Election Digest: Scottish Socialist Voice

Date: 16th June '01

Name: Lion Rampant

Country: Alba

Scottish Socialist Voice - 15 June 2001
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SSP election analysis
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Scotland after the election

Labour landslide masks rising discontent

Poor William Hague had an impossible task on his hands.

With New Labour having stolen one Tory policy after another, by June 7 there was scarcely a puddle of clear blue water left to separate him from Tony Blair.

In his desperation to be different, the Richmond skinhead ended up doing a reasonable impersonation of a BNP fuhrer.

But his mad dog rants against refugees and his hysterical pleas to save the pound failed to save his own political career.

Yet amidst the frenzied cheering and flag-waving of the new Labour media groupies, one sobering fact stands out like a black eye.
On June 7, just one in four adults in the UK electorate voted for New Labour.

Almost half the electorate abstained. And even of those who did vote, only 42 per cent backed Blair, with 58 per cent voting for opposition parties.

Even more ominously, Labour's biggest slump in support occurred in the party's traditional heartlands.

According to an ICM exit poll for the BBC, there was a swing to Labour among the middle and upper classes - and a sizeable swing away from Labour among working class voters.

As political analyst, John Curtice, pointed out in the Scotsman, "Never has Labour's link with its traditional working class roots looked more tenuous than now."

Labour, the Tories and the SNP all suffered huge losses. These parties lost over half a million votes between them in Scotland. Significantly, the only two parties which gained were the Lib Dems and the SSP - both of which called for extra taxes on the rich and more investment in public services.

The Lib Dems are an unadulterated pro-capitalist big business party. Their tax proposals were ultra- mild: those earning over 100,000 year would have their tax rate increased from 40 per cent to 50 per cent under the Lib Dems.

Even under Thatcher, right up until 1988, the rich paid 63 per cent of their income in taxes.

Yet so far to the right has New Labour swung that the Lib Dems successfully portrayed themselves as the most left wing of the major parties.

For the SNP, June 7 was a serious setback. Under John Swinney, the party has moved gradually rightwards.

It has abandoned many of its key policies of the 1990s, including public ownership of the privatised utilities and the restoration of benefits to 16 and 17 year olds.

The SNP proposal of a five per cent increase on the top rate of taxation is even more timid than the ten per cent rise proposed by the Lib Dems.

In this election, Swinney even played down the party's commitment to independence and the break up of the UK.

When Jeremy Paxman taunted the SNP on Newsnight as a "regional party", Swinney failed to respond. He eventually ended up calling for a cut in the number of Scottish MPs in Westminster.

Yet despite the dull, uninspiring leadership of the SNP and its timid politics, the SNP will make big advances in the 2003 Holyrood elections.

Westminster elections are never easy for the SNP, or for smaller Scottish-based parties like the SSP.

During a Westminster election, the media becomes obsessed with the question of who will be the next Prime Minister.

The focus of political debate invariably shifts from Scotland to London.

On top of that, since the setting up of the Scottish Parliament, Westminster has become an even more remote and irrelevant institution to many voters.

The Scottish Parliament now deals with many of the bread and butter issues including health, education and transport.

Polling evidence has suggested that SNP voters were more likely to stay at home in a Westminster election than voters of the other main parties.

Nonetheless, SNP activists will be shaken by this result.

Under Swinney, the SNP blatantly set out to fight for Middle Scotland.
In the cities, SNP activists still tend to run a more left wing campaign, targeting disillusioned Labour voters.

But nationally the leadership have sought to present the SNP as a sober, fiscally responsible party, only marginally more left wing than New Labour.

This meant the SNP was incapable of eating into Labour's heartlands. Ironically, the party simultaneously failed to secure its rural strongholds of Galloway - which it lost to the Tories - and Perth, where it held on with a wafer-thin majority.

Yet the pro-independence vote in Scotland has marginally risen since 1997.

The combined SNP-SSP vote was 23 per cent, compared to 22 per cent for the SNP four years ago.

But it is the smaller of these two parties, the SSP, which is most equipped politically to build mass support among disaffected Labour voters in Scotland's urban heartlands.

Of the one and and a half million who refused to vote last week, the vast majority would support SSP policies on redistribution of wealth, increased pensions and benefits, a higher minimum wage, opposition to privatisation, opposition to nuclear weapons and massive extra spending on public services.

On top of that tens of thousands of people voted Labour with a heavy heart.

Many are sympathetic to the aims of the SSP and can be won over to a genuine socialist party.

During and after the general election, hundreds of SNP supporters and dozens of SNP activists contacted the SSP for further information.

Many are socialists who back independence rather than straightforward nationalists - and are beginning to see the SSP as their natural political home.

The SSP has an open door policy. We invite all socialists, whatever their previous political allegiances to join us in building a mass, united socialist party prepared to storm the citadels of power and establish an independent socialist Scotland.

When the dust has settled on this general election, the political focus in Scotland will begin to turn towards the battle royal that will be the 2003 Holyrood elections.

Of Scotland's five main parties, only two have emerged strengthened from the 2001 general election - the Lib Dems and the SSP.

But with the Lib Dems in Scotland handcuffed to the New Labour administration, any gains the party has made in this election will eventually evaporate.

In contrast, the SSP is new, dynamic, principled, courageous and prepared to resist injustice at every turn.

Above all the SSP - in contrast to the grey big business parties - has ideals, vision and a political programme capable of transforming Scotland from top to bottom.

Across the globe, socialism is now resurgent after the long dark years of defeat and retreat.

In Scotland, the forces of socialism are united as never before. They are growing in strength and influence.

And, most importantly of all, they are brimming over with optimism and confidence in the future. -----------------------------------------

The rise and rise of socialism in Scotland

It was the most spectacular vote for socialism in any Westminster election in the last 50 years.

As hundreds of thousands of voters deserted New Labour, the SNP and the Tories, tens of thousands swung behind the Scottish Socialist Party.

In 1997 the forerunner of the SSP - the Scottish Socialist Alliance - contested just 16 seats and won 9,457 votes. In 2001, the SSP stood in all 72 seats and took 72,518 votes.

In other words, support for the Scottish Socialists has multiplied seven and a half times in the first four years of New Labour. Even in the two years since the Holyrood elections, the SSP has surged forwards and upwards.

In 1999, with the same national turnout, the total SSP vote was 25,000 in the first ballot and 39,000 in the second ballot, conducted under proportional representation.

It is always exceptionally difficult for a small party to make headway in a Westminster election.

The loaded first past the post voting system discourages people from voting for candidates who have no hope of winning.

In general elections, the media generally ignore the non-mainstream while providing massive daily coverage to every word and gesture of the UK party leaders.

The SSP was systematically excluded from TV debates. It was effectively banned from the pages of the tabloids by the puppets who edit these papers on behalf of the New Labour government.

As a result, the coverage of the 2001 general election was brain-numbingly boring as four identikit parties squabbled over petty details.

This in turn contributed to the pitifully low turn-out of just 59 per cent across Scotland.

Against this background, the 72,000 votes for the SSP represents an outstanding breakthrough.

The SNP took 30 years after its formation before it finally won 64,000 votes.

That result, in the 1964 general election, catapulted the SNP into the mainstream of politics and transformed Scotland into a four party system.

This result on June 7 will go down in history as the day a five-party political system arrived in Scotland.

In the past, socialists have been able to achieve modest successes at local level by selecting prime seats and concentrating resources into those areas.

In England and Wales, that is still the stage that socialists are at (see Socialist Alliance results on page 7).

But the SSP is now a truly nationwide party.
In Glasgow the party averaged seven per cent of the vote and saved its deposit in all nine constituencies within the city boundaries.

But in Edinburgh, traditionally a much more difficult city for socialists, the party achieved over four per cent in several seats including Edinburgh East and Edinburgh North - both of which include large concentrations of wealth.

Even more remarkable was the SSP vote in the final two seats to be declared - Orkney & Shetland and Argyll & Bute. In these remote rural and island constituencies, the SSP took 4.7 per cent (Orkney) and 4 per cent (Argyll).

The SSP vote on June 7 was the highest socialist vote in Scotland since 1945.

It is all the more significant given that this election took place against a backcloth of four years of economic growth, with unemployment in Scotland falling to its lowest level for more than 25 years.

In the space of two and a half momentous years, the SSP has smashed the myth that socialism is dead and buried.

In the next two years, leading up to the next Holyrood elections, Scotland's united socialist party has the opportunity to capture the hearts and minds, not just of tens of thousands, but of hundreds of thousands of people the length and breadth of Scotland.

Top socialist votes in Scotland

In the Glasgow Pollok constituency, Keith Baldassara took ten per cent of the vote - higher than any other left or Green candidate in the UK. The next best socialist votes in the UK were in Glasgow Maryhill and Glasgow Springburn, where Gordon Scott and Carolyn Leckie took eight per cent of the vote.

In all nine Glasgow seats, SSP candidates held their deposits and took an average of over seven per cent.

Outside Glasgow, the SSP took over five per cent in Coatbridge & Chryston, and over four per cent in Argyll & Bute, Clydebank, Cumbernauld, Cunninghame South, Dumbarton, Dundee West, Edinburgh East, Edinburgh North, Hamilton South, Greenock & Inverclyde, Rutherglen, Motherwell & Wishaw and Orkney & Shetland.

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Hundreds phone to join SSP

by Ian McDonald

The Scottish Socialist Party's election certainly stood out from the grey campaigns of the other parties.

The SSP's question and answer quiz - Right, Left or Centre? - invited voters to tick the boxes and test their ideals.

Unlike the establishment parties, we also included a phone number for the public to phone and talk to us directly about our policies and our principles.

The leaflet generated 1000-1500 calls including requests for copies of our manifesto, questions about our policies, well wishers and inquiries about joining.

From the remotest islands to the inner cities, the calls came flooding in.

An SNP member from the Highlands called to say he'd just read the leaflet. He'd been an SNP activist for 40 years, but our leaflet had convinced him he was in the wrong party.

Several hundred miles and a generation apart, a ten year old boy from Partick called to ask if he could join.

He told us that he wanted to be Health Minister in the Scottish Parliament in the future to make sure more money is spent on research into illnesses and diseases.

A retired woman from North Ronaldsay in the Orkney Isles called to say that she had never voted before in her life but that she would be going to the polls for the first time on June 7 to vote for our candidate.

On the same day a Labour-voting pensioner phoned from the other end of the country - Ecclefechan in Dumfriesshire.

She had received our leaflet and wanted to tell us that she too would be making the break and voting SSP.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again - she had called the Labour Party's headquarters to tell them what she thought of them, and that they had lost her lifelong support!

Even after the polls closed and the results had come in the calls still came. Many wanted to join - one Glasgow man said that this was the first time he had voted in 20 years, and could he now join the SSP?

The SSP now has a solid core of support the length and breadth of Scotland - roll on the 2003 Holyrood elections!

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Ex-Tory millionaire shaken

by Mark Brown
(Note: Mark Brown is an SWP member)

One of the best election results for the Socialist Alliance in England came in St Helens South on Merseyside.

The candidate, firefighter Neil Thompson, got a superb 2,325 votes - a 7 per cent share of the poll.

This was despite the rival campaign of the Socialist Labour Party which took three per cent.

The New Labour leadership had insulted local people by installing Shaun Woodward, the former Tory MP and millionaire, as its candidate for one of Labour's safest seats.

This provoked Neil, a longstanding Labour supporter to stand against his old party.
The contrast between him and Woodward - who once boasted that even his butler had a butler - couldn't have been greater.

Speaking to the Voice before the election, Neil said,:

"My dad was a miner. I couldn't have campaigned or voted for Woodward - my dad would turn in his grave."

Neil's trade union, the FBU, recently voted to allow its members the right to donate their political levy to parties other than Labour.

Neil now believes that trade unionists should make the break and transfer their political levies to the Socialist Alliance and the Scottish Socialist Party.

Another outstanding socialist result in England was the 2638 votes - 7 per cent - in Coventry North East for Socialist Alliance National Chair, Dave Nellist.

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Racist far right exploits hatred of New Labour

The anger against New Labour has helped strengthen the socialist vote but under certain conditions, sinister forces on the far right can exploit the bitterness.

This was shown by the Nazi BNP's election successes in Oldham and Burnley. In Oldham West the BNP got 16.4 per cent of the vote and came third. In Oldham East it won 11.2 per cent of the vote and in nearby Burnley it picked up 11.3 per cent. Nationally the Nazis made no impact. They stood in fewer seats than in 1997 and the lower number of candidates is a sign of their failure to build on the anger with New Labour.

The NF got a drubbing, polling only 0.6 per cent and 0.9 per cent in seats in Kent where it has marched against asylum seekers.

Mainstream politicians will condemn the BNP but claim that Oldham is an exception.

Such complacency is dangerous. Despite their failure to make a national impact the Nazis will take heart from Oldham and try to repeat their success elsewhere.

In Glasgow the BNP has already targeted refugees and has leafleted a number of housing schemes in an attempt to gain a foothold.

They can be stopped in their tracks but that means organising all of those horrified by the Nazi vote in Oldham and Burnley.
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