Cuts: the defining struggle
by Richie Venton, 10-05-2011
The media scribes ran out of superlatives to describe the SNP’s sweeping surge to power – “historic”, “unprecedented”, “a tsunami”, to name but some.
The explanations and factors behind this astonishing triumph are many and varied.
Those wanting independence from the cold barbarity of the ConDem Coalition were inspired to elect the SNP. But that doesn’t explain the scale of their vote – 45 per cent both at constituency and regional list levels – when 30 per cent currently back independence in opinion polls.
Hordes of LibDem voters revolted at the gross betrayal of their ill-founded hopes in what really are the Yellow Tories, and overwhelmingly switched to the SNP.
In rural seats and rich urban heartlands like Edinburgh Pentlands, disgruntled Tories switched to the SNP, some of them probably seduced by the 5-year Council Tax freeze.
In seats with no sizeable LibDem votes to be cannibalised, a section of disillusioned Labour voters swung to the SNP.
Many former Green and SSP voters went for the superficially most radical of the four mainstream parties.
Labour's vote did not go into freefall compared to 2007. They held onto the core of that year's voters - but they lost a devastating 40 per cent of last year's Labour vote, when they were the chief beneficiaries of rising fear and hatred at the spectre of Tory Westminster rule.
Shelter from the storm
But the SNP won additional vast swathes of voters with one main feature, one main desire, in common – people seeking shelter from the storm of savage cuts by Westminster’s butchers.
That common thread to most of those who gave an unprecedented outright victory to the SNP, under a voting system designed to prevent single-party government, is profoundly significant.
It represents the seeds of an almighty collision between the hopes for shelter from the cuts under the SNP umbrella, and the realities of cuts that will rain down from that same SNP government during the next five years, without the mudguard of minority rule to protect them from a later tide of people’s wrath.
Labour cowardice
The people with a fervent desire to stop cuts to jobs, services, benefits, pay and pensions looked around, and what did they see?
Tory butchery. LibDem treachery. Labour cuts in Labour-run councils and in the recent Labour government. A UK Labour leader who breezed into Scotland at the tail-end of the election and called for a Labour vote in Scotland as “a stepping stone” to him becoming Prime Minister, thereby inflaming Scots’ national feeling.
And more crucially, a Scottish Labour leader as likely to stand up and fight Cameron and Clegg as he is to confront anti-cuts campaigners in a sandwich shop!
In marked contrast, the slick, confident Alex Salmond conveyed the impression of standing up for Scotland. As Ian McWhirter wrote in the Sunday Herald, “Salmond manages to make Scots feel better about themselves without them really knowing why.” The SNP preached “hope over Labour’s negativity”, vision versus sniping.
The SNP traded on their perceived record in government over the past four years. Many former Labour-voting workers I spoke to said “the SNP didn’t make too bad a job of it in government”.
Of course the SNP spun a cunning web to conceal the other side of their track record, and deafened voters with silence over their real intentions on cuts for the next five years.
SNP cover-up on cuts
Since 1998, the SSP has championed abolition of the unfair Council Tax and its replacement, a progressive, income-based Scottish Service Tax, which would provide almost double the funds the council tax does for local jobs and services.
In 2007, the SNP stole some of the SSP’s clothing, parading much the same pledge on the vastly grander stage afforded them by the media – which helped them conquer minority government.
In sharp contrast, in 2011 the SNP trumpeted their pledge of a 5-year Council Tax freeze, appealing to those desperately shuffling bills in the face of pay cuts – as well as to the well-heeled Tory and LibDem voters who actually gain most from the freeze.
But the SNP silently buried their 2007 pledge, dropping the promise to bring in an income-based tax instead. This bows to the self-interest of the extremely rich, including the array of multi-millionaire businessmen who conspicuously backed the SNP for May 5th. But it condemns hundreds of thousands of council workers to even more severe cuts to pay, jobs and conditions, and adds to the looming threat of carnage in the communities.
One estimate puts the cost of the SNP Council Tax freeze at £2.5billion over two terms of government – which would be paid for through the current savage pay cuts imposed by the outgoing SNP government, plus wholesale job losses, cuts to holiday pay, community services, facilities for disabled people, school closures, privatisation of local services, and much more.
All things to all classes
The SNP can realistically boast of being “Scotland’s national party”, in that they swept all before them in the rural north and south as well as the urban Central Belt; from Glasgow Shettleston with male life expectancy at an appalling 56, to Edinburgh Pentlands, where houses routinely change hands for £1million.
But there’s the rub, the clue to the prospects for the next few years. They try to be all things to all classes. It’s one thing to get away with that during an election campaign, an entirely different thing to deliver in government.
When the SNP downplay their goal of independence to appease the majority of unionist capitalists, they also demand more powers for a devolved government, including control over Corporation Tax. With what goal in mind? To cut Corporation Tax, to make Scotland a haven of low-tax, high-profit allurements for the multinationals – which would slash income to the government for public sector provision. One class’s tax cuts are another class’s pay cuts, job cuts, service cuts.
The current Scotland Bill includes cuts to the Westminster block grant, increased tax-raising powers for the Scottish government, but a gaping shortfall of £5billion even if the tax-raising powers were fully applied. The SNP will face the stark choice: stand up for Scotland and demand back these stolen billions – or pass on Westminster’s brutal cuts just like they did with the £1.3bn cut to this year’s block grant, something they hid from sight during their election rhetoric.
Stockpiled SNP cuts
The SNP cleverly staved off the full force of the cuts in last June’s Emergency Budget and the October Spending Review – by delaying them! That was pivotal to their sweeping victory; it delayed and disguised the impact of cuts which they have failed to resist, failed to defy, failed to mount a mass revolt of the Scottish people against.
But the next one or two years will throw up an entirely different scenario. They have not avoided the cuts, merely stockpiled them, created a double whammy of cuts to come.
And all the evidence from their four years in Holyrood, and their role in the leadership of local councils, suggests they do not have the ideology, the anti-capitalist vision, to truly stand up for Scotland, to initiate and mount mass rebellion against ConDem cuts.
Whereas the SSP’s battle-cry is “stop all cuts – tax the rich”, the SNP blames Westminster, reassures the rich with offers of Corporation Tax at Southern Irish levels (12 per cent) and seeks to “manage” the cuts that follow from bank bail-outs, ongoing recession and the relentless pursuit of profit.
Hopes raised – struggles required
So after the raised hopes, communities, colleges and workers will have to roll up their sleeves for a fight to stand up for the real Scotland – for the mass of the Scottish people, workers, their families, even the middle class, as opposed to the small minority who have amassed fabulous wealth and are keen to hold onto it!
All has changed, utterly changed – and yet in a different sense nothing has changed.
An entirely new prospect around the struggle for Scottish independence has opened up. New expectations have been invested in the SNP to combat the cuts, yet the economic recession and system remains in full force, dictating cuts to any party that refuses to break out of the capitalist straitjacket.
The raised hopes of being sheltered from the cuts will turn to bitter strife as the reality bites.
So far very little of the ConDem’s butchery has materially impacted, except by some people on benefits and sections of council workers. A horrendous wave of attacks to workers, students and communities is about to descend on Scotland.
Stand up for Scotland!
We should demand, through community, student, pensioner and workplace organisations, for the new SNP government to really stand up for Scotland, to stop and reverse the cuts. But we should do so without any illusions in the readiness of this ‘all-class’ party to challenge the onslaught – unless they are compelled to reflect a massive revolt from below.
The struggle against cuts, alongside the national question, will be the pivotal issue for life under the new government.