Thank you for the invitation
to join you here this afternoon at this Independence Rally in The Inch. Shame about the weather.
I have just come from
the SSP’s now famous campaign stall on Princes Street where we champion the need for a
£10/hour wage. And I know you will all want to sign the petition on our stall
over here.
CROSSROADS
Friends, the Independence
movement has reached a crossroads with the publication of the SNP’s
Sustainable Growth Commission report recently because it shows we still need to decide
what Independence is actually for, what kind of nation we are out to build, and which
Scots will benefit most.
Some see Independence as the
continuation of what we have now with economic and political power transferred from
one wealthy elite to another. I don’t.
Some believe we need to water
down our commitments to the most deprived and vulnerable Scots to please the
moneymen and the selfish middle class. I don’t.
Some think we need to stress
how little will change with Independence to placate those most reluctant to embrace
it. I don’t.
For me Independence is all about
change. That is its greatest asset. It’s about transforming the Scotland we all
see today; about eradicating the grotesque inequalities and intolerable deprivation
that blights places like The Inch, about dumping economic & social attitudes
and laws that hold back millions of people and shackles us to a rotten,
exploitative system that forces misery on most and ugly opulence for an out of
touch elite.
That Britain is a failing
state. I’m not out to win the great prize of Independence against all odds and
after great sacrifice just to establish a replica of it just to please
financiers and aristocrats.
The Sustainable Growth
Commission poses a vision of Independence I do not support.
It promises ten years of
austerity after Independence.
It promises to leave us
vulnerable to economic decisions others take with no control over our currency,
interest rates or flights of capital. That’s not Independence.
It seeks to ‘transition’
Scotland to Independence by changing very little; keeping the Pound, staying in
NATO, maintaining a feudal monarchy with its divine right of Queens and
hereditary principles over a meritocracy with democracy and equality.
It’s that conservatism that
lost us the last Referendum. And it will lose us the next one too. It’s not ‘transition’ we need
its transformation.
I am not a nationalist. I am
a socialist who supports Independence as a democratic right of a free people
held back by a political union that oppresses working class people. I do not
support a prospectus that makes Scotland’s working-class majority worse off.
Independence must be about
something better.
It must be about redistributing
this country’s vast wealth, taking some of it from those who have too much to give
to those who have too little. It must be about public ownership and satisfying universal
need not feeding private greed. It must be about unleashing the enormous
technological and scientific riches humankind has bestowed on us for everyone’s
benefit!
WINNING ‘INDYREF2’
I agree with Nicola Sturgeon
when she says we need to spend more time persuading our fellow Scots about the merits
of Independence rather than obsessing over the timing of INDYREF2.
But we also need to stop
obsessing over Brexit and accept that the majority of Scots who voted to Remain
did so without any great love for an institution that does not serve their
interests nor the peoples of Europe.
I see the hand of big
business behind that obsession because Brexit poses the loss of cheap labour
and easy profits for them. They wouldn’t have a labour shortage if they paid the
Living wage!
We are behind in the opinion polls
as things stand and will not win a second vote unless we spell out more
persuasively what Independence is for. Victory can only be achieved by painting
a much better economic and political prospectus!
And to those who say
‘But Colin, let’s get
Independence first, then settle all these other questions later’ I say
‘No. It is not possible to
win Independence without first explaining what it is for and what it will look
like. Otherwise you are asking people to sign a blank cheque! That will never
happen.
And to those who say
‘But, we start at 45% support
today. When the campaign really gets going we can race ahead just as we did between
2012-14.’
That’s not a persuasive argument
either. I was around in 2012-14. That period is gone forever. Political battles
are not like some TV repeat where the same plot develops over & over &
over.
A 2nd Referendum, whenever
we have it, will look nothing like the last one. The dynamics will be completely
different. Some people who voted YES last time will vote NO now & vice
versa.
Losing a second time however will
kill our movement stone dead like it did in Quebec. I don’t want that.
Our movement remains at a huge
disadvantage until we are clear about what we want. We have skirted too many
fundamental issues in an attempt to build unity. But unity for unity’s sake is
not enough. Victory lies ahead only if we agree on the need for profound
improvement for working people. Maintaining the status quo is not a victory
option.
We have time so let’s use it.
Let’s stop running around like headless chickens waving flags and mumbling
mindless platitudes. Let’s start finding solutions to the challenges that confront
us.
OUR CASE NOT STRONG ENOUGH YET
The need for Independence is
as strong as ever. But the truth is, as we all know, our case is not strong
enough, not yet. We have still not persuaded the majority of Scots to back our
case. We trail in all the polls. We still talk to ourselves too much and do too
little to build extra support.
REMAIN POSITIVE BUT WORK ON MORE PERSUASIVE ARGUMENTS
The case for Independence is
powerful. Britain is a failing state. Working people in Scotland can be
persuaded of our case if we offer them the promise of a better world without
insecurity and exploitation, where the nations enormous assets belong to us all
and the fruits are shared out between us all, where the people are sovereign
and we are at peace with the rest of this world.
I want an independent
socialist Scotland, a modern democratic republic, and I believe that remains a
powerfully attractive goal. We need to turn that dream into a reality. END