 cottish Labour prides itself on its distinctive
culture, ethos and political outlook compared to the rest
of the British party. This is a party defined by the fact
it has won every Westminster election in Scotland since 1959 - twelve in a
row - while the rest of the party was shaken to the core
by the four defeats post-1979.
One word sums up Scottish Labour's different road: constancy,
meaning a sense of certainty and sureness that its way of
looking at the world has been vindicated by events. From
the vantage point of Scottish Labour's citadels in the 1980s
it saw a social democratic politics define the Scottish civic
resistance to Thatcherism, and painted a stereotype of England
as lost to Labour and some mythical Mike Leigh land. The
workers were different in Scotland; they still thought of
themselves as working class and of collective solutions;
in England, they had embraced tax cuts, share options and
council house sales.
Scottish Labour did not get on with the Blair revolution
from the outset, and resented it when New Labour imposed
a referendum on support for a Scottish Parliament on them
pre-1997. The election of a Labour Government did not remove
this state of affairs, as the party could still gripe at
the New Labour project, but the onset of the Scottish Parliament - Labour's
coming home - began to undermine this mentality. It has been
a bumpy experience, necessarily one of transition, whereby
the old Labour politics has taken time to begin to wither.
The first thing to note is the significant reverse Labour
experienced at last year's Scottish Parliament elections.
The party lost seven constituency seats - its worst reverse
in post-war times, while its regional list vote of 29 per
cent was the lowest the party won since prior to the breakthrough
election of 1922 - worse than the debacles of 1931 and 1983.
Labour's retreat was only disguised by the bigger humiliation
inflicted on the Nationalists, and the way the additional
member system makes the overall result more nuanced in its
impact.
Scottish Labour lost seats to a wide array of forces across
the political spectrum - left, right and centre. It lost
three marginal seats to the SNP, where the Nats had dug in
and organised. It lost one to the Lib Dems, one to an Independent
hospital closure candidate, and significantly, two to the
Tories. The importance of the Tories winning seats from Labour
signals the wider shift going on in Scottish politics - the
slow, weakening of the anti-Tory consensus forged in the
1980s, and the coming in from the cold of the Tories as a
pariah party. The fact that David McLetchie, Scots Tory leader,
could win Edinburgh Pentlands, and defeat Enterprise Minister,
Iain Gray showed something profound at work.
The pointers suggest that voters were beginning to punish
Labour as the incumbent party of Scotland for several generations.
Labour, Scotland's political establishment, had hidden this
fact behind its fancy rhetoric opposing Thatcherism and the
weight of the civic society consensus. After four years of
the Parliament, run by a Labour-Lib Dem administration, and
various Labour local government scandals, and other unedifying
displays - 'Lobbygate', 'Officegate', the scandal of the
escalating costs of the Holyrood Building Project - voters
began to realise there was no point in continuing to kick
the Tories. This is bad news for Scottish Labour, as it suggests
2003 is the first instalment in a series because Labour still
governs most of Scotland. If so, they will be held increasingly
responsible for the state of the nation.
The debate on proportional representation in local government
touches wider issues about the kind of Labour Party devolution
will bring about. The party is unenthusiastic, if not outright
opposed to this, and Jack McConnell, First Minister, has
only supported it as a price of coalition with the Lib Dems.
Now PR has the potential to change the face of town hall
politics across Scotland, and challenge some of the nasty
and indefensible ways Labour runs Scotland without much opposition
and scrutiny.
It could herald a new era in local government with a very
different kind of politics and Labour Party. There is an
argument in favour of PR, and an argument against. What the
McConnell leadership has done is abrogate any sense of responsibility
by arguing that he is against PR, but his hands are tied
as a price of coalition with the Lib Dems. This is the opposite
of any notion of what political leadership is about.
This touches on a fundamental issue about the character
of Scottish Labour, namely its lack of democracy, and the
audacity of the leadership running the party with little
reference to proper procedures and debate. The party has
had three First Ministers, but not one proper election and
debate, validating any of these leaders, their programme
and any sense of vision they might have.
Instead, the party's North Korean tendencies have come into
play. Donald Dewar was prior to the Parliament coronated
leader in a manner similar to an Eastern European Communist
regime with 99.8 per cent of the vote. Henry McLeish, the
accidental second First Minister, actually had the inconvenience
of an election, but it was a mini-one of an electoral college
against Jack McConnell, which was meant to go to a wider
ballot of members, but did not. And after McConnell had withstood
pressure from party grandees and Gordon Brown and stood,
he then forgot all about democracy when he later became the
third First Minister, winning the Labour contest without
an open election. First, he was to face Brownite supporter,
Wendy Alexander, but she quickly withdrew, then, Malcolm
Chisholm, Health Minister, announced he was to stand from
the left, and then declared he could not get the nominations,
with suspicion that a deal had been done to prevent a democratic
contest.
Scottish Labour has thus given three First Ministers to
the nation without any party debate or discussion about their
credos and visions. And this links into a deeper argument.
Scottish Labour is now in coalition with the Lib Dems - an
unsettling experience for a party with deep monopolistic
traditions - but no debate has taken place in party channels
about whether this is a good thing or not. This is just not
the way the party leadership operate; they just do things,
and if party members get annoyed or challenge it, they are
out-manoeuvred at party conference to stop debate. So the
chance of coalition government being used to develop a different,
more pluralist Labour politics is thus, squandered and wasted.
This is at last being challenged. A new alliance made up
of UNISON, the GMB and TGWU is arguing for a democratisation
agenda centred on three demands: the right to a recall conference
before any coalition deal, amending Policy Forum documents,
and the right to debate reserved issues. This coalition is
made up of people beyond the usual suspects of the hard left
and oppositionalist whingers. Instead, it links up disgruntled
constituency and trade union activists, soft left with hard
left and decent right-wingers.
A showdown was waiting to happen at Scottish Labour Conference
as we went to press. The leadership have been reduced to
a rump of sycophantic supporters from Old and New Labour,
and their only chance of avoiding defeat seemed to be to
stop a debate, claiming that these constitutional amendments
should be tabled for next year. But that will only delay
the inevitable. A party that the leadership have taken for
granted, and that has long been characterised by its compliant
nature has finally had enough.
Scottish Labour cannot go on as it has been. The party leadership
seem to believe they can be in coalition government and deliver
such issues as PR for town halls, while pretending they do
not believe in such things. They seem to have an Ostrich-like
outlook of trying to ignore the new realities of Scottish
politics whereby two parties now sit in the Parliament firmly
to the left of Labour and SNP - the Scottish Socialists and
Greens. Both of these parties won 6-7 per cent of the list
vote in last year's elections, and provide a home for disillusioned
Labour (and SNP) voters, while the SSP also acts as a haven
for disgruntled trade unionists and unions that consider
disaffiliating such as the RMT which has already done so,
and FBU and CWU which may do so. The Scottish Labour leadership
seem to have no answer to how they can respond to this new,
unfolding environment, and how they should respond to this
reconfiguration of the party going on in front of their eyes.
These are inevitable consequences of the processes unleashed
by devolution. A Scottish Parliament has produced a more
pluralist, uncertain political system. And that requires
a Scottish Labour Party which uses its members and resources,
and is not run by some self-appointed, self-serving clique.
The democratisation of Scottish Labour will either force
the existing Labour leadership to change their style and
approach to politics, or as is more likely, some years down
the line, throw up a new leadership which has been created
by a culture of debate, discussion and democracy. It might
just have the chance of being a stronger leadership in a
stronger, healthier party, which has the prospect of offering
a more energising and galvanising prospectus than the current 'safety
first' politics.
Gerry Hassan is editor of The Scottish Labour Party: History,
Institutions and Ideas, published by Edinburgh University
Press, £15.99, and is co-author of The Political Guide
to Modern Scotland, published by Politico's Publishing, £20. |
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