![\"th\"](\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/th1.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nAllan Armstrong (RCN) analyses two recent developments in the Scottish referendum\u00a0campaign.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The SNP government\u2019s referendum on the future constitutional status of Scotland \u2013 \u2018Yes\u2019 for \u2018Independence-Lite\u2019 (or as Michael Russell terms it \u2018Independence within the Union\u2019), or \u2018No\u2019 for acceptance of the UK status quo \u2013 is still over a year away.<\/p>\n
However, two events have occurred recently, which have considerable bearing on the conduct of the referendum campaign. It has been revealed that behind the scenes, some organisers of the mainstream unionist Labour\/Conservative\/Lib-Dem \u2018Better Together\u2019 alliance have dubbed their campaign \u2018Project Fear\u2019. Furthermore, the Guardian<\/cite> has reported that the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been looking to ways of designating the Faslane Trident base sovereign UK territory, in the event of a \u2018Yes\u2019 vote. Faslane would become, in effect, Scotland\u2019s own Guantamamo Bay.<\/p>\n This article examines the significance of these two events for socialists. Right from the start, \u2018Yes\u2019 campaigners have, with much justification, styled \u2018Better Together\u2019 the \u2018No\u2019 campaign, because of its overwhelming negative approach. Hardly a day passes without us being told about some new disaster that will occur, if people in Scotland dare to vote \u2018Yes\u2019. Therefore, the revelation that the main drive behind the \u2018No\u2019 campaign is \u2018Project Fear\u2019 is not that surprising, although somewhat embarrassing for its organisers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Many \u2018Yes\u2019 supporters claim that the \u2018No\u2019 campaign\u2019s negativity can be overcome by offering an alternative positive campaign. It worked for Barack Obama in 2008, and for the SNP in the 2011 Holyrood campaign, so surely it will work for the official \u2018Yes\u2019 campaign in the lead up to the 2014 referendum. Indeed, the most politically na\u00efve wing of the \u2018Yes\u2019 campaign seem intent on repeating Ally Macleod\u2019s Scotland\u2019s 1978 World Cup tactics \u2013 just cheer on your own side loudly and long enough and victory is in the bag!<\/p>\n However, the failure of Labour\u2019s Holyrood campaign in 2011 alerted the British ruling class to the problems represented by the SNP\u2019s electoral victory. Labour had made the mistake of thinking it was refighting the 2010 Westminster General Election. Then, by conducting an anti-Tory campaign, Labour had been able to claw back some electoral support from the SNP, and restore its number of Scottish MPs to the same level as 2005, when it was last elected the UK government.<\/p>\n One year later, though, with the Tories representing no real threat in the Holyrood elections, Labour\u2019s profoundly negative campaign backfired spectacularly. After the unexpectedly large SNP victory, the British ruling class soon appreciated that its campaign of opposition to the SNP\u2019s \u2018Independence-Lite\u2019 would need to be conducted in greater depth, and not just rely on the Labour Party.<\/p>\n This is because the overwhelming majority of the British ruling class support the existing UK constitutional set-up. They see no benefit in the SNP\u2019s \u2018Independence-Lite\u2019 proposals, although these only amount to a further reform of the UK, not to its abolition in Scotland. They remain opposed, despite all the reassurances about the continued role of the monarchy (and hence the Crown Powers), the Bank of England, the British High Command and NATO, given by the SNP government. The British ruling class is currently digging in, closing down any alternative political options, the better to help them weather the storms ahead. Therefore, they are preparing their anti-independence counter-offensive on several levels. \u2018Project Fear\u2019 is only the most publicly visible component.<\/p>\n The mainstream unionists\u2019 first political aim, now secured, has been to ensure that the SNP conducts its referendum campaign under Westminster rules. This means the SNP and the official \u2018Yes\u2019 campaign are restricted to the use of those permitted constitutional mechanisms and campaigning methods devolved from or sanctioned by Westminster. The SNP, as an impeccably constitutional nationalist party, keen to win over key members of the Scottish establishment, was never going to challenge such restrictions anyhow.<\/p>\n The British ruling class, though, is not bound by such limitations on its actions. It can draw upon an extensive array of anti-democratic Crown Powers, beyond the effective control and scrutiny of Westminster should these prove necessary. The significance of the Guardian<\/cite> report on the activities of the MoD is that it briefly put a spotlight on some of these undeclared anti-democratic activities. Prime Minister, David Cameron was quick to say that the MoD was not speaking with the authority of the government.<\/p>\n However, senior military officers do not swear their allegiance to Westminster, but to the Crown. Like other key state and City of London personnel, they ensure that their hidden state, protected under the Crown Powers, is free to act, whenever they think this is necessary, despite any formal parliamentary restrictions.<\/p>\n Usually though, they can rely on the government \u2013 Conservative or Labour – to provide \u2018legal\u2019 cover for their operations. It took 38 years before the Bloody Sunday Enquiry admitted the government promoted lies to cover up the state-promoted killing of fourteen peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Derry on January 31st<\/sup>, 1972. Even then, nobody was brought to account for these actions.<\/p>\n We can be sure that, as well as the British High Command and the MoD, MI5 and the City of London also have their own contingency plans for dealing with the Scottish referendum challenge. Cameron\u2019s governmental disclaimer will not stop them; just make them more careful in covering their tracks.<\/p>\n There are a number of reasons, though, why the British ruling class prefers public political campaigning, rather than having to use the UK state\u2019s hidden powers. Their experience in Northern Ireland is a reminder of how destabilising dependence on the anti-democratic Crown Powers can be.<\/p>\n Therefore, as long as the British ruling class are only having to deal with the very mild constitutional \u2018Yes\u2019 campaign, and one public climb down after another by the SNP government, they feel they can rely mainly on the mainstream unionists\u2019 official \u2018No\u2019 campaign. This can draw support from Conservative, Labour and Lib-Dem MPs, as well as from Northern Irish Unionist MPs in Westminster, and MSPs, MAs and MLAs in Holyrood, Cardiff Bay or Stormont.<\/p>\n The official \u2018No\u2019 campaign also knows it can depend on large scale financial backing from big business, highlighted by the \u00a31.1M donation given by Ian Taylor, the Tory supporting Chief Executive of oil-trading Vitoil plc, and funder of Arkan, leader of the Serbian death squads.<\/p>\n Beyond this official support the \u2018No\u2019 campaign has unofficial backing from the Orange Order and other Loyalists in Northern Ireland and Scotland, as well as from the BNP and the SDL. However, this decidedly ugly face of British nationalism can hardly be seen as an asset for the official campaign, so any contacts are likely to be behind-the-scenes and involve the UK security services or individual Tory Right wingers.<\/p>\n Far more importantly for now, the British ruling class has the support of the US State Department, NATO leaders, and most of the EU bureaucracy. Opposition to the SNP government\u2019s proposals has drawn public support from such key political figures as Hillary Clinton (until recently, US Secretary of State), Baron George Robertson (former Labour Defence Minister and Secretary General of NATO) and Herman van Rumpoy (President of the EU\u2019s European Council). SNP government attempts to claim these people are unrepresentative, or only involved in preliminary sabre-rattling before meaningful negotiations take place, will not convince many, given these people\u2019s political records, and the powerful corporate and imperial interests they represent.<\/p>\n One of the key determinants of British ruling class concern about the SNP government\u2019s referendum challenge is that it is occurring during the midst of the severest economic crisis for 80 years. Back in the mid 1970\u2019s, a significant section of the British ruling class had initially been prepared to give its backing to Labour\u2019s mild Scottish (and Welsh) devolutionary proposals, in the face of rising national democratic challenges.<\/p>\n However, as the late 1970\u2019s economic crisis deepened, the majority of the British ruling class switched its support to the unionist Right, led by Thatcher, helped by Labour anti-devolution supporters. They opposed any liberal constitutional experiments with unforeseeable political consequences, at a time when the British ruling class increasingly saw the need to batten down the hatches of UK plc. Today\u2019s economic crisis is deeper and therefore the British ruling class is even more opposed to any constitutional experimentation, which they have not initiated themselves.<\/p>\n The main reason why the British ruling class has become increasingly confident that all it needs to do is conjure up any number of scary scenarios, to persuade people to vote \u2018No\u2019 next year, is largely due to their political recovery after the 2008 Crash. For this, they have all the mainstream British parties to thank \u2013 but especially Labour. Since there is no official opposition from these parties to the British ruling class\u2019s austerity drive, this places them in a politically powerful position. That is how they have been able to subsume \u2018Project Fear\u2019 within their wider austerity offensive.<\/p>\n When the current economic crisis broke out in 2008, it was obvious to virtually all that it had been triggered by the activities of the banksters. It was widely thought, and even feared by the bankers themselves, that \u2018heads would roll\u2019, and that their destructive, deregulated banking system would be brought under some form of more effective public control.<\/p>\n Some on the Left believed that the shamed and politically exposed, neo-liberal \u2018masters of the universe\u2019 would have to accept the sort of reforms that inspired the New Deal in the USA, or the post-war Labour social democratic welfare state in the UK, i.e. neo-Keynesianism. Into this mix, would come not only the regulatory measures needed to save capitalism from itself, but a whole raft of social democratic reforms to benefit the working class.<\/p>\n But mainstream social democracy, including New Labour today, no longer represents any attempt to bring about deeply rooted, cumulative economic and social reforms (or for Left social democrats, a transitional statist road to socialism). At best, it supports social liberalism, or \u2018neo-liberalism with a human face\u2019. However, the ruling class\u2019s current austerity drive demonstrates, that when faced with a deep-seated economic crisis, that \u2018human face\u2019 can only bare its teeth and spit out venom.<\/p>\n The ability of capitalism to concede major social democratic reforms depends on the absence of major economic crises and continued levels of profitability. In the past, it also depended on national states exercising extensive political and economic powers within their own boundaries. These were the conditions pertaining in the prolonged boom from 1945 to the early 1970\u2019s, following the massive destruction of accumulated capital in the Second World War.<\/p>\n Before the Second World War, by 1938, the New Deal reforms in the USA had already faltered in their ability to revive the economy. It was only the conditions created by the Second World War that allowed the New Deal to be more thoroughly incorporated into US society. But that was only until a major new economic crisis developed in the late 1970\u2019s.<\/p>\n Then, the neo-liberal Right, under Reagan, in alliance with Thatcher in the UK, built on the \u2018Chicago Boys\u2019 Pinochet post-coup Chile experiment, to launch its own systematic demolition of the welfare state. Furthermore, the neo-liberals\u2019 deregulation of state financial controls, and promotion of such transnational institutions as the IMF and WTO, undermined any\u00a0national government regulation of global corporate activities.\u00a0These new attempts to escape such regulation and scrutiny had already been preceded by\u00a0earlier offshore banking promoted by the City of London and Wall Street[1]<\/sup><\/a>See Blue Labour<\/a><\/span><\/span>![\"MoD](\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/th3.jpeg\")
![\"Ian](\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/th-12.jpeg\")
![\"th-2\"](\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/th-22.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/th-4.jpeg\")