It is noticeable how the official No campaign in the lead-up to the Scottish independence referendum has had to change its tactics since the belligerent stand taken by the British government over the currency issue. In general, the stridency of the anti-independence campaign has been proving counter-productive, and has not been having the effect desired by the establishment. On the contrary, it seems that the Yes campaign has been picking up momentum, with a recent poll by Panelbase producing the narrowest gap so far. The No side has been seen to shift, with campaign leader Alistair Darling suggesting that a Sterling zone might be put to a referendum in the rest of Britain.

These developments are representative of how people are being presented with all kinds of diversions, the central theme of which is to reduce the debate to the level of pragmatism, to what “works”: whether Scotland is “better off in or out”. This is to divert from the actual issues at stake over sovereignty and the right to decide. In fact, the conduct of the government, big parties and sections of the media is the direct opposite of how a democratic campaign should be carried out. People should be presented with all of the facts to enable them to make up their own minds, rather than raising passions and dividing the population over the issue.

The attempt to ensure a No vote through the wrecking of public opinion is reminiscent of the way in which the parliamentary system operates. The system of representative democracy is dominated by a set of big parties, which form part of the state arrangements themselves and act together to block people from political power. Elections nowadays take the form of coups, such as the coming to power of Tony Blair’s New Labour in 1997 or the imposition of the present Coalition, which deprive the electorate of the power to decide. Rather, they ensure that the anti-social offensive and the subordination of public to monopoly right continue unabated.

Similarly, the British establishment’s No campaign is attempting to organise what could be called a counter-coup against the Scottish people, along with the working class and broad sections of the people of Britain and the north of Ireland as a whole. Through the whipping up of fear, hysteria and division, the attempt is to prevent the people from developing their political initiatives and bringing about a renewal of democracy where the people are the sovereign power.

Recently, hysteria has begun to be created around the idea that a vote for independence would create a constitutional crisis and jeopardise next year’s general election. Alan Boyle, professor of international law at Edinburgh University, in a memorandum for the House of Lords, outlined two alternatives for the general election in the event of a vote for independence: either exclude Scotland from the election altogether, or remove Scottish MPs when Scotland becomes independent a year after the election. This was followed by a defeated motion proposed by John Stevenson, Conservative MP for Carlisle, to prevent Scottish MPs from being elected to the British parliament following a Yes vote.

The former option would require the transfer of powers to the Scottish Parliament before formal independence, without which, Scottish MPs would legally be entitled to remain in Westminster until that time. The latter option is being said to threaten to bring down the next government by shifting the balance of power in parliament. Seizing on the issue, one Cabinet minister was reported in the Telegraph as saying: “Britain would be plunged into a constitutional crisis. You couldn’t possibly hold a General Election in 2015 which elects Scottish MPs for five years when they won’t even be the same country.” Either way, it is being suggested that the remainder of Britain might see a permanent Conservative majority, given that Labour relies on Scotland for a significant proportion of its MPs. Such talk of crisis both covers over the fact that Britain is already in constitutional crisis, currently manifested in the deep disaffection with representative democracy, as well as revealing the profound inability of the current arrangements to deal with any of the issues.

Scottish debating chamber It is a positive step that a referendum on Scottish independence is actually taking place, both reflecting and further contributing to the space that is opening up over the question of where sovereignty lies. It is now up to the working class to take the lead on this issue. The Party has put forward in its Draft Programme for the Working Class that the workers should call for modern sovereign states of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and a free and equal union between them if they so desire. This raises the questions of what is meant by sovereignty and where sovereign power should lie in a modern society.

The referendum therefore presents an opportunity for the working class in Britain and Ireland to take up all of these questions from its own standpoint. This means starting to discuss and begin to build the new mechanisms required to renew democracy on the basis of the sovereignty of the people, breaking the stranglehold of the big parties on politics. The official No campaign seeks to preserve the status quo whereby sovereignty lies with the anachronistic “crown-in-parliament”. The need for the working class is instead to constitute itself the nation in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and vest sovereignty in the people, creating the conditions for unity on a new basis.

The AGM of the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign (SLHC) is taking place this coming Tuesday, April 15.

This is another important landmark for the campaign, which famously won its judicial review against the government. This was an extremely important battle on the legal front. It is a battle which has also had the merit of exposing the dictatorial character of the Coalition government, and the Westminster system of “representative democracy” as a whole. Exposure after exposure has followed, demonstrating that the government’s programme for the NHS as a whole is one of wholesale privatisation and hospital closures going under the name of combating “unsustainable” Trusts and of improving the “quality of care”.

Such a victory for the SLHC was made possible through its stand of self-reliance. It relied on the working people of Lewisham and other areas which supported the campaign, for finance, for mass actions, and for the single-minded passion which imbued the campaign. As part of this, importantly the clinicians within Lewisham took a stand, and demonstrated a broad-minded and dedicated commitment to health care in Lewisham and neighbouring parts of south London.

The battle at Lewisham is continuing, now covering the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, as the campaign stands shoulder to shoulder with other campaigns throughout London and other regions of England. The SLHC even sent a message of support to the campaign to save Withybush Hospital in south Wales. The SLHC is aware that, at the same time as the fight to save the National Health Service is a national campaign, it is still a fight in the local area also.

The strength of the SLHC remains in its ability to define itself, rather than being a group to put pressure on, or take its lead from, some other force. This remains true of its vision of a health service in Lewisham, and now Greenwich also, which serves the needs of the people as a whole for the highest quality of health care, locally accessible, and able to provide A&E care, maternity care and acute care for children and the elderly, as of right. It is then able to fight against all attempts to negate and oppose this vision, a fight in which all progressive and pro-social forces can participate and are participating in, and can continue to sum up its experience.

The SLHC is working out, in the course of its campaigning activity, the demands which reflect the sentiments of the people. These have included the stands against Section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act, an Act which should be repealed in its entirety and its very essence, and against Clause 119 of the Care Bill, a clause which the government has dictatorially introduced following the judicial review victory. The SLHC takes a stand against all privatisation measures, including the disastrous financial effects of the PFI.

There is an enormous amount of added value created by all who work in the NHS, and it is criminal that health workers are being branded as part of the problem in the NHS, and funds diverted to the privateers through the corrupt practices of the government. The AGM will be an important stepping stone to combating these cuts and privatisation, as well as taking as a stand in defence of the quality of care which the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust is dedicated to providing.

The National Health Action Party (NHA), which was formed a year or so ago in 2012, has taken a decision to participate in the elections to the European Parliament on May 22. It is doing so in order to take the stand of safeguarding the future of the health service as an electoral issue at this crucial juncture of the government’s all-out attack on the provision of health care as a right, publicly provided and guaranteed.

See below for details of the NHA candidates.

The spirit of calling for a vote for the NHA in these European elections is to make them a referendum on the future of the NHS. The NHA reflects the sentiment of the people in opposing the closures of hospitals and down-grading of services, which is amounting to the same thing. It reflects the sentiment of opposing the privatisation of the health service and the private delivery of health care.

WWIE wishes the NHA well in the elections, along with all the other forces who are fighting to safeguard the future of the NHS.

The NHA declared candidates to date for the London region are:

Dr Louise Irvine

Lewisham GP for 20 years. Chair of the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign. A medical educator for 15 years, teaching GP trainees and medical students. “I want to use this election to raise awareness of the imminent danger posed to the NHS by the EU-US trade agreement which will allow American companies to carve up the NHS and make the privatisation process irreversible. I also want to alert the public to the gravity of the threat to the NHS from this government with its programme of cuts, hospital closures and privatisation and to send a powerful message to politicians in Westminster and Brussels that people will not stand by and let their NHS be destroyed. If elected, I will strive to ensure that EU regulations don’t adversely affect the NHS and are always in the best interests of the health of British people. The health of the nation spans all areas of policy from the environment to the economy.”

Rufus Hound

Comedian, actor and presenter. “In 1948, Great Britain resolved that being broken wasn’t your fault. If bits of you got smashed off, started going wrong or gave up entirely, then a National Health Service would do its best to stick them back on, put them right or find you a new one. It essentially made being healthy a human right. We can’t let that creation die. I really don’t want to be a politician, but none of the mainstream political parties is fighting to stop the dismantling and privatisation of our NHS. It’s up to us – all of us – to save it.”

Chidi Ejimofo

Consultant in Emergency Medicine at University Hospital Lewisham. Played a prominent role in the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign and testified before the People’s Inquiry into London’s NHS on the dangers of poorly planned A&E closures. “I have witnessed Department of Health appointees in partnership with private sector management experts dust off an abandoned and discredited reconfiguration scheme at the cost of millions of pounds, while forgetting to address key concerns such as Children’s health, Mental health and Women’s health. I have lived and worked in places where healthcare isn’t free and I am very worried that the UK populace are unaware of how close they are to losing this unique institution for good. I am passionate about the NHS, about the underlying ethos of providing medical treatment to all free at the point of delivery.”

Andrew Sharp

Director at a children’s book publishing company responsible for digital output and for licensing books to overseas publishers and other media companies. “I intend to guarantee that the NHS is still there for my grandchildren when their families need it as much as mine did. Like most people, I want the NHS to remain publicly operated so that it can be properly accountable when things go wrong for patients, properly funded so that staff are not so rushed off their feet that they don’t have adequate time for my family while under their care. I also want the NHS to be coordinated so that when we are ill we do not get passed from one private provider to another – rarely does anybody rely on just one NHS department to resolve their health issues. I no longer feel able to stand by and allow our politicians to purposefully cause our NHS to disintegrate.”

Note

Elections to the European Parliament are by region using the Proportional Representation system of voting. You vote for a party, not an individual, and each party is allowed up to eight candidates (in London) on their party list. The more votes the party receives, the more candidates from their list will be elected. It is estimated that in the London region the party needs around 200,000 votes (out of a total of nearly 6 million) to get one candidate elected. It is do-able, so a vote for the NHA is not a wasted vote by any means, the Party reports. Due to limited funds, the NHA says that is focusing on the London region at present, so to be able to vote for the National Health Action Party in these Euro elections the voter must live in the London area.

(NHA Party)

In this year of the centenary of the start of the First World War, government minsters and even some historians, who should perhaps know better, have been intent on presenting the conflict as a noble and just cause. They assert the British government declared war in response to Germany’s invasion of Belgium and therefore “in defence of international law and a small state faced with aggression”. Some go even further declaring that the government of the day acted to end “warmongering and imperial aggression”. Today every effort is made to blame other countries for starting the bloody conflict, just as occurred a century ago, without any attempt to look at the underlying causes of the war, which include the “warmongering and imperial aggression” of all the big powers, including Britain.

It has to be recognised that Britain was one of the leading warmongers and imperialist powers and that it was the intense rivalry arising out of the imperialist system of states at that time which created the conditions for war. By 1900 the world had already been almost completely divided between the big powers that had already staked out colonial territories and spheres of influence. Nevertheless, contention continued with all the major powers seeking a re-division of a world in order to gain an advantage over their rivals.

Britain’s “entente” with France, for example, was a consequence of its evident international isolation following earlier imperial aggression in South Africa. Britain’s alliance with France then led the government to threaten Germany with war when the latter squabbled with France over which power should invade and occupy Morocco. It is clear that in this case Britain did not defend the sovereignty of a small state faced with aggression. It was content to support the aggression of France against their common rival Germany, because France had agreed to accept Britain’s prior invasion and occupation of Egypt.

British imperialism chose to use Belgian “neutrality” as a justification for war against its rival Germany but did not seek to prevent the aggression of the Belgian monarch, Leopold, against the people of the Congo. In the thirty years preceding the First World War, Belgian imperial aggression led to the deaths of some 10 million Africans, probably half the Congolese population, without any intervention by any of the big powers. This is not surprising because all the major powers fought wars of aggression and conquest not only in Africa and Asia but wherever their predatory interests necessitated it. It needs to be remembered that Britain was the most aggressive and predatory of all the big powers at this time.

The British government’s warmongering and imperial aggression was also expressed in the rapid expansion of the navy and the secret naval agreement with France in 1912, both of which were directed against Germany. A new alliance with Russia in 1907, which opened a new chapter in what was then known as the “great game” of Anglo-Russian contention in Central Asia, was based on a joint agreement that denied Afghanistan and Persia their sovereignty and placed the resources of these countries at the disposal of banks and monopolies of Russia and Britain. Such alliances were clearly undertaken in the context of British imperialism’s predatory interests and in contention with Germany, its main rival in this period.

The division and re-division of the world did not only precipitate war and create the conditions for the international alliances that turned Europe into two camps of armed robbers. Secret negotiations and treaties also occurred during the war in order to sanction further re-division. In 1915, the British government reached a new secret agreement with Russia over the division of Persia, which it was decided would fall into Britain’s hands, while Russia was compensated with rights over parts of the Ottoman empire, including its capital Constantinople; Britain and France would acquire other Ottoman territory. When Italy joined the Allied powers, the British government entered into a further secret treaty partitioning the Austro-Hungarian empire and allowing Italy to seize further territory in Africa, including Libya and in the Horn of Africa, thus violating the sovereignty of the Libyan, Somali and other peoples in that continent. Secret plans were also made for the dismemberment of Ethiopia. These secret agreements also paved the way for France to annexe Syria and Lebanon; Britain would take what is today Iraq. The secret treaties also paved the way for the British government’s Zionist occupation of Palestine, which since that time denied the rights and sovereignty of the Palestinian people.

Newcastle Meeting on World War IThe notion that the British government entered the First World War to uphold “civilised values” or for a “just cause” or to defend the rights of small nations is a dangerous fiction that has no basis in fact. It is advanced with the aim not just of spreading disinformation about the past but also of creating illusions about current warmongering, intervention and aggression and the growing contention between the other big powers in Africa, Central Asia and elsewhere. The conditions for the First World War grew out of the conditions of the imperialist system of states at that time, not least the intense rivalry between the big powers for markets, raw materials and spheres of influence, which could only be secured by a violent re-division of the world. A hundred years later, the economic and military contention between the big powers is again only too evident in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.

It is the task of the working class and all peace-loving people to stay the hands of the warmongers. We must learn the lessons of history and have no illusions that any of the Westminster parties are a factor for peace. The working class and people must take matters into their own hands and establish an anti-war government.