As workers try to act in a concerted way nationwide, new devolved powers would seek to divide them…
Unity, not devolution
WORKERS, JULY 2009 ISSUE
With current actions in the oil refining, postal and rail industries demonstrating their ability to think and organise nationally, British workers are showing how unity brings them strength. Indeed it is this consciousness that can create a sense of nation, while capitalists are happy to see disintegration, with no loyalties except to their own profits. They seek refuge in the European Union, now seeking to increase its powers through the Lisbon Treaty. Attempting to break national unity, the EU is creating “regions” with more and more devolved powers. This is a creeping assault on workers’ ability to achieve unity, and thereby strength and nationhood.
Now comes the latest twist in this saga. It is the government-sponsored Calman Report recommending extra powers for the parliament in Edinburgh, a further boost for Scottish devolution and a weakening of national unity. It will also be a further encouragement to those in power in Scotland seeking a total break, with an “independence” referendum to be scheduled for the next parliament. The EU project is seldom openly stated; whenever a new development is needed, a convenient “commission” is appointed to give its ‘independent’ report.
The Calman Report is no different, its outcome predictable. Created by Labour and subtitled “Scotland and the United Kingdom in the 21st Century”, its conclusions have been lauded by political parties across the “left-right” spectrum, with many on the “left” complaining that the new powers are not yet great enough.
Raising taxes
The real increased power in the hands of the Scottish parliament lies in it being granted an enhanced ability to raise taxes. The report – which an all-party committee is moving to ensure it becomes law before the next general election – will, just for Scotland, create a totally new tax system. This would make it much easier to achieve, at a later date, a fully independent and autonomous tax system.
In granting this measure of real power and responsibility to the Edinburgh parliament a change has been made far greater than the 1998 setting up of devolution. Divisions could now open up, such as stimulating the housing market with stamp duty levels lower than in England, differing taxes, as well as a host of other differing rules starting with government borrowing, road speed restrictions, drink driving limits, firearms, legal matters and new, Scotland-specific taxes.
It would spell an end to Britain’s unified tax system; and tempt tax avoidance and crime. It will hand to the current nationalist administration more autonomy, more power with an ability to create ever more distance between Scotland and the rest of Britain. With their control approaching half of all income tax it becomes quite a short road to future control of all income tax.
The next logical step would be for the Scottish parliament to acquire the power to raise all taxes and deduct a portion to finance those few remaining “reserved issues” dealt with in London. Discussion of some devolving of broadcasting, defence related matters and controls of social security is already happening.
The “gradualist” nationalists see all of this as leading to independence in all but name, with not even the need for a referendum on it (which, at the moment, they would undoubtedly lose). The Calman report is the logical extension of the original devolution settlement and shortens the distance left to travel to break up.
The political parties have embraced a report that is proposing a far more radical transfer of powers from Westminster to Holyrood than they envisaged when they agreed to set up this commission following the Scottish National Party victory in the 2007 elections – and their unanimity will ensure a smooth and speedy path to the statute books.
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| The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh – with three flags flying outside: the Union flag, the Saltire…and the flag of the European Union! What price Scottish independence? |
The same as independence
Around the world there is no example of such a sub-national government with such full fiscal autonomy, if that were achieved: such complete control is synonymous with independence. With “exports” from Scotland to the rest of Britain worth £41.5 billion in contrast to its £18.6 billion of exports to the rest of the world, devolving taxes would seriously impede internal trade and harm workers’ livelihoods and living standards throughout Britain.
It is thought that moves to control major taxes such as VAT, National Insurance and Corporation Tax were narrowly defeated within the Calman Commission. First Minister Alex Salmond’s opinion was that “In reality this report puts Scotland on the road to independence – not to strengthening its place in the Union”. The report also recommends that the Scottish parliament should now take control of running the elections in Scotland. Nor will there be a referendum on the report and its sweeping changes.
Meanwhile, on the back of this the SNP is reviving its 1970s call of “It’s Scotland’s Oil”, encouraged by the renewed vigour of the EU’s attempts to gather all controls over energy and energy policy unto itself. Of course, the SNP – and Labour – are friends of the EU and Alex Salmond never lets up in his calls to join the euro currency. There is no clear distance between him and his former employer, one of the biggest failed banks in the world.
With the collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland and Dunfermline Building Society (in Gordon Brown’s constituency) the British taxpayer – British workers – were saddled with the biggest bailout in history. And if Alex Salmond had his way, Scotland would have been on the rubbish heap of capitalism like Latvia, Iceland and, first to declare recession, Ireland.
Arc of calamity
In the fraudulent “boom”, Salmond trumpeted these countries as “the arc of prosperity”, to be emulated by Scotland. With over 50 new oilfields now to be opened up (with the help of tax incentives, of course) in the North Sea and with exploration advanced in the near North Atlantic, Salmond and the bankers have something to whet their appetite.
The details, just out, from the Government Expenditure and Revenues in Scotland annual report show that £12 billion is the likely revenue to go to the British Treasury next year from oil and gas extracted from waters around Scotland, and it is this money that separatists have their eyes on. Yet at least £50 billion has been spent on saving the Scottish arm of the failed banks!
This brings us to the point that all these politicians seem to have missed – their plots and plans have been dwarfed by the greatest accumulation of debt and borrowing ever amassed by the British state outside the world wars.
The great struggle for workers is to survive the onslaught on jobs, to fight against plummeting living standards, to create their own and better nation – and to achieve this unity is essential.
On small scales many are resisting this separatism. There is a struggle in the world of sport over putting forward united British teams – for example, the Scottish Football Federation has rejected a single Olympic team, whereas both the Men’s and Women’s Volley Ball have formed all-British teams enthusiastically. There is a fierce argument going on in the legal profession over the formation of a single British Institute of Actuaries, with a vote on merger on July 23. Of course, similar arguments and moves to increased devolution are happening in Wales. But for workers a great goal would be to increase the bonds of unity, not weaken them.
British workers’ unity grows
At last there are some “green shoots” showing in Scotland – and it’s nothing to do with a recovery of capitalism; it is that at least some of its workers see the sense in a united resistance in Britain to capitalism in decline. Witness the solidarity shown in Scotland for the Lindsey Oil Refinery strikers and their campaign for British jobs.
And possibly the most significant words spoken at this year’s Scottish Trades Union Congress in Perth came from Fiona Farmer, the 2009 President and Unite regional officer. Tucked away in her opening remarks was an account of the all-Britain Trades Union Congress (TUC) – and the need, in these times, to keep the links close. Hints of the need for closer collaboration also came in an address from the President of the Welsh TUC, Vaughan Gething.
That such sentiments have reached the tips of the tongues of the top union officials is no accident – this year’s vigorous actions against the imposition of the undercutting, cheap labour coming in under the EU flag have been Britain-wide.