I am a bit at a loss to understand Brian Wilsons argument. We have built together a National Health Service and a welfare state. We have created educational opportunities beyond the dreams of our forebears. While inequality remains an affront, in Newcastle as much as in Glasgow, there are standards of prosperity and rights for working people, won through long decades of struggle. In Scotland, there is a parliament with the powers to address outstanding injustices – if it chooses to use them. Everything that has transformed our life prospects has been achieved within the United Kingdom, fought for by people with shared interests in every part of that state, combining against the same forces of privilege and reaction that have invariably sought to halt the incremental march of progress. Anyone who believes that Scotland has been, or would be, exempt from that dynamic knows nothing of its history, ancient or modern. Well, of course Everything that has transformed our life prospects has been achieved within the United Kingdom. As a United Kingdom for the last 300 years, give or take a year or two, it could hardly have been otherwise. The sometimes facile argument from the left that, in seceding from the union, Scotland is somehow betraying the working classes and that we should stay together for the sake of solidarity seems only to argue for having no borders and a common government worldwide. Then we could truly express our solidarity across nations. At a time when Britains attitude to membership of the EU, a supranational organisation, is increasingly biased towards leaving, it is ironic that the prospect of a single country leaving the union is viewed with such hostility. I dont buy his argument that the electorate of rUK is less likely to elect a government of a progressive hue if Scotland leaves. In a democracy, then that decision is down to the electorate of rUK. And yes, inequalilty is an affront. It is an affront here in Glasgow, and what, precisely, have Mr Wilson and his colleagues in Scottish Labour done about it over the many years that they have had power in Scotland to address the issues on their own doorstep? theguardian/commentisfree/2014/sep/04/scottish-independence-nationalism-progressive-george-monbiot-uk
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 12:42:57 +0000
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