For two political parties that supposedly hate each other, the Labour party and the Scottish National party certainly are agreeing on a lot these days. They agree on the need to continue the Ukraine war in perpetuity, and they apparently agree that the number one priority of the governments in London and Edinburgh should be to support asset strippers such as Jim Ratcliffe of Ineos.
That is the company which currently co-owns (along with a Chinese company) Petroineos, operator of the Grangemouth oil refinery where at least 500 jobs are currently at risk owing to part of the plant being threatened with closure.
When this was announced by the company last year there was a storm of protest from Unite the Union leadership in the form of general secretary Sharon Graham and Scottish secretary Derek Thomson declaring the closure to be “unacceptable” and “inexplicable” and promising to fight the company’s plans tooth and nail.
But the first rumours about job cuts at Grangemouth emerged more than a year ago, and while there have been plenty of denunciations and verbal gymnastics from Ms Graham and co, there has been remarkedly little else. Certainly no ballot of the Grangemouth workers for strike action, and apparently not even any agitation to build support for such a ballot. A strike ballot was held in relation to pay in 2023 but nothing over the proposed axing of at least 500 jobs.
As workers at Scotland’s only oil refinery, keeping the region supplied with petrol, Grangemouth employees have considerable industrial power should they choose to use it. Surely the most obvious step for any union worth its salt at this point would be to mobilise the workers to defend their jobs and to be ready for a battle against Ineos and all those, including Swinney’s SNP and Starmer’s Labour party – who are working together to gut Grangemouth.
It should be noted that even as the firm is moving forward with its plan to axe jobs at Grangemouth and mothball the plant’s oil refining capabilities, the British government has loaned Ineos £600m to develop refinery facilities in Belgium! This is a major scandal that the entire British trade union movement should be mobilising around. Why is the government paying a company to deindustrialise part of Britain that already suffers from low and ever declining economic inactivity?
Total failure of Unite to mobilise in support of jobs and infrastructure
But the most baffling/enraging aspect of the case is the sheer inactivity of Unite itself. Sharon Graham was elected to her present position four years on a platform of ‘getting back to union basics’ and fighting to preserve jobs, pay and conditions. Given that it has now more than a year since the Grangemouth plans were first mooted and Unite has done nothing to oppose them, we can only conclude that the union leadership is complicit with these job cuts.
It seems to us that, once again, the Unite leadership is doing the bidding of the Labour party who (in turn) are collaborating with Ineos to get the plans pushed through with minimal resistance.
And what of John Swinney’s SNP administration in Edinburgh? Why on earth would a party that claims to be dedicated to taking Scotland out of Britain be willing to overlook further deindustrialisation of their region?
Why is that after a year of these job losses being talked about, there has been no action from Unite? Why has the SNP government done absolutely nothing? Why has the Scottish Trades Union Congress done nothing? Why have the only demonstrations outside Grangemouth been held not by any trade union but by the nationalist Alba party (founded by the late Alex Salmond)?
The truth is that the SNP, like the Labour party, is servant of the British ruling class. The job of its leadership is to police dissent in Scotland and make sure it gets channeled in ways the British ruling class finds acceptable. The SNP’s leaders have shown their willingness to back the slaughter in Ukraine, and now they seem to be backing the asset-stripping of their home terf – a territory they claim to want to lead into a bright and independent future!
The way these charlatans follow the orders emanating from London reveals a certain wretched truth about devolution in Scotland, Wales and the English regions: it was never about reviving these areas but only about ridding the London government of the responsibility for managing their decline – and misdirecting workers’ anger about the cause of their problems in the process.
This approach was first outlined in secret by the government of Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s, as cities like Liverpool were being rapidly deindustrialised, and it came to fruition under the direction of Tony Blair’s regime dressed up as ‘devolution’. So the real job of regional ‘leaders’ like John Swinney is to oversee the effective destruction of the areas they supposedly ‘champion’ and wants to lead to ‘sovereignty’. Swinney’s true role is not to lead nationl liberation but to act as regional manager for the British ruling class, which explains why he has no more interest in fighting for working-class Scots than Keir Starmer.
So whether we’re talking about the Unite leadership, the Labour party or the SNP, all these organisations are designed to police working-class actions and make sure that nothing happens that might challenge the rule of capital. If capital demands the closure of Grangemouth then it is the job of its political and industrial servants to ensure this takes place, while lying to the working class and actively looking to prevent any mobilisation against it.
Those who are prepared to act as policemen for the British monopolists against the working class can have well-remunerated careers with large expense accounts attached. Defy the ruling class, however, and only prison awaits. That is the deal that the union leaders, Scottish and Welsh nationalists and most of the left have accepted.
The demand needs be raised across Britain for the full nationalisation of the entire petrochemical industry, starting with Grangemouth, since it is clear that the refinery’s private owners have no intention of investing in it. Pressure should be brought to bear on both the Edinburgh and London governments by the unions in support of this demand. If private owners cannot run vital energy infrastructure at a sufficient rate of profit, it should be taken from them without compensation and run according to a plan and without the need to generate profits for shareholders.
If the Unite leadership were remotely serious, they would be making that demand and mobilising workers at Grangemouth and across the oil industry in support of it. If the SNP leadership were remotely serious, then they be nationalising Grangemouth and daring Starmer to try and stop them.
It is high time the working class saw through these con artists, who are collaborating with the ruling class and facilitating its war on the workers.
