Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg - On the Other Side: To my children from Germany 1940-1945

A few months ago I read Naomi Mitchison 's memoires of her wartime experience in Scotland, Among You Taking Notes. It was a fascinating combination of personal experience, political commentator and reportage. By chance I was lent a copy of On the Other Side by Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg. It was an opportunity to compare the experiences to very different women during World War Two, one in Germany (Hamburg) and the other in Britain.

Wolff-Mönckeberg's book consists of a series of letters she wrote to her children most of whom were uncontactable as they lived in Wales, South America, the USA and Denmark. The letters were never sent and Wolff-Mönckeberg stopped writing them when regular communications reopened in 1946. Instead they were stuffed in an envelope and not found until some years after her death. Translated and annotated by Ruth Evans, the daughter who lived in Wales, they form an occasionally fascinating but very personal memoire of life in Hamburg under the Hitler regime.

Wolff-Mönckeberg came from a privileged background. Her father was mayor of Hamburg, streets in the city are named after her relations and as a result of her two marriages she knew and worked with many important and wealthy figures in pre-war Germany. It would be fair to say that Wolff-Mönckeberg was very much an enlightenment German. Her letters are filled with quotes from Goethe's poems and books, and her second husband, and anglophile, teachers English literature through the war. Her first husband became a committed Nazi and neither she, nor the children had any contact with him. Wolff-Mönckeberg on the other hand hated the Hitler regime, and sympathised with its victims. Though she was in no way an active opponent. Interestingly one of her children became a leading Communist in South America, dying of illness during the War.

Unlike Michison's book, there is little here about politics. Perhaps Wolff-Mönckeberg was frightened of her writing being found by the authorities, though I suspect she wasn't particularly political. One gets a sense as we read of how stifling life was under the Nazis, and the fragments of news she gets are often inaccurate. Though its interesting how cynical her, and others, clearly were about news reports.

Instead much of the letters are accounts of the repeated, and overwhelming bombing raids, life in the shelters and the ongoing quest for food and resources. As the war lengthens, rationing gets worse, though I was surprised to see the freedom that Germans like Wolff-Mönckeberg did have to move around, leave the city and, most surprisingly to get the occasional letter from outside of German - often via neutral Switzerland. The reader also gets a sense of how horrific the British bombing raids on Hamburg were - they killed between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians and its hard to understand what military benefit they had. 

Through the war Wolff-Mönckeberg keeps herself going by dreaming and worrying about her children. She becomes obsessed by food, and reminisces about meals and celebrations of the past at Christmas time. Those of us who think of the big political and military aspects to the war are reminded that at the same time most people continued trying to live their lives - working, worrying about family and surviving.

The most interesting parts of the book in my opinion deal with the period after the war as British troops occupy Hamburg. Far from things improving, in reality things get worse as food is increasingly short and tensions rise with the occupiers. Wolff-Mönckeberg biggest concern - how her children are, is relieved as she starts to get letters via British troops. Also in this period she begins to learn about other events - the violence of the Eastern Front and the behaviour of the Russian troops. There are a few mentions of the victims of concentration camps, but beyond a few early sympathetic comments about the Jews in the first year of the war, there is nothing here from Wolff-Mönckeberg about her thoughts on the Holocaust etc.

An interesting book, I felt it was too focused on the personal. Of course Wolff-Mönckeberg was not writing for history, but for her own sanity and her children. Yet it is striking how little she mentions wider issues. Ruth Evans' introduction and epilogue frame the letters excellently and I was moved by the account of finally seeing her mother after seven long years. 

Related Reviews

Mitchison - Among You Taking Notes
Taylor - Dresden: Tuesday 13 February 1945
Moorhouse - Berlin at War
Hansen - Fire & Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945
Kershaw - The End

Stephen Bach - Final Cut: Dreams & Disaster in the Making of Heaven's Gate

A recent watching of the full 3 hours and 39 minute version of Heaven's Gate led me into a deep dive into the history of the film. Heaven's Gate is infamous as the film that "sunk a studio", it's $44 million cost leading directly to the sale of United Artists and the sacking of most of the staff - even those who had little to do with the film itself. Heaven's Gate, in all its different versions, was a car-crash. It's troubled creation leading to a troubled release, re-cut and then re-release, which did nothing for its popularity. 

Final Cut is the story of the making of Heaven's Gate, an insider account by UA's Head of Production Stephen Bach. It is erudite, unflinching, witty and entertaining. It is also not unsparing in its criticisms of Bach himself and his colleagues. But its principle enjoyment lies in the schadenfreude the reader gets watching a metaphorical car crash unfold. A few days into filming, the director Michael Cimino was famous already days behind schedule and vastly over-budget. Because the reader knows the end result, the fascination is watching how the Bach and others in the studio allow it to happen. The rich, famous and pompous are brought to their knees over a few hundred pages. 

The danger with a book like this is that it's one sided. Bach makes Cimino the bad guy. He doesn't exonerate the studio, but he constantly justifies their failure to hold Cimino back. To be fair to Bach the final outcome was only one of several possibilities. Cimino, after all, had just come back from making the Deer Hunter which had won him a clutch of Oscars and vast amounts of praise. The real problem, which Bach only hints at, is that movie making is not about films, or art - its about profits and UAs inability to challenge Cimino comes as a result of their greed. They were expecting record returns and this clouded their judgement.

This is not to let Cimino off the hook. His desire for perfection, his inability to work with others, a workplace culture that stinks of bullying and arrogance all had their place. Final Cut focuses more on the Studio overview, and readers can find much more about what took place on set. Famous stories of Cimino's wasting of money, pomposity and overtime bills abound. 

But I was struck how much rope Cimino was given. UA constantly worried about costs, but then seemed to be happen to write blank cheques. Their acquiescence to Cimino's repeated outrageous demands - for more time, for overtime costs and so on, make it clear that responsibility for the final disaster lies equally with UA's top brass and Cimino's behaviour.

Reading this in a time of Covid also highlighted another factor about life for studio executives in the 1980s. They lived lifestyles that seemed to match the hedonistic life of move stars themselves. Perhaps more hardworking, but flying around the globe, staying in luxury hotels and mixing with the great and the good. Its a lifestyle that seems unimaginable in a time of Covid and climate crisis. But remains a reality for the rich today (though now billionaires also go to space on a whim). 

Bach's witty self-depreciating style, and his willingness to admit when he personally was at fault meant that I finished the book rather liking him and perhaps even feeling sorry for him. In contrast I came away with a deep dislike of Cimino, a man who clearly had talents, yet squandered them on pompous, self-obsessed and bloated filmmaking. 

Bach shows that Heaven's Gate on its own didn't kill UA. The studio's troubles were already there, and the cut-throat world of filmmaking doesn't give much room for failure. But he does demonstrate how Cimino's self-obsessed dreams could not be contained by the style of management that UA had. It might have been good for art - but it was terrible for business. But that's the contradiction of art under capitalism.

Ultimately this isn't really a book about a film, but a book about the movie business. The disaster that was Heaven's Gate is the icing on the story's cake, and it's a great read even for those who have little wider interest in the movie business. 

But what of the film? Google Heaven's Gate and you'll find plenty of articles telling the reader how it has been reappraised and evaluated, and is now seen as a classic. Personally I thought Cimino's self-obsession shines through. It's a bloated, pompous film, where gorgeous landscapes drown out the story. The resultant confusion is hard to hear, hard to understand and boring. The opening and closing scenes that Bach so desperately wanted Cimino to include in order to make sure the film wasn't understood as a Western seem unnecessary, overlong, confusing and laughable. Nonetheless it's a piece of film history that ought to be watched, if only to enjoy Stephen Bach's delicious autobiography of disaster so much more.

Related Reviews

Frankel - The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend
Frankel - High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic
Biskind - Easy Riders, Raging Bulls
Biskind - Seeing is Believing

Robert Wuthnow - The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Small-Town America

In the 2016 US election, 62 percent of rural voters voted for Donald Trump, compared to 25 percent of those in urban areas. Robert Wuthnow points of that "the smaller a county's population and the farther it was from a metropolitan area, the more likely it was to have voted for Trump". Wuthnow has been studying US rural communities and small towns for decades (he himself grew up in such a rural community) and this short book seeks to explain why a figure like Donald Trump could appeal to rural voters.

As Wuthnow says the "leading explanation for the growing rural-urban political divide was that rural people wanted change because they were suffering economically". Another reason often given is that the predominantly white population was "racist and misogynist enough... to prefer a white male candidate". As the book explains there are some truths to these answers, but Wuthnow argues that there is a much deeper explanation that goes to the heart of what small-town America is, and has experienced. 

Firstly we need to see how rural America understands itself. These small communities celebrate themselves as places were "everyone knows everyone" - even though that can't possibly be true. Small town identities are celebrated and perpetuated through community "rituals" that "marked the seasons or reminded people of the town's ethnic heritages. It was a tomato festival in one community, the dogwood festival in another, an Oktoberfest in another" and so on. The towns celebrate their individual history, sporting achievements and, importantly, their community spirit. The remoteness of the towns, distances from urban areas or healthcare, for instance, fosters an independence and a reliance on each other. Wuthnow documents extensively how voluntary organisations (usually through the Church) provide essential support groups for the ill, the poor and the elderly. 

Religion is important. Reading The Left Behind I was struck by how much people believed in America. Wuthnow makes the insightful point that "An outsider would probably say its [faiths] role was mostly therapeutic" but he then adds,

I came away thinking, too, that faith was perhaps more meaningful in small towns because few other options were available. It wasn't going to do much good to send letters to the governor in hopes of getting a new fiscal plan that would help. The nearest psychiatrist was probably an hour away and the best local alternative might be drugs or alcohol. 

Wuthnow argues that these factors come together with wider issues - economic and political - that create a feeling for these communities that they are under threat. Their history, their way of life, the very towns themselves are threatened by outsiders, by Washington, by liberals and by forces that seem beyond the experience of many. As he explains:

The basis of small-town life is not only that it is "rural" but that it is small, which means what happens is close enough to witness first-hand and to experience intimately enough to understand and have some hope of influencing. Whether Washington was "up there," "down there," or someplace else in people's minds, it was so far away that people we talked with couldn't understand it - "so distant that I just feel helpless." And they were pretty sure Washington didn't understand them. "They're just not listening to us out here."

Wuthnow continues:

Whoever Washington was listening to, it wasn't anybody "small." Not the small farmer, the small-business owner or people living in small places. It was somebody "big". It was the big interests, big cities, big businesses, and big farmers... Washington was doing everything it could either to bail out or regulate big banks, but in the meantime small banks were hurting.

This is a revealing pair of paragraphs, which I think gets to the heart of the issue. Rural America feels ignored because it has been "left behind" and successive US governments, Democrat and Republican have ignored the interests of the bulk of the rural population who have been left to try and protect each other. But, it's worth emphasising, Wuthnow rejects a simple economic explanation. He calls rural people's anger at Washington a "moral outrage" because "they view the federal government's basic mode of action in recent years as an affront to their way of life". 

The problem is that this sense of outrage is dominated by a bigoted view of the world. That's certainly not to say (and Wuthnow is concerned to emphasise this) that everyone in rural America is a bigot. But, he argues, that the dominate politics that shape the response is from the right. Sections on abortion politics and homosexuality show the complexities of this. Opposition to abortion is almost the only political position, so much so that people who are pro-choice or unsure are silenced. Homosexuality is less clear-cut, as 88 percent of rural Americans know someone who is gay (four percent admit to pollsters that they are gay themselves). Not everyone is on the right, though many are, but the many expression of anger comes from the right and people's "outrage" is shaped though a right-wing prism. 

How might things change? Here Wuthnow offers no clear answers. Though to be fair to him its not what his book sets out to do. One thing I did feel was that the book neglects one key element that has shaped rural America's past. That's the question of struggle. There have been major political and economic struggles - of workers and smallholders - that have fought to try and make sure that peoples' wages and conditions weren't degraded. But the decline of rural industry and the nature of contemporary agriculture make these sort of movements harder (though not impossible). 

The answer cannot simply be posing the Democrats against the Republicans. There needs to be a more radical set of politics - around healthcare, education, jobs and environment that is able to reach out to both the urban and rural masses and offer real hope. If this movement is to attract support it will have to make it clear on which side it stands - against the big and for the small. Without compromising on questions of political principle. Wuthnow makes it very clear that rural America is not a homogenous mass of right-wing Trump voting bigots - but a place were people feel squeezed and threatened. What needs to change is the political framework that most people experience - and that needs to come from a social movement whose starting point is that working people, in rural areas and cities, have more in common than their differences. 

Robert Wuthnow's book is a good short read that I found extremely enlightening about rural America. It is short of answers - but reading it makes it clear that the answers are not easy to come by.

Related Reviews

Newsinger - Chosen by God: Donald Trump, the Christian Right & American Capitalism
Wendling - Alt Right: From 4chan to the White House
Grandin - The End of the Myth
Clutterbuck - Bittersweet Brexit: The Future of Food, Farming, Land and Labour

Christopher Priest - The Affirmation

At the start of this novel Peter Sinclair is twenty-nine years old. At times during what follows the only certainty that Peter has about himself is his name, and possibly his age. It begins as he goes through a series of traumas - he loses his job, his father and splits up with his partner. His father's inheritance allows him to escape to a rural cottage where, in an attempt to come to terms with his situation, he begins to write the story of his life.

But what he writes is not his own autobiography. But that of another Peter Sinclair, who didn't/doesn't live in London and grow up in Manchester, but rather in the city of Jethra, in Faiandland. This is a completely different world, where humans live on one of many islands, some of which appear to be at war with each other, and on none of which anyone has ever heard of London. This second Sinclair has just won a lottery, the prize of which is immortality. To get this he has to take a long journey through the islands to receive some treatments. Just before he travels, he sets out to write his autobiography, not knowing at the time that it will be crucial to overcoming the inevitable amnesia that the immortality treatment causes. But the autobiography that he writes, isn't his own. It is about a Peter Sinclair who lives in London...

These two stories twist and turn, and weave in and out. It's tempting to describe it as a multi-layered book, but that's not true. The stories are closely linked and the only constant is Peter himself. Though characters in London seem to reappear in Faiandland, with different names, personalities and histories, though similar appearances. What is going on? Is Peter travelling between worlds? Is he making it up? Is anything real? We jump from the concrete certainity at the beginning - economic crisis destroys Peter's job, to uncertainty and then a fantastical alternate world.

About half way through I decided that Christopher Priest had written a very clever novel about mental illness. Perhaps he intended to portray a character going through some sort of multi-personality disorder. It is, I think, possible to read The Affirmation like this. But that only works if the reader is trying to drag the book back into reality - to give it a literalness that it doesn't need. 

Its much more interesting to see the book as an exploration of truth - how we create truths about ourselves, how we imagine what we should and could be, and the images of reality we build up inside our minds to justify, explain and cope with the world we inhabit. 

Ultimately we know that the first Peter - who lived and worked in London was real - because we know a London. But is his story actually true? In Faiandland, Peter's friend who reads his manuscript is convinced that London is impossible and not real. Crucially for Peter - which point of view is the correct one?

Christopher Priest takes us on a very unsettling journey. Perhaps it is just a glimpse into a human mind in turmoil - upended by reality. But perhaps it is really meant to be just a fantasy voyage. Either way, this is a book that will leave you feeling unsure about what you just read. Written in the author's characteristically clear and succinct fashion, there's plenty here to chew on.

Related Reviews

Priest - Inverted World

Richard Woodman - The Real Cruel Sea: The Merchant Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic 1939-1943

Over 30,000 members of the Merchant Navy lost their lives during World War Two. Most of their names are inscribed on the Tower Hill memorial near the Tower of London. It's a beautiful memorial, near a smaller memorial to those Merchant sailors who died in the First World War. Both memorials are seldom visited, despite their location. 

The sacrifice of these sailors almost all of whom were men, is mostly forgotten. During the war, appalling conditions, the dangerous work and the low wages meant that crew often didn't go back to see. To counter this the British government produced a badge with the label MN to create a esprit de corps. Many men wore it upside-down, joking - or perhaps not joking - that the letters now stood for Not Wanted.

Richard Woodman's book is a detailed account of the primary battleground of Britain's Merchant Navy during World War Two - the Battle of the Atlantic. He mentions only in passing convoys to Russia and events in the Pacific and Indian oceans. It was in the Atlantic that most of those 30,000 sailors lost their lives and where their most important work was done. 

This is a massive book. Nearly 800 pages of small type, detailing in almost complete detail the events of the Battle. Open the book at random and there will almost certainly be a story of a ship that sank, a crew that abandoned ship or a heroic voyage in a lifeboat. The backdrop to this is a British Admiralty that, for most of the War, simply could not provide the escorts that were required to stop German U-Boats sinking ships. The Convoy system that was rapidly introduced after heavily initial loses went some way to saving ships. But there just wasn't the military protection that was needed - Britain was too short of destroyers and other escort vessels, and these had duties elsewhere.

As a result, the carnage dominates Woodman's history. The book opens with the loss of the passenger liner Athena. A ship sunk by a torpedo a few hours after war was declared. Over 1,400 people were on board, including 500 Jewish refugees. A model evacuation meant that the loss of life was relatively low - 117 passengers and crew. It was a propaganda disaster for Germany, and a success for the British, helping encourage a more anti-Nazi position in the US. Later ships would not be as lucky, and German submarines became adept in a total war against shipping. Some U-boat captains showed compassion to survivors, others committed war crimes, or demonstrated indifference.

In his desire to document so much, large parts of Woodman's book become almost lists of ships sunk, their cargos, and captains. But Woodman does manage to excite the material by focusing on specific tales. The best parts, and there aren't enough of them, are the oral histories of sailors. I also felt that more could have been made of the economic role of the ships. How was the war effort hampered by loss of material? Why was Britain exporting goods to the rest of the World at the time? What was being imported and why - who prioritised and decided what materials were needed. 

Woodman explains well the tactics of both sides. I was surprised to find that one great tactical mistake of the British military was to not deploy aircraft to the theatre in significant numbers. It's clear from later in the war that this made a significant improvement to the ability to combat submarines, yet the focus was always on bombing German civilian targets. A strategy that was, even at the time, known to be limited. Only one raid was made against German submarine bases, which seems incredible to me.

I was also shocked to learn that the US failed to learn the lessons. When the US entered the war, they did not take up the convoy system until hundreds of lives and ships had been lost. German submarine officers describe seeing ships silhouetted as easy targets against the backdrop of the brightly light US cities that were not blacked out.

Two other things stand out. For most of the first part of the war, British seamen were considered to have broken their articles, their contractual bond with the captain of the ship, when they were sunk. Thus survivors, who lost everything in the sinking and their dependents also lost any pay the moment they entered the lifeboats. It was an indignity and insult, and often the first their family knew was when the money stopped coming. The second thing is the multinational character of ships crews. Many of the men who died originated from British colonies and China. They lost their lives or fought for survival alongside their crewmates, fighting for a country that cared little for them, and even less for the Merchant Navy sailors. While there are occasional stories of resistance and mutiny by sailors, they are very much a handful of accounts. 

Its a neglected story, told in great detail by Richard Woodman's massive book. Sadly it finishes in 1943 when the U-boat threat was almost over. I would have liked more detail on events afterward - the troopships and return of troops after the war would have been fascinating. Had Woodman sacrificed some detail more justice could have been done to the wider story. Nonetheless for those who've read or watched The Cruel Sea, this is excellent background material.

Related Reviews

Monsarrat - Three Corvettes
Monsarrat - The Cruel Sea
Lund & Ludlam - PQ17: Convoy to Hell
Lund & Ludlam - The Fate of the Lady Emma

Patrick Bond (ed) - Durban's Climate Gamble

At the end of 2011, the annual United Nations climate conference took place in Durban, South Africa. COP17 was another showcase event for the post-Apartheid regime. Yet, the context of Durban was much more contested. As this interesting book, edited by South African academic and activist Patrick Bond, shows - Durban was a city suffering from major environmental issues, the legacy of Apartheid, and ongoing racism - as well as enormous political and economic problems. The new South Africa, being shown off to the UN delegates, was far from the polished success story that the government was trying to show. But nor was the COP process itself.

This collection of essays explains some of that reality. The first section on Durban's Political Ecology looks at the political context for COP17's host city. From the battles over space, environment and wealth to wider discussions on the history of apartheid. There's a fascinating chapter by Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed on Durban's "Indian Quarter" - the historic class struggles that have shaped the area, but also the ongoing development that continues to threaten its inhabitants. Patrick Bond's excellent chapter on Water Wars looks at how the city is shaped by struggles over access to water, sewage, toilets as well as the beach front and fishing rights. At times inspiring - such as the movements that have reconnected shackdwellers to their water supplies, but also depressing as we see how the neoliberal city rides roughshod over its inhabitants health, labour and environment. An earlier chapter on political ecology by Bond and Aswin Desai highlights the biggest problem about Durban in the time of COP17 - the fact that the UNFCCC process will not solve the biggest challenge of climate change. In summary:

far greater emission cuts are required than the present balance of forces in negotiations will permit; secondly the UNFCCC;s failure to take climate crimes and the climate debt owed to victims of climate change seriously; thirdly the UNFCCC';s commodification of everything, from intellectual property to forests... and lastly the UNFCCC's failure to consider decommissioning the dangerous carbon markets. 

It's a depressingly litany, that those of us preparing to protest COP26 in Glasgow, ten years later, must also fight. The fact that the issues remain the same tells us that much about the fundamental flaws of the COP process itself.

Several chapters explore this further. Larry Lohmann has been a longstanding critic of market solutions to climate change. His contribution to this book is an excellent demolition of carbon markets. Lohmann's demolition of such trading schemes is well worth seeking out (he has written extensively on the subject) but as Del Weston writes in their chapter on the Politics of Climate Change in South Africa, these trading schemes in and of themselves are not the problem:

Rather it is the fundamental social relations of production, the ensuing construction of the state and the financialised global political economy - which are determining South Africa's and the world's future. 

All the authors explore this reality. The way that the capitalist system and its priorities (eg in market solutions to climate change) drive wider disparity in African society. For instance, the fact that the South African government can make huge amounts of money by selling carbon credits from the Bisasar Road Landfill meant that, despite promises to the contrary, they kept the site open. For the local Black and Indian population this meant ongoing exposure to poisons and continued health problems. 

That the South African government is part of the problem is highlighted in the book's exposure of their negative role in undermining the Copenhagen negotiations, breaking the radical united front of the African negotiators at that COP.

There is much of interest in this short book, and together with a slightly earlier work solely authored by Patrick Bond Politics of Climate Justice: Paralysis Above, Movement Below (reviewed here) it offers a valuable insight into the question of climate justice, capitalist environmental strategies and the African continent. A great strength of both books are their recognition of social movements as the force to transform the situation. Of course, as with any book written at a specific political juncture some of the material is out of date. But nevertheless this is worth digging out in order to understand exactly why, as we approach COP26, the situation is worse than it has ever been.

Related Reviews

Bond - Politics of Climate Justice: Paralysis Above, Movement Below
Böhm and Dabhi (eds) - Upsetting the Offset, The Political Economy of Carbon Markets
CTW - The Carbon Neutral Myth, Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins
Alexander, Sinwell & others - Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer

Fotheringham, Sherry & Bryce - Breaking Up the British State: Scotland, Independence & Socialism

This is an important and timely book. Published in the aftermath of a historic success for the Scottish National Party (SNP) in the May 2021 election it seeks to discuss the question of Scottish Independence in a Marxist framework and historical context. All the authors and editors are members of the Socialist Workers Party in Scotland, and it is one of the clearest arguments for a socialist strategy around Independence published so far. 

Breaking Up the British State argues that socialists must both support and actively campaign for Independence - but they must do this with clear strategic goals. The key ambition is to further the struggle for socialism through breaking up the British state and weakening capital's ability to defend itself. Thus the book critically examines the ideas of several Independence campaigners on the left, it also pushes a clear independent argument, rooted in opposition to racism, support for democracy, internationalism (particularly in terms of opposition to war and the basing of nuclear weapons at Faslane) and workers' emancipation. As Donny Gluckstein and Bob Fotheringham say in their chapter on Scotland, the National Question and Marxism, when compared to the idea of an independent capitalist Scotland,

the other side of the reformist equation suggests the movement for Scottish independence can mean more than that. Firstly, independence is an articulation of working class aspirations at a time when Labour, under Starmer, has more or less abandoned the effort... Secondly the capitalist state structure which is to be rearranged s the British state. This has an imperial history and worldwide reach and its break up would be significant.

The repeated success of the SNP is often crudely associated with left positions on many questions. There is a detailed critique of this by Iain Ferguson and Gerry Mooney who argue that in reality the SNP's reputation for left positions is superficial at best. Titled Neoliberalism with a Heart, it's a devastating critique of the role of the SNP in office - in terms of housing, education, anti-racism and environmental policies. Despite appearing better than Boris Johnson during Covid, in reality the situation in Scotland is little better - not least because of previous failings of health care policy by the Scottish government.

But understanding the current position of the SNP requires understanding three other aspects of politics in the whole UK. The first is the historic development of Scotland, second the role of the Labour Party and finally the rise and fall of workers' struggle in Scotland. The last two aspects of these are discussed in three excellent chapters. Dave Sherry's account of Red Clydeside is a brilliant summary of the struggles in the first two decades of the twentieth century on the Clyde. This includes the incredible workers' strikes during the First World War and the role of the Clyde Workers' Committee, as well as fascinating struggles over rents and housing. This culminated in the 1919 revolt when Britain was "on the brink of revolution" within which Scottish workers' played a central role. 

Charlie McKinnon's chapter on the Making of the Scottish Working Class looks at earlier periods of struggle, arguing that while these are often portrayed as nationalistic struggles this isn't strictly true. He concludes: 

working class agitation and struggle in Scotland during this period should not be seen in isolation from that of the working class in the rest of Britain. Workers north and south of the border were often engaged in common struggles, such as during the great Chartist Revolt.

That is not to say that movements north of the border did not have specific demands or contexts, but that those took place in the wider framework of the British wide class struggle. This analysis is important when looking at the issue of the Highland Clearances, which have their parallels with the enclosures movements that drove the English peasantry off the land and transformed them into wage labourers, predominantly in the cities. McKinnon explains:

The Crofters' Revolt effectively signalled the end of the Highland Clearances. Overall, they were undoubtedly a political defeat but there was clearly significant resistance to the capitalist class. [Marxist historian] Neil Davidson argues that they were unquestionably a 'historical crime' carried out by a rapacious and 'triumphant capitalist class' with a 'disregard for human life', They were not, he points out, 'inevitable' in the sense that the Highlands were peripheral to the profitability and success of capitalism across Britain. Therefore, they were not a consequence of the transition to capitalism but rather of its 'established laws of motion'.

This argument is important because, as several authors explain, Scotland is not oppressed by Britain in the way that (say) Ireland was. The Scottish ruling class merged with the English in order to develop capitalism together. 

The third part of the equation is the Labour Party. Labour in Scotland has gone from being almost the only show in town, to one that is in "steep decline and shows little chance of recovering". This decline is documented in Dave Sherry and Julie Sherry's chapter, which shows how repeated and systematic betrayals of their core voter by Labour nationally and locally created the conditions for sudden collapse. When this happened,

it happened very quickly, but in truth it was the culmination of forces that were in play since Labour's election in 1997, like Blair's Iraq war, Ed Miliband's advocating of 'austerity lite', and decades of Scottish Labour's dismal record in running major councils.

Even under Corybn Labour's position of supporting the capitalist Union, alienated even further those who saw Independence as being about a fight for a better society. The nature of Labour's betrayals, and the social movements that have taken place, means the mood for Scottish Independence is dominated by left ideals. That's not to say, as several authors in the collection emphasise, that the country is immune to the far-right or racist populists. But that one of the reasons that socialists can be positive about developments is that there is a real desire for progressive change - and very often this is manifesting itself on the streets through mass movements. 

This however poses a problem for the neo-liberal SNP, who want a capitalist Scotland able to compete on the global scale. As Gluckstein and Fotheringham note, once you understand this contradiction,

a number of perplexing questions can be answered. For example, why is the SNP, which clearly craves an independent Scotland, so hesitant in going about winning it? Why, when All Under One Banner mobilises hundreds of thousands in marches for independence, does the SNP keep them at arms length, or grudgingly send the odd speaker but little more?

The authors highlight a parallel with Marx's comments on the passivity of the German bourgeoise during the 1848 revolution when they were wary of over-throwing the old feudal order. The reason was that if they "confronted feudalism and absolutism, it saw [also] pitted against itself the proletariat". Engels continued elsewhere, that the German bourgeoisie "attempted an impossible arrangement aimed at postponing the decisive struggle." While the Scottish working class is in no way in a revolutionary mood at the moment, the fear of radical ideas and action clearly haunts the SNP leadership.

Basing itself on the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, the authors in this volume put a powerful case for a Marxist position on Scottish Independence. It should be added though that this is not a crude regurgitation of what Marx and Engels said. Rather these are nuanced attempts to learn and apply lessons from the past to the current situation. It is worth finishing this review with Gluckstein and Fotheringham's conclusion. They argue that the Scottish capitalist class wants independence, not because they are nationally oppressed by the British state, but because 

the social system is one in which individual units... of capital compete with each other... For the Scottish bourgeoisie, full sovereignty at Holyrood is a path to greater competitiveness. On its own this would not garner any widespread support. So independence is framed in terms of expanding democracy.

Thus the demand for Independence sees the coming together of two different class interests, but both sides have different desired outcomes. So Gluckstein and Fotheringham continue:

The fight for [independence] has the potential to 'grow over' into something even more ambitious. For the true essence of permanent revolution is about how a socialist challenge to the existing order cannot be achieved in just one country. It needs internationalism rather than nationalism.

This nuanced approach characterises all the essays in this book. Debates around Scottish Independence are going to be a key political issue north and south of the border in the coming years. Socialists of all stripes will stand to learn a lot from this excellent book, that places the question of Independence in a wider context - the struggle for socialism.

Related Reviews

Devine - The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed
Hunter - Set Adrift Upon the World: The Sutherland Clearances
Hutchinson - Martyrs: Glendale and the Revolution in Skye
Sherry - John Maclean
Berresford Ellis & Mac A'Ghobhainn - The Radical Rising of 1820