A Response to David Torrance in The Herald
by Allan Armstrong of Edinburgh RIC & the Republican Communist Network.
David Torrance wrote a piece in The Herald on Monday 25 November making some laboured criticisms of the very successful RIC conference held at the Marriott Hotel in Glasgow the previous Saturday. Torrance writes from “the centre right”, meaning that wing of the Conservatives, which is unhappy with the party’s self-acknowledged “toxic” label. He is an opponent of a ‘Yes’ vote in next year’s referendum, and particularly dislikes the socialist politics to be found within RIC.
The Herald, unlike most of the rest of the press in Scotland, has been generally supportive of the ‘Yes’ camp, whilst also providing space to its opponents. It has regular contributions from the ‘Yes’ advocate and avowed republican Ian Bell; the more middle-of-the-road Iain McWhirter, whose support has oscillated between ‘Yes’ and ‘Devolution-Max’; and the died-in-the-wool Thatcherite unionist, Andrew McKie. So, I have no complaint about the presence of Torrance’s piece. However, it should be seen for what it is, not as a piece of objective journalism, but a political intervention on behalf of the ‘No’ camp.
Torrance takes up a lot of his article developing a rather stretched analogy for the RIC conference, comparing it to a Dr Who convention. This is to suggest that RIC is all about “fantasy” politics. One of the first things we have come to learn about the ‘No’ camp is that it is constantly trying to limit people’s capacity to think beyond the limitations imposed by a UK state in thrall to the City of London and successive war-mongering US governments. For these people ‘there is no alternative’ to the current global economic order and the UK’s political regime, where the banksters and their political apologists get soaring pay, perks and privileges, whilst the working class faces cuts in jobs, wages, conditions and social security at a faster rate than seen for 70 years.
In Torrance’s own ‘non-fantasy’ world it is entirely natural that sales of luxury houses and Rolls Royces to the rich are booming, at the same time as the poorest face pay day loan sharks, food banks and the return of Rachmanite landlords. However, one thing is certain. Throughout the world, a growing multitude is seeing through this particular ruling class fantasy, as Paul Mason highlights in Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere. The rapid development of RIC is just one very real manifestation of this.
Torrance pinpoints a particular incident in the workshop session, ‘After the UK’, when Mary McGregor “was heckled and one lady even staged a walkout.” He contrasts this this with the reception given to SNP MSP Christina McKelvie, who in a plenary session, “basically told delegates what they wanted to hear [and] was warmly welcomed.”
The decision to divide the conference between plenary and workshop sessions was, deliberate. It is not surprising that many of the plenary session speakers chose to tell those attending what they wanted to hear, since this was effectively the rallying part of the conference. The workshop sessions, though, were designed precisely to allow discussion about different approaches to the referendum campaign. Thus, far from RIC “find[ing] it almost impossible to agree on an agenda, thus “stick[ing] to vague generalities that dilutes its impact”, RIC is beginning to develop a method that allows it to unite around what is shared, whilst at the same time allowing differences to be aired, properly discussed and their applicability considered.
This is in marked contrast to the official ‘No’ campaign, where even this week, the Tories are turning on ‘Better Together’ leader, Alistair Darling. Is Torrance telling us that Scottish Labour, Lib Dems and Tories all agree upon their future Scotland? Well, maybe they do share a lot more than they would like to make public, but their mutual hostility is palpable. Only it is not principles that divide these parties, only the unseemly competitive clamour to hang on to career advancement, by desperately trying to keep open such prospects at both Holyrood and Westminster.
I suspect that if Christina McKelvie, as the SNP’s Parliamentary Trade Union group leader had declared ‘labour must wait’ until after 18 September 2014, she may have been heckled too. However, Mary McGregor would not have “staged a walkout”, but challenged her in the discussion period afterwards. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of those listening to Mary’s talk showed their dissatisfaction at the person who heckled and walked out. Mary started her talk by saying that the Left had to learn how to conduct meaningful debates and accept criticism without resorting to high dudgeon. Quite clearly, the “one lady” who “staged a walkout” thinks that the SNP leadership should be beyond criticism. The heartening feature was how few agreed with her.
Torrance could also not resist a dig at the Republican Communist Network, which Mary, former Labour group leader in Dundee, now happens to be a member of. “The Republican Communist Network was present with rather a sparse stall”. The RCN stall was there both to display our new banner and to distribute 500 copies of our special conference magazine. Torrance is right, the stall did indeed become rather “sparse”, since we were left with only 5 copies. However, unlike him, we see this as entirely positive. If Torrance had wanted to a obtain a wider selection of socialist literature, he could have gone to the excellent Calton Books table, which also included books written by RCN members, amongst many others.
Now, so far, we have not seen any such large gathering from any component of the ‘No’ campaign. However, if ‘Better Together’ were to announce a public rally, I think even they would be disturbed at some of the people who turned up to support them –the neo-fascists of the BNP and SDL, the Loyalists and UKIP. OK, the latter have now committed suicide in Scotland despite of their massive promotion up here by the BBC – the clue is in that first initial!
And, if the Scottish Conservatives were to invite others to their own conference in support of the Union, I doubt that much of that famously expandable interior of the Dr Who Tardis would be required. And I suspect there would also be a lot of ill-natured confrontation between the Tories’ beleaguered social liberals and their increasingly vocal ‘nasty’ wing, shouting “Exterminate, exterminate!”