Scotland's social ills can't be cured within the failing UK

Published in The Scotsman, March 19th, 2024.

In today’s Scotsman, arch-unionist Brian Monteith accuses the First Minister of focusing on economics, not drug deaths, but he fails to acknowledge they are connected. 

Addicts aren’t born, but made. The precursor to addiction is dislocation - a loss of psychological, social and economic integration into community and culture that engenders a sense of exclusion, isolation and powerlessness. 

Scotland is riddled with examples. The Highland Clearances destroyed traditional clan structures, culture and language. Hundreds of thousands of Scots were evicted from their land and forced to emigrate. A highlands administrator at the time wrote, “the children of those who are removed from the hills will lose all recollection of the habits and customs of their fathers.”

Then there was the 1980s deindustrialisation of Scotland that caused massive economic and social dislocation. Whole communities were hollowed out, unemployment soared and with it, hopelessness and despair. The UK government failed to create alternatives for these communities, so poverty and its associated problems - trauma, mental illness and drug addiction - became entrenched across generations. 

It doesn’t need to be this way. Slovakia, Sweden and The Netherlands don’t have high drug death rates. They prioritise social spending so that poverty and inequality are far lower than in the UK.

If Scotland is to cure its social problems, it, not London, needs to control its economy so it works for the Scottish People. 

We must end the ongoing theft of our resources and destruction of our remaining industrial base by the UK and private corporations. Only then can we create the conditions - restoring social spending, funding public services and prioritising full employment - for Scots to thrive in their home communities. 

Another welcome benefit of restoring Scotland’s sovereignty is that it will end England’s addiction to our resources, helping it, for once, to stand on its own two feet.