On May 5th, the Lib-Dem-initiated referendum proposal to introduce AV<\/acronym> to Westminster elections was massively rejected in every nation and region of the UK<\/acronym>, including Northern Ireland. In the English Local Council, the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assembly and the Scottish Parliament elections, all held on the same day, former Lib-Dem voters used the opportunity either to punish Clegg and his allies for entering into a coalition with the Tories, or to vote for the real thing. This took precedence over any vote \u2018Yes\u2019 recommendations on AV<\/acronym> by the other parties. In the absence of meaningful resistance, voters turned to revenge instead.<\/p>\n In the English Local Council elections, Labour routed the Lib-Dems in the north, whilst the Tories routed them in the south. Elsewhere in the UK<\/acronym>, though, the impact of the National Question pushed the Lib-Dems\u2019 decline to being a secondary issue.<\/p>\n In the Welsh Assembly election, the Lib-Dems also lost out to both Labour and the Tories. However, the main loser was Plaid Cymru, recently in coalition with Labour. Plaid\u2019s recent efforts, throwing all of its weight behind the\u00a0Coalition\u2019s successful referendum campaign to devolve law-making powers to the Welsh Assembly, seemed to represent the culmination of its political ambitions. Yet, all the mainstream unionist parties supported this liberal unionist measure too. With Plaid less relevant, and the Tories very unpopular in working class South Wales, Welsh Labour advanced and has formed its own single-party government, thus making more posts available for its own careerists.<\/p>\n In the Northern Ireland, the Lib-Dems officially support the moderate unionist Alliance Party. However, the lack of any wider appreciation of this fact, along with Alliance\u2019s different name, meant that, despite its Lib-Dem type politics, it was able to make limited gains in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, as the old UUP continues to sheds its more moderate voters (remembering that \u2018moderate\u2019 is a relative term in Unionist politics in Northern Ireland!)<\/p>\n But this too was a side issue when the DUP<\/acronym> and Sinn Fein made small gains, despite their joint implementation of public sector cuts. They were able to take their first Stormont Coalition into a second term. Voters threw their weight behind competitive sectarian pleading for Westminster resources, in a Stormont that has a constitutionally recognised divide between Unionists and Nationalists. Voters rejected any return to possible armed conflict, or to a class based opposition to the Con-Dem cuts to the Northern Ireland budget.<\/p>\n On the Unionist side, the tentative move to the centre, marked by the growth of the Alliance Party, was matched by a move on the Right towards the rejectionist, Traditional Unionist Voice. However, the possibility of voting for either of these constitutional Unionist options was underpinned by the continued desire for stability. This was highlighted by the electoral demise of the Progressive Unionist Party, linked to the redundant (for the moment) Loyalist UVF<\/acronym> death squads.<\/p>\n However, the most sensational result on May 5th<\/sup> occurred in the Scottish Parliament election. Here the previous minority SNP<\/acronym> government was able to increase its number of MSPs<\/acronym> from 46 to 69, an absolute majority forecast by no one. Furthermore, the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s votes came at the expense, not only of the Lib-Dems, but of the Tories, Labour and the small Socialist vote too. Only the Greens managed to hold on to their vote and their 2 MSPs<\/acronym>. They made a calculated Left appeal, now that their moderate leader, Robin Harper, has retired. They hoped to woo former disillusioned Socialist voters. Labour only managed to increase its vote in two constituencies, Dumfries and Eastwood. Here they were the main challengers to the Tories, who by their own admission remain \u201ctoxic\u201d in Scotland. Very few people in Scotland held street parties to celebrate Will\u2019s and Kate\u2019s royal wedding on the 29th<\/sup> April – many are saving these for Thatcher\u2019s funeral!<\/p>\n In the English Local Elections, three Socialist councillors, now standing under the CWI<\/acronym>-initiated, Trade Union & Socialist Coalition (TUSC<\/acronym>) banner, lost their previous seats (including both SWP<\/acronym> councillors), despite these and a few other candidates still getting a credible vote. Elsewhere though, the TUSC<\/acronym> vote was small. It will be interesting to see whether TUSC<\/acronym> can survive as a wider Socialist unity project, or whether it will just follow that other CWI<\/acronym> initiative, the National Shop Stewards Network and become a complete CWI<\/acronym>-front.<\/p>\n In Wales, Socialists only stood on the List vote in the Assembly elections, under the banner of Scargill\u2019s SLP<\/acronym>, the Communist Party of Britain, or TUSC<\/acronym>. They made little headway. Indeed it is an indication of the decline of the Left, that it was the moribund SLP<\/acronym> that attracted most Socialist votes as a purely passive electoral gesture.<\/p>\n In Northern Ireland, those Socialists who contested the Stormont election, either under the banner of People Before Profit (SWP<\/acronym> front), the Socialist Party (CWI<\/acronym>), the Workers Party or Socialist Democracy (USFI<\/acronym>), sometimes competed against each other. They were marginal outside Derry\/Foyle, where the SWP<\/acronym>\u2019s well-known Eamonn McCann made a credible showing.\u00a0Republican socialists and traditional pro-armed struggle republicans did not stand in the Stormont elections, but confined their activities to the Local Council elections held in Northern Ireland on the same day (unlike Wales or Scotland). A couple of breakaway former Sinn Fein councillors held their seats, whilst Patricia Campbell of the Independent Workers Union and the republican socialist, eirigi and the IRSP all made a credible showing, despite some mutual competition between these last two in West Belfast. The traditionalist republican, pro-armed struggle, 32 Counties Sovereignty Movement also made headway in Derry, a reflection of the lack of any meaningful \u2018peace dividend\u2019 in the most deprived Nationalist communities.<\/p>\n In Scotland, Socialists, who as recently as 2007, held 6 seats at Holyrood, were fatally crippled in the aftermath of the Sheridan affair. As in Wales, they only stood for the List seats and were split between Scargill\u2019s SLP<\/acronym>, the SSP<\/acronym> and Solidarity. And, as in Wales, Scargill\u2019s phantom SLP<\/acronym> gained the most Socialist votes in the Left\u2019s equivalent of \u2018bald men fighting over a comb\u2019. In the absence of Solidarity\u2019s leader, the Left nationalist, Tommy Sheridan, they also decided to back another celebrity socialist, the left Unionist, George Galloway. He had parachuted into Glasgow as the George Galloway\/Respect candidate after being rejected by electors in East London last year. Glasgow voters recognised an opportunist carpetbagger when they saw one, so knowing he was going to lose, he just picked up his bags and left before the count. The SSP<\/acronym> vote continued to fall from its poor 2007 result, whilst Solidarity\u2019s declining vote went into tailspin. This raises the question in both organisations about the prospects of future meaningful Socialist unity.<\/p>\n So, what does the SNP<\/acronym> victory in the Holyrood elections represent? Ever since the banking crash, which saw the SNP<\/acronym> and its charismatic leader, Alex Salmond, too closely associated with the failed Royal Bank of Scotland, the party had been unable to win any Westminster or many council by-elections. During the 2010 Westminster general election, the Labour Party, amazingly and also unpredictably, increased its vote in Scotland, retaking a seat previously lost to the SNP<\/acronym> in a pre-crash by-election. Labour\u2019s electoral appeal was almost entirely based upon playing up to the fear of the Tories.<\/p>\n As recently as the beginning of the year, polls were anticipating the return of a Labour-led government to Holyrood, in the face of the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s betrayal, after the economic crisis, of its 2007 electoral promises. Labour thought that they could just repeat their \u2018No back to the 1980s\u2019, anti-Tory appeal in the run-up to the May 5th<\/sup>. However, that card had been played out in 2010. Despite voting Labour, Scotland now faced the hated Tories once more, supported by the increasingly despised Lib-Dems. Yet Miliband\u2019s Labour Party, consigned to \u2018opposition\u2019, was making absolutely no difference.<\/p>\n Salmond was able to repeat Gordon Brown\u2019s 2010 pre-election trick, and postpone major Holyrood cuts until after the election. Although he lowered the electorate\u2019s sights, abandoning many earlier SNP<\/acronym> promises, those still remaining aimed higher than any made by Labour. The relentlessly negative Scottish Labour leader, Ian Gray, believed that Scottish voters would automatically return to their \u2018natural\u2019 fold, and that the Holyrood gravy train would once more be at Labour\u2019s disposal. He slept-walked towards May 5th<\/sup>. When Labour\u2019s poll support started to ebb away, his response was once more to raise the separatist bogey (it had failed in 2007 with its effect neutralised by the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s promised referendum on independence), and then, in panic, he adopted virtually every other SNP<\/acronym> policy.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Salmond had been assiduously building-up the backing of Scottish businessmen, including Brian Souter, the homophobic owner of Stagecoach, Sir Thomas Farmer, the Con-Dem cuts-approving owner of KwikFit, and Sir David Murray, the Unionist owner of Murray International Metals and recently of Rangers FC. Donald Trump, the controversial American tycoon, given the go-ahead to build a luxury golf-course and gated housing project in Aberdeenshire, also enjoys the support of the SNP<\/acronym> government. Both Murdoch\u2019s Sun<\/cite> and Tommy Sheridan (http:\/\/tommysheridan.wordpress.com\/ April 22<\/a>nd<\/a><\/sup>) backed the Scottish populist nationalist, SNP<\/acronym>. The SNP<\/acronym> obviously gained far more by way of support from the former, given the evidence of the latter\u2019s failure to persuade many Glasgow voters to back his other recommended choice – the Left British unionist, George Galloway.<\/p>\n Underlying the large electoral drift to the SNP<\/acronym> is the current lack of working class self-confidence. This reflects the lack of fightback against the Con-Dems\u2019 austerity drive, following on workers\u2019 earlier disillusioned acceptance of Brown\u2019s and Darling\u2019s proposed Westminster imposed cuts. The STUC is every bit as wedded to social partnership deals with the employers and the state as the TUC.\u00a0The effect of these has been to turn trade unions into a free personnel management service for the bosses. Added to this is the sorry demise of the Left in Scotland in the aftermath of the Sheridan fiasco. The attraction of Socialist unity in the face of massive cutbacks was demonstrated earlier this year in the Irish elections when the United Left Alliance was able to pick up 5 Dail seats.<\/p>\n However, much of the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s electoral support is superficial – a clutching at straws. As long as workers remain acquiescent, the SNP<\/acronym> government will openly pursue its real aim – making Scotland a haven for Scottish businesses and global corporations. Earlier this year, to show where the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s loyalties lie, John Swinney, Finance Minister, allowed the lapse of Holyrood\u2019s income tax raising powers, voted for in the 1997 Devolution Referendum. The SNP<\/acronym> have extended their council tax freeze for another five years to force Local Councils into privatising services. The Lib-Dem\/SNP<\/acronym> coalition running Edinburgh Council has brought in consultants to prepare for such measures. This follows their attack on cleansing workers\u2019 pay, preparatory to possible privatisation. The SNP<\/acronym> government has even attacked the Con-Dem\u2019s recent proposed levy on North Sea Oil. It\u2019s not to be \u2018Scotland\u2019s Oil\u2019, but will remain the petroleum corporations\u2019 oil!<\/p>\n The SNP<\/acronym> has entered negotiations with Cameron over Westminster\u2019s proposed Scotland Bill. This is based on the miserable additional devolutionary powers recommended by the Calman Commission to dish the SNP<\/acronym>, in advance of any possible Independence Referendum. The SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s over-riding concern is to get the political power to cut corporation tax. Up until 2008, the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s very mild reforms were dependent on building up Scotland\u2019s \u2018buoyant\u2019 finance sector – a trickle-down \u2018social democracy\u2019 courtesy of the Royal Bank of Scotland! Now, any such reforms are meant to be financed by a very limited tax on corporate profits – if their boards agree to play ball!<\/p>\n The media has made much of a possible constitutional crisis due to the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s commitment to holding a referendum on Scottish independence in the last years of its office. The novelty of a Nationalist victory in one of the UK<\/acronym>\u2019s devolved assemblies should not prevent people looking to other comparable examples in Spain and Quebec. Here Catalan Convergence and Union (CiU), the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and Parti Quebecois (PQ) have also formed majority administrations in devolved assemblies. Both the CiU and PNV have settled for greater measures of devolution within the Spanish state, whilst the PQ initiated referendum on Quebec independence was narrowly defeated and has not been attempted again.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, \u2018over the water\u2019, the former revolutionary nationalist Sinn Fein has settled very quickly into helping to run the UK<\/acronym>\u2019s devolved administration in Northern Ireland. All the indications are that the very constitutional nationalist SNP<\/acronym> is quite willing to settle for \u2018Devolution-Max\u2019. Salmond doesn\u2019t have the excuse that he had in his last government of being in a minority, and hence being unable to put forward the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s promised Independence Referendum Bill. In reality, however, significant forces in the SNP<\/acronym>, including rightist Education Minister, Michael Russell, and former leftist, Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, never wanted a referendum, and nor do many of the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s current business backers.<\/p>\n Salmond is publicly ditching more and more attributes of meaningful political independence. The SNP<\/acronym> recognise the continued role of the monarchy (which fronts the British ruling class\u2019s draconian anti-democratic Crown Powers), the City (which sets financial policy), and the UK<\/acronym>\u2019s armed forces (which would be able to use Scottish military facilities). The SNP<\/acronym> supports UN-backed (i.e. US<\/acronym>-dominated Security Council approved) imperial wars, and has campaigned vigorously to maintain Scottish regiments, and British and NATO<\/acronym> bases in Scotland.\u00a0There may still be some commitment to abolishing the unpopular Trident bases and hence for Scotland to step down into NATO<\/acronym>\u2019s second tier, non-nuclear \u2018Partnership for Peace\u2019. However, there are also signs that the SNP<\/acronym> would be prepared just to lease out military facilities here, creating, in effect,\u00a0\u2018Guantanamac\u2019 bases.<\/p>\n \u2018Independence-Lite\u2019 represents the height of SNP<\/acronym> leadership ambitions, although a considerable section would settle for ‘Devolution-Max’.\u00a0Most of the existing institutions of the British unionist and imperial state would remain in place but be given a lick of tartan paint in Scotland. The SNP<\/acronym> is no more able to deliver meaningful political independence, than Labour was able to deliver political devolution in 1979. A considerable majority of the British ruling class was against Scottish devolution then, but the overwhelming majority of the British ruling class is against Scottish independence now.<\/p>\n The British ruling class is currently prepared to go no further than a few more limited devolutionary concessions, based on Blair\u2019s 1997 \u2018Devolution-all-round\u2019 and Peace (in reality, pacification) Process settlement. This settlement is designed both to buttress wider British imperial control over these islands (emphasised by the recent royal visit to Ireland) and to create the best political conditions for corporate profitability.<\/p>\n Furthermore, despite the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s overtures to Americans of Scottish descent (many of whom are on the US<\/acronym> Right), it is the UK<\/acronym> government, which enjoys official US<\/acronym> state backing. Indeed the UK<\/acronym> is such a reliable junior partner (with military forces that can be deployed more widely than Israel\u2019s) that successive US<\/acronym> governments have granted the UK<\/acronym> state the imperial franchise in the North East Atlantic. The UK<\/acronym> also acts as a useful spoiler to contain any independent French-German Euro-imperial ambitions. The US<\/acronym> is unlikely to switch its backing to the SNP<\/acronym>. Furthermore, EU leaders will not step on UK<\/acronym> governments\u2019 toes over this issue.<\/p>\n Realising the SNP<\/acronym> is isolated in the UK<\/acronym> and wider international arena, Salmond is likely to offer a second \u2018Devolution-Max\u2019 option in the SNP<\/acronym> Government\u2019s proposed Independence Referendum. This would satisfy his most ardent business supporters, as well as important sectors of his own party. Those rank and file Scottish independence supporting SNP<\/acronym> members could be left to get on with campaigning for a \u2018Yes\u2019 vote for what is, in effect, \u2018Independence-Lite\u2019 under the Crown, the City, the British armed forces and NATO<\/acronym>.<\/p>\n However, the SNP<\/acronym> leadership would itself be riding two horses, with different members providing their personal support for whichever option they really backed (in a similar manner to Labour in the 1979 Devolution referendum). SNP<\/acronym> \u2018Devolution-Max\u2019 supporters might hope to get influential backing from those amongst Labour (e.g. Henry MacLeish), the Lib-Dems (e.g. Charles Kennedy) and even the Conservatives (e.g. Murdo Fraser), who are committed to further liberal unionist measures. The SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s worried rank and file independence supporters would be fobbed off with the promise that \u2018Devolution-Max\u2019 was but another stage on the road to independence – an argument that could have some purchase, given that some SNP<\/acronym> supporters also see \u2018Independence-Lite\u2019 as but a stage towards ultimate Scottish political sovereignty.<\/p>\n Those actually campaigning for a \u2018Yes\u2019 vote for Scottish \u2018independence\u2019 (i.e. \u2018Independence-Lite\u2019) will soon be subjected to all the dirty tricks available to the British ruling class and its political representatives under the UK<\/acronym> Crown Powers, since they are currently implacably opposed to such a course of action. The membership of the impeccably constitutionalist SNP<\/acronym> is no more prepared for these, than it was in 1979, when the British ruling class was at least split, not united as it is today, over how best to maintain the Union. Meanwhile, the SNP<\/acronym> government will be forced to impose the cuts demanded by Westminster and its business backers. This will highlight just whose class interests the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s advocacy of \u2018independence\u2019 are meant to serve.<\/p>\n Salmond has just had his own 2011 equivalent of New Labour\u2019s \u2018things can only get better\u2019 1997 election. This is likely to lead to a similar let down in the future. Socialists today appear to be in as much of a mess as they were after Thatcher defeated the miners and Liverpool Council in the mid-80\u2019s. By 1987, the triumphant Tories had decided to introduce the poll tax and face down the growing \u2018National Question\u2019 in the UK<\/acronym>. However, Thatcher was defeated by mass independent class action and continued Irish republican opposition. Independent class action and a socialist republican strategy based on the promotion of \u2018internationalism from below\u2019 is the precondition for our advance today.<\/p>\n Allan Armstrong. 7th June 2011<\/p>\n The long-term decline of the Labour Party in Scotland has enabled the SNP<\/acronym> to pose in social democratic colours, particularly in the Central Belt. The SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s social democratic commitments are not that great, and like New Labour compete inside the party with another distinctly neo-liberal economic agenda. However, the SNP<\/acronym> has skilfully positioned itself, so that it appears to promise more reforms than New Labour – not a very difficult task! However, as with New Labour, any social democratic reforms are only made as election promises when they are compatible with the interests of the major financial institutions, well represented in Edinburgh, and of other global corporations and Scottish businesses engaged in constant lobbying at Holyrood or Bute House.<\/p>\n The last SNP<\/acronym> government (2007-11) soon abandoned its election promises of improved teacher\/student ratios in schools, the cancellation of student debt, and the abolition of the regressive council tax, in order to prioritise meeting the costs of the bankers\u2019 bailout. This highlights the limitations of the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s social democratic reforms. The SNP<\/acronym> pushes much more consistently for reduced corporate taxation and other pro-business measures, highlighted by its courting of prominent Scottish businessmen, e.g. Brian Souter, Sir George Matthewson and Sir Tom Farmer, as well as international tycoons, e.g. Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the essence of any social democratic reforms today, whether under Labour or SNP<\/acronym>, is that they only represent \u2018sweeties\u2019, selected and handed down by those liberal capitalist parties representing the ruling and middle classes, in order to win votes from what they hope will remain an otherwise passive working class. The conservative capitalist parties (the Conservative and UKIP<\/acronym>) oppose state financed, social democratic reforms, and only accept their continued existence as a price to be paid to prevent greater social upheaval. Since the post-1975 ruling class offensive, any new reforms have rarely come about as a result of independent working class campaigning or action. This is why they have proved to be so ephemeral under the current conditions of capitalist crisis.<\/p>\n The notion of what constitutes social democracy has been successively diluted since the late nineteenth century. Then it meant the politics of those who organised the working class to fight for an alternative socialist society. Later it meant the politics of those who represented the economic and social interests of the working class within capitalism and who sought a welfare state\u00a0– termed Labourism in the UK<\/acronym>. Nowadays it means the politics of those who argue for a vague commitment to some state regulation and social reforms, something that also appeal to sections of the middle class, especially those employed in the management of the public sector. However, today’s social democrats everywhere subordinate their proposed social democratic reforms to first meeting the \u2018needs of the market\u2019, i.e. global corporate capital.<\/p>\n The SNP<\/acronym> has become, in effect, a \u2018tartan\u2019 social democrat party, in the current political sense of the term. This chimes in very well with the dominant cultural values found in Scotland. However, when workers take their own independent action you can see the real class face of the SNP<\/acronym>. The SNP<\/acronym> control West Dunbartonshire Council and have imposed cuts here upon some of the most deprived working class communities. They suspended Scottish Socialist Party (SSP<\/acronym>) councillor, Jim Bollan for six months following his consistent backing for workers and service users resisting these cuts. In the City of Edinburgh Council, the SNP<\/acronym> are in coalition with the Lib-Dems. Here they have spent more money on hiring private refuse collectors to break the industrial action of the council\u2019s in-house refuse workers resisting a major pay cut, than it would have cost to settle the dispute. This is because the council is preparing for privatisation of services, as a way of making public sector cuts, and of winning business support.<\/p>\n The SNP<\/acronym> remains, in effect, a federally organised party, advocating different policies in different regions to appeal to different classes and sections of the Scottish population. It has a somewhat different face in the Western Isles, the north-east and the Central Belt. However, for a long time, a dominant Labour Party was able to limit the SNP<\/acronym>\u2019s growth in the major cities and the Central Belt, with its characterisation of the SNP<\/acronym> as \u2018Tartan Tories\u2019. This was never an entirely accurate label, although the SNP<\/acronym> undoubtedly has a right populist wing, where most remaining \u2018fundamentalists\u2019 are still to be found.<\/p>\n However, under Jim Sillars and later, Alex Salmond (significantly both from the former Leftist 79 Group), the SNP<\/acronym> has made huge efforts to win over the Labour Party\u2019s working class electoral base. They have been mightily helped in this by New Labour\u2019s drift to the Right, and by the current demise, after the Sheridan debacle, of the once promising Socialist alternative, which developed in Scotland in the aftermath of the successful anti-poll tax struggle.<\/p>\n The SNP<\/acronym> has learned more from the Labour Party, though, than the necessity to advocate social democratic reforms to win working class support. Because the Labour Party developed within, and increasingly adapted to the existing UK<\/acronym> state and British Empire, with its constitutional monarchy and its established church, it departed from the earlier Radical, and never adopted the continental Social Democrat tradition, which then championed a republican and secular society, as the best means to integrate people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds.<\/p>\n In the nineteenth century, as those rising middle class members, who owned industries and other businesses, joined and broadened the traditional British ruling class, their Liberal principles became increasingly compromised. This was because they began to fear more Radical challenges from the \u2018lower orders\u2019. They sought their own rapprochement with the existing British unionist and constitutional monarchist order with its established church.\u00a0This became especially clear in their attempts to deal with those challenges they faced in Ireland.<\/p>\n The majority of the British ruling class decided that, rather than push for a secular Ireland, which might bring together \u2018lower order\u2019 Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters\u00a0– the old republican ideal – they would look for influential allies who would help them maintain their overall control. The widening of the franchise, first to the middle class, then later to tenant farmers and workers, meant that they could no longer rely on the old \u2018Anglo-Irish\u2019 Protestant Ascendancy alone. They found a powerful ally in the Catholic hierarchy.<\/p>\n However, winning the hierarchy\u2019s support also meant granting it significant concessions. These included the recognition of the papacy\u2019s right to appoint bishops in the UK<\/acronym>, and giving the hierarchy control over educational and elementary social provision (hospitals, children\u2019s homes, etc). This was consistent with earlier Liberal capitulation to Protestant denominations over the provision of education and social provision in Ireland (particularly the North), England, Scotland and Wales.<\/p>\n In Ireland, both Daniel O\u2019Connell and later, Charles Parnell went along with the Catholic hierarchy\u2019s demands for a greater political say, in return for support for more political recognition of Ireland within the Union. The hierarchy also ensured that its full weight was thrown behind the suppression of the Radical alternatives represented by Young Ireland, the Fenian Brotherhood and the more Radical wing of the Irish Land League, and that loyalty to the Queen, UK<\/acronym> and British Empire was upheld.<\/p>\n This ruling class attempt to broaden the base of \u2018Britishness\u2019 by making political concessions to the religious and ethnic leaders in particular communities has become the hallmark of a top-down state managerial approach to win the loyalty of people from different religious and ethnic groups in the UK<\/acronym>.\u00a0Today, this is officially promoted as \u2018multiculturalism\u2019, at the same time as the UK<\/acronym> constitution and state retains a hierarchy of religious and ethnic privileges. This is highlighted by the continued existence of an established church (the Church of England, with semi-established status for the Church of Scotland too) and the state promotion of \u2018British values\u2019 (first developed in and heavily influenced by the context of systematic clearances, enclosures, various types of forced labour, brutal punishments and the worldwide imperial looting of the planet). State promoted multiculturalism is not based on the idea of universal equality of the members of those ethnic and religious groups living in the UK<\/acronym>, but by the recognition of a hierarchy of privileges meted out to \u2018their\u2019 state-approved representatives[1]<\/sup><\/a>However, just as social democratic economic and social measures are being scrapped to meet the needs of crisis-ridden capital, so too, have Cameron\u2019s Conservatives decided to undermine \u2018multicultural\u2019 state backing for selected ethno-religious leaders (particularly Muslim), the better to promote old-style racist divide and rule policies amongst the working class.<\/span><\/span>How socialists fared throughout the UK<\/acronym><\/h3>\n
The meaning of the SNP<\/acronym> electoral victory<\/h3>\n
SNP<\/acronym> success in inverse proportion to working class confidence and Socialist success<\/h3>\n
Constitutional crisis or a SNP<\/acronym> negotiated \u2018Devolution-Max\u2019 cop out?<\/h3>\n
The British ruling class opposes Scottish independence and backs \u2018Devolution-all-round\u2019<\/h3>\n
Part Two – the\u00a0SNP<\/acronym> follows Labour<\/h2>\n
Social democracy SNP<\/acronym>-style and the lessons it has learned from Labour<\/h3>\n
The SNP<\/acronym> and the Labour unionist precedent in abandoning a consistent secular approach to society<\/h3>\n