06.11.1997

Labour’s Paisley freeze

“Lacklustre”; “the dullest by-election campaign in years”; “Labour’s tactic is to bore its way to victory” - these are some of the opinions of the bourgeois press of the Paisley South by-election.

The SNP’s early promise of a no-holds-barred contest has evaporated. Despite accusations of sleaze, feuding, cronyism and incompetence directed against Labour’s representatives on the local Renfrewshire council, MPs from neighbouring constituencies and down the road in Glasgow, the SNP failed to seize the opportunity to exploit the situation. One reason for this is that the Labour Party, instead of ‘spinning’ to victory as it has done in the recent past, actually attempted to minimise press coverage to try to freeze out the opposition.

Relying on Blair’s and Labour’s continuing popularity and wary of its vulnerability on local sleaze, Labour’s campaign team has attempted to avoid confrontation. To this end photo-opportunities replaced press conferences in an effort to reduce the possibility of gaffes. In their frustration at not getting anything to write about, journalists ambushed Douglas Alexander, Labour’s candidate, at one of these photo shoots. His failure to name correctly the manager of the local first division football team, St Mirren, brought delight and a story to political correspondents and embarrassment to the candidate’s MP minders.

Alexander’s selection as candidate was controversial. Gordon Brown was prominent in pushing young Douglas’s nomination for Paisley, as he is one of the chancellor’s close advisors. However, this brought Brown into conflict with his boss - Blair was trying to get his own advisor, Pat McFadden, on the short list. This power struggle between ministerial heavyweights on this occasion resulted in success for Brown. However, Blair turned the tables within weeks, getting Brown’s acquiescence on the single European currency.

While the capitalist parties have been campaigning by soundbite, telephone and photo opportunity, the Scottish Socialist Alliance’s activists have been going into the housing schemes, onto the doorsteps, talking to the people of Paisley face to face. Putting forward the case for a socialist alternative as an antidote to the rotting chaos of capitalism, involving them in the active fight for a better future and getting them to vote for SSA candidate Frances Curran.

Unfortunately the Socialist Labour Party decided to stand Chris Herriot against the SSA in this by-election, thus splitting the left vote. This is down to Arthur Scargill’s sectarian belief that only ‘his’ SLP can provide a left alternative. All other groups are irrelevant. Despite serious attempts by the SSA to discuss and resolve the situation with SLP members in Scotland, Scargill’s personal intervention ensured that any such solution was rejected out of hand.

It is incumbent on Scargill to recognise the development and importance of Socialist Alliances in Britain. This is particularly true in Scotland where work has been done within the communities and the SSA is leading political fights against the Labour establishment. Only by ending such sectarianism will we be able to build a genuine, mass working class party.

Nick Clarke