A democratic advance
Scottish History
Scotland 'gave up' her Parliament in 1707 to 'merge' with the English Parliament. However, many of the institutions of the Scottish state remain. There is a separate Legal System based more on Roman Law than the English System. Separate laws are
The British establishment hopes that Scotland's new parliament will modernise and stabilise the United Kingdom. Scottish nationalists and the anti-capitalist left have other plans. Gordon Morgan On 11th September, 74% of Scottish voters voted "Yes" in a referendum proposing a Scottish Parliament. Elections will be held in 1999, and the Parliament will begin its work during the year 2000. The new Parliament will technically be a "devolved Assembly," subordinate to the British Parliament. But it will be a separate legislative body with sub- Will be a separate legislative body with substantial autonomous powers.
It will have full responsibility for health care, education, local government, economic development, environment, transport, law enforcement, and prison. Scotland will continue to have its own civil law and much of its own criminal law. The new body will control a budget of around £14 Billion. (US$22.5 bn.) As well as powers to change legislation and alter local taxes on households and business, it will have powers to vary the rate of British income tax paid by residents of Scotland.
The British parliament will still control foreign, defence, fiscal, economic and monetary policy, company law and social security Modernisation
The Scottish Parliament has been promoted by Britain's Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair as the first of a series of steps to "modernise' the British state, bring it into line with other European states. Scotland's new powers were often discussed in comparison with those of Catalonia in Spain and German Länder like Bavaria.
Blair's modernisation project also includes ending the influence of the Trade Unions and the anti-capitalist left in the Labour Party, and replacing Britain's confrontational two-party system with an alliance between Labour and the smaller bourgeois Liberal Democratic Party
In the medium term, Blair wants Britain to join the European Union's single currency zone, so that he can better argue for British financial and business interests in Europe. To free his hands, he wants to retain corporate control of the United Kingdom state, while leaving local issues to the Scots.
George Balafas is serving the fourth year of a ten-year sentence on charges of murder, drug smuggling, and membership of the "terrorist" November 17th group. The authorities have made him a symbol of their determination to beat down the extreme left, which in Greece has a strong "street fighting" component. [See December 1997 issue].