Now past 10 years since Indyref, Arianna Introna offers a disability justice perspective on the waning of welfare demands by the independence movement.

The belief in the potential for Scottish state institutions to use increased powers to introduce more progressive policy measures than those offered by the UK government animated, from the 1970s, the phenomenon described by Nicola McEwan as ‘welfare state nationalism’. It also informed the progressive vision of the movement for Scottish independence in the run-up to the 2014 referendum.

McEwen sought to make sense of the ways in which grounding the promise of fairer provision of state welfare within imaginaries of national identity and solidarity could fulfil a nation-building purpose, and saw the rise of Scottish nationalism leading to devolution as a response to the onset of welfare retrenchment and neoliberal rhetoric in the UK from the late 1970s. Similar dynamics have been traced by Gerry Mooney in relation to the entanglement between social policy and constitutional developments that emerged before and during the independence referendum, and identified by Jay Wiggan in the articulation of a welfare state imaginary by the Scottish Government in opposition to the neoliberal trajectory of welfare reform pursued by successive Conservative-led UK Governments.

A perspective that centres disability justice and welfare justice as the building blocks on which radical social change can be pursued in Scotland forces us to ponder the extent to which the logics posited by welfare nationalism have materialised post-indyref. To explore this, I will consider the establishment of a Scottish social security agency, Social Security Scotland, and the introduction of a disability benefit, the Adult Disability Payment, alongside the trajectory of UK welfare retrenchment.

The Establishment of Social Security Scotland (2018)

With devolution, social security remained a reserved UK Government matter and is mostly delivered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Following the ‘No’ vote in 2014, the Smith Commission recommended that authority over several areas of social security be transferred to the Scottish Parliament. This recommendation was enacted by the Scotland Act 2016. The Social Security (Scotland) Bill 2018 both followed and heralded a different approach to administering social security in Scotland compared to the approach adopted by the UK government. Social Security Scotland, the executive agency of the Scottish Government responsible for managing the devolved benefits, was established in 2018 through a lengthy process of consultation with third-sector organisations.

The first social security agency in the nation’s history, Social Security Scotland was designed to embody a difference vis-a-vis the DWP in terms of values and policies. Its ‘Charter’ presents a grassroots demand for this difference as having emerged from the consultation process that preceded the establishment of the agency. It declares: “The people of Scotland were asked how these new social security powers should be used. They said that the UK system is stressful, complicated and often inhumane”. This dissatisfaction with the UK welfare state expresses, according to the Charter, a popular demand for the re-location of social welfare powers to the Scottish state as necessary for a fairer delivery of social welfare within Scotland. The Charter also details how the core values of dignity, fairness and respect form the basis for delivering social welfare in a distinctively (progressive) Scottish mode. “The Scottish Government”, we read, “is determined do things differently. It has set up Social Security Scotland to deliver benefits in a more positive and supportive way, based on the fact that social security is a human right”. In line with this belief are the eight principles contained in Section One of the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, which frame the delivery of social security as inseparable from respect “for people’s dignity”.

The Introduction of Adult Disability Payment (2022)

UK Welfare Retrenchment and the Attack on Disabled People (2024)

This difference is deepened by the regressive direction in which welfare politics is evolving in the UK. As of 2025, the provision of welfare by the British state entangles welfare retrenchment with vicious attacks on disabled people. Grassroots opposition to both is carried by organisations such as the Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty (ECAP) in Scotland and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) in the UK. It has culminated in the case that the disabled DPAC activist and author Ellen Clifford brought against the DWP at the end of 2024. Supported by the Public Law Project, Clifford has challenged the DWP over the consultation held in 2023 on proposed changes to the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), which decides disabled claimants’ eligibility for the extra health component of Universal Credit or Employment Support Allowance. The High Court has recently ruled that the DWP acted unlawfully:

• by presenting benefit assessment reforms as a way to support disabled people into work while cost savings was a “primary rationale” for the proposals.
• through a consultation process which was “misleading” (because not highlighting the compulsion to access employment support that proposed changes would involve), “rushed” (because it ran under eight weeks), and “unfair” (because it exposed disabled people to substantial risk of poverty and increased vulnerability).

Clifford has welcomed the verdict by challenging the UK Government to co-produce reforms that protect disabled people’s “rights to an adequate standard of living”.

Whither Scottish Welfare State Nationalism, 10 Years Post Indyref?

Neither the establishment of an independent social security agency in Scotland nor the introduction of ADP have been grasped within the pro-independence and radical milieux of Scottish politics as fulfilling the promises of welfare state nationalism – promises of historic import for progressive nationalist and labour movements alike. This silence raises questions about the direction in which Scottish welfare state nationalism may be travelling, its limits, and its possibilities. The encounter between disability politics and constitutional politics in the creation of a progressive social security system post-indyref has unfolded disconnected from, and largely ignored by, the progressive and radical strands of the nationalist and labour movements in Scotland. This disconnection portends the possible irrelevance of welfare justice, disability justice, and welfare state nationalism for both.

However, as David Matthews argues in his recent book The Class Struggle and Welfare: Social Policy under Capitalism, class struggle and class conflict permeate society and shape welfare provision through the balance of forces they produce. Disabled people are central subjects of the fight for welfare justice because of their marginalisation from the workforce and consequential reliance on state welfare. A Scottish welfare state nationalism worthy of the name must, and still can, be worked towards within the scope of these class dynamics and the disability politics connected to them. Both Scottish nationalism and the labour movement in Scotland have a lot to lose by failing to wire disability justice, at least as welfare justice if not on its own terms, into the heart of their pursuit of a fairer society.

Arianna Introna is a disabled researcher, activist, and Associate Lecturer with the Open University (Scotland).

The Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty (ECAP) is organising to campaign against the UK Government’s Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill which allows authorities to spy on claimants’ bank accounts. If you would like to attend their forthcoming meeting to organise resistance against the Bill, you can find contact details on the ECAP website.