Back to main newsLabour must change course - say Scottish communists
Sat 05 Jul 2008
Author: Simon Steel
The refusal of Labour governments under Blair and Brown to pursue pro-working class policies is paving the way for the return of the Tories. Let no one be in any doubt about that. The inability of the Scottish end of New Labour any longer to hold its own is further confirmation of the rejection of New Labour in the rest of Britain – so starkly revealed in last year’s elections to the Scottish Parliament.
Wendy Alexander’s resignation as Scottish Labour leader should be seen against that backdrop. The turmoil in Labour’s ranks is a direct result of the systematic pursuit of reactionary policies at home and abroad – continued adherence to Tory anti-trade union legislation, more recently, the scrapping of the 10p tax rate, the foisting on public sector worker of below inflation pay settlements, the deliberate undermining of national agreements on wages and conditions, the steady privatisation of the NHS, the grotesque participation in imperialist wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, at the behest of US imperialism, the proposed replacement of the Trident missile system (notwithstanding the declared position of the Scottish Parliament), as well as the haemoraging of Labour members, all indicate a Labour government at Westminster and a Labour Party in Scotland, yet again, taking the opposite direction to the one they need to be going in.
As to Wendy Alexander’s resignation, let’s be clear about what lies at the root of the present media obsession with political party funding. The ongoing debacle has more to do with breaking the trade union link with Labour than ensuring so-called transparency and honesty in the funding of political parties.
In the wake of last year’s elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Communist Party’s Scottish Committee argued that the vote, which brought the SNP into government, represented an angry protest at the party’s abandonment of progressive policies under the leadership of the Blair clique and that Labour ignores this at its peril.
We were similarly clear that the SNP’s victory did not represent any mandate for separation. We further argued that The current balance of forces in the Scottish Parliament does offer a way forward. But the parliament itself will not produce it. A progressive outcome will depend on what happens outside. The key force has to be the trade union movement. But in a new way – in active alliance with working people across Scotland, alliances in defence of public services, jobs, peace and democratic control, alliances that give hope of a better world and that spell out the nature of big business control and the urgency of mobilising against it. The Scottish Trades Union Congress has policy to do this. It is urgent that it does.
Only such political pressure from below will ensure that Labour MSPs fight for Scottish Labour Party policy against privatisation in the NHS, against Trident, for the fourth (council housing) option and for restored public ownership in transport. Only such a movement can give support to those SNP MSPs who are willing to fight for public ownership and to speak out on the class issues and the nature of EU control.
The trade union response to Wendy Alexander’s resignation must be to pile on the pressure for a complete change of course by Labour.
Mobilising the trade union movement and ordinary Labour Party members on this basis would be a massive blow to New Labour control inside the Labour Party – especially if similar moves developed in Wales and England. It would strengthen those forces in the SNP who don’t want to see their party ruled by big business. And in so doing it will open up prospects for broader alliances against big business control in Europe.
Reject New Labour’s bankrupt policies!
For peace, public ownership, democracy and socialism!
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