The SNP government's
declaration of a second Referendum, including its timing - and the brutal,
dictatorial response of unelected Tory Prime Minister, Theresa May - has framed
the whole debate about independence around EU membership and Brexit.
As the Scottish Greens,
rightly, help the SNP vote for Indy Ref2 in the Scottish parliament, they both
- wrongly - make Brexit and membership of the EU and its Single Market the
centrepiece of the case for Scottish independence.
Socialists unequivocally support
Scottish independence - but not as a means of making life more comfortable,
more obscenely profitable for the capitalist elite, whether home-grown or
multinational.
We want to win independence as a means to end Tory dictatorship
from Westminster, on behalf of the bankers and billionaires, wielding the
butchers' knife to public services, pay, job security, rights at work, and our
civil rights.
The SSP's call for an
independent socialist Scotland is an inspiring goal that would transform the
lives of the working class majority of the population, from the cradle to the
grave. Independence would empower a Scottish government – provided it was a
government with the principles, policies and political will to confront the
capitalist powers at home and abroad – to redistribute wealth and power from
top to bottom.
That also makes the case for
a socialist Scotland an indispensable weapon of persuasion in the battle for
self-rule. Without that message being heard loud and clear, working class
people won't be inspired to vote for change, and could be thereby imprisoned in
at least another decade of Tory savagery, especially given the enfeebled,
war-torn state of Labour.
Separate Fight for Indy from the
EU
Socialists and trade
unionists need to wrestle the case for independence away from being about
membership of capitalist Brexit Britain or the capitalist EU.
It's true enough indeed that
the 62% Remain vote in Scotland being ignored by the Blue Brexiteers adds to
the case for the Scottish people being empowered to make their own decisions,
through independence. But that alone will never win independence; for starters,
calling on the 400,000 pro-Indy voters who chose Leave to now vote for
independence so Scotland can Remain in the EU is utterly divisive and
counterproductive.
I strongly believe we need to
demand two key things alongside describing the transformational vision of what
could be achieved in an independent socialist Scotland, to decouple the case
for Indy from the divisive, confusing issue of the EU.
Firstly, call for a separate
decision on an independent Scotland's relationship to the EU to be fully
debated in democratic forums AFTER winning independence, including a
post-independence Referendum on the options then available.
And secondly, here and now
broadcast that we want an independent socialist Scotland to help forge
cooperation between equals, on the basis of an alliance of socialist
democracies across Europe - instead of either the Blue Brexiteers' capitalist,
isolationist hell-house, or the EU of brutal big business interests.
Tell the Truth - about Brexit
In fighting to convince a
majority of working class people to vote Yes, we need to tell the truth -
including on what needs to be done to defend and vastly enhance workers'
rights, at work and in their communities.
Those who imagined a Brexit
vote would turbocharge a wave of united workers' struggle against the Tories
and capitalist bosses are indulging in a dystopian version of La La Land.
Whilst for many the Leave vote was a raging against years of neglect by the
capitalist machine, the Brexit outcome has sown even more confusion and
division, including the scapegoating of migrant workers, and handed the Tories
an unexpected golden opportunity to bludgeon to death the flimsy rights workers
cling onto. If we let them away with it!
Tell the Truth - about the
EU
But when the SNP and Scottish
Greens advocate the gushing glories of Scotland keeping its place in the EU,
they are at bottom advocating a continuation of the capitalist Age of
Austerity, and the interlinked attacks on workers' rights.
Whilst most ordinary people
who voted to Remain in the EU did so for honourable, internationalist ideals –
and in rejection of the axe-wielding, service-slashing, pay-cutting Tories,
plus the ugly racism of Farage, Boris Johnston and their Leave leadership -
many also shared the SSP's view that it was the lesser of two evil choices in
the binary EU Referendum.
One of the key tasks of
socialists, including in our workplaces and unions, is to unmask the debilitating,
demobilizing nonsense peddled not only by the SNP and Greens, but especially
(and more importantly) by most trade union leaders, that membership of the EU
is the road to salvation for workers' rights.
Struggle is the only
Guarantee
Our fundamental message needs
to be that united, collective struggles by workers is what's won the
all-too-limited rights we have; not some benign handouts from the EU and its
ruling, unelected executive, the European Commission (the selected heads of 28
Member states).
And whether in or out of the
EU, it will require massive resistance and action by workers and their
organizations to halt and reverse the tide of assaults on our rights and
conditions. Just as we need to hoist high the case for a Scotland run by its
working class majority, a socialist Scottish republic, so too we need to
enhance people's understanding that class-based struggle is the only guarantee
of decent wages, workplace conditions, equality, humane public services,
environmental protection...
Evolution of the capitalist
EU
Space prevents a full
description, but suffice to say in an earlier period of the EU, particularly
from the late-1980s - some progressive regulations were issued, encapsulated in
the term 'Social Chapter'. But the EU never pretended to be a socialist institution;
it preferred the term 'Social Market' - the model of post-War Germany, with
some limited state regulations over the excesses of the capitalist market.
Social Chapter - a Passing Phase
Compared to the
red-in-tooth-and-claw savagery of Maggie Thatcher’s monetarists of the 1980s,
EU President of the time, Jacques Delors, won rapturous applause at the 1988
TUC conference, for his promises of what became the Social Chapter at the
following year’s Strasbourg Summit. What Delors carefully concealed, of course,
to the assembled TUC delegates, was his role – as its Finance Minister - in
helping the ‘Socialist’ Mitterand government of France abandon all the promised
reforms that had enthused millions in the previous elections.
In the face of subsequent
defeats at the hands of Thatcher’s civil war against workers’ rights and
livelihoods, culminating in the defeat of the 1984/5 miners’ strike, a big
majority of union leaders sheltered behind the mildly progressive rules and
Directives issuing from the EU Commission in that period. It was a substitute
for giving leadership in struggle. It ran in tandem with their constant refrain
during the 13 wasted years of Tory rule: “Wait for a Labour government”. It was
one feature of the defeatist, class-collaborationist philosophy of far too many
union leaders at the time – which aided and abetted the biggest wealth
transfusion to the rich from the rest of us over 30 years of them discouraging
a more combative course by workers.
As the crisis of capitalism
intensified, the EU’s phase described as the Social Chapter died; morphed from
being a sweetener to bitter pills, to being the poison of austerity and
deregulation of the market itself; from being a partial shield from Thatcherism
in Britain to being a vehicle for the spread of ‘Thatcherism’ across the EU.
The EU's lifelong adherence
to the interests of monopoly capitalism has increasingly meant the Commission,
European Central Bank, and European Court Justice have helped national
governments enforce vicious austerity, particularly since the 2008 bankers' crisis.
European Decency Threshold
Downgraded
A few examples illustrate the
general trends, and the central lesson that we need to rely on working class
struggle, not the EU, to resist the savagery of the capitalist class and their
pliant politicians.
In the past, the European
Decency Threshold, which called for the national minimum wage in each EU
country to match 68% of the national average wage, was a very useful weapon in
the hands of those of us fighting against the growing theft of wages for profit.
But it was only ever an aspiration, not legally enforceable on each state's
government. And as social democratic parties and governments converged with the
traditional conservatives in unabashed defence of capitalism - as in New Labour
- the EU reflected this and drastically downgraded the Decency Threshold,
rendering it almost useless in the fight for a decent living wage here or
abroad.
Workers Won Reforms, not EU
bosses
Many of the positive rights
attributed to the EU by its zealous advocates are either the product of class
struggles by workers in one or more EU state, or actually have nothing
whatsoever to do with the EU!
When the TUC General
Secretary, Frances O'Grady, last year wrote that "It's the EU that guarantees workers paid holidays, parental leave
and equal treatment of part timers" - a claim repeated almost verbatim
by Jeremy Corbyn, who added "equal pay" to the list - they were at
best misleading workers.
Dangerously misleading, in a fashion almost designed
to make workers rely on the benign EU Commissioners rather than defend our
rights and conditions through the organised trade unions and their
allies.
Nothing to do with the EU!
Entitlements to paid holidays
vastly predate the very existence of the EU, or even its EEC predecessor.
French workers won guaranteed annual paid leave of 12 days back in 1936, when
they forced the elected Left Front government to take action by occupying the
factories and striking!
Trade union struggles in the
UK won the Holidays Pay Act in 1938.
And even today, organised
union pressure has meant UK workers are guaranteed 5.6 weeks paid holidays,
well better than the 4 weeks the EU demands.
Equal Pay
Equal pay - still
disgracefully denied to millions of women in practice - was legislated for in
the UK in 1970, well before Britain even joined the Common Market/EEC, in 1973.
And the Equal Pay Act was forced upon the British government by the
ground-breaking strike action of women workers in Fords Dagenham plant in 1968.
Furthermore, the same women had to launch a more prolonged strike years after
the Act was passed, to actually get the equal pay it promised!
So whilst anti-discrimination
Directives from the EU are welcome, they merely reaffirmed what was won on the
picket lines and workers' demonstrations.
The EU Directives guarantee 14
weeks paid maternity leave; decades of campaigning has won the concession of 37
weeks here.
Health and Safety laws in
Scotland are based on the 1974 Act that was conceded on the wave of industrial
struggles that overthrew Ted Heath's Tory government in February 1974; it was
not a generous handout from either British capitalists nor their EU
co-thinkers.
Some EU Regulations, like the
Working Time Directives, acted as a dented, limited shield in the face of
savage attacks by Thatcher's, and subsequently Blair's governments. In terms of
capping compulsory hours of work at 48 and insisting on guaranteed minimum
break times during and between shifts, they are welcome reforms.
But all along the British
government insisted on opt-out clauses, and can do so entirely legally, within
the framework of EU regulations and rulings. For instance, the Tories'
railroading laws to remove doctors and nurses from the 48-hour limit underlay
the Junior Doctors' strike last year. And all workers in Scotland can 'choose'
- often under 'subtle' duress from employers - to waive that right anyway,
fuelling the life-threatening long hours culture we are cursed by.
Capitalists Pick and
Choose
The positive EU measures are
often ferociously resisted and bypassed by the Westminster club of capitalist
politicians, but the equally numerous anti-working class EU Directives and
regulations are eagerly seized upon to back up their drive to privatize, slash
public expenditure and make workers pay for a capitalist crisis caused by
bankers and the profit system.
And in the case of Scotland,
these EU Directives have been frequently used as an excuse for inaction, or
regressive measures, by the SNP government. We shouldn't forget that as an
added reason to decouple the case for Scottish independence from the SNP's
advocacy of the EU as a land of milk and honey.
Strangling Public
Spending
For decades, and increasingly
in recent years, the EU has framed laws to aid the privateers and the help
enforce the capitalists' chosen path of austerity.
The EU Stability and Growth
Pact prohibits government budget deficits above 3% of GDP, thereby banning
state expenditure to provide jobs, houses and services, reinforcing the
downward spiral of cuts.
A 2008 Directive called for
postal services to be "fully open to
competition by December 2012", adding to the Tory (and Labour) armoury
in shedding the 400-year-old, public sector Royal Mail.
From the EU's First Rail
Directive in 1991, to its more recent Fourth, the EU Commissioners seek to
break up and privatize the entire rail networks of all EU states.
Successive British Tory and Labour governments needed no encouragement from the EU to privatise all and sundry, or apply a scorched earth policy to public services. But they certainly got encouragement, as increasingly anti-working class governments in the member states huddled together in the one and only EU institution with the powers to initiate rules and Directives - the unelected European Commission.
SNP Hide Behind EU
Directives
That's an example of where
the SNP government chooses to comply rather than defy all that's reactionary
and regressive about the EU.
On both the issues of railway
renationalisation and Scotland's ferries, they chose to obey the laws of the
capitalist market, including its EU bureaucracy, and hide behind them instead
of proceeding to implement the oft-expressed wishes of the overwhelming
majority of Scottish people by taking the entire transport system into public,
democratic ownership.
It was only after strike
action and legal challenges by the RMT union that the SNP government conceded
on keeping some of the ferries in the public sector, and retreated on
implementing their contract clause for ScotRail that insists on driver only
trains - in itself the product of their refusal to nationalise the railways,
regardless of EU rules.
Undermining Wages
Another major weapon used by
employers and national governments in their war on wages is the EU Posted
Workers Directive (PWD). This, and associated ECJ rulings, allows profiteers to
set up shop abroad, or post workers from one EU country to another branch of
their operations, to undermine wage rates.
In its actual wording, the EU
PWD states: "Member states shall
guarantee workers posted to their territory the terms and conditions of
employment...which in the member state where the work is carried out...are laid
down by law, regulation or administrative provision."
On the surface, harmless
sounding? On the contrary, it means bosses paying only the national minimum
wage to migrant workers, not the rate for the job negotiated and fought for
through the unions in the host nation.
For instance, last year construction
workers' unions in Rotherham, Yorkshire, waged a battle against a Croatian
subcontractor company hiring Croatian workers to build a power station on £7 an
hour, undercutting the national industry collective agreement rate of £16.64 an
hour. The unions rightly fought to organise the migrant workers and win
equality, the rate for the job, rather than fall prey to the racist division
this Posted Workers Directive inevitably triggers.
Tory Brexiteers Wage Class
War
The Tories are hell-bent on
inciting division during the Brexit process, to ease the path to further crush
workers' rights, public services and wages as a share of national wealth.
It's
no accident their recently-implemented Trade Union Act has taken full effect in
March 2017, with barely a whisper of protest, as the white noise around Brexit
lets rip.
We need to advocate Scottish
independence as the best, quickest escape route from Tory dictatorship.
An opening to demand and
enforce a Charter of Workers’ Rights, alongside other key measures like a £10
minimum wage for all at 16 (in 2017 figures); a maximum wage no more than 10
times the minimum to help close the chasm of inequality; the union-negotiated
rate and rights for the job for migrant workers; guaranteed minimum 16-hour
contracts instead of zero hours serfdom; public ownership of all services,
energy, banks and landed estates.
Greek Tragedy
But that's got nothing to do
with false claims that EU membership would gift the Scottish people a secure,
pleasant future.
On the contrary: not only
will that claim drastically undermine the case for independence, but it is
selling a lie to the working class. And underneath it all is the pernicious
message that we don't need to organise in an almighty class struggle for transformational
change, but that we should just rely on benign politicians to hand out workers
and communities rights and services like sweeties issued by kindly
grandparents.
Try telling that tale of 'EU
bosses bearing gifts' to the Greek people, who voted massively against
austerity, and then were told by the EU to slash spending even further, despite
starvation on the streets and hospitals running out of painkillers, and to tax
the poorest as part of a grossly misnamed 'rescue package'.
For an Independent Socialist
Scotland - In a socialist Europe
We need to decouple the
issues of independence and the EU.
For an independent Scotland
that can then proceed to debate and decide its place in Europe and the wider
world after gaining self government.
For an independent socialist
Scotland that could help pioneer collaboration between equals in a future
alliance of socialist democracies across Europe.
Most important of all
perhaps, we need to unmask the demobilizing myth that Scottish people should
rely on the EU and its benign regulations to protect us from capitalist
exploitation.
Anything protective, however
limited and feeble, that the EU calls for is the result of struggle by workers'
organizations, and in any case hedged with umpteen opt-out clauses.
And as the populist right and
hard-faced capitalism holds more and more sway across Europe, the EU act as
thuggish enforcers for the Age of Austerity.
Working class people need to
rely on their own organised strength, demanding all that's best in Europe for
the people of Scotland, and likewise defying all that's worst in the EU
capitalist club.
We need independent workers'
struggle, an independent socialist Scotland, and an alliance of European
socialist democracies to confront and eradicate the crimes of profit against
people.
