davidsberry

On many occasions, I have found myself enlightened and stimulated by Burdzeyeview and would recommend the blog to all on both sides of the debate regarding where Scotland is going and why. I had intended giving the soapbox a rest over the holidays as I imagined even hardened independistas would rather be sharing cracker jokes than locking horns over festive fare.

But as I read the Burd’s blog, I realised that, for the first time in some while, I was not of her opinion and the matter was serious enough to not wait for twelfth night to rejoin the fray. Basically, the Burd takes exception to His Eckness being awarded ‘Briton of the Year’ by the Times newspaper. Now, if I understand the Burd aright, her objection centres around this being an award to a ‘regional’ politician and therefore conceals a mighty slight on Scotland’s conceit of nationhood.

“Such sentiments and statements are patronising and perpetuate a stereotypical little UKlander view of the world and importantly, of Scotland.”

Although the Kiplingesque stalwarts at the Times would surely dispute this, the Burd does have a point. But then later she continues:

“What the British establishment thinks of we Scots should matter none.  We should neither want nor seek baubles of Britishness nor Briton-ness.  Why should our yardstick be what our neighbours deem to bestow upon us and our First Minister?  Measuring ourselves against the accepted order of things on these islands is to accept their limitations for our ambitions and our aspirations.”

And here is where the Burd and I part company, for three reasons:

1. Such a stance reeks, for me, of the ‘Little Scotlander”, similar to my accusation of Jim Sillars in the previous blog. Simply because the accolade derives furth of Scotland it should therefore be discarded. I find this narrow. If Salmond were to be accorded ‘European of the Year’ for his work in securing a voice for smaller countries, thereby binding the EU in harmony by making small countries less fearful of being steamrollered by the Merkozy faction, would she take the same view? Despite glaring Unionist credentials, the Times is a reputable paper of standing: their accolade has objective validity.
2. Such objective validity is, in itself, a commodity in which the SNP has long been short-changed. They have won elections despite swimming against a tide of hostile media on both sides of the border. Surely ‘Briton of the Year’ award to a man accused of separatism took some deep swallowing among those selecting the winner. Had they condemned him as a ‘narrow nationalist’ (which he patently is not but some politicians who should know better can’t seem to see past that stance), it would be business as usual. But they didn’t.
3. Most importantly, we have been round the houses many times since May in the formulation of a referendum and the significance of various percentages pro/con and shades between. What is startlingly clear is that, with all unionist parties in serious straits (no leader over 6 months’ experience and barrel-scraping shares of vote) the argument for the floating ~30% is there to be won. These are voters alienated by the cringing inefficacy of unionists and increasingly aware that only the SNP seems to have both ideas and a boatload of people capable of putting them into effect. Forget independence, half these people just want a decent government. Every other party has serious egg-on-face from messes they made. If you want to give the Libourvatives a comprehensive kicking, what better way than to take your country right out of their self-serving grasp? But such people first want reassurance that there’s more to the  SNP than passion and ideas. The Times’ endorsement is the very dab.

So, apologies to the Burd if this ruffles her feathers. I give way to no-one in my passion to see Scotland take its place in the world’s community of countries, but she and I will not determine our future—our votes are already good as cast.

It will be the million or so Scots who love their country, like their life here, want the best for it and are so scunnered at the third-rate offering from Scotland’s so-called national parties that the Times ‘objective’/’British’/’patronising’/’unionist’ accolade may break the camel’s back of any vestigial loyalty. Epiphany for such people WILL BE our battleground.

To mix metaphors shamelessly: let’s not throw their vital support out with the unionist bathwater by looking the Times’ gift horse in the mouth.

In its time, Scotland has produced its share of groundbreaking politicians and, given the imprecision of and the human flaws intrinsic in politics (unlike with physicists or surgeons) there is less unanimity about who belongs at the top. Jim Sillars may be in the running but, for my money, is overrated—and the more so with time.

Always a thinker and never afraid to make his case, Jim is a man to be admired and, often, listened to. Well ahead of Scottish Labour’s recent Damascene conversion that they need to change, he and the equally redoubtable Alex Neil tried to modernise that party in the seventies, founded and failed to plough a separate furrow with the ILP and more recently have followed very different paths within and without the SNP fold.

Impatience with the SNP has been Jim’s leitmotif for two decades now. Had the SNP’s fundamentalist/gradualist debate of a decade ago gone deeper than it did, the SNP could have split, with Jim returning to lead the former faction. As it was, after Swinney’s low-key tenure and the Alex-Salmond-led mid-noughties resurgence, things have never looked so good. So, when Jim weighs in with opinions apparently contrary to the SNP’s thoughts, who’s right? Jim himself is clear as ever:

“If Scotland is to seize the opportunity that will come with independence to repair its economy, and overcome the deficit of inherited debt from the UK, then it must be able to exercise the maximum sovereign powers. There will be no such maximum available in the new eurozone treaty.”

As clarion a call to dump Europe and follow the Norwegian road, if ever there was one. But is he right? Sterling though many of Jim’s qualities might be, patience seems alien to him. You need only recall his almighty harrumph about “90-minute patriots” when his “Free by ’93” slogan cratered big-style. It appears that independence continues to drive him. But any impediment to that becomes the object of his wrath; Cameron’s wielding of the veto on Europe last month exemplifies today’s need for the drastic.

Several political observers whom I respect have waxed lyrical about Jim’s article in Tuesday’s Hootsmon. But I beg to differ. Seen through the lens of a typical Tory backwoods/bencher, Europe is indeed a bureaucratic bog, designed by Belgian Sir Humphrey’s to sap the precious bodily fluids from Brits—the last virile tribe of free-marketeers to roam the once-open fiscal plains of Western Europe. Though they may see themselves manning the beetling chalk cliffs of Albion against incursions by Johnny Foreigner, the Tunbridge Wells birthplace of such a political attitude is a far cry from the Clyde (let alone Loch Awe), from whence Weir pumps & their ilk export a wheen of Scots-built world-beaters into Köln and Stuttgart, as well a Canton and Shanghai.

Talk to leading Scots businesses, whether in oil service or whisky, tiny chips or ships’ hulls; we are out there in the world and making our mark. Irn Bru is outselling coke in Russia and we are lumbered with a PM who thinks more about the 1922 committee than about Scotland. When Jim argues we should make some Pavlovian Thatcher-gesture two decades after the original handbagging, I argue that he seems to understand less about Europe than even Cameron does.

And Cameron has an excuse. To keep his ConDem show on the road, he has to find raw meat the throw to the anti-EU hyenas roaming his back benches. Jim has no such need and Scots are generally more curious than hostile towards ‘foreigners’. Has Jim gone to Dublin and ask how the Irish fare in Europe? He would be told that their MEPs saunter down the corridor with a couple of bottles of Baileys to cut deals with the Danes or the Dutch, quietly line up ‘little’ countries so that, when the Merkozy faction is preoccupied, they stitch them up. How do you think the Spanish got such a sweet deal on pillaging our fish with trawlers built on EU subsidies?

Because you have to be on the field to play—let alone win—the game, Jim. And this angels-on-pinheads debate about whether Scotland would be in or out is for academics. We share a huge amount of culture with Europe. Go to Ulan Bator or Moghadishu if you want to see what foreign really means. Those people in Berlin or Barcelona or Brussels watch the same TV and—these days—even speak the same language as we do. Spend a couple of weeks with them and your biggest cultural problem will be they serve mustard with chips.

The idea that 260m educated, business-oriented and (at least in the German case) hard-working neighbours would not want a country like ours, with most of Europe’s oil, half of its fish, almost all of its marine renewables, a world reputation for pluck, grit and dry humour and (& here’s the clincher) an enviable record of taking on the truculent English and winning, as a necessary part of any European Union seems myopic to the point of being thrawn about it. Even the Spanish will want us. Within 20 years, they’ll be importing our water by the tanker-load—as well as our fish.

Everyone on this island needs to understand that Scotland is actually one of the most desirable friends that Europe could have. Most of Europe already knows this (talk to them). But, though the SNP are doing their best to explain this to our benighted neighbours dahn saaff, fixated as they are on circling their rickety wagons and trapping us with them, we also have well intentioned little-Scotlanders like Jim reciting his own version of “we’re too poor…too wee…etc”. Enough, already!

The Scots may not have built half the known world but our diaspora dwarfs any other in its achievements. It wasn’t fearties who built the Hudson’s Bay Company or Jardine Matheson any more than it was ninety-minute patriots who stood their ground with the Bruce. I want Jim Sillars and any who still think like him to have their say—and the time to reflect how Europe was once part of every step Scotland made forward, whether as Flemish merchants, Russian admirals, French exiles or Swedish generals.

Time we remembered our long heritage and who our real friends have always been.

Had to laugh last night when unsuccessful Labour Leader candidate’s Twitter alter ego Tam Horris commented that he was off to drown his sorrows but wasn’t the demented engineering officer down in the bowels of Das Boot also called Johann? It was classic Harris and one of the reasons that I, for one, am disappointed that what Tom had to offer was given such short percentage shrift by all three elements of the party. Because, however much they may not want to hear it, Tom was the iconoclast, the voice of reason, the shrewd observer with an acid tongue who has had the courage not just to question the emperor’s clothing, but to do it in an engaging and insightful way.

Since results were announced 24 hours ago, many messages of praise—from all political quarters—have rolled in for Johann Lamont’s success and I quibble with none of them. She has a dozen years’ experience, a reputation as a doughty fighter and would not have reached Deputy (let alone Leader) in any modern political party without ability. But, if I were to associate myself with any of the commentary published so far, it would be with Gerry Hassan’s blog on a Seven-Step Recovery Plan for Labour. She ignores it not at her but at Labour’s peril.

Because Labour have shown questionable political judgement for years now. It started with Jack McConnell but found its nadir just two days before their May catastrophe when Iain Gray delivered his most personal attack on Alex Salmond by arguing his handling of the banking crisis and release of the Lockerbie bomber exposed “fundamental flaws” in the SNP leader’s character and judgement. Within 36 hours, when interviewed by STV, he was admitting that Labour itself had to “address some fundamental questions about the structures and organisation of Labour in Scotland.”

Unfortunately, in a further six months of his tenure, it didn’t. As his opponent in the May election, I can attest to Iain being a decent guy who, when not posturing in parliament, can listen when required and make sense when speaking. He’ll make a decent back-bench MSP (and I certainly hope so because he’ll be mine). He had a hard time keeping up appearances at the count when it looked like he might lose. And you only have to look at his record as a minister—it was on his watch at Transport that the whole trams fiasco was born—let alone his years as Leader to see a man out of his depth. Margaret Curran’s ringing endorsement sounds all the more hollow the more you know of Iain’s career.

"It takes a worried man to sing a worried song" Iain Gray Bricking It at the East Lothian Count, May 2011

The key question for Ms Lamont is, therefore: how can SHE make the real difference Labour so urgently needs? The runes are not good. While I do endorse Gerry Hassan’s hopeful suggestions, I also look to Lalland Peatworrier’s analysis of the vote share (but not actual votes) as signifying the fractiousness within her party. Given her reliance on the party establishment, where will she find the courage and resolution necessary?

One week before the votes were counted, Tom Harris, effectively ruling himself out as a possible winner, said the party was “in deep trouble” but was not prepared to make the radical changes required to turn around its fortunes in Scotland. “We need to think outside the box. There is no indication that the party is prepared to do that yet and I don’t know why.” Tom’s a loyal party man with much hard work, including pioneering social media, to his credit. That his candidacy received thin support speaks volumes.

And what of Johann herself? “I am honoured to have been elected the first Leader of the Scottish Labour Party. Thank you to everyone for their support and kind messages” and congratulations to her new deputy are her only tweets. Her blogspot has nothing since a speech dated October 27th. Scottish Labour’s website carries her statement:

“While I am delighted and honoured to be elected leader of Scottish Labour Party, I believe the real work starts now. In May, we fell short of people’s expectations and they turned away from us, unable to find a reason to give us their support. If we are to earn the right to serve the country, our challenge is to listen, to learn lessons and to demonstrate that we can change. I am confident that once again people will recognise that Scottish Labour is the party which understands their lives, can deliver their hopes and will stand up for Scotland.”

This could have been written after any Scottish election over the last decade. It remains to be seen whether she will be just another name in Labour’s decline in Scotland or whether she can develop ideas and finally make a difference. For the sake of Scotland, I hope she does. But, just as the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, the road to political oblivion is paved with pious but substance-free statements like her one above.

As regular readers should know, while this blog maintains a pro-community, pro-independence and internationalist outlook, we hold no monopoly on the truth and are happy to give credit elsewhere for ideas that would advance Scotland and its myriad of communities. For that reason, we have quoted many sources, including the staunchly unionist Hootsmon and Torygraph. But looking back over the year, it is obvious that, while the occasional mention has been made of the Record, one glaring omission has been of the far left and its mouthpieces like the Socialist Worker. But no more.

The title of this piece is the headline from the December 10th edition that celebrates the November 30th strike during which “public sector workers fought back to stop a vicious assault on their pensions”. Fair enough. Seen from a worker’s perspective, working longer and paying more to receive less in pension is hardly a sweet deal. The enforced austerity that the UK government claim makes it necessary is hardly eased by Chancellor Osborne realising he needs to borrow an extra £60bn, nor by Cameron “going nuclear” in Europe and wielding his veto in an “us-against-the-world” showdown.

Socialism is a great idea. If it didn’t have to rely on human beings to operate it, it might be seen as the highest of civilising ideals. Having seen its actual operation in Russia, Cuba, Italy, Greece, (I discount the Stalinist betrayal throughout Comecon countries) Mozambique, Vietnam and now China, its qualifications as an ideal look decidedly tarnished. So, how does the Socialist Worker see it working in Scotland/UK? How will the lot of the downtrodden masses be bettered? I have no quibble with there being downtrodden masses when social disparities are as wide as they are and Fred the Shred and his ilk stuff their pockets before being chauffeured away unbowed and unpunished.

Front Page of the Socialist Worker, December 10th 2011

Examining the SW’s 16 pages you are struck by a tone of belligerence as an answer to each and every problem. If the paper were renamed the Striker’s Weekly, it would be a more accurate description of its content. There is nothing wrong with ‘streetfighting’ journalism and this blog has long been a fan of Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘gonzo’ variant. But when every page is stuffed with inflammatory prose (“riots”, “scam”, “bias” “chaos” and “sleaze” are in the article heads on a single page) and the solution for every industrial wrong is a strike—”Shut the Sites to Beat the Bosses” takes up one whole page and threatens many of the remaining construction jobs that have not already been lost to the recession—then you wonder where we would all be if everyone followed their lead.

Words like “lackey” and “scab” are emotive and should be used with care so that their (important) meanings are not diluted. A few decades ago “Capitalist lackeys and all their running dogs” was used by China so frequently that it became joke shorthand for blinkered communism. Unions have a proud history; they brought humane conditions and fair rewards to the great majority of workers that once had no-one speaking for them. But, with the laudable exception of page 10’s article Challenging Racism, the rest of the rag would lead us all back into the blind alley of class war and decline that was the 1970’s. Can’t speak for others, but I’m not up for another Thatcher Mark II cold bath to wake us from the economic dwam we got ourselves into then.

It would be simplistic to blame SW and its attitudes for three decades of decline in union membership. And the ‘fat cat’ scandals may, through the ‘Occupy’ movements and unions’ participation in them, motivate a revival in memberships. But the relative prosperity of the nineties and noughties was driven by workers, bosses and even the public sector acting as if they were on the same team, finding ways to get things done, rather than ways to stop things.

Everyone benefitted, even those with no job because there was more money available to provide them with support. It may not be possible everywhere but in East Lothian, the council has borrowed heavily, kept up major infrastructure investment in badly needed affordable housing and achieved staff reductions entirely by natural wastage. This was achieved by unions working in harmony with officials and administration. While not perfect, relations with unions are better than when Labour ran the council in much easier times.

If this issue of the SW’s date was changed to Dec 10th 1977 (i.e. the Winter of Discontent) its stories and attitudes would fit right in. It’s a free country and they can bang the ghost of the class war drum if they like. But, in Scotland, the comprehensive collapse of once-ebullient socialism in the shape of a fractious and unsuccessful SSP vs a one-man-(in-jail)-band and equally unsuccessful Solidarity (Truth in Advertising—where are you when we need you?) should be warning enough to them. However tough the going now, no-one in their right mind who lived through the seventies wants to re-live them.

Reading this issue, I can’t get out of my mind the image of Stan (John Cleese), convening a meeting of the PFJ (People’s Front of Judea) in The Life of Brian: “Bruvvers, let us not be down-‘earted. One total disaster is just the beginning!”