A few years ago, as part of a research and policy development project on health inequality in Scotland, I attended a meeting in North Ayrshire. It brought together different community organisations made up of local people and was among the most powerful meeting I have ever attended. The testimonies revealed the power of community organisation but also the hopelessness of so many of those living with the devastating effects of a broken economy and endemic poverty.
My notes afterwards said:
The impact on (our) young people is nothing short of tragic. The contributors to our meeting spoke of the difficulties facing them. How young people are ostracised and moved on by the police but with nowhere, and no recreational services, to go to; the minimal employment opportunities available to young people, where the work that is available is characterised by low pay, zero hours and insecurity; where welfare cuts have sapped the confidence of young people so affected by constant rejection from jobs (that don’t exist) such that they give up looking and are sanctioned as a result; where stress and mental health issues “are going through the roof” yet mental health service provision for young people is abysmal (sometimes waiting 2 years for a psychiatric appointment) and suicide is increasing. The consequence is that people have a “greyness about them”, “a deflated-ness”, “a hopelessness” and “a helplessness”
That hopelessness has not gone away. But the focus on dealing with these fundamental problems has. Scotland is in a reductive debate that has engendered a state of political paralysis, framed around the constitutional question, which pays peripheral attention to how we build a better Scotland and what must be done to accomplish it. Today’s focus is much more on where powers lie, rather than what powers and what political approach is needed to build a better country where everyone is looked after from each according to their ability to each according to their needs. James Mitchell in his excellent Jimmy Reid Paper was right about that and in his observation that when thinking of all of the constitutional options ‘the primary foci should be on how to improve citizens’ wellbeing’.
Concentrating minds on this is needed now more than ever. Scotland and the rest of the UK is undergoing an economic shock the likes of which we have not faced in our lifetime. Yes, caused by the global pandemic we continue to live in the midst of, but also by the type of economy we have lived with these past 4 decades, which has left us exposed and ill-equipped to deal with the public health emergency and the economic aftershocks from it.
On top of the public health crisis and recession, predicted to be the worst in 300 years, we have the climate crisis, the constitutional question and Brexit also to contend with. Developing a progressive vision for our society, whatever the constitutional framework that’s in place, was always imperative. Now it is more urgent than ever. And it requires the involvement of all progressive forces joining together to fight and argue for it no matter where they stand on the Scottish constitutional question.
During this tragic period the Tory Government, under the cover of Brexit and the virus, have undermined devolution. The Internal Market Bill has shown contempt for the Scottish Parliament and the Tory agenda to erode the powers of, and circumvent the Parliament is obvious. Meanwhile they are as always serving the interests of what has become known as their chumocracy, as they corruptly plunder public money and divert to their wealthy connections via dodgy public contracts. Including contracts that quite literally steal food from hungry children’s mouths. The Brexit trade deal has fired the starting gun on a free market free for all that will see the Tories lower tax, increase private ownership, punish workers with low pay and insecure contracts, strip away protections and continue their assault on public services.
The time is ripe to present a different economic model for Scotland and the UK; no matter the constitutional arrangement. One that argues for investment in and the creation of an economy that serves the interests of, and protects, working people, the vulnerable, renews and builds public services, expands common ownership and develops Scottish industries as part of an industrial strategy. Now is the time to be bold and outline the need for a socialist economy.
What is certain is that constitutionally, politically, economically and socially the status quo is broken and has been for a long time. Its failing people and its quite literally killing them too (long before covid). Too many communities and people are (to coin a phrase) being left behind and living from hand to mouth on a day to day basis. The recently published UK Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report from January 2021 reported rising destitution and extreme hardship and how this was occurring before the pandemic[1] and which is having increasingly detrimental impacts on vulnerable children and families across Scotland[2]. There are nearly a million people in Scotland living in poverty, including 150 thousand older people and 230 thousand children, a quarter of all children[3]. Of the children 2 thirds of them lived in a house where at least one person worked[4]
The health and well-being of our children suffer as a result. Three year olds in households with incomes below £10,000 are two and a half times more likely to suffer chronic illness than children in households with incomes above £52,000. While there are strong links between the experience of child poverty and poor mental health. Some studies suggest that children living in low-income households are nearly three times as likely to suffer mental health problems than their more affluent peers[5].
Scotland in 2021 is a country where wages are so low that working parents struggle to provide for their children and often lack the ability to provide basic needs. Where pensioners do not have the means to see out their lives in dignity. Where the future of so many of our children is already mapped out in the womb, where educational attainment differentials don’t change from the nursery to secondary school and where mental illness is exponentially rising. Where the right to basics like shelter, food, and warmth, are left to the market and often out the reach of the poorest.
The Red Paper has always argued that powers and change must have a purpose. The purpose of the Scottish Parliament has clearly not realised the ambitions of the late great Mick McGahey for a ‘workers parliament’. Timidity has marked its first 20 years, characterised by warm words rather than robust action. This is nowhere truer than the feeble attempts to build a fairer economy with a Scottish Parliament and Government prepared to intervene in the Scottish economy with the powers it has to create and sustain jobs through direct economic intervention.
The Scottish Parliament has at best paid lip service to tackling some of our national shames; including the persistence of health inequalities where life expectancy differentials are amongst the worst in the western world and rival those in some third world countries. Some will say Scotland doesn’t have the powers to intervene. This is not so. Joe Cullinane’s North Ayrshire Council Community Wealth Building agenda, through direct intervention, has achieved more in 2 years than the Scottish Government has in 14, despite the best attempts of the Scottish Government to strip away powers from councils across Scotland.
The current SNP Scottish Government has presided over decline. It’s foremost ambition is to end the British state not child poverty. The problem for those on the left advocating full independence is that the SNP ambition is not even to end child poverty when and if Scotland does become independent. More than that however there are serious qualms about what type of economy they intend to create and what resource would be available to tackle Scotland’s various social and economic problems. A concern confirmed by the Scottish Government’s own Growth Commission. David Byrne in the last Red Paper publication called the Growth Commission (SNP) vision correctly:
The report showed the real nature of the SNP very plainly. For them independence must be achieved on terms with which international finance capital is wholly comfortable. An independent Scotland on these terms would suffer the kind of severe public service cuts, including cuts to the pay of public sector workers, which happened under EU tutelage in Latvia, Estonia and Bulgaria. Although those countries have recovered somewhat none has reached pre 2008 levels of GDP and in Latvia in particular much of the population has emigrated to other EU states – shades of Ireland after 1920. What the SNP has in mind is a neo-liberal independent Scotland with worsening austerity[6]
To be fair socialists in favour of independence recognise this and also the weakness in the economic case for independence that the dominant SNP have never satisfactorily addressed. Last year the Fraser Allander Institute wrote of the economic challenges facing Scotland if it ever did become independent. Of how a new Scottish currency (something that is now SNP policy), would have to raise significant reserves to back it up. Whilst at the same time dealing with the shortfall between spend and revenue. Meeting the requirements of a new currency and adjusting the public finance would, they said, require ‘significant restraint’ in public spending.[7]
It is easy to see how an independent Scotland could well see the working classes pay the price. In the guise of cuts to wages, declining public services, pensions jeopardised, rising taxes and their companies and workplaces sold off to foreign firms whom the SNP see as central in driving the economy of an independent Scotland. In fact the Scottish Government see foreign direct investment today as conduit to growth that will somehow trickle down to the rest of us. For example in our renewables and wider energy sector, in foreign capital investment in public contracts via the Scottish Futures Trust and in our financial services sector, for instance through the new en-vogue niche industry of Fintech (Financial Technology) .
Meanwhile attempts to develop a green industrial strategy where Government has a say and directly intervenes and where it sees common ownership as a natural and correct policy position, is an alien concept. Helping the workers at Bi-Fab quite obviously came way down the list of priorities compared to the efforts being made to attract capital to Scotland. For example the case of Fintech where efforts are being made to make Scotland a hub. The productive capacity and beneficiaries of this focus however is questionable. Given one focus is on how automate the delivery of financial services. It may well enhance profit for the owners but it could in all likelihood reduce jobs for workers in the financial services sector.
Fintech exemplifies how the current Scottish Government has been captured by big business and private capital; manifested through the open door policy given by the Scottish Government to Scottish Financial Enterprise (SFE) and the importance given to the Government created Financial Investment Services Advisory Board (FISAB). It seems the Scottish Government have walked through the trap door that considers private interests the same as the public interest.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Scottish Government created Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board. Chaired by a senior corporate lobbyist, Nora Senior, whose day job is for Weber Shandwick (its British client list includes the likes of Raytheon, News International, Amazon, JP Morgan, Scottish Power Renewables, SERCO…[8]) the board’s remit is to essentially ensure public policy in education and training is tailored to meet the needs of business.
Evidence from behaviour now, notwithstanding the vision presented in the Growth Commission, indicates clearly how the SNP Scottish Government may well want to change the political status quo but they have no intention of trying to change the economic status quo. The problem is that in changing the political status quo, via full independence, they would fundamentally diminish whatever bargaining chips Scotland has with the international capital houses that already help call the shots in Bute House. How is the current focus of the Scottish Government, let alone a post independent Scotland and all the economic challenges it would bring, going to help the future prospects of young people in North Ayrshire and beyond?
If we are thinking about the future well being of people in Scotland it seems that the stale, sterile binary debate currently on offer is selling out the people who need change the most. Neither option: the political and economic status quo versus change to the political status quo but retention of the economic one is offering the answers and change Scotland needs.
If not the status quo and if not independence then what? First there has to be a change in political thinking and ambition. Post covid tinkering just won’t do. Too many people struggled and were in suffering before the virus. There must be an end to the supine embrace of and capitulation to the shadow elite, with instead a fight to popularise a political and economic vision that challenges wealth and income disparity.
This can be started under the current arrangements. The Scotland Act Scotland allows the creation of new taxes. If for instance there was the political willingness, then a wealth tax could be introduced. Albeit it would need to be agreed at Westminster via an Order in Council as required under section 80B of the Scotland Act. Some have previously raised doubts about this but as Patrick McGuire of Thompsons Solicitors said in 2017 ‘Constitutionally, if the Scottish people called for an Order in Council under s80B that Westminster refused we would be at a crisis that no one would want or tolerate’ and if ‘ If there is political will, there will (good that) be no problem’[9]
If a one off payment or annual and how we assess wealth would have to be worked out but in a country where the wealthiest 1% of private households own more wealth than the bottom 50% it seems obvious, especially in rebuilding our economy post covid, that we should get to work on sorting that detail. The fact its never been considered by any Government shows how captured Scottish politics is by the interests of capital.
We could also use procurement to ensure every public pound spent drives up pay and terms and conditions in the workplace and indeed the ethical standards of employers whether that be in ensuring they pay their taxes and not blacklisting workers. We could take a leaf out of Joe Cullinane’s book and focus on Scotland wide community wealth building. Common ownership could become the norm and we could allocate more focus and attention on developing publicly owned renewables projects in Scotland instead of encouraging the selling off of our wind farms projects to private capital, which sees most of the profits and benefits blow right out the country and into the plush boardrooms of banks and private equity firms across the world.
New powers that we could argue for include powers over (increased) borrowing to pay for a green industrial strategy, employment law (where we can only go beyond not below minimum standards) and over drugs law. All of these could be introduced as part of a wider new federal state where the current structural inequalities in wealth and power distribution are addressed across the UK. But also here in Scotland where there is a power imbalance between central and local government as a result of an aggressive centralisation policy deployed by the SNP Government over the past 14 years.
A new national conversation and a reframing of the constitutional debate is urgently needed. Politics is about priorities and our priority in these darkest of times has to be thinking about how best to protect and change the lives of everyone now. W should also consider what future constitutional vehicle is best, and what powers we need, to tackle Scotland’s wide array of social and economic challenges. The status quo won’t do and neither will the SNP vision (which frankly given current political conditions is way ahead of all others at this stage). There is another way. A third constitutional option that will be the socialist and progressive option. The option whose purpose is to end poverty, not sustain it and make it worse. Its time to flesh that out, working back from an understanding of what powers we need to accomplish our objectives and then when we do make sure that this socialist, third option is on the ballot paper in any future referendum.
[1] Destitution in the UK 2020, (December 2020) Report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Available online at https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/destitution-uk-2020
[1] Challenges from the Frontline – Revisited, Supporting families with multiple adversities in Scotland during a time of austerity, (September 2020), Report by Barnardos Scotland and NSPCC. Available online at https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/media/2402/challenges-frontline-revisited-adversities-scotland.pdf
[1] Poverty in Scotland 2020, (October 2020), Report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Available online at https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/poverty-scotland-2020
[1] Child Poverty in Scotland: The Facts, Child Poverty Action Group. Available online at https://cpag.org.uk/scotland/child-poverty/facts
[1] Child Poverty in Scotland: The Facts, Child Poverty Action Group. Available online at https://cpag.org.uk/scotland/child-poverty/facts
[1] For a Scottish People’s Parliament Now! (April 2020) A report by The Red Paper Collective
[1] A Referendum in 2020 (January 2020) Blog by Fraser Allander Institute. Available online at https://fraserofallander.org/a-referendum-in-2020/?fbclid=IwAR0EPA-qhIoGB6lzK6vElW1HcjVvMLsRBVlfXVaqV1HpCeDXGcwppuo7fYQ
[1] Register of Lobby companies at the Public Affairs Board. Latest register with information on Weber Shandwick available online here at https://register.prca.org.uk/register/profile/?company=Weber%20Shandwick
[1] Destitution in the UK 2020, (December 2020) Report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Available online at https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/destitution-uk-2020
[2] Challenges from the Frontline – Revisited, Supporting families with multiple adversities in Scotland during a time of austerity, (September 2020), Report by Barnardos Scotland and NSPCC. Available online at https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/media/2402/challenges-frontline-revisited-adversities-scotland.pdf
[3] Poverty in Scotland 2020, (October 2020), Report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Available online at https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/poverty-scotland-2020
[4] Child Poverty in Scotland: The Facts, Child Poverty Action Group. Available online at https://cpag.org.uk/scotland/child-poverty/facts
[5] Child Poverty in Scotland: The Facts, Child Poverty Action Group. Available online at https://cpag.org.uk/scotland/child-poverty/facts
[6] For a Scottish People’s Parliament Now! (April 2020) A report by The Red Paper Collective
[7] A Referendum in 2020 (January 2020) Blog by Fraser Allander Institute. Available online at https://fraserofallander.org/a-referendum-in-2020/?fbclid=IwAR0EPA-qhIoGB6lzK6vElW1HcjVvMLsRBVlfXVaqV1HpCeDXGcwppuo7fYQ
[8] Register of Lobby companies at the Public Affairs Board. Latest register with information on Weber Shandwick available online here at https://register.prca.org.uk/register/profile/?company=Weber%20Shandwick
[9] Wealth Tax in Scotland, How it Can be Done (October 2017), Available online at https://unisondave.blogspot.com/2017/11/wealth-tax-in-scotland-how-it-can-be.html