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The Cafe
The Cafe is our readers’ forum. Send your contribution to islay@scottishreview.net
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Iona
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Where is the evidence
for a centre-left Scotland
run by the SNP?
Alex Wood argues with some passion in SR (13 June) that Scottish Labour Party supporters should vote for independence in the coming referendum. The case he makes is a carefully considered one. He is anxious to be seen to be fair, accepting that a ‘devo-max’ option should be on the ballot paper even though he disapproves of it.
Not everyone, however, will agree with the parallel he sees between the ‘great historical issues’ of Scottish independence and the second world war. The issue in 1939-40 was stark – black and white. The British Labour Party had to decide either to resist fascism or to stand aside and effectively capitulate to it. Scottish Labour supporters today surely see the independence issue as a hugely more complex one.
However, my own dissent from Mr Wood’s case is based on the other central element of his argument. He seems to me to assume that the SNP would run Scotland in a manner wholly acceptable to the Scottish left. Indeed we are virtually asked to believe that in a post-independence Scotland, the SNP would shed its nationalist identity and emerge as the true Scottish Labour Party. Mr Wood believes that, compared to the present UK, an independent Scotland would enjoy a more equal and less divided society, would be characterised by a less market-oriented social order, would maintain a high level of tax-supported public services, and pursue a less aggressive foreign policy.
Well perhaps so. But then again, perhaps not. As things stand, I’m not aware of the SNP campaigning, as it should be doing if Mr Wood is right, in favour of the centre-left Scotland he wishes to see created. Such signs as there are, are not particularly encouraging. Mr Wood mentions Britain’s outdated feudal institutions, but an independent Scotland will apparently retain the monarchy. He tells us that the British economy has been in decline for the last 60 years. But if an independent Scotland is going to remain within the sterling area, ultimately controlled by the Bank of England, how will things change? Finally, it is a touch disappointing to see Mr Wood referring to the ‘long imperialist history’ of the British state without acknowledging that Scotland profited immensely from its more than willing participation in the British empire.
Andrew Hook
Recently, it was nigh impossible to avoid seeing extensive television coverage of lots and lots of little bunting-covered boats sailing along to lots of endlessly jolly music. This was evidently to celebrate an incident that had occurred some 60 years ago. I was personally more reminded of a weekend I had spent, exactly 30 years ago, equally involving sailing, but with little bunting and no jolly music.
I was in Buenos Aires producing a series of weekly current affairs programmes for British television covering the Falklands/Malvinas crisis. Each programme would be sent back to London via Montevideo and since there was no working telex in the hotels at weekends, any plans for the following week had to be sent back to London via the downtown general post office, where a very cheery and helpful collection of young women would see your needs electronically satisfied.
But not that particular Sunday, exactly 30 years before that celebration on the Thames. The general post office was a very different place with a very different collection of young women. They were still the same people but they were beside themselves in floods of tears, for a reason that was, to me, still unknown.
They explained, with no particular malice directed towards me, that they were mourning the loss of the Argentinean cruiser Belgrano which had been sunk that very day by the submarine HMS Conqueror. The loss of the 323 crew, including many young naval cadets, was by far the largest number of fatalities in any single event during the Falklands war.
Back in the UK, the Sun carried the memorable (for one reason or other) headline, ‘GOTCHA’. I have successfully avoided knowing what the Sun’s headlines might have been over this more recent event.
Norman Fenton
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