FOR A PRO-INDEPENDENCE, ANTI-CUTS ALLIANCE FOR MAY ELECTIONS

As the SNP conference meets, the media are speculating that proposed changes to the SNP constitution are designed to "reward the wider Yes Scotland movement for its efforts in the referendum campaign by allowing the fast-tracking of activists to be party candidates at next year's General Election", adding this "paves the way for SNP constituencies to approve non-party members to stand as MPs under a different banner, such as Yes for Scotland, in May's poll." (Herald 14 November 2014).

The same article goes on to claim "The SNP has resisted calls from the Greens and Scottish Socialists for a pro-independence pact next year, but [if agreed, this constitutional change] ...would open up the potential for pro-independence campaigners who are not party members to stand under the SNP banner". 

As an aside, I'm personally unaware of whether or not  the Greens have called for such 'a pact'; certainly the SSP has asked them to back a pro-independence alliance for 2015, and we would hope they'd join forces with us in pressing for this with the SNP leadership.

PRESSURE FOR UNITED FRONT IN MAY 

But the SNP's plans reflect the massive pressure from their own ranks, especially those thousands of new recruits who fought alongside the SSP and others for a Yes vote, saw the value of a united front, now favour that being sustained for the Westminster elections, and look to SNP conference to agree it. Another indication of the mood for such a united front is the election of  Stewart Hosie as SNP deputy leader, after he had declared for some such arrangement.

However, and it's a big however, if the Herald has got it right, allowing people "to stand under the SNP banner" is far removed from a genuine alliance or united front. It's an attempt to square the circle; to go it alone as the SNP in the glow of mass recruitment and spectacular opinion polls, whilst trying to appease the demands of (especially new) SNP members for a continuation of the success that was the multi-faceted Yes movement. It wouldn't work! If they intend to suggest SSP or Green party members stand as SNP candidates it's a complete non-starter. 

FOR A GENUINE ALLIANCE TO CONFRONT TORIES AND LABOURIf, more probably, they hope to rope in Yes campaigners with no party affiliation to stand under the SNP banner, that's up to those individuals to decide, but they will have to face up to being held responsible for all that is negative about the SNP, as well as what is positive. In particular their track record on passing down Westminster cuts rather than mounting a mass campaign of resistance, whether at Holyrood, council, college or NHS board levels.

There is a powerful mood to unite in opposition to the Westminster Tory dictatorship and their cuts, and the SSP's call for a pro-independence, anti-cuts alliance for next May's elections matches the hour. 

So we hope the ranks of the SNP respond to our appeal for a genuine alliance of pro-independence, anti-cuts candidates - named as such in every seat - as outlined in the Press Release below that I sent out in the west of Scotland at the weekend.

......................................

PRESS RELEASE: for immediate use (9.11.14)
SSP calls for pro-independence, anti-cuts 'Yes Alliance' for 2015 Westminster elections 

The Scottish Socialist Party is campaigning for a Yes Alliance to contest the Westminster elections next May. This was agreed at the recent SSP national conference.

SSP west of Scotland regional organiser RICHIE VENTON told us:
"The savage cuts to benefits, pay, jobs and people's basic democratic rights announced in the wake of the Referendum has driven increased numbers of Scots to favour independence. And even those still unconvinced of full-scale self-government are strongly in favour of vastly increased powers for Scotland over benefits, taxation and measures to protect Scotland from the Twin Tory Coalition onslaught.

"Many of the same people want to punish Labour for their collaboration with the Tories in blocking independence, leaving us at the tender mercies of Cameron's dictatorship of and for the obscenely rich.

"The SSP is conducting a systematic campaign - in the streets, communities, workplaces and through local public meetings - for powers for the Scottish parliament to transform our lives, including the ability to set a £10 Scottish minimum wage for all at 16; establish a benefits system that supports people instead of demonising them; to ban fracking and take the Big Six energy giants and the green energy sector into democratic public ownership, to banish profiteering and fuel poverty; to repeal all the Thatcherite anti-trade union laws; and to implement progressive taxation of the very rich and big business to fund decent public services. 

"We have these distinctive policies, often radically different from those of the SNP. For that reason alone, we are not prepared to give a blank cheque to the SNP in the 2015 elections. We will not be calling on people to just vote SNP and forget their differences with them on key matters of policy.

"However, we are stepping up our appeal to the SNP, Greens and people of no political party who made up the very successful Yes campaign to sustain that united front in the Westminster elections. That's what our recent SSP national conference agreed unanimously.

"We want a pro-independence, anti-cuts alliance that agrees one candidate in each constituency, to challenge the Tories and Labour, appealing to not only the 45% who voted Yes, but to the No voters who want a radically fairer distribution of wealth and power.

"We believe the beauty of such an alliance is that it would appeal to outraged, disenfranchised Labour voters in a way that the SNP on its own never will, with socialists, greens, SNPers and independents standing as candidates in an agreed allocation of seats.

"And my message to the forthcoming SNP Conference is that they need to recognize the growing support for this idea at grassroots level. For instance, I have spoken at several local Yes groups that support such a multiparty alliance, including many people who have joined the SNP recently.

"The SSP will never drop its commitment to an independent socialist Scotland, but we are eager to reach agreement with others in the interests of resisting Tory attacks on the working class, and of keeping the flames of social justice and independence alight, through a pro-independence, anti-cuts alliance for May 2015."

UNIONS MUST BREAK FROM LABOUR TORIES: stop funding arsonists to torch your home!

On 1st July 2014 I wrote a blog - "Ructions after Referendum" - which included the statement: "The exposé of Labour as open collaborators with the avowed Tory enemy of workers has added immensely to the process of workers unshackling themselves from their old Labour loyalties...After September 18th we are likely to see eruptions, schisms and a haemorraging of members from Labour in Scotland."

Within weeks of the Referendum result - a No majority won primarily through the agency of Labour lies, scaremongering and false vows! - absolute ructions have erupted in Labour, with an intense squeeze on them from the hundreds of thousands of trade unionists who fund their party. 

Workers without a mass party 
The Labour party was founded 120 years ago by pioneering socialists and trade unionists who had seen through the false promises and capitalist ideology of the Liberals, who up until then had enjoyed the loyalty of big swathes of the working class. They sought to build an independent mass party of the working class, a political wing of the trade union movement. 

But that was then! History has turned full circle. Workers entered the 21st century with no mass party to represent and voice their aims, interests and aspirations. Labour's attachment to the UK state, displayed during the Referendum, is an expression of its deeper ideological devotion to capitalism. Since at least the 1990s Labour has transformed into an openly capitalist party, the New Tories.

Labour's shameful record
That was harshly exposed under the spotlight of Labour being in government from 1997-2010. Thirteen years in which Labour retained the most vicious anti-trade union laws in the whole of Europe; announced the slashing of 100,000 civil service jobs; scrapped the 10p tax rate for the lowest paid; implemented rampant privatisation; raided workers' pensions; allowed the worst levels of inequality since 1886, according to Oxfam; and dragged us into the blood-soaked killing fields of Afghanistan and Iraq. 
Not to mention Gordon Brown's boasts of having ended the capitalist cycle of 'boom and bust' being smashed to smithereens by the bankers' crisis of 2008; a crisis which Labour obliged workers to bail out and pay for through subsequent years of austerity.

Make the Break campaign 
Back in January 1999 the SSP launched the 'Make the Break' campaign, appealing to trade unions to end their funding of Labour's New Tories, instead demanding a democratic choice of pro-trade union parties that workers could help fund through their union fees - on top of what individual workers could do by joining the SSP to pursue the goals long since abandoned by Labour. 
Some unions did in subsequent years, but now the time is rotten ripe to 'Make the Break' and help build a mass, working class socialist party. Immeasurably more so than in 1999, especially after the mass politicization of working class people that the Referendum debate produced.

Millions for a party supporting millionaires!
Yet many trade union leaderships persist with Labour affiliation and funding of their own worst enemies. It might be only a few pence a month that each union member gives to Labour (usually without knowing it!) if they're in one of the affiliated unions. But over a period it adds up to £millions of members' hard-earned money going to an outfit that couldn't give a toss about low pay, inequality, workplace victimization or the shackles on workplace rights imposed by successive Tory and Labour governments.
Given their track record, it's obscene to note the level of trade union funding since 2001: Unite has given Labour £41.4million since then; Unison £19.6m; GMB £15.7m; Usdaw £12.29m; CWU £7.6m. And in 2013, the trade unions accounted for 77 per cent of the total funding enjoyed by Labour.
It's time to end this madness. It's equivalent to holding a whip-round at work to buy the fuel to hand over to an arsonist to torch your own home!

Don't resign - organise! 
Thousands of workers in Labour-affiliated unions are in revolt, rightly furious at the treacherous role of Labour in blocking Scottish democracy, the right to rule our own country. And at bottom this is a rebellion against the continued anti-working class policies of capitalist austerity on offer from Labour.
Hundreds in each of several unions have furiously - but foolishly - resigned from their union in disgust at being told to vote No by a leadership that failed to hold democratic debates or votes amongst members first. That includes Usdaw, GMB, CWU. 

Foolishly, because in most cases that leaves them with no alternative union that is recognized by their employer, leaving workers defenceless in the face of exploitation or victimization.
Hundreds have taken the much more constructive and wiser route of staying in the union but withdrawing payment of the political levy to Labour, by filling in exemption forms. And vowing to fight for democracy in their own union. To illustrate the scale of this growing force determined to punish Labour, almost half my own Usdaw branch members have completed these forms in the past few weeks - with more to come! And that includes many who voted No, but feel abandoned and betrayed by Labour.

Life's political
But it's important to avoid the pitfall of believing that "the unions should stay away from politics". That is impossible. Workers' conditions, incomes and rights are determined by political decisions.
Anti-union laws have helped reduce wages to their lowest share of national wealth in 60 years. The pathetic level of the minimum wage - which has become the norm rather than the minimum - needs to be challenged politically. Not with Labour's recent insulting promise of £8 by 2020 - which would barely even match inflation - but with the demand of the SSP for a £10 minimum here and now.
Political decisions on public services, privatisation, fracking, Corporation Tax levels and a multitude of other issues deeply affect our daily lives. Workers need an organised socialist voice and vehicle.

Democratise the unions 

And as hundreds of thousands demonstrated by their participation during the Referendum, we should never leave those decisions to an elite, the 'political class' of career politicians, most of whom have never done a day's work outside the machinery of their own party and parliament.
We need to demand union members' meetings and decision-making Scottish conferences, where as well as pursuing the fight for measures to tackle poverty, inequality and the dictatorship of capital, we can democratically decide which political parties members' fees can contribute to. A multiple choice of pro-trade union parties. That would assist workers in choosing to help construct a mass socialist party that stands up, unashamedly, for the working class against the profits, power and privileges of bankers, billionaires and bosses of big companies.

Murphy's Blairite claptrap

When contender for Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, launched his mission statement with talk of "representing both the prosperous and the poor", he is repeating the nauseous, dishonest claptrap of Blairite New Labour. In reality they represent 'the prosperous', at the expense of 'the poor'.
At their recent Scottish Labour Gala Dinner, these worthies forked out £200 each in the city where people rely on foodbanks for handouts to avoid literal starvation.
They have countered the Tory Coalition's additional £25billion in cuts over two years with their own cuts over three years - of £27billion!

Murphy epitomizes all that is rotten about modern Labour: a capitalist party that tries to disguise its devotion to capitalism with empty sound-bites that try to hide and deny the class realities of society to their working class electorate, whilst cooing messages of reassurance to the City of London spivs and profiteering capitalist class. 

Murphy's former spin doctor, John McTernan, has claimed that the really significant vote in the Referendum wasn't the 53% Yes vote amongst working class Glaswegians, but the 61% No vote in Edinburgh's middle class. He concludes that Labour in Scotland should tack to the right and win over the "aspirational middle classes" as well as its traditional heartland working class. 

Facing both ways

Classic Blairism. But the material basis for this con-trick has melted away with the 2008 banking crisis, which burst the financial bubble that for a short spell in history had deluded not only "the aspirational middle classes" but also sections of workers that things were getting better under New Labour. Based on plastic wealth, credit, that inevitably turned into debt and demolished any temporary feel-good factor in the working class. 

Since then, the class divide has deepened, making it all the more untenable to keep up the pretense of simultaneously 'representing the prosperous and the poor' for any length of time. Something Labour is discovering as their support in working class Scotland plummets at an unprecedented rate. 

SSP upholds principles of the socialist pioneers
Workers and their unions don't have to imprison themselves with a choice of two factions of Thatcherism. They should stop funding their Labour enemy, demand democratic choices and membership control of their unions' political funds - and join the SSP in pursuit of the democratic socialist aims of the labour movement pioneers, often enshrined in their own union rule books.

DEMAND SCOTTISH £10 MINIMUM WAGE: demand the powers to transform our lives

                                                                    

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others", was the memorable satirical line in George Orwell's Animal Farm.
Well the pigs with the biggest snouts in the trough here and now in capitalist Britain would agree. As millions of people work to remain poor, we have a new obscenity on parade: the UK's best-paid boss, Simon Peckham of Melrose engineering investment company, last year 'earned' £31million! 

That means he grabbed 2,238 times as much as the annual wage of a worker on the so-called Living Wage of £7.65 an hour. Put another way, whereas it would take a worker a whole year on £7.65 an hour to earn £13,923, this chief executive only has to spend 49 minutes to get that much.
The mind boggles! And your blood should be boiling, your resolve to fight poverty pay hardened by such examples of the worst levels of inequality ever recorded.

A YEAR'S LIVING WAGE IN 49 MINUTES!
The directors of the top 100 companies in the UK only need spend one single day at work to earn a year's Living Wage; their incomes average £3.195m.
Most companies studiously conceal the facts about the incomes of their top dogs compared to those of the workers they hire to produce their profits. And no wonder! Just one example in retail tells the story they don't want told.
NEXT shops CEO Lord Wolfson last year grabbed a modest £4.6m for himself, which is 459 times as much as the average annual wage of workers in NEXT. They are paid a miserly £6.70 an hour - if they're 'adults'!
And 3 out of every 10 jobs in NEXT are 12 hours a week or less - one of the common causes of crucifying poverty in retail, where profit-crazed employers want workers at their beck and call, with very few guaranteed hours a week, but a reserve army of labour to work additional hours at busier times, without the overheads of holiday and sick pay for longer contracts. And of course many big companies go the whole hog and rely on Zero Hours Contracts, the ultimate in casualised, low-paid labour.

RECOVERY? WHAT RECOVERY?
We are told daily about the economic recovery. "What recovery?" is the universal reply of the army of workers who slave away without the reward of a share of the booming national wealth.
A clutch of charities published figures in March 2014 showing that a devastating 870,000 people in Scotland live below the poverty line. And although it was ancient news for some of us, their Report's most damning indictment of capitalist employers and capitalist politicians was the revelation that over half of those in poverty - 436,000 of us - are in jobs, working to stay poor!
80,000 kids in Scotland in 2014 suffer the hunger, disappointments, and stunted ambitions of growing up in poverty despite having one or more parent in work.
A more recent report confirmed that the root cause of this national scandal is the blindingly obvious: low hourly rates of pay.
372,000 workers in Scotland - 18 per cent of the national workforce - earn below the £7.65 Living Wage, which has been calculated as the bare minimum required for access to a decent life.
93 per cent of these workers are in the private sector: by far the biggest proportions are in retail and hospitality.

TORY CLASS WAR
Throughout the Referendum campaign we in the SSP warned of the horrendous consequences of remaining under the heel of Westminster Tory dictatorship for the working class majority population. We warned a No vote would usher in assaults on pay, benefits and public services on a scale unprecedented. 

But even we underestimated just how swiftly this revenge attack would be unleashed. Within a week of the No vote being achieved by a cocktail of lies, scaremongering and false promises for 'far more powers for Scotland', the Tories launched full-scale class war on workers and working class communities.
The obnoxious George Osborne declared war on benefits - including child benefits, working tax credits, income support and other in-work benefits - robbing an average of £480 a year off a million Scots, ten million across Britain. He further announced plans to rob people under 21 of Housing Benefit, and of all Job Seekers Allowance after six months unemployed.
In shameless contrast the same Cameron-Osborne Tory dictatorship slashed taxes on the rich, awarding the well-off at least £1,900 a year in tax reductions, and even more outrageously announced what Osborne boasts is "the largest reduction in the burden of Corporation Tax in our nation's history." 

CASH PILES STASHED AWAY
Corporation Tax is to slump to 20 per cent next year, the lowest in the G20 richest capitalist nations. That will mean £8billion less in big business taxes in 2016; £8bn less for vital services, job creation or - god forbid! - a decent minimum wage.
And it's not as if the big companies that hire the majority of workers - often on pitiful pay - are in need of a handout. Just the FTSE 100 companies alone have already stashed away a monstrous £53.3billion in what is politely termed 'cash piles'; wealth they refuse to invest in jobs, or modernization of their business, or improved wages. That's close to twice the annual budget of the entire Scottish government, salted away in the vaults of a mere 100 companies, waiting to be added to when they have to pay even less in Corporation Tax next year.

THE HUMAN TOLL
Reams of statistics fail to convey the human misery and insecurity caused by this ocean of poverty pay and rocketing inequality.
People in work are amongst those who have to swallow their pride and traipse to Foodbanks for a handout in this rich, food-exporting nation. People are literally starving whilst those at the top of the pile of wealth gorge themselves shamelessly, grabbing a year's Living Wage in a day, or in 49 minutes in the case of Simon Peckham.
We face another winter where many elderly people will suffer a cruel, avoidable death through hypothermia because they can't afford to eat and heat their homes. Because their pensions are the worst in Europe compared to average wages, whereas the chief executives of the supermarkets and the Big Six energy companies rake in utterly immoral levels of profit and personal perks.

POWERS TO TRANSFORM OUR LIVES
Others have reported the crime of poverty amidst plenty: the point however is to challenge it, fight to banish the root causes, fight fire with fire in the face of the Tories' class warfare.
For most of this year, the SSP campaigned on the streets of the west of Scotland with the slogan "Vote YES for a decent living minimum wage", arguing that independence would open the door to organise and demand such a central anti-poverty measure. We didn't get independence - yet! So now we need to link the battle to banish rock-bottom wages with the debate over what powers are to be granted to the Scottish parliament.
The Smith Commission on this issue speaks of "financial powers". The trade union movement, including the STUC, should join the SSP in demanding that Holyrood must have the powers to set the level of guaranteed minimum wage in Scotland; that's a key financial issue!

LIVING MINIMUM WAGE OF £10
There's a lot of confusion around terms like Minimum Wage and Living Wage. 

The National Minimum Wage is legally enforceable by government legislation - and the vigilance of the trade union movement, to outlaw wage-dodging cowboy employers. But it is set at a pathetic level: £6.50 an hour for over-21s, and the slave-wage £2.71 for Modern Apprentices. It is a recipe for poverty - and brazen profiteering by employers, who are more than happy to let taxpayers subsidise their low pay through Working Tax Credit.
As a reminder of the class-divided society we need to change, if the national minimum wage had kept pace with company chief executives' pay rises since it was introduced in 1999, it would now not be a miserly £6.50, but £18.89 an hour!

CAPITALISTS DON'T VOLUNTEER LIVING WAGES!

The Living Wage is the product of research and laudable campaigning by the Living Wage Foundation, Poverty Alliance and others. It is calculated as the bare minimum required for a basic standard of decent life, currently set at £7.65 an hour.
But it has two fundamental flaws: it is still far too low to match the mounting cost of living, and it is entirely voluntary, relying on the whims and fancies of employers. Employers are under no obligation to pay it; they can volunteer to do so and win 'Living Wage Accreditation' from the SNP government-funded Poverty Alliance/Living Wage campaign. But to highlight the problem, a mere 23 companies in Scotland have signed up so far!

What is needed is a legally enforced national minimum wage, set at a level to guarantee a decent life. A decent, living minimum wage. Which is why since 1998 the SSP has fought for such a minimum to be set at two-thirds male median earnings - about £10 an hour in today's figures. And that £10 an hour was agreed as the national minimum wage demanded by the recent TUC congress in Liverpool - unanimously!

POWERS TO TRANSFORM OUR LIVES
The recent STUC march to 'challenge poverty' needs to be urgently built upon with a systematic campaign in workplaces and on the streets demanding the powers to implement a £10 Scottish minimum wage - for all at 16, with abolition of the lower youth rates, and equal pay for women. Further rallies, demos, pickets of low-paying companies and support for workers who strike for better pay needs to accompany the demands on the Smith Commission.

And alongside that central demand we need a drive for other powers and policies to tackle poverty in 21st century Scotland. Powers to transform our lives. The power to implement a living level of state pension in Scotland, linked to a £10 minimum wage. Full powers over welfare and benefits to reverse the savage assault on the sick, disabled and unemployed by the millionaires' Westminster bootboys. 

SCRAP ANTI-UNION LAWS

And a critical issue is repeal of the battery of anti-trade union laws implemented by Thatcher, retained by 13 years of Labour governments, and made even worse by the current Coalition. Handcuffing workers and their unions was a central strategy in the fundamental redistribution of wealth and power to the rich and big business by successive Tory and Labour regimes. As recent academic reports confirm, inequality in Britain was at its lowest, its least obscene, in the years when 58 per cent of workers were in trade unions and 82 per cent of wages were covered by collective bargaining. Now, by 2012, only 26 per cent are in unions, and a mere 23 per cent of wages are determined by collective bargaining, by the combined efforts of workers banded together through their unions. And the gap between the highest and lowest incomes is the greatest it's ever been since records began.

DON'T PLEAD - ORGANISE!
The link between poverty and the most repressive anti-union laws in the whole of Europe is glaringly obvious. And the position needs to be reversed, if we are serious about banishing the poverty and inequality that scars the face of Scotland.
Likewise, the leaders of the 630,000-member trade unions in Scotland need to face up to a simple truth: begging and cajoling employers for a decent wage doesn't work! There's no excuse for poverty pay, or poverty pensions, or skinflint benefits. There's oceans of wealth surrounding us - but it's in the hands of 'the 1%'.
So those who fought for independence, plus those who didn't, should demand the power to tax the richest minority and big business by Holyrood, to fund decent pay, benefits, pensions and public services.

TAKE SIDES!
The Tories have launched ruthless class war on the rest of us in defense of the rich. That's in their political DNA, so no surprise there.
Labour has joined them at the hip in pursuit of profit for the millionaires and poverty for the millions. It's time the trade union leaders woke up to that reality too, and stopped funding a party that declared their own war on workers with plans for cuts of £27billion by 2017.
And those who have rushed off to join the SNP should pause and ponder some fundamentals: you can't appease the profit-hunger of the multinational corporations - including with pledges of even far lower levels of Corporation Tax than the Tories' 20 per cent - and at the same time hope to banish the crushing poverty of nearly a million Scots. When the rich and their political puppets unleash class warfare, you can't stand in the middle, or take both sides.
The SSP has no hesitation in taking sides with workers, their families, people on benefits and pensions, the millions in open conflict with those in charge of the massive wealth created by nature and generations of working people. Join us in a crusade against poverty and inequality, here and now, as part of the struggle towards an independent socialist Scotland.

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES! NOT ANOTHER WASTED GENERATION!

Those who fought for Scottish independence - the tireless campaigners, the newly politicized mass army of Yes activists, and indeed the Yes voters - have every right to feel gutted at the result. "Gutted" is the word I've had most commonly used by workmates, in text messages and conversations with campaigners on the streest, in the days immediately after the 55% vote against self-rule. "Angry" is another common adjective: anger at the lies and scare stories deployed for over two years to preserve the profits and prestige of the British ruling class and their hired politicians.
But it's important to stand back a pace, ponder the reasons behind the vote, look at what we actually achieved, put it in historical perspective, and above all look at what prospects Scottish independence and socialism face.

FROM 7,229 to 1.6 MILLION!
Back in the 1951 Westminster general election an enormous 81% of Scots voted. But that time round they voted the same direction as the rest of the UK, electing the Tories despite Labour having introduced the NHS and welfare state in the previous term of office. Those advocating Scottish  independence won a grand total of 7,299 votes in the whole of Scotland!
This weekend marks the 16th birthday of the SSP. At the meeting to found this new socialist party to challenge the big business agenda of not only the usual suspects but also Labour and the SNP leadership, we adopted policies on decent wages, reversal of privatisation, extension of public ownehership, equality, against war and Trident, etc - but crowned by the demand for an independent socialist Scotland. Back then this was still very much a minority viewpoint in society.

Fast forward to the Referendum result: not only did the percentage voting for independence far surpass the polls of two years ago, hovering round 25% or so, to reach a magnificent 45% for YES, but more impressive still is the fact 1.6 million voted for democratic self-determination, self-government, a Scottish government with full powers to shape Scotland's future. 

More than the entire poulation on my native N Ireland. An incredible result, considering the mountain of lies, filth and scaremongering these men and women had to climb to see a vision of a better future.
Post-Referendum analyses are a cottage industry, keeping some people in well paid jobs! And the detailed statistics are disputed between various polling organisations and psephologists. But some patterns of the Yes/No vote are indisputable, and confirm the fundamental factors behind the outcome, thereby also setting the context for what we now face and what we should do about it.

CLASS KEY FACTOR
Most fundamental of all truths: class was the key determining factor in the vote. Big working class centre like Glasgow, Dundee, West Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire all voted Yes majorities. Inverclyde almost did too, and North Ayrshire wasn't far off. 
This point is underlined in red by the central paradox: with the partial exception of Dundee, those areas voting Yes are Labour strongholds, whilst big SNP-voting areas voted NO. 

It's an incredible fact that all eight Glasgow constituencies, every one of them with Labour MPs, voted by clear margins for independence. One estimate put it at 37% of Labour voters nationally voting Yes.
Working class conurbations decided they'd had enough of Tory dictatorship via Westminster, enough of their brutal assaults on workers' lives and livelihoods, and voted for a better society. This was not a nationalist movement, but a movement for independence, with progressive social and economic aims at its heart. Something the Labour leadership either never understood, or chose to set their faces against in their devotion to the UK, its imperial pretensions, its capitalist system, and the personal stake the tops of Labour have in its continuation. 

They lack any ideological vision of a different kind of society, having abandoned all pretence of socialism a couple of decades ago, and therefore got into bed with the Tories to defend the capitalist status quo. Labour was the chief obstacle to a Yes vote, but they will also be the chief losers from the No vote!
All those who queued up to register to vote did not do so to keep things as they are! They voted alongside other working class (and many middle class) people to radically improve their lives, for a more equal, less poverty-stricken Scotland.

In stark contrast, the better-heeled middle classes of rural Scotland, Edinburgh, and the leafier suburbs turned out in their multitudes to vote against such change, with over 90% turnouts in many such districts. That included many SNP voters in the likes of the rural North. Many of them swallowed the fear-mongering about loss of security under independence, fearing for their relative personal security. Some are small c- conservatives, resistant to radical change. An exception to this pattern is the Glasgow west end middle classes, more radicalized, aspiring to a fairer society, many of them active in the Yes movement, including the likes of National Collective or even Business for Scotland.

AGE DIFFERENTIAL
Another feature of the voting patterns is age. Whilst exit polls argue over the detailed figures, everyone agrees that younger people voted overwhelmingly Yes, those over 65 overwhelmingly NO. One survey put it at 72% Yes among the youngest voters and 71% No for over-65s. 

It's widely accepted that there was actually a Yes majority among all voters under 55! A remarkable harbinger of the future. 

In the passing I have to condemn scurrilous comments I've seen and heard about "coffin dodgers". It's totally unacceptable to insult older citizens for voting No in their droves, including in the record-breaking numbers of Postal Votes. We need to understand why. At its heart, many pensioners, working class ones in particular, voted No in fear and dread of losing their pensions. With 30% of Scots still having no access to the Internet and therefore social media, they were subjected to a ruthless terror campaign of lies about their pensions being at risk. The fact the Coalition government's own DWP department issued statements as far back as January 2013 saying pensions would be safe and secure under independence - subsequently confirmed by the Coalition's Pensions Minister in May 2014 - didn't stop the Better Together lie machine pounding some of society's most vulnerable with hair-raising threats to the contrary. 

SCARE TACTICS PAID OFF
And the scare tactics were central to winning the No majority, not only amongst pensioners, but also sections of younger workers (as well as the points already made regarding the middle class). Better Together director Blair McDougall has blurted out what we all knew at a Labour party fringe meeting. Scare tactics were necessary to winning, he confessed. 

And one post-Referendum survey, by Brian Ashcroft, identifies three overwhelming reasons why No voters voted No: 47% out of fear and insecurity, 27% due to strong attachment to the UK, and 25% because of the last minute 'Vow' by Labour, Tories and LibDems of 'extra powers' for a devolved Holyrood parliament.
Workers in Defence-related industries were subjected to a Niagra of lies about mass loss of jobs in the event of independence. Workers in all manner of jobs, such as finance, banks, engineering, even sections of the civil service, we subjected to tales of Armageddon by their own chief executives. Or to be more accurate, that was the impression given to them after the mainstream media bosses had turned vague hints of relocating their legal HQs into headlines about the potential slaughter of jobs, something few if any of the bosses had actually threatened.

CAPITALIST TERRORISM
To win 1.6 million votes for independence in the face of ruthless opposition from all the forces of the old, reactionary, corrupt capitalist society is an incredible achievement, and a powerful platform to continue the struggle from. 

Bankers were in cahoots with BBC bosses; supermarket chief executives willingly took orders from Cameron to spread panic; international capitalist politicians like Barack Obama added their tuppence worth; and every single arm of the mainstream print and broadcast media - with the honorable exception of the Sunday Herald in the latter months of the campaign - were enlisted to protect a terrified British ruling class from the loss of Scotland, and all that would signify in loss of profits, natural resources, a parking lot for Trident nuclear weapons and imperialist prestige. 

No wonder Cameron went from panic to smug gloating and childish gossip about the Queen "purring down the phone" when he told her the result. No wonder the FTSE stock market share prices rose after the No vote. Class interests were at the heart of this Referendum.

LABOUR CHIEF OBSTACLE

But as we've written over the past year or more, Labour was the chief obstacle to the Scottish working class majority winning the democratic right to elect our own future governments. Who in the Scottish working class would listen to Cameron and his endangered political species after all? Or to Clegg's Mini Me Tory collaborators? 

The ruling class of the UK desperately needed Labour leaders to exploit their residual roots in the working class to defend the rich from a movement that threatened to go far beyond changing flags or government headquarters to demanding a change to the entire economic amd social system. And the Labour leaders obliged, betraying the working class they have exploited for votes and political office for a century.

One central aspect of this betrayal was the last ditch intervention of Gordon Brown for 'substantial extra powers' provided we voted No. This came on the back of months of pleas to vote No in 2014, vote Labour in 2015, and proceed to a land of milk, honey and 'justice with Labour'.
This then became the infamous VOW, plastered over the front page of the mass readership Daily Record, with Cameon, Clegg and Miliband vowing far more powers for Holyrood provided the Scottish people answered their cooing 'Please don't go' message.
And that ploy played a substantial part in swinging it for NO. The aforementioned Ashcroft survey of No voters identified 'extra powers' as the main persuader for 25% of No voters: that's a massive half a million voters!

THE 'VOW' OF MORE POWERS
But what of the Vow? That is a major short term issue in deliberations on what we need to do in the wake of the Referendum.
The actual pledges from Brown and then all three unionist parties - the Vow - were a mixture of very vague and downright deceitful. 

It promised the permanent existence of the Scottish parliament - which of course Westminster still has the power to defend or disband! 

It promised to defend the Barnett Formula whereby Scotland gets funded above-average per head of population - from taxes the Scots conduct net exports of to Whitehall by £billions every one of the past 35 years! But five days after the No vote the London Times carried a front page announcement of plans to slash the Barnett Formula!

The Vow refers to additional income tax raising powers, control of some welfare (Housing Benefit is most frequently named) and the ability to defend the Scottish NHS from privatisation.

How do they propose to give control of Housing Benefits (HB) to Holyrood if Westminster still has control over rolling out its discredited Universal Credit (UC) which plans to include HB as one element of UC payments? As we wrote many times during the campaign, power over HB was only raised because of the mass revolt over the Bedroom Tax, as a sop from Labour which their partners in unionism and capitalism have now also adopted.

A CUNNING PLOY

The NHS aspect of the Vow was a blatant attempt to neuter the massive impact of the case for voting Yes to defend the NHS from the consequences of cuts and privatisation of the NHS in England. But what is still missing - as far as anyone can tell what is actually, concretely included!-  in these last-minute promises is control over the fundamental purse strings - for instance Corporation Tax on very big businesses. 

Without the ability to raise adeqaute funds for the public purse in Scotland, a Scottish government could soon face the Hobsons Choice of either resorting to some form of privatisation/private investment to shore up the NHS, or use whatever powers over Income Tax granted to then levy higher taxes on the working class and lower middle class. 

In that respect I think the whole scheme behind the Vow is not only a late concession to mass pressure from a panicky ruling class - and in particular their Labour lieutenants - but also a cunning trap. To ensnare Scottish governments into passing on cuts and austerity dictated by Westminster, a devolved government taking the blame for measures they don't have the economic levers to fully combat. A cunning plan, as Baldrick might say!

NO VOTERS' REGRETS - ALREADY!

And within an hour of the Referendum result, Cameron announced a master stroke in his efforts to appease the Tory backwoodsmen, UKIP and the baying mobs of middle class Middle England against any concessions to further Scottish devolution: linking it to English Votes for English Laws (EVEL!). 

In fact this is a powerful democratic argument for Scottish independence! 

But Cameron's ploy forced his Labour bedfellows to get up in arms - in cynical attempts at self preservation. To avoid Labour losing even more working class Scottish voters if their promises are exposed as utterly hollow and false; and to avoid the scenario that even if Labour won in the 2015 Westminster elections (with the help of Scottish votes) they could end up totally undermined and defeated by a Tory majority on English issues. Claim and counterclaim on 'the Vow' has followed, causing hordes of people who voted No to say "I think I did the wrong thing". 

THE POWERS TO TRANSFORM OUR LIVES

So what should we do about it?

There is no doubt the 45% Yes voters are joined by hordes of No voters in expecting and demanding the untrustworthy Westminster politicians carry out their Vow of extra powers for Holyrood. A period of consultation is supposed to happen. As part of helping to sustain the mighty coalition of forces that made up Yes Scotland, RIC, Women for Indy, Trade Unionsists for Indy and numerous other formations, I think we should actively demand something that goes beyond the vague half-promises of the unionist parties - whilst taking account of the fact we've just lost a vote for full independence. 

For example, demand and campaign in the streets, workplaces, colleges, and cyberspace for 'The Powers to Transform our Lives'. Powers including the ability to implement a £10 national minimum wage, as agreed unanimously at the recent TUC conference. Powers to reverse all attacks on welfare and benefits - not just the Bedroom Tax. The powers to tax the very rich and big business precisely to defend our NHS and other services. Amd the power to take the energy companies into public ownership, to combat fuel poverty and pollution. 

Powers that fall short of independence, but would avoid the trap being set by Westminster for Holyrood to implement and take the blame for cuts dictated by Westminster and the class they represent.

PUNISH LABOUR

Labour deserves to be punished for their central role in denying the Scottish people democracy. 

In the trade unions we should help stem the tide of resignations from trade union membership in disgust at union leaders who told members to vote NO, and used members' fees to help finance Better Together and/or United with Labour - without any proper prior debate and vote amongst the members at branch meetings and conferences of Scottish members. 

Instead of leaving the union, leaving yourself defenceless at work and leaving even more control in the hands of undemocratic national officials, we should organise mass withdrawal from payment of members' fees to Labour in those unions affiliated to Labour. Demanding instead that the unions make the break from Labour and help build a mass, working class socialist party.

A YES ALLIANCE FOR 2015

In the 2015 Westminster elections, I personally would support the idea of a Yes Alliance, a pro-independence slate of candidates (whatever the exact name), embracing the three parties that were in Yes Scotland - SNP, SSP and Greens - and others who were part of that coalition. 

I would not endorse the SNP by saying we should all punish Labour by voting SNP - that would be a hostage to fortune, given the track record of the SNP implementing cuts in councils they control, not to mention their policies on cutting big business taxation, or membership of NATO, etc. and the likelihood they will now implement austerity cuts imposed by Westminster cuts in the block grant, stockpiled and deferred rather that defied and defeated by the SNP government.

But just as the SSP played a totally constructive but independent role as the socialist wing of Yes Scotland - uniting in the fight for independence, but retaining the right to put across our own distinctive socialist case for it - so too a continuation of that successful alliance into next May's general election would be one important strand to sustaining the crusade for outright independence, as well as hammering Labour for their treacherous role. And such a multi party alliance could reach voters that the SNP on its own would never win over, given the tribalism of SNP-Labour loyalties.

MAKE 2016 THE ELECTIONS FOR INDY

An even greater prize in the staging posts we can envisage for continuing the struggle for independence and socialism is the 2016 Scottish parliament elections. And they are a mere 18 months away!

All those tens of thousands who fought for a Yes vote could fix their sights on winning an absolute majority of pro-independence MSPs in 2016. 

The SSP, for its part, is not about to disappear! Alongside others we want to make 2016 an independence election, a mandate for self-government. Those, including several SNP leaders, who speak of independence being off the agenda for another generation, or in some cases a lifetime (70 years!), are lowering our expectations unnecessarily. Referenda are but one means of winning independence. The democratic election of a majority of MSPs who favour independence in 2016 - SNP, SSP, Greens, Independents - would surely be equally a mandate for Scottish independence?

That is a quite short term opportunity that can't be spurned by talk of "waiting another generation" in the wake of 18 September 2014. 

MASS POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT

And none of these suggestions are thrown out onto a vacuum. We've commented many a time that the Referendum campaign has been an exercise in mass political education, at an incredible pace, to an incredible level of understanding amongst tens of thousands, in the public meeting halls and workplaces of Scotland. 

An unprecedented number of people are signing up to the three parties that fought for a Yes vote. 

But even on that the mainstream media just can't bring itself round to telling the full story, the truth. They systematically exclude mention of the 2,200 (at time of writing, over a mere five days!) who have applied to join the SSP. The capitalist politicians, and even the faint hearts and wiseacres who wrote the obituaries of the SSP in recent years, have a lot of explaining to do! This is an unprecedented growth rate for any socialist party anywhere in the UK, let alone amongst the smaller nation of Scotland. And these people are politically savvy, whatever age they each are, finding their natural home in the one and only party to have consistently campaigned for an independent socialist Scotland since our birth 16 years ago.

BE PROUD - AND ORGANISED

We should all be immensely proud of the 1.6 million who conquered mountainous obstacles to vote Yes, and also wide open to the hordes of No voters already bitterly regretting having listened to the lie machine. We should be proud and confident of the tens of thousands who will keep up the fight to win self rule - not in 70 years or even 'a generation', but in the foreseeable future. And we should celebrate and embrace the thousands who have said 'The time has come to be an organised socialist, I'm joining the SSP!"

The struggle continues - and our day will come!

A VERY EARLY SHIFT FOR YES/TAK ON D-DAY!

This truly is a day destined for the history books, decision day on Scottish self-rule, potentially the first day of an entirely new chapter in history, with all its repercussions for the might and swagger of British imperialism, and its boost to the demands for independence for the likes of the Catalans - who are staging a vigil in hope of a Yes vote in Scotland!
In some ways it's also like most other days. Up in the pitch black of night to start work at 5am. 
But today, making sure I switch my Yes badge to my clean uniform, and double-checking I've got the bundle of Yes leaflets - one in Polish for Tak, the other with the apt message: 'One opportunity - to end Tory rule forever'. 
The first batch of fellow workers I encounter show all the traits that have been noticeable for a while: the sparkle, enthusiasm, talkativeness and straightforward happiness of spirit of those we've convinced to vote YES over recent months, and in contrast (with a couple of rare exceptions) the quiet, subdued, even sullen silence of those sticking to NO.
It will never stop me standing up for their rights and conditions as their union convener, but the NO voters generally display a lack of confidence in demanding improvements in their lives; the Yes voters seem empowered with vastly raised expectations.

While doing my job, people walk past, stopping to chat or comment on my badge. Many of them go away with a leaflet, a reminder of a core reason for YES. As a group of three pass me I shout 'Yes, Yes, Yes?'. All three reply YES in unison, one adding: "It's not even a question any more". 

Another jokes "You can't be wearing that Yes badge alongside your union badge!" He is referring to Usdaw's affiliation to Better Together, without prior debate among the members and branches. "But I knew you had the bottle to make your own mind up." We then discuss what happened with the Usdaw decision and what members can do about it.

NO WARNS OF ANOTHER UKRAINE!!
A recent recruit to the union describes how he was NO until a few weeks ago, but one of several experiences that changed his mind was a telephone canvass from the NO campaign, somebody up from England.
"I declined to say which way I was voting, repeatedly, and then this guy told me to consider what was happening in Ukraine and our fight against the Nazis. I couldn't believe it. I asked him if he was saying a YES vote would lead to invasions and civil war like Ukraine and Russia, and his reply was 'Stranger things have happened'. That was the end of the call for me!"

A slight majority of the Polish workers I spoke to were going to vote NO. After a five minute chat one of them said she would definitely now think again "because I've never heard the information you've given me before". 
In previous conversations I'd picked up a rumour, so on asking some Polish workers straight out this morning, they confirmed they'd been told that a YES vote would mean they would have to leave Scotland. A dirty lie, systematically spread by at least some of the NO campaign, brutally playing on the fears of migrant workers who have settled in Scotland for a better life. As well as Scotland planning to welcome MORE migrant workers, the only real threat to them staying in the country is a NO vote, a subsequent Tory or Tory-UKIP government at Westminster next May, and then their In/Out Referendum on taking Britain out of the EU.

BUILDING THE UNION
Two more new recruits to the union this morning.
One woman who spotted my Yes badge and showed how she had a slightly more discreetly displayed one on her uniform!
A man who started in our place recently, who it turned out had been leafleting for Yes at a polling station before his shift. When I introduced myself he said: "Oh, you're the one I've read about debating in the union?". Which he must have read on www.newsnetscotland.com, a report of our branch members' meeting where, after a brilliant, vigorous debate, members voted 87.5% YES, with ZERO for NO. A debate that has caused a huge buzz at work over the past week, including among people unable to attend who have had reports from members at it, winning round big numbers of NOs and doubters to YES. In the past two days at least 3 of the Undecided voters at our debate have confirmed to me they are now firmly voting YES.

DON'T RESIGN - DEMAND UNION DEMOCRACY
But while we recruit to Usdaw and gain improvements at work for an increasingly strong membership, our UK and Scottish union leadership are driving people out of the union. Several members today again spoke to me about "That letter". The one posted to every one of USDAW's 46,000 Scottish members, from UK general secretary John Hannett, asking us to vote NO - even if we Don't Know! The letter was a rehash of the email all members got from him last week.
It's created fury, and massive threats of resignation, because members were never given the chance of branch debates or a ballot of members before Usdaw decided which side to support.

So while campaigning for workplace improvements, I am also fighting to stop union membership bleeding away.
The fury of members is entirely justified. But resigning from the union - something happening across numerous workplaces on a big scale - would be a terrible blunder, a disastrous mistake in the extreme. It would leave workers defenceless in times of need with their employers. And it would weaken the fight for greater union membership democracy, if critics of the current USDAW leaders' undemocratic methods on the Referendum just walk away from the union.
They should instead stay and demand democracy. And they can opt out of paying money to the Labour party whilst staying in the union. Numerous members in our workplace have asked for the forms to do that. Just home, and a supply of Usdaw Political Fund Exemption Notice forms has arrived in the post.

Off to vote, to apply a pencil to paper as a contribution to the quiet revolution of working class people we are witnessing; then onto the streets for the rest of the day to help shore up the YES vote, so all workers can shape Scotland in our best interests.
Vote YES, vote TAK, and seize the reins of power for the working class majority!