‘Being’ Left or Being Left Behind

Elaine Smith MSP

Elaine Smith MSP looks at how Labour can regain support

In March this year I wrote an opinion piece for the Citizen on how the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party was conducting itself in opposition. Whilst I didn’t predict the imminent departure of Wendy Alexander from the Leadership job, it wasn’t altogether a surprise.

What I did predict was that when Wendy mopped up all but four of the available MSP nominations (thus shutting down a contest for the leadership) she would leave herself weakened, with no democratic mandate when things started to go wrong.

The same is of course true of Gordon Brown. Had he not worked so hard at preventing MP’s from nominating John McDonnell last year the party, and Brown himself, would have been in a much healthier condition following a contest.

At the time of writing this, the Scottish Labour Party is engaged in the process of electing a Leader and Deputy. Citizen readers will know the result by the time this is published. Since I don’t have a crystal ball, I can only comment on what the outcome is likely to mean for the party.

The result is important because it will signal whether or not the people’s party can throw off the neo-liberal shackles of New Labour and emerge again as a force for the meaningful representation of the working class. Or if the establishment will triumph with a leader and deputy leader who are no different to what has gone before. If that is the case, then sadly the party has a lot further to fall and Scotland could be in for a decade or more of nationalist government.

All of the candidates recognised that the majority of the Scottish people are attracted to many of the tenets of democratic socialism. Mind you, they could hardly fail to as it has become blatantly obvious with Alex Salmond’s Nationalists growing in popularity by presenting themselves as being to the left of Labour. Though of course they are not. Like all of the other mainstream parties they are positioning themselves to the right of what was once regarded as the centre.

The SNP has no ideological underpinning other than separatism. They comprise a mixture of activists from across the political spectrum including some who were once members of the Labour party.

What they are doing well is hyping policies such as free school meals, free prescriptions and free further/higher education, which are popular with the electorate, whilst at the same time passing the buck to local government to make the cuts to services that inevitably follow as a result of the council tax freeze.

People are actually beginning to feel those cuts bite; but still the nationalists remain popular. However, when more and more pensioners discover that they are no longer eligible for the free central heating, when more and more trade unionists discover that their education courses have gone alongside suffering effective wage cuts and when more and more people discover that PFI/PPP has not been rejected but simply re-named, then the SNP honeymoon will be over.

Interestingly, cracks are beginning to appear in their cleverly crafted mask of a left-wing public face. Just recently, Alex Salmond took the peculiar step of phoning a live BBC Radio Scotland programme to try and back-track on remarks he made about Thatcher in an interview with ‘Total Politics’ magazine.

In the initial interview he indicated that the opposition to Thatcher's Conservative Government during the 1980s was against her "social side" rather than her economic policy.

He said: "The SNP has a strong social conscience, which is very Scottish in itself. One of the reasons Scotland didn't take to Lady Thatcher was because of that. We didn't mind the economic side so much. We didn't like the social side at all."

No wonder he tried to spin his way out of that as outraged opponents rushed to enlighten him to the fact that actually the Scottish people did rather mind Thatcher’s economic policy. They reminded him of the thousands who lost their jobs during the 1980s closure of shipyards, steel-works and coalmines, the devastation of UK unemployment at three million, and the hated poll tax inflicted first on the people of Scotland.

During the interview Alex Salmond also showed the SNP’s true colours by indicating that he had steered them from the left to a more business-friendly position.

He said:“We have a very competitive economic agenda. Many business people have warmed towards the SNP. We need a competitive edge, a competitive advantage - get on with it, get things done, speed up decision making, reduce bureaucracy.”

This blatant shift to the right perhaps explains why he has been refusing to pay a reasonable wage to Scottish Government workers in the PCS union who have been forced into taking industrial action and why he is so averse to giving Local Authorities the funds they need to pay their workers a fair wage. The Tartan Tory tag is not so easily disguised after all.

However, waiting on the SNP to fall out of favour with the Scottish public via its own actions is not really an option for Scottish Labour.

After last year’s electoral defeat there was recognition in some quarters of the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party that the nationalists can only be defeated from the left. Events since have served to highlight this even more. But it’s not enough to talk the language of left leaning policies; to really make a difference the new leadership team must be of the left and believe in Labour’s founding principles of peace and socialism if the party is to recover.

If our policies fail to reflect the party’s traditional mission to secure equality, democracy and the redistribution of wealth and power, then we will fall further into the abyss. We cannot any longer expect the loyalty and votes of the workers, as has been witnessed in the recent Glasgow East by-election. Instead, we must earn the votes of the workers by offering fundamental reform of the economic and political system that is crushing them.

Bill Butler, candidate for deputy leader and CfS Executive member, recognises that fact, stating in his election literature:

“We need to promote an imaginative, distinctively Labour message which stresses the need to eradicate poverty, and promote social and economic justice.” He goes on to say “We need a strong leadership team at Holyrood which will work with all sections of the party to shape a progressive policy programme…”

Indeed, every candidate in the election has recognised the sense of talking a left-wing game in an attempt to appeal to the grass-roots and the trade unionists because they are all conscious that the language of right-wing neo-liberal New Labour is no longer popular.

This reminded me of an event from a few years ago. A Labour Party councillor candidate hopeful approached some comrades seeking support from Labour’s Campaign for Socialism. When it was pointed out that support could only be forthcoming for left-wing candidates the reply was “I can do left”.

What the party needs if it is to once more gain, and deserve, the votes of the working class is a leader and deputy who are actually left-wing as opposed to “doing” it.

Recovery can only be achieved by delivering progressive policies for the benefit of the workers, with the redistribution of wealth and power bringing an end to poverty. The new team must also transform the party’s structure and constitution to make it a democratic, member led force for change and recognisable once again as the people’s party.

All of the candidates have talked about returning to ‘traditional labour values’ but what are they? What was once mainstream Labour policy may now seem radical after a decade of New Labour. Labour’s primary purpose was to represent the interests of the working class and do so by promoting socialist policies such as public ownership of key industries, government intervention in the economy, redistribution of wealth, increased rights for workers and a belief in the welfare state and publicly funded healthcare and education.

It is a radical change of politics that is needed, not just a new face. I hope that the Party in Scotland has elected a leader and deputy who will recognise that and get on with the job of delivering policies that help the poor, encourage equality, promote peace and make our members once again proud to be the party of Labour.