Back to main newsPower in whose hands?- we must work to ensure that devolution advances the interests of the working classes
Sat 07 Jun 2008
Author: John FosterJOHN FOSTER explains how we must work to ensure that devolution advances the interests of the working classes.
"I DON'T even know the estate owner's name. What I do know is that I have had to sell my cows."
A scene from the highland clearances? No, it's May 2008. Andrew Murray, along with other smallholders, was ordered to remove his cattle from land that has been given over to crofters for grazing ever since 1886, when the Duke of Sutherland signed the agreement in the aftermath of the crofters' war.
Since then, the 22,000-acre estate, like much Highland land, has changed hands many times. The current landlord bought it in 2006 and wants the area for sporting purposes.
It's not the only clearance in Scotland today. Working class housing schemes are being demolished to the benefit of speculators and property developers. Closures are imminent across large swathes of Scotland's manufacturing industry.
The power of capitalist wealth continues unabated. Indeed, in some ways it is even worse than it was in the Duke of Sutherland's time.
At least he felt obliged to make concession towards his tenants, as did the governments of the 20th century when they provided the cash for council housing.
As always, what ordinary people get depends on the balance of class forces and, specifically, the organisation and collective strength of those exploited by capitalism.
This brings us to the unspoken question behind much of Scottish politics. It might be called the Connolly question. It's about the relationship between formal independence and real economic and class power.
In Ireland's struggle for independence, James Connolly repeatedly asked what difference flying the Green Flag over Dublin Castle would make if land and capital remained in private hands, whether British or Irish.
If this question was relevant in Ireland, it is doubly so in Scotland where so much of the bargaining power of working people has depended on the united strength of the labour movement across the nations of Britain.
Last week, the self-proclaimed prime-minister-in-waiting David Cameron launched his charm offensive on the SNP.
"Whoever is Scotland's First Minister, I would be a Prime Minister who acts on the voice of the Scottish people and will work tirelessly for consent."
The same day, a Glasgow Herald editorial reminded us of something we tend to forget.
"Anabel Goldie, the Scottish (Tory) party leader, and her colleagues have aligned themselves with the SNP to the intended benefit of both. The Scottish Tories have played an important part in maintaining Mr Salmond in power and, in return, have won government backing for policies on business rates, law and order and drugs."
The SNP believes that a Tory victory in 2010 would do wonders for their ability to win the independence referendum scheduled for later the same year. In turn, Cameron sees himself as benefiting greatly from SNP inroads into Labour north of the border.
To make this point is not to claim that Alex Salmond is aligned to the Tories. Salmond's political instincts are social democratic.
He is, however, first and foremost a nationalist politician and has shown very considerable skill in seizing the opportunities offered by his inept new Labour opponents.
And herein lies the danger. There is a potentially progressive dynamic within devolution. But there is also a reactionary one.
Which is dominant will depend on the balance of class forces and the effectiveness of interventions by the labour movement.
At present, it is the pro-big business dynamic that is dominant.
SNP MPs are already laying down terms for their support for a Tory government in 2010. Their key demand is lower corporation tax in Scotland.
At the same time, at British level, the big-business press is demanding an end to the current system of financial allocation for social and welfare spending between the nations of Britain. This Barnett formula, they claim, gives the "sponging Scots" far too much and the English regions too little.
As the recession bites, these calls will get louder. If they lead to a Yes vote in an independence referendum, big business will be only too happy.
Lower taxes on company profits will put pressure on England and Wales for the same, as will a new regime of "fiscal accountability" at Holyrood. And a fractured labour movement, in both economic and political terms, would be even better.
Which brings us back to the Connolly question. City of London financial institutions would still own and control everything in Scotland.
At the same time, any independent Scottish government would have to rule within the neoliberal straitjacket imposed by the EU.
Faced with such pressures, social democratic instincts won't count for much.
So, how can the dynamics of devolution be made to work for working people, as was the original intention? Progress in one nation was meant to lever forward advances in the others.
The policies themselves exist. The STUC in April demanded that the Scottish Parliament is given the powers that will enable it to end its subservience to big business - the power to borrow that will provide an alternative to private finance, the power to control the public utilities essential for Scotland's infrastructure and an approach to financial allocation at British level that matches social need.
What is required is the political will. In Holyrood, as in Westminster, Labour remains transfixed by the fear of the right-wing media. Which is why trade union pressure is now essential.
Forthright intervention is required within the Labour Party. But something more is necessary. Ultimately, it is collective action that transforms the climate of opinion.
In face of the multiple economic crises affecting Scotland, the trade union movement needs, in a new way, locally and together, to mobilise members, families and communities to demand a progressive resolution.
Why shouldn't governments intervene to resolve the transport, energy and housing crises or the failure of manufacturing industry? Why should essential services be cut? And why should big business pay even less tax than it does currently?
The sacred cows of neoliberalism need to be ordered off our land as a first precondition for any satisfactory answer to the Connolly question.
These arguments are made more fully in the CPB Scotland's new pamphlet Scotland's Future which will be launched on Friday 13 June at 6.30pm in Unity Offices, 72 Waterloo Street, Glasgow.
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