SEVEN YEARS AGO the Labour Party unveiled what at the time were regarded as daring proposals for changing the relation between the Westminster Parliament and Scotland. The 1908 Scottish Council of the Labour Party recommended 1 tears and risks are guarded against..
Edinburgh sittings Scottish Committee (ol the House of Commons) could be tried. We remain open minded to further non-divisive steps in the long term future. (1] much shorter than anything the Scottish Council of the Labour Party could guess In ess than a decade the Scottish National Party's vote rose from 5 per cent to today's 30 per cent.
Now, in the midst of Britain's deepest ever economic crisis, a sudden and radical change is to be made to a system of Pariamentary institutions which have evolved over centuries. Both the Labour and Tory partles have embraced at laast the principle or devolution for Scotland, suffering public splits in the process. But the revolutionary left was no more percepTHE STARTING POINT of an analysis of the national question has to be a review of the changing relation of Scorland to the Linion a relation which now seems so fragile. Although it is the post-mar siruation which is crucial to an understanding ol Scottish nationalism, it is necessary to note in passing some of the features of Scolland's cariler developThe Union of 1707 wat probably unique in European history, for it produced neither rebellion nor assimilation for the new British state. Mateless or Smith and Home. writers like SomE proletarians like Hardie, Tandlards Eke the Doke of Sutherland and the industrialists who saw all found their economic, social and political life tied up with British society as a whole. 15] Bur the Union, and the British state born from it preserved lotact many of the specifically Scottish institutions of scia le and civil society — mastittians disinet from those in England. The Church. Jaw, education, and later, civil administration, remai ned alive and functioning, inhabited by a spocios of upper petty bourgeois renowned for both their intense British patriotism and their Scouish parochialism, In the titst 250 wears of the Union there was no contradiction berween the two, and the possibility of тести a macpe эрна sae mo po tacss institutions was never scriously raisod. Scotland's cvolution in the post-war decline of British imperialiscn was to dramatically change this situation.
Since the Second World Rar. Lie legacy of Scolned's partnership in Britain's world economic role a ant tou evident. The dismal picrure of the Thousands of Scotlish workers Eving in Loadoo or Birmingham are all roo familia: features of post war Scotland of course bas nor heen alone in slaterne cran these Testonal probitubs. of the crisis and decay of British imperialism. where the entire question of Scotland and the Assembly did not even merit a sentence.
In many ways, this lack of understanding of the national question in Scotland was surprising weakness of the revolutionary laft. In the era of 'classical' Marxiam of Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg and the Austro-Marxists, national question and the problems of socialis strategy associated with it were the source of extensive and sometimes brilliant debate. i4j However, at that time it was the impending breakup of the Russian and Austrian empires which gave urgency to these polemics. The long term future of course proved to be ists have been slow to realise that today's map of Europe demonstrates much of the political Instability discussed by Olto Bauer or Rosa Luxemburg.
The rise of mass working class struggie since 1968 is, Just as before the First World War, going to be faced four-square by the question of nationalism and national self-determination In this issue of the Battle of Ideas, NEIL WILLIAMSON looks al the most basic questions which confront revolutionary socialiste in considering the national question complified by laly with the sharp division betwen north, Like southern Haly, the most useful index of Scotland's underdevelopment has been its massive loss of labour, above all in the manufacturing soctor.
The industries which buil the expansion of the minereenth cenrury find themselves ground dowr under foreiga competition. In ship-building the Clyde is now huilding less than half the tonnage of the carly years of this century. This involved a post-war lost ol 30,000 in its labour forpe In steel production, Scotland's share of the British toral has slumped from hall its total in the same period, with a similar loss of labour to that in shipbuilding. Mining completes the pattern with two thinds of is jobs lose since the late 1950c. The end resalt has been a net fall in the male The Dole Queue - logical outcome of regional policies ManCHE TOTA SCOTISH USED WITH INTO boa Cutting RE 30,000 per year broughou: the 19605. 16)
In the first fifeen years of the post-mar era the Scottish cconoms was growing percen I0 and 15 pe not continue indefinitely without some response. Ar population, and the unemployment rare ran a douhle the national average, the vision of Scotland as an industrial desert, a sort of urban Brittany, became a serious one. A product of the decline was the draining away of the dynamism and weight of the Scottisa employing class This was the context for the formarion of bodies like the Scouish Council for Desclopmeat and Indusiry 17), uniting bath trade unions and employers in a frantic search for jobs → at any price. Reports, surveys and plans proliferated, and regional policy was born. Support for regional policy and blanket aid to industry were the joint slogans of the Scottish TUC and the Scottish CHI. For the trade union bureaucrati there way the advantage of their acceptance in the corridors of power, no matter how lacy the ferniture Regional policy stagecred into life in the mid. Nos in a veritable plethora of legislation. The Local Em play ment Act of 1960, the Industrial Development Act of 1966 aed che Regional Employment Premium passec cinder the statute book. Over a decade Inter it is possible to make some assessmen: of the success of the policies Even on ibe aims they ser themselves - creation of employment the record is a pretty blesk ove Migration actunliy rose in the period of regionaland the manufacturing godusers lost over 30,000 jobs. Bar this is only half the story, for regional policy was direcily responsible for what can anly be described as a new phase in the Scotish conomy The bribes paid to indestrial investment were massive. By che 19708 one balf of the deprociation on new plant and machinery was covered by grants, 40 per cen: of ooss were being paid as an initial allowance on new building. Alogetaer, these sort of gracis were taking up 35 per pent of Britsin's total expenditure on regiomal aid. Bat it was nor the older soctions of Scortish industry who were best placed lo take advantage of this. With such lucrative induce ments in invest and cathetic subpot trot the STUC for indestry at any price, the marinationals *moved in.
The list of plants starting up in Scolland in the carly 1960s reads Eke a Who's Who of international bi busined. Roots opened up in Lingood in 1960. followed by the British Motor Corporation three years Sale. Caterpillar opened up their first LiE operation with their cractor plans just outside Glasgow, Ferranti. of the 1960s.
Fortunes were made by building subsidised factories, using the Regional Employment Premiam to pay the wages, dien shifting to countries with lower wage rates. Firms like Personna and STC were to beconte Tamous as get Ten quick merchan, Due DoneTs Uke Chuyster scaved to openly blackmail the Government far an increased subsidy lo save jabs Side by side with the decimation of the male labour force in the previous bastions of labour ciovemen! strength bren foundries, shipyards, mines), weat the "new industries — unskilled, usually badly unionised. often employing mainly women employed in assembly WOTH The role of the state was heparing indispensable to nearly every sacrion of Scoffish employment. Withour regional policy there would be no Bathgate, no Linwood and no Marathon. The alder sectors were so decrepit that eventually even the protence of private ownership was thrown away and the Government nationalised them. Even in "calls" firms Ike Weirs or ar Yarrows, I was Government contracts which provided the gravy Government scorned rip-off by the employing class, the labour leaders were unable to act, for this new inestment had boen their own slated goal tbroughour the 1960s. The influential Scoltish Council for Development and Industry concluded is 1974 conference with the die warning that rodendnicy has to he accepred an a normal occurrence' azi protected a further 50,000 jobs permanently los by the mid 1980c 18)
It was this type or thinking which lay behind the decision liceraliy to 'hutcher" the UCS shinyards in 1971. 8.500 sorkers were directly employed there. and an estimated 20.000 others wore involved in supply and relared induscries. When this closure was anet by over 100,000 workers demonstrating on the streets, the logio of regional palicy was at Jeast lemperarty defied.
But the lessons were never legroed, for the failure of the policy lay dooper than the unemplesment statis ties. The underlying malaise of Scorish urban sociely remained as before: the atrocious housing. the urban poverts, the resulting waves of migration. In housing schemes like Blackhill in Glasgow, bale unemploy ment is 14 percent, 40 per cent of the population live in overcrosded conditions and SET percent ar antually referred to the social work department, 19)
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The History of the New Nationalism