Guest post.

The Lair is excited to host its first guest post. Charlie Marks, from Rebellion Sucks! made an excellent post about the growing tension between Holyrood and Westminster, with Alex Salmond seizing every chance to pick up a fight with the central government and asserting the authority of the devolved parliament. The post is reproduced here in its entirety.

We return to the national question in Scotland, as materialised in this instance by the Cheshire cat grin of Alex Salmond; victims of the Lockerbie disaster are put through more anguish; Tony Blair visits Muammar Gaddafi and agreements are reached, but not all of them disclosed; and light is cast on the murky world of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” flights and a variety of people find the whole thing disagreeable.

Calm before a storm
The SNP/Green minority administration in Scotland has got off to a steady start, cutting tolls and halting cuts in the NHS – not that this makes it any less of a bosses’ government. For sure, the SNP is financially backed by, and serves the interests of, sections of the national bourgeoisie in Scotland. (And as for the Scottish Greens…)

On the international side of things, First Minister Alex Salmond made the headlines – and the London Newsnight programme – by exposing a deal planned by the British government to hand over the man jailed for the Lockerbie bombing to the Libyan authorities. This was all without consultation with the Scottish administration or disclosure to the Scottish Parliament.

Yet Kirsty Wark, who was presenting Newsnight on Thursday, gave Salmond a hard time. Wark’s hostility is perhaps indicative of her political views; she has holidayed with Jack McConnell in the past and she could easily present the Scottish edition, but instead flies down to London each week to present the English and Welsh version.

Salmond had made an emergency announcement in the Scottish parliament on Thursday, disclosing all he knew and making a great play of his party’s openness as against the secrecy of New Labour: details of possible agreements made by the British government have not been disclosed. So it’s true that he’s milking it for all it’s worth, but the focus should be on the issues raised by the matter.

The first of many?
All of the parties in the Scottish parliament were united behind Salmond in denouncing any deal to return the prisoner, Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, currently held in Greenock jail, to his country of origin. New Labour’s Jack McConnell, who was the previous First Minister, admitted that the issue had come up while he was in power and Tony Blair was apparently warned that he should notify Scotland by the Foreign Office of the content of his talks with Gaddafi during a recent visit to Libya.

The row over the Lockerbie bomber marks the first outbreak of discord between Edinburgh and London. Outgoing Prime Minister Blair has yet to congratulate Salmond on his party’s electoral victory and assumption of the role of First Minister for the devolved parliament – though we are told that Prime Minister in-waiting, Gordon Brown, has contacted Salmond.

Previous Labour/Liberal coalitions were more closely tied to Westminster, and there were no formal channels through which Scotland and the UK government conducted affairs. The SNP are pushing for a formalisation of relations between central government and the devolved parliament: now that there is truly a Scottish government, political independence seems a step closer.

The bomb, the bomber, Blair, and BP
PanAm flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people, half of them Americans. The US initially fingered a Palestinian group called the PFLP-GC, based in Syria but after the first Gulf War, in which the Syrians backed the invasion of Iraq, the focus switched to Libya.

Two men were tried at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands under Scots law in 2001, but only al-Megrahi was found guilty – the other defendant, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was returned to Libya. The trial was farcical and the verdict doubtful: the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has been investigating al-Megrahi’s case for the last four years. In 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, whilst denying it had commissioned it – in the hope that sanctions against the country would be lifted.

Blair visited the “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” for a second time as part of his farewell tour and met with its leader Colonel Gaddafi, now one of the good guys. The meeting was not merely to remind us of Blair’s foreign policy “achievements” – Gadaffi shook hands on a £900 million deal to allow British Petroleum back into Libya. For BP, the deal could be worth tens of billions, and it is something of a coup for Blair as big oil has been barred from Libya since the seventies when foreign capital was expelled the economy was taken into public ownership.

The visit was a reminder that all will be forgiven of wayward Third World leaders if they follow the neo-liberal agenda. (Take note Robert Mugabe: you can get your honorary degree back, if you want it.) The deal made between the Libyan government and BP was also a reminder of that British foreign policy is completely enmeshed with British capitalism. Like we needed reminding…

It had to be Blair meeting Gaddafi, both in 2004 and 2007: a meeting of Bush and Gaddafi would be to confusing for both the American and Libyan masses. Libya had been presented as the archetypal “rogue state” and Gaddafi the original Muslim bad boy, supposedly sponsoring terrorist groups around the world – and in 1986, the US carried out a bombing raid on Libya which was timed to make the evening news back home.

21st century gulag archipelago
Human rights groups have been invited to meet with the SNP’s Justice Secretary to discuss the issue of CIA rendition flights through Scottish airports, something else for Salmond to use to argue for independence. It is good that the Scottish government is taking the matter seriously, though the reasons for doing so are probably opportunistic.

A European Commission inquiry concluded with the assertion that the US had operated secret prisons in Romania and Poland to which they had transported terror suspects to be interrogated and tortured. A report instigated by the Association of Chief Police Officers – and revealed on the same day as Marty’s findings were announced – has pooh-poohed suggestions that CIA flights might have passed through England, but did not look into the situation in Scotland.

Members of the British government had previously denied knowledge of such an unlawful programme and suggested that it was a little far fetched; now Harriet Harman, minister for Constitutional Affairs, and contender for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, is making noises about the scandal.

On a related matter, former US Defense Secretary Colin Powell has said that the illegal detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be shut down and the “detainees” moved into to the federal legal system in an effort to regain international faith in American justice. (This is somewhat far-fetched, especially when you consider that when the American legal system was established, black people were regarded as being three-fifths human, and now people of colour make up a majority of the States’ vast prison population. By the way, Powell is not arguing that the US armed forces exit Cuba, only that the military prison is closed.)

Turning to the British tabloid press, the matter of rendition flights has been viewed negatively by right-wing Daily Mail, which has condemned the CIA’s programme and the UK government’s collusion. Everyone will use it to their own ends, I suppose. But if the boot was on the other foot and a Tory government had been complicit in US breaches of the law, it would be a different story for the Mail.

EXCLUSIVE!

The Lair brings you the SSP statement on the election results before anyone else! Don't you just love us?

The day Scotlands rainbow parliament turned grey

by Alan McCombes

By any standards this was a massacre for the left.

The red-green presence in Holyrood, represented by the Scottish
Socialist Party, the Greens and Solidarity was slashed from 15 to
two.

Of the six-strong group of independents, only Margo MacDonald was
left standing.

May 3rd 2007 was the day that Scotlands rainbow parliament was
turned a drab prison grey.

The wipe out of the socialist left was made all the more bitter by
the final electoral arithmetic of the new parliament.

Last Thursday marked the end of Labours monolithic stranglehold over
Scottish politics at national and local level. The emergence of the
SNP as the biggest party in Scotland by the narrowest possible margin
will not lead to instant independence, the removal of nuclear weapons
from the Clyde, or even the demise of the Council Tax.

But it is likely to open up a new, turbulent phase in Scottish
politics, a time of strife, which could accelerate the ultimate
break-up of the United Kingdom and pave the way for the resurgence of
socialism.

After the horrendous internal strife within the left over the past
year, and with the socialist movement bitterly divided, the SSP went
into this election in a brutally realistic frame of mind. This was a
damage limitation exercise. At best, the party hoped to maintain a
fragile toehold in Holyrood in preparation for better days to come.

Yet no-one expected the sheer scale of the collapse of the socialist
vote, down by 100,000 votes from 2003. The final tally of votes
appeared completely out of synch with the attitude of voters on the
streets and at polling stations, which was open and receptive to the
politics of the SSP.

The Greens too were stunned by the scale of their losses. On the
morning after the election, shell-shocked Green MSPs admitted that
they had been expecting to win nine seats.

Although Solidarity polled more votes than the SSP, the failure of
Tommy Sheridan in Glasgow was the biggest shock result of the night,
leaving Solidarity activists visibly traumatised.

At the start of the campaign, the bookmakers William Hill had offered
odds of 100-1 on Sheridan being re-elected  the kind of odds that
might be offered on rain falling in Glasgow sometime in the next six
months.

Every media and academic commentator predicted that Tommy Sheridan
would retain his seat in Glasgow, while the SSP would be wiped out.

As the political pundit, Professor Bill Miller, admitted on Scottish
Television the day after the election, We all expected the SSP to
lose all its seats, but none of us expected Tommy Sheridan to lose.

Sheridan, the most famous celebrity politician in Scotland, even
enjoyed the open sympathy of the mass circulation local newspaper in
Glasgow, the Evening Times.

As well as forecasting his certain victory - and the defeat of the
SSP - the paper even carried a sycophantic double page spread in the
final week, headlined the House of Sheridan  festooned with
photographs of the Sheridan family.

This election has been a serious setback for socialism; it would be
futile to pretend otherwise. It is also a tragedy for the thousands
of people who had come to rely on Scottish Socialist MSPs to deal
with their problems.

In Glasgow, for example, Rosie Kane and her caseworker met with
queues of asylum seekers facing deportation. These cases are often a
matter, literally, of life and death.

Other MSPs have tended to hide behind the coat-tails of Westminster,
refusing to deal with asylum because it is a reserved issue. Sadly
one of these MSPs was Tommy Sheridan, who refused to dirty his hands
with asylum casework after leaving the SSP to form Solidarity.

Within the parliament too, the SSP has provided a voice for workers
in struggle, and for others who were too poor or marginalised to be
of any interest to the big mainstream parties. Holyrood will be a
poorer place without the Scottish Socialist group of MSPs.

There is no single explanation for the debacle of May 3rd. The
incineration of the left was the product of a combination of
inflammable ingredients.

In the first place, all of the smaller parties and independents were
mangled in a classic political squeeze, in which two parties were
running neck and neck. In this election, the drama was heightened by
the fact that one of the two parties stands for dissolution of the
United Kingdom, thus polarising Scotland into two camps: pro and
anti-union.

These two juggernauts had vast propaganda resources at their
disposal. While the SSP was forced to fight this election on a
shoestring budget of just £30,000, the SNP had a war chest of
£1.5million - ploughed in by big business, including a £500,000
donation from the reactionary Stagecoach tycoon, Brian Souter.

Labour, meanwhile, was gifted literally millions of pounds of free
advertising from Scotlands mass circulation tabloid press, notably
the Sun and the Daily Record.

Despite the partys cosy rapprochement with elements of Scottish big
business, many left wing voters - including it appears most of those
who voted SSP in 2003 - swung behind the SNP in this election.

Alf Young of the Herald - one of Scotlands most incisive and
experienced pro-Labour analysts - pointed out the irony behind that
shift:

The far-left took out its anger over New Labour, Blair and Iraq by
backing a party which, while sharing their goal of Scottish
independence, has even less interest than Gordon Brown in bringing
the pillars of modern capitalism crashing down.

The small print of Alex Salmonds economic policies were drowned out
by the headline promises of an independence referendum, the removal
of nuclear weapons, Scottish troops out of Iraq and more immediately,
the scrapping of the Council Tax.

Labour, the LibDems and the Tories have all been tested in government
in recent times, either at Westminster or Holyrood level, while the
SNP is as yet untarnished by power.

As we go to press, the LibDems have spurned Alex Salmonds advances
to form a coalition. That means that the SNP are likely to form a
minority government, possibly with the involvement of the two Green
MSPs.

However, with the SNP up against the much larger bloc of unionist
MSPs, it is unlikely that an independence referendum can be achieved
before 2008.

The other key flagship policy of the SNP  replacing the Council Tax
with a three pence rise in income tax  may also have to be shelved.

The economics of the policy do not add up. It would leave a black
hole in council budgets of half a billion pounds, forcing cuts
elsewhere. Moreover, although a deal could possibly be reached with
the Liberal Democrats over the scrapping of the Council Tax, the
Greens have in the past voted against an income-based tax  which
means that the policy could be scuppered by the narrowest of margins,
even with LibDem support.

Paradoxically, a minority SNP government could potentially create a
more favourable climate for a future surge towards independence. A
stable SNP-led coalition would involve backdoor deals, horse-trading
and shoddy compromises with the LibDems, allowing Labour the
opportunity to recapture some ground.

In contrast, a minority SNP government could allow Salmond to portray
the SNP as a party which is trying to introduce radical changes, but
is being blocked and obstructed at every turn by the three unionist
parties.

Either way, the sands of Scottish politics are shifting. The
socialist left may have been marginalised for the time being, but
that can change rapidly and dramatically in the future.

It is not much more than year ago that the political obituaries were
being written for the SNP after the Dunfermline West by-election 
the SNPs worst by-election performance since 1982.

A procession of political pundits pronounced the terminal decline of
the SNP and the unstoppable march of the Liberal Democrats

As one commentator, Chris Deerin, expressed it in Scotland on Sunday:
Nichol Stephen is youngish, moderate and attractive. Salmond, in
contrast, wears a sullen air& the perception that they have failed to
develop as an alternative government, makes him, and them, an
unattractive prospect. The LibDems are succeeding where the SNP have
repeatedly failed& The SNP cannot turn second place into first.

Even within the SSP at the time, some members (who later left to join
Solidarity) drew the conclusion that the SNP was finished, the LibDems
were now the main opposition force in Scotland, and the idea of
independence was all but dead and buried.

Fifteen months later, and the SNP are now Scotlands biggest party
and about to form a government.

As sure as the sun rises in the morning, the socialist left will be
back with vengeance in the future. And whatever the arithmetical
breakdown last Thursday, the only socialist party with the capacity
of coming back from this defeat is the Scottish Socialist Party.

The SSP fought this election with dignity and restraint. We also
fought a highly political campaign, with a 450-point manifesto,
including the boldest and most radical policy of any party in this
election  free public transport.

In contrast, Solidarity exposed itself as an embittered personality
cult around Tommy Sheridan.

The 16-point manifesto of the breakaway party, along with its other
election material, prominently featured photographs of Sheridan, his
wife and his two year old daughter. His name appeared on every ballot
paper, including even for the local council elections.

A large part of the Solidarity vote was an expression of sympathy for
Tommy Sheridan based on confusion and misunderstanding of the facts
that led to the split in the socialist movement, rather than a
conscious socialist vote.

Tommy Sheridan himself, in his manifesto, on TV, and at public
meetings repeatedly accused the SSP of lies, dishonesty and
backstabbing.

That is the prospectus upon which Solidarity was created: that Tommy
Sheridan was the victim of a plot to remove him as party convenor;
that the SSP leadership manufactured allegations about Sheridans
personal life to justify his removal; that the party leadership
forged documents to back up these allegations; that members of the
SSP conspired to pervert the course of justice and in order to
destroy Sheridan.

The entire Solidarity edifice has been built upon this fairy tale,
and will come crashing to the ground as the lies unravel and the
truth emerges.

In the meantime, for wide sections of the public, including for many
ex-SSP supporters, there is no smoke without fire. The allegations
against the SSP have not yet been disproved. At the very least,
people are inclined to lay the blame equally on both sides.

The events of the last two years have been complex and labyrinthine.
But the stark facts are these.

Like Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken, two top Tory politicians who
served lengthy jail sentences for their actions, Tommy Sheridan took
out a libel action based on a fraud: at least some of the material
published in the trashy tabloid News of the World was substantially
true.

The SSP did everything it could to dissuade Sheridan from this
insanely reckless legal case. We predicted that this grotesquely
selfish and deceitful course of action could lead to the destruction
of everything that had been built over decades by hundreds and
thousands of socialist activists.

But Sheridan carried on regardless. He dragged scores of people into
a legal toxic waste dump against their will. These included innocent
people who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and have
since had their lives destroyed to protect Sheridans right to
hypocrisy.

The SSP was also dragged into the Court of Session. Our response was
to defy the courts and face down a jail sentence.

In the weeks that the SSP was under siege, dragged through the
courts, having its offices raided, Sheridan effectively went into
hiding, failing to turn up to any of the meetings to decide tactics.

The rest of the SSP stood valiantly against the courts.

Finally, Sheridan emerged to argue that the SSP should now buckle
under and surrender the partys internal documents to the News of the
World and the courts. His capitulation was backed by those who went on
to found Solidarity. So far, so dishonourable.

But worse was to come. In an abysmal display of cowardice, Sheridan
told the courts and the media that the documents had been forged by
the SSP as part of a plot to fit him up.

To salvage his fake reputation, he denounced the SSP leadership as
liars, perjurers, forgers and conspirators, before walking out to
split the left and wreck the socialist unity project, built up over a
decade and more.

The mainstream press, cowed by the courts and the threat of libel
action  and perhaps also by the fear of jeopardising an ongoing
police investigation into perjury and conspiracy to pervert the
course of justice  have never been prepared to bring out these
facts.

As a result, the SSP was fighting this election under a cloud of
suspicion. To pretend otherwise would be to run away from reality.

However, two or three years down the road, the events of the past
year will have begun to fade into the mists of history. With the
removal of Tommy Sheridan from Holyrood, the Solidarity bubble will
burst.

That will be a massive step forward for the left, allowing Scottish
socialism to be rebuilt under the clean banner of the SSP.

Spoiling tactics turned confusion to fiasco

Its not who votes that counts, its who counts the votes said
Josef Stalin.

The New Labour establishment could have taught the commissars of the
old Soviet Union a thing or two about manipulating elections.

If 100,000 votes had been disqualified in Venezuela, politicians and
newspaper editors would be calling for the tanks to be sent in to
restore democracy.

In Scotland, it looks like the response to this mass
disenfranchisement of a vast swathe of the electorate will be a
whitewash, with the Electoral Commission asked to investigate the
Electoral Commission.

Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, has called for a full judicial inquiry
 a call that has been rejected by the man responsible for the
debacle, the Scottish Secretary, Douglas Alexander.

In Glasgow, lawyer Mike Dailly has begun legal proceedings.

The SSP should support both of these moves. This democratic
abomination was not the result of incompetence by the Scotland
Office.

It was a product of a deliberate, cynical manoeuvre by New Labour
politicians to confuse the public and marginalise the smaller
parties.

Since 1999, Labour has consciously undermined local democracy by
refusing to separate the council elections from the Holyrood
elections. In this election, when council elections were conducted
for the first time under PR, the case for a change was overwhelming.

But it was never put before the Scottish Parliament. A Tory MSP had
begun to initiate a private members bill, but, after what appeared to
be backdoor wheeling and dealing, dropped the proposal.

Even worse was the decision to swap the order of the Holyrood ballot
papers and to include the constituency and regional votes on a single
form for the first time.

This was a deliberate subversion of democracy, designed to protect
the big parties and undermine the diversity of Holyrood.

The SNP went along with this ploy, hoping that they too would benefit
from the confusion. They opportunistically attempted to manipulate the
new arrangements by renaming their party Alex Salmond for First
Minister  SNP, reinforcing the confusion that already existed.

The SSP can report numerous examples of voters  including even party
members - marking their X against Alex Salmond then scrolling down the
regional list to vote SSP. All of these votes would have been
discounted.

Ironically, the SNPs tactic has almost certainly backfired on the
party. Their cunning plan was that voters would back Alex Salmond on
the left side of the paper, then be forced to vote again for the SNP
on the right side of the ballot paper when they realised that the
smaller parties were not listed on that side.

What the SNP failed to anticipate was that a large proportion of
voters would mark both their crosses on the left side of the ballot
paper.

Because the regional and constituency ballot papers were not
physically separate, tens of thousands of people appear to have
believed that it didnt matter which side they marked their two
crosses.

This would not only distort downwards the vote for the smaller
parties; it would also negate many thousands of constituency votes,
particularly for the SNP.

Without a full analysis of every paper, it is impossible to say how
the results were affected by confusion.

However it is wishful thinking for Tommy Sheridan to claim he was
robbed of a seat in Glasgow. The claim that with just a few hundred
more votes, Solidarity would have won a seat in Glasgow is pure
fiction. Out of around 10,000 disqualified regional votes in Glasgow,
Sheridan would have required 2,200 to beat the Greens and 2,600 extra
votes to beat the SNP  and even that would be based on the
far-fetched assumption that neither of these parties had any
disqualified votes!

In Glasgow as elsewhere, it is likely that the vote for the SSP, the
Greens, Solidarity and a range of other small parties would have been
significantly higher, but nowhere near enough to affect the outcome.

Nonetheless, this distortion of democracy blatantly discriminates
against the most deprived voters in the poorest constituencies who
are already disproportionately excluded from electoral politics.

The constituency with the highest number of disqualified papers,
Glasgow Shettleston, was also the constituency with the lowest
turnout in Scotland  just 33 per cent.

And by the way, just in case you didnt know - Shettleston also tops
the UK league table for poverty and deprivation. 

This will be also appearing in this week's Scottish Socialist Voice. I am not particularly happy that we had to mention the split again and go down the "who's the best party line", but given the ludicrous statement of Solidarity, I guess it couldn't have been avoided.

The case for Scottish Republicanism.

In a desperate attempt to take my mind off the catastrophe that were Thursday’s elections (on which I may, or may not, comment later) and in place of a May 1st post (May 1st, apart from international labour day, was also the 300 anniversary of the formation of the British Union) I will honour my promise to Southpawpunch and present a brief argument in favour of Scottish independence from a socialist point of view. You see, said fellow mistook my last post for such an argument. It appears that he understood that my rationale was that if large capital is in favour of the union, then we should be against it. I can't possibly fathom where he drew such a conclusion from, considering that the only point made therein was that Scottish capital could extract a variety of gains from independence that do not necessarily have to do anything with attacking the working class, which seems to be one of the key postulates of left unionists.

It seems that such sophisms form the intellectual foundations of many ultra left numpties. For example, the Squirrel Vanguard's favourite puritan ortho-Trot sectlet, the Socialist Equality Party published an article about how Scottish independence (or fiscal autonomy) would be an economic disaster from the working class. Apart from being largely based on false premises the article registered at new levels of idiocy for the following paragraph:

So what could possibly be wrong with the Irish model? At a time when most European economies are stagnating and unemployment is high, the Irish model, with only four percent unemployment, might indeed seem to offer an alternative perspective for other small economies. That is certainly what the Scottish and Welsh nationalists claim and, by extension, what their supporters among the radical left must agree with.

One would have thought that the countless demonstrations, paper articles, press statements and whathaveyou as well as the successive resolutions of a number of SSP conferences explicitly stating that we will never enter a bourgeois coalition, would have made it a bit clear by now that the Scottish Socialist Party is utterly, completely, fully, most assuredly and irreconcilably opposed to the SNP's vision of Tartan business haven Scotland. You would expect from self proclaimed Trotskyist dialecticians not to employ the "humans have legs, pigs have legs, ergo humans=pigs" kind of formal logic which Trotsky used to denounce in a huge number of his works. But that's probably just me. Now, enough with the puritan bashing, let's move on to the actual politics.

I only wish to point to the political/ideological/tactical potential benefits for the socialist movement that can be made by fighting for and eventually achieving Scottish independence. There is a compelling (for the working class) economic case to be made as well, but this is not what concerns me here. Andy from the Socialist Unity Blog made a short and to the point post outlining the economic benefits that Scottish independence could bring for the whole of the British working class. You can read it here.

Now, with the lengthy and ranty intro out of the way, let's look at what the key issues surrounding the question of independence are. The most common points Brit lefties usually raise are that independence will break the unity of the British working class, that the break up of a nation state into smaller ones is inherently regressive, that advocating independence necessarily involves whipping up nationalist feelings (therefore weakening proletarian internationalism) and that, after all, there is no reason for socialists to get involved in a choice between a capitalist Britain and a capitalist Scotland. All capitalisms are the same, the task of socialists is to raise class consciousness and fight for socialism!

These arguments may on first look seem to be entirely inline with a Marxist outlook, but if we examine them more carefully and refrain from puritanistic black and white juxtapositions of class struggle vs anything else we'll see that they don't hold much water.

Starting with the issue of the unity of the working class in Britain, let us consider what the idea that the working class should not be split along national lines is founded on. Most Marxists and socialists take this as an axiom. Left unionists extend this axiom to the case of Scottish separatism and thus, they a priori reject the latter without having really considered its internal dynamics and how these relate to the unity of the working class.

They idea is that since capital is largely integrated, and operates in a largely centralist manner, transcending national boundaries, then the working class should aim to unite as much as possible and fight capital on an international level as well. An isolated working class is far weaker than a united, militant working class fighting on the principle of solidarity. Therefore, the erosion of national boundaries is inherently a positive development, since it builds bridges between formerly divided national working classes. Conversely, the fragmentation of existing states is necessarily against the interests of the working class as it becomes divided and therefore, weaker.

So far, so good. There's nothing wrong with the above in the abstract. Internationalism is always good, both tactically and ideologically. Nobody is disputing that. The problem however is that if we look at the concrete potentialities of Scottish independence, the above is completely and utterly irrelevant. The main weapon of the workers in the class struggle is their organization in trade unions. The unions in Britain and the rest of the world evolved from initially local organizations to the largely centralized formations that they are now, reflecting trends in the capitalist economy. British capital will remain integrated even if Britain is broken. Its internal antagonisms may become more acute, but it will remain a single class. Well so will the trade unions! The separation of Scotland from Britain does not have to, nor will it entail the division of British trade unions into their national components. The National Union of Journalists already organizes workers in both the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Unions in North America operate on both sides of the US/Canadian border.

None of the circumstances that necessitated the establishment of all British trade unions will vanish if the British state disintegrates. To think that Scottish independence will somehow undermine the capacity of the British working class to operate as a single entity is to mechanically connect the trade unions and the bourgeois state. Such thinking is extremely undesirable from a socialist point of view. We must consciously seek to develop workers' unions beyond the existing nation states, not wait until those states merge to achieve this.

But what of the ideological problems that support for independence entails? Surely, the setting up of a new nation state will promote nationalism and weaken support for socialist ideas amongst the workers.

Well not quite. Nationalist groups are a small minority in the independence movement which is more concerned with actual socioeconomic issues rather than the evil English. Within the movement, we should fight to isolate and eventually destroy all expressions of nationalism, but in the present, the most right wing of the major political forces in favour of independence is the SNP, which only some days ago got the first Asian MSP into parliament and is not using any anti-English rhetoric.

Moreover, there is no language/cultural barrier between Scottish and English workers to create division and hostility. The poison of nationalism and xenophobia is the result of inability to relate to and communicate with other people. In the southern US, Spanish and English speaking workers have trouble organizing together and are often hostile to each other despite living in the same state.

Surprisingly (not really) the political group that represents the despicable ideology ultra nationalism and racism, the British National Party, is hardline unionist.

None of these dangers are present in the dynamics of Scottish separatism. The only xenophobic group I know of that is supportive of separatism is Siol Na Gaidheal and it is little more than a kitsch tartanry culture club. In fact, the break up of the UK could once and for all defuse whatever hostility could arise on the part of the Scots towards the perceived "English exploiter".

What left unionists fail to understand is that proletarian internationalism is not the product of bourgeois states. The failed British identity that was artificially constructed by the ruling classes of these islands as an ideological support for the Empire is ample evidence of this. Internationalism is forged by the working class(es) during common struggles. The British state was never built on such foundations. It wasn't even built on bourgeois radicalism, unlike Italy. It was established by a conservative ruling class that was threatened by both the radical elements of the bourgeoisie, like the Cameronians, and the even more reactionary feudalist Jacobites.

The links that English, Scottish and Welsh workers have built in decades of struggle are not subject to the existence of the British repressive apparatus. It is rather ironic, that prominent "dialecticians" would think in such a mechanistic manner as "break-up of the uk=break up of the UK's working class". Such arguments are little more than leftist manifestations of Blair's "border guards on the Tweed" doomsday scenarios.

Having seen how most of the objections to independence put forward by left unionists have little substance, we should take a look at why independence is a goal worth fighting for.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to fight for the Scottish independence is the constitutional crisis that it would cause throughout Britain. I said earlier that the key weapon of the working class in its fight against capital are the trade unions. For the bourgeoisie, it is the state.

Britain has one of the most powerful state apparatuses found in the developed world today. It is, even after devolution, highly centralized, with a rather unrepresentative House of Commons and an unelected House of Lords. More importantly, the government has royal prerogative powers that are not subject to parliamentary review.

Setting up an independent Scottish state would give us the chance here (provided of course that we are actively involved) to establish an apparatus that is far more representative and with considerably less authoritarian powers, thus providing considerably more fertile ground for socialists to organize and agitate.

A similar debate would be probably started south of the border as well, giving the English and Welsh left the chance to fight for more representative forms of government, like the adoption of PR at Westminster and devolution for North England among others.

Further, one cannot underestimate the power of the blow that will be dealt to global imperialism by the break up of Britain. It is no secret that the UK is the chief guard dog of US interests in the world, an imperialist junior partner. However, with 1/3 of British troops being Scottish, Britain's capacity to support her American masters would be severely compromised should Scotland become a separate state with an independent foreign policy. Of course, you may reasonably object that there's nothing to guarantee that Scotland would not follow a similar foreign policy to what will remain of the UK, meaning that there'll be little change on the global level, apart from an extra line on the map. While this objection has some merit, in that no one can predict with certainty what the foreign policy orientation of an independent Scotland would be, it is not unreasonable, given the facts, to assume that Scotland would abandon yee-haw imperialism for a foreign policy similar to that of the Republic of Ireland.

First and foremost, the Scottish economy is largely based on small to medium sized businesses. Such capital is of necessity introverted preferring to spend state money on subsidies and internal investment rather than weapons of varying destruction scales. Second, the SNP, which, should Scotland go independent, will definitely form the first two governments, has a history of anti-war populist politics (like its commitment to scrap Trident - its not like small-mid businesses need nukes) and is largely pro-European. That and the cold hard fact that Scotland is a rather small country would almost surely push a newly formed Scottish state towards the EU, away from the Anglo-Saxon axis. That of course is not to say that the EU is a "better" imperialist entity than the US. The point is that the loss of Scotland would be significantly more damaging to American-British imperialism than its gain would be to the EU. We should also consider that, as said earlier, left wing forces in an independent Scotland will be in a significantly better position to influence the political agenda, making it possible to completely pull Scotland away from US interests while also pushing the EU approach into a Scandinavian channel of relative independence.

Finally, it is important to note that the independence movement is fertile ground for the spreading of socialist ideas and the building of hegemony. The reason is that, as I wrote earlier, support for independence is bound up with a series of inherently progressive concerns (anti-war demands, concerns over the democratic deficit etc.). Thus, there is an ever present opportunity to pose questions (and give answers) over what kind of Scotland we want. Now, this does not imply that socialism will immediately spring up as the first answer. However, given that amongst workers, support for independence is mostly found with those that are more class conscious and militant, it is certain that any campaign for Scottish independence can be infused with (quasi)socialist demands relatively easily. As Gregor Gall argues:

Support for independence amongst the social groups that comprise the working class has grown between 1979-2002: routine non-manual: 8% to 25%, skilled manual 5% to 34%, semi-skilled manual 8% to 34%, and unskilled manual 8% to 40% . This then also intersects with the growth in support for independence from the left and those that identify themselves as 'Scottish' rather than 'British'. In 1992, 30% of left-wing opinion supported independence with 46% doing so in 2002 . In 1979, 11% of those identifying themselves as 'Scottish' supported independence with 36% of those doing so in 2002. With a population of 5m in Scotland and extrapolating from these figures, around 1m people can be identified who are of key importance for the SSP; those who are working class and on the left, identify themselves as 'Scottish' and who are pro-independence. The crucial point here is that amongst the key constituency for the SSP, namely the working class, the most radicalised section of opinion is pro-independence.

Whether the potentialities identified above will be realised or not is entirely, or almost entirely, up to socialist and working class agency in the political processes that will deliver and follow independence. In the abstract, the establishment of a separate Scottish state cannot be defined as either positive or negative a development for the socialist movement. This black and white, mechanistic approach is where the fallacy of both left unionist and left nationalist narratives lies. Passive support for the British state is no way forward for the working class and neither is cheerleading for the SNP. The movement for Scottish independence must have a specifically defined goal of setting up a republic that is not servile to imperialist interests, a republic that adopts radical solutions to poverty and other social ills; a social republic if you will. Within that movement, we must agitate for the socialist transformation of society, in order to build a truly powerful, deeply rooted working class vanguard that can fight the harsh political struggles that we shall inevitably face in an age of ever growing capitalist decline and increasing imperialist competition. MacLean wasn't speaking out of his arse.

Tesco, SNPs 100 and the unmarxism of left-unionists.

Some days ago, Alex "St Bernard's" Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, announced a list of 100 business supporters of his party's electoral campaign, further confirming the SNP's identity as the newest business ass licker. For left unionists, this was more proof that Scottish independence will be a disaster for the socialist movement and the working class in Britain, meaning that all principled socialists should oppose the break up of the British empire state, in the interests of working class unity (as if proletarian internationalism is created or sustained by bourgeois state apparatuses) . This of course, by extension means, for them, that we, are crap.

Soon after this glen shattering revelation however, the chairman of Tesco announced his support for the Union, saying that it has "served us well" until now. Who this "us" refers to, I'll leave the reader to decide.

But wait a minute! Tesco is the UK's largest and the world's fourth largest retailer, as the infinite source of knowledge that is Wikipedia tells us. What then is wrong with the heads of this burgeoning firm's bosses? Can't they see what a titanic victory against the conscious working class the break up of the UK would be?

The answer's no, they can't. And neither can the big shots of CBI. And how could they? It makes absolutely no sense for capital to break up one of the most powerful imperialist constructs in history. All the endless "we're too small", "terrorists everywhere" tirades of New Labour, as well as the "we're stronger together, please stay" Tory rhetoric are just reflections of the cold hard fact that British capital loves the British state and wants to keep it intact. That doesn't of course go to say that British capital can't survive if Scotland breaks away, but merely, that the fat cats would rather it wouldn't. If they could survive the setting up of the Republic of Ireland and the death of colonialism, they can definitely tolerate Scotland breaking away. But for reasons that should be obvious to four year-olds, they would prefer to keep unitary political control over these isles.

Why then, would a section of Scottish capital wish to dissolve the Union and forfeit the benefits of having access to such a formidable machinery of violence? A Marxist analysis actually makes the motives behind the new found patriotism of Scottish capital quite clear. By Marxist, I do not mean the kind of vulgar mechanistic determinism upheld by left unionists and their sects, but an actual concrete look at the class dynamics of a given social process. The vulgar Marxism of left unionists (and many others) consists in forcing preconceived ideas, derived from the study of older situations, on the currently unfolding events. They do not engage in a "concrete analysis of concrete circumstances" as Lenin would put it, but seek to push the concrete current situation into their familiar ideological boxes. Thus, according to their black & white mode of thinking, if the bourgeoisie wants something, there is zero chance that the working class might benefit for it. But enough with those web-covered, dusty "Marxists". Let's take a look at what's happening here.

The first thing to do is take a look at the synthesis of this infamous list of business owners that love the SNP so much. We should remember that the bourgeoisie is not a uniform class. It is heavily stratified internally - more so than the working class - and grasping this is a key to understanding why it may sometimes act in ways that don't make sense if we regard it as a monolith. Now, looking at the names on the list (you can find it by following the first link and scrolling to the bottom) we find that it is predominately composed of small to medium size businesses, with tourism being a particularly large section. There are legal firms, a bed and breakfast, a tour company, a couple of management companies and... a kilt maker.

But what about the big shot supporters like the Royal Bank big shot Sir George Mathewson. What can small tourism based businesses like Hotel Ceilidh-donia and finance capital magnates have in common?

The answer isn't that complicated. They would all benefit from a sovereign Holyrood parliament with economic powers, or even a non-sovereign parliament with fiscal independence as the trajectory of the SNP seems to suggest will soon be the case. They would also not be particularly affected by the loss of Britain's imperialist strong arm. The existence of nuclear weapons on the Clyde as well as shock & awe all around the world are of little concern to the Linlithgow Tours company or to Kilts by Lindsay.

Big finance capital like the Royal Bank of Scotland is also not dependent on old fashioned big guns imperialism for its growth. Neo-liberal institutions and just plain unfair treaties are good enough for them. Of course, you might argue that in order for the Third World to remain in line, some sort of military bullying will always be necessary. But the RBS doesn't care about who's got the guns. As long as the poor countries of the world are kept weak enough to accept their shark loans, the golf playing fat cats are content. Tesco on the other hand really does need cheap fuel, cheap raw materials and of course, good ol' child and sweat labour.

Now, apart from not being hurt by it, the RBS (and the rest of the great 100), would also benefit by the establishment of an independent Scotland. You see, they would be in a much better position with regards to the levers of power. In the UK, the Royal Bank has to compete for influence with other monsters like Barclay's, while in Scotland, where it is by far the largest and most powerful bank, it could easily pull the strings of a St. Bernard led administration. As far Scottish smaller businesses go, they have little chance of ever gaining any significant influence on an all British scale. So why not go for independence?

We see therefore that despite Brit left rants, Scottish capital does not support independence as a gain against the working class, but as a gain against its competitors. Any analysis of the effects that Scottish independence would have on the capability for socialists to organize and raise transitional demands necessarily leads to the conclusion that the break up of the UK will be a positive thing, if socialists take an active part in the campaign for independence and strengthen their hegemony over the movement.

The left-unionist tirades about how Scottish independence is an anti working class, bourgeois nationalist project simply write working class agency off history. Some Marxism there!

Election fraud in Scotland? No, it can't be!

The following is from Scotland on Sunday. It appears that the British bourgeoisie has taken some lessons from its American overlords.

THE Holyrood election has been left wide open to fraud on a potentially massive scale after ministers scrapped checks designed to prevent abuse of postal votes.

With just 11 days to go, a Scotland on Sunday investigation has revealed concern at the highest level that key seats could be won by fraudulent postal votes, and that there are already widespread claims of vote-buying by corrupt party activists.

Despite an unprecedented 433,000 postal vote applications, our inquiry has established that:

• Computer checks on ballot signatures will be used in England, but not north of the Border;

• Date of birth checks on the same papers will happen south of the Border, but not in Scotland;

• The Electoral Reform Society in Scotland is "hugely concerned" about the scope for fraud;

• Allegations are circulating that votes are already being bought for as little as £20;

• Police have taken the unprecedented step of issuing every officer with a booklet on how to spot voting crimes.

The claims follow several scandals in England following the decision in 2003 to allow everyone to vote by post. In the 2004 local elections in Birmingham, party activists were accused of taking bundles of votes to ballot stations in black bags. A year later, allegations spread to the London borough of Tower Hamlets where nearly one in seven postal votes was estimated to be fraudulent.

The allegations centre on fraudsters stealing or buying other people's postal ballot papers and signing them themselves.

As a result of this obvious weakness in the system, England's council elections on May 3 will use for the first time equipment called postal vote identifiers which compare a voter's signature on the application form with the signature on the ballot. A further check on the date of birth will also be introduced south of the Border.

But the Scotland Office, which monitors the Holyrood elections, decided last November not to bring it in either measure because electronic counting of votes will also be used for the first time and it was feared so many innovations might overwhelm the system.

Billy Somerville, the president of the Scottish Assessors' Association - which administers the voting roll - admitted: "The reason it hasn't been built in is the complexity of the electronic counting for this year. Everyone wants to focus on that, without the added complication of comparing signatures."

Amy Rodger, director of the Electoral Reform Society in Scotland, last night warned: "We are hugely concerned about it and we do want to see these measures brought in. With the extension of postal voting we were always keen that additional measures to prevent fraud were brought in."

Scotland on Sunday has spoken to members of the Asian community in Glasgow who claim that fraud there is rife.

Muhammad Shoaib, who left the Labour party to become an independent candidate last year, claimed there was "a deliberate campaign" to abuse the postal vote system.

He said: "Party workers put pressure on people to sign up for a postal vote. They then have a list of addresses which they know are registered for postal votes. They know when the forms arrive and go back saying that 'we can assist you filling in the form'. There's a lot of pressure put on people; they effectively force people to fill in the form and to vote for them."

Another man, who asked to remain anonymous, claimed that in the last election he had been visited by three party activists. "One of them gave me a postal ballot paper and said 'just tick here'," he said.

The man said that the practice of literally buying votes was also on-going: "The cost would depend on how much the person knows how the system works. A recent immigrant from Poland might demand £20, an Indian or Pakistani £50, and a non-Asian who knows it's not allowed would ask for hundreds of pounds."

One independent candidate in Govan, Asif Nasir, claimed: "Party workers are taking advantage. There are big concerns in the Muslim community, many of whom have never voted in this [new] way."

Both Labour and the SNP insisted last night that there was no evidence of any fraud by any of their activists. Both the parties are following a new code of conduct, which now bars party activists from handling postal ballots.

Of claims that SNP activists were handling ballot papers, Peter Murrell, the chief executive of the SNP, said: "It is fanciful. I can't accept that it could happen. None of the parties have heard of anything wrong going on."

A spokesman for Labour said: "We have clear guidance sent to all candidates and agents and follow, to the letter, the guidance given by the electoral commission regarding handling posting votes. Any breaches would not be tolerated."

A spokesman for the Electoral Commission said: "What we have done is to issue police with guidance in order to aid their officers in identifying and tackling incidents of alleged malpractice. So far, we have not heard of any wrongdoing or attempted offences anywhere in Scotland."

Police officers have been issued with a "pocket book" so they can spot voting fraud. The guide includes specific references to "false application to vote by post or proxy".

Yesterday, a spokesman for the Electoral Commission said the guide books were intended to give "beat bobbies" assistance if and when they uncovered evidence of malpractice.

Note that the Scotland Office, which decided to scrap said checks, is a Whitehall, central UK government body, rather than a devolved one under the Scottish Executive.

Given their bleeding support, it appears that Labour hacks are trying to exploit every glitch in the system possible to maintain control over Scotland. This is yet further evidence of abuse of power on the part of the British state and demonstrates well the democratic deficit that Scotland is experiencing by being part of the UK.

The sooner this filthy imperialist construct goes down, the better; for everyone living on these islands.

Labour: DOOM will befall us if Scotland goes independent. Tories: We work well together don't we?

Awrite folks, sorry to keep you waiting. I decided to take some time off and go home for the spring break, hence the lack of updates. Back in action though.

So, I read an article on yesterday's Guardian online entitled Brown and Cameron head to Scotland to confront SNP threat. As soon as I saw the title, I knew that it would be a good laugh. It's always funny to read Brown's whining about how British he is and it is at least interesting to watch Tory attempts to wash off their black record in Scotland. I have to tell you, I was not disappointed. The article manages to present British politics in all their bizarreness.

Cameron, in keeping with his good record managed once again to outdo Brown and New Labour. He made a speech outlining the "benefits" of the Union, both past, present and potentially future, while also criticizing New Labour and the doomsday scare tactics it employs to frighten people away from the SNP:

"The Labour party's approach is to cow and bully Scotland into remaining part of the union. I believe this is the wrong approach; instead of threatening the people of Scotland we must inspire them."

I never thought I'd agree with any Tory political comment, but this one is spot on. New Labour has completely failed to come up with even elementary political arguments in favour of the Union. Their campaign has focused solely on how bad, untrustworthy and incompetent the SNP are (you see, New Labs have proven themselves to be masterful politicians) and how inconceivably weak, poor, small and plainly useless Scotland is. They even sent ex-Stalinist bully John Reid up here to tell us that if Scotland goes independent, she'll be incapable to protect herself from the great threat of terror. The New Labour hacks seem to ignore that one of the key rules of politics (including the politics of everyday life) is that if you want to keep people with you, YOU DON'T TELL THEM THEY SUCK!

Labour's actions have "desperation" written all over them. This is not surprising. Not only is Labour getting its arse kicked south of the border by the Tories, it is also losing (possibly permanently) one of its traditional heartlands. On the other hand, the Tories can afford to remain calm as they are making gains in England and can in fact strengthen their position there by capitalizing on the failure of Labour here.

Of course, tactical blunders aside, there's not much Labour can do to stop the rise of the SNP. Given that they are both parties of the bourgeoisie, their political programmes are not really all that different. Tax cuts and handouts to corporations are at the core of both. The sole difference is that the SNP is not as committed to violent imperialism which I suppose is due both to the relatively strong influence of strong business interests on its agenda and the fact that its most powerful large capital supporters are finance capitalists meaning that they don't need Shock & Awe to rob people. The SNP and Labour represent the interests of different sections of the bourgeoisie, not the interests of different classes. That is why they can't put up an interesting political debate for the life of them.

Funnily enough however, according to the same article, Gordon Brown, in a speech he made at Scotstoun shipyard, did try to point out a potential difference between the two parties future economic policies. This is what he said:

"I'm afraid the SNP policies would mean higher taxes, less jobs, the shipbuilding industry would be put at risk and so would many of our important services and industries in Scotland."

That's right. One of the potential leaders of what has the nerve to still call itself "the Labour Party" is attacking another party for raising taxes. Not only that, but apparently, higher taxes inflate unemployment. If the fact that Labour uses arguments from the 80s Tory book against its rivals isn't proof of its political bankruptcy I don't know what is! They seem to be incapable of understanding that people don't care about "competitiveness" and "attracting business". Of course, you will correctly answer that they do not care about the people. They do, or should at any rate, care about their votes however. It seems to me that Labour is in collective shock. They have probably realised that Scottish independence is now a real possibility, and even worse, that it is beyond their control.

So what should socialists in Scotland do? Our task, as always, is not an easy one. We need to fight against the SNP's vision of Scotland as a corporate tax haven and promote the idea of a socialist republic. If the Scottish people are to be mobilized in strong numbers against the British state, they must be offered something more than a smaller Britain with a nice fresh coat of tartan paint. This is what Independence First has failed to realise as is evident by its insistence to remain apolitical.

Further, we must fight against the persistent idea of Labour as a working class party. While support for Labour is plummeting in Scotland, it is not certain that once a more charismatic and less business loving leader takes over Labour, the working class will not turn to that filthy labour aristocracy and capital alliance once again. It is imperative that we spread the idea that the problem is not Blair Brown and Reid, but capitalism and any political group that is in bed with the ruling class.

On May 3rd, the only alternative to job losses, pay cuts, public sector decay and environmental destruction on the ballot paper is the Scottish Socialist Party. After May 3rd, the only viable vehicle for the fight against both the British state and capitalism will remain the Scottish Socialist Party.

A tartan butcher's apron!

So it appears that Alex Salmond has been gradually managing to curb the hostility of British capital to the prospect of Scottish Independence.

In just a few days' time, we have witnessed prominent bandit banker Sir George Mathewson announcing his support for the Scottish Nationalists and Stagecoach magnate Brian Souter donating an obscene amount of money to the party. True, the overall mood of British capital might be decidedly pro-unionist as it has always been, but "mutinies" such as the above do appear to have a quite disquieting effect on Tony Blair and look-how-British-I-am Gordon Brown, which is understandable given the meltdown of Labour in Scotland, one of its traditional heartlands, which has made the SNP the most likely party to lead the next Scottish Executive. With Holyrood elections less than two months away, we should only expect more doomsday scenaria to be weaved by the New Labour leadership (the Tories have been relatively silent. I suppose that this is because they have crap support in Scotland and that a possible removal of those "rebellious Scots" from the British electorate might actually give them a chance to get back in power south of the border) and its lackeys.

Of course, I couldn't care less about what Blair, Brown, or Souter and Mathewson think about the pros and cons of Scottish separatism. What I do care about is what this change of tender tycoon hearts translates to politically.

The average Left unionist would, of course, seize the opportunity to attack the struggle for Scottish Independence as bourgeois or petty-bourgeois (they can't really make up their you see) nationalism, an evil project that will undermine working class unity on the island to the benefit of the ruling class. I do not wish here to deal with the pseudo-internationalist broken record of the Brit left. The time will come for that in another post. What I want to address is what these developments actually mean for those on the left that do support independence.

To begin with, it is necessary to remind ourselves that Scottish Independence is not an abstract demand rooted in romantic nationalism. The average Scottish working person that is supportive of independence is not so because s/he wants to see the Saltire flying over Edinburgh castle instead of the Union Jack. The demand for Scottish Independence is the product of the synthesis of a number of other key issues affecting the Scottish people, whether political, such as the democratic deficit, or economical, such as the grinding poverty experienced by people in Scotland. Such problems can never of course be permanently solved within a capitalist framework. They can, however, be at least addressed by a government that is not completely preoccupied with sucking up to big business through moderate measures such as providing free school meals and scrapping the council tax.

The problem though is that the SNP is more and more dependent on big business; its quasi social-democratic era under William Wolfe's leadership in the 1970's is long gone. The SNP has been gradually abandoning its formerly populist programme for an increasingly neo-liberal agenda. The revelation that the nationalists will (should they win in May) put separatism in the freezer until they have proven able to govern (govern what? Holyrood?) should not really come as a surprise to anyone. For the SNP (or better, its leadership) and its bourgeois masters fiscal independence is just as good as full separation as fiscal autonomy (that is, the ability to give even bigger handouts to capital) is what they're really after. Even their old policy of withdrawing Scotland from NATO has been effectively (although not officially - more like RESPECT has abandoned socialism) dropped meaning that even if Scotland does break away from the UK, she'll still be a loyal lapdog to the US.

All this effectively means that the SNP cannot deliver independence, or better, it cannot resolve the real problems that the demand for independence springs from. At best, the SNP can deliver formal independence from the UK, offering us a tartan clad version of the British state apparatus. Most likely however, the SNP will follow the path of its Catalunian counterpart.

So what is our task? We must break the hegemony of the SNP over the pro independence movement and at the same time show that the struggle for independence cannot but go hand in hand with the struggle for socialism and republicanism. The false-separatists are just as much an important political opponent as the unionists. We must also challenge the left-nationalist notion that growing support for the SNP is somehow a positive thing because it brings us closer to independence. It doesn't, not in any meaningful way. We must also challenge the rather abstract demand for "A referendum on Scottish independence" by Independence First. Referenda can be manipulated and it is a huge political blunder to campaign for one when you are not sure to win it. Further, campaigning for an independent Scotland in the abstract, as IF does will also not get us very far in the long run. If we are to gain the active support of the Scottish people we must be able to present a tangible alternative to the British state, rather than rely on their national pride.

The struggle for Scottish independence must be conducted on explicitly republican grounds while building socialist hegemony over the movement must be our primary objective. MacLean's call for a Scottish Workers' Republic is just as relevant now as it ever was.