George Galloway Doesn't Believe In 'Countries'

....Even though he would quite like Palestine to be recognised as one.

If ever there was a man who you'd think would support Scottish independence, it would be George Galloway. He supports self-determination for nations across the globe, is deeply dissatisfied with the current political order and opposes Britain's excessive spending on WMDs and illegal wars. But for some reason, Galloway just doesn't seem to 'get it' as is shown in one of his latest tweets:

"To Scottish nationalists: I don't think "countries". I am an internationalist and socialist. Nationality means nothing to me. Get over it."

The first thing that strikes me is the way Galloway describes every person who supports independence as a "nationalist". I find it difficult to believe that an educated man like Galloway could actually see a constitutional issue like independence in such black and white terms. Supporting independence does not make you a nationalist. Yes, it is true that Scottish nationalists do exist and identify themselves as such, but it is also true that there is a significant movement that supports independence and abhors nationalism. I see myself as belonging to the latter. I don't care about flag-waving or William Wallace. I care about Scottish people getting the Government that they voted for. As a Green, I see independence as a direct means of achieving localism; putting power back into local communities and reinvigorating our failing democracy. I don't care about any nationality any more than any other. I care about my family in England, my socialist comrades in Spain, the Zapatista movement in Mexico and Kurdish self-determination movement just as much as I care about the 20% of Scottish children who live in poverty.

This brings me on to my next point. Galloway has no problem backing the 'independence' and 'self-determination' of nations like Cuba or Venezuela but seems to despise the idea of Scots running their own affairs. George says that the "world is my country" and yet, somehow, I don't think he'd be particularly happy with the suggestion that the Palestinians give up on statehood and become citizens of the world. Now, of course, I am not comparing the plight of the Palestinians to the Scottish people's dialogue on independence. Palestinians face drone attacks, political repression and apartheid in their own land. What I'm trying to do is show that George's black and white rhetoric can be used against him. If Galloway wants to give his two cents on the independence debate then he'll need to learn to do a lot more than isolate and divide the Scottish people along 'nationalist' and 'progressive internationalist who's happy to stay within the union' lines.

The quote shown above also seems to suggest that socialism and independence are incompatible. This, of course, is utter nonsense. Scotland's socialist movement has been intertwined with the independence movement for over a century now. Keir Hardie supported home rule, John Maclean supported independence and, most recently, the late Jimmy Reid stated his support for an independent worker's Scotland. Both the Scottish Socialist Party and the breakaway Solidarity party have identified the British path to socialism as a failure and independence as a means of tackling capitalism. Socialism can't be achieved with one large swipe across the world. Scotland has the opportunity to turn it's back on the neo-liberal consensus and become a beacon for social justice, sustainability, peace and democracy. Neither side of the independence debate owns socialism and it would be ridiculous to pretend that is the case. 

-Scott Lumsden, Scottish Green Party member.  

There are worse things to admit to.

I recently read a brilliant article about the journey of one woman becoming more comfortable with her nationalistic tendencies. However the one thing that made me almost cringe was her seemingly ashamedness of wanting her own country to become self-determined.

I am unashamed. I also didn’t like the suggestion that a writer, or artist cannot be affiliated with a political party. I am a Scottish National Party member. The reason I support them is because of what they have so far achieved for this country. Free prescriptions, free university education, free bus passes for the elderly, care in the community, frozen council tax….I could continue but I feel these things are what affects most of us most of the time. You need some antibiotics, you don’t have to pay. You want to finish that degree, you will be financially assisted. You want your Granny to come visit next week, she can get a bus for free. You slip after a night out and need some physiotherapy, you don’t have to wait too long. You want to pay less council tax, so do I. The point is that so far the SNP have done very well for Scotland, more so than the Westminster Government.

This is why I will be voting Yes in the independence referendum. Also contributing to my deep rooted searing passion is the fact that when I meet folk, the worse thing I can say even to a staunch unionist isn’t that I support independence, but rather that when they ask “What do you do for a living?”, my response is usually sheepishly “Nothing. I am an unemployed, disabled artist.”  The artist part is debateable though. What is un-debateable is the stigma that has now been caused by being “unfit” to work. The sheer despicableness that David Cameron and his Government has shown to folk like me is without doubt an attack on the most needy in the community. While all my friends continue to work and gain pay rises that reflect inflation, I am stuck forever more, being poor. I can’t even move out from my mothers as I could now be taxed on a spare bedroom that I would need for my carer. Don’t think for a wee minute that I am one of the many children of benefit culture, I had a 3 bedroom flat on the South side of Glasgow, studying in my third year for University and my partner worked extremely hard to pay the mortgage. I was lucky though as I was funded by the SNP to get my degree, what was unlucky was falling ill. This could happen to you or anyone you know at any time. Nothing is certain. That is why all the questions relating to the uncertainty of an independent country doesn’t phase me. The union of Great Britain doesn’t seem too certain just now. Independence is a glimmer of hope in an otherwise gloomy London outlook.

I have had many debates with friends and strangers regarding independence. The overall consensus seems to be that everyone wants better for Scotland, just that some folk have different opinions on how this can be achieved. Its not us “Nats” and they “unionists”, it is all of us Scottish brethren. We have to come together to appreciate what is happening in Scotland right now and how we have been ignored for too long by the Tory government, that’s one thing we can all agree on….we don’t like Dave and his cronies. With an independent Scotland we can control 99% of Scotland’s revenue, right now we only control 15%. With an independent Scotland we can get rid of Nuclear weapons from outside our most populous city. With an independent Scotland WE can decide what is best for our country.

- Debra Torrance. 

The Importance of Being Rational

The Importance of Being Rational

Rationality is something that isn’t always that easy to achieve. I suppose, deep down, it isn’t a characteristic that has come ‘hand-in-hand’ without some form of resistance through our evolutionary history. And arguably its true value is still underappreciated in society. The same is true with consistency. How many times in your life have you found yourself contradicting something that you argued for strongly not 24 hours earlier?

It can be difficult to be both rational and consistent with what you say. Crucially however, that says nothing of their importance.

A few weeks ago I ‘tweeted’ some stuff about David Cameron, and about more general topics relating to Westminster and the independence debate. The first of these was an expression that the PM, and indeed the Conservative Party at large, lack the democratic mandate to govern in Scotland. That’s contentious and debateable, purely on the grounds of current democratic setup and legality. But the sentiment I stand by. And I think it’s a rational one. If you go with the General Election votes from 2010, then the Conservatives do not represent the Scottish electorate, or to elaborate one step further, the Scottish nation.

That however doesn’t mean that that view is inflexible and the correct one. Everyone should be perfectly willing to change their views and opinions when reason proves them wrong. Accepting when you’re wrong isn’t a weakness; it’s a strength, to borrow a motto of Alex Ferguson’s making.

I’ll guess what you are thinking. That humility hasn’t always been one of Fergie’s strong suits. But the principlein what he was saying I think is true. There’s reason and rationality behind it.

Another of the remarks that I posted on Twitter I immediately sensed with regret as the send button was pushed: “I relish the day when those fucking CLOWNS from Westminster come up to campaign‘NO to Independence’. Think you’re out of touch down south? Cross the border.” Nonsense. How can you talk rationality when you’re actingirrational? It was crass and made me look stupid. Where’s the rationality? Or the sensibility? Nowhere to be found I’ll answer. At the verybest it was just populist [if you’re a nationalist that is] drivel. A classmate – a Labour Party member –immediately and rightly pounced upon it, and there was little point defending a statement that I knew in my heart I had made wrongly.

But I know I’m not the only nationalist online spouting crap. And I know it’s not only nationalists that do so either.

Recently there was an article in The Spectator from Fraser Nelson. It was about hedging bets on or against Alex Salmond ‘winning’ the independence debate. Whilst reading through it there was one line- it was wedged in there amongst several others - that popped out at me (and Gerry Hassan has picked up on it too): ‘Scotland would be far worse off outside the Union.’ [My emphasis]. What does he mean by that? Democratically? In foreign policy or defence terms? Most likely he meant economically: in terms of revenue streams and spending power. Perhaps he meant all of them. But how could he know that? Economics isn’t a hard science. He might be right, or he might be wrong. I don’t know. But surely neither can he - at least not to such a strong and steadfast degree? We nationalists and Nationalists would obviously argue for the viability of Scotland ‘going’independent, but I don’t think I would – or could – argue the absolutely certainty of its success, regardless of how that success was framed. At the very least you could not ‘guarantee’ it in ‘economic’ terms.

Today the Scottish Sun has broken the story that the Labour MP Tom Harris has been made to apologise for posting a video on YouTube – a clip from Downfall (a 2004 film about Hitler’s final days in power) subtitled with some supposed comedic remarks from the SNP ‘top-brass’and ‘inner party’ members. The article also states that the Labour MP has lost (whether voluntary or forced) his new role of ‘media advisor’ of the party. The ‘faux-offence’, as a nationalist friend has righty labelled it, which met the video’s release was, I’ll argue, unreasonable. The video I didn’t find funny, but you need to doubt the extent to which people genuinely found it offensive. Collective outrage can be a dangerous thing. The same article did however highlight another perspective - that the widow of a concentration camp survivor found the video abhorrent. That’s reasonable, and it’s rational considering the personal connection. For most of the rest of us, I believe it was disingenuous, shrouded in overtly political point scoring.

As with many things in the social sciences, there isn’t a clear right or wrong answer. The truth often lies in the shades of the intermediary. Maybe joking about the Nazi Party is unacceptable, in which case I’m as guilty as Tom, and maybe it’s something that we should be outlawing as aggressively as sectarianism. But I just can’t feel supportive of that. I firmly believe the principle of laughter in the face of adversity.

Here’s what I’d argue.

Next time you’re standing on a shoreline somewhere, take a look down at the complexity etched onto the faces of the rocks below you, or the sheer multitude of sand-grains upon which you stand. Then take a look at the horizon and try to imagine not only the stupendous size of the planet that we call home, but the scope for variation in the life that lives here. I would doubt it’s truly comprehensible. We are now a species of some 7,000,000,000 (seven billion!!) souls, each one completely unique. Imagine the variation in history and upbringing that every single one of us has had. Imagine the differences in opinion that we all hold; the vast - or indeed slight - difference in values, and in the sentiments that we attach to those values. Everyone has their own story. The chances of any two being the same are profoundly remote. The chances that they will clash and collide are intensely high.

That we are even bound by and functioning as a society can sometimes come as surprise. That me and you and Tom might differ on this issue and others is not the core point here. The main point is that no one deserves a level of punishment that does not fit the crime. To publicly apologize for that YouTube video? - ‘Laugh out loud!’ comes to mind.

If you apply that to Scottish politics then of course not everyone will be in agreement. In essence this is what irks about the Tom Harris affair. When you think about the obvious differences in personality across our country, that one person should suffer for, what in my opinion, is so slightan offence, is both unjust and undeserving. The video wasn’t a political statement about the SNP being far-right; it was a satire of the party. If you really pushed him, would Mr Harris genuinely equate the Nationalists with the National Socialists? The video was made in jest and why, as a society, we haven’t taken it that way I’m struggling to fully understand. It’s not a stance that we should endorse, and it exemplifies reductions in levels of tolerance, liberalism and even more fundamentally, in humour. Self-degradation can be endearing, and being able to laugh at ourselves is (or was?) supposedly a national trait in this country.

Surely that’s why you’d rather a have a friend that was modest and funny - belittling and confident enough to see and take it as such - than one who was full of ego and who took themselves too seriously.

I don’t know the first thing about Tom Harris as a person. As a politician he absolutely does not represent my views, but on this issue I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him.

I think that this ‘offence-taking’should stop. It is often irrational and almost always inconsistent. I wouldn’t consider myself a ‘bad guy’, but I’ve certainly done things in my life that haven’t been nice, and that I haven’t been proud of. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Even as an atheist you have to admire the reason and rationality in those words. But can they breed consistency? Let’s hope so. For me to lambast Tom Harris for that video, or for me to even criticise it, would require a parachute to get down from what would be a very high horse. I’m not going to crucify someone for such a small mistake. If you could even call it that, is another question.

There is perhaps something unhealthy in expecting our public figures to be ‘whiter than white’. No human being I know is. Why should a politician defy the rules of human nature? We learn from our mistakes.

There’s no hiding from the fact that the debate on our country’s future has proven to be extremely divisive -and it shows no signs of abating. But we could all learn from the wise words of Carl Sagan when he compared the more petty trials and tribulations of human beings to the enormity of everything else around us - our interconnectedness and our vulnerability. He said that ‘it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one and other.’

And that must surely be an important foundation upon which to proceed.

How can you talk rationality when you’re actingirrational? You can’t. And one of those will have to change if this‘Proper Debate’ is to be had. Rationality and consistency aren’t achievable. Not one-hundred-per-cent; not all the time. But it’s something that we should be striving for.

Ross Croall, @croall89

And The Land Lay Still?

This is just a small post, and one brought on by impulse. It has been inspired by something I’m beginning to sense; something I’m beginning to feel happening in this country. Is Scotland about to wake (or has it already woken?) from a 304 year slumber?

It’s hard to tell for definite, but I think it might be more than just a feeling of hope.

I was on holiday last summer with my ex-girlfriend in sunny Spain, and brought along something to read, settling on the 4^th novel by the brilliant Scottish writer James Robertson, And the Land Lay Still - the title of which was taken from the poem ‘The Summons’ from late Edwin Morgan's Sonnets from Scotland.

The novel itself is preceded by Morgan’s piece, and for me it has a small nationalist tinge. I’ve never been one for deciphering or understanding poems to any degree, but I think the last line resonates…

“The year was ending, and the land lay still.

Despite our countdown, we were loath to go,

kept padding along the ridge, the broad glow

of the city beneath us, and the hill

swirling with a little mist. Stars were right,

plans, power; only now this unforeseen

reluctance, like a slate we could not clean

of characters, yet could not read, or write

our answers on, or smash, or take with us.

Not a hedgehog stirred. We sighed, climbed in, locked.

If it was love we felt, would it not keep,

and travel where we travelled? Without fuss

we lifted off, but as we checked and talked

a far horn grew to break that people’s sleep.”

Will the independence referendum pass? Who knows? But it’s something that I’m beginning to sense is increasingly possible. And if it does, it will be in no small part down to the money gifted by Edwin Morgan to the party. A selfless act and an example.

And if James Robertson could read this - I hope you have another book due in soon.

Happy holidays everyone.

Ross Croall, @croall89

Would I Vote For Independence?

On 1st July 1999, the Scottish Parliament took up its full powers as established by the Scotland Act 1998. Twelve years and three more elections since, we have a majority SNP government, which promises us a referendum on independence before May 2015.

I've said for years whenever anyone asked, that while I'd want to be a Scot if Scotland got independence, I'd vote for what we now have: devolution within the UK. I have always thought this fits our peculiar situation as a country - we have not been fully independent as a nation since 1603, and separating Scotland from the rest of the UK into a separate nation would be as bad as moving house when you've been married for 408 years: there's so much community property that would have to be divided, and with one thing and another it doesn't seem likely to be a friendly, unrancorous divorce. The last time something like this happened in Europe was 1905, the dissolution of the 90-year union of the crowns of Sweden and Norway. That ended peacefully, but Sweden and Norway had never become as closely married as England and Scotland.

The SNP has won - more or less - two elections in a row. Both times they benefited from external events - the guddle of the ballots in 2007, the unpopularity of the Scottish Liberal Democrats following Nick Clegg's defection to the Tories in 2010. (Unfairly unpopular, it has to be admitted, since the Scottish LibDems had nothing to do with the actions of the Westminster party.) But win they did, and though confused London pundits may put this down to the genius of Alex Salmond, anyone familiar with Scottish politics knows it's quite a bit more complicated than that.

The last time the Tories were in power in Westminster they succeeded in making themselves so unpopular in Scotland that a Scottish Tory MP is now a rarer species than a giant panda: in 1992 all of the Tory MPs in Scotland could have been fitted into two taxis, and by 1997, the year of the total wipeout, the Tories were so worried about their electability in Scotland that even before Section 28 was repealed they'd started courting the gay vote. (The first time an official representative of the Conservative party ever attended a LGBT conference in Scotland was 20th June 1997 in Edinburgh City Chambers.) Conservative MSPs get into the Scottish Parliament, 15 of them at last count, benefiting from the list vote – ironic since Tory party policy is in favour of first-past-the-post.

Alex Salmond has nothing to lose and a great deal to gain if he puts off the referendum til the very end of the fourth term of the Scottish Parliament. David Cameron and Nick Clegg seem likely to keep the Conservatives in government in Westminster till April 2015, and the lackluster opposition of the Labour party combined with some interesting revisions of the Westminister constituencies mean that the Conservatives could even win a second term, and this time without even the tiny brake on their drive that the coalition represents.

And if that happened?

So far, the SNP and the previous SNP/Green coalition have shielded Scotland from the worst of the Tory cuts. If Scottish youth unemployment is at an all-time high, Scottish unemployment is still overall not as bad as it is in England and Wales. But things are bad all over, and the Tory committment to public sector cuts mean things are only going to get worse. In Scotland we won't (so far) suffer from Andrew Lansley's plans to allow the private sector to make use of 49% of NHS hospital resources: the Scottish Parliament have refused consent to the horrifying Welfare Reform Bill, the first time Holyrood has refused Westminster legislative consent, on the grounds that the changes to the welfare system proposed by the Tories at Westminster would result in damaging cuts to some of the most vulnerable people in Scotland.

But this shield can't stay up forever. The Tory determination to cut public services is ideological, not economic: claims by John Redwood that austerity is good for the country look as inaccurate as his own claims for expenses.

In simplified form, a government always gets the money it needs to run the country by borrowing and then gets a steady trickle or hopefully a flood of money coming in from taxes: the better the economy (and the better the revenue department) the more money comes in for the government to spend, and the better off we all are.

The claim by George Osborne and other right-wing thinkers that if the economy is doing badly and so less money is coming in from taxes, the thing to do is to create massive unemployment and cut services that people depend on, and to cut investment in young people who will be the creators of wealth in the future, and thus ensure even less money comes in from taxation - even if you could count on HMRC to collect all the money we're due, which we can't, and even if the Tory government had not been steadily cutting the number of tax inspectors trained to deal with megamillion tax avoidance, which they are. We aren't as badly off as Greece or Ireland yet, but those countries are where the Tory "austerity" is taking us to. Calling this Osbornomics is too much of a compliment to the Tory chancellor: he did not originate the idea of cutting the economy in order to save it, and he's hardly the only exponent of it in the current government.

Points of information: The UK's national debt is not excessive, is long-term, is largely internal: the UK lends more money to other nations than it borrows. The 2008 banking crash, caused by deregulation of the financial industry, is the cause of the current depression in the UK and the worldwide economy - the Tory story that we have a problem because Labour spent too much money on public services is, not to put too fine a point on it, a lie.

I lived through the last Tory years, 79-97: I remember just what they were like. We have, in this united country, built up shared treasures of community property - from the National Health Service to the Human Rights Act 1998, from the smallest of local services to help troubled teenagers to the grandeur of an education system that is in principle open to all and is in practice still one of the best of the world.

What the Tories are doing to our community property is nothing short of vandalism. Massive cuts are being made that will cause permanent damage - loss of experience and skill that can't be brought back. These are ideological cuts, all too clearly driven by the Tory party's financiers, and sadly, it seems Labour in Westminster has been far less radical in reaction to this than the SNP in Holyrood.

What will the SNP become in an independent Scotland? They're not exactly free of links between major donors and policy changes: Brian Souter, baron of the buses, makes huge donations to the SNP - and the SNP mysteriously dropped the policy of bus re-regulation. Iceland is an example of how a small country can come to disaster by predatory banks despite strong opposition from the Icelandic people. Would the SNP continue to be as radical in government in an independent Scotland without the spark of opposition to a Westminister government that's been steadily drifting rightward?

I've gone from being sure I would vote against independence to being unsure - is it really time to break up a 408-year marriage over a few unhappy years of Toryism? Can the damage the current Westminister government is doing be fixed once they're out of power? How long can the Scottish Parliament hold them off? How soon will the UK be able to elect a better government? Above all: is it really right to end the union because of a temporary political fault? Has English politics really become so alien that we'll never again be able to agree on a common government? I read English reactions to Tory cuts and I have hope: I listen to English MPs of all three major parties and I lose hope.

If I vote for independence, it will be because I feel there is too much risk of an ongoing right-wing government in England - Labour in Westminster seems to be running to the right in order to win votes from the Conservatives: a pattern that results in the Tories running further right, and eventually overturns the whole ship. It will be because I believe that Scotland still holds as a nation to the principles of universalism which underpin a working welfare state. The SNP long ago rejected the concept of Scottishness as a racial characteristic, identifying anyone as a Scot who wants to be, who's born in or living in Scotland, whether they're Henderson or Hussain, Dalgleish or De Luca. Can we hold to this, if a majority vote for independence? I hope so. Because I can't help thinking that I'm not the only one who's doubtful about breaking up the union, but horrified at what another few terms of Tory government would do to Scotland after what the last lot did.

Written by Jane Carnall