Socialists and the Scottish Parliamentary elections

Submitted by cathy n on 18 April, 2011 - 9:57

What should socialists be saying – and doing – in the election campaign now underway for the Scottish Parliament elections which take place on 5th May?

In last year’s Westminster elections the Alliance for Workers Liberty initiated the “Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and Fascists” (SCSTF). The campaign rested on two basic ideas.

Firstly, it called for a vote for Labour. Labour was certainly not standing on a left-wing platform. But it had maintained a base in working-class organisations such as the trade unions, and significant policy differences had opened up between Labour and the Tories

Secondly, it advocated and, where it had the resources to do so, helped prepare campaigning in defence of working-class interests, whichever government was elected: the anti-working-class warriors of the Tories, or a Labour government led by the pro-boss Brownites and Blairites.

It makes no sense, however, to simply "graft" the SCSTF onto the Holyrood elections, as if the latter were some small-scale re-run of last year’s general election, albeit including a form of proportional representation.

(In Holyrood elections first-past-the-post constituencies are combined into larger regions, in which candidates are elected on the basis of proportional representation. But the more individual constituencies a party wins, the less regional seats it will pick up.)

In the Westminster elections the fundamental question confronting voters was: do you want a Labour or a Tory government (or some kind of coalition with one of those parties at its core)?

That is not the question confronting voters in Scotland this year. The Scottish Tories will be lucky to hang on to a handful of seats. In the Holyrood elections the basic question is: do you want a Labour or an SNP government (or some kind of coalition with one of those parties at its core)?

The SNP is not, and does not claim to be, a socialist party. But the policies on which it is contesting the Holyrood elections are far removed from those on which the Tories contested the Westminster elections. In fact, more than one political commentator has commented on the overlap in Labour and SNP policies.

(The SNP, of course, stands for independence for Scotland. But as time goes by that policy, without being abandoned, is increasingly being pushed into the background. The SNP now contests elections on the basis of its record in power at Holyrood, rather than a promise of imminent independence.)

In the Westminster election campaign Labour turned to gut anti-Tory rhetoric to bolster its vote. Despite the hypocrisy of the Labour leadership in voicing such rhetoric – given their record in power – it did represent an assertion of basic working-class politics.

In the Holyrood elections, on the other hand, Labour’s anti-Tory rhetoric fulfils a different function. True enough, it does represent an appeal of sorts to a basic working-class vote. More fundamentally, however, it is used to avoid challenging the SNP’s policies.

Over the past four years the SNP has implemented reforms – however modest some of them may have been – which Labour singularly failed to implement during the preceding eight years when it was in a coalition government with the Lib-Dems. The SNP’s election is largely based on promising a continuation of those policies.

The Labour leadership in Scotland is not prepared to attack the SNP from the left and argue that the SNP’s policies do not go anywhere near far enough. Such an approach is precluded by the Labour leadership’s own politics.

Their way out of this dilemma is to appeal to a gut anti-Toryism and claim that Labour is best placed to challenge the Tory (and Lib-Dem) government in Westminster. This allows the party leadership to sidestep the need to challenge the SNP on their actual policies and record in power.

(And on some significant policy issues in Scottish politics Labour is well to the right of the SNP. For example, it advocates mandatory prison sentences for carrying a knife, and generally longer prison sentences all round. Its exploitation of the release of Al-Megrahi in 2009 was also a shameless exercise in lynch-law populism.)

A third difference between last year’s Westminster elections and this year’s Holyrood elections relates to the strength – or lack of it – of the Labour left in Scotland.

Throughout Britain the Labour left is only a shadow of what it was even as late as the early 1990s. If there has been a revival of the Labour left to any degree since the 2010 general election, then only by comparison with the emaciated state it found itself in after 13 years of Blair and Brown at the helm of New Labour governments.

Even so, for all its weaknesses, sections of the Labour left in 2010 could still summon up the commitment and energy to back the SCSTF and advocate a vote for Labour in the general election, in conjunction with preparing to challenge the anti-working-class policies of whichever government was elected.

But in Scotland the Labour left is arguably in an even more parlous state than in the rest of Britain.

Numerically, it is probably even weaker than elsewhere – either because of a migration by some to the SNP, or because of a migration by others to the Scottish Socialist Party (at a time when it represented a serious political force).

Organisationally, it exists virtually only on paper. If the Labour Representation Campaign (LRC) or the Campaign for Socialism (CfS) have met even once in Scotland over the past year, there has been a marked failure to let their members know about any such meetings.

(The only visible manifestation of either the LRC or the CfS is the latter’s quarterly free magazine, “The Citizen”. The opening sentence in the editorial of its latest issue proclaims: “It is time to get angry.” But anyone who struggles through the subsequent articles is more likely to end up comatose rather than angry or any other emotionally charged state.)

In short, there is no Scottish equivalent (i.e. one adapted to the specifics of current Scottish politics) of the SCSTF in the Holyrood elections. Nor, in the time remaining, is one going to be established.

The fourth major difference between the Holyrood and Westminster elections is the fact that Scottish voters have two votes – one for first-past-the-post constituency candidates, and one for regional ‘lists’.

In a region such as Glasgow, where Labour wins all or nearly all of the individual constituencies, there is arguably little or no point in voting Labour in the regional ‘list’. In fact, throughout the history of the Scottish Parliament no Labour MSP has ever been elected as a Glasgow ‘list’ MSP.

The Holyrood electoral system itself therefore provides openings for parties of the left to win representation in the Parliament, even if those parties are the only voters’ second choice.

But even allowing for all such differences between last year’s Westminster elections and the Holyrood elections this May, the case for calling for a Labour vote – at least in the individual constituencies – remains the only rational policy for the socialist left.

The basic character of the Labour Party has not changed since the general election. In fact, in however limited a fashion, there has been a partial reassertion of trade union influence within the Labour Party.

(For example: the restoration of the right of unions to submit a – very limited – number of motions to Labour Party conference; the role played by the unions in the defeat of David Miliband; and the drive by Unite in particular to have a greater say in Labour policy and decision-making.

At the same time, although this appears to be less widespread in Scotland than in England, some trade union activists who quit the Labour Party under Blair have re-joined.)

Right now and for the foreseeable future the Labour Party remains the focus for trade unions seeking change in the political arena (although how effectively unions organise and fight to secure such change is another question).

The SNP, on the other hand, has no such links with the trade union movement. Despite the fact that some union activists are SNP members, the SNP, by its very nature, has no interest in becoming the ‘political wing’ of the trade union movement in Scotland.

The SNP has certainly moved on from its primitive nationalism of the 1970s and earlier. And its commitment to independence may be expressed less vigorously than in the past (much to the chagrin of its ‘traditionalists’, such as Jim Sillars).

But its overarching political framework is still defined by its goal of an independent capitalist Scotland (which only a left which has had the sense knocked out of it could re-define as a blow against imperialism).

But is there a case for voting for one of the socialist parties/coalitions in the regional ‘lists’ (or at least in Glasgow, given the number of constituency seats which Labour is likely to win in that region)?

Certainly not for Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party (SLP), an organisation which exists only on paper, embodies the essentially Stalinist politics of its founder, does virtually nothing during elections and absolutely nothing between elections.

And certainly not for ‘The Respect Party George Galloway (Respect) – Coalition Against Cuts’ either. This is no more than a vanity project to try to provide Galloway with a seat in Holyrood. The involvement of the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party (Scotland) would be laughable if it was not so pathetic.

And the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP)? While a vote for the SSP cannot be ruled out on principle (as is the case with the SLP and the cheerleaders for Galloway), the SSP has been unable to recover from the damage inflicted on it by Sheridan, the SWP and the Socialist Party.

Politically, the SSP remains an uneasy amalgam of Scottish populism and vaguely class politics, with more than a dash of vintage Stalinism thrown in for good measure. Its much reduced size also highlights a sectarian strand in its politics: its demand that unions disaffiliate from the Labour Party, for example, simply has no purchase on reality.

In fact, one of the strongest supplementary arguments for a vote for Labour in the Holyrood elections is the sorry state of the left outside of the Labour Party – above all as represented by those who have thrown in their lot with Galloway.

(And given that the SNP is likely to hold on to Govan constituency as well as having a chance of taking the Kelvin constituency, the argument that a vote for Labour in the Glasgow regional ‘list’ is a wasted vote deserves closer inspection.)

The absence of a Scottish equivalent of the SCSTF does not undermine the validity of a call for a vote for Labour in the Holyrood elections. What it does do is underline the weakness of the Labour left in Scotland and the need for socialists in Scotland to re-engage with the Labour Party.

Whatever the outcome of the election – at the moment Labour and the SNP are more or less neck-and-neck, although the SNP generally picks up more support in the course of Holyrood election campaigns – the incoming government will be one which seeks to pass on the Con-Dem cuts in public spending.

Socialists need to combine campaigning against those cuts with a rebuilding of the Labour left, both in terms of individual Labour Party membership and also in terms of affiliated unions re-asserting themselves as a political force within the Scottish Labour Party structures.

These are the basic arguments which socialists should be raising in the current election campaign, along with trying to develop a network of activists which can provide a basis for campaigning along these lines after 5th May.

Comments

Submitted by PeterBurton on Mon, 18/04/2011 - 20:09

hmmm!

It's the Labour party that is implementing the cuts in Glasgow big time.Its the Labour party that holds
on to a race to the bottom tendering process between private companies running public services- and by awarding contracts
to lowest bid cowboys - further encourages the worst Thatcherite sharks and it's the Labour party that's desperate to increase the council tax whatever its promises of freeze. One could go on ad nauseum-PFI,PPP etc etc and it's this Labour party we get when they get voted into office , not the individual socialist who isn't that bad on this or that issue or the trade union affiliate who is
not comfortable with some of what Ian Gray is saying and doing.

I think we would be better attaching our numerous and necessary qualifications to a call for an SSP vote than a Labour party that is putting the boot into the working-class where it controls Councils , especially in circumstances where the Tories are not a meaningful threat.

Submitted by ann field on Mon, 18/04/2011 - 23:03

And there was me thinking that all we had to do was elect a Labour government and everything would be okay!

The logic of 'Don't vote Labour - they do nasty things if they get elected' would presumably mean that it was wrong to advocate a vote for them in the General Election last year.

What do you think a Labour government would have done if one had been elected? Weren't they wanting to implement even bigger cuts than Thatcher?

And given that the SSP is not standing any candidates in the first-past-the-post constituencies - who do you think people should vote for in those constituencies?

Submitted by Peter burton on Tue, 19/04/2011 - 19:56

Pete

You answer your own point -You say:

"The logic of 'Don't vote Labour - they do nasty things if they get elected' would presumably mean that it was wrong to advocate a vote for them in the General Election last year."

and

"In the Westminster elections the fundamental question confronting voters was: do you want a Labour or a Tory government (or some kind of coalition with one of those parties at its core)?
That is not the question confronting voters in Scotland this year. The Scottish Tories will be lucky to hang on to a handful of seats. In the Holyrood elections the basic question is: do you want a Labour or an SNP government (or some kind of coalition with one of those parties at its core)?"

The Tories are no threat here ,and this changes what the group ought to say.The SSP , so the group has argued,was not substantially to blame for the crises and split and it is not substantially different politically from the period when we were active in it and calling for an SSP vote.And is it really credible to sell an anti-working-class force in Scotland on the basis of its organic links with the unions ?

Submitted by ann field on Tue, 19/04/2011 - 21:16

I would have thought that a party's "organic links with the unions" (your expression) would count as a "positive reason to vote for a party".

Do you also think it's correct to say: "Right now and for the foreseeable future the Labour Party remains the focus for trade unions seeking change in the political arena (although how effectively unions organise and fight to secure such change is another question)."

Who do you think people should vote for in the first-past-the-post constituencies?

Submitted by Peter burton on Thu, 21/04/2011 - 20:41

Let's get this straight . The group doesn't agree with the Partys' programme,policies,rules and regulations,constitution,philosophy,
culture ,internal regime ,local anti-cuts implementation programme and agenda or any of its other goals but let's call for a Labour vote anyway in a Scottish election where the Tories are no real threat.It's neither honest nor credible. Vote SSP on the Regional List
is the only credible call here.

Pete

Submitted by AWL on Thu, 21/04/2011 - 20:59

There has never been a point throughout the entire history of the Labour Party when we, as revolutionary socialists, would have "agreed with" the Labour Party's policies, rules, constitutions, philosophy, culture or anything else on your list. The political or organisational (in)adequacy of the Labour Party has never been the reason for orienting to it as a site of struggle or for believing that it makes sense to vote for it. It's because it remains, like it or not, the political wing of the trade union movement which is, in turn, the inevitable and organic outgrowth of class struggle where it's at its sharpest (i.e. workplaces). If you think that's no longer true for some reason you should argue that positively, not simply point out how politically/organisationally bad the Labour Party is. Of course there have been very fundamental (near-qualitative in some instances) shifts but to be crude, it's always been bad.

I'm not unpersuadable about calling for an SSP vote but I think the SSP has degenerated almost beyond recognition from when it was at its best. Pete, why don't you make a positive case for why the SSP - whose culture is hardly a shining example to follow and whose politics are groaning under the weight of populist-Stalinist baggage - is where it's at in Scotland?

-

Daniel Randall

Submitted by ann field on Thu, 21/04/2011 - 22:13

It should also be pointed out that the ‘Socialist Campaign to Stop the Tories and Fascists’ did not advocate a Labour vote simply because of a risk of the Tory government. It gave specific reasons, referred to in the original article, for voting Labour.

Your starting point (there is no need to vote Labour because there is no risk of a Tory government in Holyrood) is therefore beside the point. That is not the argument.

(In fact the corollary of the argument that the key issue is to keep the Tories out of Westminster would be to advocate tactical voting, not to advocate a vote for Labour.)

You still won’t say who people should vote for in the first-past-the-post constituencies. I presume that’s because the logic of your argument is that people should simply abstain in the individual constituencies. But I don’t think that’s a position that deserves to be taken seriously.

All that you’re left with therefore is a call for a vote for the SSP on the regional lists.

And that despite the fact that you don’t agree with the SSP’s core policy (independence); trade union work (or lack of it); policies on Cuba, Israel, and other international positions, internal ‘regime’, etc.

If you re-read the original article it does not rule out a vote for the SSP, in contrast to the way it makes a point of ruling out a vote for the Respect Party and the Socialist Labour Party.

(In fact, we’ve published far more material on the website/in the paper attacking Galloway’s electoral project than the SSP itself has.)

But if there is a case for voting SSP on the regional lists, it cannot simply be the negative one of not voting Labour (especially when the reason given for not voting Labour is a wrong one anyway).

Submitted by Peter burton on Sat, 23/04/2011 - 20:06

"The SNP is not, and does not claim to be, a socialist party. But the policies on which it is contesting the Holyrood elections are far removed from those on which the Tories contested the Westminster elections. In fact, more than one political commentator has commented on the overlap in Labour and SNP policies."

This,from your article Stan, matters. There is a relationship between Camerons' Tories,their "shock and awe" tactics and working-class combativity and confidence- or rather the lack of it as the fear factor goes through the roof especially in workplaces. I think for that reason- and the absence of any kind of credible socialist alternative in England at the time of the General election -that calling for a Labour vote with all sorts of qualifications was right.

The SSP is not in the same position as SPEW or the SWP in England. Even now, there is some potential in it, as an organisation that
is in the public conscious, was not as guilty for the crises and split as Sheridan, the SWP and the CWI and has policies both we and most working-class people would agree with - free school meals and free public transport , an end to the Council tax and nuclear weapons,increasing the minimum wage, non -means tested benefits etc etc etc. If the SSP continues to be looked at through an AWL prism it's always going to be found wanting and the SSP policies that are wrong will then be used as a reason to do nothing to either support or change it. Abstain on constituency vote, SSP on Regional List. And get back active in it to link up with an increasingly critical SSY.

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