Corbyn, Labour and Scotland

Jeremy Corbyn told the parliamentary Labour Party (14 September) that Tom Watson, Labour's new deputy and he would be visiting Scotland at least one day per month in order to boost Scottish Labour's vote before the May 2016 elections for the Scottish parliament (Holyrood.)

Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP, told the media that she hoped Jeremy Corbyn's victory in the vote for the leadership of the Labour Party would mean that Labour would collaborate with the SNP to build a common front against austerity and to oppose Trident - Britain's nuclear weapon. She also told the Scottish media that as Jeremy Corbyn was unlikely to win the 2020 British election, the only way for Scots to escape future Tory rule was to achieve full independence in Scotland.

Behind this opening salvo there is a tangled web of confusion among different parts of the anti-austerity movement in England, Wales and Scotland. There is, undoubtedly, a debate to be had. If Scotland wants an end to austerity, surely it should vote for a UK wide Labour Party, for Corbyn. Indeed, without Scotland voting Labour there is little chance that Corbyn's Labour Party could win any General Election. On the other hand surely Corbyn's leadership is fragile. It would be better to ensure the end of austerity in Scotland if it were independent. On top of that, is it not 'more progressive' for Scotland to be able to decide its own political future anyway?

The debate will rage and roar away. Without in anyway intruding on the right of the Scots to determine their own future here are some (hopefully clarifying) thoughts.

Some (influential) supporters of Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party are completely convinced that the national question in Scotland (and therefore the SNP) are now a dangerous, 'blind alley' for the real 'battle for socialism'. Scotland must get behind Corbyn's chance to become a Labour Prime Minister for the whole UK and the SNP 'diversion' should be totally defeated. Such opinions in England are found most forcefully represented among some of the leadership of the left unions. (In fact this stance is actually an extension of their previously held views about the Scottish referendum campaign.)

This blog has argued before that Scotland is not a colonial nation dominated by English imperialism. But there is no doubt that Scottish politics is dominated by Westminster. This is not the same as the political conditions in Newcastle or Liverpool. Scotland has a national, political identity which means that just as Greek and Spanish anti-austerity movements call for the establishment of the people's sovereignty over remote and wealth-serving institutions that drive the EU, so millions of Scots tie their domination by the Westminster political class to the possible freedom that might be offered by the achievement of their own national sovereignty. In Scotland, the poverty question, the question of inequality, of Trident and of welfare, in other words the class questions, are not the opposite or alternative to the national question. They are now inextricably linked.

Unfortunately for this perspective, the Scottish Labour Party (despite the removal of the hapless Jim Murphy) is now led by another ex-Blairite. In Scotland most people voted SNP in the last General Election (May 2015) because, unlike Labour, the SNP argued for an end to austerity and to Trident. Kezia Dugdale, Scottish Labour leader, attacks the SNP in Scotland over education results, over 'pushing' for a new referendum, over a long list of things — but not over the absolute need for no Trident and an anti-austerity Scotland. Scottish Labour is unlikely to be promoting Corbyn's politics anytime soon.

Just as it was the anti-austerity, anti-war movement in England that toppled the traditional leadership of Labour in favour of Jeremy Corbyn (and certainly not some long term mushrooming campaign inside the Labour Party, or even inside the unions) so the same trend in Scotland has, up to now, associated itself with support for the SNP - albeit critically (including many of the Scottish members and activists in those same left unions whose leaders are hell bent on burying the national question). This is because Labour has been more than tried, and then tested to destruction, over decades in Scotland. And what the Scots have learned is that Labour cannot defeat the Tories in England - even if they hold Scotland. Worse, that they have tried to become them. They note Corbyn's victory and are glad for it. They also note Corbyn's weak social base and the political fragility of his leadership, and they feel the absolutely decisive requirement to get away forever from Tory governments of both the Conservative and the Labour kind. And more; to get away from the distant, overbearing and corrupt Westminster political class, with its thousands of representatives in the leadership of all three traditional parties.

Can Corbyn's tremendous victory mesh with, even push forward a more radical perspective and political movement in Scotland?

Undoubtedly. But not by trying to unwish the hard political experience of the Scots. (Although some of Corbyn's English well wishers will need to learn the value of modesty.) It is perfectly reasonable, from any point of view, to promote the requirement for Scottish Labour to take its own 'independence' from Westminster. An independent Scottish Labour Party might then stand more than a fighting chance to take on the SNP's programme — from the left. If the Scottish Labour Party removed the issue of an independent Scotland from the agenda — by supporting it — then the social question, the class question would determine the direction of Scottish politics, to the benefit of the Scots - to the benefit of Scottish Labour and to the benefit of the rest of Britain.

A determining socialist presence in Holyrood would transform the political debate in all of the rest of the UK, while breaking up the power of Britain's political class and the over-mighty post imperial ambitions of its rulers. England would be a smaller country and with smaller European countries in mind, it might even begin to learn to behave itself better. The key is that the movement in England, against war and against austerity, that has already pushed over the rotten leadership of a decaying mass party, as another aspect of Westminster's political crisis erupts, would be immensely strengthened. And that is good for all our futures.