Features - James Halliday

They tell us that our election on May 1st is to be all about war and our involvement in it. Diana’s death, then Kosovo and now Iraq. We haven’t had much of a chance to select our own issues at any of these fixed-date elections, and we can be forgiven for guessing that some other distractor will be provided in 2007.

Certainly no issue surpasses a debate on peace or war, and no-one needs to be told that. But we can surely be forgiven if we protest against being put in a position where we are compelled to choose. Surely among our missing freedoms in this our subordinate condition is the freedom to choose what our politics are about.

Concentration on so-called bread-and-butter issues is often just a piece of evasion practised by a party which doesn’t feel comfortable when they try to discuss principles. Every time we have tried to carry forward the debate on constitutional right and justice some glib and cynical Labour functionary has always jumped in with some gabble about the arithmetic of spending on health, housing, employment and education. Nothing wrong with these topics, and no time spent on their discussion is to be grudged. We should certainly bear in mind the galling awareness that their purpose is merely to frustrate, obstruct, and if possible deny, all chance of taking a political decision which will carry with it answers to these and other social and material problems. Well our opponents know this — and their public posturing, proclaiming their wish for a better life for us all is, you may be sure, balanced by their private happy sniggering that if they keep chanting the script they will continue to do down the dirty Nats.

One reason why they have used this tactic for so long with such success is that we have not yet, in our country, in our political system, even at times in our own Party, been able to debate effectively. Some time ago we had reason to point out that meaningful and productive debate was impossible if one side refused to engage. Only by responding to an asserted point of view can debate be carried forward in pursuit of informed decision. Perhaps it is wrong to assume that decision or validation of a point of view is the purpose of debate.

Perhaps each side just asserts its point of view and leaves it at that, with no attempt to judge the merit of each assertion. If so, debate becomes an exchange of sound-bites, or, if tempers are high, what Nye Bevan once called "an emotional spasm".

It is sad and disappointing to see the most vital of topics discussed fruitlessly because both sides seem immune to what was once a familiar Scottish characteristic — to see arguments carried to an accepted conclusion or cases proven. We have not been granted such satisfaction by either side in the peace or war debate currently raging. Neither side has faced up to the final bed-rock arguments of the other, and we must wonder if they ever will.

It is not for us to re-hash the inconclusive arguments which will keep us on edge in the weeks and months to. come. Could we not better use our days and our minds in trying to understand and bring others to understand — that not the least of the beneficial consequences of independence would be release from involvement in global military decision making.