As we approach the anniversary of the first year of the SNP government, Steve Arnott looks at how well the SNP have lived up to their promises, and charts the growth in support for independence

As we approach the anniversary of the first year of the SNP government, Steve Arnott looks at how well the SNP have lived up to their promises, and charts the growth in support for independence.

When the SNP emerged as the biggest party in 2007 and went on to form a minority government, there was almost a truce for a while in the time honoured unionist sport of ‘Nat-bashing’. It was as if even New Labour arrogance was turned down a few notches after the scale of the historic defeat - suffered even with the tantalising promise to traditional Labour voters of Brown in the hot seat instead of Blair. Scottish Labour’s in-house rag, the Daily Record, appeared almost to undergo a damascene conversion to a fairness of sorts – for a while. It was almost as if the Record suddenly realised it’s appalling and uncritical anti unionist and anti-SNP propaganda was totally out of touch with its own readership and was suddenly running to catch up with reality.

The almost truce did not last, of course. Once it became clear that the vote had been no flash in the pan, and that the coronation of Brown did not lead to traditional Labour voters returning to the party in droves, the political knuckledusters were once again dragged out. A minority government was routinely castigated for ‘breaking promises to voters’ by Labour’s new paradigm of sincerity, Wendy Alexander - i.e. for not fulfilling its promises for four years of the parliament in the first six months, or worse, failing to do in six months what it had taken New Labour 10 years to fail to deliver. Scotland’s best read tabloid returned to form as a mouthpiece for Scottish Labour’s increasingly unfathomable unionism, with Alex Salmond routinely portrayed as a populist but untrustworthy jack the lad, determined to pick the pockets of ‘hard-working families’ with his nefarious local income tax, or pick any fight with Westminster to bolster the SNP ‘secret agenda’ (!!) of independence.

Yet despite this propaganda onslaught, and despite the fact that the SNP have made some real mistakes and misjudgements, opinion polls have consistently showed Salmond and the SNP trouncing Labour in Scotland. The credit crisis and the beginning of the descent into recession and a possible negative equity meltdown will not make a recovery for Labour likely in the near future. If a new Scottish election were held now the SNP would probably increase its number of seats. Most worryingly for the strategists of unionism, tracking polls on the question of independence itself have shown a consistent rise in support for the idea that the Scottish people should run their own country, and determine their own relationships with their neighbours. That is to say, support for what in many parts of the world would be regarded as a normal state of affairs.

The latest TNS System Three opinion poll (12^th April) showed 41% of Scots in favour of independence compared to 40% satisfied with the current devolutionary settlement. This is significant because it is the first time this tracking poll has showed a majority for independence since the election of the SNP, but interestingly it confirms a trend. When the question was first asked, in the wake of the SNP’s victory, those favouring independence were in a clear minority - but support for independence has steadily increased throughout the SNP’s first year in tenure. The worry for the unionist establishment is that support for independence will go through the roof if Cameron’s Tories are returned to power at the next Westminster election.

Pro-independence march in Edinburgh

Only weeks after the SNP’s election victory, Solidarity, in its post election political analysis document ‘The Whole of the Moon’ made the following points and predictions

…Scotland’s first ever pro-independence government…for many workers actively represented a left of centre progressive vote

…the buoyant enthusiasm with which SNP members and supporters have greeted this victory will be unlikely to fade too quickly to disillusionment. A great deal of credit is likely to be extended to the Salmond government by its own supporters who understand the political realities of the parliamentary arithmetic…

…Labour and the Lib-Dems will block any overtly radical or popular legislation and block any attempt to progress an independence referendum…

…one key part of the SNP programme that could be voted through – principally because the Lib-Dems have also pinned their colours to this particular mast – would be the abolition of the council tax…While it goes without saying that this would be a welcome reform and one that results in a large part from the political pressure created by the left over the issue…the SNP’s scheme is neither sufficiently redistributive or well thought out. Indeed, the money they would raise from the implementation of the scheme would leave a huge shortfall in local government finances and a potential backlash from workers and users of frontline services. Taken with the SNP’s declared intention to find money for commitments through ‘efficiency savings’ the stage could be set for a series of battles on the public sector union front.

…We should also be aware that New Labour and its right wing union supporters – who have acted as a brake on struggle when their team was in power – may be quick to seize on such struggles opportunistically, not on a principled basis, but purely as a way of hurting the SNP electorally.

These analyses and predictions are proving themselves to be correct on an almost daily basis. The SNP have been able to carry out a number of popular, if limited, social democratic style reforms – the abolition of student loans, cutting prescription charges, getting rid of bridge tolls, saving accident and emergency units due to be axed under Labour.

On the other hand they have continued to cosy up to the interests of big business. The budget deal was voted through parliament with the support of the Tories on the basis of cuts in local business rates i.e. less money for local government to spend on public services. Falling over to pander to the likes of Tom Hunter (first name: philanthropist), religious evangelic and homophobe Brian Soutar, and the bewigged golfing American Donald Trump may be part of an SNP master plan to convince rich Scots and ex-pats that business will be well looked after in an independent Scotland, but it does not go down well with the party’s core working class support.

The key battlegrounds, however, are proving to be the SNP’s plans for a local income tax and their call for a referendum on independence.

The problem with the first of these is outlined above – the SNP proposal to replace the council tax is Tommy Sheridan’s Scottish Service Tax Lite. Because it shies away from taxing the most wealthy at a higher rate it simply doesn’t raise enough to fund local government services at the same level as the current iniquitous council tax. Consequently, the current concordat on spending with COSLA, the otherwise principled abolition of ring fencing, and plans for further efficiencies are really ways SNP finance master John Swinney is attempting to fit local government spending to the SNP’s local income tax plans. It is a recipe for unrest, conflict with public sector unions and will allow Labour (the party of the dented shield under Thatcher and Major, remember) to hypocritically clothe themselves as public sector service defenders.

Thus far this process has reached its most advanced stage in Aberdeen, where Aberdeen City Council (SNP/Lib-Dem coalition) has proposed a series of swinging cuts to many well regarded and well loved public services, resulting in a popular backlash. Well attended meetings and demonstrations have been organised against the cuts – a movement in which Grampian Solidarity members have been wholly involved, but also a movement whose most enthusiastic cheerleaders have been Aberdeen Labour.

Solidarity should continue to welcome positive reforms from the SNP and say why and when we don’t think they go far enough; we should criticise the SNP when they put the interest of business and the wealthy before the interests of the majority of society, and we should point out consistently that it is the left leaning measures of the SNP that have so far also proved the most popular. We also need to expose – hopefully with a great guffaw of laughter – Labour’s hypocritical attempts to attack the SNP from a ‘left’ position.

The role of a principled left socialist party like Solidarity could be critical in the months and years ahead, but it will gain the ear of the best and most radical working class elements in society best if it approaches its criticism of the SNP in government constructively and from the point of view of a clear commitment to a democratic referendum on the question of independence, and clear support for the democratic ideal of independence itself.

It seems strange to this writer that there are still those on the left – not necessarily in Solidarity – who are ardent supporters of national liberation movements elsewhere in the world but are lukewarm on the basic democratic demand that the Scottish people should have sovereign power in their own country. Perhaps this is still to do with residual echoes of a paternalist Old Labour past, or the old Communist Party’s ‘British road to socialism’. It may be to do with unjustified fears of a split in the UK wide trade union movement if independence were to occur – something that is actually hugely unlikely. Or maybe it’s just the association of the word ‘nationalist’ with the independence cause.

Solidarity, in common with the Democratic Green Socialist group, does not believe that internationalism and socialism are in any way incompatible with the rights of nationalities and democratic self-government. The Scottish Saltire in the eyes of many working class people is not principally associated anymore (if it ever was) with the parochial and patronising ‘tartan-and-shortbread’ unionist pastiche of Scottish national identity, but with the fire and smelter and community of an industrial nation slaughtered at the altar of Thatcherite economics, subjected to the grotesque experiment of the poll tax, and dragged into a war to which it was opposed. For many, it is becoming a potent symbol of a modern national identity and resistance.

"not tartan and shortbread but the fire,smelter and community of an industrial Scotland"

The role of the 21^st century left in Scotland should be to ally our commitment to social justice, public ownership, peace and the environment to the democratic demand for independence. Read between the lines of the editorials and the commentary pieces of Labour and Unionism’s traditional spokespeople. The independence genie is out of the bottle and they know it.