Election heralds urgent need to break with passivity and head for real change

by Ken Ferguson

IN SCOTLAND, the election contains both positives and negatives with the balance coming down, at least provisionally’, on the progressive side.

The appearance of Reform MSPs surely came as no surprise predicted as it was in poll after poll and indeed, taking into account both constituency and list votes, it can be argued it is less dramatic than predicted.

However, both in Scotland and the wider UK, Reform is displacing — at least for now — the centuries-old Tories, leading, already, to calls in the Tory press for an alliance between Badenoch and Farage to forge a united right wing front.

Watch this space.

Voice readers are unlikely to weep many tears for the further humiliation of the Labour Party which long since discarded any real claim to represent the working class, preferring the company of speculators and the priorities of warmongers and the rich. The newly re-elected — for a remarkable third decade — SNP government far outnumbers it opponents and has, at least potentially, allies in the now 15 strong Green group. Congratulations to them is of course in order but now comes the litmus test, fashioned years ago by Lenin, what is to be done?

Before answering that conundrum it might be useful to give some consideration to how it came to pass that, in Scotland which was a beacon of opposition to the brutality of Thatcher, a openly Thatcherite political formation such as Reform was able to pile up thousands of votes in working class areas. The answer to this has a long tail with some of it originating in Scotland and some based on much broader factors but all creating a feeling of dislocation and neglect and increasingly of being marginalised and ignored.

This malaise, rooted in factory closures and the destruction of the pits, lies at the heart of the dissolving political old order which, in the minds of millions amounts to failure, falling living standards and insecurity at every level.

All this compounded by the massive sell off of council homes largely into the hands of greedy private landlords at the same time as house buying is ever more difficult generated our ever worsening
housing crisis. Thus a working class suffering the latest bout of insecurity visited on them by the cost of living crisis and recalling decades of sacking from formerly secure work, paying for bankers crimes through cuts and austerity, stuck in their tens of thousands on house waiting lists and languishing in pain waiting for NHS treatment understandably turning to the new ‘remedies’ of Reform.

The truth is that throughout the election campaign the parties aspiring to government deliberately avoided the massive economic challenge in public spending which poses £4.5 billion cuts and the loss of 20,000 public service jobs and the reality that this crisis will confront Holyrood in short order.

On past form there will be much oily talk from the government about reorganising public services (cuts) and further reduction of services in the name of “balancing the books” to the old tune of blame Westminster despite the axe being firmly in First Minister Swinney’s grip.

This crisis is also likely to pose a direct challenge to the newly enlarged Holyrood Green group which spent the election campaign claiming socialist credentials partly to bask in the reflected glory of current England and Wales Green leader Polanski which no doubt benefitted them.

Now crunch time approaches when the issue becomes one of acceptance of sackings and cuts or resistance to them and on past form the Greens have voted to implement cuts and sackings. Like other elected politicians it will take a mass movement to keep them honest.

The 600,000-strong STUC can have a pivotal role here but it must move beyond the confines of the passivity of the seminar room with the great and the good — for example basing discussions on Council Tax abolition with parties who kept it — into communities, local unions and those under the cosh of austerity.

In particular, the unions need to grasp the new rights of access to workplaces contained in the recent Workers’ Rights Act and launch a energetic drive to unionise the millions currently without trade union protection, and in doing so, re-invigorate the public role of workers in defending wages, conditions and the
health and wellbeing of our communities.

However overarching the politics that can defeat Reform’s Thatcherism and finally break the illusion in markets is the critical need to accept that the current profit driven economic system inevitably puts the needs of money over that of workers and communities.

Public ownership heart of campaign

That’s why, in the election campaign, the Scottish Socialist Party placed public ownership at the heart of its campaign since taking our key resources off the profiteers and into the hands of the people is the indispensable key to rebuilding industry, skilled unionised jobs and rebuilding communities currently turning to Reform, in despair.

As the crisis deepens events such as slashing cuts and brutal sackings will throw the choices before politicians — particularly those claiming the name of socialist — into sharp relief and offer a stark choice between the elite minority and the health, prosperity and wealth of the working class majority.

For the Voice the choice of people over profit can only be realised by a rebuilt and reactivated labour movement urgently grasping the new tools available to recruit the thousands currently not members and inspire resistance in workplaces, colleges communities beyond.

Active resistance to defeat the looming cuts and build support for a real socialist alternative can both defeat immediate attacks and, by re-energising peoples’ resistance, isolate and ultimately defeat Reform and their Tory soulmates.

The struggle continues!