Support the Scottish socialist republican campaign!

Submitted by Matthew on 10 September, 2014 - 11:25 Author: Pauline Bradley

The arguments on Scottish independence are simple and clear for me. There is just one question on the ballot paper “Should Scotland be an independent country?” The answer is, yes or no.

Salmond wanted a third way/more devolution (devo max) option but Cameron refused this. Now the Tories are panicking and offering all sorts of goodies if Scotland votes “no”. We don’t believe they will deliver.

So most of the left here is for yes and there has been a shift in the political landscape for the last few years. Everyone is involved in this, young people especially as they have a vote. Whichever way the vote goes, nothing will be the same again. This is most definitely not a diversion from the class struggle; a new constitution (and we’ll fight for a republican one) will set the scene for all class struggle in future in Scotland.

Most or all of Workers’ Liberty’s arguments are economistic, but there is more to this than the economy; Of course that is important but for us is not the central issue.

The main point is one of democracy, we want to vote for the people who govern us and not vote left and get a load of Tories as we do now. I know outside Scotland that’s also true, I have much sympathy for your predicament, having lived in Doncaster. The difference is Scotland has been a country before and can do that again.

A yes vote may be not socialism or liberation of course, but it can open doors which are closed now e.g. no anti-union laws — we’ll certainly fight for that. Marx said that every reform is a victory for the working class and this will certainly be a progressive reform.

By the way, no one here is talking about erecting borders between England and Scotland. That’s not important to us. I don’t believe there will ever be a concrete border there like the one between Israel and Palestine. Any system of crossing borders  will be very simple and is yet to be decided on by the new government we’ll elect after a possible yes vote. 

Most of us have family in England and we do want to still relate to them as well as the English, Welsh, Irish north and south (the Welsh and Irish working class were missed out from the latest “pro union/no” argument in Solidarity) and international working class.

Also to put unionists in quotes in your articles (that is “unionists”) is very telling. It’s a wee bit embarrassing perhaps to be aligned with Ian Paisley (junior) David Cameron, Gregory Campbell, Nigel Farage etc. But that’s exactly who AWL is aligned with by advocating “no”. There’s Orange Order and UKIP marches here in a Scotland soon to support the UK union. Will AWL be supporting them, against us?

I hope you’ll print this to give the debate some much needed balance.

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