THE Scottish Socialist Voice is the only socialist newspaper edited and published in Scotland and it stands four square behind the Yes movement.
During the 2014 referendum campaign the Voice was in the thick of it, campaigning for a Yes vote, opening our pages to Yes voices, organising discussions and reporting from the front line.
Our latest forum, on the Sustainable Growth Commission, scheduled for September 15, will ask whether the Commission helps or hinders our chances of winning indyref2?
Two of the most vocal critics of the SNP’s Sustainable Growth Commission’s conclusions will lead the discussion – former SNP MP George Kerevan and SSP national spokesman Colin Fox.
Former SNP MP and National columnist George Kerevan
Each will highlight the pitfalls they see in Andrew Wilson’s neoliberal approach to the economy of an independent Scotland, and both will set out what they see as more attractive alternatives. Joining them on the panel will be the economist Margaret Cuthbert, RMT union executive member Paul Shaw and Green Party councillor Susan Rae.
It is no secret that the Growth Commission’s conclusions have met with considerable criticism from within the Yes movement.
Put bluntly, the report is a one which suggests the SNP is wedded to neoliberal, pro-market economics with promises of low taxes for employers and low wages for employees. Even a casual observer can see that model is failing on a daily basis both here and globally.
READ MORE: Make Westminster say No and more people will think Yes
Throughout the report it talks ominously about the need for “fiscal responsibility” – which is code for austerity and keeping the City of London and the money markets happy. What this means for Scotland’s working class – who make up the majority of society – is quite another matter.
Few Yes supporters would be happy chapping doors in Drumchapel, West Pilton, Lochee or Seaton promising to continue with the squeeze on wages, maintaining public spending cuts, reducing the quality and reach of public services, delivering more insecure jobs and low wages for at least a decade after independence while the financial elites decide whether we are well behaved enough to borrow their money.
Yet this is what First Minister Nicola Sturgeon meant when she told Radio 4 that some choices in the Growth Commission’s findings could not be “sugar coated”.
The Voice forum offers the chance to examine the neoliberal core at the centre of the Growth Commission’s conclusions which jeopardises any chance of winning a Yes vote.
This economic model has failed across the world and working class Scots demand a better alternative. No one surely believes ignoring working class voters and then offering them 10 years of cuts and austerity represents a winning formula for indyref2.
From the Voice’s perspective, this idea represents political suicide for the independence movement. Have we forgotten that just four years ago it was the mass rebellion of largely Labour voting working-class cities such as Glasgow and Dundee that took the Yes case from the mid-20% mark to 45%?
It may be unfashionable – even in some Yes quarters – to mention class but it remains the case that working-class Scotland is the key to winning a second independence referendum.
Why then would we want to offer a vision of an independent Scotland which looks pretty much like the existing economic arrangements?
After 10 years of Westminster austerity – that has put thousands more into poverty – why offer more cuts and expect people to vote Yes?
Ken Ferguson is the editor of the Scottish Socialist Voice
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