💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anarchist-federation-don-t-mourn-organise.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 06:53:54. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Don’t Mourn. Organise. Author: Anarchist Federation Date: September 19, 2014 Language: en Topics: Scotland, organizing Source: Retrieved on 3rd June 2021 from https://scotlandaf.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/dont-mourn-organise-edinburgh-anarchist-statement-on-the-referendum-result/
Yesterday Scotland voted against independence. Today half the country
are mourning, their hopes of a new state and it’s social democratic
promise dashed. The other half are relieved, if perhaps not
enthusiastically celebrating, the potential uncertainty removed; things
will persist as before.
We neither mourn nor celebrate. The scaremongering of the No campaign
would likely have proved largely unfounded. So too would the promises of
the Yes campaign. In reality our lives would have continued mostly as
they did before in either event. We will trudge to the same jobs we hate
along the same roads, through the same congestion on the same expensive
transport. We’ll do so so we can pay our wages back to the capitalist
class in the same shops, to pay rent to the same landlords and mortgages
to the same banks. We’ll take our kids to the same schools with the same
education system, when we’re ill we’ll wait to use the same hospitals.
We’ll escape our jobs to the same parks, beaches, museums and pubs.
An independent Scotland would in most respects have resembled the
Scotland of the UK, a patriarchal, capitalist, environmentally
destructive society. A country with the most unequal land ownership in
the developed world – where 50% of the land is owned by just 432
individuals. A country dependent on North Sea oil for much of its
exports – oil that must be left in the ground to prevent climate
catastrophe. A country with huge poverty and huge wealth and little in
the way of organised working class action to change that dynamic.
And in so continuing to uphold the same institutions, the same
structures of power, the same business interests, and the same political
configuration, our fight against the state, capital and oppression
continues.
It has become popular amongst some on the pro-independence to claim that
even in defeat politics has been radically altered. People are engaged
with politics for the first time, turnout was 85%. A new broad popular
social movement is born, the referendum was never about a vote for the
Nationalists (capital N[1]). The campaign they built to push for
independence will now re-orient itself against the Scottish and British
governments and push for material concessions, emboldened by how close
they came and bringing newly radicalised people with them. But a high
turnout in itself tells us very little of what will come next, the
complacency that we have already changed politics is dangerous.
Leaving aside the tactical mistake of offering the SNP the support they
wanted to pass the referendum and then hoping to win concessions rather
than making those concessions a precondition of support, this seems at
best an optimistic prediction, which is far from certain to be realised.
It is highly probable that the movement built to advance a radical case
for independence will fail to maintain the unity it has shown
pre-referendum in a post-referendum situation. A new left unity party
(perhaps Left Unity itself) seems likely to form out of the Radical
Independence Campaign and will have to compete for votes with the
Scottish Green Party. The disintegration of the SSP last decade bodes
ill for the lasting chances of that configuration. If the parliamentary
left can regain even the position it held from 2003–2007 it will have
done exceedingly well (in its own terms).
Undoubtedly many from the radical independence movement will want to
maintain extra-parliamentary organisation, though how much of it is
truly independent of the parliamentary parties will be an open question.
But as with the referendum itself elections have a tendency to draw
activists away from direct struggle and towards themselves however good
peoples’ intentions are. Perhaps the most debilitating effect of the
referendum campaign was its draw away from other, more meaningful, sites
of struggle – the boycott workfare campaign, anti-deportations and pro
migrant work, environmental organising and so on. Of course, that is not
to say that no independence campaigners continued their engagement with
these causes, but no one has unlimited time and energy to contribute,
and that expended on the referendum could have been better placed
elsewhere.
As the independence referendum moves into the past, other issues may
start to regain their prominence. Foremost must be the commitment of
politicians in Westminster and Holyrood to continuing extraction of
Scotland’s share of North Sea oil.
The independence debate was consistently shaped by the prospects for oil
production and how the proceeds will be distributed. Even where
criticism did exist and a call for a “green new deal” was made, the
focus was to argue for renewables. Whilst greater use of renewable
energy is to be welcomed, it is far from sufficient. As Jason Moore has
highlighted energy revolutions of the past have always been additive and
substitutive. Market logic plus intervention for renewables will only
give us both renewables and fossil fuels. As alternative grow fossil
fuels prices will fall and maintain their use alongside. Real
decarbonisation of society requires the fuels be left in the ground and
their value written off.
You cannot build a “green” capitalism. You certainly cannot create it in
time. There is too much money invested in fossil fuels– in drilling, in
mining, in fracking. The ruling class will never voluntarily give up
this wealth, or allow it to be simply voted away. “To survive we must
act now” and “couple bleak reality with the utopian impulse” to demand a
complete transformation of our society[2].
An independent Scotland would have relied heavily on fossil fuels – not
least to maintain currency reserves and a positive balance of trade. The
extraction of North Sea oil will instead continue to prop up the UK’s
trade deficit. As part of a larger economy that dependence may now not
be brought as clearly to the fore. But that reliance must be exposed,
and it must be broken. That will be an expensive and difficult task, but
one which we have no choice but to take up – there will be no future for
Scotland or the UK if we do nothing. We must create the movement which
makes that possible. Too much time has been spent on bourgeois
constitutional questions while the rich consolidate their wealth and
power, impose austerity and hardship and leave the planet to burn safe
that adaptation will be good enough for them.
So tonight, drown your sorrows. Take time to regain your energy and when
you’re ready come back to join us. The better society that had been
pinned on independence doesn’t need a new state. Keep talking to your
neighbours and your workmates. We have a world to win and only our own
working class self-activity and organisation will secure it.
[1] We’ve discussed previously the obfuscation of “good” and “bad”
nationalism and the left’s claim that independence has nothing to do
with nationalism. In our opinion both yes and no campaigns de facto
represent competing nationalisms, whatever their intentions to the
contrary.
[2] Goodbye to the Future – Out of the Woods.