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Few people now really
believe a word which official spokespersons utter. Distrust and
contempt even extend into fiction —just consider how many films and
dramas show important characters to be corrupt if they are clever and
able, but usually stupid. Management is laughable, and promotion
clearly the result of grievous misjudgment on the part of those making
the appointments. And of course there is ample evidence in real life
to justify those bitter opinions.
There is a danger in
all this scepticism, however, because many people who automatically
refuse to believe what those in authority tell them, believe instead
almost any alternative explanation as to why things happen, and why
things are as they are. Believing nothing is followed by believing
anything. Rejecting official explanations, they seize instead upon
"the true story", "the real reason". As a result,
many of our fellow citizens end up expressing support for some lurid
rubbish. The conspiracy theorists have it pretty much their own way
these days.
Let’s just test
ourselves, setting aside any political prejudices which we carry and
which may skew our answers. For instance, you would see the recent
assertion that no one had ever walked on the moon, and that Armstrong
and Aldrin had lent their support to a comical hoax, or had themselves
been somehow confused.
A favourite posture of
the Scot is to be at all times shrewd; inclined to smile knowingly,
finger along the side of the nose; possessed of the true story, and
not at all impressed by the party line. So where do we stand on the
denial of the moon-walk?
Or again, there are
those who profess to believe that the Twin Towers of New York were
felled, not by the hijacked aircraft, but by operatives of the CIA,
who took advantage of the collision to destroy the buildings from
within, in order to bring al Qaeda into unjust disrepute. If the
Herald’s letters columns of the past year offer any guide, there must
be a vast body of support for this excitingly original explanation.
Because our cause and
our Party have suffered particularly from official untruth,
distortion, misrepresentation and all the armoury which a hostile
state apparatus can command, we are perhaps more liable than more
contented persons to give a hearing to exposés; and in pursuit
of intelligent scepticims, end up in a state of gullibility and
credulity, not perhaps on economic or general political issues but on
matters arising in the world around us.
To some extent the
devolution settlement is to blame. The agenda of our Parliament is by
law domestic, and thus debates, if they are to be in order and
relevant, must be about issues within its remit. Reinforcing this
condition is the fact that the opinion in our Party which proved to
command majority support, preferred it this way. It’s not that we
don’t have opinions about issues and events above and beyond the
quasi-municipal, but we don’t try to have a worthwhile method of arriving
collectively at those opinions.
Could we then perhaps
consider together our response to some unanswered — even unasked
—questions?
Does the wish to
preserve guaranteed oil supplies discredit all policy decisions in
relation to the Near East? Do we concede that oil is vital to the
survival of modem economies and states? Do we believe, rather, that
those economies and states should accept their ruin? and do we imagine
that this submission is at all likely?
Why do Socialist Worker
placards enliven so many demonstrations which have no apparent
connection with Socialism? Or, for that matter, with work? And why do
CND banners fly where no question of nuclear weapons is at all an
issue? Are we seeking a general pacifist stance? and, if so, could we
assert it openly and devise appropriate publicity?
And finally, how would
you respond if the British state banned the SNP? Talk it over with the
Basques. |
