The Point

Last updated: 27 June 2022.

Three weeks to go, an appeal to fellow citizens of Scotland: Colin Fox

The Point marks 21 days to go till the referendum with a magnificent seven appeals to undecided voters from both rank-and-file activists and leading figures in the YES movement.

Colin Fox is national co-spokesperson of the Scottish Socialist Party and sits on the YES advisory board.

 

With voting now underway in the Independence Referendum – the first postal votes went out this week - there can be no doubt the ‘Yes’ campaign has engaged the people of Scotland on this issue in a way never seen before.

The last two years have seen Scots debate crucial political questions to an unprecedented extent. The level of political participation has been extraordinary and that is down to the ‘Yes’ side. ‘Better Together’ would rather this entire discussion was not taking place.

Sitting on the ‘Yes Scotland’ Advisory Board I am privileged to observe this phenomenal grassroots movement with hundreds of energised and motivated local groups up close.

Despite seventy polls over the past 2 years predicting a No vote on September 18^th the result hangs in the balance because there are so many unknown quantities, not least the level of turnout in Scotland’s huge working class communities.

The received wisdom has it that the higher the turnout the better it is for a Yes vote. Both sides expect 80% of voters to cast their ballots. The turnout in Holyrood elections is usually around 55%.

The Scottish Socialist Party has been the standard bearer of the left in the Independence movement for the past 16 years. Together with the SNP and the Greens we founded the Scottish Independence Convention in 2005. Our case for an independent socialist Scotland has added an important political dimension to ‘Yes Scotland’ and helped to build the biggest grassroots movement this country has ever seen.

The socialist case for ‘Yes’ is simple and clear. Working class people will be better off economically, socially and politically. An Independent Scotland could be the world’s 14^th richest country [measured by GDP per capita]. We would finally be able to address those appalling social problems Westminster ignores; the child poverty, fuel poverty, food banks and chronic shortage of affordable homes.

And there is a profoundly important democratic question at the heart of this debate. Britain is not a country. It is that most unusual phenomenon in the world today, a political union of 4 countries. Scotland on the other hand is a country. We are a nation. We are not a region or a province of anywhere else. We are therefore just as entitled to self-determination as any of the world’s other 270 nations.

Supporting Scotland’s democratic right to self-determination doesn’t therefore make you a Scottish nationalist. It makes you a democrat. The SSP stands in the same democratic socialist tradition as the ‘Red Clydeside’ leader John Maclean and Edinburgh’s James Connolly executed by the British for his part in the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916.

A Yes vote brings forward great opportunities for working class people. The relative balance of political forces is far more favourable to Scotland’s social democrat and socialist ‘centre of gravity’ than the ‘neo-liberal, warmongering consensus predominant at Westminster.

 

The ‘No’ side says, in effect, that ‘ this is as good as it gets’. ‘Scotland gets the best of all worlds. We have a strong Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh and vital influence at UK level via Westminster’. But this is not true. We don’t have a strong Parliament at Holyrood. My daily experience as an SSP MSP from 2003-2007 was to be told what I couldn’t talk about by the Presiding Officer. He would rule ‘you cant talk about unemployment and under-employment in here….you can’t talk about the worst anti-union laws in the whole of Europe in here…. you can’t talk about pensions in here….or the national minimum wage…or Iraq…or Trident. Those are matters reserved to Westminster.’

And if we had ‘vital influence at Westminster’ as Alistair Darling suggests we would not have had Scottish soldiers killed in Iraq, or the bedroom tax imposed upon us against our will, or Trident, or the privatisation of the Royal Mail, or the poll tax before that.

Of course none of the economic, social or political advances inherent in the Yes vote will happen automatically. They will need to be fought for. But a ‘Yes’ vote represents a huge political opportunity to advance the left of centre, progressive, social democratic and socialist vision the majority of Scots want to see. For the socialist movement independence is about profound change. A ‘Yes’ vote unleashes powerful forces demanding change.

The SNP leadership has sought to convey the message to ‘middle Scotland’ that independence is nothing to be alarmed about, that they will preserve their way of life and their privileges. ‘We will keep the pound, keep the Queen, remain in NATO, keep the BBC, maintain the hegemony of finance capital.’ And in his proposal to assemble ‘Team Scotland’ Alex Salmond aims to pack the negotiations with ‘pro-business’ voices from the SNP and the ‘No’ camp. Needless to say he has offered no place to the SSP or the Greens despite our crucial role in ‘YES Scotland’.

Despite Salmond’s wishes the left is well placed to influence those negotiations. If we can mobilise those huge new political forces energised by the ‘Yes’ campaign we can ensure all the promises of ‘prosperity, fairness and democracy’ made to the working class majority are delivered. For whilst I have no doubt the corporations will aim to pressurise the SNP after September 18th, we on the left can bring our own pressure to bear by mobilising those working class forces who will have delivered victory in the Referendum itself.