Defend Scots Democratic Rights - Part 1 of 6

Summary

• The Tory government is adopting an increasingly authoritarian stance, as witnessed over its attempts to prevent Parliament having a say over Brexit.
• Labour's strategy is being driven by Stalinist Popular Frontism, in support of the Tories to push through a policy of Brexit, and fantasies about some possible future ability to carry out a policy of building Social-Democracy in One Country.
• Given the opposition to Brexit in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the policy is being increasingly implemented on the basis of promoting English nationalism, at the expense of the democratic rights of these other nations and regions.
• English socialists should emphasise the right of Scots to self-determination, Scottish socialists should emphasise the need for unity of Scottish workers with the workers of other nations. No support for the illusions of nationalism.
• Scotland is not an oppressed nation, but nor do the nations of Scotland or Wales, or the people of Northern Ireland occupy an equal status with England within the British state. Socialists should not content themselves with the reformist solution of merely mitigating the privilege that England has over the other nations.
• Demanding the continuation of the unity of the British state as the means of preserving the unity of Scottish workers with English and Welsh workers, simultaneously means demanding that Scottish workers are wrenched away from their unity with 450 million European workers, including Irish workers, within the EU.
• Britain is headed in an opposite and reactionary direction to the EU. That should be taken into account in determining, in practice, the position that socialists should take in deciding upon these two conflicting demands. The truth is always concrete.
• For now, we should attempt to maximise the unity of the British working-class, within the British unitary state, and oppose its fragmentation. We should do so, on the basis of defending democratic rights and equal status within that state, and on the basis of a struggle to oppose Brexit, and to maintain the unity of the European working-class, and to strengthen it, in a fight for a Workers' Europe.

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