The Point

Last updated: 27 June 2022.

Hope at Last? Gary Fraser reports on the Radical Independence Conference (RIC)

Only the hardest of political cynics could have walked away from Saturday’s second Radical Independence Conference (RIC) unimpressed. The size of the conference said it all. 1,000, maybe more, ‘radical’ campaigners gathered in the Marriott Hotel in Glasgow for a day of speeches and workshops. The workshops were actually so big that they felt like mini conferences. One delegate said to me, could you imagine how many supporters Better Together (labelled Bitter Together by RIC) would get if they had organised a conference? My silence said it all.

If the campaign for Scottish independence is to have a soul then that soul is to be found in the vision of independence being promoted by RIC. Here we find a Scotland based on egalitarianism, social justice and peace and it was these messages which were hammered home by just about every speaker to an audience that lapped it up. It was one of those conferences where not getting a round of applause was an impossible task. ‘It’s time to put people before profit’, yelled one excited youngster and the crowd roared back with cheers and even whistles. The speakers talked about scrapping Trident, ending illegal wars, nationalising the energy companies, abolishing the bedroom tax and ending zero hour contracts. Oh, and someone got a huge cheer when he said that the monarchy should also be scrapped. The actor David Hayman, received a standing ovation, after citing a poem which included the line, despair has a name, its name is no!

Two broader themes emerged at RIC, both of which I think are driving this historic referendum. Firstly, in Scotland, resistance to the Tories, and this goes back to Thatcher and the Poll Tax, increasingly takes on a national dimension. This is an important point. It’s not to argue that class does not exist as the Labour and traditional left do, or to get into silly debates as to whether Glaswegians are more progressive than Liverpudlians, or if Scots are more left of centre than people in Yorkshire. Of course not. The point is this: Toryism in Scotland is viewed through a national prism; and a historical narrative that the Tories have ‘no mandate’ in Scotland has brought together the forces of progressive civic national identity with the politics of class. As the always impressive Robin McAlpine said at the end of the conference, the referendum is about class conflict, and the rich are voting no.

The second theme to emerge is the complete and utter failure of the Labour Party, both its British and Scottish variant, to offer any genuine alternative to neo-liberalism. In the 1980s, the argument might hold that the best way to get rid of the Tories was to elect a Labour Government. But as always, experience is the best teacher. The Scots waited until 1997 to get a Labour Government whose lasting legacy is betrayal, betrayal and betrayal. Iraq and Afghanistan, PFI, the defence of Trident, the attacks on benefits and the low paid; none of this will be easily forgotten. For leftists of my generation, a hatred of the Labour Party is just as natural as the hatred my father’s generation had for the Tories. No wonder that the loudest cheers at RIC went to those who reminded delegates that Labour was no alternative. Ed Miliband might be a better man than both Brown and Blair, and privately he might even be a socialist – socialism after all is in his genes. But the constraints placed on the Labour leader are serious and so great that it is doubtful that a Labour government would achieve much. Just think about the constraints for a moment; the Blairites in his own party ready to undermine him at any moment; the power of the City of London; the right wing narrative promoted by the British media; the power of the Tories in the South of England; the rising threat of UKIP – all of this creates a political narrative which makes genuine reform within the context of the British state next to impossible.

Thinking back to Saturday’s conference I sensed from speaking to activist’s young and old that RIC is providing the Scottish left with a sense of hope. My own gut feeling, and I felt this after the first conference, is that the Scottish left is emerging into a new political age. It’s maybe worth reflecting on this point.

Something is changing in radical left circles. The old organisations are either dying or withering away: Solidarity no longer exists in any meaningful sense, whilst the SWP has pressed the self-destruct button. Could you imagine any new student, once the natural constituency of the SWP, switched on by the discourse of revolutionary social transformation, joining today’s SWP? I can’t, and certainly not whist the ISG is around. Even the SSP, despite its seat at the top table of Yes appears tired and battle weary, although given the ordeal it went through this is not a criticism. I also came away from RIC upbeat by the fact that some of the young people I spoke too would have been barely 10 years old in 2004 when the Scottish left was torn apart by the Tommy Sheridan court case.

I’m not getting excited by the ‘youth’, just mentioning the fact that a new generation is finally breaking through, and sooner or later one of them is going to make the even bigger break into Scotland’s national psyche. Why not? They have the talent, and the left needs it.

Of course there are negatives about RIC. At the end of the day this was just a conference and a conference high on slogans but remarkably light on detail or analysis. Moreover, and I don’t wish to make a sectarian point, but some of the speakers were just too parochial and focused on single issues like the bedroom tax, or fuel poverty and offered nothing which put the referendum in its historical context.

I have also been around the Scottish left long enough now to know that what it promises and what it is capable of delivering are two very different things. If we are serious about the issues we discussed on Saturday then at some point we need to acknowledge that a, they won’t be achieved by independence alone, and b, a serious discussion about strategy is required. Right now it’s about pushing Yes Scotland and the SNP leftwards but this approach is fraught with limitations.

I hate to say it but I find the current vision being promoted by Yes and the SNP completely uninspiring, although to be fair to Yes, the challenge of constructing a political narrative without offering any policies is not an easy one. As I have noted before, Yes might be slick and media savvy but there is a serious lack of substance.

At campaign level, there is also a danger of running the referendum like a long term general election campaign. From what I see, and this is based on direct personal experience, the SNP are a highly efficient hierarchal machine who are very good at winning elections. But this is a campaign unlike any other and I’m not sure they know how to win it. I don’t either, but I do know intuitively that the Scots will demand the stuff of substance. Not gimmicks or glossy leaflets or minor celebrities holding up Yes placards. Lesley Riddoch writes in the Scotsman:

Repeating formulaic arguments won’t cut in this debate. “Heart” supporters of independence are already signed up. The gullible are least likely to vote. The majority of Scots want grown up, credible reasons to up-end the constitutional arrangements of several lifetimes.

This is the challenge as we head into 2014. In my view it’s time to be bold. We need to get the narrative of RIC into the heart of the national debate. Apologies for the footballing analogy, but the current tactic of every man behind the ball will just not do.