Self-Governance Advocacy in Place of Radicalism

In the modern history section of Dundee’s McManus Gallery, you can see paraphernalia from an alien activist past. Dundee is given the nomenclature “Radical City”, punctuated with photographs from the Poll Tax protests and the final great industrial clash of the late 20th century, the 1993 Dundee Timex Strike. Striking women faced down Tayside Police and tried to block strike-breakers sent by the Timex Corporation to replace them. Following a political tide change over the next twenty years, a new name for Dundee emerged; we became the “Yes City” - a pattern we can see all over Scotland.

Did the Scottish nationalist movement co-opt Scotland’s radicalism? In a sense, the

Scottish National Party developed their positions alongside what Scots deemed anti-establishment. Take the SNP’s 79’ Group, the most notable member being former First Minister Alex Salmond. The group’s core thesis was that there was a class divide in support of devolution and that they could capitalise on the opposition to the Poll Tax. They aimed to establish a “socialist and republican Scotland”.

The group got suspended from the SNP in 1982. Within a decade, Alex Salmond won the leadership. He brought his left-wing politics to the role: Emphasising the party’s anti-NATO stance by, in 1999, attacking intervention in Kosovo. Questionable foreign policy interventions aside, Salmond made the SNP a progressive alternative and campaigning force while Labour drifted to the right under Tony Blair. Salmond resigned in 2000.

It wasn’t until after Salmond’s 2004 return that the nationalists switched tact. Realising to defeat Labour, they would have to emulate them. Salmond and his new deputy Nicola Sturgeon chucked the grievances with Westminster for an ambiguity-laden positivity. They reversed their position on the nationalisation of public services, vowed to lower corporation tax and banned the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement – a grouping not dissimilar to the one that got Salmond himself expelled – from association with the SNP.

While it may feel like a betrayal of principles - it worked. The SNP were elected in 2007 and has remained dominant. First Minister Alex Salmond once claimed Scots didn’t mind Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies. Long gone were the days of the anti-Poll Tax protests. While Salmond never apologised, the party did reverse its position on NATO in 2012. The ideals of the SNP had become those of the Scottish left. However, 2007 was also the start of the global financial crisis. The crash’s aftermath would politicise a generation not yet old enough to vote. Necessitating the party to, rhetorically at least, veer left once more under Salmond’s replacement Nicola Sturgeon.

Sturgeon’s media profile as activist First Minister emerged alongside a renewed radicalism. Opposition to austerity measures in Westminster had radicalised a new generation. It was this influx of progressive politics that saw the surprise election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Labour saw no notable influx of young supporters north of the border in a comparable period; energy coalesced around the Scottish government. Praise poured in from English liberal outlets for the SNP’s pro-EU, anti-Tory stance.

Sturgeon’s confidence in the role made it easy to accept contradictions: Her vocal support of the LGBTQ+ community masked the reactionary views of those in government. Social democratic posturing papered over the millionaire with business interests in the City of London who represented them at Westminster from 2017-2022. Aided by a right-wing Westminster government that allowed Scots to feel progressive while defending slashing local government budgets, Sturgeon performed an impressive balancing act. This fact lays bare for all to see that all that unites the SNP is a belief in self-governance.

With presumed successor Angus Robertson and stalwart John Swinney both refusing to stand, our next First Minister will be from a younger generation of nationalists. The party is now preparing for a reckoning about who it represents. The frontrunners are MSP for Glasgow Pollock Humza Yousaf, running as a Sturgeon continuity candidate and Skye Lochaber and Badenoch MSP Kate Forbes. Finance Minister since 2020, Forbes has made headlines for her socially conservative views around gay marriage, abortion and sex out of wedlock. Her candidacy appears to be capitalising on a moral panic around LGBTQ+ people – particularly in opposition to trans rightsthat has manifested within the SNP.

Criticisms aside, Sturgeon is arguably one of Scottish history’s great political leaders. Her nationalism is one of togetherness and optimism. This fact goes some way to explain why her electoral successes outweigh that of her predecessors. However, in politics, you are judged by the company you keep, and the SNP’s shift to the right may have put them in government: But a position rooted in class analysis and anti-fascism may have prevented the party from descending into the most deranged forms of bigotry and conspiracy theorising. To secure a bright egalitarian future, we must look to our past.

Newly established democracies are often fragile. A fact proved by the reestablishment of the military junta in Myanmar in 2021 following a brief period of liberalisation. Under the administration of State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, political reforms from 2011 to 2021 saw elections taking place, the establishment of commissions to investigate human rights abuses, the formation of labour unions and the liberalisation of the press. After so many years under the authoritarian regime of the previous military government, many believed that things were finally starting to change, and that a process of long-term democratisation was taking place.

However, it did not last. The general election held in November of 2020 saw a landslide victory for National League for Democracy (NLD). The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), a party affiliated with the military, claimed that the NLDs triumph was the result of electoral fraud. Following the announcement that State Counsellor Suu Kyi would retain her position in the new government, the military acted. Suu Kyi and other senior members of the incumbent administration were detained, power was handed to General Min Aung Hlaing, and a state of emergency was declared, restricting travel and communication.

After the military junta regained power, a crackdown on media in the country immediately took place. According to Reporters Sans Frontières, nearly 100 journalists were arrested in the first six months of the new regime. The junta used a deliberately vague legal framework that enabled them to arrest journalists for “causing fear” or “spreading false news.” Of course, it was the regime itself that decided what constituted these crimes, meaning that journalists could be arrested on a whim, for reporting anything deemed detrimental to the interests of the junta. As well as arrests, police raids were carried out on the homes of journalists.

Independent media outlets that did not conform to the narrative of the regime had their licences suspended, leaving other outlets that were not directly affiliated to the state to walk a fine line as they juggled the production of valuable journalism with avoiding reporting anything that would result in them meeting the same fate. State media outlets became little more than propaganda machines, disregarded for the most part by the general populace. The junta also tightened its grip on the narrative by banning Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, limiting the development of public discourse.

Fast forward to today, and the outlook for the media landscape in Myanmar is similarly depressing. The number of arrested journalists has risen to 130, with 50 currently in prison. Media outlets that criticise the junta have been forced to go into exile in other countries in order to keep reporting. For example, the founder of the independent media outlet Frontier Myanmar , Sonny Swe, fled to Thailand following the coup along with writers for the publication and many other journalists. However this is nothing new. For example, the Democratic Voice of Burma has been advocating for democracy and press freedom in Myanmar from Norway since the 90s.

Furthermore, there have been safety concerns for the exiled journalists in Thailand due to links between the Thai and Burmese military forces. Various mechanisms have been created to enable cooperation between the two armies, such as the High-Level Committee, which has enabled them to take joint action against drug dealing and the illegal arms trade in Thailand. With this elevated level of integration between the two countries’ militaries, it is easy to see how journalists reporting on Myanmar from exile in Thailand could still be targeted by the authorities. Despite this, they have continued to critique the actions of the junta.

For example, FrontierMyanmarreported on the state of journalism in the country in March of 2023. The journalists granted access to government offices and press conferences are carefully vetted by the Information Department of the regime, in order to ensure that they adopt pro-junta stances in their work. And even then, when journalists that make the mistake of asking the wrong questions or are suspected of dissent face arrest. Vendors in the capital city of Nay Pyi Taw are only able to sell publications directly connected to either the military or the USDP, now regarded as merely a proxy party for the military.

Myanmar’s case tells a gloomy story of how even when progress is being made in the right direction, an unstable political climate can be taken advantage of by bad actors in order to consolidate power.

As a consequence, the vital organ of democratic society that is a free and independent press has been wiped out, in turn negatively impacting public discourse. It will likely require the toppling of the junta for this to change.