What’s Left of the Union Part 2

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What’s Left of the Union Part 2

Arguing for a socialist Yes: reclaiming the local

The last century was one in which numerous macro solutions to humanity’s ills were tried and failed. The overwhelming hope of socialists in this century has to be radical change at a local level.

Because I am writing this in the United Kingdom, the ears of many will prick up and hear the beginnings of conservatism in the above statement.

Such responses take us to the heart of why Britain remains a highly conservative country; it ignores the fact that true radicalism has to be local in character; though its impact can echo across the globe.

For far too many on the left in this country, taking democracy nearer to the people becomes parochial. The audacious fury of Neil Findlay is always instructive in this regard: so furious in fact that he is able to claim that the union could deliver social change against three decades of undeniable fact. The link between our appalling health outcomes and the failure of successive UK government’s to tackle de-industrialisation with anything other than soundbites and statistics is quietly ignored.

The real lesson that we can take from our Nordic neighbours, and it’s not a ‘model’ any more than universal suffrage was a ‘New Zealand Model’, is the importance of local democracy.

Now there are many who would argue that focusing on localism is just an excuse to leave the wider structure intact. They must be looking at the problem through a very Anglo-Saxon lens. Real socialism shouldn’t feel the need to wait for a messianic revolution to try and enact utopia at a local level. Take the small Andalusian town of Marinaleda for example: the socialist municipality that has full employment and builds houses for its citizens in the heart of Spain’s economic crisis. With 2,700 citizens, it could provide a model to revive towns in the bleakest parts of Scotland’s central belt.

This blindness in the present state for the capacity of local control of resources to provide the bedrock for an equal society, must be addressed now while we have the public platform to discuss constitutional questions. Solidarity must be universal in its reach, but time and time again we see that action and empowerment cannot be enforced from a higher plane.

By relentlessly confronting the No camp with their own inability to describe how they think Scotland (or England) could be better governed, we can win the argument hands down. Johann Lamont’s slogan that constitutional change is an irrelevance will be exposed for the barefaced opt out that it really is. We need to move towards the crux of the matter and learn to talk of self-determination and empowerment as the norm not the exception. We have an opportunity to call out those on the left who support the union and claim to be progressive, while denying the importance of who makes the decisions, who raises, spends the cash and on what. We can also succeed in making the constitutional argument relevant to every Scottish community. Positive moves in the Northern and Western Isles on this front could be an early indication of how this process of devolving from Holyrood and beyond can function as part of the Yes narrative.

To those bristling at such delusion from a closet Salmondista in red clothing I would cite in my defence the figure that many agree was the last socialist to hold any real sway in the United Kingdom, Tony Benn:

Democracy is what is controversial in Britain. Not socialist rhetoric, nobody cares about socialist rhetoric, anymore than they care about what bishops say on a Sunday about brotherhood, so long as nothing happens till next Sunday. But when you raise the democratic question, then I tell you you’re in trouble. I’ve learned that all my life. Not only are you in trouble at the top, but you’ve mobilised support down the line. People really are interested and leaders are opposed to it.

Whether or not we end up making all of our laws in Edinburgh or London: we will still live in a state that is ludicrously over centralised by European standards.

The almost exclusive ownership of the localist agenda by the British right has caused a profound disconnect between the ability of communities to affect change for the benefit of their inhabitants. Taking its cues from the anti-elitist Powell, the Thatcherite machine was able to rip up entire villages and neuter local government, while still claiming that it stood for localism, or the common man, over central government. Like the coalition’s Police Commissioners, the Neighbourhood Watch was conjured up to give locals a say in protecting their own property and precious little else.

History has shown us that we will only get a perverse caricature of local democracy from a UK government. This tradition is alive and well. As we’ve heard on the coalition’s recent offer of powers on the Bedroom Tax but not tax powers: only the axe will be devolved.

On the unionist left there is a deafening silence: punctuated by the odd rant featuring the north of England, socialist dogma, and Blairite soundbites (often mixed together in a surreal and very bitter cocktail).

All these things considered my plea to members of the Scottish Labour Party is as follows:

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Please understand that my support for independence is defined entirely by the possibilities a Yes vote offers, not a dogmatic belief in nationalism. I am told, time and time again, that those who share this opinion with me are fundamentalists, committed to an arcane concept, nationalism, that is not about the reality of what I or my children will live through. This view is patently incorrect.

I have no interest in defaming any other Scot’s love of the place they call home, however they intend to vote in the referendum. To do so would defeat the entire exercise. We have a short time on this earth and a short time to make it better. I do not believe that the United Kingdom is capable of delivering anything other than the bleakest of futures for the majority of its citizens. It doesn’t do a good job of protecting their rights, empowering them, or bringing them together. Equality in Britain in the past two decades has exploded. The parliament that your party was instrumental in creating is more transparent, gender balanced and forward looking. I think it can do a better job at reflecting Scotland’s needs on all matters than Westminster can, it’s as simple as that.

I know that because of such realisations, the press, the media and prominent politicians brand Yes supporters like me as either naïve or on a trajectory that will inexplicably result in fascism. Even though, historically, fascism was the product of unionism, not self-determination. By contrast we should be proud that our path to self-government is tolerant, inclusive and defined by a lack of violence and aggression at every turn. Change the kind of language you use now and you can be proud of this too.

Finally I don’t know anyone within the Yes Campaign who thinks that independence is a magic bullet. All of us realise that, if we achieve a majority for independence on 18 September, the real tasks begins the day after. The challenging, but remarkable work of building a new society, is one in which all Scots can participate in. Where would we start? I leave you with the following statement from Marinaleda’s website, which   was neither too poor, nor too wee, to chart its own path:

We have always thought that liberty without equality is nothing, and that democracy without real wellbeing for real people is an empty word and a way of deceiving people, making them believe they are part of a project when in fact they are not needed at all.

It seemed to us that in this field there should be no limits; that the people should have a dream of collective welfare and must then in fact turn to struggle, because the Left if it is genuinely revolutionary cannot reject, either in thought or in action, any of the people’s seemingly unachievable aspirations.

In this way we were able to win each and all of the things that we were obviously lacking.

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  1. Brilliant! Exactly why I have left my leftist doubts behind and embraced the chance to change things with independence. A radical new road is possible and it’s the only means to defend the social democratic welfare gains made and being destroyed. I haven’t found a single worthwhile argument from the anti-independence left that doesn’t succumb to defending the British state in some way or just exist as dogma and believe me I’ve looked!

  2. picpac67 says:

    Spot on! And the hard part is that is requires a revolution in consciousness, overturning the Thatcher obscenity of “There is no such thing as society”. We should beware the “Norwegian Dream” – there’s no peace or security in wealth. In Norway, where (I was told recently by a resident of Spitzbergen) everyone is rich (my friend said everyone has at least 1 million euros each), people have become more selfish and more anxious about keeping their money safe.

    The really hard part is to acknowledge that for a society to be “at ease” with itself, the fundamental (socialist) attitude must be: “I have no right to be much richer than anyone else” – or to be rich when there is poverty elsewhere, whether at home or abroad. Is it of no relevance to our lives that around 35,000 people, mostly children, die unnecessarily every day? The poison of “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost” has to be spat out.

    Democracy – currently a sham – has to be reclaimed. My preference would be for a politics without parties, with minimal executive powers and full-blown direct democracy. And of course no monarch as head of state – though I accept the pragmatic argument that preaching republicanism now would damage the “Yes” campaign.

  3. An excellent article that I’m going to re-blog and use as a challenge to anyone who is a committed “no” voter.

    Personally I am yet to be convinced that independence will deliver the changes that we need but I’m open to persuasion.

    With this in mind, I would love to see your arguments being made without them getting muddied by the left/right, egalitarian/libertarian rhetoric which tends to allow people to slide unthinkingly into partisan positions.

    What we need is a vision of how we want to live together (locally, regionally, nationally, globally) and then decide what needs to be done to come as close to achieving that vision as is possible in an imperfect world.

    Words like socialism and equality are barriers to thought and understanding because they are over-used and under-defined, flicking switches of preconception and prejudice in our minds.

    If we talk, instead, of aspiring to a land in which no-one has to live in fear of poverty and everyone has access to opportunities that suit their talents and ambitions then we will attract far wider support than if we use the rhetoric of the left.

    I found myself in a discussion with a Tea Party supporter recently who assumed (from my chat about financial/fiscal reform) that I was a socialist which meant that he brought into the debate a lot of prejudices that were based on that assumption and clouded an otherwise productive exchange of ideas.

    When I explained that I was simultaneously arguing for more of what he would call capitalism as well as what he would call socialism it took the wind out of his sails and demonstrated how useless these terms, as we currently use them to define polarities, are.

    The language of left and right is as distracting as the idea of independence for the sake of independence.

    Vision (how we want to live) and pragmatism (how to get there) are what we need.

    1. bellacaledonia says:

      Thanks Malcolm

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