitary state. It’s sensible, it’s practical, it’s realistic.” He might have added that it is subordinate to his becoming prime minister. “Scotland’s problem is not the English. It’s the Tories.” In other words he believes he is the answer, not the ability of workers in Scotland to make independent decisions.

The Labour Party, along with other bourgeois institutions, has absorbed feminism. This has created an odd beast: half anti-democratic, half plain daft. The party has concluded that there should an equal number of male and female candidates to the Edinburgh parliament, fairly distributed and with equal opportunity of election. Plus an ‘additional member’ voting system that guarantees a 50-50 gender split in parliament by allowing the party leadership to appoint a number of members according to their sex - an unelected quango of ‘placepersons’ whose loyalty can be counted on. Liberal Democrats and the SNP have similar policies, and Labour hopes the Tories will back it too.

Pamela Urquart, a delegate from Inverness, argued, “We must look at all the ways power can be devolved down from a Scottish Parliament.” Even to the point of holding committee meetings in Mallaig on fisheries.

You cannot build democracy by devolving meetings. Fisheries are an international problem. For example, Spain has 25% unemployment. Is it (or any other bourgeois state) going to bow to polite requests to fish responsibly? A working class response might begin by trying to unite fishers internationally to fight for full employment and to demand unemployment benefits without loss of earnings. So long as fishing is dependent on profit, rather than human need and the sea’s fertility, then the fisheries problem will be resolved by the bankruptcy courts, no matter how many meetings are held in Mallaig. 

Phil Kent