In pubs across Scotland you may hear some of the clientele, under the influence several drinks, giving voice to patriotic songs such as "Flower of Scotland” or “Scotland the Brave” but you might "Belong to Glasgow", but Glasgow like every city in Scotland and the world over belongs to the property speculators and the owners of capital. Most of us don’t own a square foot of Scotland. It doesn’t belong to us: we just live here and work for the people who do own it. In or out of the Union, that won’t change.
To talk of Scottish interests is to gloss over, to ignore the basic conflict of interests that inevitably arises from the structure of capitalism. The defenders of capitalism adopt sundry devices to hide this fundamental class-antagonism, and one of the handiest ones has been for years to play on the difference of nationality and seat of government. The defence against this stratagem is, as always. the re-statement of the socialist case that the simple truth is that capitalism will be just the same in an independent Scotland as far as the working class are concerned. What is required is another system of society, not new administrators for the old one.
The Scottish National Party is endeavouring to enlist the support of workers there, on the ground that they can better feed and house Scots better than their fellow-slaves in England, and they propose a whole series of reforms for the special benefit of workers in Scotland, such as increased wages, shorter hours, better housing, and public spending, etc., and with this avowed end in view, calls for the restoration of the Scottish Parliament, which voted for its own extinction. Scottish workers may well ask themselves whether it is worth their while to go through so much for manifesto promises. The truth is the capitalist class is not primarily concerned with geographical boundaries or the nationality of the people whom they exploit. The Scottish nation, whether independent or united with England, is divided into classes, as is society everywhere. It is this division which accounts for the existence of the evils from which the Scottish workers suffer. English rule did not account for the fact that the clearances of the Scottish Highlands led to the congestion in its industrial slums. The Scottish chieftains themselves turned out their own clansmen in order to make way, first for sheep and later for deer, in order to fill their own pockets. The notorious Duchess of Sutherland, for example, had 15,000 people hunted out in the six years 1814-20 and called in British soldiers to enforce the eviction.
The history of Scotland, while differing in detail from that of England, followed the same general course. By their expulsion from the land during the Enclosures, a nation of peasant cultivators was converted into wage-slaves, exploited by a class ready to convert the world into one gigantic market. The forces of competition thus let loose may be held in check to some degree by national legislatures, but no final solution for the havoc they create can be found along such lines. The problem is essentially an international one and must be internationally solved. That, however, calls not for nationalist parties, but for parties in all countries which clearly recognise the common interest of the workers of the world, namely, to achieve their emancipation as a class. When the workers get on the right track of understanding their position they will cease to fret and obsess over comparatively trivial differences in their conditions, whether as between nations or between districts or separate towns. They will recognise that they suffer varying degrees of poverty because at present they exist merely to produce profits for their masters and that it is a matter of comparative indifference to them whether these masters are English or Scots, Germans or Japanese. Their aim will be to abolish masters of every nationality and to organise the production of wealth for their common good.
There are in Scotland the Left Nationalists, many of whom are deserving of the epithet “tartan trots”, who believe that an independent Scotland is a step closer to socialism. They make an appeal to the workers of Scotland for a Scottish Workers' Republic so that they might win you away from the service of the imperialist gang in London. The struggle of the workers of the United Kingdom must be a united one. To appeal to advocate for an independent workers' republic is to arouse and foster the narrow spirit of nationalism, so well used by our masters. Economically the demand is utopian, as the development of capitalism has made countries more and more dependent on each other, both through the specialisation of industry and also by the global institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank controlled by the Great Powers to suppress or control the smaller nations. The history of countries that have gained independence shows that the realisation of "political sovereignty" by a country leaves the workers' conditions untouched and actually worsens them in many cases. If workers are is to be won over to socialism, it is by getting them to understand the principles of socialism, and not by appealing to them to concentrate on parochial Scottish affairs. Socialism is worldwide.
The Socialist Party understand only too well the urge to do something now, to make a change. That makes us all the more determined, however, to get the message across, to gather our fellows to clear away the barrier of the wages system, so that we can begin to build a truly human society.
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