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 decisions to close two major Accident & Emergency
Units at Monklands and Ayr hospitals taken by
the Labour/Liberal coalition at Holyrood was hugely significant. Despite the
Health Boards in the two areas denying publicly that the costs of the private
contracts through the Private Finance Initiative scheme influenced the
decisions, they have since admitted it was one of the most important factors.
The SNP stood in these constituencies on ‘SNP – Save Monklands
Hospital’ etc.,
almost taking the safe Labour Airdrie & Shotts seat, reducing a
massive majority to under 1,000.
Lord Mike Watson got a life peerage for
standing aside to allow Mohammed Sarwar to become MP, then got four years for
setting a posh hotel on fire at a shabby political "oscars"
night. The left is very weak in the parliament. Wendy Alexander was installed
as leader with no contest. A token challenger couldn’t be found reflecting the
absence of a left wing, but also the dearth of any political talent whatever.
Alex Salmond of the SNP is in all honesty head and shoulders above the Labour "councillor"
types that pollute the parliament. Clearly the SNP win was in large
part the result of a lack of any programme or ideas from Scottish Labour
that suited the working class, pensioners and students.
Over the last three or four years there have been a
number of high profile strikes in the public sector, the Royal Mail, Fire
Service and the railways. Regional sections of the RMT & CWU for a
while affiliated to the Scottish Socialist Party, reflecting the rank &
file disappointment in Labour. There is also a real sense of resentment among
Scots, who stubbornly returned Labour MPs throughout the Tory years and they
feel they have not been rewarded for loyalty. There is no question that New Labour
since coming to power has done very little to appeal to or help its core base
in Scotland.
The council tax remains a huge issue, affecting the elderly and the sick in
particular. The creeping privatisation and use of PFI has generated massive
opposition. Bread and butter issues like law and order, poor service from
undermanned, underfunded public services, high council tax, concerns about anti-social
behaviour, general disquiet among the wage-earners and on a larger
scale renewal of Trident nuclear weapons at a cost up to £22bn in total
and, of course the disastrous adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
SNP Hold Majority of One
There was definitely to some extent a protest vote in May when a message was
sent out to Labour, "change course or else". The SNP were the beneficiaries -
because their results in the council elections (First ever under Proportional Representation
through a Single Transferable Vote) did not reflect the much bigger parliament
vote. It was almost as if the electorate concluded: "Well, we can’t do any
worse under the SNP in Holyrood". However, old sores in the soft left
of the SNP have never healed. Salmond, who until now claimed to be on the left,
had to drop a pre-election pledge to renationalise the buses when Brian
Souter – a born again Christian who has been savaged by the Monopolies &
Mergers Commission for his business practices – the owner of Stagecoach who is
in perpetual collision with his workforce -, donated £500,000 to the SNP, and
the buses commitment was dumped. Salmond then announced that business
corporation tax would be cut and more concessions given to business. After
standing on a Save the NHS ticket in Monklands & Ayr seats and promising to
overturn the decision to close the units, the Health Secretary Nicola
Sturgeon announced an independent panel would investigate the best way forward.
Now, according to a report in The Herald, Dec 18th, there may be no alternative
but to close these two units with the best that can be hoped for is a reduced Accident
& Emergency service, perhaps until 9 pm at night. The SNP criticised
Labour’s record on law and order and the rise of anti-social behaviour (as if
this is something that’s exclusive to Scotland) and promised "1,000
NEW police officers on the beat". They have had to dump this pledge,
saying they really meant they would free up 1,000 police from desk jobs, which
is impossible in reality. They promised to scrap the debts of students in
higher education but now admit this cannot be met. They promised £2,000 to
every new homebuyer in Scotland.
This "can no longer be afforded," announced finance secretary John
Swinney. They promised to build thousands of affordable quality housing, giving
the impression they, as an administration, would borrow the money. Instead the
onus is on local councils to find a way to raise the finance for these new
builds. Having ordered a freeze in council tax and ordered councils to make a
total of £2.7bn in cuts, if councils are to build any houses they will have no
option but to use PFI and in reality it will not be local authority
housing, but private housing which may or may not allow those on council
waiting lists tenancy. COSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) have
warned the SNP they are on a collision course with councils over spending cuts
and mass job losses, more privatisation of services etc. In further education,
colleges and universities require a minimum of £168m to stand still -
the SNP are allocating just £30m. This will affect staff pay, conditions
and important research projects will be neglected. Suddenly free tuition fees,
which is a class issue and came on the back of a drop in working class youth
going into higher education because of costs, looks vulnerable. The Principal
of St Andrew’s University has now called for tuition fees to be brought back
and that universities be free to raise their own funds. The only pre-election
promise the SNP have kept is to abolish prescription charges. But this will not
happen until 2011 and lots can happen in that time. The SNP has always had a
soft left radical wing with former senior Labour Party figure Alex Neil MSP
probably the best known. Neil will be privately seething that every
radical pledge has been dropped and there will be tensions in the future
between the tartan tweed tories and the soft left in those historical
industrial areas that were victims of the Tory scorched earth policy in the
last generation. For decades the SNP sought to push themselves to the front of
the anti-Trident campaign. Now as the largest party in Holyrood, they have
launched a lame on-line petition to Downing St denouncing nuclear weapons.
Labour: McConnell Resigns. Wendy Alexander is new leader
Jack McConnell, ex SNP member, was the Labour First Minister in the last
parliament with the support of the Liberals. His administration was completely
uninspiring, with the LibDems getting much more of the cake than their
electoral support deserved (even allowing for PR – Additional Member). Seen as
a New Labour Westminster robot, McConnell was indecisive in parliament, always
leaving himself open to the charge he had to consult with Westminster. Having presided over Labour’s
worst performance in Scotland
for fifty years, McConnell had no option but to stand down as leader. Wendy
Alexander announced her intention to stand before the hapless Jack drew breath
and was elected unopposed. Her ‘Team Alexander’ was highly organised with
officers and fund raisers. About £17,000 was raised. Then the
revelations about illegal donations. Nobody, not even Alexander herself, denies
the Paul Green donation to her campaign was illegal, but they are all blaming
each other with Charlie Gordon MSP likely to be the whipping boy. Gordon
admits he accepted an illegal donation from Green for his own campaign to
become Member of the Scottish Parliament two years ago. Scottish Labour are
embroiled in a stinking mess of their own making. However this is a most
serious matter and could result in criminal charges against one, some or all of
‘Team Alexander’. The result was that Wendy did not enjoy any honeymoon period
to establish herself in the post. Ironically, the legislation governing
donations was partly introduced to stop the actor Sean Connery making large
donations to the SNP! The bottom line here is that Labour in Scotland has
failed its core support, with more children living in poverty now
than under Thatcher’s Tories. Fighting the allegations about donations
and being constantly on the back foot means that the SNP budget, which will
throw public services into chaos even further and create more poverty and
hopelessness, has been left unchallenged – with many Scots still unaware
of the implications of an SNP led administration. However, the struggles that
are pending will not be fought out in Holyrood, as we have seen with the
magnificent Glasgow Day Centre workers in Oct/Nov/Dec, the action by railway
signal workers, the post workers’ dispute and the ongoing actions by civil
service union members. This is where the battles will be fought: in the
labour movement, in the trade unions and in the Labour Party itself which has
no alternative but to begin spewing out the class traitors and careerists. All
history – including the past 15 years especially, shows that the workers will
move through their own organisations, the trade unions and the party of labour.
SSP implodes
The Scottish Socialist Party has imploded and last May’s results, when they
lost all of their parliamentary seats and failed to get a single
councillor elected in the generous PR afforded in council elections, underlines
that this alliance of left nationalists, reformists, Scottish republicans, far
left groups, environmental protest groups and individual campaigners is
dead and buried. The SSP split and fought each other in the bourgeois courts
with regard to leader Tommy Sheridan’s court action against the News of the
World. As a result they are a spent force – part of the past. Hopefully the
serious socialists and especially those who consider themselves to be Marxists
will examine the entire episode soberly and draw the correct conclusions. The
workers do not desert their organisations lightly; nor do they unquestioningly
march behind individuals or groups just because they raise a flag and tell them
to. It is time for the brave comrades (and there are many) who remain in the
SSP and those who have fallen away in complete disillusionment, to draw up an
honest balance sheet. The mood is still one of bitterness in Scotland, and
some comrades with the best of intentions are discussing a way forward for the
left. Their preferred choice is to rebuild a Scottish Socialist Party Mark II.
However, the best of these comrades and the youth will now be interested in
ideas, methods, tradition and a programme. It can be found in Marxism and in
the Marxist Tendency. We are not ‘Johnny Come Latelys’ to this
matter. Socialist Appeal archives are open to any serious socialist
to read the arguments our tendency put forward at the time of the Scottish
comrades splitting away from the tried & trusted methods of our tendency
for more than four decades.
