Sillars - In Place of Fear II: a Socialist Programme for an Independent Scotland

A Socialist Programme for an Independent Scotland

Jim Sillars

The referendum is about power. On 18 September, 2014, between the hours of 7 am and 10 pm, absolute sovereign power will lie in the hands of the Scottish people. They have to decide whether to keep it, or give it away to where their minority status makes them permanently powerless and vulnerable.

Without sovereignty, Scotland is inherently weakened. Oil, gas, energy, whisky, land and other vital national interests are externally owned, often by those who do not put Scotlands interests first. Without the power to intervene in the national interest, a power available through independence, not devolution, we are at the mercy of forces that have no concern for us, our welfare or our future.

Independence alone can remedy this.

This subordinate position cannot be allowed to continue. Bereft of sovereign power we are in a trap, with others deciding the fate of our economy and society. The only way we can have a vision of a better tomorrow for our children and grandchildren, and deliver it to them, is by being a nation in full charge of itself.

Independence does not mean more of the same, with the only difference being that the saltire flies alone on public buildings instead of alongside the union flag. Independence is a paradigm shift. It means no longer tolerating the intolerable.It means using the power of the nation to create a different economic model than the present one that has failed us, and from there going on to build a decent society.

Remember the lesson of Grangemouth. On 24 October 2013, James Cook, reporting for BBC 1 pm news, summed up the position: The nation awaits the decision of one man. A vital national interest to be saved or destroyed by a foreign billionaire. What a humiliation: one man vs 5 million, and the 5 million were powerless. There can be no better example of why that sovereign power in Scottish hands on 18 September must be retained, and why the socialist ethic of public good above all must again be embraced.

Grangemouth is not alone in showing that a new political and economic model is needed, where the public interest registers, where policies driven by the greed that has become so prevalent in the UK are replaced by ones founded on co-operation and concern for communities, and where a dynamic state is a powerful driver to achieve more equality.

The alternative to independence is more of the same. A land of food banks, pay-day loan companies and unremitting poverty for 250,000 children. Better Together is a fraudulent slogan. If Scots vote NO, they will be voting to be Poorer Together. The United Kingdom is heading towards a national debt of 1.5 trillion. The present recovery is artificially stimulated and fuelled by more national and personal debt. It is designed to hide the truth and take the Tory Party successfully through the election campaign in 2015 immediately thereafter the real cuts will come in. At present only 1 in every 10 of cuts has fallen upon the people. After the 2015 election, with 25 billion cuts scheduled in 2015-16, will come the deluge. The gap between the rich and the rest will grow wider.

Socialist ideas can change all that, with independence. Socialists have a vision, not an airy-fairy one where words compensate for lack of ideas, but one grounded on a programme that aims to shift power to working people and their families; that aims to end the indignity and corrosive effect of unemployment on the personality. A programme that will set people free from fear, that transforms the lives of those in poverty by abolishing it, that gives our young people a society in which they can develop all of their talents, that addresses the disabled with compassion, and that ensures dignity and security in old age for our pensioners.

What Scots have lacked to date is belief in their own power. Working people have allowed themselves to be browbeaten and manipulated into believing that this is the best of all possible worlds and that they are powerless to alter it. The myth of Scottish inadequacy has sapped the moral and political strength of the nation, and made it susceptible to swallowing lies about itself.

That depressing era comes to an end when, on achieving independence, Scots own their own country, are beholden to no one, bend the knee to no one, ask permission of no one for policies the people need, when they can think new thoughts, embrace new ideas and use the power that lies latent within themselves to change things for the better forever.

In place of fear we will create a nation proud, selfconfident, prosperous, in which the working people will have the opportunity to exert their power to quickly build a fair and just society.

This is a programme of priorities. It concentrates on what must be done and can be done in short order.

In 1952 Nye Bevan published In Place of Fear . He addressed a country in which fear of unemployment haunted the working class, whose experience of the 1930s had left bitter memories. Today, with the technological revolution gathering pace, job security seemingly a thing of the past, and labour just another commodity for sale or disposal in the marketplace, fear is back. It need not be so.

Nye Bevan did not argue against a mixed economy, but sought to conquer the commanding heights in order that the public good, through public control, brought benefits of production and services to the people. There are still considerable, if not actually commanding, heights to be conquered for the public good.

Time and circumstances have changed. China and the rest of Asia were still basket cases when In Place of Fear was published. Global capitalism through the transnational companies had yet to develop. So socialists today are faced with a very different world to that of the 1950s. We do not need to fear it.

Nye Bevan said that to succeed socialists must be audacious. We must be able to think and do what the establishment says we must not think and cannot do. There is, in fact, nothing the people cannot do when they exercise their power in an independent parliament. It is that power, with the audacity to use it, that this programme calls into action.

This programme is coherent. The bits fit together. A number of projects will cost no more than money at present in the system. It will be better distributed and used. Resource management will, with a different economic model, maximise the assets of the nation, achieve higher growth rates, and increase the revenues for government. There are new ideas on funding.