our for an elected Assembly. Althe SNP has gained support from important sections of the merchant banks in Scotland, it is absurd to see the growth in their support as constitutional arrangement between Scotland and the United Kingdom For socialists 'unity' is not about structures of parliamentary rule, but about the unity of the organisations of the working class. A fight for independence can only be a fight to break up that unity. To divide the trade union movement, for instance, along national lines, to break up the Engineering or Transport Workers unions into Scottish and English unions would only weaken workers on both sides of the border.
Any analogy with Ireland's break from Britain, or argument that some specific form of English oppression is responsible for Scotland's problems, is to tail-end the reactionary mythology of the middle class SP, who seek some way out of the crisis by appealing to the "Common Interests' of the Scottish nation.
Some socialist movement have argued that the whole issue is a diversion, cunningly invented by the Labour Government to distract attention from its scand alous record on unemployment or the Nothing should surprise about the cynicism of the Labour Cabinet, but more important issues are at stake.
FIGHT The fight for socialism does not merely take place within the four walls of the factory. The capitalist class exercise their rule by a multitude of social, cultural and ideo logical means. To refuse to confront capital on every single terrain of daily life is to give up half the battle before it is fought. For better or for worse, the national question is one of these terrains.
British imperialism is now in its worst crisis since the days of George Ill. Its panicky and clumsy attempt to soive the nanonal quesuon 1 Scotland is only an indication of its weakness, not its strength. By initiating a fight now the homes work-places and union branehes of the Scottish working people for the the powers Assemory to assume necessary to confront the power of capital, this weakness of the Westminster Government can be turned to the positive advantage of the working A new era is opening up in Britist