Scotland: 45% vote Yes despite ruling class panic; Business as usual is not an option; Labour for Independence statement

By Alister Black, Glasgow

September 20, 2014 -- Green Left Weekly -- After two years of campaigning, Scotland’s independence referendum has ended. It saw victory for the No side, the opponents of independence, with 55% compared to 45% who backed a Yes to independence.

The referendum saw an unprecedented level of political engagement and debate throughout Scotland. This was reflected in the huge and unprecedented turnout of 84.59%, reversing the trend of recent decades of dwindling poll turnouts. Some rural areas even recorded 100% turnout.

Pro-independence campaigners, especially around the Radical Independence Campaign, registered thousands to vote in Scotland’s poorest and most marginalised communities, where many had been off the voters roll since the days of the poll tax.

We spoke to people who had never voted and needed the process explained. These alienated communities were enfranchised by the referendum.

Poor voted Yes

"The four poorest and most deprived local authorities in Scotland were the only local authorities (out of 32) who voted Yes. Glasgow, Dundee, West Dunbartonshire and North Lanarkshire,” noted Frances Curran, a former Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) Member of the Scottish Parliament. “Says it all about what this referendum was about.”

These communities have been hit hardest by Tory austerity and benefit cuts. Thousands rely on food banks for survival.

Tales circulate of families opening tins of beans on the spot and eating them cold, with their hands due to hunger. Police report a surge of house break-ins, in order to steal food. Some areas of Glasgow have an average male life expectancy of 58 years, lower than sub-Saharan Africa.

The “union of the crowns” has offered nothing to these communities but deindustrialisation, unemployment, poverty and despair.

In some areas such as Craigmillar in Edinburgh, voters organised early morning marches to the polling stations; mums and dads with prams and the elderly being pushed in wheelchairs to vote, led by banners and pipers.

This reflected the emergence, especially in the last few weeks of the campaign, of a dynamic and radical mass movement which mobilised in communities across Scotland to attempt to secure a Yes vote.

The great advantage of the Yes campaign was that we ceased to be led by politicians and men in grey suits and became a popular movement rallying around progressive and democratic ideas.

Young people were to the fore in this social movement, increasingly questioning and debating the kind of society we want to become.

The demands that inspired the grassroots did not come from the conservative Scottish National Party (SNP) manifesto, they were not focused on historical or ethnic questions. They were focused on social justice and equality. They were for an end to ill health and food banks. They were for peace and the scrapping of Trident nuclear missiles.

Most had no previous political involvement but came into the campaign through their local community Yes group, from coalitions like the Radical Independence Campaign or campaigning groups like Women for Independence or the National Collective arts group.

Shock to establishment

This movement gave the establishment, the politicians and the City of London the shock of their lives, coming within a few percentage points of victory.

The British state threw everything it had into the fight. The Labour Party led the “Better Together” campaign and shared platforms with Tory leaders to campaign for a No vote. Labour has done itself serious damage and is now cut off from a new generation of politically conscious youth. Their final slogan at the polling stations was “it’s not worth the risk”.

In a display of “shock and awe”, British Tory Prime Minister David Cameron phoned all his old school friends on the boards of the banks and called in favours from the supermarkets and oil companies. They lined up to issue tales of capital flight and soaring prices.

Many of these were quickly debunked but these tales were given great prominence by the media, which overwhelmingly backed No.

Chief among these was the BBC, the supposedly impartial state broadcaster. Some BBC reports were stunningly biased. Although Yes used social media brilliantly to counter this onslaught, it did do damage.

There were endless threats that Scotland would be thrown out of the EU and would not be allowed to use the pound, cutting it off from international lending.

In the face of this assault, the Yes vote held up astonishingly well. Yes supporters overwhelmingly won the ground war in the last few days, literally taking over the streets of the big towns and cities every night for spontaneous mass rallies and marches.

New constitutional debate

We now face a new constitutional debate. Scotland has been promised new powers by Westminster and the possibility of a new constitutional settlement for the UK.

Already however, both Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband are backing away from their “pledge” to give greater powers. The Tories will undoubtedly try to use this to their advantage and to appease their right wing and the far-right “little Englanders”.

The SNP has seen the resignation of popular First Minister Alex Salmond. The SNP demonstrated strong organisation and has widespread support. It will probably now be led by capable deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon, who played a crucial role in the campaign.

The left may be strengthened over the next period if it can react strategically and make a turn towards the social movement that emerged in the campaign.

There may be attempts by the social-democratic “Common Weal” platform, which drew support from many intellectuals and celebrities as well as grassroots campaigners, to build a new force.

Radical Independence and the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) also emerged from the campaign with their reputations enhanced, as have the Scottish Greens. Many activists will be keen to continue the degree of unity achieved during the campaign.

In the face of an establishment onslaught, and after 25 years of being told that tackling poverty and inequality was a dream and there could be no alternative to the neoliberal consensus, 45% of Scots still voted Yes.

This is a great achievement and an even better achievement has been the building of a mass social movement. If we can now harness that movement to build a new political force in Scottish society then, despite our defeat in the referendum, we can regroup and organise to shake up politics.

[Alister Black, editor of the Scottish independent Marxist review Frontline. Black, a member of the Scottish Socialist Party, is active in the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), a left platform within the Yes Scotland movement.]

By Alan Thornett

September 19, 2014 -- Socialist Resistance -- The proposal for an independent Scotland has been defeated in the September 18 referendum, and the ruling elites have expressed a huge collective sigh of relief. It was a defeat based on fear and intimidation organised by the No campaign in collusion with Downing Street which delivered a “no” vote by a margin of 44.7% to 55.3%.

The whole of the Westminster establishment and the three "main" political parties were lined up against a Yes vote. To these we can add virtually the whole of the media, the banks, the supermarkets and the City of London. The military establishment entered the debate around in defence of Trident nuclear-armed submarines. They have managed to prevail by exploiting fear, intimidation and appeals to every kind of reaction and conservatism over the most remarkable grassroots campaign ever seen in these islands. Internationally they enlisted support from Barrack Obama to the president of the EU.

Labour Party politicians, led by a re-emerged Gordon Brown, were even more forceful than the Conservative Party (Tories) in pushing this intimidation.

Until a week or so ago, when support rose dramatically for the Yes campaign, and blind panic set in, the Westminster elites had expected a walkover. They didn’t even bother with contingencies. When asked why there was no contingency to move Trident the government said it was because the London considered the possibility of a Yes vote as a "very low probability". It was a statement that not only reflected the divide between Westminster and Scotland but the contempt with which the Tory leadership regarded that divide.

The Yes campaign should be congratulated and celebrated, despite the result. It generated a huge national debate that rose to ever-higher political levels as the referendum date approached. This is expressed in the remarkable statistics: with registration at 97% and the turnout at 84.6%. This is a clear sign that when real change is on offer people will engage with it and grasp the opportunity to shape their own destiny.

A different Scotland

The Yes campaign was not based on crude nationalism or anti-English sentiment, but on the idea of a different kind of Scotland with new level of political democracy and involvement. It was based on the idea that people living in Scotland should rule Scotland and that the long period of English dependency should come to an end. It was based on the idea that they should not have Tory governments imposed on them that they did not vote for, and which had virtually no support in Scotland.

It reflected resentment in Scotland that a range of Tory policies --from student fees, benefit cuts, especially for the sick and disabled, the bedroom tax, tax cuts for the rich, and foreign wars -- were imposed on them by people with no support in Scotland.

The strength of the Yes campaign is also expressed in the enthusiasm with which 16 and 17 year olds took to the campaign and the debate, having been given the right to vote for the first time in the referendum. It was expressed in the remarkable energy that gripped the Yes camp in the final weeks of the campaign.

Labour Party

On the morning of the result, Labour Party politicians, even more than Tories, were talking about this vote settling the issue of independence for a very long time and even for good. The critical mass of support for independence, however, has increased dramatically in the course of this campaign and that is unlikely to change. People in Scotland have spent months debating and defending the idea of independence and are more committed to it than they have ever been.

It is not surprising that it is Labour Party politicians who are so vehement this morning. Labour has been heavily damaged by running a shoulder-to-shoulder campaign with the Tories.

The biggest Yes votes were in the strongest Labour industrial (or de-industrialised) heartlands of Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, West Dumbarton and Dundee.

The Scottish Labour Party has suffered a serious fragmentation and is likely to be in trouble, particularly when it comes to the next Holyrood election in 2016. The Scottish National Party (SNP) will be seeking another majority and hope to replace Labour as the main left of centre social-democratic party in Scotland. Those tens of thousands of Labour voters who supported the Yes campaign and were attacked by the Labour Party for doing so may well then stick with the SNP. Particularly since a big vote for the SNP in that election would be the best way to reignite the issue of independence.

Extra powers?

Nor should it be assumed that the Westminster elite will now deliver the extra powers to Holyrood just because they have signed a pledge on fake parchment that they will do so. This is already being cast into doubt by Tory back benchers who intend to oppose it and coalition ministers who don’t want it.

British Prime Minister David Cameron knows that to do so will strengthen the call for independence in Wales. Leanne Wood, as the leader of Plaid Cymru, has played a good role in supporting the Yes campaign in Scotland. She is already making it clear that she is not prepared to see Wales left behind as Scotland discusses more powers.

It also raises the issue of the huge democratic deficit in Britain as a whole as one of the most centralised countries in Europe. It raises issues from the alienation of the northern cities and the northern regions from Westminster and the south east, and it raises once again the issue of the first-past-the-post electoral system, which means that most votes don’t count when it comes to an election.

It is clear from the first statements that Cameron has made on this that he is more interested in looking over his shoulder to the far-right UK Independence Party, to English nationalism and his right-wing back benchers than fulfilling a pledge with Scotland. He is far more interested in simply stopping Scottish MPs voting on English issues, which would be popular with UKIP leader Nigel Farage, than looking to any kind of new constitutional settlement for England.

This poses a problem for the Labour Party because the pledge was made first and foremost, not by Cameron, but by Gordon Brown. Cameron’s main aim now is to turn clock back on this whole development, but it won’t be easy. The Yes campaign comprehensively won the political debate. Many of the 1.6 million people who voted for independence may well remain politically engaged and will not take kindly to backsliding on promises or new attacks from Westminster.

The radicalisation of the Yes campaign could well translate into a new radicalism in Scottish politics. This could also have its reflection throughout Britain. Demands for more devolution and democratic reform are inevitable. Westminster has not represented northern English cities and northern regions any more than it has represented Scotland.

Despite the defeat, things can never go back to where they were. Business as usual is not an option.