Why 'radical’ independence movements are destined to fail

To me, it was neither radical nor particularly pro-independence. Cat tries to explain this away by claiming she “has never been a romantic nationalist”, then goes on to say she sees Scotland as a “nation built on conflicting clashing forces … between rich and poor, landlords and tenants, reactionaries and rebels trade unionists and Tories”. So what is so different from other countries in that? That attitude is so typical of the numerous, cliqued, alphabet soup of Brit Left Nat groups.

In her previous column in The National, she boasted of abstaining; spoiling her ballot paper, and voting Labour. Then the RIC wonders why they were so short-lived and extinct in the age-old struggle for power in these islands. She would as well have joined the LibDems and been crushed just as flat, in the non-existent space between Tory and Labour.

READ MORE: Radical Independence Movement shows there’s an opportunity for new political alliances

As for the precious Tame Unions, they sold out long ago and have become no more than a cash machine for the Royal Labour Party in and out of the English House of Lords and the English Peasant Parliament. There are no Scottish Trade Unions left, apart from the EIS, which survived only because we still have a separate education system. Dick Leonard even sold the STUC building in Glasgow’s Woodlands Road to property developers, leaving the “S” TUC an obvious empty shell, like his short-lived leadership.

How is voting for Corbyn the Abstainer a radical or independent act? Complaining about the SNP and NATO, without mentioning Labour and Trident, or their long history of attacks and pay freezes on the working class, or their long imperialist history smacks of political immaturity and historical ignorance. I would not accuse them of agent provocateurism merely of gross naivety, bound to fail in Scotland and sunk in the graveyard of all the other short-lived similar groups.

A few years back I met an ex comrade from the residual SSP, who said that Scotland needed yet another party. Yeah, like a hole in the heid. Little did I know he meant the RIC this time. Then I met him with Cat Boyd after a cross-party public meeting in Maryhill Burgh Halls and tried to speak to them in the pub after. I felt I was intruding and left them to it for a convivial evening with local Wyndford SNP activists, who had more effective radicals in the Cooncil than the RIC were to have in the whole of Scotland.

Even more puzzling, was the Glasgow RIC attitude to the more experienced Angus RIC member, consisting of Scottish Republican Socialists (SRSM) and a few anarchists, whom they treated as rustic yokels. The Angus radical Independentistas are still campaigning locally and are not romantically involved with Corbynistas abroad, who voted against or abstained in most of the SNP’s parliamentary proposals.

Elsewhere, The National reported that the radical ex-Green Andy Wightman was thinking of standing as a Highland independent. My advice, which he won’t take, is not to vanish into obscurity. He would be more effective and useful in the broader SNP. David Pratt also reported in his column of the futility of all these “pro-indy” anti-SNP “radical” groups popping up all over the place like wee plooks on a teenager, and how they have become easy meat for agent provocateurs and MI5 mixers.

READ MORE: Andy Wightman considers standing as an independent in Holyrood election

Ruth Wishart, Lesley Riddoch etc etc keep warning them, but do they listen? Perhaps they are just too snobbish to get down and dirty with a mass movement and smelly proles, which is shooting up in the polls despite them?

Maybe The National should gie me a column, afore I pop my clogs, intsteid of a’ these boring, humourless, fly-by-nighters that cannae last the pace?
Donald Anderson
Glasgow