The Fringe Minority Who Damage Us All

Let me say upfront, the vast majority of debate in the referendum campaign – whether online or offline - has been good natured. Sometimes it has been heart-felt, sometimes robust, and sometimes tough questions are asked. But it has been, in the overwhelming majority, respectful and has maintained a remarkable level of decorum. It is possible to be passionate without rancour, and this debate and campaign has predominantly been just that.

Criticism does not equal abuse

Let me also say this: some people will always try to paint any criticism, critique, or questioning of their position, however respectfully addressed, as “abuse”. It’s a pity, but if you can review your argument with pride, there’s nothing to worry about.

However, there is a small minority on both sides of the debate who cross the line from passion into personal abuse. And there is an undeniable culture of misogyny in some of that abuse. This is not confined to the referendum campaign, nor is it confined to cyberspace, but it is something that women in public discourse are subjected to.

Twitter is the public sphere

And let us not be under any illusions: your postings on Twitter are public discourse. They are not a private chat with your mates in someone’s kitchen. They are public utterances, and they can and will be used to try and paint the campaign you espouse in a certain light. You need to remember that you represent a campaign; your conduct affects us all.

Misogyny 

So what am I talking about? Some people – a very few, but they exist – seem to think it’s OK to respond to women with whom they disagree by calling them a “bitch”, a “whore”, a “slut” or even a “cunt”. It is not OK. Not even a bit. It doesn’t matter that you call your male friends those things. It isn’t just “part of the knock-about nature of debate”. It denigrates women. It is unacceptable abuse. And it negates any valid point you may have had.

I have also seen comments about women’s appearance. Again on both sides – “she’s ugly”, “she’s fat”, and so on. It’s unacceptable, whoever it’s aimed at.

By using these terms, these themes, you are damaging all of us. You are letting down your side, whichever side that might be. So don’t do it.

If you are in any doubt as to whether your tweet might be construed as misogynist, don’t send it.

Nazi smears

Nor is it just misogyny. We don’t like it when people in the No camp liken the Yes campaign to Nazis. And this, incidentally, isn’t just at the fringes, but often comes from people right at the top of the No campaign. I saw tweets from Blair McDougall advertising James MacMillan’s ludicrous article which smeared Yes artists as like Nazis as a “must read”. We have heard the audio of Alistair Darling agreeing with a journalist’s description of the Yes side as “blood and soil” nationalists. He had the opportunity to disagree, but didn’t; he said that’s what they were “at heart”.

But how can we complain if some among us respond in like? If some among us use Nazi era terms like “Quisling”, or liken people to Goebbels, or deploy any hyperbole that allows them to paint us all as intolerant and extreme?

It doesn’t matter who started it. Which tweet do you think the press will pounce on?

Agent provocateurs 

And that brings us to another matter. How easy would it be for me to open a new Twitter account, badge-up with a Better Together Twibbon, and set out to discredit the No campaign? Extremely easy. Don’t you think the state has thought of that? We know that special branch and MI5 agents go under cover and infiltrate political movements. Look at the Mark Kennedy/Stone scandal. We know it happened during the miners’ strike, during the anti-poll tax movement. It would be remarkable if, during this time that the British state itself is under threat, they weren’t doing it now.

And the social media makes it much easier for agents to go under cover, and engage in agent provocateur activity.

No, not all of the fringe idiots flinging misogynist abuse are agent provocateurs, but let us be quite clear: the effect is the same. If you do it, you damage the whole movement, and you might as well be working for MI5.

Keep it positive 

The confines of 140 characters make it hard to make your point concisely; the ability to click and send without thinking, and the anonymity of the net makes it easier to issue abuse you wouldn’t use face to face. But that should be our rule – if you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it. I’m not talking about being squeaky clean prudes who never utter a word in anger. If you’d say “up yours” to George Osborne’s face on budget day when provoked by attacks on working class people, then of course you can say it on Twitter. I did. Just don’t stand by when others are besmirching the movement with their misogynist tirades.

Like the vast majority of us do, keep it positive, keep focussed on the issues, and remember that they’re going to use all the dirty tricks they can. Don’t fall into their traps.

“Will it actually make any difference to us if Scotland becomes independent?”

It’s a fair question, and one that I’d hope everyone asks before deciding how to cast their vote in the referendum:

“Will it actually make any difference to us if Scotland becomes independent?”

Well, will it?

My top reasons for voting Yes are here:

#indyreasons To defend the Welfare State. To rid our lochs of WMDs. To renationalise mail service. To rid ourselves of austerity ideology.
— Trevor Chaplin (@TrevorChaplin) March 24, 2014

Let’s take those one at a time. First, defending the Welfare State. Can’t that be done through Westminster?

Not really. Westminster under the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition is dismantling the Welfare State, and rather than try to stop them, Labour is joining in. On Wednesday March 26th, Labour, the Party of Atlee and Bevan, voted in favour of the Tory Welfare Cap. Save the Children warned that the welfare cap will push 345,000 children into poverty over the next four years, but Labour voted in favour anyway.

Never forget Labour voted with the Tories on welfare cap. Save the Children warned cap will push 345,000 children into poverty. Shameful.
— Trevor Chaplin (@TrevorChaplin) May 17, 2014

What about the NHS? Hasn’t the NHS in Scotland always been separate? Isn’t it one of the current devolved powers?

Although the NHS in Scotland is devolved, there is a direct link between Westminster health spending and what’s available to Holyrood to spend on NHS Scotland.

As Westminster freezes or reduces public funding for the NHS in England, as less of the funding comes from the public purse, this would have a knock-on effect on Scotland's grant from Westminster, which the Barnett formula calculates as a percentage of public spending south of the Border.

Listen to Philippa Whitford, an NHS surgeon, explain why she is worried about the outcome of a No vote on the Scottish NHS:

“In five years England will not have an NHS as you understand it, and if we vote No, in ten years neither will we.”

See NHS for Yes: http://www.nhsforyes.org/

The Welfare State is an achievement to be cherished, but it is being undone. The Westminster arithmetic means that the parties chase a few swing constituencies, pulling the consensus rightward. (I discuss this more fully here: link) We have a chance to do things differently. We can build a social democratic consensus and defend the Welfare State.

What about nuclear weapons?

One of the actual Forces of Darkness, which we can get rid of by voting Yes: pic.twitter.com/oYVUc0TVbX

— Trevor Chaplin (@TrevorChaplin) April 8, 2014

Scottish CND are backing a Yes vote.

They are quite clear that a Yes vote is the best way to get rid of Trident.

Scottish CND has registered as a Yes campaigner with @ElectoralCommUK http://t.co/OyVgQqvsh2 #indyref pic.twitter.com/mqJiOMpQPw

— Scottish CND (@ScottishCND) May 20, 2014

The vast majority of Scots oppose Trident. And look at the opposition to replacing Trident: 80% of people are opposed – including 87% of people planning to vote Yes in the independence referendum, and 75% of No voters.

Think of the things we could spend that money on if we were to vote against nuclear weapons!

See Scottish CND’s own site here: Link

We can renationalise the Royal Mail. pic.twitter.com/yOsY568rTD

— Trevor Chaplin (@TrevorChaplin) May 26, 2014

If the SNP were to be the elected the first government in an independent Scotland, they have pledged to renationalise the Royal Mail. See this link

It’s likely, given the opposition to mail privatisation, that other parties would follow suit.

Never forget, austerity is an ideology, not a necessity. It is a choice that governments make, and it's the wrong choice. Miliband and Balls are committed to keeping the Tory austerity plans if they are elected to government in 2015.

Labour say they'll keep Tory austerity & Trident. Whoever wins at Westminster, a No vote is a vote for austerity, privatisation & WMD.

— Trevor Chaplin (@TrevorChaplin) May 10, 2014

If Scotland votes No, that will deliver a huge boost to the Tories. Labour are far from certain to win. But even if they do, they’ll keep austerity! Voting Yes gives us our best chance to rid ourselves of austerity.

The No campaign has been built on scare stories: telling us what we can’t do, what we shouldn’t do, and what we won’t be allowed to do. Perhaps you’ve seen the recent newspaper ads by the "Vote No Borders" campaign? (It's an organisation owned by Tory-supporting millionaires).

I’m not the most enthusiastic fan of the Wings Over Scotland site, but this is an excellent article taking each of those ads and examining the claims they make (where there are claims at all). Well worth a read. And a good summation of what we should be thinking about when we vote in September.

http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-head-and-the-heart/

And let’s not forget the effect that I hope and believe independence would have for the rest of the UK.

I think it'd give Westminster a big shock to the system. It'd be weakened, and that's an ideal time for the working class to make demands. The Welfare State was won at a time when the state recognised that the demands of the people had to be acceded to. If the people of the rUK seize the moment, I think a similar realignment of the consensus is possible. Especially if looking north, the rUK sees WMD going, the mail service being renationalised, the NHS being defended from cuts, and so on.

http://hourscotland.org/

Stop abusing the plebs and start to listen.

Those of you roundly abusing those who didn’t vote in the European elections as idiots and stooges with no right to complain, stop and think about this: they outnumber you vastly. You belong to a small minority who voted; two thirds of the electorate did not. They have sent the loudest message that representative democracy allows them to send, and still you are not listening.

Two thirds; think about that. If your preferred option in the independence referendum scored two thirds against the other side’s one third, would you accept that as a clear result? Of course you would. So why are you not listening to this clear result?

Before we go into what that loud message might be saying, think about this, too: what makes you so sure that had there been a full turnout they would have voted the way you wanted? If forced to chose, by compulsory voting legislation, they may have fallen into the same proportions we saw last night. It was a bigger sample than any professional poll, after all. What makes you think merely ensuring people turn out to vote would guarantee that people vote “correctly”?

Howard Zinn (an atheist, incidentally) once said sardonically: “If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates”. What did he mean?

Well, speak to people who don’t vote and ask them why not. They’ll tell you that they have a pretty low opinion of politicians, that they’re “all in it for themselves”, that it makes very little difference to their lives who wins. As the Who song says, “Welcome the new boss, same as the old boss”.

You don’t think so, because you are a political anorak. You are convinced that your tribe of politicians will be better than all those other tribes. The public aren’t so convinced. They have experienced politicians wearing different rosettes, and they haven’t been persuaded that any of them are representing their interests. They certainly aren’t convinced enough to make a trip to a polling station, not for a European election.

What can we legitimately say about reasons for low turnout at European elections? Well, let’s try. That people see the European parliament as remote? That people don’t really know what its role is or powers are; where it sits with what the European Commission does or what the Council of Ministers does? That they suspect that none of these distant bodies listens very much to what they have to say? (After all, you can even send BNP MEPs over there and what difference does it make?) That it’s just another bunch of people in offices somewhere making decisions about us without actually involving us? That they’re going to do what they do anyway, and it won’t be our interests they serve when they do it?

The turnout in the local elections south of the border was around the same as the European turnout. That suggests to me that people feel just as disconnected from local government; it feels just as distant as Strasbourg and Brussels. At the last council elections in Scotland, the turnout was similarly low - 39.1%. It was lower in Glasgow at 31.7% over the city, but even lower in some wards.

You are probably still shouting “well get out and vote to make a difference!” despite this huge majority telling you that they don’t think it does make a difference. Not even if they try to shock the political system by voting UKIP or BNP.

Some people try, it’s true. But it’s worth noting that even when returning UKIP top of the poll for the European parliament, people south of the border put them in fourth place for local government. “Look”, they seem to be saying, “We’re not stupid. We want to send you a message, but we don’t necessarily want these people running local services”.

“But”, you counter, “A protest vote is dangerous; it legitimises the party you lend your vote to, and makes them think all their views have some level of support”.

“Exactly”, the majority who didn’t vote might say. “We don’t want to legitimise any of them; a plague on all their houses”. They’re saying the opposite to what you said at the top of the page; they’re saying “If you voted, you’ve only got yourself to blame; you have no right to complain”.

You’re an adherent of one of those houses, though, so you’re unwilling to accept that. The idea that your tribe of politicians might be seen by the majority as in any way equivalent to these other tribes shocks you so much you can’t accept it. You’d rather see the non-voting majority as lazy, stupid, and racist-by-extension. And you think that attitude will win them over? Really? How’s that going for you?

Does telling people that they're stupid and that they just don't get it (but that you do) ever win them over?

Try listening for a change. Try and find out what people are saying. I think they’re saying “We feel powerless”. Is there anything you can do to change that? What can you do to contribute to their empowerment? Because more of the same isn’t an option.

The Inferiorisation of a Scottish Currency: the BBC and belittling the Pound Scots.

For time to time an article appears that shouts its subtext louder than its ostensible contents. Just such an article appeared today on the BBC News website.

It’s a piece about Prof. Gavin McCrone’s evidence to Holyrood today, giving his view that an independent Scotland should opt for a separate currency, pegged to Sterling, rather than Currency Union, as the Scottish Government prefers. So far so good, and I actually agree with McCrone on this. However, now look at the article. [Link].

The version I’m looking at is date and time stamped 7 May 2014 at 07:23.

The title of the piece is “How many unicorns do you earn?”, and below that is a large fantasy fiction style picture of the mythical beast.

After asking “How many unicorns would it take to do your weekly shopping?”, the piece begins: “This sounds like the start of a bad joke”.

The Unicorn was a gold coin used in Scotland for only 41 years, until 1525, and named for the Scottish heraldic symbol used on its obverse face. When Scotland joined the Union in 1707, the coin had been out of use for the best part of two centuries. Gavin McCrone has not suggested the Unicorn be re-introduced. Nobody has. So why bring it up? Why name an article on a modern Scots currency “How many unicorns do you earn?”, and why illustrate the piece with a large picture of the beast? (Why, if mentioning it at all, not depict the coin?)

The article was trailed on Twitter with the words: “Unicorn, groat, penny and merk. Could Scots currency make a come-back?” And again the mythical beast was pictured.

Unicorn, groat, penny and merk. Could Scots currency make a come-back? #indyref http://t.co/1OBghYO99U pic.twitter.com/BdQhu6CHNS
— BBC Scotland News (@BBCScotlandNews) May 7, 2014

I have covered before on this blog the practise of calling a Scots currency “Groats”. Scotland’s currency was never “Groats”. When last used in Scotland, Groats were in fact a Sterling coin. Last minted in the UK in 1856, Groats were worth four pence. They were used until withdrawn in the 1880s. They were never the name of the currency north or south of the Border. Why would Scotland call its currency “the fourpence”?

Prior to Union there was also Scots coin called the Groat, and there were variations of the name in coinage throughout Europe - The Dutch Groot, the Tyrol Groschen etc. It was a term for a thick coin, derived from the Latin adjective meaning thick or heavy, grosso. It is an antiquated coin type, once common across Europe.

People pretend they think a Scots currency would be called the Groat to belittle and ridicule the idea, and make the notion of a Scottish economy seem antiquated and obsolete. It's just a cheap shot by people who want to suggest an independent Scotland would be backwards, and a Scottish currency crude and naive.

The Unicorn was introduced to the story not by McCrone, but by BBC reporter Jamie Ross. The imagery is clear enough: the idea of having our own currency is a fantasy, and – as the opening remark tells us – “a bad joke”. This is all very familiar to those who have read Frantz Fanon; Jamie Ross is telling us that once left to our own devices by our Westminster saviours, Scotland “would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation and bestiality” (p169, Fanon, 1967, "The Wretched of the Earth"). Is he doing it on purpose? Possibly, but more likely he just knew what sort of thing would go down well: a jokey, fatuous, and patronising piece. The sort of thing no BBC reporter would ever turn in on Sterling.

Groat, Angel, Double Leopard, and Mark are all old English (and/or British) coins, of varying vintages. No BBC piece on modern Sterling would ever use up space discussing those, or illustrating the piece with pictures of angels from mythology (rather than the coin). Such an article would never get anywhere near the BBC website. But for Scottish stories, that sort of thing is exactly what is wanted. The patronising and cringe-inducing defence policy animation is another case in point.

McCrone has long advised a separate currency for an independent Scotland. He does so in his recent book “Scottish Independence: Weighing Up the Economics” (2013). It’s well worth a read. And he was quoted by the Scotsman as having favoured “the restoration of the pre-1707 pound Scots, or indeed the Merk, and it could be pegged against Sterling initially on a one-to-one basis as Ireland’s currency was.”

Why mention Merks? A merk was a Scottish silver coin, worth ⅔ of a Pound Scots. It wasn’t the name of the currency (that was Pound Scots). Perhaps McCrone was searching for a good Scots word to name the new currency, and it’s the same name the Germans used for their currency until joining the euro, after all. However he needn’t have bothered; there’s already a guid Scots word for Pound: Pund. McCrone’s slight linguistic diversion, though, is as nothing compared to the patronising flight of fancy that the BBC News website goes on. And not for the first time.

25 Questions for the BBC on its CBI Membership

So, in a joint statement the BBC has announced it is to “suspend” its membership of the CBI due to the CBI’s status as an official “No” campaign. There are still many questions that the BBC needs to answer. I have 25 that I think urgently need to be answered. Perhaps you can think of more.

1. Why did it take so long for the BBC to act, given that it had been reporting for a week on other organisations leaving the CBI to maintain neutrality?

2. When did the BBC first become aware of the CBI’s stance as being opposed to independence?

3. During the time the BBC was aware of the CBI’s stance, how many times did it quote the CBI on the issue of independence?

4. Why did the BBC never declare its interest while reporting the CBI’s views on independence?

5. What are the terms of the “suspension” from the CBI?

6. Why is the BBC an unsuspended member until the 30th May?

7. How can it report impartially on the referendum while still an unsuspended member?

8. What does the BBC pay the CBI for membership per year? How are those payments split?

9. Was the BBC aware that it was funding partisan campaigning by making those payments?

10. Is the BBC aware of the anti-independence materials the CBI has already prepared and publicised, for example their current website materials?

11. Are these appropriate materials for the BBC to fund with our licence fees?

12. How long has the BBC been a member of CBI?

13. Why is the BBC a member of the CBI?

14. Was the BBC a member of the CBI while it reported on issues the CBI has campaigned or lobbied on?

15. Was the BBC a member of the CBI when the BBC has reported on issue of occupational pensions? Or when the CBI has been quoted by the BBC on the issue of occupational pensions?

16. Was the BBC a member of the CBI when the BBC has reported on or the CBI has been quoted by the BBC on taxation? On executive pay? On public services? On immigration policy? On employment law? On the economy? On any of the issues that the CBI campaigns or lobbies on?

17. Was the BBC a member of the CBI during any industrial dispute in which it has sought quotes from CBI figures?

18. Was the BBC a member of the CBI during the miners’ strike?

19. Was the BBC a member of the CBI on 18th June 1984, when the BBC was editing and compiling footage for a report on the events at Orgreave?

20. Where does the BBC publish and publicise its membership of the CBI?

21. Is that information given due prominence?

22. How long has that information been made public?

23. Did the BBC reporters seeking answers from the CBI about membership figures know where to find information about the BBC’s membership?

24. When the BBC resumes membership of the CBI on September 19th, how can it be sure its impartiality on the post referendum landscape will not be tainted by membership of an organisation which will have views on that landscape, whatever it is?

25. How will the BBC rebuild trust in its integrity?



If the BBC is not promptly and comprehensively open about these issues, then it will become mired in doubt and confusion, and will itself continue to be the story.

ARE SCOTS “NATURALLY” LEFT WING, (AND THE ENGLISH NOT)?

It’s sometimes said that Scots are more naturally “left wing” than voters in England. It’s widely believed, but it is nevertheless a myth. However, exploring the reasons the myth arose is a good way of understanding why it is that the Westminster system is dysfunctional, and why the Union is broken.

First let’s put to bed the idea that Scots are “naturally” left wing. If that were the case, why did a majority of Scots (50.1%) vote Tory in 1955 (returning 36 Conservative and Scottish Unionist Party MPs to Labour’s 34)? That is an outright majority of the popular vote, not just the largest party.

The party of Scotland

It’s true that in that same year the Conservatives won an outright majority of the popular vote in England, but in that same year in Wales an outright majority voted for Labour (57.6%), something that has never happened in Scotland. That’s right: Labour has never had an outright majority of the popular vote in Scotland. It wasn’t until 1964 that Labour began to overtake the Conservative and Unionists in Scotland in terms of share of the vote. In that year, though, the Conservatives still managed 40.6% of the Scottish vote, compared with 44% in England.

So what happened? Why the apparent divergence between Scotland and England that we see today?

Well, first of all it is worth remembering that just as Labour has never had an outright majority of the popular vote in Scotland, so the Tories never had an outright majority of the popular vote in England after that 1955 general election. Thatcher never once had a majority of the popular vote in England. In each of her general elections, a majority of English voters voted against her party.

True, the Tory percentages in England during the Thatcher era were in the 40s, while in Scotland they began at 31.4% in 1979, and began to slip into the 20s. But even in 1992, more than a quarter of Scots were still voting Tory. (By 2010, it was only 16.7%).

The Tories have never had a majority in England in more than 50 years

However, hold onto one salient point here: in more than half a century, the Tories have never managed more than half of the votes cast either in the UK as a whole or in England alone.

First Past the Post

The reason that they have had government majorities (that is, a majority of seats in Westminster, as opposed to a majority of votes) is the first past the post electoral system (FPTP). It’s seats that count, not votes. There are a huge number of seats in Westminster that are safe seats. It’s around 400, give or take, depending on various factors. They tend not to change hands. And even then, some don’t “matter” as their MP will not form part of a government majority (eg SNP seats). In 2010 there were 650 constituencies, but only upwards of 150 seats – 23% of seats or so – were “marginal”. The average Westminster seat has not changed hands since the 1960s; fewer than one-in-ten seats has changed hands in 12 of the last 17 general elections since 1950. Furthermore, marginal seats are not evenly spread. I don’t want to get into the complicated algorithms, but there are more marginal seats in the South of England than there are total seats in Scotland. It is in the handful of marginal seats that Westminster elections are really fought.

It is thought that there will be around 190 marginal seats in the 2015 general election; 29% of constituencies. Nor are all of these as hotly contested, with only a tiny proportion seeing the highest campaign spending, usually in three-way marginals.

Nor is that the end of the matter. Within each constituency in that handful, only a small margin separates the first placed party from the second placed. And it is influencing those margins that Westminster politics tailors itself towards.

Keeping the centre-right orthodoxy

The majority of seats can be relied upon, so the policies are tailored towards placating those swing voters in that handful of marginal seats. Traditional Westminster wisdom holds that these represent “Middle England”, and all three Westminster parties calibrate their policies towards not offending them. The media, especially press, but also broadcast, plays its part in perpetuating this traditional, individualist, centre-right “common sense” orthodoxy. The New Labour phenomenon was built on that. As is Miliband’s promise to ape Tory austerity ideology.

However, although no party will step out of line for fear of losing those swing voters, the funding of big business, or being called “loony” by the press, the majority British public - including the majority of Conservative voters – hold very different views to those of the parties. The vast majority of the British public, including English voters, wants the NHS to stay in public ownership. They also support re-nationalising the energy and rail companies, and they opposed the sale of Royal Mail. However, there is no party with a chance of winning offering those policies that English voters can vote for. There is a democratic deficit in England as well.

People of England not out of Step with Scots

The people of England are not so out of step with the people of Scotland. It is the Westminster political classes that are out of step with the people. There is a perfect storm of inter-party ideological homogeny, business funding, media manufacture of consent, and neoliberal consensus in the ruling classes. The UK public has no choice at elections but neoliberal a, b or c. The parties are all vehicles of the neoliberal project.

This is an important point for two reasons: first it exonerates the British public: whichever party they vote for is “right wing”; secondly, it begs the question of how accurately we can describe Scottish votes as being for “left wing” parties. In the 2005 Westminster general election, for example, 39.5% of Scottish votes cast were cast for Labour.

How left wing is Labour anyway?

However, by what measure was Tony Blair’s Labour government “left wing”? It was a government that had two years previously led us into an illegal war in Iraq, along with the US. Blair had an easy alliance not just with George W Bush, but also with Berlusconi and Aznar. Blair preached across Europe about selling off public services. The Blair government accelerated the demonization of the disabled, the poor, and the unemployed, not least with the rhetoric around welfare-to-work. Labour in government spent 13 years consolidating Toryism. So that 39.5% was not cast for a left wing party. Nor were the 22.6% of votes that Scottish voters cast for the Liberal Democrats. Already that is more than 62% of votes cast for non left wing parties, and we haven’t yet added the Scottish Tory vote, or dissected the policies of the SNP.

So, this idea that Scots were voting for left wing parties is looking a bit shaky. However, the same mitigation applies: what were the choices on offer?

That the choices in a parliamentary democracy are limited ought not to surprise us. As one of America’s Founding Fathers, John Jay – head of the Constitutional Convention and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court - used to say, “The people who own the country ought to govern it” (quoted in Chomsky, Understanding Power, 2002, p315). The purpose of government is not therefore to represent the interests of the working class, but of the owning class. That is why choice in elections is limited to a narrow band of “acceptable” opinion in the US, as it is in Westminster.

No wonder, then, that Howard Zinn said of voting that it was “a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens”.

So why bother?

Why, then, should we hope for better in an independent Scotland? Well, first of all, the 19th of September is not the end of a process, but the beginning of one. It must be the beginning of a process where we seek out and understand the self-activity of the people, and articulate it in ways which contribute to community empowerment. We will also be dealing with a government of a much smaller state, with the levers of power therefore closer to the people. And it will provide us with the opportunity to force our political leaders to listen to us, to respect the social democratic consensus that is bringing them to government, and understand that a new consensus is being demanded. (I have talked about this at greater length in another blog post). We have, in short, a rare opportunity to break that Westminster neoliberal log jam, not just for ourselves, but for our English neighbours. If we pass up this opportunity, then we condemn both Scottish and English working people to continue in the same faux democracy, with the illusion of choice, and the interests of the owning class thrust upon us by the Westminster charade.

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/11/04/nationalise-energy-and-rail-companies-say-public/

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp2003/rp03-059.pdf

http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/images/dynamicImages/file/ERS_Penny%20for%20your%20vote_Final.pdf

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.