Indy Debate with Unison

Full text of my speech to the AGM of Unison Highland Branch this morning, on behalf of Better Together.  With acknowedgements to Douglas Alexander MP for the inspiration!

Good morning.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you on behalf of Better Together

You will probably be expecting a well-rehearsed list of scare stories about independence.

Fears about access to NHS specialists, joining the Euro, Bank of England control, can we afford our pensions?

What happens when the oil runs out?

As even John Swinney is now asking.

Well I'm not going to do any of that.

I'm going to talk about my vision for Scotland and why I think we really will be Better Together.

I'm going to make the case for why staying in the UK will better deal with the big issues that are important to the Labour and Trade Union movement.

I’d like to start by taking Nicola Sturgeon’s advice.

In her speech in December last year, the Deputy First Minister said this:

 “I ask you, as you make up your minds over these next two years, to base your decision not on how Scottish or British you feel, but on what kind of country you want Scotland to be and how best you think that can be achieved.”

Well I believe the kind of country I want Scotland to be is best delivered by progressive politics based on fairness, equal opportunity and social justice.

A Scotland with its own distinct political and economic identity but which is part of a socially progressive United Kingdom which shares those values.

Because we should not confuse the arguments of nationalism with those for advancing social justice.

We live in an unfair society right now as the Tory & LibDem Coalition shrinks the economy, cutting jobs, benefits and services for the poorest whilst protecting their rich friends.

But the great advances that were struggled for and secured by working people across the UK – the Welfare State, Trades Union Rights, Equal Pay, a National Minimum Wage - were secured by the votes of working people in Cardiff, Liverpool and Newcastle, just as surely as people in Dundee, Inverness or Glasgow.

It was the votes of Yorkshire miners and Lancashire mill workers which helped deliver a National Health Service, not Edinburgh consultants, Fife Farmers or Glasgow captains of industry.

Socialism doesn’t stop at a border.

We need to fight together to create the UK society we want.

Better together means social justice is not just an ideal for Scotland but is a statement of solidarity and connectedness with our comrades and fellow workers across the UK.

We must maintain a distinctively Scottish view on public services regardless of who is in power at Westminster.

The NHS has been much safer in the SNP’s hands than the Coalitions.

We need to get away from the neo con view that the private sector is always best, that local government is just an expensive bureaucracy.

That decent public services are a burden on the state rather than a measure of the health of our society.

At the risk of arguing the case for small independent nations, Norway, Denmark and other European countries manage to run social democratic economies with high quality public service, low unemployment and decent workers’ rights. 

Paid for by higher taxes.

So can we, but we need to argue that case.

And we need to win that argument TOGETHER or the banks, the tax avoiders and the big corporates will pick us off just as they have done with the other “arc of prosperity” countries.

And we don’t need to look far to see how badly wrong things can go in a small independent country.

From the early 1990s, the combination of the Celtic Tiger phenomenon and Trade Union engagement in the Social Partnership Agreement worked to drive up real wages in Ireland, especially in the public sector.

By 1999 the country attracted up to one quarter of all US direct investment for the EU with a total of over 1,000 multinationals employing over 100,000 people in electronics, software and pharmaceuticals.

Much of that investment, however, came at a cost of sweet-heart non-union deals to attract the big corporates. 

The IFSC was in effect a “free port” for big capital.

When the crunch came, ordinary working people paid the price.  Unions were undermined and isolated.

Would an independent Scotland have to go down the same route of low taxes and low regulation to attract big business? 

Is that what the business backers behind the SNP are really looking forward to?

Competing with our comrades in the rest of the UK for investment, in a race to the bottom driven by the big corporates?

That’s not the Scotland I want to live in.

I want to live in a Scotland where….

We can share the costs of developing Green energy across the rich UK tax-base not just those in Scotland.

We can ensure a level playing field for jobs and the minimum wage which does not allow workers in one part of the country to be exploited by another.

We can devote much bigger resources to engineering and medical research in centres of excellence right across the country instead of having to fund it ourselves.

It won’t just happen; we will all need to work hard to elect governments in Westminster and Holyrood which share those ideals.

Tory government is not inevitable. 

But a free market UK economy will drag down an independent Scotland.

A rightward drifting Tory party in England needs to be defeated by a Labour government not given its head by Scotland walking away.

We must fight for decent public services and the kind of NHS we all believe in right across the UK and not abandon working people in other parts of the UK to the worst of Tory free market dogma. 

Scotland can prosper as a social, economic and politically devolved country…..

.. making its own choices about what works for us…

…… but able to flex its economic power as part of a joined up UK which shares the same core values. 

That’s why we are Better Together.

Thank you.