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As the general election campaign gets underway, sections of the left are calling either for a vote for Corbyn’s Labour Party, or for the Scottish National Party (SNP) on the grounds that one or the other is the only ‘progressive’ alternative to the Tories. Both, however, are completely reactionary, and the only progressive alternative is a boycott of this election sham and a fight for socialism.
No to the SNP!
The SNP is a reactionary, bourgeois party. Scotland currently has around 43,000 millionaires while also being home to some of the worst inequality and poverty in Western Europe. But the decade-old SNP Scottish Government has repeatedly refused to raise taxes on the wealthy in Scotland to alleviate the worst of these problems while decrying the lack of money from Westminster. It pays lip service to social justice but in education, health and child care, policing, courts and prisons it oversees inequality and injustice daily while implementing further cuts to legal aid, schools, colleges, jobs and services across the country. Its push for a second independence referendum is to dampen any resistance to its austerity programme and does not reflect anything progressive for the working class.
No to Scottish Labour!
Neither is the Scottish Labour Party a progressive alternative to the Tories. Like the SNP, Labour continues to pose as anti-austerity while implementing cuts across all council areas under its control. Not one Labour or SNP council has refused to implement cuts in Scotland. Even if they wanted to, they are not prepared to defend the poor if that means going beyond ruling class law and order. Labour and the SNP have collaborated when necessary to implement cuts, for instance in Edinburgh, where the Labour/SNP coalition slashed £150m in jobs and services between 2012 and 2017.
For the mass of the Scottish working class and oppressed the victory of either of these parties will come at their expense. Don’t vote – fight for socialism!
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 257 May/June 2017 Election Special
