One working class – one class enemy

In recent years, the spirit of national identity has been reborn in Scotland and elsewhere. Backed by the indignities of the past, fired by an interest in national resources such as oil reserves, it has succeeded in forming an organised opinion which has forced the government of Westminster to once more take notice of the nationalists. But we should always remember, it is not Scotland's oil, it is the capitalists' oil.

The early history of Scotland shows it to be a land peopled by tribes for the most part engaged in inter-tribal disputes. Its ’community of interest' was of clan chieftain self-interest, there being no centralisation of authority which could exist under the prevailing social and economic conditions. The Union of the Crowns then the Act of Union changed the situation and Scotland's clan culture was dismantled.

The advent of the Industrial Revolution saw Scotland as a people exploited by the coal and iron masters, both English and Scot, a situation shared by their brethren throughout the length and breadth of Britain. The Socialist Party has always argued that nationalism has no progressive role left. Marxists realise that Nationalism is the ideology of the capitalist class. The identification of people with the Nation State and the National Interest enables the bosses to present society as a struggle between nations in the interests of the people thus obscuring the real conflict in society between the working and capitalist classes. Nationalism threatens to poison relations between English, Scottish and Welsh workers.

The world is full of leaders claiming to unite their countries while deepening their divisions. Defending the homeland against foreigners is a political strategy that has been played out countless times. Populist nationalist leaders are promising more than they can deliver and looking for scapegoats at home and abroad to blame when things go wrong. Nationalism has always needed real or invented threats. Borders divide the working class more than they divide capital. Global capital flows across borders easily. It uses borders to its advantage, by imposing a race to the bottom. National governments compete for capitalist investment, by offering compliant workers.

Scottish nationalism does not strengthen the movement for socialism, a united, class-conscious working class, but fragments and weakens it. A sovereign Scottish parliament would represent no more than a decorative layer of tartan paint on the capitalist state machine.  It certainly would not impede the workings of the major capitalist institutions.  The perspective of the nationalists is one of the reformist prospect that they can run capitalism better from Edinburgh than from the City of London and Westminster, an illusory one. the SNP rails against London mismanagement and like every opportunist political party promises wealth beyond our wildest dreams. But for whom, exactly, it must be asked. It is the pursuit of a class collaborationist Utopia of palliatives and amelioration, not based on class struggle but passive acquiescence. The left-nationalist's socialist verbiage is buried beneath this nationalist reformism. We do not spread the illusion among Scottish fellow-workers that separatism would be any gain for them. They think that they need to do is change the tune and all will follow. The Left in Scotland is weak and it will not get any stronger by hanging on to the coat-tails of nationalism and pretending they are leading the struggle against global corporations, which are itching to establish themselves, as soon as an independent Scotland re-enters the EU. Capitalists around the world will turn an independent Scotland into a client state and the only opposition to that is to become a vassal state of Brussels and Strasbourg.

We insist that Scottish sovereignty will leave the workers in exactly the same position as before.  The Socialist Party does not support nor encourage the separatist trend in Scotland. We don’t believe that it will improve your condition one iota. Only class struggle and ultimately socialism can do that. However, the Socialist Party does not, of course, defend the present centralised British state. We do not defend the unity of the UK in any way.  To do so is simply to line up with the British nationalists.  We know that most of our fellow-workers will vote for reformism but we have to say to them, “See what good it does you!”

The goal of the Socialist Party is one of a world in which the working class organises and controls its own destiny.   Socialism cannot be imposed from outside – it can only be made by, and for, the working class where it lives and works. It is the question of who owns and controls the means of production which matters, not whether our exploiters have an English, Welsh or Scottish accent. The lesson to be learned is that to resist we require unity with our class brothers and sisters throughout this island. We have to make the ruling class’s divide and rule inoperable by our unite and liberate. The task before us is a vast one. Working class unity makes it impossible for the capitalists to go on in the old way of divide and rule. Working class unity enables us to combine our tactics for defending our class with the strategy of liberating our class.  Working class unity is where revolution is on the agenda. Working class unity is revolutionary.