Scotland

The Glasgow North East By-election was billed by political
commentators as a final test for Gordon Brown and his leadership of the Labour
Party. If he was to loose another Labour heartland seat in Glasgow to the Scottish National Party (SNP)
then he would struggle to hold on to his position as party leader. Despite many
early predictions to the contrary, Labour held on to the seat (formerly held by
the speaker and therefore previously benefiting from no opposition from Tories
or Lib-Dems) and actually managed to increase their percentage of the vote. But
this hides the real story. Labour got 3,000 less votes than they did in 2005, these
votes did not fall to the Nationalist, who lost 1,000 votes on last time but
instead fell into mass abstentions making this the lowest turn-out in a
Scottish by-election ever.

Poor old Gordon Brown, down in the polls as his part in destroying the lives of millions of working people through his mismanagement of the economy is exposed to all. With his attempts to smear the Tories blowing up in his own face, things aren’t going so well for him. He thought a cabinet meeting in Glasgow, away from the City and Fleet Street, might do some good for his popularity. He was wrong.

March 23rd saw the BNP once again make another ugly appearance on the streets of Glasgow, the second time they have done so in three days. On this occasion they could only muster two supporters, seemingly their hardcore in the west of Scotland. As usual this pair carried out their Laurel and Hardy style act with the big intimidating one, complete with scary red bobble hat, remaining silent as the smaller overly confident character spewed out a range of contradictory positions and bigoted lies.

The chances of a referendum on Scottish independence appear increasingly distant following a Scottish parliamentary vote in favour of a resolution condemning moves towards one. This is a huge blow to the SNP self-declared Scottish Government that is committed to holding a referendum before the current parliament ends in 2011. However the vote has also done little for a Labour Party that has lost all sense of direction, as its leadership exposes itself as utterly unable to capitalise on the SNP’s fall from grace.

Poor old Alex Salmond. Things
haven’t been going too well for him lately. Maybe it was one too many whiskeys
with their Burns Suppers, but the Scottish National Party Government seems to
be stumbling from one embarrassment to another. First they couldn’t get their
“recession beating” budget passed on the first go. Then they were forced to
back down on their flagship policy to scrap council tax, apparently due to a
lack of “parliamentary consensus”. And then, just to add insult to injury Iain
Gray, the Scottish Labour Party leader, slammed the SNPs plans for an
independence referendum.

n light of the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, people in Britain and around the world have come out to demonstrate and show their disgust at the imperialist attacks of the Israeli state and its funding and support from both the UK and the USA. On the 10th of January supporters of Socialist Appeal attended the Palestinian Solidarity demonstration in Edinburgh.

Saturday 13th
December saw fascists once again attempt to organise in Glasgow’s city centre.
A few weeks ago it was the pleasantly named and completely ineffective ‘Racial
Volunteers Squad’ who were intimidated just by the sight of the number of left
wingers who were also handing out propaganda on Buchannan Street.  However this Saturday saw those fine
defenders of white nationalism, the racist British National Party attempting to
distribute their paper, the aptly titled ‘Voice of Freedom’ to unwitting members
of the public.

The situation of financial crisis, coupled
with a hugely unpopular Westminster government that has found itself entirely
incapable of coming up with any solutions 
beyond throwing more and more of our money at the banks, would seem a
perfect opportunity for the SNP to make their mark and assert the need for an
independent Scotland. With unemployment poised to reach two million and share
prices continuing to fall at the SNP conference, Alex Salmond has been reduced
to calling for the return of ‘Scotland’s money’ and blaming the collapse of
Scottish banks on the Union. Supposedly independence will save us from such
catastrophes in the future. 

The SNP victory
in the Glasgow East by-election certainly marks a new low in the recent history
of the Scottish Labour Party but the question is now posed: does it mark the
seismic shift in Scottish politics that Alex Salmond has declared?

Just
when you think it can’t get any worse for Gordon Brown, it does. New Labour has
succeeded in losing the Glasgow East by-election. Glasgow East is a solid
working class area with one of the finest labour movement traditions on the
country. It has been a Labour heartland for generations.

The unexpected by-election in the Glasgow East constituency
has focussed the attention of the political parties and the media on a part of
Clydeside which it has long been fashionable to ignore. At the
general election Labour obtained a majority of 13,500 over the SNP candidate,
gaining 60.7% of the vote. If ever Labour had a safe seat it was Glasgow East.
This has led to the constituency being taken for granted and systematically neglected.
In Greater Glasgow, life expectancy is below the national average at 70.7
years. In the Calton ward of Glasgow East it is just 53.9 years, a figure
comparable with many ‘third world’ countries.

Wendy Alexander, leader of the Labour Party in Scotland has
declared that the SNP Government should “bring on” a referendum on independence
and has gone as far as to not rule out a bill calling for a poll earlier than
the Nationalist administration’s proposed date of 2010. This has resulted in
the issue of Scottish independence making a large impact on the national media
for the first time since the SNP’s victory in the Scottish Parliament elections
in May of last year. It has also unleashed a potential Pandora’s Box that is
threatening to divide the Labour leadership in Scotland from the national
leadership.