Scottish Nationalism and European Nationalism

Nationalism, as we have seen, is always the tool of the bourgeoisie, historically.  The Socialist Party will argue in this June the 8^th General Election that liberation for Scottish workers can come about only by overthrowing capitalism itself. If this is not done, no amount of sovereignty can ever succeed in bringing freedom, but the only diversion. At present Scottish nationalism and the SNP have the appearance of being a progressive movement to some honest people and those sincere people in and around the nationalist movement will only discover, in some years’ time, that they have been most cruelly misled and have been wasting their time.  Instead of tragically wasting their time fostering nationalism (in whatever form), they must build a powerful socialist movement.

Many who will vote for the SNP will do so in the hope that eventual Scottish independence will bring re-membership with the EU which is routinely presented as an internationalist project for an ever closer union between peoples of the region as a means of overcoming national differences and state rivalries which therefore appeals to many on the left, who often identify the EU with modernisation, economic and social advance.  Although it was not a nation state, the EU is already mimicking the state ideologically, producing a Europeanism constructed of nationalism. The EU has the appearance of a body in which national differences, if not dissolved, are at least partly reconciled. While Eurocrats and politicians in member states have declared for internationalism and harmony, they have simultaneously organised a regime of exclusion which divides ‘Europeans’ from ‘non-Europeans’ as effectively as any imagined differences which were earlier said to separate Germans, French, or Italians. Fortress Europe has a class character, intended to deny entry to almost all of those seeking a buyer for their semi- and unskilled labour power, as well as those seeking sanctuary from civil conflict and repression. The vast majority of those denied entries are poor and vulnerable; those with wealth and privilege are invariably admitted such as the Russian oligarchs with well-padded bank accounts to buy up football clubs.

‘Fortress Europe’ in fact draws upon ideas which earlier underpinned Europe’s rival nationalisms. It has encouraged racism in general and helped to provide rationales for the extreme right, where the vocabulary of Nazism has reappeared in the form of defending “European” and “Christian” culture. The EU has begun to construct its exclusionary regime with razor wire and border police, with the idea of securing Europe against ‘threats’ from without. EU states were focused intently upon removing migrants and refugees deemed ‘bogus’, ‘clandestine’ or ‘illegal’.  The vast majority of those targeted were poor and vulnerable people, almost invariably of African or Middle Eastern origin. But EU states have also targeted an ‘enemy’ long present within European territorial boundaries. Roma people were identified by fascist movements of the 1920s and 1930s as one of their two greatest enemies: conservatively at least 200,000 Gypsies were sent to the death camps. In a crisis-stricken Europe images of the divided past are returning. Immigration policies are now formed in response to the collective insecurities and imaginings of public opinion; the clampdown on illegal immigrants, the need for tighter border controls, the threat of religious fundamentalism, the perceived loss of national identity, and the fears of demographic invasion are characteristic reactions of the right-wing revival. The media regularly carries stories of an Islamic menace, with Europe depicted as a target zone for migrants who could make common cause with resident Muslim communities which are increasingly depicted as a fifth-column within European society. The EU’s progress towards a fortified Europe and the heavy cost in terms of intensified racism and growth of the right presents a dismal picture.

Yet SNP propaganda depicts a happy transnational Europe in which old conflicts are being erased but it is the commercial trade-offs that drive the SNP to remain with the EU.