Scotland’s Left on Independence Referendum
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The position of some groups in Scotland on this can be found here, including a pro-yes call by the SWP’s branch in Scotland which in view of this has the cheek to call itself the International Socialist Group”. Apparently they think that an independent Scotland could avoid the austerity that all other capitalist governments are being forced to impose. Or perhaps, as good Trotskyists, they are only pretending to believe this to attract support in the hope that when it doesn’t work the workers of Scotland will turn to them for leadership.
These people are incapable of taking a principled stand on anything. If they really were international socialists they’d come out and say that an independent and inevitably capitalist Scotland would make no difference whatsoever to workers in that part of the world and, like us, urge people there would want socialism to write “world socialism” across their ballot paper in any referendum on Scottish independence.
None of which ought to surprise us. The left, historically, will stand for anything if their leaders tell them to stand for it!
I made a mistake. Chris Bambery resigned from the SWP last year. But he’s still a Trotskyist. In ant event, here is the passage where he suggests that an independent Scotland might be able to avoid austerity:
Quote:However, on a more positive note, in campaigning for a “yes” vote for independence we can promote the argument for an “anti-austerity Yes vote”. Cameron (and now British Labour Party leader Ed Miliband) wants to doom us to at least a decade of austerity. By campaigning for Scotland to escape that nightmare we can fight for our vision of a new society and that can help build resistance south of the border.He can campaign (and vote) as much as he likes against the nightmare of prolonged austerity but it won’t make any difference as that’s what capitalist conditions demand at the moment. Better to campaign, like us, to replace capitalism with socialism.In the meantime the Links site in Australia has published comments by two members. Go here and scroll down.
Showing how we’ve been consistent over the years this article from 1925 on the confused idea of a “Scottish Workers Republic” has just been added to the archive section of the Socialist Standard on this site:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1925/no-254-october-1925/confusion-scotland
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