PUTTING VAMPIRE CAPITALISTS IN CHARGE OF SCOTLAND'S FUTURE??

Contrary to all their warm words about 'valuing trade unions' and 'supporting social partnership', the SNP government appointed a corporate lobbyist (Andrew Wilson) and 23 business representatives to produce the Growth Commission on Scotland's future - but totally excluded the STUC and unions which organise and represent over 630,000 workers.

So it's no wonder the Commission's Report advocates a neo-liberal nightmare of ten more years of low Corporation Tax, low wages, insecure jobs, capped public spending, 'fiscal responsibility' - another decade of savage austerity cuts, in plain English.
This is an offer any self-respecting worker will refuse, in anger and disgust. 

Even compared with the milk-and-water SNP government White Paper - 'Scotland's Future' - published in the run-up to the 2014 Referendum, the Growth Commission Report is a monumental, catastrophic retreat. 
Far from painting a picture of the future that would recommend Scottish self-government to the huge swathes of working class people yet to be persuaded, the multiple threats to the material well-being of the working class at the core of this document couldn't be better designed to dissuade them if it had been written by hardcore Blairite Unionists.

But unless the independence movement wins the hearts and minds of the working class majority, no amount of cosying up to big business and the multinationals will convert the 45% into a majority for Scottish self-government.

When people rightly object to the total exclusion of the trade union movement - Scotland's biggest civic organisation, by far - from constructing a vision for an independent Scotland, we have the bizarre spectacle of Glasgow SNP councillor, Russell Roberston, who defected from Labour in 2016, tweeting that inviting the unions into the Growth Commission would be like "letting Dracula control a blood-bank".
This is a contemptuous insult to workers and their families - which, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to be denounced by the SNP leadership.

Vampires in Charge of Blood Donors' Future!

In fact, it would be more appropriate to point out that asking a neo-liberal corporate lobbyist and his cohort of business interests to frame the future of the working class majority is like letting Dracula shape the fate of the blood donors - given that it's workers who produce the wealth of the economy, only to see it sucked dry for the profits of a tiny handful.

The STUC and affiliated unions should now combine with genuinely pro-trade union parties to devise an entirely different vision of Scotland's future, in stark contrast to the Blairite dystopia from the SNP's Growth Commission. 

One based on secure, well-paid jobs; a minimum wage based on two-thirds male median earnings; a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week instead of casualised labour; progressive taxation to fund jobs, house-building for rent, and other services; democratic public ownership of all public services, transport, energy, banks and big businesses.

That's what we argued back in 2012-14, with many workers persuaded to vote YES by the SSP and Trade Unionists for Independence, because of the vision we presented of a radical socialist change to the society we live in - not a Mini-Me UK capitalism.

That's the kind of Scotland workers need - not a haven for the tax-dodging rich and corporations.