Scottish referendum result - 18 September and 3 new saws

1.  The pattern of yes votes did not conform to the SNP's main bases of electoral support. The biggest yes votes came in areas most associated with traditional Labour; Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, Dundee etc. Previous elections were therefore not a guide to who voted for independence in Scotland. It was working class areas that wanted the most radical solution available and on offer to deal with their problems.

2.  Besides the historical myriad of fissures in the left, there was a new and major split. Virtually all of the official movement backed a vote for the union. Most of the trade unions (with the honourable exception of the RMT who held a ballot among their scottish members) the Labour Party and the Communist Party argued that a yes vote would divide the british working class. In the event, their claim was rejected and contradicted in practice by a million or so Scottish working class people. The official movement's leadership was unable to lead a large section of the class that they purport to represent in Scotland. They became the sectarians.

3.  The referendum campaign has turned the independence issue into a class issue. The genie will not go back into the bottle. (See blogs from 8 & 14/9.) The national question is no longer 'a dangerous diversion' but will be picked up again by the Scottish working class as the new 'powers' granted to Holyrood do nothing to reduce poverty, to reign in inequality, to remove Trident or to save the health service. The reaction of the national and international 'markets' to Scotland's no vote were not a result of their relief that we still had 'class unity' in the UK. The response of big Capital was a gut reaction to the continued unity of the British state which they had (correctly) seen as the main issue in the referendum. 

It is also of note that Cameron echoed Salmond's own words in his speech commenting on last night's vote. He said the issue of independence was settled 'for a generation.' Unlikely. As austerity conditions bite deeper courtesy of whichever combination of the mainstream parties occupy the House of Commons from May 2015, so the Scottish working class will demand a rerun. They will seek whatever instruments they feel are available to resist. And they will remember the mass movement that was built and the possibilities for deep and rapid change that they had felt were in their grasp. It is also clear that the SNP, as well as the traditional British labour movement chiefs, have barred themselves from leading such a struggle and so another leadership will need to be built.  

Best wishes from England, for the Scot's own future.

Scotland's vote happens tomorrow. A rare moment of genuine democracy in Britain. The vote will not just determine the future of the Scots but effect everybody in Britain.

In Scotland the vote opens the door to a different sort of democracy where the millions mobilised by the independence debate can go onto discuss and argue about what sort of country they want and need. And an enormous favour would have been done for rest of us if the Scots vote yes because at one (peaceful) blow England, Wales and the bit of Ireland still ruled by Westminister will cease to be the puffed up, over stretched, US side kick its rulers have made its identity since the end of Empire. 

Instead a medium sized country will need to deal with the parasitical, overblown City of London and reorganise a properly balanced economy - based in the first instance on the sort of state investment that was made instantly available to the banks in 2008/9. It could cut back on its inflated, embarrasing pretensions, at the UN security council, in the 'chambers of Europe', at the G8 and in NATO's nuclear club. At a stroke the 'terrorist threat' would disappear as the remains of the UK withdrew its sorely used soldiery from countries whose people did not want us there. The rest of the UK would become free from the remnants of empire. And then we could work out, as the Scots would be able to do, how to look after all of our population properly and how to be helpful and friendly neighbours. 

Gordon's big lie

Gordon Brown argues that the UK is better for Scots than independence because 63 million people sharing their resources according to need is better than only 5 million. He points to greater funds for the Scottish NHS and Scottish pensions because their need is greater than other areas across the UK - only available because the Scots are in the UK.

This argument is a rank lie and Brown knows it. He bailed out the banks. He was the first to give the banks the £3 trillion that they ended up with, courtesy of the UK taxpayer. 

Brown knows that the issue for Scotland, indeed for Britain and the West as a whole, is not how state funding is distributed between welfare priorities and between different areas, regions and, as in the case of the UK, countries. It is how state funding as a whole is raised and who it is raised from and then it is about what the priorities for state spending are. 

Brown knows full well that the diminishing budget for health, education and welfare is unevenly distributed across Britain - but not according to need rather mainly according to political priorities. He also knows that the costs of his bail out of the banks are being paid from the health and welfare budgets, especially in frozen wages, and that there is an enormous shift underway of wealth from those who work for their living and the main beneficiaries of his bank bail-out, the super rich. 

Tomorrow 5 million Scots have the opportunity to break away from Brown's vicious circle and start something different. 

And after the 18th?

Previous blogs (besides, perhaps nostalgically?, renaming Gordon Brown as George Brown - another entirely different but equally dismal Labour figure) have pointed out that a major and unique popular movement has been built in the struggle for independence in Scotland and that It is inevitable that this movement will continue in some form beyond the vote on the 18th. It will characterise politics in Scotland for some time to come. 

Voting will be close. Huge numbers of Scots will vote and that fact is of tremendous significance for what happens next.

Should Scotland vote yes, then a mass movement will be needed more than ever to help remove the obstacles to real independence, to real equality and to real security. The negotiations with Westminster will be like peace talks in the middle of a battle. Moving Trident will take enormous resources that Westminster will insist that Scotland pays. Struggles will need to take place against punitive price hikes, big business blackmail and EU and US recalcitrance. The terrible (and deliberate) mistake of the Obama machine, to demobilise the huge groundswell of support and community action immediately following his electoral victory, predetermined the paralysis of his regime and his inability to remove the Congressional obstacles to all and any reform. If the vote is yes in Scotland, the movement, with its first task of rising to the leadership of the whole nation, is utterly indispensable for progress towards true justice to continue and be consolidated.

Should the majority vote no, then the movement for change, equality and self determination, the yes campaign, has to force 'devo max' as far as it will go and be ready, at the first signs that Scotland is being bent yet again in an undemocratic direction by a Westminster government, to raise the banner of independence immediately. It is complete hogwash that the September 18 vote has to be a final decision that, for the next 300 years, guarantees union. While it is true that independence needs decades to finally show its merit, being as it is, the beginning of the process (as all pro independence leaders now loudly claim) on the other hand the Scots have already seen 300 years of union within the UK. A vote for independence is the start of a new period that will need time to flower. Staying in the union is just a continuation of current and historical experience, of Westminster politics and City of London economics, an experience that goes deep and is very well known throughout Scotland.

Yet, what's this? The Westminster parties are all promising real change in the direction of Scotland's needs in the event of a no vote. It is their main prize offered to Scotland's no voters. There will be change, they say! And because of previous disappointments with such promises made in the past (Thatcher said her regime would be better for Scotland than devolution in 1979, when a majority voted yes, which was a lie worthy of Goebbels) this time change will come in months! That at least is Gordon Brown's claim. Well, so be it. That is certainly something that can be judged, even dismissing Brown's fantasies, in a matter of years and does not require decades, let alone centuries. The assessment of whether Westminster has delivered the change they have promised needs to be made by the people of Scotland. And such accountability requires the maintenance of a movement of the people testing whether they are advancing towards equality, good living standards and security. It will become very clear, very quickly. And if it turns into another piece of baloney as some might suspect, then Scotland will need a new referendum as quickly as possible. 

Germany comes to the rescue

When was the last time that the British political establishment welcomed major economic advice from Germany over what it claims to be its own affairs? The most recent information we have about PM Cameron's views of any German role in the Scottish independence debate is from today's Glasgow Herald's article which states that 'it emerged at a private meeting earlier this week that Mr Cameron issued what one (attender) described as 'a call to arms' evoking the defeat of Hitler as he addressed more than 100 business leaders.'

But things have changed. Today Germany stands for austerity (in other EU countries) and a strong euro (for German exports.) And it is the fear that anti-austerity, not to mention an attack on inequality, that could emerge from an independent Scotland, that gives rise to the recent comments from Berlin. We can be sure that Cameron was consulted, even that he perhaps initiated the most recent intervention from Germany into Scottish and Britsh history. 

In the Deutsche Bank report, David Folkerts-Landau, the bank's chief economist, said;  'a Yes vote for Scottish independence on Thursday would go down in history as a political and economic mistake as large as Winston Churchill's decision in 1925 to return the pound to the Gold Standard or the failure of the Federal Reserve to provide sufficient liquidity to the US banking system, which we now know brought on the Great Depression in the US.

These decisions, well-intentioned as they were, contributed to years of depression and suffering and could have been avoided had alternative decisions been taken.' 

Indeed the depression in Germany provided a major impulse to Nazi progress. Vote No in Scotland ... to defeat Hitler, twice! 

This would all be laughable if it were not tragic. It is worth noting however just how important for both main classes in society that real votes can be. And how our rulers call on aid from all their allies when substantial questions are at stake, tossing aside their own 'principles' of sovreignty and democracy. It is for the Scottish people to decide, the main party leaders clamour, while building their now international avalanche of fear designed to choke off hope and self determination in Scotland. How different all this is to Britain's general elections in the last 35 years, where precisely no issues of who has the wealth and who has the power have been addressed as the big party consensus on austerity has become embedded as a poisonous type of common sense. Yet how remarkable is the courage of those Scots, still standing firm against the ruling class sunami. Half the nation hold out. All they have is their own intelligence, their own resolution and their support of each other. They are truly a potentially great leadership for a new nation. 

Nick Robinson, BBC political editor, exposes Cameron

Ex chair of the young Tories, now BBC political editor, Nick Robinson, told us all yesterday that it was PM Cameron that had recently mobilised supermarket chiefs to claim the prices would rise in an independent Scotland. This is a small item in the absolute barrage now underway as Britain's rulers try to weaken the resolve of Scotland's pro-independence voters. 

The barrage appears to be having some effect. The politics of fear often work initially - look at post 9/11 USA. But Scotland is at the end of a two year debate. It has politicised a whole nation. The quality of the discussion is higher than at any time anywhere in Britain since the centres of the miner's strike in 1984/5 and before that, 1945/7, across the whole of the British population as it struggled to create a new country, free of fascism and the insecurities of the 1930s. The seed is well planted. Millions in Scotland have a good idea of the conniving, self-seeking and cynical character of the current British political establishment. And they have renewed hope; for a better life, for a better country and they want to do something that really means something. Like all huge offensives, the current onslaught is meant to terrorise, to paralyse, to reverse the advances that the Scots have made. But there will be a fight. The people of Scotland will resist. Whatever the outcome - a movement has been built.  These are moments at the pinnacles of real human history. 

So Robertson's revelation simply confirms what millions already know. If you want and need change you will be fought to the end by those who hold power; you will need to face the fears they try to create; you will need to assert your right to your own destiny.