England’s case for voting ‘Yes’
A pamphlet from the Scottish Republic Yes Tendency
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2 responses to “England’s case for voting ‘Yes’”
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If the Scottish population votes “Yes” by a narrow majority, to what the SNP and its fellow travellers of the nationalist Left chose to describe as “independence”, the new separate Scottish economy will enter a long period of profound instability and vulnerability to the speculative caprices of the international market. The SNP’s bogus claims on continued access to usage of the £ pound Sterling made by are economic nonsense – as is the possibility of using the Euro – not without an “independent” Scotland bowing to the EU Commission and ECB by carrying out cuts in public services to “align the Scottish economy” with the EU’s desired statistical measures – cuts which will dwarf anything demanded by the Treasury in London.
So the outcome of separation from the rest of the UK for the Scottish working class will actually not be “new opportunities” but massive cuts in welfare services, and even greater Austerity and real wage cuts than they have faced since 2007/08. The ability of the Scottish working class to combat this destruction of their wage levels and welfare/public services will be immeasurably weakened by the ideological appeal to them to “help their new independent nation in its hour of need”. So , as ever in these situations, appeals to petty nationalist sentiment , to “stand by their fellow Scottish bosses in a national effort” will trump class politics.
Despite the efforts of the authors of this article to dress up their Left nationalism in “leftish ” rhetoric, and rewrite the reality of Scottish and UK history to meet the current nationalist narrative, the reality is that the breakup of a large capitalist state, the current UK, into two or more mutually competing continuing fully capitalist states, on the basis of a narrow petty nationalism, is a recipe for ever greater sectarianism and division amongst the working classes in this island – in the face of a globalised capitalism already able to play individual states off against each other in a “race to the bottom” in taxes, wage rates, and employment rights.
There is nothing whatsoever in the petty nationalism of the bogus case for Scottish “independence” on a continuing fully capitalist basis that assists the mobilisation of any section of the working class in Britain on a self conscious class-based socialist programme of action.
So you are in agreement with Cameron’ s case for Unionism and British nationalism? If all yes supporters are Scottish nationalists then by the same token and logic all pro-unionists are British nationalists. British nationalism and Ukipism is on the way out. The future belongs to the Scottish working class and their allies in the rest of the country, not the British ruling class and their allies in the socialist movement. Your British road to socialism is finished if not this week then within the next few years. What you don’t get is the democratic argument which is the legacy from your days in the SWP.