of Ideas] Neil necessit can actuany De exercisco Dy te scolish peopie Nation through limited concessions.
-OTO- their tuture democracy:
assembly, as such. programme.
the present relationship of class forces, the In his otherwise useful discussion of "Socialists and the working class" [including the Six Counties?] and the New Rise of Scottish Nationalism' (February Battle exhortations to to support Scotland's right to national tion of socialism, self-determination, but does not explain how this right Far from being the implementation of self-determination, the Devolution Bill, granting Scotland an British imperialist state as a result of mass action and, elected assembly with very limited powers, represents an allempt br the British imperialist parliament at Westminster to deflect the demand for self-determinOnly a referendum, asking not only for consent to the setting up of the Assembly, but whether or not the The unity of the working class is, after all, created in majority of the Scottish people want separation from the struggle against a common enemy and not defined the UK, offers a real chance for the Scots to determine by bourgeois state frontiers.
Strangely, Neil Williamson does not even mention best to combat the bourgeois Scottish National Party this choice and manages to dissolve the whole problem must be answered. I am amazed that comrade Williaminto the foggy concept of 'an extension of bourgeois son manages to write that nowhere has this demand for determination is a democratie right, but that does not theorganised strength of the labour movement". mean that it should be confused with the creation of another organ of bourgeois democracy, a regional Labour Party has suffered over the past few years at If a referendum on separation was to be held, what danger that a continuation of these defeats may should the attitude of socialists to independence be? completely Red Weekly has repeatedly come out in favour of a political force in Scotland? vote against independence. Comrade Williamson does not declare his position, but demands a 'consistent this threat is not by timid and confused debates over struggle within the labour movement for an Assembly this or that concession to be made to nationalism whien will assume the powers to implement a socialist inus leaving Now. how on earth can a Scottish Assembly offensive implement a socialist programme if it does not have independent Scotland do you propose to build? and the powers of an independent state. And now does nis counterposing demand for such a powerful assembly differ from the Scotland to the SNP's petty-bourgeois pies-in-the-sky, demand for an independent socialist scotland. Glven thus exposing Is gious worshipping of an abstract 'unity of the British GÜNTER MINNERUP (Portsmouth).
cabilalists. creasv eminence ano reters with humorous contempt to the 'nice' wait for a propiems unu une arrival or une al-amusa introcue "Militant" and the WRP, is hardly an attractive and credible perspective for Scottish workers Indeed, it is hard to see how the breaking up of the hopefully, the creation of a separate workers' state in Scotland can do anything but strengthen the socialist cause all over what is now still the 'UK This is what the bourgeois anti-devolutionists fear when they talk of the slippery slope to independence.
Finally, and most importantly, the question of how national self- an elected assembly translated itself into an attack on What about the series of crushing defeats that the the hands of Scottish nationalism and the grave wIDe The only way that the labour movement can counte SNP the systematically confronting the SNP around GuesHon.
socialist action class quasi-reli- democratie demand for self-determination. debunks the friend of the new Republic • Tel one is inconsistent-