May 3, 2007

I was just reading through the Scotsman online and ran across an article on the upcoming election on May 3 – apparently Tony “Bush’s Poodle” Blair and the Iraq War has done so much to destroy the labor party’s prestige and formerly iron-clad grip on scotland that the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) has a real chance of taking the majority in Scotland at the next election.

If that happens a national referandum on independance will follow soon after; and it is a very real possibility that within a few years Scotland will once again be an independant nation, and the Brittish empire will finally die the death it so richly deserves.

Now I’m not a big fan of nation-states, obviously, but I am a big fan of local control, a fan of self-determination, and a big fan of anti-impirialist movements. England became an empire by conquering and subdoing its neighbors at sword and gunpoint and then using their resources to conquer the rest of the world. Without the colonization of Scotland, Wales, Cornwal, and Ireland the Brittish empire would have been impossible – there could have been no colonial control of India or colonial genocides against indiginous people in north america, australia, and new zealand; and that’s just for starters. The world would be an incredibly different place today. Obviously it’s a bit late to prevent all those things from happenning now, but the fact that this formerly mighty empire is begining to crumble at “home” just a few decades after losing its last impirial holdings gives me hope. The fact that this crumbling is at least partly due to a neo-impirialist oil-war just makes the whole thing more bittersweet, and gives me a little bit of hope for the future demise of American impirialism.

It’s not that i particularly like alex salmond or the nationalist party (or electoral politics at all for that matter).  but scotland is a country of 5 million and an independant scotland would be the kind of place where local control and direct democracy could really take root and grow.  independance is 1 step on a long road in my mind, not the goal itself.

On a more personal note, I’ve been trying to figure out how to emigrate to scotland for a little more then 5 years now, but keep running into a wall because Scotlands immigration policy, like so much else, is controlled by England. And since England has more immigrants from its former colonies then it knows what to do with, the english-controlled brittish government makes it incredibly difficult for someone from outside of the so-called “commonwealth” to immigrate. If Scotland was an independant nation, however, they’d be able to set their own policies on everything – from finance to immigration and on – and as part of the effort to attract back the millions of scottish emigrants and their descendants (myself included) needed to deal with the curent labor shortage, the newly independant Parliment would almost certainly make it easier to immigrate. And that would make me a very, very, happy man.

Long story short – I’m not a ‘nationalist’ in any traditional sense of the word, but for here and now I’m really really hoping that the scottish electorate sees past the bullshit of their largely english-controlled media and votes for the SNP (or one of the other pro-independance parties) on may 3. Scotland is a nation, it has always been a nation and will always be a nation, it’s time for scotlands people to stand up and finally – once and for all – throw the english government the fuck out of their country. That wouldn’t be a blow against the english people any more then the iraquis refusing to bow to the US govt’s occupation of their land is an attack on the american people, it would be a clear message to the world that the days of empire are finally over, once and for all. And that’s a message with clear resonance, from Baghdad to Washington to London to Edinburgh.
I just wish it hadn’t taken the brutal invasion and occupation of another nation – iraq – to undermine labor’s support in scotland and open the way.

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may 4 update -

the nationalists  beat labor in scotland for the first time ever.  that’s fucking huge.  it’s also huge because the last time labor was out of power in scotland was 50 years ago and it was the torries in power.   normally i’d sympathize with labor over nationalism any day of the week, but brittish new labor doesn’t actually give a shit about working class people any more and the nationalists are actually well to the left of them on social issues (they’re social democrats as opposed to “labor” thats gone neo-liberal).
anyway.

it’s not a clear win, they’ll need to form a coalition government and al lthat, but it’s a step at least.  their position should be strengthened by the fact that labor totally fucked up the election and something like 1 in every 10 votes was disqualified and not counted.  conspiracy-theorist minded people are saying that’s a sign of endemic fraud and that if the election had been fair the nats would have swept labor.  meanwhile i keep having flashbacks to florida in 2000 and ohio in 2004.  guess america isn’t the only country where this kind of shit happens, but it’s just another reason to hope for independance.

guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

Posted: April 24th, 2007 under news, politrix.
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