Standard Life threat shows where power really lies

Standard Life's statement that in the event of a “Yes" vote in the Scottish referendum they would leave Edinburgh, forcing 5,000 employees to choose unemployment or emigration, shows up the narrowness of the independence debate so far.

The insurance company said it would have no choice because Westminster has ruled out a currency union with an independent Scotland which would be denied the possibility of retaining the pound.

The Edinburgh-headquartered company’s statement serves as a reminder of where power really lies, and the reality that political power, whether located at Westminster or Holyrood, means nothing without economic and financial authority.

Just as Standard Life was putting the boot, the Royal Bank of Scotland posted massive losses for the sixth year running. The essentially bankrupt bank announced that it has decided to pull out of some of their riskier activities and focus on "bread and butter banking".

Is that the right or wrong thing to do? One thing is for sure, we were not asked though we as taxpayers nominally own the bank. RBS CEO Ross McEwan declines to say if the bank will leave Edinburgh if there's a vote for independence in September’s referendum.

But no way can a few million Scottish taxpayers bail out that behemoth when the next crisis strikes. They would just have to crash, taking thousands of jobs and millions in savings with them. The same goes for the Bank of Scotland.

The problem is there is no real transfer of power on offer as a result of the referendum. Alex Salmond's business-loving, oil-addicted party do not present a materially different future as a result of independence. So the SNP has a very narrow platform. In effect all they can offer is "Scotland ruled by Scots" and "no more Tory governments".

Given that the SNP and One Nation Labour are equally willing to kow-tow to ruthless corporations (remember the shocking betrayal at Grangemouth last year), that's pretty uninspiring.

The SNP had no answer to the question, what will happen if Scotland is excluded from a shared currency? They simply called Osborne-Alexander-Balls "bullies" and said they would never carry through the threat.

They didn't point out the obvious, that this shows that the three main parties are entirely in agreement on economic and financial issues, with absolutely no difference between them. That's because the SNP share the same ideology!

It couldn't have been clearer this week, when the ConDem Cabinet met in Aberdeen and the SNP Cabinet met just down the road at Portlethen. They may have been separated by a few miles, but they simultaneously presented the same fawning, acquiescent policies to the giant oil corporations.

This independence referendum is certainly putting questions of democracy and the realities of state and economic power into sharp relief. It is a disruption of the status quo that is causing huge distress, particularly for Labour.

If the SNP cannot give any powerful reason why people should vote for independence, nor can Labour give any meaningful reason why they should not. A strange scene yesterday at Westminster underlines this.

SNP MP Pete Wishart went into the voting lobby to see which Scottish MPs had turned up to vote in a motion on the bedroom tax. Scottish Labour MPs failed to even turn up last time, to their eternal shame.

East Renfrewshire MP Jim Murphy rushed up to Wishart screaming "fuck off, fuck off, fuck off....." over and over again. It was a bizarre scene by all accounts, but I would argue this unbearable tension felt by Scottish Labour is about more than loss of seats and personal incomes.

As Labour cannot advance either a socialist case, a working class solidarity case for the continued union of Scotland and England or principled support for self-determination, then what have they become? Demonstrably, undeniably, another party of big business, a process that began with the Blair governments. Neverthless, Labour’s crisis over Scotland is an  historic moment for the party of Keir Hardie.

Penny Cole

Plan A or Plan B spell misery for Scots

Currency unions between sovereign states are a dangerous business for ordinary people as Greeks under the hammer of Troika-imposed austerity will confirm. Or Italians, whose grand coalition of all the parties is systematically destroying living standards and pensions in the name of the euro. Or Spanish people living in poverty as unemployment climbs above 26%.

So when Bank of England governor Mark Carney, addressing business people in Edinburgh yesterday, stressed the dangers of a currency union that doesn't impose shared fiscal policies on all its members he was only stating the obvious. But at least he was bluntly honest.

 "The euro area is now beginning to rectify its institutional shortcomings, but further, very significant steps must be taken to expand the sharing of risks and pooling of fiscal resources. In short, a durable, successful currency union requires some ceding of national sovereignty," he said before delivering his real message.

Carney then confirmed that if this year's referendum vote goes in favour of independence, the   Treasury in London will want a major say in Scotland's tax and spend plans before it agrees to any sterling currency union.

As a Treasury spokesman explained: "Governor Carney today highlights the principled difficulties of entering a currency union: losing national sovereignty, practical risks of financial instability and having to provide fiscal support to bail out another country. This is why the UK government have consistently said that, in the event of independence, a currency union is highly unlikely to be agreed. The Scottish government needs a Plan B."

Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond’s response is that he does indeed have a plan B. It is to simply go on using the pound without any currency union agreement – a kind of self-supporting Scottish pound. So we are talking about a globally tradable currency, with no reserves behind it, in a country where the banks are amongst the ropiest on earth - what a recipe for disaster!

The 2008 bailout of RBS cost the taxpayers £45.2 billion. Scotland's annual output is just £216bn. At present, RBS has loans and investments of £1.3 trillion, equivalent to more than six times that. It also has £36bn of toxic loans in its “bad bank account” and faces fines for wrongdoing that could be as much as £1 trillion. And we haven't even mentioned the Bank of Scotland, which posted an £8bn loss last year. What price would Scotland's population have to pay to bail that lot out?

The economic choices for ordinary Scots are not looking good, either way. Inside the union it's austerity for generations and misery for the poorest. In an independent capitalist Scotland the choice is either a currency union where key decisions on spending are still imposed by the   Treasury or a level of fiscal uncertainty as a new currency tries to find its feet in a market that is descending into turmoil. Just look at what happened to the Turkish, South African and other currencies this week.

But there is another way to resolve the currency question and the political and economic issues too. We need to move away from a nationalist agenda for a capitalist Scotland to one where we have a say on what kind democracy, what kind of constitution, what kind of economy, what kind of currency ordinary people want.

With that as the focus of a campaign for a “Yes” vote, we could turn the referendum away from narrow nationalism into a debate about what real self-determination means. The message should go out loud and clear: we don’t want the rule of the banks and corporations wherever we live or a political system that leaves the elites firmly in control.

And that would undoubtedly inspire people in England, Wales and the north of Ireland to find their own route to challenging and defeating the power of the common enemy.

Penny Cole

Let's write our own constitution for Scotland

In a doorstop of a White Paper published this week, Scotland's SNP government promises an opportunity for people to be involved in drafting a new constitution for Scotland. We should seize this rare chance to identify where power actually lies and map out what real self-determination would look like.  

The SNP government has to propose a new constitution, because how could you have a new country without one? The other main political parties must oppose the whole idea – because they believe the British constitution and the union of England, Wales and Scotland is the last word on democracy. Were it so!

Scotland's Future promises "an open, participative and inclusive constitutional convention" to "ensure that it reflects the fundamental constitutional truth - that the people, rather than politicians or state institutions are the sovereign authority in Scotland". The convention will have a direct role in shaping the constitution following the approach of the US constitutional convention of 1787, the SNP government claims.

But the truth is that the draft people will be consulted on is certain to consist of a robust defence of the status quo, where profit-driven growth invariably trumps the needs of people and the environment. It will enshrine capitalist property “rights”, support company law and leave land in private hands. Political power will remain firmly out of reach for the majority.

And it won't be the people living on estates and battling poverty that are consulted, but the bodies that make up Scotland's close-knit elite. So in order to discuss the kind of revolutionary constitution that shook the world in 1787, we will need to draft it ourselves. We should establish People's Assemblies across Scotland to ensure that the people, not the corporations and not the professional politicians of any stripe, decide matters.

Most of the White Paper is a referendum day shopping list of childcare, inflation-proofed pensions and wages, and an end to the hated bedroom tax and universal credit. All this is promised in the midst of a global economic crisis and Scotland would have no immunity to a renewal of the banking crash. In fact, with RBS in line to be the trigger of the next financial crisis, Scotland would be hit hard.

Further, fiscal independence is a myth whatever the currency. With the SNP government determined to remain in the pound, its room for manoeuvre will be minimal, to say the least. In any case, the Bank of England, which decides money supply, interest rates and so on, does so in the interests of the bankers and the corporations. If an independent Scotland is compelled to join the euro as the price of European Union membership, it wil be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire.

The White Paper points to the eurozone as an example of a single currency operating well in many independent states. Where has the SNP been for the last five years? What price Greek, Spanish or Irish independence when it came to defending people from horrifying austerity, mass unemployment and poverty imposed by Europe in the name of defending the euro?

‪In 670 pages and 170,000 words the SNP outlines a social democratic paradise to emerge fully formed from a “Yes” vote. First minister Alex Salmond says it is "a mission statement and a prospectus for the kind of country we should be". But we all know what happens to company mission statements and prospectus's when the market crashes and the economy slumps!

Opening up a discussion about what a new constitution should contain is very important. But to use all this flannel (from the Celtic "wlana" wool - as in pulled over eyes) as our starting point would be accepting a nationalist and mostly illusory explanation of the future.

   

The referendum creates an opportunity to adopt a fundamentally different approach to independence, self-government and self-determination and we should take it up now, not allow ourselves to be hoodwinked by the SNP's false dawn.

We have launched a discussion about an alternative view of self-determination for Scotland on A World to Win’s network. Let us know what you think. 

Penny Cole

Grangemouth workers hung out to dry by Unite and SNP

The fate of jobs at the Grangemouth petrochemical plant now lies solely in the hands of a ruthless corporation that buys firms and then drives them back into profit at the expense of their workers’ wages and benefits.

The 1,800 Grangemouth workers have found that neither the Unite union leaders, who they pay for, nor Labour or SNP representatives they voted for, would stand with them, if they decided to mobilise a real fight against Ineos. In an amazing display of solidarity and determination, the majority of the Unite members had  voted to strike and reject the company’s blackmail.

But within hours of their vote on Wednesday, the message from all sides was that there was no alternative to accepting destruction of living standards and the pensions of any future workers. A media outcry held the workers responsible for the fate of the 10,000 related jobs in the local area.

So yesterday, their union leaders simply caved in. Unite general secretary Len McCluskey left earlier negotiations up to local officials but hurried up from London to capitulate in person. Within hours he had unreservedly accepted the company’s terms, “warts and all”. Shocking but true.

McCluskey has breathed fire and brimstone since the ConDems coalition took power, threatening strikes, civil disobedience, even a general strike against austerity, the public sector wage freeze and pension curbs. When it came to the crunch, he had no fight. Hot air and nothing more.

Later today it will be discovered whether this treachery is enough to keep the plant open or if in reality the company never had any intention of staying their hand. The closure of the petrochemical plant at Grangemouth would reduce global capacity and drive up prices to the benefit of Ineos plants elsewhere.

And that's the big lesson. When it comes down to it, the corporations make decisions on the basis of their own business plans, on the grounds of costs, shareholder value and profits. And so who holds the power?

The Scottish SNP government lined up with the Westminster government to demand that the Grangemouth workers accept the inevitable. First minister Alex Salmond was in talks begging Ineos not to close the plant. Finance minister John Swinney, the great champion of an oil-based independent economy, stood shoulder to shoulder with ConDem Scottish secretary Alistair Carmichael.

SNP claims that a capitalist Scotland would be in some way better for Scottish workers have been exploded. Ineos, like all Scotland's key industries from oil to whisky, is not "Scottish". They are run by freebooting global capitalist transnationals with no care for local conditions, except where they impact on profits.

The adjacent oil refinery, whose waste product is processed at the threatened plant, is owned by Petroineos, a refining and trading joint venture between Ineos and the Chinese government-owned PetroChina. Its other refinery is at Lavera, near Marseilles.

As the recession continues and fracking throws more cheap US coal and gas on to the world market, who knows what will happen to the offshore oil refining business. There is no such thing as security for workers, whatever the status of their country's governance.

The Unite members were ready to fight and their union could have organised an occupation to prevent the dismemberment of the plant, but they did not and will not. Independence will not change that.

Those who limit their vision for the future to achieving a "Yes" vote in the 2014 referendum have missed the point. Independence and self-determination should not be reduced to whether a Scottish elite should be in charge of a capitalist Scotland.

It has to be about acquiring a revolutionary independence, forging a new solidarity across the UK and Ireland, based on the struggle for a democratic state, for the socialisation of Scotland’s resources, for a new commons. That would provide a platform for a sustainable energy strategy that protects both jobs and the environment.

Penny Cole

Osborne defends sovereignty of banks not UK citizens

The Treasury is trying to frighten Scots out of voting “Yes” in the 2014 referendum on independence over the question of what a currency union based on the pound would mean. But George Osborne is hardly in any position to lecture others.

Osborne and his crypto-Tory pal Danny Alexander, still nominally a LibDem, are promoting the virtues of a report written by civil servants and academics. The report claims that the “current currency and monetary policy arrangements within the UK serve Scotland well”.

In fact, it is described as “one of the most successful monetary, fiscal and political unions in history”. Leaving aside this sensational claim to a unique place in world history, the sting is in the tail.

The report claims the SNP's preferred option of continuing to use the pound sterling might be rejected by the rest of the UK because it could expose the larger neighbour to risk if Scotland ran into fiscal and financial difficulties.

It concludes that even if a deal could be reached, it would have to include arrangements for Scottish ministers to hand their annual budgets over to Westminster for approval even before they had been voted on at Holyrood.

And it admits that would run both ways, with Scotland wanting some say over British fiscal policy. Bu Con/Dem chancellor Osborne is having none of that. He told an audience of Scottish business people:

"The fundamental political question this analysis provokes is this - why would 58 million citizens give away some of their sovereignty over monetary and potentially other economic policy to five million people in another state?

“Before the rest of the UK could ever agree to enter a formal currency union, any future UK chancellor of the exchequer tied to independence would have to provide the British people with a clear and compelling answer to this question.”

Well maybe the compelling question he should actually answer is, what control do the citizens of any country have over their currency? The answer is, absolutely none. It is outrageous for Osborne of all people to masquerade as the defender of the sovereignty of the citizens of the UK.

The financial sector he serves has created a level of debt that is so uncontrollable that even the global corporations are terrified about the future. The 50% collapse in Tesco pre-tax profits, and bankruptcies in retail are the front end of a collapse in manufacturing that will bring even more downward pressure on wages and working conditions.

And what do governments of nation states, like Britain, mired in an eternal and deepening global crisis do to defend their citizens? Well we know the answer to that. They have so little real control over the economy that they are basically reduced to just two possible actions.

One is to slash public spending in order to try to reduce the deficit. And the other is to print money, introducing liquidity into the economy but at the same time undermining the long-term value of the currency overall.

The real attack on the pound has come from Treasury-authorised quantitative easing in a desperate attempt to shore up the banks. The result is that the majority of us exist every day within a hostile economic and fiscal environment that offers us no security and no control whatsoever.

The real sovereignty question is why do 90% of the people hand control over currency, their public services and their social, political and environmental future to governments who operate on behalf of the minority who stand to gain from the current arrangements? What kind of independence and self-determination do we really have, north or south of the border? To ask the question is to answer it.

This whole independence debate is, not surprisingly, bringing to the fore burning political and economic questions. Neither Osborne nor Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond have any answers outside of the failed policies they are already pursuing.

Penny Cole

Scottish independence is not a question of 'empathy', Mr Salmond

Scotland's SNP first minister Alex Salmond is basing his plans for the country's future on the ideas of Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith. He told an American audience he would be looking to both of Smith's great works - not only The Wealth of Nations but also the less well-known Moral Sentiments.

In this, Smith notes that there is something in human nature that makes us care about others, feeling what they feel not in our senses, but in our imaginations. This "empathy" is, apparently what David Cameron lacks and what Salmond has.

Yeh, right, that's what they all say! Here's Cameron speaking in 2010: “There’s something else you need to know about me which is that I believe the test of a good and strong society is how we look after the most vulnerable, the most frail and the poorest. That’s true in good times, but it’s even more true in difficult times.”

But as we all know, when financial crisis push comes to shove, the needs of capital win out every time. That’s why we are enduring austerity-plus from the ConDem coalition. The only sense of us all being it together is the fact that most Europeans are suffering the same pain.

A recent leaked Scottish government paper showed growing concerns in Edinburgh about oil revenues and public spending projections. Under such pressures would empathy trump the interests of global capitalism, whether in an independent Scotland or not? No way.

Empathy is not some national quality shared by all Scots regardless of their class or politics. If it were, some of the most miserable conditions in any advanced capitalist state would not have been created and tolerated for so long!

The House of Lords economic committee this week called on both the Westminster and Scottish governments to publish detailed studies of what would happen to the Scottish economy in light of a “Yes” vote. In that way voters could consider the implications fully.

But neither Westminster nor Holyrood will do this, for two reasons. First, they are both of them incapable of producing a document that is not riddled with propaganda for their side of the independence argument. And second, neither of them have the least idea of what is going to happen to the economy in the short, medium or long term - not in Scotland or anywhere else in the UK.

They are aboard a floundering ship which they claim to be piloting but that is actually controlled by a phantom crew nobody dares name. These are not supernatural forces, but the invisible forces of corporate debt, junk bond investments and financial instruments whose real value, or lack of it, nobody can pinpoint.

The wreck is imminent in a fresh banking crisis on the horizon. What price empathy when that happens?

We no longer live in a welfare state, but in a market state where the private sector delivers public services for profit. This is just as true in Scotland with its "arms length bodies" with big budgets, big fat salaries for councillor/directors and big fat pay offs for executives.

A Scottish government operating the existing capitalist state form would neither change nor challenge this status quo. We live in a state where benefits can be cut, removed or changed - not because people's needs have changed but because capitalism's crisis has deepened, and this would remain the same in an independent capitalist Scotland.

Of course we must defend all benefits and public spending but we must not stop there.

The independence referendum gives us a chance to debate and decide on a very different kind of society. People’s Assemblies could come together in every part of Scotland to draft a revolutionary new constitution.

That would aim to transfers power from the ruling elite to the people alongside measures to achieve economic democracy through new forms of common ownership of the corporations and banks. That is the real essence of self-determination for the 21^st century.

A campaign for a “Yes” vote that is not based on fighting for that kind of transformation, is simply leaving the ship in the hands of the wreckers whilst painting a big Scottish flag on the side.

Penny Cole

Scots need a people's constitution, not an SNP one

The deal struck between Edinburgh and Westminster to hold a single question referendum on independence in the autumn of 2014 should not obscure the fact that the needs of ordinary Scots are secondary to this political manoeuvring.

Even though it seems most Scots would like to have the option of greater devolution as an alternative to independence, this will not be on the ballot paper.  The Tories, who have no support whatsoever in Scotland, want the electorate to face a stark choice – “in or out”. Labour supports that position.

The big three parties are united on the need for a strong, united British state –  not for the benefit of the people, but as part of feverish attempts to hold the crumbling economy together.

The big question facing people in Scotland is not “do we want independence from England” (a completely inaccurate and historically wrong formulation) but what  kind of society do we want? What kind of economy, what kind of politics, what kind of life for the people? And these are the same questions that face people everywhere, in this unprecedented economic and ecological crisis.

None of these questions will be on the ballot paper, nor raised by Scottish National Party. The SNP makes the right to self-determination of the Scottish people synonymous with a crude nationalism that masks its reactionary policies.

The referendum campaign presents a massive opportunity to build something genuinely new and independent and we should not let it pass us by. We should refuse to spend two years as onlookers as they haggle over a constitutional settlement that will still put the needs of the corporations above the needs of the majority.

The argument put forward by some on the “left”, that if we get independence within the framework set out by Salmond and Cameron, that will somehow strengthen the power of the people for the future is unbelievable.

How would a Holyrood Parliament organised on the same lines as its counterparts in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland save us? And if an independent Scotland is still using the pound, as SNP leader Alex Salmond says it would, then the Westminster Treasury would still call the shots on spending, interest rates and borrowing.

For the next two years the SNP government and local councils of all stripes will go on cutting health, education and the voluntary and community sector. They will destroy further education colleges and oversee rising youth unemployment and destitution for families.

Whatever their disagreements over independence, all the parties agree there is no alternative to this. Labour in Scotland wants to remove universal benefits not enjoyed elsewhere in the UK right now. The SNP wants to keep them as a kind of bribe.

But for independent thinkers, the question is why are these benefits not rights? Why do people not have the right to work, to adequate food, to a home, in our rich country? Why are these subject to degrading rules, and dependent on whether capitalism decides to afford them or not?

If we are really talking about an independent future, let’s plan for a society where dependence on benefits is eliminated, where everybody participates and in return receives a share of the collective wealth that is enough to live well.

Salmond’s top priority for a post-independence constitution is keeping Scotland in NATO. We should develop a constitution that rejects NATO and its corporate-sponsored wars.

All Scotland’s politicians and businessmen want the corporations to drill for oil in deep water off our coast, and they support more open cast mining. We should demand an end to fossil fuel burning and a rapid transition to renewables. Let’s plan to place all land and sea in Scotland into a new commons, where it can be used for the benefit of all.

Those who want to bring about such real, fundamental changes should get together and write a people’s constitution. Then we can support and promote local initiatives that build into a network of democratic People’s Assemblies – in Scotland and beyond – striving for real political change. That would give real meaning and a modern content to the right to self-determination.

Penny Cole

Self-determination for Scotland has to end minority rule as well

It is hardly surprising that Scots hate rule from Westminster - they are not alone. Millions of workers all across the UK have come hate the ConDems Coalition for imposing the full burden of the economic crisis on their backs.

Whatever question is on the ballot paper for Scotland’s proposed referendum, there will be none that will bring about independence from cuts, closures, poverty, capitalism and the banks.

It will simply give people in Scotland the chance to swap rule of the 1% based at Westminster for the 1% based in Edinburgh. Or rather, continuing rule by the global corporations that rule everywhere, supported by their cohorts in the Scottish banks, the oil industry and the landowning, shareholding, political elite.

We will be asked to vote out the sham UK democracy and replace it with a sham Scottish democracy that will provide self-determination for an elite only.

The reality is that as a small economy, Scotland’s fate would be decided by global events and the decisions of the major capitalist states. This is the experience of Greece, Hungary, Iceland and Ireland among others.

It has been the experience of devolution, which has been unable to insulate Scots from the ravages of the global financial and economic crisis. One in three children in half of all local authority areas live in poverty, one in two in Glasgow. Unemployment is once again higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, and youth unemployment stands at 25%.

Further Education colleges face unprecedented cuts and an unwanted and badly-planned restructuring. The infrastructure of both Edinburgh and Glasgow is crumbling. Both cities’ councils are riven by scandals, waste and a ruthless determination to ignore the views of the people.

It is just crude nationalism to talk about being “free from England”. Who do we want to be free from? The tenacious battlers who continue to occupy at St Paul’s? The electricians striking across the UK to prevent the destruction of their wages and working conditions? The disabled people and their supporters fighting cruel cuts in benefits? Do Strathclyde Police have a kid glove where the Metropolitan Police have an iron fist?

There is not one England any more than there is one Scotland.

From Labour we get a kind of greater British nationalism, a support for the union that has more to do with the big fat prize of Westminster government jobs than any principles. It certainly has nothing to do with defending the unity of the British working class and trade unions.

Labour can only win at Westminster with Scottish votes, and Ed Miliband makes clear they would use those votes to continue with cuts and attacks on living standards. It is no wonder that Scots have come to detest Labour almost as much as they detest the Tories, and the SNP under Alex Salmond has benefited from that.

Cameron’s “defence of the union” is equally self, or rather power-seeking. Ditching Scotland might ensure a permanent Tory majority in England. That’s why they want just one question - independence, yes or no - on the referendum ballot paper.

And as a result, Cameron sets out to deny Scots the right to vote for a greater degree of devolution, even although polls suggest that is what they would prefer and even although people in Wales had a referendum on this in March 2011.

If it comes to a referendum, A World to Win will support the right of the Scottish people to self-determination but will campaign for real liberation from the likes of Salmond, the banks, landowners and the Scottish ruling elites.

What we need is to form People’s Assemblies all over Scotland now, to create the basis for a truly profound shift in decision-making, authority and ownership - directly to the people. We can’t vote for a revolutionary form of independence, that combines self-determination with an end to minority capitalist rule. They won’t put that question on the ballot paper. So we will have to put it on the agenda ourselves.

Penny Cole

Scots political elite united - against working people

As the political élite in Scotland focus on wrangling over future of the union with England, they are united on one thing - the need to impose the full burden of the crisis on people already struggling with low pay, part-time work and fuel poverty.

Scotland’s local authorities have now agreed to impose a public sector pay freeze, a freeze on council tax and an agenda of cuts and privatisation, in pursuit of what Scottish National Party (SNP) finance minister John Swinney calls a “relentless pursuit of efficiency”.

His budget means annual spending will fall by 11.3% per year by 2014-15. A council tax freeze will benefit those living in the most expensive homes whilst leading to cuts in service for the many thousands living on the margins. Another year’s pay freeze for many public sector workers will mean a real terms cut as fuel and food prices soar.

The SNP is transferring money out of revenue budgets into capital spending by measures like forcing further education colleges, the police and fire service to merge and in the case of further education, to make massive cuts. The resulting capital projects will create little more than short-term, sub-contracted jobs without making any real economic improvements because they will not add anything to real demand in the economy, or long-term, stable employment.

What it will do is lead to more job losses, and particularly for women who work in education, the NHS and voluntary sector organisations contracted to deliver welfare services. Scotland already has a deficit of 17.25% in full-time jobs. Many women survive by working two and even three part-time jobs, and that is becoming more and more common.

The SNP blames the cuts on the Westminster coalition, but if that is true, why don’t they go straight for an independence referendum and get Scotland out of Cameron/Clegg’s clutches? It’s not only because they fear they might not win the vote. It’s also because Alex Salmond, a capitalist economist and banker, knows that during the current euro-zone crisis, an independent Scotland would face financial meltdown.

And since it would be impossible to join the euro, what kind of independence would it be if Scotland kept the pound? Basically, Salmond is hoping if he holds on until the end of this parliament, the eurozone crisis will be solved and his dream of a modern capitalist Scotland, pouring renewable energy into the grid and oil into the power stations, will be back on the agenda. Fat chance!

Labour-controlled Glasgow City Council huffs and puffs about the SNP government, but makes the cuts anyway. Edinburgh complains, but is itself mired in a growing scandal over inflated costs for repairs to homes, with a number of staff under police investigation. Aberdeen plans even more cuts in disability service, but is ready to squander millions on destroying one of the city’s best-loved parks.

Labour is leaderless and has not a shred of integrity or a political idea between them. In the place where the working class first realised the need for a political party to represent its interests, that party is now a self-serving unrepresentative clique. The Tories are ready to change tack and change name, using the Ulster Unionists as their model. The Liberal Democrats are desperately trying to distance themselves from Clegg and co - but the voters are not swallowing it.

Nowhere is the collapse of the political class clearer than in Scotland, where the three main political parties manage between then to make a minor figure like Salmond look like General De Gaulle; after the local elections next year he could be presiding over a one-party state. Truly, apres-moi le deluge.

There is an urgent need for People’s Assemblies, not with the aim of holding the political class to account but to plan how to replace them entirely, with a democratic body ready to meet the challenge of the crisis with radical plans for social justice, workers’ control and an end to poverty.

Penny Cole

Devolution leaves power in same hands

The Scottish people have first hand experience of what it is to have greater devolution without any real power over their lives and communities.

For example, the Scottish National Party-led government is colluding with privatised rail companies to break the RMT union and introduce cuts that threaten rail safety soon after the election.

The Edinburgh government agreed to indemnify Scotrail against losses resulting from the company going all-out to win a dispute over driver-only operation (DOO) on the Airdrie to Bathgate route. By defeating RMT members on this route, they hope to force in driver-only trains across the Scottish network.

Letters between Transport Scotland and Scotrail show clearly that:

- Scotrail planned to recruit and train an army of scabs, and expected Transport Scotland to foot the bill. It kindly offered to “cap” its claim against the Scottish taxpayer at £300,000 – about the same is would cost to settle the dispute, says the RMT.

- Scotrail threatened that it would not go ahead with expanding DOO unless ministers agreed to indemnify it against losses from industrial action.

And since Transport Minister Stewart Stevenson admitted to RMT that there was no economic case for scrapping guards on this route, this is clearly a union-busting exercise and nothing more.

During the Westminster elections, SNP leader Alex Salmond’s only policy has been low level pork-barrel politics, where he prays for a hung parliament so that Scottish Nationalist MPs can play the same role as Ulster Unionists in propping up the Major Tory government of 1992-97. This might keep a few more jobs for the élite in Scotland, but it won’t stop wholesale cuts in public spending.

The SNP offers fine rhetoric about cancelling Trident, but knows it is entirely dependent on the Westminster government, which over the next three years will wipe out whole swathes of public services in Scotland.

In fact, last year they drew up plans for cuts of up to 5%, and transport is likely to be a key target. Regional transport bodies set up to work for integrated transport, have lost their funding and the SNP government plans to put transport back into central management.

This combination of cost-cutting, constant failed restructuring, and decisions that have more to do with ensuring the jobs of senior officials than providing better services, is about as much as the Scottish people have got from the long struggle for devolution.

Between August 2007 and August 2009, the numbers of young people on Jobseeker's Allowance rose by more than 100% in six local authority areas: Borders (109%), East Dunbartonshire (116%), East Lothian (158%), East Renfrewshire (143%), Midlothian (144%) and South Lanarkshire (114%).

The SNP and the other leading parties are as silent about the extent of the cuts coming in Scotland as the main parties in England. Labour MSPs are even claiming there will be an INCREASE in public spending if New Labour is re-elected nationally!

Almost 100,000 jobs are threatened by the cuts, but the Scottish banks at the centre of the financial collapse are about to post much-improved profits. The oil corporations, have done better than expected in the North Sea this year – but none of this will improve the lot of jobless youth or halt the cuts.

There is no mechanism for transferring increased private profits to improve the lives of ordinary people. And this would still be true if Scotland were entirely independent, but still ruled by the same corporate interests as it is today.

Nowhere more than in Scotland does AWTW’s policy of “Hang on to your vote – Build People’s Assemblies” have greater resonance because there is no way that a real transfer of economic and financial power to ordinary people will be achieved through the Edinburgh Parliament.

Penny Cole

* The RMT is holding a lobby outside the Scottish Parliament from 12.30 tomorrow as MSPs debate the rail dispute.