WHILST generally agreeing with The Guardian and Jeremy Vine show’s token left correspondent and boy wonder Owen Jones, I now wonder what he is doing as yet another National columnist who is not quite all there as a force for Scottish independence.
Owen is now in his 30s and says he still looks like a 13-year old. Maybe he still lacks political maturity on his blind spot, Scotland. Many moons ago when he was a student at a Manchester college we both contributed to an online forum called “UK left”. I challenged the use of kingdoms, or queendomes, by socialists as a title and “left”.
With a Welsh name and a Welsh faither, I thought Owen might be a bit more sympathetic to Scottish independence and a Scottish socialist republic. He was in a way, but justified his Unionist stance with, “If Scotland became independent, we would be left to fight Tories on our own”. At the time, Scotland was governed by Labour North Brits for their masters in London and were our Tories in Scotland.
READ MORE: Owen Jones: Are Labour and the Tories really the same now?
Look at them noo, Owen. Only one Labour MP left in Scotland, elected by tactical voting in a posh Edinburgh seat by Tories and wealthy English incomers and Fringe luvvies. Plus, Lab-Con coalitions in municipal authorities throughout Scotland with the sole policy of keeping the SNP out and maintaining English/British nationalism and opposing any good coming to Scotland.
His argument that there are differences between Labour and Tories might please some south of Hadrian’s Wa’, but does not hold water north of the Tweed. His argument around Sir Keir and token Labour lefties is purely confined to the English Red Wall and not the Scottish Tartan Wa’. When Sunderland workers can declare that “Boris has our backs”, that says it all.
We have had all the token lefties from the Benn and Foot faimilies, who reneged on all they pretended to stand for upon reaching office. Benn reneged on his anti-nuclear stance and built more nuclear plants than the official Tories, including Torness. Corbyn had to resign as the vice-chairman of the English CND over his parliamentary support for Trident.
Foot, Benn, etc all turned tail on token support for Ireland, by passing antediluvian legislation that made them the worst offenders against human rights in the EU. Corbyn was pressured by the strong Irish organisations in his Islington constituency, who voted for him, and then let them down. Corbyn opposed or abstained on the many proposed progressive reforms put forward by the SNP in the English parliament.
READ MORE: New book explores life of key Labour and SNP founder Robert Cunninghame Graham
Must we all share Owen’s collective amnesia on the anti-working-class attacks by Lords Wilson and Callaghan etc when even the tame unions policed their 0% pay freezes? Joe Gormley of the National Union of Mineworkers was not the only one exposed as an MI5 tout.
Our own Ramsay MacDonald was a great Scottish republican socialist and internationalist – in opposition. The list is endless. The Scottish trade unions were bought over and “amalgamated” and asset-stripped, like the Scottish Wholesale Cooperative Society, with its factories and farms. The “S”TUC, more British Unionist than trade unionist, even sold their building in Woodlands Road, Glasgow and is now a mere shell of an organisation with a wee office in Bridgeton’s Landressy Street, next to the Orange Hall.
Like most GB journalists, Owen could do with doing a lot more investigative journalism on the history and politics of their mulch coo north of the Border. Only then can Brit Nat lefties claim to be truly international and we will see who is left in Engerland.
Donald Anderson
Glasgow
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