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SNP exposed as the recession bites
THE SECOND anniversary of the coming to power of the
Scottish National Party (SNP) government approaches. With Scotland
gripped by a deep recession, the SNP is responding by moving to the
right and jettisoning some of its more progressive policies. The SNP
government has abandoned plans to scrap the widely despised council tax,
which was one of its key flagship policies and, moreover, a policy that
played an important role in their election victory in May 2007.
Alongside reneging on the promise to write off student debt in Scotland
and the resurrection of PFI/PPP to build some public infrastructure
projects – despite promises to scrap (in reality, modify) the use of
private finance – the largely phoney radicalism of the SNP is being
exposed.
These policy reversals, taking place at a time of
deepening economic crisis and rapidly rising unemployment, underline the
inability the SNP to offer any alternative to the capitalist market. The
SNP has not benefited politically from the capitalist crisis. If
anything, it has been exposed to a greater degree than at anytime since
it came to power and particularly after the sky fell in on the banks
last autumn. This is some feat given the huge opposition to the failed
and discredited New Labour government led by Gordon Brown and Alistair
Darling.
The SNP’s economic model, the so-called ‘arc of
prosperity’ of Ireland, Iceland, Norway and an independent Scotland, has
become the arc of insolvency. Iceland is in the grip of a national
bankruptcy, while Ireland has gone from ‘Celtic tiger’ to economic
basket case in less than a year.
The SNP leadership, including first minister, Alex
Salmond, has a very close relationship with many of Scotland’s top
bankers. Salmond is a former economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
Former RBS chairman, Sir George Mathewson, chairs the Scottish
government’s council of economic advisors. Salmond described the now
battered and insolvent HBoS as a "very well capitalised bank", blaming
spivs and speculators for short-selling HBoS shares leading to its
demise, rather than the greed and incompetence of the bank’s own
executives. The SNP had hoped to build its ‘smart and successful’
Scotland on a thriving financial services sector. These events have left
its plans in tatters.
Financial services have taken a battering. The
takeover of HBoS by Lloyds/TSB is expected to result in at least 7,000
jobs lost. RBS are expected to cut at least 25,000 jobs, more than 2,000
of them in Scotland. One in three of all new jobs created over the last
seven years have been in the finance sector, which now employs 86,000
people. It is expected to collapse by 10% this year. The credit crunch
will have a devastating effect on workers’ jobs.
The construction industry is becoming a desert –
26,000 jobs have already gone with another 100,000 in jeopardy. New home
starts have fallen by a colossal 86% in the last year, while 86% of
construction companies and 67% of retail firms have reported falls in
contracts and sales leading to thousands of lay-offs and redundancies.
The SNP blamed the lack of a majority in the
Scottish parliament for its decision to give up on its promise to end
council tax. However, it was clear that the recession and the planned
huge public spending cuts were key factors in its decision. As the
International Socialists pointed out, the SNP’s planned replacement to
the council tax, the local income tax (LIT), was going to raise around
£750 million less in revenue than the council tax. With the Westminster
government refusing to assign current council tax benefit – £400 million
– to help fund LIT, there was a huge hole in the SNP’s plans. The SNP’s
local income tax was different to the parliamentary bill for a Scottish
service tax presented by the then MSP Tommy Sheridan in 2002. Rather
than tax the rich more while raising more money for public services,
which Tommy Sheridan’s bill would have done, the SNP’s LIT plan was
going to be levied at 3p in the pound for all workers, leaving a huge
shortfall in revenue.
This deficit was made worse by Darling’s demand for
swingeing cuts – described as efficiency savings – in public spending in
2010 and 2011. For the Scottish government, that will mean slashing £500
million a year from the Scottish budget. It is for this reason that the
SNP gave up on scrapping the council tax, although a freeze on council
tax is still in place for now.
For the SNP, defying cuts in public expenditure and
building a campaign to win resources to fund decent public services is
not an option it is prepared to contemplate. At a time when hundreds of
billions of pounds in public money is being used to bail out the banks,
a mass campaign to demand our bailout to safeguard jobs and services,
including demonstrations and strike action, would get a huge response
from working-class communities, public-sector workers, and trade
unionists in general. This was the approach that the Liverpool city
councillors took in the 1980s when they refused to make the cuts that
the Thatcher government demanded. Instead, they built a mass campaign
among the working class of the city and won extra resources to build
homes, improve education and create jobs.
The SNP, in contrast, is quite prepared to implement
the cuts at a local and national level. It is taking the axe to jobs and
services in the councils it forms part or all of the ruling
administrations. The ‘responsible’ SNP government in Edinburgh is also
demanding 2% efficiency savings, ie cuts across the public sector. It
has imposed below inflation pay deals on its own low-paid civil servants
while supporting wage cuts on Scottish local government workers who were
on strike last year.
As a result, there is a growing questioning and
opposition to the actions of the SNP, which is being exposed as a
pro-business and anti-working class government. New Labour offers
nothing except the increasingly likely road to the return of a Tory
government led by David Cameron. There is no sign of a Tory revival in
Scotland. The Tories may do well to hold on to the one Westminster seat
they currently have in Scotland. It is possible therefore that, in a
desire to prevent the return of a Tory government, Labour’s support in
Scotland could hold up or increase. However, if a Tory government seems
inevitable, the SNP could also gain, despite its policy failures.
Support for independence has been held back. There
are increasing doubts about whether an independent Scotland could be
viable against the backdrop of the biggest economic crisis since the
1930s, a dramatic fall in the price of oil, and a severe contraction in
the banking and financial sector. These doubts are likely to remain a
big complication for the SNP as the recession worsens. For many workers,
even those sympathetic to independence, the SNP's inability to provide
any answers to the deepening economic crisis can undermine support for
independence, currently standing around 38%. However, the election of a
Tory government could alter that situation and would be likely to
produce a surge in support for independence and/or a Scottish parliament
with more extensive powers, given the memory of the last period of Tory
rule. Between 1979 and 1997 the national rights of the Scottish people
were trampled on and Tory policies produced a resurgence of the national
question.
For trade unionists, young people and the working
class generally the political choice is between the devil and the deep
blue sea. The screaming urgency to build a mass working-class and
socialist alternative to the capitalist parties is clear in Scotland, as
it is across Britain. The International Socialists support the building
of such a party and we welcome the discussions that have been taking
place among leading trade unionists and socialists in Scotland with a
view to convening a national meeting to clarify how the left and
socialist ideas can be strengthened. This is an urgent and necessary
task. At the same time, we will be actively involved in helping to build
Solidarity – Scotland’s Socialist Movement, and the Youth Fight for Jobs
campaign.
The scandalous decision by the Scottish Crown
Office, ‘under incredible pressure’ from Lothian and Borders police, to
pursue a libel trail against Tommy and Gail Sheridan also requires all
socialists and class-conscious workers to fight this brutal vendetta by
the enemies of socialism and working people. It is clear that massive
state resources are being brought to bear to try and destroy Scotland’s
best-known socialist. In particular, this onslaught is designed to
extract revenge for Tommy Sheridan’s role, alongside many other members
of Militant, in the defeat of the poll tax and the injuries inflicted on
the ruling class by that mass movement. But these attacks will not save
their system nor will it prevent a new generation from finding a road to
the ideas of socialism and Marxism in the months ahead.
Philip Stott
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