By Bill Heaney
Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer will today put a kilt on the case for change with a Labour government on a joint initiative with Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar to launch Scottish Labour’s General Election campaign.
Sir Keir will make the point that after two failed governments in Scotland – the Tories and the SNP – Scots are now much less willing to believe that politics makes a difference.
Highlighting the ‘need for a new feeling in politics’, Starmer will make a point of encouraging people to play their part in changing Britain and championing Scotland.
Labour leaders for Scotland and the UK – Sir Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar.
Focusing on the decision the public are faced with at the General Election, Starmer has said that it is an opportunity to finally “turn the page on 14 years of Tory Government and the failed SNP, and to chart a new course for the country.”
A Labour government “will bring down energy bills for good”, as findings show that the average family remains hundreds of pounds a year worse off due to 14 years of Tory energy failure and 17 years of SNP misrule in Scotland.
This comes as projections in today’s Ofgem’s energy price cap announcement shows that bills will be £1,574 per year for a typical household on a default tariff from the start of July. This leaves the average family paying a staggering £400 a year more than a few years ago.
On Labour’s first step to set up Great British Energy, he said: “With Labour, Scotland will lead the clean energy revolution. We will set up Great British energy to give Scotland the future it deserves. Cut your bills for good, boost our energy security, and it’ll be headquartered – here in Scotland.”
The Labour Party is committed to delivering the change that Scotland needs by setting up Great British Energy, a publicly-owned clean power company, headquartered in Scotland, that will invest in clean power to help cut bills for good and boost energy security, paid for by a windfall tax on oil and gas giants.
Great British Energy will invest in homegrown, clean energy to boost Britain’s energy independence and cut bills for good. Early investments will include wind and solar projects in communities up and down the country, as well as making Britain a world-leader in cutting edge technologies such as floating offshore wind. GB Energy is one part of Labour’s plans to reindustrialise Britain with the biggest investment in clean energy in British history.
Labour’s plans will reverse fourteen years of failed Tory energy policy during which the government has blocked investment in clean energy and left us fallen behind, as well as a new, changed politics for families across Scotland and beyond.
Starmer added: “After 14 years of Tory chaos, people across Scotland are desperate for change. Families are picking up the tab of 14 years of Tory energy failure and are expected to remain a staggering £400 a year worse off under the new price cap.
“We can’t just send a message in this election, we must send a government – but we can only do that if we rebuild trust and chart a new course for the country.
“The Labour Party is humbly asking for the opportunity to change the country. To serve the entire country. To be clear, there is no national renewal without a strong Scotland. There is no Labour without Scotland. There is no changed Britain without Scotland.
“A Labour government will take Scotland in a different direction and give people hope for the future. Labour will stop families paying over the odds for energy. Great British Energy, our new publicly owned energy company, will invest in homegrown clean energy to boost energy independence and cut bills for good.
“When I say let’s get Britain’s future back, we say it with one voice. Scotland is at the beating heart of that mission.
“It’s time to stop the chaos, turn the page and start to rebuild with Labour.”
Anas Sarwar said: “Scotland is crying out for change, and it falls to Labour to deliver the change we need.
“After 17 years of SNP failure and 14 years of Tory chaos, Scotland has a chance to deliver a government that is on the side of the working people of Scotland – with Scottish MPs at its heart.
“A UK Labour government with Scottish Labour MPs will boot the Tories out of office, maximise Scotland’s influence, bring down bills, make work pay and deliver the change that Scotland needs.”
Ends
Yes on can listen to the pitch being made by Sir Keir Starmer. But will anything change. New Labour and the Tories are different cheeks from the same backside with the SNP no better. The UK is in the grip of neo liberal corporate straightjacket where people just pay pay pay as living standards go down whilst the corporates fill their boots.
Labour, Tories and now the SNP all the same!
But here is an article published today in Yours for Scotland by Prof Alf Baird. It is absolutely worth a read. In fact it should be mandatory reading because it summarises where we are as a colony endowed with resources to enrich Westminster’s corporate elites. And make no mistake, Scotland is a colony, like Ireland, or India or Kenya in days gone by.
Look at our electricity prices, our fuel poverty and all despite Scotland being a renewable power house. Look at the proposals for Freeport and Special Enterprise Zones where corporate taxation will be reduced. where the areas will not be obliged to pay the living wage, where planning controls will be taken from councils and given to enterprise, where zones can reduce national standard – imbedded off-shore tax havens outside Scottish democratic control.
But read prof Baird’s piece. It is timely and explains why the SNP have become what they have become. Red, Blue, Yellow they are our enemies and in fact Sunak said that last week. Ireland took it’s freedom and today it is a prosperous European state.
THREE PHASES OF DECOLONISATION – LESSONS FOR SCOTLAND – by ALF Baird
Self-determination is the process by which colonized and hence oppressed peoples become independent. In this regard we have a great deal to learn from postcolonial theory which explains this process in some detail, and from which much of the UN approach to self-determination and decolonization is based.
Postcolonial theory is drawn from the common experiences of many peoples and nations that have become independent from imperial rule, mostly since the end of WWII and the founding of the United Nations. It is therefore very much an applied body of literature. In this it is important for an oppressed people to understand the different ‘phases of decolonization’ which colonized peoples’ have to go through in order to secure independence and liberation from oppression, which is never an easy or straightforward process.
PHASE 1: THE RISE OF THE DOMINANT NATIONAL PARTY
Within the first phase of decolonization, the naivety and inexperience of the newly elected national party is exploited to the full by the colonial power. New to assuming any kind of power, the national party elite ‘attach a fundamental importance to the fetish of organisation’, which takes precedence over any reasoned study of colonialism.
Because the national party elite has never undertaken a detailed analysis of colonial society, the leaders do not yet understand what independence really means (i.e. decolonization) or why it is necessary. This also leaves the understanding of the mass of the people at a rudimentary level as they likewise also remain ignorant of what independence means.
The colonial power plays on the relative inexperience of the national party elite using its long experience of imperial administration and the very solid government and justice system it has created. The colonial power also uses traditional means such as divide and rule of the oppressed, manipulation, and the deployment of confidential agents pensioned off at ransom prices.
It soon becomes clear to the people that, inside the nationalist parties, the will to break colonialism is linked with another quite different will: that of coming to a friendly agreement with it. At the decisive moment, such as the election of a majority of nationalist members of parliament, the party elite lacks the courage to declare independence.
Instead, the national party chooses ‘neutrality’, it depends on slogans and for the most part leaves the question of independence to future events. It therefore takes the movement up a blind alley, delaying independence. The dominant national party elite then becomes part of the colonial racket, it behaves like a gang, feathers its nest and builds up its pensions. Colonialism, which is always a co-operative venture with native elites, effectively draws the national party leaders under its wing.
PHASE II: THE RUPTURE IN THE MOVEMENT
As time goes by, the people begin to realise that all is not well with the dominant national party in whom the movement has placed its trust. The dominant national party opted for neutrality instead of liberating the people, which is the clearest sign that its intentions are no longer aligned with the masses. The party elite then suffers from a kind of petrifaction, it becomes calcified and immobile. Unable to serve two masters, that is both the colonized and the colonizer, the party elite chooses to protect the interest of the latter and hence sacrifices the former, that is the people.
The colonised people discover they cannot gain their liberty from oppression by following the imposed laws and justice courts of their colonizers, i.e. what is known as the Section 30 Scotland Act approach. In an attempt to make party officials looks busy, the administration passes laws with mystify and further oppress the people. The inevitable split in the party results in conflict between ‘legal and illegal’tendencies.
The dominant national party refuses to promote any innovation or make progress on the most urgent cause of liberating the people. It attacks the so-called ‘radicals’ and ‘undesirables’ in the national independence movement, joining with colonial forces(such as state police and prosecutors) to persecute key leaders. Such developments and lack of progress on independence sicken the movement and leads to its rupture.
New national parties are then rapidly created, albeit they unfortunately also have a tendency to model themselves on political parties in the mother country. However, even the more assimilated native who automatically favours the status quo starts to become disturbed by events. The native starts to remember what he is and, no matter whether he thought of himself as British of French, he realises that this was a manufactured being, and little more than a cultural illusion.
The people start to “spew ourselves up; but already underneath laughter can be heard” as they finally begin to realise the colonial hoax that has been played out at their expense and thus to understand their wretched (colonial) condition. And so,they begin to better understand that this colonial condition is at root racist, itsubordinates them as ‘a people’ and a culture, which enables the economic plunder of their lands, which in turn widens inequalities and results in under-development of the people and nation.
PHASE III: THE PEOPLE START TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUE PATH TO LIBERATION
Here the people begin to understand that they must take a different approach if they are to become liberated, free to go their own way, and that their political leaders and political solutions have proven to be inadequate. The third and final phase must see the people finally awaken and shake themselves from their lethargy in the face of the forces of colonial occupation, economic exploitation, and political and cultural domination.
It is in this final phase that the people must become liberated from their oppressive reality. The people have to realise that they cannot live with colonialism and neither can they compromise with it through such mechanisms as limiting forms of‘devolution’. The complicit national party that has now become the main obstacle to liberation must be cast aside and a new liberation vehicle brought into play which is wholly focused on securing the freedom of the people.
The colonial relationship and chains must be broken, oppression must be ended. If the colonial relationship is allowed to continue, the people, their culture and nation will eventually perish. The people need to understand that true independence meansthe concrete situation which begets oppression must be transformed. This requires a two-stage process, as follows:
1) the oppressed group and their leaders unveil the world of oppression (i.e. colonialism is revealed to them) and commit to its transformation, and:
2) the culture of domination is confronted, its myths expelled, and its presence removed.
Liberation is thus like a childbirth, and a painful one. The correct method of liberation requires dialogue with the people, and political action must be undertaken together with the oppressed group. This is achieved through a liberation movement in which revolutionary leadership establishes a permanent relationship of dialogue with the oppressed people.
The liberation group cannot exist without the people, and the leadership group grows out of communion and dialogue with the people. The leaders must dedicate themselves toward an untiring effort for unity among the oppressed people in order to achieve liberation, which is the opposite of domination. Such organization is a highly educational process in which leaders and people together experience true authority and freedom, which they then seek to establish in society by transforming the reality which mediates them, including necessarily self-recovery of culture.