The Point

Last updated: 27 June 2022.

Eyes on the Prize - Building a new left for the post-referendum Scottish Parliament

Gary Fraser looks at Scotland after the referendum and where next for a ‘new’ Scottish Left?

 

 

 

I apologise for the cliché but this truly is an exciting time to be living in Scotland, and I say that as someone not typically prone to bouts of political excitement. Something is happening and unlike the character Mr Jones in Bob Dylan’s memorable song, we in Scotland know what it is – it is called the Yes campaign.

In less than a year, Yes has morphed from being a top down centralised campaign into the biggest grassroots popular movement Scotland has ever seen. Irvine Welsh, in a recent article, captures this well when he writes:

Something strange and beautiful is happening in Scotland. The country is reinventing itself from the inside out. People are talking about their futures as if they actually have them. It’s that exhilarating, intoxicating and occasionally exasperating phenomenon at work: welcome back participatory democracy. How these islands have missed you.

The No Campaign seems ill prepared for all of this. By this late stage in the game, victory was supposed to be in the bag. All that would be left would be to ‘bayonet the wounded’, said Ian Davidson in an ill-judged remark. Yet their ill preparedness reflects the world from which the no campaign comes from. This is a world where politics is confined to TV studios, where political activism means a career in politics. Most of the people I have met in the no campaign, some of them decent, are paid to be political and have a material interest in the status quo. Theirs is a top down view of politics where political discourse is transmitted to communities via professional politicians and media pundits.

The standard line of attack from No campaigners is simple: talk up fear, attack the SNP, then make it personal about Alex Salmond and finish it off by moralising about the dangers of nationalism. Yet, many are seeing through these arguments. More and more people are beginning to recognise that when they scratch beneath the surface of the sterile media debate they discover that what actually inspires yes campaigners is democracy. And democracy does not stop at Carlisle or Berwick. A yes vote would would ignite debates around devolution and the decentralisation of power in the rest of these islands. Those of us on the Scottish left, tired of hearing our No left opponents wax lyrical about class unity (usually from the comfort of a Labour MP’s or MSP’s salary) should point out that Scottish independence would be good for England too.

By far the most interesting thing about the yes movement is the way that people are beginning to connect the ‘issues’ to the democratic question. Broadly speaking the issues are this: – defend public services, opposition to Trident and illegal wars, end zero hours contracts and a sense of moral outrage at the existence of food banks and grotesque levels of inequality – say any of these things at a Yes public meeting and a round of applause is guaranteed. Moreover, a narrative of ‘we don’t like the Tories’ is being constructed in Scotland, which makes Scottish nationalism an interesting beast, and one that is not easily framed within the traditional left understanding of nationalist narratives.

The joining of the dots between the ‘issues’ and the constitutional question marks the arrival of a significant moment in Scottish politics. And regardless of the vote on September 18^th it is a moment that is not going away. And this is where the left comes in. The independence referendum has been good for the left. The firing gun that marked the start of the yes campaign represents the moment when a new political context was constructed creating the fertile ground that makes a ‘new’ Scottish left viable.

A significant section of Scottish society has been radicalised by this debate. ‘Radical’ is of course a nebulous term. It doesn’t necessarily mean ‘anti-capitalist’, or ‘pro-socialist’; however, in a post- modern age when people no longer think in these terms this is not of primary importance. What is important is that a radical constituency exists. If there is a yes vote the expectations of this constituency will increase over night. Moreover, many will soon realise the contradiction at the heart of the SNP which is that the party that promises political change offers very little in the way of economic change. The SNP may want independence from Westminster, but their leadership (I say leadership because I don’t think this applies to all of their members or voters) demonstrates very little desire of wanting independence from neo-liberal ideas.

The question is can the left get organised enough to have an impact in the new Scotland that will emerge after the referendum? There are of course sub sets of questions, about how this organisation would look - would it be an alliance, an electoral pact, even a new political party? Now is not the time to get into detail, other than to say that strategic discussions on the organisational question are required.

Can the left rise to that challenge? My honest is answer is I don’t know.  I have been around the Scottish left long enough to know that what it promises and what it is capable of delivering are two very different things. The worst thing to happen would be for the left to get carried away by what is called movementism. This is the politics of the comfort zone.  At a recent public meeting, I heard one activist say that we should be for direct democracy and not representative democracy. This is a political narrative big on opposition but hopelessly lacking in influence. I also know that people can willingly get stuck in the comfort zone of groupiscule politics, where radical politics becomes a life style for activists, led by those who enjoy being big fish in small ponds.

Neither should we get too carried away with the idea of ‘radical’ Scotland. The radical constituency is definitely smaller than we make out. Another public meeting quote. I heard two people talking about the 200 strong crowd. One said, this shows that people are getting radical. The other said, yes, but 20,000 people live in this town!

Scottish nationalists often construct a deeply romanticised view of Scotland. But they are not the only ones. The Scottish left is equally guilt of this, only the nation is substituted by class. It is true that a radical history has existed but it has co-existed with a history of conformism.  What I am saying is that whilst Scotland might be anti-Tory, I am in tune with my Scottishness enough to know that many Scots, working class and middle class alike, young and old, are small C conservatives and this constituency is still the biggest constituency in Scotland, which explains why there are so many ‘no’s’ and ‘don’t knows’ in this debate. This is the Scotland that doesn’t go to public meetings, the Scotland where people worry more about their mortgages and kids futures than they do Trident. It’s worth pausing to reflect on this Scotland for a moment.

Significant sections of this Scotland are a-political and lead lifestyles based more on consumerism than any sense of the good society. For those of us who have been out campaigning, we realise sadly that many of the ‘don’t knows’ are also ‘don’t cares’. Worryingly, the poor and the young feature disproportionately in this group. There also exists a pragmatic Scotland where people get up in the morning and go to work, come home and then do it all over again without too much thought for politics. The left, for good reason, when characterising neo-liberal societies, often contrast the extremes of wealth and poverty. But this leaves out a chunk of the population who have materially benefited from neo-liberalism - witness the rise of private housing estates all over the country.  And whilst these estates might look uniformly bland, they nonetheless represent some degree of protection from the worst excesses of neo-liberal society. These people have worries, of course they do, but in an age of individualism such worries are increasingly personalised and divorced from politics.

The bigger point I am making is that neo-liberal ideas have become deeply embedded in Scottish society. The market economy, constructed by Thatcher and her ilk in the 1980s, is now a market society. The French philosopher Michel Foucault once talked about the development of ‘political rationality’. From this perspective, according to Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, authors of an excellent new book on neo-liberalism entitled The New Way of the World, neo-liberalism is not merely destructive of rules, institutions and rights, it is also productive of certain kinds of social relations, certain ways of living, and certain subjectivities.

 In Scotland, neo-liberal ideas permeate the top levels of the Labour Party and the SNP. They influence strategic thinking at senior level in the public sector – witness the rise of managerial narratives in recent years and the positivistic obsession with measurement and outcomes when it comes to public goods and services. In 2008, the year of the financial crisis, some overly excited commentators, who mistakenly thought that politics travels at the same speed and in the same direction as economics, heralded the end of neo-liberalism. They were wrong.

The grim but true reality is that far from impairing neo-liberal policies the crisis has led to their dramatic reinforcement. That there has been no significant turn to the left only highlights the success of neo-liberalism in conditioning subjectivity. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, writes:

Amidst the uncertainty and insecurity, discipline or rather submission to the ‘there is no alternative’ condition is self-propelling and needs no foremen or corporals to supervise its constantly replenished supplies.

This is an astute point.  In the absence of socialism from below other strategies need to be considered. For me, this is where the national question enters the debate.

The conflict between capital and labour still exists and will continue to exist in an independent Scotland. But there is also a conflict between neo-liberal globalisation and democracy and independence represents some attempt, however ill-defined, for a nation state to get some control over its own destiny.  Although this process may be contradictory, or even impossible in a globalised world, it is nonetheless worth pursuing because it’s the only viable path that offers a glimpse of genuine reform for the majority of people in Scotland.

I stopped believing in utopia a long time ago. There is a reason why it doesn’t exist on any map. But reform is possible. Fukuyama was wrong. We still exist in history and we Scots have the chance to make history on September 18^th.

The worst case scenario is of course a no vote. Make no mistake about it, a no vote on September 18^th is a backward step for the left. Every single person who voted no will be morally responsible for inflicting more austerity and more Tory policies on Scotland. The national debate will get ugly as the SNP and yes campaigners blame (correctly!) Labour for the austerity that follows from Westminster.

Yet, whatever happens after the referendum the collective gaze of the left needs to be on our national parliament.  Simply put, we need to get organised and have a presence in that building.  

As Lenin once said, hope is good, but control is better.