THE re-elected Scottish National Party government, with Green Party support, has won a clear mandate for a second independence referendum.  

The Scottish Trades Union Congress has passed a motion stating that “the Scottish Parliament should have the power to hold a referendum on Scotland’s future and should not require UK government consent.”  

This democratic right to a second referendum must be unequivocally supported by every socialist and trade union leadership throughout Britain and Ireland.  

The class collaborationism that defined the approach of the Labour Party and many trade union leaderships in the 2014 independence referendum must be confronted and rejected, as must the self-fulfilling prophecy that working-class division is an inevitable outcome of support for Scottish self-determination.  

It was class anger not narrow nationalism that drove strong support for independence in working-class heartlands like Glasgow, the West of Scotland and Dundee in the first referendum — it was also a desire for democratic accountability, political control and hope that independence might prove a credible route to a more fair and equal society.  

It was also an expression of workers’ contempt for the Westminster political consensus exemplified in the “Better Together” campaign, an alliance of Tory, Labour and Liberal parties, that offered nothing but the status quo of cuts, privatisation and austerity.  

The Blairite Labour Party abandoned British workers, but they were also repeatedly failed by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and right-wing union leaders who refused to organise a generalised co-ordinated fightback against relentless neoliberal assault on their terms and conditions: betrayal of the 2010-11 public-sector pensions dispute emboldened David Cameron’s coalition government to implement austerity in its most brutal form.  

Many Scottish workers were suspicious of the SNP but their support for independence exposed Peter Mandelson’s hubristic delusion they had “nowhere to go.”

Scottish workers’ support for self-determination was, and remains, the result of a fundamental crisis of working-class leadership and political representation. 

Led by irreconcilable “family, flags and forces” British nationalists Labour is incapable of playing any constructive or even independent role in the independence debate and will echo, with some cosmetic presentational “differences,” the Tories’ uncompromising pro-unionist position, further alienating the radical youth and Scottish workers, including many of their own current party members.   

Trade unions can meet the challenges, dangers and opportunities presented by the independence debate but this will require a clear class analysis, not in abstract terms, but in the context of the living struggle now unfolding. That means the adoption of an independent class position with principled support for the democratic right of workers to pursue national self-determination while campaigning as never before to protect and advance the interests of workers throughout the islands and uncompromisingly advocating a socialist alternative to the chaos and instability of capitalism. 
                  
Lessons from the independence referendum 2014

Woefully unprepared for the first referendum the British trade union movement avoided division by good luck rather than judgement. But the stakes now are immeasurably higher and UK-wide unions and the TUC must now begin a debate and learn from mistaken approaches in the first referendum.  

The following examples give a picture of how some union leaderships approached the 2014 referendum: imposition of a recommendation to vote No to independence with no consultation with either members or activists; a recommendation to vote No decided by a UK-wide union conference; membership consultation, but only after a leadership imposed a No recommendation and, a “neutral” stance, recommending neither Yes nor No.

In Unison, the UK’s largest public-sector union, the leadership attempted to impose a No recommendation but were faced down by Scottish activists who warned them of the inadvisability of such a move.  

Two unions, the rail workers and prison officers, held Scottish conferences that, significantly, resulted in Yes to independence votes.  

The imposition of vote No to independence recommendations by leadership fiat or by so-called “democratic” UK-wide votes — in reality an effective veto on workers’ right to national self-determination — are “strategies” that can only lead to division and even splits.  

A foreshadow of such potential division occurred when the STUC, in touch with the mood of Scottish workers, refused to back the Better Together campaign.  

The imposition of pro-unionist recommendations to members led to not insignificant membership loss in some unions, a self-inflicted wound exploited by the SNP as over 11,000 workers joined their trade union wing.   

It is true that “a Scottish worker has more in common with a worker in Birmingham than a Scottish millionaire” but substituting a slogan for an analysis and a sermon for a strategy does little to illuminate the class basis of the struggle taking place and which underpins support for independence among significant layers of Scottish workers.  

There is no demand from Scottish workers or activists for a split in the UK-wide trade union movement because they understand that no contradiction exists between pursuing their democratic right to self-determination while maintaining the wider unity of the British trade union movement.   

National self-determination: a democratic strategy for the trade unions

The strategy adopted by Civil Service union PCS offers some clue to how democratic debate and a campaigning strategy can be developed across the movement.  

The union prioritised and enabled the widest possible debate through consultation with Scottish members and activists, including the circulation of information from both camps, policy forums, branch debates and a Scottish conference.  

Membership surveys of the union’s 30,000 Scottish members showed their main concerns were job security and pensions with their main priority the provision of good public services.  

Delegates attending the Scottish conference in February 2014 voted on three options:

1. The union would provide information on both campaigns so members could decide which to support and PCS would continue to campaign on industrial issues with the Scottish government, as well as with the Westminster government, and would continue to press its demands on PCS’s alternative to austerity, cuts and privatisation with both the Yes and No campaigns;

2. Support Yes, and

3. Support No.

Branch votes, reflecting their membership, voted for Option 1 – 18,025, 2 – 5,775 and 3 – 0.  

This sharp picture of a mixed consciousness within a key sector of Scottish workers showed a wariness about both Yes and No campaigns, although the total lack of support for the No campaign strongly echoed members’ revulsion toward Better Together.  

The conference overwhelmingly endorsed the union leadership’s approach that PCS should not be a mere observer in the campaign but active participants with an independent class position, promoting and defending the interests of its members and the working class, campaigning for an end to austerity, cuts and privatisation, and for tax justice, repeal of the anti-trade union laws, equality and civil liberties, and an extension of public ownership of the utilities.  

This strategy, including full support for the right of workers to national self-determination, was endorsed by the union’s UK-wide annual conference.                                                   

The Tories and the reactionary British establishment will attempt to defeat the independence campaign through the tried and tested methods of liberal democracy — a biased press and media, “Project Fear” propaganda and so on.  

But such methods are becoming increasingly unreliable, which is why the Tories are reaching for stronger repressive legislation and strategies, including the Policing Bill and voter suppression.  

Trade unionists need no reminding that the UK has the most repressive anti-union laws in the Western world and should be deeply concerned by calls from influential representatives of the ruling class for a “Catalonian solution”, ie, open state repression, to defeat independence.  

It must not be underestimated how important it is for the Tories to assemble another Better Together-style formation and exploit the authority of the trade union movement as part of a pro-unionist front, but such an alliance can only divide and disorientate workers in all nations and must be rejected by all trade unions and the TUC.  

Many Scots now regard Tory Britain as demonstrating characteristics of a failed state in irreversible decline — Brexit, rising British/English nationalism, racism and the disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic in which the ruling kleptocracy put their own enrichment over people’s lives.  

Scottish workers’ support for independence is more likely based on “anything is better than this” than “Saor Alba.”  

The past period is no reliable guide to the qualitatively different one we have now entered, which is one of unparalleled instability in which multiple crises will provoke rapid shifts in consciousness with the established order questioned as never before.  

Workers’ support for independence is not an embrace of reactionary nationalism but a demand for democracy and, in however an undeveloped or even distorted form, for socialism itself.        

Socialists and trade unionists have nothing to fear from demands for Scottish self-determination but each union must develop strategies for the widest consultation and participation among Scottish members while asserting, through patient explanation and debate to members in England, Wales and Ireland why the right to national self-determination, a basic democratic demand, must be fully supported.  

Trade union unity can be maintained and even strengthened but only by adopting an independent class position that stands separate and distinct from both reactionary British nationalism and pro-capitalist Scottish nationalism and which builds the strongest possible campaigns to leverage maximum concessions from the Westminster and Scottish governments.  

Nothing will unite our class across the islands like a co-ordinated fightback, and that must be the movement’s top priority. 

John McInally is the former PCS union vice-president, he oversaw the union’s strategy in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. Follow him on Twitter @JohnMcInally13.