09.05.2007

Election fiasco

Scottish Socialist Party and Campaign for a Marxist Party members Sandy McBurney and Matthew Jones give their view

Since 1999, the first Holyrood election, the Scottish Socialist Party has had parliamentary representation and in 2003 a massive swing to the SSP gave it six MSPs. In that election over 128,000 people voted SSP, with 31,216 votes (15.23%) cast on the Glasgow regional list alone (matched by nearly 30,000 in the Glasgow constituency contests). In most of the city the SSP finished ahead of both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, and its share of the regional vote was more than both these capitalist parties put together.

There was a real sense of shock at the count in Glasgow that night in 2003, as the SSP won two 'additional members' seats in Glasgow and a further four in the rest of Scotland. The left had arrived - people, particularly the working class - were prepared to vote for, work for and join a united party of the left in unprecedented numbers.

The scale of the reverse last week can be appreciated by the fact that in Glasgow Solidarity won just 8,525 votes (4.13%), while the SSP only took 2,579 (1.25%), polling less than the BNP and even the Socialist Labour Party. It is worth noting, however, that the combined vote would have been just enough to elect an MSP.

As it is, parties to the left of Labour have no representation for the first time in the history of the Scottish parliament. True, each side of the split managed to get one councillor elected, thanks to the new proportional voting system (single transferable vote) for councils in Scotland. The SSP has Jim Bollan in West Dunbartonshire, while Solidarity saw Ruth Black come home in Glasgow. But this is scant compensation for being wiped out at Holyrood.

Why this appalling result? The split has undoubtedly wreaked havoc - a large number of previously active members simply dropped out. This also means that income is lower for both the SSP and Solidarity, while resources consumed in the messy business of the infamous Sheridan court case and the split itself have caused severe financial difficulties for the SSP. During the election campaign activity on the ground, particularly in Glasgow, was at a much lower level in 2007 than in 2003, with fewer public meetings, stalls, etc and less material handed out or posters put up.

Moreover, the SSP in particular has shifted even more towards nationalism, with independence being the key plank in all the party's election literature and manifesto. This is not only an attempt to mislead the working class, but aids the Scottish National Party resurgence. If you want to vote for a nationalist, you might as well vote for one that has a chance of getting elected.

One thing the election campaign clarified was that the SSP's demand for an independent capitalist Scotland as an alleged step forward for the working class is an illusion. Key business supporters of the SNP such as Brian Soutar of Stagecoach and Sir George Mathewson, formerly chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Scotland's largest company, have made it absolutely clear that any move to independence would be a chance to attack the "dependency culture" in Scotland. In other words, a massive attack on public services, public sector jobs, benefits and the living standards of workers.

In the case of Solidarity, the organisation undoubtedly benefited from Tommy Sheridan's public profile - although you would suspect that many would have been put off by some of the revelations and manoeuvres around last year's trial. But the split destroyed one of the SSP's key attractive points: for the first time the quarrelling and sectarian left had united and was offering an alternative of some kind.

The debate around the result of the election has now started - the Campaign for a Marxist Party held a post-election meeting on Tuesday May 8 (watch this space for a report next week) - and on the SSP side there will be further meetings over the next few days. Rightly comrades are calling into question not only the leadership, but its politics, including nationalism, the SSP's own internal democracy and its attitude towards the institutions of bourgeois democracy. One response from a section of the membership is to recoil from standing in elections. We disagree, but at least the debate will be had.

In an encouraging development a member of Solidarity, John Dennis from Dumfries, has had a letter published in The Herald (for a long time the letters page of The Herald has made up for the lack of an internal bulletin in the SSP) calling for unity among the rank and file of Solidarity and the SSP, even if the leaderships cannot agree. Such a move, if it took shape, would bring more forces into the debate over the election fiasco - although we note that comrade Dennis has been savagely denounced inside Solidarity for making this appeal.