JIM SILLARS URGES UNITY
Jim Sillars This article is based on a speech I made at an ALBA public meeting in Edinburgh on Friday 7th. July. The other speakers were Alex Salmond and Marjorie Ellis Thompson. Among the large attendance were not only ALBA supporters, but, like me, members of the SNP. I harbour no ill feelings towards ALBA, my regretContinue reading "JIM SILLARS URGES UNITY"
Jim Sillars
This article is based on a speech I made at an ALBA public meeting in Edinburgh on Friday 7th. July. The other speakers were Alex Salmond and Marjorie Ellis Thompson. Among the large attendance were not only ALBA supporters, but, like me, members of the SNP. I harbour no ill feelings towards ALBA, my regret being that, for good reason, people found it necessary to create and join it. I hope one day it and the SNP will unite, because a movement split is a poor basis on which to campaign.
My purpose is to call on the national movement to face reality, and to act upon it. We are stuck, no nearer independence in 2023 than in 2014. If we don’t face reality, and change who leads us, stuck is where we shall stay.
The SNP Dundee convention showed why we are stuck: continuity of mistake, along with a dash of convoluted confusion; followed days later by the utter folly of Humza Yousaf volunteering to join the Euro – seemingly ignorant of the massive loss of sovereignty that involves. Swapping the Bank of England’s control of our monetary policy, for control by the European Central bank, and swapping Westminster government for the unelected, unaccountable European Commission, will keep us under someone else’s control. The very opposite of independence.
The mistake I refer to, was made by Nicola Sturgeon, now loyally followed by Humza. That is a failure to understand the difference between strategy and tactics. Our strategy is to gain independence by building a substantial majority to a level that the British state cannot ignore or thwart. Only then do we adopt a tactic, one of impeccable constitutional principle, a demand for a referendum.
For seven wasted years the SNP elevated a referendum as the be all and end all of Scottish politics. They have done so while support for independence has been a consistent minority. We are lucky the UK government didn’t, and does not, grant the Sturgeon-Yousaf wish, because we are in no position to win a referendum.
Our movement faces a double reality. Not only are we stuck, but we are in no condition at present to win over those unionist votes we need for that substantial majority. No longer can we trust the SNP government to produce the necessary geopolitical analysis combined with a coherent, convincing, economic case of how an independent Scotland will transform itself from a faltering, low wage region, to a nation able to win a prosperous position in a world where power, and competition, has shifted to Asia. No longer must we allow the path to independence be controlled by the SNP.
That task must now be taken up by the movement itself, through forming a single national organisation committed to producing the evidence that will convince our fellow Scots unionists of two things. First, that the British state’s crises, which means ours as well, is insoluble in the British context. Britain is broken and bankrupt, sustained at present by an international credit card it will find increasingly difficult to pay off.
Second, that if they, who have clung to the Union, are to escape from the continued decline and failure that is the fate of being “British,” their only escape from getting poorer is to join us on the road to independence. I don’t write of broken Britain, with any glee. Thousands of working class people south of the border are going to face a nightmare of falling income and failing services in a country where they will get poorer. They cannot escape. The Scots can.Scots staying in the union with them will be of no help. Five million cannot save sixty million.
A bankrupt, broken British state? That is not an invention of some deranged ScotNat writing in The National. That message comes from the Daily Telegraph and the Bank of England. Here it is from the Telegraph describing what their columnists set out:
6/12/22 I fear nobody can save Britain from its inevitable, catastrophic collapse.
22/12/22 Britain is as poor country pretending to be rich.
24/12/22 There’s no cause for optimism in broken Britain
5/1/23 Nobody wants to confront the truth: Britain is becoming a poor country.
15/1/23 Britain has just become a whole lot poorer – and there’s no way out.
David Leask, writing in The Herald 22/4/23 : It’s time to scotch the myth of a rich UK. We are getting poorer every day.
26/4/23 Daily Mail Headline reporting on Huw Pill, Chief Economist of the Bank of England, telling Britons “You need to accept you are poorer.” Of course he, earning £190K, a year was denounced for insensitivity, and a couple of days later was made to apologise. Shoot the messenger, and ignore the message. But it is the message that matters. Denying the truth doesn’t make it disappear.
To achieve independence we have to persuade unionists to change their opinion, and vote. They, not those who at present represent a solid base of support, are the ones that will decide whether we win or not. Treating them with respect, engaging with them in civilised discussion, pointing out a new truth about the British state, and the consequences for them and their families, is how we can win them over.
In 2014 the UK they believed in – big, powerful, rich – they saw as an economic umbrella under which they thought it best for Scotland to shelter. That belief is no longer available. We have to show them that the only way they can avoid getting poorer is through independence.
MY COMMENTS
Britain is getting poorer and it is becoming impossible to hide it. Inflation is destroying savings, wages are not keeping up, the need to be part of a strong union to get a decent wage rise is increasingly the way to go for workers. All this of course was supposed to be in the past, the Tories thought Margaret Thatcher had destroyed union power, and she did at the time but it is back and it is growing in influence and power every day. No good Tories complaining about it because it’s been their running and organisation of the economy “the greedy man’s charter” that has finally given the Unions the chance to re establish their role as more and more people rebel against policies that enrich the richest in society while ignoring the ordinary worker. The cost of living crisis is adversely affecting not just the working class but increasingly middle class home owners are struggling with soaring energy and mortgage payments. The Tories will be toast at the next election if these problems continue although powder puff Starmer is not making much of the electoral opportunities that are flooding in. Likewise in Scotland the SNP have made a huge mess of things and have completely lost the art of governing effectively and with popular support from the electorate. The coalition with the Greens had been marked by one policy disaster after another. The “cabinet” these days is lightweight and desperately short of talent, vision and energy.
I am, as always
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