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Friday 12 October 2012

I am an admirer of Gerry Hassan. I don’t agree with some of his analyses, but I have never read anything he has written that is not cogently argued and doesn't contains key insights that matter fundamentally for Scotland’s future, whatever it may be. He is, and will continue to be a serious voice in the critical years ahead of us. His commitment to Scotland’s independence is beyond question.

In a number of telling phrases, he captures what is wrong with Scottish Labour, but also sees another dimension to Scottish society, one that is little recognised, but vital.

For example – “Scotland is a social democracy for its middle-class professional interest groups. The system of government and public spending work best for those most entrenched in the system.”

By God, I recognise that reality, and fulminated against it as the Glasgow professional classes, blinded – and bought – by the glitz and glamour of Big Sport and the Commonwealth Games - and the Scottish Government - ignored and betrayed the vulnerable people and small business of old Dalmarnock, and the mothers of the disabled children of the Accord Centre, .

He refers to the “profound absence of responsibility” among Labour politicians as they “closed their eyes to the mediocre services the party offered” and to the “pronounced Scottish Labour entitlement culture” in Labour for the last half century.

But he also inveighs against a straw man, “the romanticising of our history” among a sector of nationalist support that denies the reality of the problems Scotland faces. Gerry is above making the tired old Braveheart taunt, but that’s what he means, and he must know that although this exists – and will continue to exist – among a minority of less informed nats (and a few well enough informed to know better), it has not been a defining characteristic of the party for many years now.

Like many intellectuals of the Left, Gerry is sometimes unaware of his own romanticisation of the potential of a new Scotland - a kind of Left-wing, cloth-capped Mel Gibson fantasy of a Scotland that will fearlessly condemn oppression across the globe, will turn away in disdain from the grubby business of trying to persuade amoral capitalists - and sometimes questionable regimes - to invest in or trade with Scotland, and will bring about the long-awaited collapse of capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

As one of my Barras soapbox orators of the 1940s used to say, fixing his admiring audience with a glittering, roving eye – “Aye, that day will come comrades, but it’ll no' come the morra, or even the day efter …”

Gerry, of course, can cloak all this when he chooses in dense prose and arcane economic theory, but the essence of the auld socialist cry is there – the Great Left Rapture, will assuredly come, when Scotland will be lifted to an ineffable state of social and economic morality. Unfortunately, for a century now, this has produced the Great Left Rupture, and the dream has turned to dust again and again, as economic reality, blatant careerism, money grubbing and realpolitik intruded, not to mention event, dear boy, events …

Gerry distrusts the pragmatism of Alex Salmond, and doesn’t like his economic vision. At this time of international economic and social turbulence, with the beast of neo-fascism, unbridled corporate power and religious intolerance slouching towards Bethlehem again, I think our only salvation is exactly Alex Salmond’s ebullient pragmatism, to secure jobs, futures and a life worth living for Scots young and old. But we need voices such as Gerry Hassan’s to balance that pragmatism with core values that still matter and are always, always under threat.

But we do not need the voice of Douglas Alexander, a career politician in the thing that the Labour Party has become, profoundly irrelevant to the future of Scotland – unless he and the Scottish Labour Party can shake off their obsession with the Union, abandon their fake internationalism, and embrace the independence of their truly internationalist country, where, in the immortal words of James Connolly - Séamas Ó Conghaile – that internationalism begins with nationalism.


6 comments:

  1. The problem with Gerry is that he still thinks that the Labour party are left wing which is so far from the truth it leaves him open to rightful criticism on some of his writings.

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  2. I must be some crazy, mixed up kid. I am a member of the SNP and I believe in internationalism.

    My head tells me, but the internet does not, that there was some sort of arrangement about assistance between Scotland and Botswana some time ago.

    As a form of aid, nominating one third world country as the beneficiary has some positives, in the sense that the donor country would see the effects of their assistance, and that the hopefully frequent, exchange of citizens would boost the commitment. In both directions.

    That is not to exclude ourselves from disaster relief and the like, we should contribute there too.

    Yeah! Crazy mixed up kid.

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  3. I am an SNP supporter, Douglas, and an internationalist. When I was a Labour supporter I was an internationalist.

    What I quarrel with is the fake, vague unternationalism that has allowed the British left to posture about principle while maintaing weapons of mass destruction, belonging to US-dominated aggreesive military allaince, NATO, and threatening, bombing and invading the rest of the world in the most 'nationalistic' empire the world has known, namely, the British Empire, now a rump as the UK.

    Scotland's internationalism will be that of the non-nuclear European nations - non-nuclear, non-aggressive, expressing its internationalism through trade, aid, cultural and scientific exchange and joint initiatives freely entered into by a sovereign nation.

    As Dolina McLennan, a great nationlist and internationalist found, internationalism begins with nationalism -

    Dolina McLennan

    regards,

    Peter

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  4. Come on Cynical Highlander, Gerry is under no such illusions, indeed he has ripped into the "Labour" party for some time now.

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  5. Internationalism begins with nationalism in he same way that war begins with peace, freedom with slavery and ignorance with strength. No doubt the hope lies with the proles.

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  6. Norman I am not saying that he has not criticised the Labour party but he is of the mistaken belief that something that has already metamorphosed into something he disagrees with can return into its chrysalis to emerge into his butterfly not possible under any circumstance.

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