29.10.1998
Report on meeting with Scottish Socialist Alliance/Scottish Socialist Party
SWP pre-conference discussion
This document featured in the Socialist Workers Party pre-conference internal Bulletin No2, berating the SSA/SSP for refusing to contemplate a unified socialist list for next year’s Scottish parliamentary elections. The CPGB fully supports the idea behind the SWP’s ‘Open letter for socialist unity’, and considers that the same principle applies in all-Britain elections, particularly those for the European parliament in 1999. The left must unite to maximise the challenge to New Labour
On Friday October 9 Chris Bambery, Julie Waterson and Glasgow organiser Ian Mitchell met with Tommy Sheridan and Allan Green of the Scottish Socialist Alliance. This was a follow up meeting to one held at our request in June to discuss a united socialist list in next May’s Scottish parliamentary elections.
The meeting began with them urging us to join the Scottish Socialist Party which is to be launched in February. They argued that all socialists in Scotland could unite in the new SSP. We replied that the SSP was consciously being launched not as a revolutionary party, but as one embracing revolutionaries and reformists, that this blurred the key divide in the working class movement, that historically in such hybrids it was the right wing that called the shots and, lastly, that the SSP’s interim programme was left reformist.
Underlying the SSP approach is a pessimism about revolutionary change. At their recent conference one of the keynote speakers contrasted the 1980s, when socialists had a big audience, with the 1990s, when the collapse of the USSR has allowed the right to go on the offensive
The dangers of adapting to reformism were demonstrated by Hugh Kerr MEP (he’s joined the SSP) in his opening speech to that conference. He argued that the SSP could hold the balance of power in the Scottish parliament and that “there would be a price to be paid” for SSP support for either the SNP or Labour!
The statement on “equal rights” says nothing about immigration controls, abortion rights or opposition to separate catholic and protestant schools in Scotland. It has none of the sharpness of our Action Programme.
The SSP is also clearly a nationalist party in its call for a Scottish socialist republic. Our position is that we are for the right of the Scottish people to self-determination and would shed no tears over the destruction of the UK state. Clearly if a referendum on separation was seen as a vote of confidence in Blair we would have no problem voting for separation. But the national question is not like that in Ireland. Ireland was a colony of Britain. For Marx, support for Irish independence was a matter of principle. In contrast, Scots played a full and bloody part in the creation of the British Empire.
Socialists have to say to workers that independence will solve nothing if Scotland remains a low wage economy competing for multinational investment within the EU. ‘Silicon Glen’ faces ruin as the computer industry collapses into a crisis of overproduction. A Scottish parliament would do nothing to halt that. Workers have to fight for a society based on need rather than private profit.
That centres on a direct confrontation with the ruling class and the state that protects its wealth. Scottish workers should follow the lead of Korean workers at Hyundai who occupied against job losses and won. Scottish workers do not have separate interests to English workers, nor are they more disadvantaged. Socialists reject pan-nationalism, arguing that Scotland is one of the most class-divided nations in the world. Class unity between Scottish, English and Welsh workers isn’t something abstract. It is a daily necessity.
The key issue in Scotland is the mounting job losses. The Scottish parliament is powerless to deal with economic affairs. The stress on independence does not address the need for a working class fightback. Disillusionment with New Labour is mounting. There is a very concrete battle being fought over what sort of alternative is on offer between socialists and the SNP. The SSP fudge this divide.
Lastly, the SSA is no bigger than the SWP in Scotland. It does not exist in Aberdeen, scarcely so in Greenock or Paisley. We are bigger in Edinburgh, and in Glasgow it is certainly not larger than us - though as a high profile city Councillor Tommy Sheridan has a personal following.
On the question of the Scottish parliamentary elections, we proposed that all socialists (SSA, SLP and SWP) could unite in a single list and that, whatever our differences, could come together on a limited platform. Each party could put out their own publicity within that.
The way the electoral system is being imposed by the Blairites makes unity imperative (see Charlie Kimber’s document in pre-conference Bulletin No1). For instance in Glasgow, as elsewhere, you get two votes. One is for the election of an MSP for say, Shettleston, and will be on the traditional first-past-the-post system. You then get a vote for a party list whose votes will be counted across Glasgow and on the basis of which extra seats will be allocated. You can only vote for one list.
The SSA stated they would stand as a party list across Scotland and would not enter into unity. What they were prepared to do was to stand down in a few first-past-the-post seats to allow us to stand.
The way they will run the campaign is by a central push to get as many votes for the SSP list as possible. The key result will be the amount of votes each party list gets. The actual contests for the first-past-the-post seats will be secondary.
The SSA/SSP are clear this is a party building decision which is not open for negotiations. It is a sectarian position. In Wales we have reached agreement for a common list with the Socialist Party and Cymru Goch.
We will meet again in November. In the meantime we should get as many signatures on the ‘Open letter for socialist unity’ in the elections as possible. We need to make clear who is sabotaging this.
Chris Bambery, Julie Waterson, Ian Mitchell