If This Is Defeat?

One of the great attractions of Dundee for me is the fact that even though I live thirty five miles away I can always be sure to run into someone I know.

Like this afternoon.  I went to down to attend a public rally against the Scottish Defence League neo-nazis who had been threatening to march through the City.

When I got there it was pretty well a damp squib.  The nazis had cancelled their march a couple of days before and no-one had got round to telling the cops that the counter-march from our side had similarly been cancelled. With a result the the city centre was crawling with cops and a handful of anti-fascists who had come to join a static rally which in the hinder end didn’t happen.

Undeterred I had a quick blether with some acquaintances and turned about to have a wander round Dundee’s historic toon centre when who did I meet but some friends from Banchory.  We exchanged news on the continuing Yes campaigns in our respective areas and headed off on our respective errands.  

I strolled up Murraygate to chance on some old mates at the Dundee against Welfare Sanctions stall. Always good to catch up.  I left a donation at the Food Bank and headed off to write up this blog.

Summing up the conversations;

On the one hand, worry and outrage at the toll that austerity is taking on the poorest in society.  An acknowledgement that things must change.  A recogniton also of the fact that the link is made here in Dundee between national liberation and the interests of the working class.  If you want a free Scotland it is the working class that will deliver.  If you want a free working class, a free Scotland and a broken-up British State is a step on that road.

If this is defeat I could handle more of it.  Nearly 100,000 members for the SNP.  5,000 members for the Scottish Greens.  The SSP are being coy about numbers but they must easily have doubled their membership.  Radical Independence Angus & Mearns held a recent organising meeting with 23 people rather than the normal four or five.

This is a good problem to have as we move into a time where no-one can be found who admits to voting NO.  A time where the Tories are contemplating a virtual electoral pact with the “fruitcakes” of UKIP.  

A vote for Labour in Scotland was always wasted on a bunch of numpties with their noses in the trough.  This coming Westminster election will simply put the tin lid on that.  There is simply no point in voting Labour in May 2015 if you want to defend worker’s rights and retain even the slightest commitment to equality and social justice.

The Smith Commission will chunder on as it must and come up with something inconclusive and alienating as it must. It simply cannot encompass devolving the powers that were the subject of the solemn “Vow” of the panic-stricken unionist party leaders in the days before the election.

There is not a glimmer of hope for unionism in Scotland.  These developments will bring us much pain but routes out of the impasse for Scotland are there aplenty whether UDI or through another referendum.

Unionism is at a dead end. All it will bring is more austerity, more cuts, more petty-minded xenophobia and “little england” -ism.

That is what the UKIP vote means.  From Clacton with Hate...