The latter point is a good place to start. Working farmers throughout the United Kingdom are facing, to a degree before other sections of the working population, a shift towards depression conditions. Many farmers are selling their products, whether milk or pork, at a loss to the big food processors and supermarkets. As London, taking advantage of European Union decisions, seeks to end farm subsidies that largely favored capitalist farmers, working farmers find themselves in growing debt. This is behind the radicalization of working farmers, especially since the “fuel price” protests at oil depots by rural producers in the year 2000.  
 
A class, not ideological, approach toward working and capitalist farmers
The growth of Farmers for Action, based among small farmers, and the relative weakening of the National Farmers Union, which is dominated by large capitalist farmers and has sought to block mass political action by exploited producers on the land, are a byproduct of this process. In other words, this is the beginning of a sharper class differentiation in the countryside. Militant articles on the protests by dairy farmers described how they blockaded supermarket depots for more than 10 hours, successfully halting the attempt by the large merchants to cut the price of the milk they pay to the producers.

As a meat factory worker I know well how the thirst to maintain their profit rates is leading the owners of supermarkets and food processing companies to increase speedup on the job and lower wages. Weren’t the farmers’ protests then, and their success in pushing back the same class enemies of the workers, something to take heart from? Aren’t these exploited producers potential new allies of the working class? As these actions showed, this is a class, not an ideological, question—that is, what matters above all is whether these farmers are exploited by the capitalist system and how they respond to this class exploitation, not their current political affiliations or leanings. Taken along with the gains made by crofters (small farmers) in weakening the hold of the big landowners in Scotland, the recent dairy farmers’ actions tell us that as the fight for national rights and the class struggle deepen, the land question will come more to the fore. If we start from the importance of the recent actions by dairy farmers, we can see that working people have some new openings to forge closer ties with their allies on the land, and, in doing so, help shape the political evolution of new organizations of farmers. Forging a worker-farmer alliance, which through revolutionary struggle can overturn capitalist rule and establish a workers and farmers government, is at the center of proletarian practice and a revolutionary socialist program.

It’s this framework of the line of march of the toilers towards conquering state power that informed the Militant article on the Scottish elections.

Despite the military victory of the U.S./UK forces in the Iraq war, London, even more so than Washington, can’t translate that into reversing the downward slide of the capitalist economy, which pushes working people to resist the bosses’ attacks at home. Since the election in Scotland, for example, some 4,500 nursery nurses have for the first time organized protest days of strike action. In addition, the relative weakness of British imperialism means the trend towards a fragmentation of the United Kingdom continues, with a growing nationalist sentiment in Scotland.

The June 16 Militant article indicated that the Scottish elections showed a slight weakening of all the main capitalist parties. The Scottish Socialist Party and the Greens, with their radical demagogy, took advantage of the vacuum this situation created in bourgeois politics, securing 13 seats between them and 14.2 percent of the vote. This result, however, doesn’t translate, as Ferguson suggests, into a step forward in either the fight for Scottish independence or the long-term struggle for a socialist society based on human solidarity rather than the dog-eat-dog morality and reality of capitalism.  
 
Scottish Socialist Party seeks reform of capitalism, not revolutionary change
The Greens are a middle-class radical current that’s for reforming capitalism. The SSP, likewise, stands for taming imperialism and turning it into a more “humane” system. Its manifesto points to the supposed viability of Denmark—“a small independent nation the size of Scotland”—and Norway to make its case for Scottish independence. “Neither Denmark and Norway are socialist countries,” the SSP document says. Yet many policies adopted by these governments are progressive, it argues. “Yes, you can tax the rich. Yes, you can have public ownership of North Sea oil and other profitable industries. Yes, you can impose higher taxes on big business. Yes, you can invest in top quality public services. It is not economics, but politics that dictates that big business in Scotland and across the United Kingdom makes sky-high profits while poverty runs rampant and public services disintegrate.”

I don’t agree. Politics is concentrated economics. As long as the economic system of capitalism reigns, whatever gains working people make in struggle will be eroded, especially as the profit system sinks into depression.

The SSP suggests the problem is the “excesses” of capitalism, not the system itself. One heading in its manifesto, for example, says, “Racism has no place in our society.” The truth, however, is that racism is endemic to capitalism, and can’t be eradicated without overturning capitalist rule and joining the worldwide struggle for socialism.

In an article printed in the May 29, 2001, Scotsman, SSP leader Alan McCombes argued, “Scotland is not Cuba 1959, nor Nicaragua 1979, both of which stood up to the might of U.S. capitalism. We live in an infinitely wealthier, more literate, more skilled, more technologically advanced society.” But the Cuban road—a social revolution, with whatever variations in tactics from country to country—is the only realistic way to end capitalist exploitation and gaurantee and maintain national independence. The struggle for Scottish independence is a dagger pointing at the heart of British imperialism. That’s why the British rulers fear it, just as they fear the Irish republican struggle.

One final but decisive note on the SSP is that in its 55-page manifesto the party fails to comment on, let alone call for an end to, the British occupation of northern Ireland. It also fails to explain up front that anti-Irish discrimination has been and remains at the heart of capitalist rule in Scotland today, and has been key to London’s ability to maintain Scotland as part of the United Kingdom. There is no way to chart a course toward independence for Scotland, that is, a break from the United Kingdom, without taking a clear stance on this. In fact, it is the progress of the Irish national struggle that has accelerated the prospects for Scottish independence more than anything else.  
 
 
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