(Note: Not the USA
“Union”)
I think the reason the percentages in Scotland flipped from
indyref 2014 to the referendum on Brexit vs. Remain is that suddenly the stark
prospect of being completely at the mercy of the central government in London
was inescapably before the country. In
2014, long before Cameron’s idiotic attempt at undercutting UKIP began, the 55%
didn’t have to face that prospect, thinking that their evils were then
sufferable and therefore saw no reason to dissolve the bands which connect them
with another. As much as I could from
the western side of the Atlantic, I supported the Remain effort, signing
petitions, posting and reposting opinion articles on Facebook, tweeting and
retweeting relevant materials.
Since the Brexit vote, the European Commission has granted
€4.4 million to Scotland’s Tidal Turbine Power Take-off Project, which is being
jointly conducted by University of Edinburgh, Aachen University in Germany, and
Delft Technical University, north of Rotterdam.
The project is expected to last three years, well past the farthest date
for the UK’s exit from the EU. So
apparently the EU is not holding the votes of Scotland’s neighbors to the south
against the country being dragged out against its will. This bodes well for Scotland’s possible
reentry after its independence should it choose to pursue that path.
Up until the Brexit/Remain campaign, I had had a fairly
negative view of the EU on several points.
First, the way in which that collective body treated one of its own members,
Greece, in 2010, as well as Cyprus the same year, followed by Spain, Portugal,
Ireland, and, to some degree, Italy. The
imposition of austerity upon those nations, Greece most of all, punished the
working and poor citizens of those countries for the sins of the rich. The fact that the EU’s most powerful economy,
Germany under Angela Merkel, was able to overrule those who sought to mitigate
the damage to the welfare of those nations’ less fortunate demonstrates that it
is not in America alone that money equals speech.
A recent article by Amir Fleischmann for Jacobin, “The Myth of the Fiscal
Conservative”, carried the subtitle, “Austerity measures don’t actually save
money. But they do disempower workers. Which
is why governments pursue them in the first place”. Like the benefit sanctions against which SNP
MP at Westminster Mairi Black recently spoke in a video for The Guardian. Further down his article, Fleischmann states
that, “Fiscal conservatism is a myth, because cutting government programs doesn’t
actually reduce government spending”.
Which says as much about the current governments in both the UK and the
USA as it does that of the EU and what it has imposed upon its members in need.
The other major bone to pick that I have with the EU is its
treatment of refugees, most of whom are fleeing wars and other conditions
created by some of its member states.
Besides making a questionable deal with a country it won’t admit to its
ranks because of the authoritarian nature of its current government. I mean, of course, its agreement with Turkey
for the latter to hold back as many as possible from reaching the borders of
its member states. It has also bullied
some of its smaller members into holding those who do manage to arrive in what
amount to concentration camps in poor conditions to prevent them from getting
into bigger and more wealthy countries in the north.
That last phrase, “in the north”, is key, though perhaps
“core” might be better. Because all of
the victims of adverse consequences imposed by the EU, with the exception of
Ireland, lie in Europe’s south, and the latter, which once played a major part
in saving Europe’s civilization, is on its periphery. The nature of this discrimination against
weaker nations and outsiders seeking refugee from war-torn countries showed
forth brightly in the recent decision of the European Court of Justice that
permits employers to discriminate against Muslim, Sikhs, and other minorities
by forbidding them to wear turbans, hijabs, and other articles of religious
clothing at their jobs and firing them if they insist on doing so. Chancellor Merkel, head of the government of
the EU’s most powerful nation politically and economically compounded that
atrocious decision with a call for a ban on hijab in every place in Europe
where that would be legal. And, as I
mentioned above, in the EU just as much as in America, money is speech.
Once upon a time, the EU may have intended to be primarily a
means of social and cultural exchange for its constituent members, but what it
has become is the primary agent for the sprread and enforcement of the ideology
of neoliberalism on behalf of its wealthiest states and their wealthy citizens,
along with Northern, and to some degree Western, European racism. It has, in effect, moved power from the
polling station to the marketplace, from the ballot to the wallet, as have the
governments in both the UK and the USA.
Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once stated that the
greatest threat to the internal security of the United States from the Black
Panther Party was not their guns but their Free Breakfast Program for
Children. Old Labour stalwart Tony Benn explained
the real motives behind this mentality, not directly speaking of Hoover of
course, in his interview with Michael Moore for the latter’s documentary SiCKO.
Tony’s coffee cup next to him read, “Old Labour and Proud of It”. The “Old Labour” which actually struggled on
behalf of working and poor people, as opposed to the “New Labour” of
Clinton-allied Tony Blair and his cronies and acolytes.
I think the best way to discuss Tony Benn’s comments is to
quote them directly. He said, at first
answering how the NHS came to be, that,
“If you go back, I think it all began with democracy. Before we had the vote, all the power’s in
the hands of rich people. If you had
money, you could get healthcare, education, look after yourself when you’re
old. And what democracy did was to give
poor people the vote, and it moved power from the marketplace to the polling
station, from the wallet to the ballot.
And what people said after the war was very simple. They said, ‘If we can have full employment by
killing Germans, why can’t we have full employment by building hospitals,
building schools, recruiting nurses, recruiting teachers. If you can find money to kill people, you can
find money to help people’.
“I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the
world, because if you have power, you use it to meet the needs of you and your
community. And this idea of choice which
capital talks about all the time, choice depends on the freedom to choose and
if you are shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose.
“People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t
vote. They always say that everyone
should vote, but I think that if the poor in Britain or the United States
turned out and voted for people that represented their interests there would be
a real democratic revolution. So they don’t want that to happen, keeping people
hopeless and pessimistic. See, I think there
are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people, and secondly,
demoralize them. An educated, healthy,
and confident nation is harder to govern.
And I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people: we don’t
want people to be educated, healthy, and confident because they would get out
of control.
“The top 1% of the world’s population own 80% of the world’s
wealth. It’s incredible that people put
up with it, but they’re poor, they’re demoralized, they’re frightened, and they
think perhaps the safest thing to do is
to take orders and hope for the best.”
Upon independence, Scotland will have a chance to institute
new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form as shall seem most likely to effect the safety and
happiness of all its people. In the
movie The Patriot, starred in by the
same actor who played William Wallace in Braveheart
(Mel Gibson, in case you didn’t know), the film’s protagonist, Ben Martin, asks
fellow South Carolina assembly members why he should trade one tyrant three
thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away. A free and independent Scotland will be also
be able to decide a new direction, one all its own choice, for international
and trade relations.
Along with people such as Robin McAlpine of Common Weal, Icelandic
legal scholar Katrin Oddsdóttir, and
others, I would suggest the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), currently
composed of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Once admitted, Scotland would immediately
have access to all its markets gained through its twenty-seven trade
agreements, including the EU, without the compulsory conditions imposed by the latter
association. For example, as pointed out
by McAlpine in a recent article for CommonSpace,
Scottish fishers would not be bound by the dictates of the EU’s Common
Agriculture and Fisheries Policies.
As for
intra-European travel, the UK, nor Ireland for that matter, has never opted
into the Schengen travel area anyway, and as an independent state, Scotland
will be free to do so. Three members of
the EFTA have opted in, while the fourth, Switzerland, has dealt with that matter
through bilateral agreements.
If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to
help people, because the needs of the many should outweigh the greed of the
few. And people shouldn’t be afraid of
their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.
Alba gu brath. Thig
ar latha, our day will come. Keep the
faith. Peace out.
