Re: <nettime> Guardian > Irvine Welsh > Labour risks failing the English -- just like it did the Scottish Did

[Bruce Robinson <brucerob1953@googlemail.com>]

Flick,

Very interesting to read your post as an English socialist opposed to 
Scottish independence for precisely the reason that it means a breaking  
the solidarity across the border and a dead end nationalism for the 
Scottish left. Of course, if the Scots want it, they've a right to go their 
own way but much of the British (not just Scottish) left beyond Labour 
advocates it either for short-sighted reasons or for the fantasy that it'd 
mean a socialist Scotland. The Canadian experience should be better known.

For those who didn't read the whole of Welsh's article, he has now 
abandoned the solidarity position in favour of Scottish nationalism and 
urged his erstwhile English comrades to do the same by adopting a 'little 
Englishness', which if it comes to pass will be very right wing. Not a good 
prospect.

Bruce Robinson

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On 8 May 2015 23:31:05 Flick Harrison <flick@flickharrison.com> wrote:

>   "What gave me, and many on the left, the biggest problem with Scottish
>     independence, was the idea that we were running out on our English
>     comrades, leaving them to the mercy of a built-in Tory power block. "
>
>   Reading as a Canadian, this hits home.  Losing the Quebec /
>   sovereignist left in the bigger Canadian picture would be a disaster,
>   and a Quebec separation would add the nightmare of a physically-split
>   have-not Maritimes, ripe for nothing so much as US absorption (although
>   some radical leftists out there dream of independence as well,
>   conservatives seem to have the upper hand even in harnessing the
>   independence spirit).  The idea of an independent Quebec also raises
>   the hackles of the conservative west which rattles its oil-powered
>   sabres about creating an independent conservative nation in response.
 <...>


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