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

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

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

So the ConDem coalition is to spend £50 million on marking the centenary of the outbreak of World War One. But the flag-waving nationalism that will surely surround the events will with certainty obscure the truth about the first global conflict.

The Coalition can find millions while it is savagely cutting public services for entirely political reasons. In 2014, we will be a year away from a general election and in the countdown to a referendum on Scottish independence scheduled for the same year.

Contrived nationalism will be used to push the myth of the “One Nation” that both the Tories and Labour are fighting for copyright over, in a beauty contest of patriotic virtues that will churn the stomach. Scotland’s right to self determination will be viewed with abhorrence in the same way as those who opposed World War One were condemned as traitors.

The 900,000 British soldiers who were killed, the 1.6 million maimed and the many millions more from other countries who perished, were victims of a war not of their making and fought not in their interest.

This shocking waste of life needs to be remembered and honoured – but not in the sickening and hypocritical way that politicians from the major parties and the establishment do. They still can’t even look after their fallen or wounded troops, who have to rely on charity and the proceeds of poppy sales.

We need a memorial that spells out the truth, which explains that those who gave their lives or were wounded were cannon fodder for the ruling classes in each country. Propaganda would have it that it was the “war to end all wars” and fought for British democracy against the “tyranny of the Hun”.

In reality, it was an imperialist war fought over the division and redivision of colonial spoils, with the challenge of Germany to Britain’s empire and industrial might the principal cause.

As the great war poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote to his commanding officer in July 1917, declining to return to duty after recovering from his wounds:

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolonging these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

World War One was followed in a short period by recession and the Great Depression, leading directly to a resumption of hostilities in 1939 in another capitalist conflict.

The same fundamentals that produced these two world wars are still present. The global economy is on the verge of a slump greater than the 1930s. Capitalism remains an irrational system that is driven to destroy its rivals, as well as a large portion of what has been created. The fall-out from the financial crash is building into a tsunami that has alarm bells ringing from London to Washington.

Wilfred Owen, the war poet, was killed a week before the ceasefire (right up until the last minute, until the 11a.m armistice, generals were sending troops over the top to die) and his words are more honest than those who claim to speak for the fallen. In his Anthem for Doomed Youth, Owen wrote:

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Distributing his works and those of other war poets to every household would be a much more suitable way to mark the centenary of World War One.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor