A Call to the Scottish People

Nationalism has nothing to offer you — other than a change of masters. Your problems will still continue, will still confront you—worrying you and causing you many a headache—while the present system of society lasts. To solve those problems—which never leave you, be you still in Britain or a separate sovereign Scotland—you’ll most certainly have to struggle for a decent way of life and a liveable standard of living. So let your struggle be one against the real origin of your problems, against the system of capitalism, and against those who support it. Struggle against the system which condemns all workers, regardless of the place of their birth to a life-time of toil and poverty, from cradle to grave. Struggle against the wealthy few who, because they own the factories, mines, railways and all of the means and instruments for producing wealth, compel you—because you own nothing—to labour for their benefit.

Any capitalist class is an enemy of the working class, and that includes Scottish capitalists. Left-nationalists argue that their promotion of national sovereignty is not be reactionary in the Scottish context. The friends of the Scottish workers are the English and the Welsh working class, who are oppressed in common with them and live under the same political system. Just what is the degree of difference in the exploitation of ou fellow-workers in England, Scotland and Wales? It will be detrimental for Scottish and the Welsh workers to fight the British state machine in isolation. it is the task of the Scottish, English and the Welsh workers to unite in a revolutionary world socialist movement to overthrow the rule of the global ruling class.

Your struggle, in common with the struggle of workers everywhere, to be successful must be a revolutionary one. Your aim? To take away from the capitalist class its ownership of the means of production and make them the common property of all mankind. When you’ve achieved that—when you’ve won that revolution — living will really be worthwhile then, it will be a joy and an adventure.

Then things will be produced because people need them and not in order to sell for the purpose of making profit; then poverty will disappear, insecurity vanish, and wars will be nothing but memories. That will be socialism—so, speed the day!