George Kerevan: Let socialism flourish in an independent England

The 66-year-old Jeremy Corbyn and I are of the same political generation. In fact, I knew his older brother Piers back in the 1970s, when we were both members of Tariq Ali’s International Marxist Group. In those days, Piers was a leading light in the London squatting movement. I once spent a night in a squat, at Piers’ invitation. Insalubrious was not the word and I never repeated the experiment.

Back then, Jeremy was considered the odd brother out precisely because he remained a staunch member of the Labour Party while the rest of us joined the myriad of far-left grouplets. We viewed the Labour Party of Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan as irredeemably right-wing. Jeremy, on the other hand, eschewed the path of university radical and instead opted to get elected as a youthful Labour councillor in working-class Haringey during the 70s. In retrospect, his was perhaps the braver choice.

But precisely because Jeremy Corbyn has always worked inside the official Labour Party and trade union machinery, he undoubtedly prizes the organisational unity of the British labour movement as the primary means for advancing progressive causes. That could make him suspicious – if not hostile – to a Scottish breakaway. Equally, he has survived four decades inside the belly of the Labour whale without compromising his radical politics. He’s an unrepentant supporter of a united Ireland and happily met with Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness at the Commons last month. And in recent weeks he has readily joined the SNP in the opposition lobbies, while the bulk of the parliamentary Labour Party has shamed itself by abstaining on the odious Tory welfare legislation.

There will be those in the Scottish independence movement who will demand that Corbyn instantly support a second referendum, as a test of his credibility – and denounce him if he does not. In fact, when asked this question during his Scottish tour last week, Corbyn’s measured reply was: “Whether there’s another referendum or not, I don’t know. That’s a decision that will have to be made by the Scottish people, the Scottish Government and the UK Parliament.”

My reading of that statement is that he will not oppose a second referendum if the Scottish electorate show a clear demand for one. Which is encouraging, given that Corbyn said this during an internal campaign hustings, when leadership candidates normally appeal to the baser sectarian instincts of Labour activists with resounding anti-SNP jibes. Besides, a Corbyn-led Labour Party will fight the Tories tooth and claw at Westminster. This is precisely the direction in which the SNP had planned to push Ed Miliband, if Labour been the largest party after the General Election. We can hardly complain if we get our wish. In fact, the chances of putting together a Commons majority against replacing Trident will be that much greater if Corbyn wins the Labour leadership.

The folk with the real problem if Corbyn wins are in the Scottish Labour Party, under its new leadership team of Kezia Dugdale and Alex Rowley. Neither are remotely on the same political wavelength as Jeremy. Rowley is a close to his former boss, Gordon Brown, as anyone can get. Yesterday Brown entered the leadership battle to attack Jeremy Corbyn, claiming Labour needed more “credible” economic policies than Corbyn’s demand for more public investment. This from the Chancellor who swore he had abolished “boom and bust” only to give us the biggest bust since the 1930s.

Nor can Kezia Dugdale be considered anything other than on the Blairite right, though her politics have been erratic of late. She was, after all, Jim Murphy’s deputy during the late election campaign, in which Labour veered drunkenly from being uber-Blairite to left-wing devolutionist, then back again. True, she recently criticised the decision of the Shadow Cabinet to abstain on the Tory Welfare Bill. Equally, she has been embarrassingly frank about what she thinks of Jeremy Corbyn, saying his leadership victory would leave Labour “carping from the sidelines”. She also said: “You have to convince me that he can be Prime Minister. Here’s a guy that’s broken the whip 500 times. So how can the leader of the party enforce discipline with that record?”

Dugdale now has to tell us who she is supporting in the Labour leadership contest. If she is that critical of Corbyn, she had better tell the Scottish party who they should be backing. If she abstains, and a Corbyn victory leads to civil war in the party, culminating in a split, then Kezia Dugdale will be blamed by both sides and her career is toast. Dugdale criticises Corbyn for rebelling 500 times, but at least he is not afraid to stand up and be counted.

But there is more to the dilemma of Scottish Labour than its prevaricating leadership. Is Scottish Labour in favour of genuine Home Rule or not – meaning full Scottish Parliament control over domestic policy and taxation, including welfare issues? That is certainly not what the Tories are offering in the so-called Scotland Bill. To date, Labour has refused to support the SNP’s attempts to strengthen the legislation.

Kezia Dugdale will have to make up her mind when the Bill comes back to the Commons for its report stage in the autumn. Currently, she is engaged in displacement therapy, spouting about an elected House of Lords being moved to Glasgow. But there is the real Scotland Bill being voted on before Christmas and if Labour reneges again on Home Rule it will surely pay the price next May.

What are Corbyn’s weaknesses? His economic programme is based on the Bank of England essentially printing money (so-called quantitative easing, or QE) and using this to invest in manufacturing industry and new infrastructure. Actually, this is not a daft idea. In America, QE was used to rescue the car industry from collapse, after the credit crunch. In the UK, however, QE was used to create artificial demand for company shares, to create a mini Stock Exchange boom. The problem for Corbynomics is that the City of London will never allow a left-wing Labour government to use QE for social ends (as opposed to saving the banks).

Which brings us back to Scottish independence. Scotland needs independence in order to escape the domination of City financial interests and the permanent deflation caused by the austerity policies the City demands. We have that possibility in our grasp because – unlike England, to date – we have been able to mobilise both mass working-class and widespread middle-class support, around the project of self-determination and social solidarity.

Our success will not leave the English working class in the lurch. I believe an independent England (with its own parliament) would be more fertile ground for the emergence of an English socialism robust enough to marginalise the City with its Tory and Blairite allies. That could be Jeremy Corbyn’s legacy.

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