Re: Scottish Independence... What are your thoughts?
A lot of good info. here, thanks for sharing it. What you said regarding Clydeside reminds me a fair bit of what has happened in NY in recent decades, at least the part I hail from, (the far upstate area), in loss of manufacturing jobs and markets. Fortunately, NYers are a resourceful lot and it seems to me that the Scots are, too. I do hope there will be more economic development in days and years to come that benefits all segments of the UK, instead of cheap political promises like we've all heard again and again, which make little to no difference in the lives of most of us working folks.Originally Posted by westlondoncarparts
Scotland is a country of diverse communities so not really correct to treat it as a single homogenous unit.
I can only speak about the part that I know about – Glasgow and the Clyde valley – because I used to live there. This part of West Scotland voted for Independence in the Referendum.
After the Union with England, Clydeside developed major trading activities with the English colonies. Clydeside was initially the main importation point for tobacco and then later an important importation point for cotton. This trade created great wealth which was invested in developing a substantive linen industry on Clydeside. Issues with cotton supplies resulted at the time of the American War of Independence and the subsequent contraction in the linen industry was never reversed. Instead, investment took place to develop the western end of the Scottish Central Belt as a major centre of manufacturing industry and this overtook linen as the main economic activity. The local abundance of good coal and high quality ironstone supplies led to the development of substantive iron production and later steel production in the area. This supported the development of heavy industry such as shipbuilding, railway locomotive and carriage manufacture, etc.. At the same time, the evolution of what had formerly been overseas trading activities into the British Empire gave the West of Scotland access to substantive overseas markets which were largely protected from international competition. Although still vulnerable to economic booms and busts in the wider world, heavy manufacturing boomed and this part of Scotland was the most important centre for heavy industry in the British Empire. Glasgow was referred to as the Second City of the Empire and the well worn phrase that ‘the Empire made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Empire’ was quite literally true. The heavy engineering in the Glasgow area could have not developed to such an extent without the markets of the Empire. The manufacturing activities in the Glasgow area made a lot of the products used to build the Empire. At peak times, half of the world’s shipping tonnage was built on the Clyde, a quarter of the world’s railway locomotives were built on the Clyde, etc.. Heavy industry was hit by the global depression in the 1930s. In the post World War 2 period, the ending of the British Empire and the loss of the Empire’s protected markets meant that the area’s heavy industry had for the first time to beat international competition to survive. For many reasons such as lack of investment to modernise production methods, poor quality management, poor industrial relations, lack of meaningful Government support, cheap labour costs in places like the Far East, and so on, much of the area’s heavy manufacturing could not hold its own in international markets and has suffered a long and steady decline in the post war era until we reach the situation today where most of it has gone.
In parallel with manufacturing decline is housing. The housing supply was completely inadequate to deal with the large influx of workers into the Clyde area when industry was booming and Clydeside had the worst overcrowding and the worst housing conditions in the UK. It had the worst slums in Europe. Post war, a lot of the old tenements were demolished and their residents decanted to large sprawling publicly owned housing schemes on the peripheries of the city. These schemes were built without social or community facilities and without any business or industries to provide employment. Consequently, these schemes have experienced very high levels of unemployment through several generations together with social issues such as high levels of alcohol and drug abuse.
The key point to make after such a long discourse and in the context of the Referendum is that the post war political set up has failed to address the substantive strategic issue of the decline of manufacturing in what was the British Empire’s most important manufacturing area. At the macro level, the Conservative party mentality that markets always know best and that the State should keep itself as small as possible has failed on Clydeside because the evidence over several decades has been that the private sector has not stepped in to regenerate the area sufficiently. The Labour party experience has been that although they tried to make a difference in some ways, they completely failed to recognise the size of the task and the resources needed. Harold Wilson’s Linwood car factory venture was doomed to fail because it made no economic sense for car panels to be produced down south and then transported to Linwood for assembly. The attempts at rationalising the shipbuilding industry so that it could compete with the new low labour cost shipyards in the Far East which were able to achieve greater economies of scale were not adequate because the initial scoping of how much needed to be done missed the point. At the micro level, a lot of smaller local publicly funded initiatives have produced benefits but collectively not enough to sort out the wider picture.
So where does that leave Clydeside now with around 30% of households workless and dependent upon the welfare state? Well, the Westminster set up has failed over the decades to support Clydeside adequately through this massive decline and there is no prospect on the horizon of any of the mainstream parties understanding what needs to be done to turn the situation around. The very high unemployment levels on Clydeside will continue. The social and behavioural breakdowns on Clydeside will continue. The UK taxpayer will continue to fund welfare benefits for Clydeside. The real tragedy of all of this is that so much public money has been misused on Clydeside – instead of using it to develop a vibrant regional economy that would provide employment that would pay taxes, successive Governments have used it to fund the consequences of unemployment that does not pay taxes.
In the absence of such failure, it is no wonder that the electorate look for some new political way out of the impasse. If Westminster has failed Clydeside, then an Edinburgh Parliament is not likely to do any worse and in all probability would do better. In my view, hence the Independence vote on Clydeside. And in my view, hence part of the reason why the Labour vote is crumbling on Clydeside.
The good news about the Referendum is that people in Scotland are now talking about issues and some are even daring to believe that solutions are possible.
Thanks again for this thread from a Yank who much enjoys learning about the rest of the world, (something one can't get from Faux News and the like).
Best wishes for many sales to all,
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