Emancipation & Liberation

Bill Scott uses the traditional song, Erin Go Bragh to explore the historical role of migrant workers in Scotland

In our feudal past, apart from the merchant towns such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, Scotland was almost purely an agricultural community. Three quarters of Scotland’s total land area is still agricultural land, mainly hill and upland grazing suitable only for sheep and cattle rearing.

Up until the 19th century the largest single source of employment for men was in agriculture with women also making up a sizeable proportion of the workforce. Then came the Industrial Revolution and the Clearances. Hundreds of thousands of potential farm workers emigrated to the New World or to find work in the mines (Fife, Lanarkshire, the Lothians) and factories of Edinburgh, Dundee, Glasgow and the West of Scotland.

But the new industrial workforce still needed to be fed. So where were cheap, and therefore profitable, agricultural workers to be found? The answer then as now was in migrant workers.

As male labourers became less plentiful the farm owners of fertile South and Central Scotland turned to female workers from the Highlands. In the martial Gaelic society of the Highlands & Islands women had always been the main harvesters. The main harvesting implement was the light toothed sickle which women wielded more efficiently cutting the grain and straw down to the root. Escaping grinding poverty and the rigid social convention enforced by the Kirk young Highland women flocked to take part in the hairst (harvest).

In 1827 a minister complained that the roads of Argyll were full of Highland women who had bought fripperies and fineries from wages earned at the hairst. Having been away the whole time from the restraining moral influences of males like himself! For these young women the hairst was viewed almost as much a holiday as work. Large groups of women from the same community would sign up and travel together taking a piper with them to play on the road as they walked to the hairst. Once they arrived they would live in communal bothies.

The Lothian hairst attracted labour from as far afield as Argyll and Wester Ross. At that time 46% of the agricultural labour force in the Lothians was female, higher than anywhere else in Scotland. As the Clearances accelerated the self-sufficient shielings and crofts of old were burnt to the ground and folk moved off the land to accommodate first the more profitable sheep and then hunting, fishing and shooting estates. The Napier Commission reported that in the 1880s Many young women went to the Lothians. It is sheer necessity that compels them to go. Whilst going to the herring (gutting and cleaning fish for the then new and very profitable herring industry) was a long term occupation, with many married women involved, the harvest shearers coming to the Lothians were mainly in their mid-to late teens.

Further labour came from the agricultural North East where the harsher climate meant that crops took longer to ripen. North East harvesters moved from farm to farm in the Lothians and then worked the harvest north through Stirlingshire, the Carse of Gowrie, Fife or even westwards into Ayrshire. Eventually they would arrive back in time for the hairsts in Banff, Buchan and Huntly.

The women who came south were paid £1 a week for their back-breaking labour but it seems that the independence gained and the possibility of romance far from the eyes of watchful ministers and fathers was also a strong attraction. A common concern in official and religious tracts of the period was this loss of social and sexual control over these mobile women earning their own wages. Some were even known to smoke!

In the early days shearers lived in farm outbuildings but as time passed purpose built bothies were constructed – still pretty basic with no running water and no toilet. Though living conditions were poor the hairst workers appear to have been well fed, with porridge, milk, bread, beer and very occasionally meat provided in addition to wages – with labour scarcer something had to be done to ensure these migrant workers would return the next year.

Many shearers embarked at Aberdeen to sail to Leith for the Lothians. In Leith the shearers disembarked at a place in the docks that locals derisively called “Teuchters’ Landing”. The former Waterfront Bar in Leith has now acquired this pretty unhappy name.

In the later part of the 19th Century after the Irish (and Scottish) Potato Famine, Irish male labourers, using the scythe-heuk, gradually replaced female shearers. The migrant Irish labourers mainly came from Donegal and originally worked in Dumfries & Galloway before gradually spreading out to other parts of Scotland. The scythe cut more corn, more quickly but male labour was more expensive which perhaps explains why there was still a demand for female labour in the Lothians as late as the early 1900s.

But the Clearances and grinding poverty also drove male agricultural workers south from the Highlands. This Scottish song from the mid-19th Century tells the story of a Highland Scot who is mistaken for an Irishman. At that time both groups were almost equally despised in Lowland Scotland being categorised as uncivilised savages, Papish (the Highlanders were actually more likely to be Episcopalian or even ‘Wee Frees’ but why let the facts stand in the way of prejudice), bog-walkers who couldn’t even speak English. Both groups were also in competition with locals for jobs and, because the Irish and Highlanders were often literally fleeing famine, were often prepared to work for very low wages, causing resentment as they undercut the locals.

The song, Erin Go Bragh, was revived and given a more modern arrangement – but retaining the biting irony of the original – by Dick Gaughan, a Leither, who is proud of his, second generation, Irish roots. The lyrics given here are close to those given on Dick’s website (there is always argument about how to set broad Scots down in writing).

The song demonstrates that West Highlanders had far closer links with their Irish cousins than they did with Lowland Scots. Stan Reeves of Edinburgh’s Adult Learning Project has experienced going into a village pub in County Cork to hear a song melody from the Western Isles with new more locally relevant lyrics attached, the song having been brought there perhaps over a hundred years before by Hebridean herring fishermen. Similarly tunes can be heard in the West Highlands that almost certainly originated centuries before in Ireland.

What the song also demonstrates is that intolerance and racial prejudice can start a lot closer to home than despising Poles or Lithuanians and accusing them of taking our jobs. How daft does, Lowland jobs for Lowland workers sound? Best to be like the bold Erin Go Bragh of this song and identify with others who are oppressed. Who knows some day it might be you yourself under attack.

But of course hundreds of thousands of Highlanders did not do as bold Erin Go Bragh did and retreat to the Highlands. Instead during the Clearances fully half of those forced off the land settled in Central Scotland. They found jobs in the factories, mines and mills. They joined trade unions. They became part of local Lowland communities. In the best sense of the word they were assimilated but so too were Lowland Scots.

Before the Clearances there was a clear divide in Scottish society between the Lowlands and Highlands, each viewing the inhabitants of the other with suspicion and as other to their own way of life. After the Clearances the songs and stories of the Highlanders were transferred into the families and communities they became part of. Yes that sometimes meant a sentimental attachment to a life and culture that had in reality been far from idyllic. But many now Lowland Scots genuinely did have a granny (because the older Highlanders were most reluctant to leave and least able to succeed as economic migrants) and a place they thought of and, for a time, had a clear memory of, as ‘home’ in the Highlands.

But in addition the Highlanders’ oral history of oppression, rebellion and struggle – the Massacre of Glencoe, the ’45, the Sutherland Clearances, the Battle of the Braes & the Land League – became incorporated as a seamless whole into the Lowland Scots narrative of the Covenanters, the United Scotsmen and the 1820 Rebellion. Gaelic and Lallans oral history became “our” history. It is that capacity to incorporate incomers which should give us hope that the current racism and prejudice towards migrant workers can, and will, be overcome as new Scots add the weft of their oral tradition to the rich cloth of Scots working class history.

Note: Nowadays Erin Go Bragh is better known as the Anglicisation of a Gaelic phrase used to express allegiance to Ireland. It is most often translated as Ireland Forever. Speakers of Irish often claim that it is a corruption of the Irish, Eire go brach. However the Scottish Gaelic phrase Eirinn gu brath, literally means, Ireland until the Day of Judgement and is pronounced almost identically to Erin Go Bragh. So it’s possible that a phrase which has come to strongly represent Ireland could have come originally not from the Irish (Gaeilge) but instead from the Scottish (Gaidhlig). Dick Gaughan’s website is at: http://dickgaughan.co.uk

Editorial from The Commune, no. 6

The jobs massacre currently taking place under the cover of recession is an attack which particularly endangers casually or precariously employed workers; furthermore, migrants are also being scapegoated for ‘stealing’ hard-to-come-by jobs.

Immigrants, many of whom are forced to leave their countries of birth by repressive regimes directly or indirectly put in place with a helping hand from British foreign policy, are expected to work long hours at low pay on casual contracts: and most of all, not to complain.

However, brave organising efforts have been mounted by many migrant workers to stand up to employers and demand basic rights: for example cleaners at university campuses or banks in the City of London demanding a living wage rather than just the legal minimum and fighting against redundancies. They are an example to the entire labour movement of how to fight back: they show the possibility of building working-class resistance to the recession. Yet as the ‘Justice for Cleaners’ episode shows unions like Unite are indifferent, or even hostile, to migrant workers. This despite the fact that for many migrants, raising your head above the parapet risks determined efforts by employers and the state to question your ‘right’ to live in the UK and therefore to weed-out troublemakers and organisers.

Recent liberal calls for an ‘amnesty’ offering ‘a pathway to citizenship’ for ‘hard-working’ illegal immigrants do not challenge this, since business interests and the state still decide who is ‘suitable’ for entry. The use of border controls to determine who may or may not live in the UK is an affront to any notion of democratic rights of the individual, and is also intimately linked with the racist idea that where you come from should determine whether you are allowed to choose to live here. Such border controls are also highly gendered, with women bearing the brunt of deportations and violence perpetrated by immigration officials.

Those who argue that migrants should not be allowed into the UK ‘for their own protection’, to stop them being exploited by unscrupulous employers, ignore the fact that hundreds of thousands of people work in the UK illegally regardless: in fact their status simply means that they are denied basic employment rights; subjected to practices such as the nonpayment of wages; and are in constant fear that their already precarious work status will be swept from under them. Borders, detention centres and deportations are a savage weapon in the hands of the bosses to control people. Capitalism needs to move the workforce around at its whim in order to mobilise it efficiently, much as the EU Posted Workers’ Directive has allowed bosses to ‘undercut’, breaking union and minimum wage agreements: the best way to fight this exploitation is not to retreat into protectionism, but rather to demand full freedom of movement and equal work conditions for all, regardless of any form of national discrimination.

As communists we are for a world without any borders or states. Opposition to all immigration controls is fundamental to the free society we envisage and the fight to build it starts now. We do not believe it to be some ‘optional extra’ to be neglected as it was by recent left electoral projects from Respect to No2EU. All workers have a common enemy in these racist, sexist, union-busting immigration controls.

Patricia Campbell reviews a crucial event in Irish history which occurred 40 years ago. This article first appeared in Fourthwrite (Summer 2009)

August 1969 was the year that transformed the face of the North forever. The civil rights marches of the previous year had launched a movement for change that the Stormont regime found impossible to cope with through normal democratic process.

Used for decades to having its every order obeyed, or at least having those who objected compelled to fall in line, the Unionist Party and its machinery of power decided to resort to the old tactic of subjugation through force. People demanding that antidemocratic practices end would be driven off the streets and battered into acquiescence – or pay a heavy price for challenging the authority of the regime. This method had worked in the past. In fact the very state had come into being through the bloody intimidation of that section of the population that had objected to its formation in the first place.

British governments in 1920/21/22 had allowed James Craig and his colleagues in the Unionist Party to use widespread sectarian violence in order to establish a 6-County state. Between July 1920 and July 1922, 453 people had been killed in Belfast, 37 members of the Crown forces and 417 civilians; 257 Catholics and 157 Protestants and two of no known religion. Of the city’s 93,000 Catholic inhabitants, 11,000 had been forced from their jobs and 23,000 driven from their homes. This was the environment in which the northern state was created.

During the early months of 1969, supporters of the unionist state had viciously attacked a series of peaceful demonstrations. A march by students in January was ambushed outside Derry and clearly identified among the attackers were numerous members of the police reserve, the ‘B’ Special. In incident after incident for the following few months, thus the level of violence increased. The RUC riot squad was responsible for a number of deaths when members of the force used their batons on civilians in Derry City, Dungiven, Co. Derry and Coalisland, Co. Tyrone.

When the Derry Citizens Defence Association (DCDA) was formed in July of 1969, it decided to organise a defence of the Bogside in order to prevent further lethal attack by the RUCC and ‘B’ Specials. The Stormont regime was unwilling to curb the activities of any of its supporters and made no attempt to prevent the Apprentice Boys parade taking place in Derry on 12 August. There was little doubt that rioting was going to break out when thousands of unionists began strutting along the city walls, reminding the inhabitants of their second class status in Northern Ireland. As the Apprentice Boys march was coming to an end the expected happened and fighting between the RUC and local residents intensified.

Unlike previous occasions, the RUC met with stiff resistance from the people of the Bogside and found it impossible to gain control of the area as the DCDA organisation proved effective. Key to the success of the defenders was their decision to occupy the high flats in the centre of the district and use is as a strong point to hurl stones and Molotov cocktails down on the advancing police below.

The struggle lasted throughout the night and into the next day and still the RUC was unable to penetrate the Bogside. Tension grew throughout the North as all sides watched the conflict develop. Nationalists and republicans were anxious to see what could be done to help the defenders while Unionism was becoming increasingly hysterical as it watched its absolute authority being challenged on the streets.

Grassroots unionism was demanding that live ammunition be used against the Bogsiders but Stormont’s cabinet knew that with the world watching so closely, it would be a gross mistake. With the situation under scrutiny, the Unionist regime understood that Britain would exact a very high price from the Belfast parliament if its police force were to be seen to carry out a Sharpville style massacre in Derry with the world’s press watching.

Under increasing siege

With the Bogsider defenders under increasing siege, word was circulated in all nationalist and republican areas that it would be necessary to organise demonstrations to take pressure off the people in Derry. Demonstrations were organised in nationalist towns across the North and RUC and ‘B’ Specials were dispatched to contain the events. In town after town these events grew increasingly violent. Police and ‘B’ Specials began to use the live ammunition that their supporters had been demanding and gunshot casualties were inflicted on nationalist civilians in several towns. In Armagh city ‘B’ specials shot and killed a Catholic civilian making his way home from a local bar.

The greatest violence, however, broke out on the night of the 14th August in Belfast. A protest march had taken place on the 13 and in its aftermath the IRA exchanged gunfire with the RUC, wounding one constable. On the night of the 14th crowds of unionists gathered in the Shankill area and other unionist districts. As daylight began to fade, shooting broke out. Desultory at first and growing in intensity as time went by. As darkness fell, the RUC sent armoured cars equipped with heavy machine guns into the lower Falls and Ardoyne firing into houses and killing several of the occupants.

As the armoured cars raced through the narrow streets they had little difficulty winning control of these districts. Once in charge, the RUC started to systematically shoot out street lighting. With the streets in darkness and the inhabitants terrified, crowds of unionist arsonists supported by off duty ‘B’ Specials started to pour into the lower Falls and Ardoyne and other nationalist areas in Belfast. IRA units in Belfast were seriously under resourced in August 1969. The republican army’s head quarters staff had taken a decision to reduce its arsenal in Belfast in order to ensure that local unit commanders would not precipitate a sectarian blood bath by undisciplined operations. The decision was well meant and had a certain logic in light of the progress of the civil rights movement but in the context of Northern Irish reality it was a mistaken and naive judgement.

Badly outnumbered they put up a spirited resistance to the counter revolutionary assault and joined by veteran members of the organisation prevented a much greater amount of damage being inflicted on the nationalist community.

It was nevertheless, beyond doubt that the nationalist communities in the Falls and Ardoyne areas had suffered greatly with a huge number of homes burned out and many families driven from their property. The trauma was enormous and evoked memories of the worst days of the 1920s. Within days efforts were being made to find arms and to organise military defence of these districts. The IRAwas to split over the issue and in practice this period signalled the end of peaceful, non-insurrectionary protest.

The British government sent troops into Derry and Belfast but refused to curb the powers of the Stormont regime. In time it became obvious that London had little interest in radically reforming Northern Ireland and the Home Secretary of the time, Jim Callaghan, told nationalist politicians that theycould have ‘reform’ but it had to happen within the parameters of a Stormont regime. This dictate of ‘any colour you like so long as it’s orange’ was to ensure that the very existence of the state had to be challenged if change was to occur and that is exactly what was to happen. Nothing was the same after August 1969. The Orange state was in free-fall.

JM Thorn, Socialist Democracy (Ireland) analyses the defeat of the Irish Left in the second Lisbon Treaty referendum.

The Lisbon Treaty was passed on October 2nd, overturning its rejection by the Irish people in June 2008.

The margin of victory was emphatic – the ‘Yes’ vote winning by a majority of 67 percent of voters to 33 percent. Turnout was 58 percent, up from last year’s 53.1 per cent. A total of 1,214,268 people, or 38.8 per cent of the total electorate, voted Yes, while 594,606, or 19 per cent, of the electorate voted No. There was a yes vote in 41 out of 43 constituencies. Large ‘Yes’ majorities, over 80 percent, were recorded in Dublin and nearby Dun Laoghaire, while only rural Donegal voted ‘No’. There was a swing in favour of the treaty from last year, when it was rejected by 53 to 46 percent, of around 20 per cent. In all, there were almost half-a-million extra ‘Yes’ votes in this poll – a clear indication that the endorsement for the treaty was down to a change of opinion rather than a change in turnout.

So why was there such a dramatic turnaround in public opinion? One explanation lies in the efforts of the ‘Yes’ campaign this time round, when a whole array of organisations and individuals were mobilised to support the treaty. This coalition ranged from the European Commission, political parties, the media, business groups and individual companies, trade union officials, the hierarchies of the churches and various celebrities. It represented social partnership at its broadest and the determined effort of what could be described as “the establishment” to ensure a ‘Yes’ vote this time round. They simply came back with a better organised campaign and spent more money in pursuit of the result they want.

Reasons for defeat

Some in the ‘No’ camp have blamed the imbalance in the resources available to each side as the main reason for their defeat. But this is not really convincing. It has always been the case that pro-EU forces in Ireland have had these advantages. Indeed, it was the case in last year’s referendum in which the Treaty was rejected. What made the critical difference this time was not the better organisation or greater resources of the ‘Yes’ campaign but the changed circumstances in which the vote took place. Since the last referendum in June 2008 Ireland has suffered an unprecedented economic collapse. The economy has contracted by almost ten per cent, the banking system has failed, unemployment has doubled and public finances have deteriorated rapidly. What this crisis has done is to expose Ireland’s economic vulnerability and also its dependency on external forces, whether that is foreign capital or the EU.

There was therefore a ‘fear factor’ at work that the ‘Yes’ campaign played upon to win support for the Treaty. The argument was that Ireland needed the EU in order to revive its economy and shield it from the worst of the recession. This was the main thrust of the ‘Yes’ campaign, with slogans such as “Yes for Jobs” and “Yes for Recovery”. The fear, or the threat, behind such claims was that rejection of the Treaty would leave Ireland isolated, ruined and on the margins of Europe.

This argument is a false one. Indeed, it could be argued that the policies of the EU, particularly on the euro and low interests rates, were in part responsible for Ireland’s economic crash. It could also be argued that the EU is in part driving the cuts agenda with its budget deficit rules for euro members. The EU is also playing a key role in the bail out of the banks. These are counters to the idea that the Irish people are being saved by the EU. But they weren’t made by the ‘No’ campaign.

The clear message of the ‘Yes’ campaign contrasted to the disparate and conflicting messages coming from the ‘No’ side. This in part is a result of the hodgepodge of political groups that made up the ‘No’ campaign. These ranged from the Catholic right, in the form of Cóir, to the left in the form of the Socialist Party and SWP. A much weaker element of the ‘No’ side this time was the neo-liberal strand represented the Declan Ganley’s Libertas. It had been weakened by the general retreat of neo-liberalism in the face of the economic crisis and the adoption of interventionist policies by Governments across the EU. Indeed, its involvement this time helped the ‘Yes’ side play up the supposedly progressive side of the EU – contrasting the harshness of the extreme liberal position with the more statist approach of the EU.

Given the weakness of Libertas this time round, the strongest element on the ‘No’ side was the left. There was a good opportunity to run a ‘No’ campaign that was explicitly socialist and orientated towards the working class. Unfortunately that opportunity was spurned. The SWP and Socialist Party ran campaigns which opposed various pro-market aspects of Lisbon, as well as steps towards greater militarism, but articulated no fundamental opposition to the EU as a capitalist institution and offered no political alternative other than to echo aspects of the rhetoric of the nationalist right.

Concession towards nationalism

The tilt towards nationalism was expressed most clearly by the Communist Party with its declaration that a ‘No’ vote was the work of “true patriots”. The concession towards nationalism was also reflected by the inclusion of Sinn Fein in the broad left campaign despite that party’s ambiguous position on the EU. In the second referendum Sinn Fein merely called for a “better deal” for Ireland. Ironically, it was left to Cóir to raise any issues that related to the working class. One of the most effective posters in the campaign was the one they produced on the minimum wage.

The only organization to offer any left political message was the Socialist Party, and that fell far short of what was promised. On election to the European parliament Joe Higgins had promised to build a socialist campaign. In reality he followed the sectarian history of his organization, joining the distinctly unsocialist broad campaign and presenting his own organization as the socialist campaign.

Any hopes that the left would learn anything from the debacle were dispelled when Kieran Allen of the Socialist Workers Party appeared on a special edition of the Vincent Browne show on RTE (Irish state television channel). The vote had been lost because the corporate establishment had united. There was establishment press bias, undemocratic intervention by Ryanair and IBEC who provoked a scare about jobs and brought in the issue of Europe in general instead of sticking to the details of the treaty. The main issue to arise from the campaign was the need for a party to represent the 30% who had voted ‘No’.

So we lost because the bosses united against us. In that case socialism is doomed – when will the conditions arise when they don’t unite against us? The bosses made a political case around jobs and the economy – a killer blow when our strategy was to avoid politics!

Allen’s final comment gives the game away -that we need a party to represent the 30% who said ‘No’. There is no doubt that we desperately need a working class party in Ireland. There is no doubt but that the nucleus of that party is to be found in the people who said ‘No’. The task of Socialists is to separate out those who voted for their class from the ex-republicans and Catholic right-wingers also in that vote. As long as Kieran Allen and other leftists pursue the apolitical opportunist and electoralist numbers game they will be an obstacle to a new party of the working class rather than facilitators of it.

The ‘Yes’ vote on Lisbon will give a boost to the government as it presses ahead with another cost cutting budget and the establishment of the National Assets Management Agency. The same arguments that were made so effectively for Lisbon can be made for these. However, that will be more difficult, as unlike Lisbon there are disputes between the political parties and within the capitalist class on how to proceed. These divisions at the top of society provide an opportunity for a working class opposition to emerge. Indeed, despite the disappointment of the Lisbon vote, it did reveal the existence of a solid core of the populace, who despite threats and coercion rejected the will of the political establishment by voting ‘No’. It is also the case that this ‘No’ vote was largely concentrated in the working class and the most marginalised sections of society. The ‘No’ vote was a class vote; the problem was that it was not a class-conscious vote.

This summarises the problem faced by the Irish working class – that it doesn’t have its own independent programme. It isn’t helped by groups proclaiming themselves socialist failing to advance one, but instead adapting to reactionary ideas. This was the story of the Lisbon campaign. While putting forward an explicitly socialist programme would not have produced a bigger ‘No’ vote, it would have been a better vote and would have better prepared a section of the working class for the struggles that are to come.

We assess the politics behind the SNP government’s proposed independence referendum and its likelihood of success.

Megrahi, behind-the-scenes deals and the ‘liberal’ US onslaught

Political developments in Scotland are hotting-up in the aftermath of the decision by Kenny MacAskill, the SNP’s Justice Minister, to release Abdelbaset Ali-Mohamed al-Megrahi, the so-called Libyan bomber,on compassionate grounds.

Whatever the undisclosed background negotiations behind this move, involving New Labour at Westminster and SNP at Holyrood, the political fallout has been considerable. Earlier negotiations between the British and Libyan government, involving Tony Blair and Jack Straw, had strongly implied a prisoner transfer agreement. Megrahi would finish his sentence in Libya, in return for BP oil concessions. The Scottish government thwarted this. It denied any right to the British government to interfere with the decision taken by the Scottish judiciary, which had been given original responsibility for Megrahi’s trial, held at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, in 2000-1.

What has become abundantly clear is that Gordon Brown and Lord Mandelson wanted Megrahi released before his death, to ensure that British corporate interests in Libya weren’t jeopardised if he died in a British jail. MacAskill’s willingness to take responsibility for Megrahi’s release was an added bonus for the New Labour-led British government. It meant that the SNP-led Scottish government could take all the blame, when the right wing press, both in Britain and the US, orchestrated the howls of outrage about ‘weakness’ in the face of terrorism.

It is possible that the SNP leadership thought that, with Barack Obama as President, the new US Democrat government would welcome MacAskill’s compassionate approach. After all Obama had personally given an undertaking to the Moslem world in Cairo on June 4th that he represented a new type of American leader. However, as the continuing war in Afghanistan (and now Pakistan), the continued build up of pressure on Iran, and the US’s failure to discipline Netanyahu in the face of continued Israeli settlements on the West Bank demonstrate, Obama is only trying to re-brand US imperialism, not challenge it.

So ‘liberal’ Obama, Hilary Clinton, and the late Ted Kennedy, led the attack on the Scottish government. Meanwhile, the rabid American Right soon ended any delusions about the longstanding affectionate ties between Scotland and the US. In their eyes, Scotland replaced France as the country all ‘good American’s love to hate. Only now it is the Scots who are ‘haggis-eating surrender monkeys’. Back in Scotland, the British unionist parties, New Labour, Conservative and Lib-Dem, characteristically decided to echo the sentiments emanating from the US. They launched an attack on the Scottish government and the nationalist SNP.

The SNP recovers from the attacks and announces its independence referendum

The SNP has been trying for years to win the approval of corporate America, with the prospect of low business taxation and the attempted cultivation of Scottish-American business figures and politicians. Donald Trump, the dodgy property speculator, has been assiduously wooed. Therefore, defending MacAskill’s decision in the face of blatant US imperial pressure did not come easily to the SNP leadership, particularly after the display of Scottish saltires being waved at Tripoli’s airport, welcoming Megrahi upon his return. After all, MacAskill still insisted that heacted solely on compassionate grounds, and that he upheld the Scottish court’s extremely dubious decision that Megrahi was guilty. MacAskill didn’t want to tread on the toes of the Scottish legal establishment.

Early opinion polls seemed to indicate that MacAskill was indeed isolated. However, the Church of Scotland, followed by the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, gave their public backing to MacAskill. Whilst this was undoubtedly embarrassing to sections of the unionist alliance, it was the decision of Nelson Mandela to support MacAskill that turned the tables. Within days, support for MacAskill’s decision had risen to 45% in Scotland.

Sensing a possible drubbing in any Scottish General Election their actions might precipitate, the unionist opposition retreated from a vote of ‘No confidence’ in MacAskill at Holyrood. They settled for a motion condemning the Scottish government’s handling of the affair. Although the unionist parties have an overall majority in Holyrood, their alliance began to break up. Former Scottish Labour Ministers, Henry McLeish and Malcolm Chisholm, backed MacAskill, and the Conservatives decided to switch the focus of attention to Gordon Brown and Westminster Government involvement in Megrahi’s release.

It was in this context that the SNP Government announced next year’s legislative programme on September 3rd, with its proposal for a referendum on Scottish independence given flagship status. Now the unionist parties can kill this off at the first hurdle, by using their majority to vote down any such bill in Holyrood. Scottish First Minister and SNP leader, Alex Salmond well knows this, but has likely calculated on there being a British Conservative Government under David Cameron next year. This could place the SNP in a good position before the next Holyrood General Election in 2011, especially with an impotent New Labour in ‘opposition’ at Westminster.

The November 12th Glasgow North East by-election

However, a more immediate by-election battle is taking place in Glasgow North East on November 12th, after the resignation of the disgraced Westminster Speaker, Michael Martin. With the SNP not wanting to be portrayed as the ‘Orange’ party (Labour’s main accusation against it, when it stood against Scottish party leader, Helen Liddell, in the notorious Monklands East by-election in 1994) their leadership is taking no chances. It has adopted David Kerr as candidate. He is a member of Opus Dei!

Glasgow City Council is one of the few Scottish councils still under Labour control, so the SNP cannot so easily be held responsible for the type of unpopular local policies, which contributed to their surprise defeat in the Glenrothes by-election last November. So, Labour has now switched its focus to an alleged SNP bias against Glasgow city, highlighted by the Scottish Government’s decision to cancel the planned Glasgow airport rail link.

The SNP strategy of trying to appeal to all Scots, regardless of class, has also come unstuck. The introduction of new local service charges for pensioners in Fife was just one indicator of where the SNP’s real loyalties lie. In Edinburgh they share responsibility with the Lib-Dems for the council’s attempt to impose draconian pay cuts on refuse disposal workers, with the threat of privatisation looming. In West Dunbartonshire, they have suspended SSP councillor, Jim Bollan, for nine months, for his tireless commitment to working class communities.

The long honeymoon, enjoyed by the current SNP government, is now under strain. The SNP is wedded to a neo-liberal economic model, which once placedfailed corporations such as the Royal Bank of Scotland in the driving seat of their proposed new Scottish economy, and lauded the successes of the Irish ‘Celtic Tiger’. Today, the SNP meekly accepts its role in administering the Westminster government’s measures to deal with the current crisis – massive public spending cuts to bail out the bankers.

The Scottish government has also frozen council taxes now for three years. This further contributes to the squeeze on social spending. Added to all this, the full consequences of the SNP’s fawning before Trump, means that the Scottish government looks prepared to back a compulsory purchase order to evict residents from their homes in Aberdeenshire to make way for Trump’s new golf course and leisure complex –the new Clearances.

The build-up of reactionary forces and the divided Left

Although the prime press interest in Glasgow North East will be the battle between New Labour and the SNP, there will be other significant political struggles going on. In the last election here, the Conservatives did not field a candidate, following the mainstream parties’ convention of not standing against the Speaker. This left the way open for the Scottish Unionists to stand. They represent that traditional Orange wing, abandoned by the Conservatives, when the party broke their link with the Ulster Unionist Party in the 1970’s. David Cameron has recently reforged that alliance. Official British Conservative backing for a Protestant unionist party in ‘the Six Counties’ will have knock on effects in Glasgow, where sectarian divisions still exist.

However, the Orange Order in Scotland is still not prepared to throw its weight fully behind the Tories. GrandMaster, Ian Wilson, has said the Order will be backing the Labour Party, wherever they are best placed to defeat the SNP in elections. Labour remains Scotland’s premier Unionist party.

Both the previous New Labour/Lib-Dem and current SNP Scottish governments at Holyrood have promoted a bureaucratic and moralistic campaign against sectarianism in Scotland, based on the false notion that there is a ‘war between two tribes’, Protestant and Catholic or, sometimes more simply, between Rangers and Celtic. The real underlying issue is support for, or opposition to, the British occupation of part of Ireland. One of the aims of this official ‘anti-sectarian’ campaign is to cutback on the many Orange Order and the handful of Irish Republican marches held in Scotland’s Central Belt. This will become a focus of opposition for hard line loyalists. There is also the planned provocation in Glasgow, organised by the fascist Islamophobic English Defence League’s satellite organisation, the ‘Scottish Defence League’ (SDL), on November 14th.

The BNP are standing in the Glasgow North East by-election. They would love to have the sort of clout that loyalists in ‘the Six Counties’ demonstrated, when the PSNI meekly bowed before their intimidation of Roma families in Belfast. Furthermore, despite BNP denials, there is obviously an overlap between BNP and EDL/‘SDLBNP. Like the loyalists in ‘the Six Counties’, they have shown a growing admiration for the apartheid state of Israel and its brutal methods. So, it is only an inner hard core of Nazi ‘Sieg Heiling’, swastika worshippers that cling on to the old anti-semitism. The majority of Union Jack waving fascists find plenty to celebrate in the history of British unionism and imperialism.

Furthermore, there are other nasty links being forged. The mainstream, usually socially liberal, Church of Scotland is under growing attack by the reactionary Fellowship of Confessing Churches (FCC), with 45 parishes threatening to break away, unless the Church publicly condemns homosexuality. The FCC is backed by Sam Cole, DUP councillor and Orange Lodge chaplain, along with Maurice Bradley, former mayor of Coleraine, Danny Kennedy, Ulster Unionist depute leader, Sir David McNee, former Chief Constable of Strathclyde, and a hundred members of the ultra-conservative Presbyterian Church of America, which also opposes the ordination of women ministers.

Tragically, the Left today is divided in Scotland. In the last Glasgow North East election, the SSP easily defeated both the Scottish Unionists and the BNP, although Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party (SLP) was able to do better still and get 14% of the vote, in the confusion caused by the absence of an official Labour candidate, with Michael Martin standing solely as the Speaker. The SLP has left no organisation on the ground and is, in effect, now only one man’s vanity party.

The concern now is that, with a Left split between the SSP, Solidarity/Tommy Sheridan party and the SLP, the BNP’s vote could overtake the Socialist vote. Whilst Sheridan will cultivate the celebrity vote, he faces competition from John Smeaton, the ‘people’s hero’. Meanwhile, John Swinburne, the ex-MSP, from the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party, and Mikey Hughes, former Big Brother runner-up, campaigning for the disabled, are also standing. More worrying than any likely BNP vote in itself, would be the opportunity this could provide them to become the ‘shock troops’ of hard right unionism in Scotland, at a time when the issue of Scottish independence is coming to the fore.

When Nick Griffin visited Scotland on October 28th, he said he supported a referendum for Scottish independence. However, he made it quite clear that the BNP would strongly oppose those campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote. He is lining himself up with ultra unionists like the Tory, Michael Forsyth, and New Labour’s Wendy Alexander, who also want a referendum campaign to see off any threat of Scottish independence for the foreseeable future. You can rest assured, whatever differences they still have, that these ultra-unionists don’t intend to confine their opposition to polite democratic debate – and the BNP are signalling that their services can be called upon to defend the Union.

The SNP unprepared for the British state counter-attack – a socialist republican and ‘internationalism from below’ approach needed

The SNP remains a thoroughly constitutionalist party, and has indicated, by its recently declared support for the British monarchy, its complete willingness to play politics by Westminster rules. The problem is, that the British ruling class only play be these rules when it suits them. When their state is under threat, both Conservative and Labour governments have shown their preparedness to utilise the antidemocratic Crown Powers to thwart any challenges, as any Republican living in Ireland can testify. If necessary, they would not be averse to covertly encouraging British loyalists, as the British state’s continued financial support for their organisations in ‘the Six Counties’ demonstrates.

Furthermore, the SNP’s complete lack of appreciation of the continued imperial role of British troops in the world is highlighted by its continued support for the British Army’s Scottish regiments. SNP Westminster defence spokesperson, Angus Robertson, has announced that ‘English’ troops would be welcome to remain in Scotland after ‘independence’. It probably won’t be long before the SNP retreats further to accommodate US imperialism. They could settle for Scotland being removed from the NATO frontline to become a ‘supporting’ state within NATO’s Orwellian renamed second tier, ‘The Partnership for Peace’. NATO bases in Scotland would still remain available for imperial use.

Scotland, with its North Sea Oil, and its numerous British and NATO military bases, is far more central to ruling class interests, than ‘the Six Counties’. It is unlikely that the British state will just wait until the Scottish independence referendum bill comes to Holyrood. US and British security services are probably preparing a strategy, using both official and unofficial forces, to marginalise the threat of the break-up of the UK and the potential loss of NATO bases.

Although there is no deep-seated tradition of independent republican organisations in Scotland, there is nevertheless widespread popular support for a Scottish Republic. Furthermore, this is strongly linked to support for public services provided on the basis of need, and opposition to British and American imperial wars. A vote for the SNP has sometimes expressed this feeling in a sentimental way. As the SNP moves further to the Right such support is becoming as undeserved as a vote for Labour from those hoping to improve their lives.

It is the job of socialist republicans to organise such sentiments in an effective way, by linking everyday struggles, such as the ‘Save Our Schools’ campaign in Glasgow today, with the demand for a Scottish Republic tomorrow, when the SNP independence referendum comes up against British unionist intransigence. Only the SSP links its support for independence with opposition to all imperialist wars, whether or not they are sanctioned by the UN – a thoroughly undemocratic body, which is nothing other than a plaything of the imperial powers. In contrast, the SNP stance on the ongoing US/British war in Afghanistan has been profoundly ambiguous.

Since the British state and its Irish government allies coordinate their actions through the ‘Peace Process’ and Devolution-all-round; and both the British and Scottish TUCs and the Irish CTU promote ‘social partnerships’, which subordinate workers’ interests to those of the bosses; whilst the BNP and loyalists are trying to cement links ‘across the border’ and ‘across the water’, it becomes all the more imperative that Socialists in these islands organise ourselves on the basis of ‘internationalism from below’ to more effectively promote working class interests throughout these islands. We need to build on the success of last year’s Republican Socialist Convention.

Issue 18 of Emancipation & Liberation is out now.

Issue 18 Cover

If you would like to buy this issue or subscribe, contact us.

Comments are open, so until articles are online, feel free to discuss the articles below. When they are online you can discuss the article in it’s comment section.

• Editorial: Can the SNP deliver Independence?, RCN
• Lisbon Treaty passed in second referendum, JM Thorn
• August 1969, Patricia Campbell
• Migrant Workers are at the heart of our fightback, The Commune
• Highland migrant workers, Bill Scott
• History and Resistance: The rise of Latin America’s indigenous movements, Ewan Robertson
• Portugal’s Left Bloc consolidates its gains, Raphie de Santos
• Afghan women bear the brunt of the hypocritical war on terror, RAWA
• Iran after the elections – an interview with Yassamine Mather, Anne McShane
• Solidarity with Scottish PSC action, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
• It was the worst of times, it was the best of us!, Rod MacGregor
• Book review: A Celebration of the Life & Times of Robert Burns and What Burns means to me, Mary McGregor
• Book review: Out of Eden – the Peopling of the World, Richard Abernethy
• Savings in the Down-Turn, Jim Aitken
• An unrepentant revolutionist, Jim Slaven
• The Legacy of James Connolly – an interview with Jim Slaven, Allan Armstrong