UNIONS, DEMOCRACY AND #INDYREF2

The election of brutal Boris's Tory regime against the overwhelming wishes of Scottish voters has triggered debate in the trade unions about Scottish independence; in particular, a second referendum.

The SSP is at the heart of this vital discussion. Since our foundation in 1998, the SSP has not only defended the right of the Scottish people to decide - their democratic right to self-determination - but also positively advocated a vision for an independent socialist Scotland that is planets apart from the future advocated by the SNP. 


The growing inclination of trade unionists to at least support the right to a second referendum  - including many who personally oppose independence - is another hammer-blow to a Scottish Labour Party already under siege after their disastrous 2019 election results.


The opening salvo from the top echelons of the Scottish trade union movement came from outgoing STUC general secretary, Grahame Smith, who in December appealed to Scottish Labour to recognise the right of the Scottish people to IndyRef2. 

After a full debate at the February Scottish Council of branch delegates in Scotland's biggest trade union, Unison, an overwhelming majority (roughly 3:1) voted to "support the call for a second independence referendum, at a time to be determined by the Scottish parliament". This is a momentous breakthrough for democracy, from the largest component of the biggest civic organisation in Scotland, the trade union movement.

Of course, it is not a vote by Unison to actually advocate independence, but it quite rightly stands for Unison members and Scottish workers in general having the opportunity to vote on independence, rather than being denied that choice by a dictatorial Westminster Tory government. 

Unison committed to taking this issue into the wider trade union movement, including at STUC conference.


Subsequently, the Executive Committee of the Bakers' union (BFAWU) voted in favour of a second Scottish independence referendum, correctly using the hashtag #Democracy in their announcement. 

Even under Corbyn, Labour denied Scotland the right to choose

Crises in Scottish Labour 

These union decisions add an explosive new ingredient to the trouble bubbling away inside Scottish Labour. 
For decades, in complete contradiction to the tradition of socialists defending the right to self-determination, Labour set its face against not only Scottish independence but even a people's vote on it. 
The 2017 Labour Manifesto bluntly asserted "Labour opposes a second Scottish referendum. It is unwanted and unnecessary and we will campaign tirelessly to ensure Scotland remains part of the UK" - in a chapter ironically titled 'Extending Democracy'!

In 2019, Labour vacillated from saying they would not allow a second referendum "in the early years of a Labour government" to never allowing it! 


On top of their naked collaboration with the Tories in Better Together in 2014, plus their decades of vicious austerity when in local or national government, this anti-democratic stance contributed to Scottish Labour's dismal results. Until recently the colossus that bestrode all Scottish political office, Scottish Labour can now only win a mere 18% of the vote, returning one unprincipled Blairite to Westminster. 

Labour MSPs Neil Findlay & Monica Lennon support IndyRef2

No wonder senior Labour figures like Monica Lennon and Neil Findlay have come out for the right to a referendum, with some scrambling round for a distinct policy wrapped up in nebulous names like devo-max, federalism and 'radical democracy'. 

Leader Richard Leonard was humiliated by his own Labour Scottish Executive when they chucked out his proposal of a special conference on the issue. 

Scottish Labour are staggering round like headless chickens on the national question, prisoners of their own British unionist dogmatism; at root, their adherence to capitalism and its institutions. 

It will take the potential power of unions and socialists to end their misery and map out a path towards a democratic socialist Scotland that could act as a beacon to the struggles for socialism by workers in neighbouring nations. 

SSP persistently puts a working class case for self-government 

SSP: Workers' Natural Allies 

In taking this brave and democratic stance, Unison and the BFAWU have a ready-made ally in the SSP.

For 21 years since our formation, we have both championed the right to self-determination and persistently campaigned for an independent socialist Scotland. 

A few days after the disastrous election of the Tories in December, I wrote to all unions in Scotland on behalf of the SSP, proposing an STUC-led demo "in the earlier part of 2020" against a Tory government "with absolutely no democratic mandate to rule and ruin Scotland".

In our letter to Scotland's unions, we advocated several reasons for a demo: solidarity with workers in struggle; defence of workers' rights, of the NHS, of migrants and indigenous workers alike from the vicious racism and division incited by government and media. But the final suggested theme of a union-led Demo was to "defend the right of the Scottish people to decide their own future (regardless of your view on independence) instead of having it imposed by a Tory government the Scottish majority haven't voted for since 1955." 

In articles in The National newspaper and Scottish Socialist Voice, we've made persistent calls on the unions to "defend the right of the Scottish people to choose."

So the SSP warmly welcomes this immensely important, seismic shift in union policy towards the right to self-determination. 

We repeat our appeal to the entire trade union movement to debate this issue amongst their membership, and stand up for the ABC democracy that the unions were in part born to champion: the right to vote! 

Chartists fought for the right to vote 180 years ago

Defending the Right to Vote 

The mid-19th century Chartist movement spearheaded the fight for adult suffrage. Over centuries, trade unionists and socialists suffered persecution and victimisation for battling for the right to vote for the working class, including women. In many nations saddled with military dictatorships, the workers' movement were and are the primary force demanding the freedom to vote. 

But in Britain, 2020, Boris Johnson ruthlessly refuses to countenance a free vote on Scottish independence, terrified after the all-too-close call for the ruling capitalist rich in 2014.

So what are the mass organisations of the working class supposed to do as this reactionary populist blusters his way past the pleas of the elected Scottish parliament for the powers to hold a vote? Ignore the Tories' denial of democracy? Leave all the pleading to a Scottish government whose recent statements make plain they have no bottle for a battle that transcends the rules imposed by the Westminster Tory regime? 

No, the unions have a right and a duty to unite around the elementary, democratic right of the Scottish people to choose, to vote, to determine our own future, rather than be chained like slaves by a Johnson government with no mandate to dictate over Scotland. 

So all unions need to thoroughly debate this democratic demand, and follow in the footsteps of Unison and BFAWU. 

For Independence and Socialism 

But there is a world of difference between upholding the right to vote on independence - which we hope the entire trade union movement can unite and rally around - and actually mustering a working-class, pro-trade union, socialist case for independence. That is precisely what the SSP has done since 1998, including in our unions. 

Unless we convince workers that they won't be swapping decades of brutal Westminster austerity for a further decade of austerity in an independent Scotland - which is the repugnant prospect offered in the SNP government's Sustainable Growth Commission Report - there is not a snowball's chance in Hell of winning a working-class majority for independence.


We need instead to broadcast the vision of a self-governing Scotland with a £12 minimum wage; a Legal Maximum Income initially set at ten times that minimum to help confront inequality; a guaranteed minimum 16-hour week for all who want it; a 4-day week on 5 days' pay; democratic public ownership of energy, construction, transport and banking to combat poverty, housing crises, underemployment and pollution through a Socialist Green New Deal - a clean, green socialist Scotland that treats all its citizens as equals, regardless of their origins. 

PETERLOO MASSACRE,1819: Rise Like Lions!

Two hundred years ago, on 16 August 1819, one of the defining events of working class history in Britain occurred; the Peterloo Massacre. 

A crowd of 60-80,000 working-class men, women and children gathered in St Peter's Fields, near Manchester, demanding radical reforms in the face of rampant political corruption, and ruin and starvation for the people. 

The ruling authorities - magistrates, politicians and military officers, fully endorsed by the UK government - replied with a savagery that profoundly changed the outlook of the masses in the days and years that followed. 

At least 15 were killed and 700 wounded as the cavalry of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry charged, swords drawn, hacking left and right into the crowd, under the orders of magistrates safely ensconced in a nearby mansion, who feared the entirely peaceful, well-disciplined crowd would challenge their economic and political monopoly of power. 

The first to die was two-year-old William Fildes, knocked from his mother's arms as one of the cavalry galloped to St Peter's Fields, intent on helping to put these protesting workers back in their box.

Political corruption remains today - if modified compared to 1819

Corruption and Famine

The demands of the mass rally arose from bitter anger at their treatment by those in power, especially in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, which ended in 1815, and in its wake led to a very brief boom in textile manufacturing, followed by deep and chronic depression. 

Whilst the mill owners and other rising capitalists continued to luxuriate in wealth, mass unemployment, starvation and actual famine stalked the country, including Lancashire, the main centre of textile weaving and spinning. 
The Corn Laws of 1815 exacerbated the conditions of mass starvation, imposing tariffs on foreign grain imports, forcing food prices up and the quality of food down, triggering outbreaks of famine. 

Rotten Boroughs

Propping up the inequality and mass hunger was a political system stinking of the worst corruption.  

Voting rights were restricted to adult male owners of freehold land above a threshold rental value. This tiny, narrow franchise - part of the shoddy compromise between the landowning and capitalist classes in the decades after the English Civil War - totally excluded the wealth producers, the working class, those rightly described by many historians as "the manufacturing class". 

For instance, Manchester and surrounding towns had a population of a million, but the whole county of Lancashire had just two MPs, returned by a tiny handful of the propertied class. 

Of 515 MPs across England and Wales, 351 were sent to 'the Mother of Parliaments' by a minuscule 177 rich individuals - and every single one of Scotland's 45 MPs relied on the same system of patronage. 

In at least two separate seats, two MPs (in each) were elected in a 'rotten borough' by one, single, solitary voter! So twice as many MPs as voters! 

Next time you get a lecture from a Tory, or employer, or lickspittle defender of the wonders of capitalist democracy, it might be worth acquainting them with this slice of rotten, corrupt reality. 

Peaceful Demands for Democracy

The 60-80,000 who assembled, after marching in well-drilled formation from neighbouring towns and districts, carried banners with slogans like Universal Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, No Corn Law, Liberty and Fraternity, Unity and Strength. 

They were entirely peaceful, but put the fear of rebellion into the corrupt, cankered hearts of the rich and their magisterial agents. They amassed troops from Special Constables and several cavalries, thousands of armed men in total. 

"The Tory party in arms" feared revolution and assaulted peaceful meeting 

Business Mafia on Horseback!

These sabre-wielding militias were enlisted from the class of tradespeople, shopkeepers and especially publicans, described at the time by one local newspaper as "the fawning dependents of the great, with a few fools, who imagine they acquire considerable importance wearing regimentals." 

More recent historians have described them more succinctly: "The local business mafia on horseback", or, in another case, "Young members of the Tory party in arms."

Next time you're assured British democracy is a God-given blessing we should be grateful for, it's worth remembering the struggles and martyrdom workers went through to even win the elementary right to vote every few years - and the armed savagery in opposition to basic democracy of "the Tory party in arms", the "business mafia on horseback". 

From Peterloo to Chartism

The horror and outrage at the massacre in St Peter's Fields - dubbed the Peterloo Massacre in bitter ironic reference to the Battle of Waterloo, just four years earlier - spread beyond Lancashire to the whole country. 

But it met with an escalated bout of repression, including the arrest and prolonged imprisonment of those who organised and spoke at the Peterloo rally, such as the radical orator, Henry Hunt. He was slapped in jail for 30 months. Workers were sacked, leaving their children to starve, for merely attending the rally. 

But repression cannot hold down the working class indefinitely. Henry Hunt contributed to a new force in the decades after Peterloo, the Chartist movement, Britain's first working class political party. 

Gradually, through mighty battles, general strikes and attempted insurrections included, this movement squeezed incremental reforms on the right to vote from a capitalist ruling class that fought brutally to retain a monopoly not just of economic but also political power. It took over a century after Peterloo to win full suffrage for the working class, for women as well as men. 

Democracy Today - a Good Idea!

Today, of course, we live in a very different world - in some respects! 

Past generations fought and suffered to win the limited democratic rights of today. The demands for universal suffrage and vote by (secret) ballot have been conquered, at a high price for earlier generations of fighters. 

But unless we win economic democracy there can never be full-blown political democracy.  

Two hundred years on, we may not be suffering famine in this country - but that's the cruel fate of millions in the global South, and here in the fifth-richest economy on earth, we have mass reliance on food banks. It's sobering to register that one of the causes of this is the fact real wages have declined more and for longer in the last ten years than in any decade since Peterloo! 


We may have the right to assembly - so long as the ruling powers deem it safe to allow us to exercise that right. Police assaults on striking miners' demonstrations in 1984/5 were a harsh reminder of the limitations of even that right, so long as we have a capitalist  minority in ownership of the main centres of wealth. Likewise, their kettling of anti-capitalist protesters on numerous occasions since. 

Orgreave: Capitalist state was mobilised to smash miners' union 

Workers in Chains - Still!

The (anti)Combination Acts passed 20 years before Peterloo were torn to shreds by mass workers' resistance, but the whole array of anti-union laws - introduced by Tory governments, retained by Labour governments - still make this one of the most repressive countries in the developed world. 

The rights fought for by the pioneers at Peterloo and in the Chartists are still often denied to workers, such as the growing number of employers who refuse to permit let alone recognise and negotiate with workers' collective trade unions. 


We may have the right to vote in this country,  but we don't really have the right to decide.

The working class majority population are still dictated to by a few capitalist monopolies: a few big banks; the Big Six energy companies; private shipyard owners who throw skilled dedicated workers on the scrapheap; one-man capitalist dictators like Jim Ratcliffe of INEOS who threaten to shut down the whole Grangemouth plant and hold the Scottish government to ransom; Jeff Bezos of Amazon, or the Walton family (ASDA owners) who threaten workers with the sack if they don't surrender to their dictats, and likewise instruct governments on what they must do, even when it subverts the will of those who elected the governments.

Break the Chains!

In saluting and honouring our dead and maimed predecessors at Peterloo and elsewhere, we should redouble our determination to fully achieve real democracy. 
Including workplace democracy, economic democracy, as well as an end to political rule by a rich, powerful elite. 

We need to relentlessly expose the corruption and inherent exploitation and inequality of capitalist rule. We need to paint a picture of a socialist democracy, where those who produce the wealth of goods and services also collectively own and control that wealth, taking concrete steps to eradicate poverty and inequality. And use that vision to inspire others to rise like lions. 


As a modest contribution to that effort, I wrote the book, Break the Chains. It strives to arm activists with arguments for socialist change, and elaborate the case behind a whole package of 21st century policies that would transform the lives of millions.

Introduction to Break the Chains

I quite consciously referenced the Peterloo Massacre in the Introduction to Break the Chains - and just as consciously quoted Percy Bysshe Shelley's inspirational poem, written in anger at the Massacre.  

In Shelley's phrase, the working class still, 200 years later, need to "Rise, like lions after slumber/In unvanguishable number!" 
Never forgetting that - even more so than in the world of 1819 - "Ye are many - they are few." 

Copies of Break the Chains available HERE