Labour Turns its Back on the Welfare State

When Tony Benn died, along with him died the unheeded conscience of the Labour Party. Yesterday the Party of Atlee and Bevan turned its back on the Welfare State and forfeited for once and for all the right to be considered the inheritors of the legacy of the post-war government.

Save the Children has warned that the welfare cap will push 345,000 children into poverty over the next four years. And for what? This policy won’t do anything to address the problem. It isn’t trying to.

The problem is that ordinary decent people are in low paid jobs with wages that don’t meet the spiralling costs of living, meaning they have to rely on tax credits and housing benefits. Do you receive tax credits? They are subject to the cap.

The problem is that many of those in work have zero hour contracts, are in unstable self-employment, or having their hours slashed. The problem is that people are facing the choice between heat and food.

This is a policy decided in reaction to Daily Mail headlines and by trying to out-Farage UKIP.

The people that will be harmed are not “scroungers” but ordinary decent families in need. And that is the point. We have a Labour Party – a Labour Party! – that is demonising the poor. On the back of a few sensationalised accounts in rightwing newspapers and some lurid television programmes, a picture has been painted of an “undeserving poor” that the “deserving poor” are meant to vilify. And that is the justification for this attack on all those in need. The attack on disabled people, on retired people, on people in unstable employment, on people out of work, the vast majority of whom desperately want work.

This policy will push people into debt, into further poverty, into food banks, and into homelessness. This is a policy that blames and punishes those in need for the economic crisis. Never mind corporations that avoid tax, let’s attack the poor. The bankers cause a crash? Bail them out, but savagely attack the poor. Energy companies racking up heating bills? Means test pensioners for winter fuel allowance.

“We’re all in it together”. It’s a sick joke that Osborne repeated in his budget speech. And all of this is backed by Labour. Balls and Miliband have said they will stick to the austerity ideology of the Tories. They have said they will not reverse any of the Tory welfare cuts.

When I first reached voting age, in 1983, it seemed only natural for me to vote Labour. There was never even any question in my mind that I should vote any other way. Now, where should people turn for decency and humanity? Labour is morally bankrupt. It no longer represents the people it was founded to represent. It has turned its back on us.

This is the party that wants us to vote No in the independence referendum. It wants us to vote No in the hope that Labour will win the next Westminster election. It is far from certain that Labour would win, but even if it did, what difference would it make? They’ve already told us they’ll do the same as the Tories anyway! After Labour’s shameful performance yesterday, I expect more and more people to see that Labour has abandoned them. I expect more and more people to turn away from the morally bankrupt politics of Westminster. And I expect more and more people to come round to the idea of voting Yes on 18th September.

Culture, Identity and the Non-nationalist Case for Independence

At the weekend, I was speaking to a friend at a party. She raised the independence referendum (as is now normal at social gatherings, chance meetings, barbers shops and bus stops), and expressed concern as an undecided voter that there were anti-English bigots who supported Yes.

I pointed out that there were anti-English bigots supporting No, too. That, sadly, bigotry will exist whether Yes wins or No wins. But she was unconvinced.

She also said that although she was worried that a Yes vote would unleash further anti-English bigotry, she was a “proud Scot”. I asked her what she meant by “proud Scot”. For me, that’s an alien concept. I find it very odd that you can have pride in something that isn’t an achievement.

What is it to be a Scot? Surely some combination of the following: you were born in Scotland; you live in Scotland and wish to self-identify as a Scot (whether or not you were born there); or you come from a Scottish background, although you live elsewhere.

So what is Scotland?

Well, it is not one homogenous culture. Few nations if any have but one homogenous culture. Nor does culture, in Scotland or almost anywhere else I can think of, coincide exactly with national boundaries.

Nations generally house many cultures, some of which overlap each other. Cultures also overlap national boundaries. I was brought up in Highland Perthshire by a mother from the Borders and a father from the Lanarkshire coal fields. I didn’t speak Doric or eat skirlie, like folk from Aberdeenshire. I didn’t speak Shetlandic or eat reested mutton. Born in the mid 60s, the music I liked in my teens set me apart from my parents. The music I listen to now is probably alien to most teens today.

Both sides of my family came to Scotland from Ireland in the 19th Century. Maybe yours did too; or from Italy, or the Asian Subcontinent, or from England. These ingredients and more shape our personal cultural experiences.

Culture is part of what it is to be human. Indeed, the rudiments of culture have been found in other social animals. We humans cannot exist outside of culture. It is nonsense therefore to feel proud to belong to a particular culture – if you didn’t belong to one culture, you’d belong to another. If you are proud of your culture, what are you saying? That you’re glad you don’t belong to another? I can’t follow you down that road, I’m afraid.

That’s not to say culture is not important; of course it is. It enriches our lives and binds our communities. What it does not do is neatly coincide with national boundaries.

That’s because national boundaries are arbitrary; they are administrative boundaries, they demark polities. They are bureaucratic divisions.

If you live in Stirling would it make any difference to your own culture if the Scottish border was redrawn 50 yards south of where it lies now? 2 miles? 10? 47? Or north by those degrees? All that would happen is that others, with their communities and cultures, would be added to or subtracted from the nation. You would continue to speak Scots or not. Understand Gaelic or not. Eat black bun or not.

Furthermore, Scotland remains a polity within the British Isles. It is a geographic fact, and it is a cultural fact. I will continue to watch Coronation Street. I will buy the next Fall album (and continue to call it an LP, unlike my children). I will visit the inlaws in England on holidays and high days, several times a year. None of this would change because of independence. My support for Scottish independence is not based on any notion of cultural identity. Nor have I met anyone for whom that is the main motivation. The demand for independence is not about identity.

The reasons people generally give for voting Yes are political, democratic, instrumental; tactical even. They want rid of Trident. They want rid of austerity ideology. They want to give neoliberalism the boot. They want the government they voted for, not another imposed upon them. They want to build a new social democratic consensus. Those are the sorts of reasons people give me when they tell me they are voting Yes, rather than to do with identity. By contrast, many of those who say they will vote No tell me it is because they “feel” British, rather than for any political or instrumental reason. A vote for the Union is, in my experience, more often for reasons of identity.

I concede that this is anecdotal. However, I can’t find polling evidence for a link between national identity and reasons for voting choice. Opinion polls have looked into national identity and voting intentions. But they have only sought to compare identity with voting intention, not with their reasons for voting the way they intend to vote.

I believe that by recognising that culture and nation are not synonyms we can build an inclusive Scotland where all our cultures are valued. It is only by trying to equate culture and nation that we would exclude.

Furthermore, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that freedom for “the nation” is the same as freedom for the individuals within the nation’s boundaries. Just as culture is not homogenous, neither are the interests within “the nation” homogenous. The interests of the corporation are not the same as interests of the individual. There is no identity of interest between CEOs and working people merely because they live in the same country. Nations are polities. It is the people within them who need to be free.

This case does not need to be made within the pro-independence movement. Irish Scots are Scots. Asian Scots are Scots. Anglo Scots are Scots. This last case might still need to be made, though, to undecided voters, and to those unsure of where the demand for independence comes from. That, and that we would continue to value our cultural interaction with others in these islands.

If the people of Scotland vote Yes on 18th September, that is not the end of the matter. It is but the beginning of the road to self management. But it is a road that people of all the various and overlapping cultures in Scotland can take together. There are still people to be convinced of this.