As Holyrood polls grow closer, we must assert our ‘Scotland for Peace’ aspiration

By David Mackenzie, Secure Scotland

THERE IS NO NEED to rehearse how bleak and dangerous the situation is.

The canvas is vast and my knowledge is limited, so I want to highlight just two areas: the European war and the Scottish election.

The war in Ukraine has cost over a million lives, in addition to the injured, the trauma that will persist for generations, and the colossal damage to infrastructure, agriculture and the environment. European leaders (and we have to include Starmer here, Brexit or no Brexit) seem content to let the bloodletting and destruction continue, exactly as they have done with Gaza.

Almut Rochowanski suggests persuasively that the Europe-wide gearing up for war is not based on a fear of Russian invasion but is ultimately a question of status: “If European leaders are now grasping for desperate measures, like a high-stakes gamble of borrowing against frozen Russian assets, it is because the end of US primacy represents a far more dramatic loss of status for Europeans than it does for Americans.

“The United States remains a superpower, one of the indisputable poles of a multipolar order. But what should Europe be, on its own, in terms of military might and power politics? A great power? Do Europe’s citizens want that? “Do they also want the great-power rivalry that would inevitably come with it, which would poison their democracy, exacerbate inequality, and threaten peace the world over? No one has asked Europeans about it. They have been ordered into panic and arms races in blind haste…”

That is a fair explanation of why tackling this horrific problem with diplomacy, political action and negotiation is entirely off the agenda as far as European bosses are concerned. The fact that the only visible move in that direction has been initiated by the unspeakable Trump is no excuse for that catastrophic failure.

Peace and Justice, Not War

In spite of the fairly chaotic state of the discourse around the future of Scotland, the independence issue will be a feature of the upcoming election in May and we should eagerly grasp the opportunity to reassert the Scotland’s for Peace aspiration: “We desire that Scotland should be known for its contribution to peace and justice rather than for waging war.”

The competition for the xenophobic hyper-nationalist space among centrists and the far right, and our resistance to all of it, will be both crucial and indicative in Scotland. The change from Farage being chased out of Scotland to Farage being boosted and feted is a hard and salutary shock, but we should not panic. We haven’t blown it yet and we know what we have to do. Elon Musk believes that “The fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy.”

That is an ideal stance from which to energetically rebound. Not empathy as a mere feeling but as a primer for action in solidarity with our neighbours, however they got to be our neighbours; as a spur to effective collective action on behalf of those under threat; as a willingness to call out and confront the hateful ideologies that promote oppression and cruelty.

Alongside all that there is what we can do to respond to the social polarisation provoked by this conflict, so as to avoid a scenario in which two opposing sides chuck abuse at each other across an unbridgeable void.

While we have to take a side and we derive strength and comfort from joining others in doing so, we also have to reckon with the dangers and limitations of being stuck in a silo. We need to work out ways to initiate and maintain dialogue and connections, including with that large slice of the population who “just want to get on with their lives”, but without giving one inch on the principles. It is hard work, but it can be done.