Common Weal director Robin McAlpine begins the first of a brand new weekly column on CommonSpace with a warning for 2016
IF you read the end-of-year ‘what did 2015 mean?’ opinion pieces, in mainstream, social and alternative media, you would find a fairly consistent view – 2015 was the Year of the rise of the SNP.
Clearly, this is true. And as one of the people who predicted it (though not quite the scale) back in 2014, I certainly don’t want to play it down. Even though a lot of it was down to the final collapse in Scottish Labour, in 2015 there was a generational shift in what passes for ‘hegemony’ in Scotland.
But it disguises something else, something just as important over which we must remain vigilant. 2015 was the year that the Scottish establishment began a fight-back to regain the ground it lost during the referendum campaign. And the significance of this fight-back is not really being discussed.
2015 was the year that the Scottish establishment began a fight-back to regain the ground it lost during the referendum campaign. And the significance of this fight-back is not really being discussed.
At the start of 2013, as the Yes Campaign as we now remember it was still emerging, political power in Scotland was really still a series of oligarchies. There were the Labour oligarchies, dominant in local government and intensely networked across a lot of public life.
There were the civic oligarchies, a range of large and increasingly corporate organisations which had a reputation for being radical because of things they (or more accurately their predecessors) had done in the 1980s but now functioning largely to reinforce their own benefits and positions.
And there was the ‘old-and-financial’ oligarchies, the kind of very senior professionals, business leaders, senior public officials, land owners, financial services leaders and so on. Where the Labour oligarchies ran local politics and the civic oligarchies were in a fairly closed feedback loop with ‘policy professionals who design and deliver public services’, the ‘old-and-financial’ oligarchies ran the actual country.
If you think this is some kind of conspiracy theory, let me give you a pen picture. A few years before the referendum I sat in a preparatory meeting for a work thing. Round the table was a wealthy financial services sector business leader who was the chair of a university governing body (his second university leadership role in a row) and was at that time appointed by the Scottish Government to design Creative Scotland.
At the start of 2013, as the Yes Campaign as we now remember it was still emerging, political power in Scotland was really still a series of oligarchies.
He was moaning to a group of incredibly senior lawyers, accountants, business leaders and others (each of whom was the chair of a university) about how artists were a total pain and who he saw his job as ‘disciplining’ them like he would in his financial services organisation. The half a dozen university principals who were present nodded knowingly.
We were getting ready to go and see the former CEO of a multinational corporation who was put in charge of the public funding of universities, and also of writing the Scottish Government’s procurement policy, and was also some kind of governmental enterprise advisor too. He was previously the chairman of Rangers.
There isn’t enough space here to begin to list the range of commissions, boards, committees, public sector advisory roles and other patronage appointments held by the dozen people round that table. You will probably not know the name of any of them.
Not a single one of them had any democratic mandate of any description for any of the influence they wielded other than that a senior civil servant suggested to a government minister that they should be appointed. Without a single exception, every one of them was in the richest half a per cent of Scottish society. With barely an exception, every one of them expressed a broadly (and sometimes acutely) conservative world view.
Then Scotland escaped their control. They had substantially influenced the vocabulary of Scottish politics for years (‘modernise’, ‘touch choices’, ‘be realistic’, ‘wealth creators come first’, ‘don’t interfere with what works’, ‘show we’re open for business’). They had (indirectly) persuaded the SNP that it should sell independence on the basis of a corporation tax cut.
Then one morning they woke up and the vocabulary had changed – radically. Suddenly people were talking about the problem of inequality, the unacceptability of poverty.
Then one morning they woke up and the vocabulary had changed – radically. Suddenly people were talking about the problem of inequality, the unacceptability of poverty, the need to rebalance the economy towards high pay and productive work.
Virtually overnight the main frame of comparison shifted from a financialised economy model (the City of London, low tax Ireland, hyper-leveraged Iceland) to a social democratic model (Danish childcare, Finnish education, Norwegian land ownership, Swedish welfare).
That is alarming enough. But what was particularly worrying for the old oligarchies was not just that the vocabulary was changed but who changed it and how. It was not a commercially-owned media which did it (though as always, the role of the Sunday Herald was crucial).
It wasn’t even big civic organisations or trade unions or traditional political parties. It was plebs. It was a dozen people organising a public meeting and inviting speakers who didn’t speak like the oligarchies and didn’t talk about what they talked about. It was the people who went to the meetings sharing their thoughts on social media afterwards.
It was alternative media sites like Bella Caledonia. It was rag-tag organisations like the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC) and Women for Independence and National Collective. And it was crowd-funded policy projects like Common Weal (which never came any where near to the corporate or personal wealth-funded model of other think tanks).
What was particularly worrying for the old oligarchies was not just that the vocabulary was changed but who changed it and how. It was not a commercially-owned media which did it.
You can debate to your heart’s content whether this just represented a different kind of ‘elite’. But it wasn’t the old elite. And it wasn’t a wealthy elite.
Although the old oligarchies won the referendum (they were almost all on the No side, apart from some of the civic elites which didn’t want to rock any boats at all and just sat the whole thing out), they lost Scotland.
I was in the BBC studios on the night of the General Election. It was filled with all the ‘insiders’ you’d imagine would be invited. As the night progressed and Scotland’s political axis tilted, I realised that many of these people weren’t really insiders at all any more.
But did we think they would cede their ground so easily? I am relieved that more and more people are becoming concious that the No campaign never stopped. Whether it is Union Jacks on our driving licenses, George Osborne’s eradication of Scotland’s renewable energy industry, the Scotland Office setting up a British nationalist propaganda unit or the anti-independence media’s pursuit of any SNP MP for any evidence that they forgot to tip in a restaurant once in the 1990s (or whatever), the No-supporting establishment is running a constant political and cultural war on independence.
What does not yet have this level of awareness is the attempts by the Scottish oligarchs to reconquer public life. The most glaring example is the utterly hysterical campaign by the establishment to make sure that universities continue to be anti-democratic places that they run on the basis of appointing each other to positions of power.
Although the old oligarchies won the referendum, they lost Scotland.
The reaction to what is really just a token of university democracy (having one elected person chairing the governing body of a university) has the universities hiring expensive lobbyists to ensure that no precedent is set and a coterie of the patronage crew saying utterly unbalanced things implying that a little democracy is some kind of chilling, Stalinist take-over of all that is good in right in the world (or ‘themselves’ as they perceive it).
And the way every member of the establishment (from the Institute of Directors to that new gang-hut and general-purpose gathering place of the conservative establishment the Royal Society of Edinburgh) has fallen in behind this campaign shows just how petrified they are of a precedent being set that the governance of public life is something over which the public should have a say.
If they’re not going to be handed uncontested power because of their wealth and position, how will they wield influence? They know they couldn’t get elected on their personal merits alone.
Thankfully, Education Minister Angela Constance has stood pretty firm on this (despite endless news reporting informing us all that she’s really about to back down completely). She’s throwing a couple of minor concessions to the other side but is standing her ground on the principle of a little democracy for our institutions of higher education.
But did we think they would cede their ground so easily? I am relieved that more and more people are becoming concious that the No campaign never stopped.
But while I am happy that that fight is being fought on this Bill, I’m a bit less impressed in how firm the Scottish Government is standing up to two other vested interests from the old establishment. I fear that it has been sending the message out that it really wants to do as little to offend established land owners as possible.
If the SNP leadership hadn’t been pushed by its own members at its annual conference, the fairly small step forward being proposed might be even smaller. Either way, I don’t see any real challenge to the status quo of wealth.
And in another area, the will to take on and introduce transparency to the lobbying industry is not excessively evident. A lobbying industry working for some of the most controversial clients in the country (all extremely wealthy, all looking to become much more wealthy on the back of public decisions) are hiding behind the disgraceful position being taken by SCVO (lobbying professionals move between the commercial and civic sector quite freely but seem never to neglect the interests of their ‘brotherhood’) to suggest that secrecy for their rich clients and ‘access to democracy’ is the same thing.
Again, the Scottish Government has been pressed into taking a step forward and the proposed legislation is indeed a step forward, but it is a very cautious step and looks rather designed to avoid offence.
The oligarchies believe that Scotland has had its fun but that we must now return to business as usual – you know, us not voting in high numbers and them running the country instead.
OK, I completely get the moment we are in. An election is coming and the SNP, with such a substantial poll lead, clearly doesn’t want to create unnecessary controversy at this stage. Bluntly, a war with the oligarchies is not desperately helpful in the run up to elections.
But if there is one lesson we must surely have learned is that oligarchs are never bought off. Did the promise of free money via a corporation tax cut prevent the onslaught of opposition by corporations during the referendum?
Did avoiding land reform legislation persuade rich landowners not to pepper their fields with Better Together propaganda? Did the finance sector-friendly promise to retain Sterling lead to RBS refraining from making claims about leaving Scotland?
The oligarchies believe that Scotland has had its fun but that we must now return to business as usual – you know, us not voting in high numbers and them running the country instead.
When they say ‘it’s time to move on’ what they really mean is ‘it’s time to move back’. It is them who have continued (and accelerated) the fight. I doubt they’re going to slow up any time soon.
When they say ‘it’s time to move on’ what they really mean is ‘it’s time to move back’. It is them who have continued (and accelerated) the fight. I doubt they’re going to slow up any time soon.
Either we stand up to this or, gradually, bit by bit, we will lose all the ground we gained during Scotland’s political reawakening (and every bit of that ground lost weakens the SNP, our best chance of real change).
That absolutely must not become the underlying story of 2016.
Picture courtesy of Robin McAlpine