Blair’s speech reflects a broader concern among the rulers about the prospects of a further weakening today of the UK’s centralized state structure. Blair was responding to repeated polls that indicate the SNP is set to be the largest party in the May 2007 Scottish elections, and could well form a coalition government displacing Scotland’s current Labour-led administration. Some polls also indicate majority support in Scotland for independence from the UK. The SNP has pledged to press for a referendum on Scottish independence if it forms a government.

The election will be the third since what is known as devolution established a Scottish parliament, after a 1997 referendum in which 74 percent in Scotland voted for doing so. The Scottish parliament has powers over health, education, and local government and can vary tax rates. In addition to elections for parliament, local council elections will take place here too.

Scotland had a separate parliament until 1707, when England’s rulers imposed the Act of Union to form a British parliament. In 1801 Ireland was also annexed into the Union and the United Kingdom was formed. The Irish Free State was founded in 1922, after London waged a bloody war against a revolutionary struggle for independence. Bourgeois forces in the Republican movement conceded to London retaining northern Ireland as part of the UK. Thus the UK is formed out of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and a part of Ireland.

Labour leaders launched their fight to defend the United Kingdom at a November 7 press conference by Blair. “We share a currency, we share armed forces, we share social security systems,” Blair told reporters. “You rip Scotland out of the UK and you lose those benefits, and you will end up with an uncertain economic future with less power for people in Scotland to effect the big changes in the world.”

UK chancellor Gordon Brown, a Scotsman, has joined Blair in this campaign. Speaking here September 7, Brown, who has been pressing to succeed Blair in the Labour Party’s leadership next year, said, “For all of my political life, I have stood up for Britain and I stand here today again to speak up for Britain and Britishness and for the values that make us proud of our Britishness.”

On October 29 Brown introduced Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, to a lecture in Scotland attracting leading business figures. King used his address to speak positively of the Act of Union. There is now “a successful and prosperous union between our two countries,” King said.

Boosting Blair’s scaremongering about the prospects of an independent Scotland, Home Secretary John Reid, another Scot, told the Scottish Labour conference, “In face of the environment, international crime and terrorism, and mass migration, the narrow nationalists stand helpless.”

The apparent growth of support since devolution for the SNP reflects more dissatisfaction with London than growing support for independence. This is what SNP leader Alex Salmond seeks to take advantage of. “The difference between 1999 and 2007 is the experience of devolution,” said Salmond October 11. “Labour in 1999 were the ‘talk of the walk’; it was a new penny, now it is a pretty tarnished commodity.”

Although public expenditure in Scotland runs at 51 percent of gross domestic product, significantly higher than the average for the rest of the UK, few working people see any palpable gains. At the same time, London’s moves to privatize education and health services, known as City Academies and Foundation Hospitals, have not been implemented in Scotland. Blair has called for changing this.

Salmond also plays on his differences with London over its support for Washington’s policy in Iraq. On November 15 the SNP in a UK parliament motion called for a “strategy for the curtailment of British military responsibilities in Iraq.” While differentiating himself from Blair’s course, Salmond makes no bones that his concern is to protect imperialist interests. In a September 14 interview with The Scotsman, he said that the Iraq war had got in the way of the more important objective of occupying Afghanistan. “We took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and are endangering the lives of our soldiers,” he said.

Salmond describes his program as “social democratic,” combining “economic competence with social compassion.” At the center of this program is what the SNP terms “fiscal autonomy,” or Scottish control of its economy, which includes a proposal to cut corporation taxes from the UK rate of 30 percent to 20 percent.

According to the Scotland on Sunday newspaper, Jim Mather, an SNP spokesman, says Scotland should model itself on “successful economies like Ireland…and Norway,” which, he insists, should remain in the European Union.

These plans by the SNP are attracting some backing from Scottish-based big business. Thomas Farmer, for example, the owner of the Kwik-Fit chain of car repair garages, has made a substantial donation to the SNP.

“As the election campaign is now well under way, the Communist League has decided it’s important to present a working-class alternative, rather than what is on offer from both Labour and the SNP, which is how to protect the interests of the capitalist ruling families,” said Xerardo Arias in a December 5 interview.

Arias, who works in a meat plant where workers face a ballot shortly on union recognition, will be standing as the Communist League’s candidate for Edinburgh city council.

The League will also be standing Peter Clifford for the Lothians regional list election to the Scottish parliament.

“British patriotism and defense of the UK are always used to cut across class differences, to pretend we are all in it together,” Arias said. “A blow against the Union can be used by working people to strengthen their battle. That’s why the League backs independence.”

Unlike the capitalist parties that suggest working people have common interests with the wealthy rulers, the League’s campaign “will center on the perspective of supporting struggles by workers to use and extend the trade unions to resist the bosses’ assaults,” Arias said. “Today fighting to organize the large number of east Europeans and other immigrant workers into the unions is central to unify the working class.”

“Unlike our opponents, we are calling for immediate withdrawal of British and other imperialist troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and call for opposing the assault on workers’ rights at home in the name of the ‘war on terror,’” Arias continued.

“Through these battles,” he said, “a revolutionary movement can be built to take power out of the hands of the ruling wealthy.”  
 
 
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