Sunday, May 17, 2015

Scotland is a unionist country. And that is why it must become independent.

A guest post by Mark Murray

Scottish nationalism is often tritely dismissed as a narrow-minded philosophy, motivated by fear, anger and resentment. This is a lie. It is a false view of the independence movement in Scotland. The movement that wants independence for Scotland is a movement that has far greater ambition for Scotland than British nationalists can imagine. It is an outward looking movement, an internationalist movement, a movement that wants Scotland to participate in peaceful, voluntary co-operation with like-minded sovereign, democratic, independent states.

Around one hundred years ago Scotland was part of a great world project. As part of the British state it was at the centre of a great global empire, the greatest the world has ever known. For good or ill it was a power across the world that shaped the lives of hundreds of millions of people, and Scots were at its heart.

That Britain is gone. It has been replaced by a Britain which is increasingly isolationist, increasingly afraid of the world outside, increasingly seeking to withdraw, to hide away, a Britain that no longer wants to be part of the international project which is the European Union.

Why should Scots who care about shaping the world want to tie themselves to the decaying British state, declining in influence and seemingly determined to remove itself from the one organisation - the EU - that allows it to remain truly globally connected and influential?

Why would anyone who looks out into the world with hope and joy see Britain as their future? Why would anyone who doesn't want Scotland to be isolated, insular and frightened wish to stay in the British union? Why would anyone who cares about Scotland's place in the world want to remain in the British union if it puts at risk Scotland's membership of the European Union - the most successful, peaceful, voluntary coalition of independent states the world has ever seen?

Scotland's future is in the union - not the British union but the European Union.

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This is our first guest post since I made my 'appeal' the other day.  Guest posts are welcome on any subject (within reason!).  My contact details can be found at the top of the sidebar.

27 comments:

  1. The Scottish independence movement is a very broad church, and that is how it should be. So I hope that you will not take offence when I say that your vision does not accord with mine. I do not admire the empire and I am glad it is gone. I do not wish to "shape the world". I do not wish to remain a part of an EU which started as a project I embraced but has become a vehicle for neoliberal economic nostrums which aim to enshrine plutocracy as a de facto world government.

    As with the British union, the EU doesn't have to be that way: but it is.

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    1. I absolutely agree with you about the EU. Everything about it stinks with corruption, it needs sorting out but that will never happen.

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  2. I don't admire the empire either Fiona, far from it. But it was a unifying force for the British state, a project that Scots could and did participate wholeheartedly in. The EU is, for me, an institution which can be used for good or ill. It does not have to be a neo-liberal project and there is nothing in its institutional design which forces it to be so. For me it is the source of much good - equality and employment protection laws, transfers of wealth from richer to poorer states and regions, opportunities for trade, travel and migration on scales which have been to the overall benefit of the peoples of the European Union and, above all, a forum for *peaceful* international co-operation between independent, sovereign states, making it a model that could be followed by all the world. Mark Murray.

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    1. I voted no to the EEC or Common Market when the vote was first asked.Now after some forty years I find I have changed my mind and see that it is good for all of us.I did naively think that the British Union would have dissolved and each component country would have been speaking for themselves,instead of being held back and out of discussions about fishing,farming and industry,so that another paper empire could be created by Westminster.I thought many years ago that the Roman Empire still existed today because it changed into a religious empire,and the British Empire would change into something else and it has,its now based on paper and financial slavery,and if I need to explain that it would take a long time and lots of typing,and perhaps those that don't understand really don't want to try and understand.

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  4. James, can you or someone else make a blog post about 2016? I am an SNP voter/member but I do like the Greens and SSP. I keep hearing people saying things like "next year we need to build a pro-indy opposition to the SNP", evidently hoping that with enough regional votes they could turn the Greens and Socialists into the official opposition at Holyrood.

    The only thing is this strikes me as a little naive. Won't that just split the yes vote in the regions, allowing in labour and tory MSPs? We could see the SNP lose their majority but maybe there won't be enough Greens/Socialists to fill in the gap. We could see ex Westminster Labour types like Gregg McClymont and Douglas Alexander sneak in where the Yes vote is split in places like Glasgow.

    What's your thoughts, James? My intention right now is to vote SNP/SNP because I'm scared of letting any Tories in. Do we really have the luxury of voting SNP/Green etc? Maybe we need to nip this in the bud and manage expectations as soon as possible.

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    1. Anon : I absolutely, totally agree. I'm almost sick to death of talking about this subject, because I've explained a billion times why tactical voting on the list is a contradiction in terms and is highly likely to backfire, and yet people keep insisting that I haven't explained and that I'm putting party advantage first. It's obviously going to carry on like this for the next year, no matter what I or anyone else says.

      I think the problem is that some people have completely fallen in love with the idea of a pan-Yes alliance sweeping the board next May, and they're demanding that the arithmetic must yield to that ideal. The notion that Patrick Harvie is going to be the leader of the official opposition is absolute fantasy, and yet how many times have we heard that over the last few days?

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    2. I wonder if some of these folk pushing for a SNP/YES vote are actually unionists, trying to stop the SNP from winning a majority?

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    3. As I see it the SNP could easily lose out at next May's Holyrood election mainly because of voters using their second preference vote for a party other than SNP.

      If the SNP lose control at Holyrood then no amount of SNP Westminster MP's can continue the fight for independence on their own account and the cause will be seriously set back and maybe even forever if a unionist majority collaborates with Westminster to roll back devolution as we know it.

      Westminster and the MSM will be devoting everything they've got to try and replace the SNP with a tame unionist coalition at Holyrood in May 2016.

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    4. Maybe nearer the election next year a blogpost could be done to explain this in a coherent way rather than hoping that it will be allright on the night.

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    5. In 2011 the SNP won so many constituency contests that iirc they only got one MSP off the list. So my party vote for the Greens was in no way wasted and did not hurt the SNP. IF a party gets more constituencies than it is 'entitled' to on the list they don't get taken off them.

      I respectfully suggest it is you who are out of touch and arithmetically challenged. You also mistake the campaign which is firstly to urge a constituency vote for the SNP and only then vote Green or SSP. Unless the SNP think they will lose seats en mass in 2016 this cannot hurt them.

      In addition it is parties like the Tories, LibDems and I suspect Labour that will increasingly rely on the list vote. With the SNP so dominant in the constituencies voting SNP on the list risks letting the Unionist parties in by the back door. Is that what you want?

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    6. If we're going from here, into 2016 with the mantra that if you don't agree with SNP all the way you're just a troll or a plant from the British state we've lost the big argument from day one!

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    7. Muscleguysblog : I am absolutely flabbergasted by that comment. You seem to honestly think that I don't know how the AMS system works, or that I don't understand the nature of the proposed tactical voting "strategy". I've responded to you in detail in a fresh blogpost -

      http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/why-tactical-voting-on-regional-list.html

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  5. I think the Scots got bound into the Empire. It may have been in some minds when the original Union was enacted - access to English colonies. Although I recall reading that Scots were still blocked out of access to America for some time after the union anyway ( Smout I think? ). They certainly made the most of the opportunities and did indeed profit in equal measure from the miseries inflicted on natives the globe over. From drugs to slavery and all things unsavoury in between.

    However, I have felt for some considerable time that it is the end of the Empire which is at the root of this problem we have. There really is no dynamic requiring us to stay bound up in the union. We get free trade anyway via the EU and EFTA. We are net contributors to the common treasury ( despite Unionist misinformation ). We can live and work freely in each others jurisdictions - and the Irish precedent can be taken as a model I'm sure if England does leave the EU.

    So what imperative is there for us to continue in this marriage of convenience now that the only thing left is bickering? We would be far better as divorcees but good friends.

    On the EU, I declare myself as pro. I foresee a future of transcontinental superstates. The two largest countries in the world by population seem to be stable. I can see a sort of federation model eventually arising in Europe, with Scotland and Catalunya amongst other member states in their own right. All the historic bitterness between conquered and conqueror can be buried in a multinational federation of equals - English speaking too! So I think the EU is the future, the Empire is past and the present British Union is no longer in Scotland's interest.

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    1. I am a Scottish historian (doctoral) and I can affirm without doubt that we gave up our sovereignty in 1707 to build what became known as the British Empire but what was in those days just called 'trade'. From the Scots side 'trade' and the expected economic advancement that came from it was the principle reason.

      There are complex political reasons why 'trade' could not be achieved without the Union which I'll not go into. But the key political factor was the succession crisis after Queen Anne (the last Protestant Stewart) and the fact that Scotland was divided by Whig Hanoverian and Jacobite factions.

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  6. What kind of a megalomaniac wants to "shape the world"?

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    1. We all shape the world, simply by being in it.

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    2. Unless we're not in the EU, apparently.

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    3. Maybe the kind of megalomaniac who can't pass the poor on the street and think that it's their own fault. The one who wants to help the weak, oppressed and crushed?
      The contrary of your megalomanic insult is that if you're not interested in shaping the world then you're a small minded little Britainer....
      I wouldn't suggest that but don't think that wanting to change the world is a negative thing.

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  7. For me the EU is a bit like Christianity....one moment I see really good things in it, the next I notice terrible aspects. I agree with Fiona that it's become way too beholden to neoliberal doctrine.
    Also, Mark, I don't think we can really know that a UK outside the EU would be an awful place....it might be, it might not be.
    It would depend what the people of England did....whether they organized to change their country, whether they allowed the neoliberal hegemony to continue and so on.
    Anyway, one thing seems clear to me: Whatever the EU currently is, it ain't democratic.

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    1. Switzerland and Norway are not in the EU and they're not terrible places. They are in the European Economic Area.

      However in order to trade with the EU you have to comply with a lot of EU rules like free movement for work. There are huge numbers of Eastern Europeans working in Norway right now.

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    2. Yeah that's got to be one of the best arguments for staying in the EU and working to change it.

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  8. This is what's on the cards in the near future - note the cartoon and the speech from mario monti - ex Italian PM and arch eurocrat https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/what-now-for-the-union/

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  9. I am a non european immigrant in continental europe in the left wing and I absolutely despise the EU. The EU is exactly everything Scotland is trying to escape from in the UK: a warmongering undemocractic superpower where neoliberalism achieved the status of a religion and can no longer be reformed or changed from the inside. How can a majority of left and center left people still be in favour of this cancer? We are about to have the Transatlantic Trade Agreement which will turn our elected governments in a ritualistic position without any powers, as any change against the will of the companies will be overturned in the court.
    It's always mentioned what a wonderful thing EU is for the immigrants but that just applies if you are european. Since the Schengen Agreement, every single european country tightened its immigration law beyond ridiculous and now in fact we have two tiers of foreigners, one that has access to benefits, employment and righs while the non european live in a limbo with increasing stigmatization.

    If you are not a neoliberal, becoming part of a federal EU will have the same result as now: Scotland having governments that it didnt vote for. Just check the level of foreign intervention Greece is experiencing now and how Ireland was forced to ruin the country to not allow two banks to go bust.

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    1. I sympathise but Europe cannot take in the entire world. I don't know your circumstances but your position would seem to be like the Mexicans and Hispanics who are illegally flooding into the southern US states and who likewise have no access to healthcare.

      About 40 years ago German chancellor Willy Brandt issued the now famous Brandt report about global development in which he said that the poor south would not wait decades in decaying unstable countries for life to get better, but that people would vote with their feet to invade the rich north for a better life and we would be unable to stop them. And so it's proved.

      His plea was for development aid for the poor south to stop this happenning.

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    2. I am speaking of entirely legal immigrants, as in my case, who cannot get a cent from the welfare pot and have several restrictions in the job market coupled with an ever increasing paperwork just to get in as in opposition to some polish or czech person that just needs to pack and move, that got this right from an excuse of an "european family" that is completely artificial when several european countries (the UK being one of them, not to mention the Latin Countries) that have more links to some non european countries than to states in the other side of the continent with no historical or cultural intersection bar being white and christian.

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