The day before Petroineos declared its intention to press ahead with the closure of Scotland’s only oil refinery, the Scottish Government published their long-awaited Green Industrial Strategy (GIS). The 54-page document, wrote Kate Forbes and Gillian Martin in their Ministerial Foreword, “makes a clear statement of our focus and intent.” For the 2,800 workers whose livelihoods depend on Grangemouth’s operation, this confirmation was unnecessary. They had long been aware of the Scottish Government’s priorities – and of how far from the top coherent industrial policy ranked. According to Ronald Reagan, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” were the nine most terrifying words in the English language. They continue to inspire fear at the heart of governments in Edinburgh and London, whose absolute refusal to intervene and prevent Grangemouth’s closure is matched only by their determination to empower the site’s owner.
“Market fundamentals,” contended Kate Forbes as she reacted to the news of Grangemouth’s closure, had motivated Petroineos’ decision. Apparently apathetic towards the powerlessness of politicians to affect the decisions of multinational corporations, the Deputy First Minister momentarily betrayed the myth of Scotland’s ‘just’ transition. Indeed, the Green Industrial Strategy she launched just 24 hours earlier commits the Scottish Government to cede further influence to the offshore architects of industrial vandalism but mentions trade unions only once. In putting together the strategy, the Scottish Government sought the advice of Shell, the investment firm ABRDN and – on seven separate occasions – Prosper, the successor to the Scottish Council for Development and Industry. There was just one meeting, however, for the trade unions. That the fossil fuel lobby was quick to throw its weight behind the resulting paper should come as little surprise.
Offshore Energies UK, formerly Oil and Gas UK, heralded the strategy for prioritising “a competitive fiscal environment.” To the delight of Scotland’s corporate interests, the Scottish Government has produced a poorly drafted prospectus that will offshore resources, wealth and power under the guise of industrial strategy. The document aims to “ensure Scotland is an attractive host country for investment.” Rather than seek to attract productive industry, the Scottish Government plans to “promote Scotland globally as a leading centre for green financial and professional services” – one of the country’s five key ‘opportunity areas’ for the transition. Earlier this year, then First Minister Humza Yousaf made similar noises during a trip to the capital organised in partnership with the City of London Corporation. The visit was designed to ensure Scotland’ benefits’ from the City’s efforts to market Britain as a ‘global centre for nature finance’. Always eager to condemn ‘London rule’, the Scottish Government’s protests do not extend to the centralisation of economic power in the capital — in fact, they are content to piggyback on it.
These plans reveal just how narrow the appreciation of mainstream Scottish nationalism for popular sovereignty has become. In the SNP’s estimations, the job of political actors is not to intervene in the economy to create the conditions for industrial restoration but to operate within the confines set by capital. Having already privatised Scotland’s trees and leased the nation’s offshore wind to the world’s largest oil companies, the new GIS promises to create further “new market opportunities for natural capital.” Nowhere in Scotland’s natural landscape, it would seem, is safe from commodification. What’s more, the strategy describes Green Freeports as a ‘distinct economic opportunity’ for their regions. The Firth of Forth freeport, which includes Grangemouth, spans a territory which generates some 40% of Scotland’s industrial emissions. Created in a handshake deal between Nicola Sturgeon and Rishi Sunak, this ‘free enterprise zone’ provides a low-tax, deregulated playground for capital, offering multinational corporations an opportunity to slash workers’ wages, terms, and conditions.
For Petroineos, the tax breaks on imports that come with freeport status will no doubt have influenced their decision to close Grangemouth’s refinery and transform the site into an oil import terminal. Jim Ratcliffe has benefited from the ‘distinct economic opportunity’ offered by freeport status. His workers, however, have been deprived of agency and, now, employment. Where the strategy does address Scotland’s industrial base, there are few deviations from the contemporary orthodoxy. ‘Effective public-private industrial policy collaborations’ are promised to maximise Scotland’s wind economy. There is so little detail about this commitment that one can only assume these efforts will follow the model of the ScotWind leasing rounds – which imposed a price cap on bids for offshore wind sites and deprived the state of millions. Meanwhile, the strategy promises to ‘anchor our offshore wind supply chain by leveraging private investment into essential infrastructure’, but makes no mention of establishing a Scottish national energy company. This promise, ditched by Nicola Sturgeon in 2021, remains permanently shelved. “In developing our industrial strategy for the period ahead, we have the benefit of much experience,” said Tony Benn in 1974 while serving as Harold Wilson’s Secretary of State for Industry. “Almost everything has been tried at least once.”
The key tenets of the Scottish Government’s GIS have been tried time and again for forty years. Be it providing a state-facilitated route to private profit-making or constructing an insecure, disjointed service economy, the document rolls out the red carpet for corporate interests. However, this attitude is not limited to the SNP. In their response to the GIS, the Scottish Green Party did not refute the underlying economic approach but railed against the technology used to administer it. Put simply, the Green Industrial Strategy is neither green, industrial nor strategic. It offers no solutions to the industrial crisis set to engulf the Scottish economy. Of the 19 significant manufacturing sites required to honour the domestic procurement commitments of the Scotwind leasing round, Scotland currently has zero. Two sites – one in Fife and the other in the Western Isles – have received significant investment to enable turbines to be constructed in Scotland. However, the yards’ owner Harland & Wolff entered administration in late September, raising immediate concerns for the fate of 400 promised green jobs and longer-term questions for Scottish manufacturing.
This news followed STUC research from March this year which revealed that, for every £1 million that renewable firms turnover, just two green jobs are produced. Rather than plot a path to correct this trajectory, the GIS will ensure Scotland’s much-diminished industrial base continues to shrink in the years to come. Once a project which found success by providing an alternative to deindustrialisation, the SNP’s supposed industrial strategy and their acquiescent response to Grangemouth’s closure are illustrative of a broader, longer-term shift within mainstream Scottish nationalism. During the 1980s, as unemployment reached its peak and Thatcher’s shock therapy enforced closure on Scottish heavy industries, the development of working-class national consciousness – concretised by events such as the anti-poll tax campaign and UCS work-in – contributed to growing support for Scottish independence. In 1987, when the Proclaimers released ‘Letter From America’, the hit single resonated far beyond Bathgate, Linwood, Methil and Irvine. It chimed with a growing demand for popular sovereignty across the country in the face of an overwhelming democratic deficit. Years later, after the 2014 referendum, such sentiments helped the SNP to break the back of working-class Labourism across Scotland’s central belt. However, today on the watch of the party who pledged to put ‘Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands’, it is Grangemouth that’s no more.
Having run from the issue until the moment closure was confirmed, the SNP made no attempt to mobilise in defence of the refinery. In fact, it is more than likely that, by granting Grangemouth freeport status, the Scottish Government was an able accomplice to Ratcliffe’s plans. Towns like Grangemouth, Methil and Irvine barely featured in the story Nicola Sturgeon and her colleagues sought to tell after the referendum. In accordance with the SNP’s renewed commitment to Atlanticism and European integration, they were expunged at the expense of Glasgow and Edinburgh, whose mission to be counted among the great cities of the continent took priority. Lacking a theory of change to achieve independence after almost two decades in government, dogged by persistent domestic failings and corruption allegations, the SNP can no longer disguise the reversal of Scottish nationalism’s historic promise to grant power and agency to the people of Scotland. This dilemma reveals the depth of the SNP’s present crisis, and why Keir Starmer’s declining popularity may only paper over these cracks.
There are few better examples of Scottish nationalism’s long-term shift than Petroineos’ choice of communications consultancy. Grangemouth’s operators did not announce the site’s closure directly. They recruited Charlotte Street Partners, Scotland’s premier corporate lobbyists, to do it on their behalf. Established by former SNP MSP Andrew Wilson, CSP grew with the SNP’s post-referendum success. They long served as the middlemen between capital and the SNP leadership, operating a revolving door between government and vested interests. They laid on lavish dinners for Nicola Sturgeon and Scotland’s biggest businesses in five-star hotels. They designed the infamous pro-market prospectus for Scottish independence, the Growth Commission. And now, they have dispatched P45s to hundreds of workers on behalf of Britain’s richest man.
Tom Nairn wrote that “the Edinburgh Bailie and the shipyard worker can both be joined in praise of nationalism; but the nation and its culture belong to the former, not to the latter, and the triumph of a merely populist nationalism will signify a greatly strengthened grip of the real ruling class.” Today, Scotland’s energy transition signifies just that.
