Why I Support Scottish Independence

I first realised that something was wrong with the union in the May of 2010. I was only 14 at the time but I recall feeling a sense of injustice whilst watching the votes of the General Election being counted across the UK. In Scotland only one conservative was deemed worthy to represent a Scottish constituency yet, somehow, we would be ruled by a conservative government.
To me, this is not democratic. Scotland did not vote for this Government. Nor did we vote for the bedroom tax, the savage cuts imposed on our social services or the privatisation of public institutions that will, once again, put wealth and power in to the hands of the few. It seems that the only viable way of escaping the brutal cuts inflicted on our communities is to vote for independence.
As we have seen in the 2010 General Elections, 2011 Scottish Parliamentary elections, the emergence of UKIP & opinions on EU membership: Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom are going in different political directions. I'm not saying that one is superior to the other, just that they are differing. Why should the rest of the UK be forced to stay in the EU on account of Scotland or why should Scotland be forced to leave it against it's will?
Independence isn't about separating ourselves from the rest of the world so that we can learn gaelic and watch braveheart all day. It's simply about having the power to make our own decisions. That is why I reject the label 'nationalist'. I am not a nationalist. I do not believe that Scotland is any better than any other nation. In fact, I would like Scotland to be far more involved on the international stage. But this vision of an internationally active Scotland differs to that offered by the neo-liberal unionist parties. When Johann Lamont and Ruth Davidson talk about 'influence' they are really talking about having the military power to oppress and to butcher other nations. I want Scotland to be influential like Norway which is holding peace talks between FARC and the Colombian government. Rather than spending billions on trident and illegal wars, Scotland would be better spending it's money on untied aid for developing countries, as well as dealing with it's own economic deprivation issues which has left around 1 in 5 Scottish children living in poverty. You must ask yourself: "Do I really see Westminster changing?". I would hazard a guess that most of you, like me, will answer "No.".
What I believe will be the main downfall of the UK is the unionist's refusal to acknowledge that anything is wrong with the current state of affairs. They ask why Scotland would want to leave the economic stability of the UK whilst Westminster is stripped of it's triple A credit rating, people across the UK face high unemployment and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. Why would Scotland want to give up the flourishing democracy of the UK with it's unelected head of state, unelected house of lords and unrepresentative voting system? After all, look at how well they've treated us Scots. We've been blessed with the 'job-creating' nuclear submarine that was deemed too hazardous to be kept in England whilst RAF Leuchers is shut down.
Yes, there is uncertainty with Scottish independence. There always is uncertainty with any radical constitutional change but I believe this change is necessary if Scotland is to escape the undemocratic, war-mongering British state and create a more just, prosperous, peaceful Scotland that protects the most vulnerable in society.

-Scott Lumsden, Scottish Green Party member.

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