18.01.1996

Locomotive force

THE Dundee Socialist Forum met on Tuesday night to hear report backs from Scargill’s meeting and to consider the next step in setting up an alternative socialist organisation in Scotland.

Sadly the outcome of the SLP meeting came as no surprise to comrades in Scotland. The only moves from Scargill’s original proposals were to grant regions a degree of autonomy within the new SLP (Scotland would be treated as a region) and to enshrine the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the organisation by insisting that any resolution debated at a biannual conference could not be discussed at the next biannual conference unless a two thirds majority agreed that this could happen.

The Scottish delegation put forward their proposals for an “open, inclusive and flexible” organisation. They left the meeting with the conviction that Scargill and his supporters were making serious mistakes, if they genuinely wanted to build the type of party needed by the working class in Britain today.

In spite of the fact that the SLP received no support from the Scottish delegates, Scargill announced later that his organisation did intend to organise in Scotland. This might be difficult, as John Milligan of the RMT, who has agreed to organise rallies for Scargill around Scotland, is apparently himself still unconvinced by the proposals. I have no doubt that a Scargill meeting would attract a lot of people, but the fact remains that his proposals do not strike a chord with political activists north of the border.

Many comrades at the Dundee meeting felt however that the time was right to push forward with proposals to establish a Scottish Socialist Alliance/Scottish Socialist Party and that the meeting in Glasgow on February 10 would be the place to do this.

Comrades were vociferous in discussion and there was no sense of people feeling downhearted at Scargill’s intransigence. Rather, there was a mood that Scotland was leading the way. As one comrade put it, “Scotland could be the locomotive force for Britain as a whole.”

Mary Ward