Socialists ready to shock the establishment

With less than one year until the Scottish Parliament elections, due in May 2003, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) faces its biggest challenge yet.

The party has come a long way since May 1999, when Tommy Sheridan held his clenched fist aloft in a protest against the oath of allegiance to the Queen as the new members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) were sworn in.

The SSP was launched just six months before the Scottish elections in 1999. In the four years since its launch, the SSP has grown in credibility and support. Socialist ideas are being taken up as credible alternatives to capitalist globalisation. The SSP polled 2% at the last Scottish election — but for the last year it has been consistently registering 6% in the opinion polls for the “second ballot”, which is conducted under proportional representation.

The party has been transformed. Launched with a handful of branches, mainly in the central belt, it now boasts 70 branches throughout the country. SSP members are just as likely to be fighting genetically modified crop trials in the Highlands, or organising anti-cuts campaigns in the Borders as protesting outside Glasgow City Council.

With 6% of the vote, the SSP could win four or five seats in the Scottish Parliament. This would represent a decisive breakthrough. Overnight, the “one-man band syndrome”, with which the party's political opponents attack Sheridan, the SSP's sole MSP, would evaporate. The SSP would burst through the credibility barrier.

Even the figure of 6% may prove an underestimate. As a general rule, opinion polls overestimate support for the big parties and underestimate support for the smaller, less well-known parties.

In the French presidential elections, the combined “hard left” vote reached 11% — an increase of 1.4 million votes, against the background of a huge slump in the overall turnout.

Could the vote for the socialist left in France be replicated in Scotland? In one sense, we are in an advantageous position. The SSP has managed to unite 95% of the left into a single party.

In the early 1990s, Scottish Militant Labour had considerable success in local council elections, mainly in Glasgow. This was a direct result of campaigns launched at a local level. Battles against the poll tax, against privatisation of water, against cuts and closures of local services, over a number of years, helped politicise whole areas of Glasgow.

The origins of the SSP can be traced to this period of struggle. If the SSP is to develop into a mass party, the key is to deepen this influence and support at a grassroots level. This is the central challenge facing the SSP and its branches in the next 12 months.

In a number of European countries, notably France, the far right has cashed in on disillusionment with the mainstream parties. In some localised pockets of England, the neo-fascist British National Party has begun to fill that role. Its breakthroughs will encourage the fascists to extend their electoral activity, including in the Scottish Parliament elections, where the proportional representation system makes it easier for small parties to be elected.

However, in Scotland the success of the SSP, combined with the strong local campaigning record of the socialist left over a decade or more, has helped block the path of the far right. In contrast to many other parts of Europe, political protest in Scotland has been channelled to the left rather than to the right.

As the mainstream parties' policies converge, traditional loyalties have begun to break down. In opinion polls, those describing themselves as having low or no party identification rose from 46% in 1987 to 62% by last year.

In the trade unions, there are the first stirrings of a break with the Labour Party. Meanwhile, sections of the old middle-class Tory vote in Scotland have shifted to Labour and the capitalist Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP).

At the same time, a sizeable number of ex-Labour and ex-SNP voters have transferred their allegiance to the SSP. Closely following in Labour's footsteps, the SNP is on a relentless march to the right.

The recent resignation from the SNP of Dorothy Grace Elder, a Glasgow MSP, has been portrayed as the product of personality clashes. But underlying these “clashes” is a boiling tension between SNP activists on the ground and the SNP leadership in Holyrood [the Scottish parliament].

During the late 1980s and mid-1990s, the SNP was able to eat into Labour's heartlands by presenting as a socialist party standing in the traditions of Red Clydeside.

But increasingly, the vision offered by the SNP leadership is of a semi-
independent Scotland which is a safe haven for capitalist global investment, and with an economy which is controlled by European bankers. Following the Labour government's budget pledge to impose a paltry tax increase on North Sea oil profits, the SNP linked up with the oil companies, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats to oppose the measure.

This move to the right is being accompanied by a purge of left-wing MSPs. Margo McDonald and Lloyd Quinan, who are prominent opponents of the leadership, have so far not been selected for the 2003 elections.

These changes have implications for socialists and republicans inside the SNP. There is a dwindling layer of working-class activists within the SNP who were recruited in the 1990s during the poll tax campaign. They have stuck with the party despite discontent at the direction it has taken. Many of them could be won over to the SSP.

Yet despite its shift to the right and its lacklustre leadership, the SNP could end up in a pivotal position after 2003. At this stage, combined support for the three pro-independence parties — the SNP, the SSP and the Greens — is running at around 40% in the polls. That could easily be transformed into an outright majority by the time of the 2003 elections, posing the prospect of a dramatic constitutional crisis.

Big international issues could have a bearing on the next Scottish election. There has been speculation that the referendum on the Euro will be called on the same day as the Scottish ballot.

If that is the case, the SNP campaign would revolve around the slogan “Independence in Europe”, which would have the effect of heightening the national question issue of independence.

The SSP should campaign for a no vote, putting firmly on the agenda the call for an independent socialist Scotland which would stand up to the institutions of global capitalism.

Some SSP members argue for a boycott of the Euro referendum. Even from a tactical point of view, this would be a serious mistake. On the one hand we would be trying to maximise our support at the polling stations and on the other calling on people not to vote.

Events in Europe over the past few months have tarnished the attraction of the Euro for some people on the progressive left. Until now, Europe has been seen as more left wing than the US-UK axis. But if the right win the looming parliamentary elections in Germany, all of the major European countries will be governed by parties at least as right-wing as British New Labour. And with the rise of the fascist right in countries like France, Germany, Holland and Italy, the idea that Europe is a beacon of social progress is already becoming less compelling.

The elections could also be conducted against the background of a US-British war on Iraq. There is speculation that an all-out war could be launched either this (Northern) autumn or, more likely, next spring.

In recent months the SSP has established itself as Scotland's anti-war party. The SNP is likely to prevaricate for fear of losing support among its more right-wing voters. The party leadership talks about supporting an attack on Iraq, providing it is carried out under the banner of the United Nations.

The Lib Dems may take a similar position, while the Tories and Labour will back Washington to the hilt. Our anti-war stance will attract ferocious criticism from Labour and big business newspapers like the Daily Record. But we will gain wider support, especially among young people, for a clear and principled position of total opposition to Bush and Blair.

In the meantime, the SSP has to direct most of its energy towards fighting on bread-and-butter issues that affect the lives of the working class. Immediately on the horizon is the free school meals bill, which has gathered remarkably broad support from a range of organisations ranging from the Scottish Trades Union Congress to the British Medical Association.

By combining a broad socialist, internationalist and anti-imperialist vision with a preparedness to get our hands dirty by fighting on local issues in local communities, the SSP can go from strength to strength over the next year and perhaps shock the establishment.

[From Frontline the magazine of the International Socialist Movement, a Marxist platform within the Scottish Socialist Party. Visit <http://www.redflag.org.uk/frontline>.]

From Green Left Weekly, July 3, 2002.
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