Scotland

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.

The Scottish parliament elections last May saw
the Scottish National Party (SNP) win a national election for the first time in
its history. The flip side of this is that the majority of Scots have
always consistently opposed independence. But on Sunday, Dec 16th, the
Sunday Herald newspaper claimed in their own poll that demand for independence
was just short of 50%. Their poll was based on a random 1,000 people
across the country. Why the rise in nationalist sentiment? Events of recent
times have caused a large section of the electorate in Scotland to
lose faith in Labour.

The Electoral Commission
has launched an investigation into an illegal donation to Wendy Alexander MSP’s
campaign to take over from Jack McConnell as Labour leader in the Scottish
Parliament. The crisis
unfolded when the Sunday Herald learned that every donation to the Wendy
campaign was under £1,000. Many were for £950. Under the Elections Act 2000,
all donations of £1,000 or more must be declared to the Electoral
Commission.

In last May’s Scottish
Parliament elections the Scottish National Party (SNP) emerged victorious as voters
wilted under increasing attacks and cuts in public services – already threadbare
after the Thatcher Tory years – by the New Labour-Liberal coalition. Socialist Appeal carried
in-depth Marxist analysis at the time when
we predicted an SNP victory and the factors that had made it possible. 

As winter creeps, in students and staff at Edinburgh schools and nurseries have learned
of the chilling news that their places of learning and work places may be under
threat once again. The Edinburgh Evening News reported on the thirtieth of
October that Edinburgh Council intended to reopen a consultation process that
would look into the future of schools. It also listed seventeen schools and
nurseries that it expected to be earmarked for the process.

In May 2004, we reported Scotland’s worst ever industrial disaster when the
Stockline plastics factory in Glasgow exploded leaving 9 dead and 40 injured.
It was another searing indictment of breaches in Health & Safety
legislation, now a matter of course in Britain. Ex-employees told journalists
they had been sacked after raising concerns about safety. The 2 companies jointly responsible, ICL Tech and
ICL Plastics, faced only charges relating to Health & Safety, for which they have now been
fined a measly £400,000.

While the Blairites are licking their wounds after last week's elections results, the results of the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity in Scotland and the Socialist Party in England should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that sectarian politics is a dead end.

On April 16th, "senior Labour sources" briefed the Financial Times that they "fear a drubbing" in Scotland. What we are witnessing is a rejection of the New Labour project which rejected class politics as outdated.

This Thursday May 3rd, Scotland goes to the polls. With capitalism red in tooth and claw and public services cut to the bone, people's needs are at odds with parliamentarians actions. Policies and programmes benefiting ordinary people and the poor, the sick, pensioners and students are difficult to find. What developments can we expect in this Thursday's elections? A grim reminder of the ultimate failure of Blairism and the policies it represents.

The mood for change in Scotland, the discontent Scottish people have for Westminster and Holyrood, is finding its expression in the rise in support for the Scottish Nationalist Party. However, the supplantation of bourgeois rule from London by a capitalist class closer to home will do nothing to change the fundamental conditions of ordinary working people.

In the light of recent developments in the Scottish
Socialist Party (SSP) we are publishing a document written by Ted Grant back in
1992 which already outlined the roots of the present crisis in the SSP. Ted
explained that the concessions the leaders of the then SML (later to become
SSP) were making to Scottish nationalism would lead to a disaster. Time has
proven him correct.