Tuesday 20 August 2013

Labour for Independence and the non-nationalist SNP members

Better Together's supposed positive campaign for the union disappears completely beneath their the latest shenanigans. Attempting to smear the Labour for Independence campaign and describe it as an SNP front was incredibly hypocritical and pathetic. I'll come to the hypocrisy in a little later. But if it is the case that there are SNP members then that says a lot more about the present Scottish Labour Party than it does about the Scottish National Party.


Labour for Independence logo


It's fair to admit that the SNP were founded nationalistically - nationhood and the feeling that Scotland could only feel properly represented as a nation if it was independent were what formed the driving force behind Scottish nationalism. But the idea that everyone in the SNP has the same motivation is short-sighted. Of the main four parties in Scotland the SNP is the only one that stands on a party platform of Scottish independence. So many people join the SNP specifically because they are a powerful voice for independence and even though their personal motivation for supporting independence is social justice or better democracy and not plain nationalism they see in the SNP many of the values they hold dear.