John Swinney – Servant of Empire

It has been a busy week for Scottish First Minister John Swinney. He started the week by vacillating over the US kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, committed Scottish troops to a potential NATO occupying force in Ukraine in the middle of it and ended it by backing US piracy. In doing so Swinney has provided us with a very useful service in that he has exposed the true nature of the SNP to be an utterly reactionary organisation that serves Anglo-American imperialism. Swinney’s SNP has fully embraced the imperialist order and only seeks to be part of it. Its actions and rhetoric demonstrate a party that seeks not to liberate anyone, but to secure a more favorable position for a prospective Scottish bourgeoisie within the Anglo-American imperialist system.

Swinney and the SNP have long been rabid supporters of the war on Russia, as have their former coalition partners, the abysmal Scottish Green Party. Therefore the news that Swinney would send Scottish troops to Ukraine in the event of ceasefire should not really come as a surprise. The SNP leadership have been desperate to prove themselves as reliable stooges for Anglo-American imperialism for many years now but it does represent yet again how utterly bankrupt and anti-worker the SNP truly are. To commit to sending Scottish working class men to potentially die in vast numbers in Ukraine pursuing an agenda hatched in London and Washington show the “nationalism” of the SNP to be wholly false.

Swinney follow this up later in the week by endorsing the US seizure of the Russian flagged oil tanker Marinera. The US raid that seized the ship could only take place with the usage of military facilities inside Scotland, an area of policy that is outside of the Scottish governments power in that this is a reserved power of the London government. Nevertheless John Swinney rapidly moved to endorse this act of piracy by the US.

What all of this reveals is that the SNP’s core project—Scottish independence—is exposed here as a hollow shell. Its nationalism is purely constitutional and managerial. It seeks a change in the flag and the seat of government in Edinburgh, while ensuring continuity in the economic base (capitalism) and foreign policy alignment (pro-NATO, pro-US). This is because the class interest the SNP ultimately serves is not the Scottish proletariat but a section of the native bourgeoisie and middle class who desire control over North Sea oil revenues and the Scottish state apparatus, yet remain terrified of destabilizing the capitalist order or angering US imperialism. Swinney’s anxiety about the “sustainability of NATO” and the threat to “peace and stability and order” is the anxiety of a bourgeois politician fearing a disruption to the markets and systems that sustain the class he serves.

The SNP are both pro NATO and pro EU. Therefore the question has to be asked – what value will the “Independence” they (supposedly) seek have? If the Scottish armed forces are to be controlled by London and Washington and the Scottish economy controlled by Berlin then what will a Scottish government actually control? The reality is that the SNP are just another collection of imperial administrators. In reality they have no intention of seriously challenging the British ruling class. They are perfectly happy sitting in Edinburgh, soaking up expenses like a sponge and doing absolutely nothing of value. These “nationalists” have found a very comfortable niche as partners in crime of the British ruling class and will always seek to defend an order that they have profited from. Scottish workers stand in the tradition of John Maclean, the Glasgow rent strike, Red Clydeside, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders occupation and the heroic struggle of the Scottish mine workers. The proletariat should have nothing to do with this collection of rotten, pro-imperialist frauds.