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	Workers Hammer No. 199	Summer 2007

Down with English chauvinism!

Brown's government: racist, anti-working-class, anti-Scottish!

As widely predicted, the 3 May election to the devolved Scottish parliament resulted in a defeat for New Labour and a narrow victory for Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party (SNP), which now forms a minority government in Holyrood for the first time. The victory of the SNP, which has pledged to hold a referendum on Scottish independence, was met with a renewed barrage of English-chauvinist ranting by the British bourgeois press and Westminster politicians. Article after article in the London-based gutter press seeks to whip up hatred in England against “Scottish freeloaders” who supposedly get everything from cancer drugs to university education subsidised at the expense of English “taxpayers”. In a particularly vitriolic piece in the Guardian (12 June), right-wing Tory MP Boris Johnson railed that “The English have got used over many decades to subsidising the Scots”. Meanwhile attempts by the SNP to form a ruling coalition with the Liberal Democrats came to naught when the staunchly Unionist Lib Dems refused to countenance a referendum on Scottish independence.

With Labour justly hated throughout the country, especially among workers and minorities, and the Tories virtually non-existent north of the border, sections of the British ruling class fear that the rise of Scottish nationalist sentiment could tear apart the archaic “United Kingdom”. This edifice is based on English domination and on the national oppression of the Scots, Welsh and Irish as well as the racist oppression of black and Asian minorities. The “Mother of Parliaments” is merely a “democratic” façade for the system of capitalist dictatorship through which the imperialist bourgeoisie, centred on the City of London financiers, bleeds workers in Britain and across the world. The devolved Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly were set up by Blair’s New Labour following its 1997 election victory, in an attempt to stem the growing discontent in Scotland where a majority had voted Labour for years but were repeatedly subjected to Tory rule from Westminster. However, Blair made it crystal clear at the time that English domination would remain unaltered, arrogantly asserting that “sovereignty rests with me as an English MP, and that’s the way it will stay”. Blair contemptuously snubbed the Scottish parliament during his recent visit to Libya where he signed a memorandum of understanding with the Libyan regime over the exchange of prisoners, riding roughshod over the veto powers of the Scottish parliament, provoking an angry response from Salmond. Such a prisoner exchange could include Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, who is serving a life sentence in Scotland after being convicted of blowing up a Pan Am flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988, in a case that bears all the hallmarks of a classic frame-up.

For the right of self-determination for the Scottish and Welsh nations!

Blair’s successor Gordon Brown today pushes a reactionary agenda of promoting “Britishness”, draping himself in the Union flag—the bloody butcher’s apron of national oppression and imperialist pillage from Ireland to Iraq—while forcing new immigrants to speak English and to learn the supposedly British values of “freedom, liberty and tolerance”. Tell that to the population of Basra! Brown’s “Britishness” campaign is a pledge to his capitalist bosses that under his premiership the Labour government will be, if anything, even more racist, antiworking-class and anti-Scottish than under Blair.

Nationalist sentiment in Scotland has grown significantly in the past two decades, in opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government which devastated major industrial proletarian centres in Scotland, Wales and the north of England and then in opposition to Labour under Blair which tried to outdo Thatcher in attacks on health care, education and other social programmes. Today, areas of Glasgow, such as Shettleston, are among the most impoverished and deprived in the country with a life expectancy of no more than 63—13 years less than the UK average. A Guardian article from 21 January 2006, referring to Glasgow’s Calton area has the startling headline: “In Iraq, life expectancy is 67. Minutes from Glasgow city centre, it’s 54”. The article describes the deadly poverty and malnutrition in an area where “deprivation bites into almost every home: 44% are on incapacity benefit, 37% live in a workless household and 30% of homes are occupied by a lone parent”. It notes:

“At one time the backbone of industrial Glasgow, the Calton, with its men working in shipyards and foundries, was skirted by the city’s markets—the meat market, fish market, cheese market—all supplying fresh food, all of them, along with the industrial jobs, gone.”

The devastation of the proletariat and the social decay engendered by capitalism cannot be addressed by either by “devolution” or independence under capitalism, but require a workers revolution throughout the British Isles which rips the means of production out of the hands of the capitalist class and begins the construction of a socialist society based on a planned, collectivised economy with production for human need, not for capitalist profits.

Hatred of Labour in Scotland has mainly benefited the bourgeois SNP which, despite its posturing as a social-democratic party, is an outright enemy of the Scottish proletariat and seeks to rule an independent Scotland on behalf of Scottish bankers and bosses within the context of NATO and the European Union. The SNP visualises using the oil wealth of the North Sea to mimic the Irish Republic as a low-wage haven for capitalist exploitation. Salmond’s vision of “independence” entails paying allegiance to the English Queen, whom he calls “Elizabeth, Queen of Scots” (Guardian, 24 May), and for whom he is now a Privy Councillor.

The Spartacist League upholds the right of self-determination for Scotland—as well as for Wales—which means the right to form independent states and implies also the right not to separate. Our attitude is grounded in intransigent opposition to all forms of nationalism—first and foremost the dominant English chauvinism. It is possible that the pervasive anti-Scottish chauvinism of the British bourgeoisie could drive the Scots towards separation. However, given the lack of decisive national differences in either language or religion, we do not presently call for independence for Scotland and Wales but advocate a course of common class struggle against the British state.

Following Lenin’s Bolsheviks who fought for “Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations” we insist that it is the duty of a revolutionary party in England, the oppressor nation, to champion the right of self-determination for Scotland and Wales and to oppose every manifestation of English chauvinism, while the duty of the proletarian vanguard in Scotland and Wales is to fight for voluntary integration with the proletariat of England. This is the exact opposite of the approach taken by fake socialist organisations like the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which for some years was buried inside the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). While raising not a peep against the pervasive anti-Scottish chauvinism in England, the SWP peddles criminal illusions in the SNP—a capitalist party in government—urging: “The Scottish left, trade unions and anti-war movement need to start fighting to ensure that the SNP delivers on its promises of radical policies that favour peace, justice and equality” (Socialist Worker, 19 May).

The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), which was long touted by the reformist left in England and Scotland as a model party, failed to win a seat at Holyrood in May and saw its vote decimated. The SSP’s former leader Tommy Sheridan, who now heads Solidarity after falling out with his erstwhile comrades (see “‘Holier than thou’ parliamentary hopefuls fall out”, Workers Hammer no 196, Autumn 2006), also failed to get elected. There was never anything remotely socialist about the SSP, who aspired to take their place as reformists in parliament, administering capitalist rule on behalf of the bosses, in coalition with the SNP. The SSP split from the (notoriously British chauvinist) Socialist Party (SP) in 1998 in order to facilitate their adaptation to Scottish nationalism. But, like the SP, it remained deeply wedded to Labourite reformism, partaking of Labour’s vile social chauvinism, including on the question of Northern Ireland—promoting fascistic Ulster Loyalists like Billy Hutchinson, a spokesman for the UVF—and pandering to the most backward prejudices in the working class, such as anti-immigrant racism.

In counterposition to the reformists of all stripes, we seek to build a multiethnic revolutionary workers party that fights to overthrow Westminster rule and replace it with a workers government. Abolish the monarchy, the established churches and the House of Lords! We fight for British troops out of Northern Ireland and for an Irish workers republic within a voluntary federation of workers republics in the British Isles.