The extraordinary gains of the SNP in the last election have already resulted in several significant moves by the English political parties. The Conservatives have least to lose in Scotland since they control only 21 seats, mostly in rural areas where squirearchical traditions are still strong. The industrial towns of the Lowlands, however, have always been among the safest of safe Labour fiefdoms. Labour needs the 32 Scottish seats it now has to maintain its majority in Parliament, but its concessions to Scottish national feeling came too little and too late. Labour promises about the same as the Conservatives--a consultative assembly with power over aspects of housing, education, and welfare. The Wilson government has moved the Office of Offshore Procurement to Edinburgh and promised to move another 7,000 civil service jobs to that city, but the SNP's supporters are intent on Scottish control of North Sea Oil profits, something neither major party will contemplate at this time. The Scottish Labour Party only approved limited devolution two weeks ago, and then with little grace. One Labour leader bluntly said that he voted for it simply in order to pull his party through this election.

Labour's short-term stake in these Scottish seats is large enough to justify his attitude. Along with Wales (where the nationalist party Plaid Cymru has made significant though much smaller inroads on Labour strength), Scotland is the key to any Labour victory. If it were not for its safe seats in Scotland and Wales, Labour would have lost every general election in Britain since 1950.

This resurgence of nationalist sentiment comes at a bad time for England. While efforts to preserve Scottish and Welsh culture come only just in time to prevent their extinction, it is a vain hope that smaller units of economic and social organization will be able to keep their heads above water any better than large ones in the approaching economic deluge. Unless the Scots are willing to become a sheikdom on the Clyde, a few decades of oil-boom cannot be a substitute for industrial development. Their growing isolationism is reflected in the Labour party's desire to get out of the Common Market. Party leaders feel so strongly about this that they have promised to hold the first binding referendum in British history on the issue if they are elected.

THIS INSISTENCE on withdrawal from the Common Market, along with plans for a wealth tax, are the reasons why trade unions will be able to see their goals--full-scale industrial nationalization and drastic redistribution of wealth--achieved even if a Labour government proves unethusiastic about implementing them. The Labour party has its own share of millionaires and in recent years has become a party with a very large stake in the status quo. But an anti-European Labour government committed to a wealth tax will have an enormous amount of difficulty raising the foreign capital necessary for Britain--an island that cannot live without imports--to finance its balance of payments deficit. American banks recently announced, jointly, that they felt they were fully "loaned out" to Britain, France and Italy. Other international monetary powers may be willing to take up some of the slack for a short while, but a real financing of Britain's 6 billion pound annual deficit could only come from the Arabs, and those ultra-security-conscious investors are hardly likely to invest very heavily in a country whose economic future must seem so unsettling to the capitalist.

So, a Labour government will be faced, sooner or later, with the inability of British industry to obtain international credit. The unions expect that the government will then be forced--at bargain prices--to nationalize almost all of British industry. Once industry is in the hands of the state, the power of the old upper and middle classes to oppose efforts to redistribute wealth will be broken.

The same end will be reached, the unions know, if a Conservative government is elected. Then the scenario will go as follows. Conservative wage controls will be resisted by crippling strikes that will further weaken British industry. A Conservative government will find it much easier than a Labour one, of course, to obtain mountains of foreign credits, but the indulgence of foreign bankers will run out eventually. In order to reduce costs some companies will attempt to lay off workers; meanwhile, other firms will go bust under the impact of tactical strikes and the slump. Nationalization of both kinds of companies will be demanded to save jobs and, given the state of public opinion in Britain today, such demands will be irresistible. Once industry is nationalized, the same kind of redistribution of wealth that would occur under a Labour government could be effected.

SUCH PLANS are plausible, though not foolproof. It is possible that a Conservative government could avoid proviking industrial unrest and so leave the militants stranded on the left. Coupled with massive infusions of foreign capital, such an appeal to British moderation might save British industry. It is possible that the political elements of the Labour party would prove strong enough to blunt the effects of the unionists' plans for redistribution of wealth. Unions might discover that their efforts to bring industry to a halt do not cause so much economic chaos as they expect.

And it is possible that the situation would be solved in an extra-parliamentary way--by coup or civil war.

But militant workers' chances to take control of their society appear stronger in Britain today than in any other advanced industrial nation. Britain's troubles could be the opportunity for a thorough-going reorganization of society in the interests of the working class. Whether this can be achieved is uncertain. The British people will have to take the decision into their own hands--and may find the voting lever an inadequate means to their ends.