YESTERDAY saw a LibDem, Tory and Labour Party coalition scrambling to promise anything and everything in a desperate effort to save the UK Union on which the past, present and future of British capitalism depends.
Cameron, Miliband and Clegg ‘Vowed’ that ‘The people of Scotland want to know that all three main parties will deliver change for Scotland. We are agreed that: the Scottish parliament is permanent and extensive new powers for the parliament will be delivered by the process and to the timetable agreed and announced by our three parties starting on 19th September.
‘And it is our hope that the people of Scotland will be engaged directly as each party works to improve the way we are governed in the UK in the years ahead.
‘We agree that the UK exists to ensure opportunity and security for all by sharing our resources equitably across all four nations to secure the defence, prosperity and welfare of every citizen.
‘And because of the continuation of the Barnett allocation for resources, and the powers of the Scottish parliament to raise revenue we can state categorically that the final say on how much is spent on the NHS will be a matter for the Scottish parliament.
‘We believe that the arguments that so powerfully make the case for staying together in the UK should underpin our future as a country.
‘We will honour those principles and values not only before the referendum but after. People want to see change. A no vote will deliver faster, safer and better change than separation.’
The vow is a work of fiction since none of the three parties involved have agreed to it, or its proposals and propositions, including ‘extensive new powers for the Scottish parliament’, and that ‘the final say on how much is spent on the NHS will be a matter for the Scottish parliament’.
This is why the ‘Vow’ has to insist that these principles ‘will be honoured both before and after the referendum’. The UK is not known as ‘perfidious Albion’ for nothing! The Scottish workers are being asked to trust the UK ruling class!
At this time when the most savage austerity measures are being imposed on the UK working class and youth, it will indeed be news that the big bankers and bosses these party leaders represent agree that ‘the UK exists to ensure opportunity and security for all’ and that it exists to ‘share resources equitably’, to ‘secure the prosperity and welfare of every citizen’.
Try telling that to workers and youth with inequality approaching the levels of the 19th century and with food banks, zero hour contracts, massive rent rises, and collapsing living standards everywhere – while the rich and the bankers are drowning in cash.
All UK workers know that the ruling class is in the grip of the world crisis of capitalism and is steering a course to return to the conditions of the 19th century. It will mean-time promise everything and anything to get over the referendum crisis, and then, as soon as is possible, normal business will be restored.
As is well known, under capitalism the NHS has no future, and that after the referendum, the NHS cuts in Scotland are due to begin.
The UK Tory party has been driven out of Scotland. The Labour Party, because of the record of the Brown Blair governments, is discredited. This why there is a tsunami of anger against the Union and capitalism that the SNP opportunists are benefitting from – for the moment.
Workers in England and Wales are no less angry than their Scottish brothers and sisters.
A ‘yes’ victory will cause a massive political and financial crisis. A narrow no win will have almost the same impact. The writing is on the wall for British capitalism. Cameron will be put out and an emergency coalition regime take over, that will have to take a series of crisis measures of an economic and political character, including postponing the 2015 general election.
What is being spelt out is that the Scottish workers are rising up and that what is required is revolutionary action by all British workers to bring down the capitalist order, and end the UK Union by going forward to a British workers republic. There is no other way out of the crisis for the working class of Britain.