Wednesday 8 March 2017

Britain's 'precious union.'

Teresa May, Britain's unelected Prime Minister, without a mandate even from her own party, made the comment in a recent speech in Scotland. Part of the decay of Britain's political establishment and the shuddering decline in its renowned stability is the unrest in its component nations. The election in Northern Ireland has delivered another shock.

'Apart from negative attitudes to nationalism and to the Irish identity and culture, there has been a shameful disrespect towards many other sections of our community,' McGuinnes (Sinn Fein leader and Deputy first Minister in the outgoing NI Parliament, Stormont) wrote this about the main (British) loyalist party, the DUP that held the first minister post. 'Women, the LGBT community and ethnic minorities have all felt this prejudice. And for those who wish to live their lives through the medium of Irish, elements in the DUP have exhibited the most crude and crass bigotry'.

The election in Northern Ireland, (4 March) with a high voter turn out of 65%, has just delivered  a new message and a tremendous blow to Northern Irish loyalism which, up to now, has held a secure majority in Stormont. It has also disturbed their allies in the Westminster Cabinet. (The small Tory majority in the UK parliament is buttressed normally by the 'righter than right' DUP's 8 Westminster MPs.) Sinn Fein got only one less parliamentary seat than the DUP in Stormont. Overall the loyalist parties have now lost their majority in Northern Ireland,

Mainline British commentators did not expect this at all. Predicting a low turnout, they believed and wrote that the old dinosaurs of Protestant Loyalism and Catholic Irish Republicanism had worn out the NI voting population with their failure to get on with peace and economic progress. They did not understand that the socially reactionary character of Loyalism and its exultant support for Brexit created a serious divide with a large section of younger voters - who think a border with Ireland makes no sense and who loath traditional bigotry. They did not see (or decided not to see) the evolution of Sinn Fein in respect of its progressive economic and social programmes. They did not understand that the unresolved national question in Northern Ireland would emerge in new, unforeseen ways.

Accordingly, Since Fein are now able credibly to put a referendum for the unity of Ireland, in both parts of the country, on the political agenda in NI for the first time - recovering the idea from its dusty abstraction in the the original wording of the Good Friday Agreement.

May has already managed to put a second Scottish independence referendum back at the centre of Scottish politics. The results in the first referendum in 2014 were 44.70% yes for independence and 55.30% who voted no, with a voter turnout of 84.59%. But 'no' has rapidly become defensive as Westminster deepened austerity, disallowed key concessions to the Scottish Parliament - Holyrood, and finally with the impact of the staggering gulf between England and Scotland's vote on Brexit. Scotland voted in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38% - with all 32 council areas backing Remain.

As with England and Wales, and the big cities and smaller towns, the working class vote split in Scotland over the EU referendum. But as the votes in Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen showed, a Scottish working class majority voted to remain in the EU. In the Northeast of England, parts of the Northwest and in South Wales, the working class voted in their majority to leave the EU. Many large trade unions split, whatever the lead offered by their executives. The racist card played incessantly by the Tory right and UKIP had a much smaller influence in the working class vote in Scotland - where declining living standards, the lack of social welfare and the rationing of health etc., were seen predominantly as the responsibility of the Westminster Tory government rather than the effects of immigration.

Nevertheless achieving a 5% shift for Scottish independence and a 5% decline in those against, on what was previously a large voter turn out and after such a prolonged and deep debate across society, seems a big call. The Scottish turnout for the EU referendum was only 67% while in Wales it was 72% and in England 73%. Another profound political and social shift would surely be required to lead Scottish society into success in a new independence referendum.

Such a shift is available, but cannot be realised by the current SNP - however astute Nicola Sturgeon appears to be. Relying on hostility to Brexit will not go deep enough. In fact the real danger in the current context is a regrowth of Scottish Toryism, with a coagulation of UK loyalists and Brexiteers building a new majority - against the 'failure' of the SNP's limp, conservative, social democratic programme.

The Scottish population is as aware of the critical political processes in Holland and France (with Germany to come), where the EU appears as incapable of resisting the surge of the new right across the West, as is the 'independent' population of the US, or of the rest of Britain. Serious economic difficulties in most EU countries will run in parallel to Britain's own problems, as neither Brexit nor EU membership is able to 'reform' globalisation. Something else  - of decisive weight - has to be added to the Scottish picture, after its previous rich debate, after its experience of a long-lived, competent but non-radical SNP government.

It is time for the ideas from the left that began to surface latterly in the Scottish referendum debate to crystallise and become a mainstream part of the Scottish independence picture. Scotland can become a new type of country, based on its young people, their internationalism, their rejection of bigotry and racism. This new country would need to be built from the construction of a new economy and political constitution that put people first and last. Its international relationships would be directly with the people of Britain, of Europe and the world, and not with their creaking and reactionary structures. The great hole in Scottish politics - that might turn the independence debate away from the fear of Brexit and towards a new type of country - is the one left by Scottish Labour, who have not yet even taken the minimal federal step away from their Westminster domination.

The narrow, corporate and traditional SNP and its clever leaders will not be able to win the majority of Scottish society away from crisis Britain. A new vision of a new nation will need to be built - or things will move backwards in the most radical part of the UK.

In Wales, as of the Spring of 2016, and in all subsequent polls, immigration was seen as the main issue facing Britain. - and remains so. It leads all other questions, including the economy or health by a large margin. This is despite the actual level of immigration to Wales. According to Stats Wales, net international migration into Wales ran at an average of +3,800 per year for the period 2003-2013, equivalent to around 0.1% increase in the population.

The result, latterly, shown graphically in the reasons given by many Welsh people in their high Brexit vote, is a certain political paralysis in political and in economic campaigns for progressive progress. And it illustrates how the radical developments in NI or Scotland are not automatic in the face of Britain's crisis. The advance by UKIP in Wales and the impact of the racist account of economic and welfare decline has deadened Wales's dynamic potential and frozen one of the most solid foundations of what was the British labour movement. Again, the disastrous hole left for so long in Welsh society by a self-serving, bureaucratic gang of Labour Party place-men and women takes its toll.

Nothing, in Britain's nations, is frozen in aspic. As the western crisis grows, first in politics and then, once more, in economics, so everything will be tested for its future durability and humanity. This review is designed to offer pointers to the current situation - no more. Nothing decisive has yet been lost - or yet achieved. That comes next.

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