4 - The Case for Left-Wing Nationalism

Summary

This chapter analyses nationalist attempts to yoke together Scottish independence and the egalitarian politics of the left. From an initial embrace of the radical participatory politics of the 1960s to a later enthusiasm for the heritage of the British labour movement, this chapter shows that nationalists have presented independence as the route to a socialist Scotland. But as this chapter also demonstrates, the early twenty-first century saw some key nationalists turning away from this agenda and embracing instead a revisionist social democracy that accepted some significant capitalist constraints on the politics of independence.