RAGE AGAINST THE TORY MACHINE with no Scottish mandate

Angry. Sick. Frightened. Despairing. Utterly bemused. 

Those are a few of the sentiments expressed on this Friday 13th - a day already laden with superstition - by many working class people at the prospects of five more years of Tory rule and all it threatens to the rights and conditions of workers and their communities. 

I'll postpone any attempts at a wider analysis of the root causes of the reactionary,  anti-working class Old Etonian, Boris Johnson, getting away with pretending to be the leader of what he today had the typical, lying audacity to declare "this people's government"! 

For now, suffice to say that although the radical social and economic manifesto of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership won Labour over 10 million votes for only the second time since 2001 - the other time being under Corbyn's leadership in 2017 - this was largely buried beneath the toxic choices and utter confusion whipped up in "the Brexit election". 

Not to mention the vicious, systematic, non-stop lies poured out against Corbyn by the media, including especially the BBC, in the panic of the ruling rich at the potential popularity of his Manifesto amongst the working class, and the expectations of radical change it would arouse. 

Scottish Labour Wipeout 

In the fundamentally different terrain of Scotland (a different world in this Dis-United Kingdom) the virtual elimination of Scottish Labour in a country where they had 50 MPs elected as recently as 1987, is their reward for decades of taking the working class for granted, using them as voting fodder. 

Infamously 'weighing' the Labour votes, only to preside over cuts and corruption in Labour-run councils; sending in the Sheriff Officers and issuing wage arrestments as they implemented Maggie Thatcher's hated poll tax; getting into bed with the Tories in the 2012-14 Better Together campaign against the right of self government for the Scottish people. 

And then compounding that undemocratic, myopic position with their current refusal to even grant a second independence referendum, let alone put a socialist stamp on the case for independence, as the SSP has persistently done since 1998, with our championing of an independent socialist Scotland.  

Labour Right on Rampage 

Those are the core reasons Labour has been wiped out, not Corbyn's radical manifesto, as a chorus of treacherous Blairites in his own party lined up to claim throughout election night, from within five minutes of the polling stations closing, in a blatantly orchestrated assault, using the identical, spurious arguments in the opening moves to drag Labour back into being an unashamed, undiluted capitalist party. 

This diatribe against the most radical Labour manifesto in years came after rightwingers spending much of the election campaign undermining Corbyn's efforts to cut through the noise of Brexit  - including a cabal of former Labour MPs taking out paid adverts calling on voters to back the Tories against Corbyn! 

No Tory Mandate in Scotland 

So where does this sorry state of affairs leave the Scottish working class majority? What immediate steps should we advocate? 

The Tories have absolutely no mandate to rule and ruin Scotland. They were roundly rejected at the ballot box. But we can't afford to sit back in mourning for the next five years. Nor can we switch from passively 'waiting for a Labour government' to relying on salvation by 'waiting for an SNP government in 2021'.

We need rapid preparation of resistance to BoJo and his reactionary band. And the biggest single organisation in civic society  - the trade union movement - has a duty to lead that resistance. In a fashion that can heal the toxic divisions between Leave and Remain voters, between the false choices of a capitalist EU or a capitalist Little England/Little Britain.  

Demand Trade Union Demos Against Tories 

The STUC and individual union leaderships should kick off 2020 with thorough preparations in the workplaces to mobilise for mass rallies and demonstrations, in defence of our rights and livelihoods from a Tory onslaught. 

Such rallies should declare and build wider support for workers already in struggle, including the posties, university workers and RMT members. 

They should be held in opposition to the crucifixion of the NHS in Brexit trade deals with Trump's USA, whereby whatever happens to the NHS in England has consequences here. 

Rallies should include demands to defend workplace and union rights, including the right to strike, which is under threat in the Court rulings against the CWU posties' strike, and in the Tory plans to ban the right to all-out strikes on the railways. 

And the STUC and affiliated trade unions should also include at these rallies the demand for the right of the Scottish people to choose their own future, not have it imposed by the Tories we never elected. 

Defy the Tories in Action 

The sweeping majority for the SNP does not just signify a narrow nationalist upsurge. It was in part a harnessing of Remain voters against Brexit, in part a straight forward anti-Boris Johnson vote, enlisted by Nicola Sturgeon's call to "stop Boris" and "lock Boris out of Number 10" by voting SNP.  

That purely electoral strategy has crashed into the roadblock of a massive Tory majority. So the potential power of collective workers' action needs to be harnessed to halt the mayhem that the Tories intend to impose on us. 

Independence and Socialism 

Working people should not stunt their ambitions to merely being voting fodder for the SNP,  instead of for Labour. We need to combine struggles to be free of rule and ruin by Boris Johnson with battles for a vast redistribution of wealth through fighting socialist measures on wages, hours, public services and a socialist Green New Deal to combat poverty and pollution alike. 

During the election, numerous people asked me for advice on how to vote, because they liked Corbyn but didn't trust Scottish Labour; wanted independence but were attracted to Corbyn's manifesto; wanted to vote for independence but dislike the SNP; and combinations of these quandaries. As I said at the time, the first-past-the-post election system is rigged, the media is rigged, so the choices these people wrestled over between radical socialist change and self government is a false choice. 

Build Mass Socialist Party 

The bigger task confronting us is not how to tactically decide on voting between two parties - neither of which is socialist, and one of which is dogmatically opposed to self-government for Scotland; it is to patiently forge a mass, working class socialist party that combines class-struggle politics with the democratic demand for national independence. The SSP's demand for an independent socialist Scotland. 

My appeal in the face of the Tory nightmare, this Friday 13th, is twofold.  

Discuss in your trade unions how to demand action, rallies, demos in the New Year to help defy and defeat the multiple attacks from an emboldened BoJo Tory regime with no democratic mandate in Scotland. 

And to all the genuine socialists who voted either Scottish Labour or SNP, or who indeed are members of either party, to break free from your political imprisonment. 

You don't have to curb your wishes to stand up for the working class or fight for  socialist change just because you want Scottish independence - which is the fate of self-defined socialists in the SNP. 

You don't have to support the right to self-determination for nations across the globe whilst denying that same right here in Scotland, falsely counterposing class issues to national rights - which is the fate of those socialists still in Scottish Labour. 

For both sets of socialists, there's a natural political home in the SSP, who have consistently fought for class-based socialist solutions on the material issues facing millions of workers, whilst advocating national independence as the most realistic route to a clean, green, socialist Scotland. 

The stark divide between the election results in England and Scotland propels the case for Scottish independence to the fore, and socialist policies to transform the lives of millions are the irreplaceable weapons of persuasion required to convince the working class majority of independence. The SSP offers both; join us.

https://membership.scottishsocialistparty.org/join_us/