Carol Mochan (right) with Mercedes Villalba Any objective assessment of the performance of the SNP incumbent administration in the Scottish Parliament, from a working-class perspective, ought to see them out on their ear. No matter where you turn, whether it’s the Cost of Living or Further and Higher Education, or Local Government, or the Health Service or the Schools or the Ferries, we find the same old neo-liberal obsession with fiscal rectitude and underfunding or poor planning or maladministration or all four.
And yet, you would need to have been living on the moon to think that asking Scottish voters with a leftwards inclination to vote Scottish Labour, is an easy ask. For although Anas Sarwar correctly called for Starmer to resign over welfare and warfare issues, the Scottish Labour party has remained largely inaudible and invisible on these and other issues, with a few, honourable, exceptions, not just in Westminster, but in Holyrood too.
What has Scottish Labour been saying, for example, about the need for redistribution of wealth through tax reform, or control of our economy through public ownership, or making life as difficult as possible for the Mafia style behaviour of US and its hitman Israel, by banning them from using our airports and denying them any support whatever, physical, moral or political.
And yet on May 7th, socialists should vote Labour in the Scottish General Election. Not because of what Scottish Labour is, but because of what it could be - what it was designed to be - a vehicle for advancing working class interests. And incidentally I am not advocating a return to a mythical past of a socialist Britain under Labour. That past never existed, but as Mick Lynch noted in a recent interview, the difficulties the Labour Party encounters advancing class interests, will be the same for any workers’ party that develops the capacity to win political power. As soon as it appears to be on that road, it will face every possible strategy that capital can develop, in Paulo Feire’s words, to domesticate it.
And who could deny the success of that approach in the Labour Party since the demise of the left surge that took Jeremy Corbyn to power. But the very success of the Corbyn ‘project’ shows that there is nothing inevitable about the dominance of the forces of the right in the Labour party. The objectives of the right are to smooth the path for minimum redistribution in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility’ and encourage maximum exploitation in the name of ‘increased productivity’. Indeed, it is increasingly obvious that they are only capable of sustaining their position through undemocratic practice in the Labour party and increasing authoritarianism in wider society. And in this they have been exposed and are now very clearly in crisis.
And what’s more, there is no alternative to the left. The demise of Your Party in Scotland illustrated in graphic detail the problems of trying creating a new party from political fragments disengaged from working class concerns. Further the Scottish Greens’ support the £2 billion PFI project in 2023 highlights the compromise in the aims of the contemporary Green movement. The objective of that movement is greening the economy, with ‘Green’ capitalism as much, if not more likely, to be seen as the route to achieving this, rather than social ownership of the means of production and the land. As the Green co-leader Lorna Slater, then biodiversity minister, put it at the time: “Leveraging responsible private investment, through valuable partnerships like this, will be absolutely vital to meeting our climate targets and restoring our natural environment.”
But the left can only take advantage of that opportunity in Scotland, if there is a group of socialists in the Scottish Parliament who can offer a different agenda for Scotland, socialist MSPs elected on a Scottish Labour ticket. I mean active, campaigning socialists like Katie Clark, Monica Lennon, and Carol Mochan. Undoubtedly, after this election Scottish Labour needs a re-set, but a socialist re-set requires the experience and commitment of socialist MSP. So, get out and Vote Labour on May 7th and help get the Labour vote out as well. Let's do all that we can to make sure we return socialist MSPs.
What has Scottish Labour been saying, for example, about the need for redistribution of wealth through tax reform, or control of our economy through public ownership, or making life as difficult as possible for the Mafia style behaviour of US and its hitman Israel, by banning them from using our airports and denying them any support whatever, physical, moral or political.
And yet on May 7th, socialists should vote Labour in the Scottish General Election. Not because of what Scottish Labour is, but because of what it could be - what it was designed to be - a vehicle for advancing working class interests. And incidentally I am not advocating a return to a mythical past of a socialist Britain under Labour. That past never existed, but as Mick Lynch noted in a recent interview, the difficulties the Labour Party encounters advancing class interests, will be the same for any workers’ party that develops the capacity to win political power. As soon as it appears to be on that road, it will face every possible strategy that capital can develop, in Paulo Feire’s words, to domesticate it.
And who could deny the success of that approach in the Labour Party since the demise of the left surge that took Jeremy Corbyn to power. But the very success of the Corbyn ‘project’ shows that there is nothing inevitable about the dominance of the forces of the right in the Labour party. The objectives of the right are to smooth the path for minimum redistribution in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility’ and encourage maximum exploitation in the name of ‘increased productivity’. Indeed, it is increasingly obvious that they are only capable of sustaining their position through undemocratic practice in the Labour party and increasing authoritarianism in wider society. And in this they have been exposed and are now very clearly in crisis.
And what’s more, there is no alternative to the left. The demise of Your Party in Scotland illustrated in graphic detail the problems of trying creating a new party from political fragments disengaged from working class concerns. Further the Scottish Greens’ support the £2 billion PFI project in 2023 highlights the compromise in the aims of the contemporary Green movement. The objective of that movement is greening the economy, with ‘Green’ capitalism as much, if not more likely, to be seen as the route to achieving this, rather than social ownership of the means of production and the land. As the Green co-leader Lorna Slater, then biodiversity minister, put it at the time: “Leveraging responsible private investment, through valuable partnerships like this, will be absolutely vital to meeting our climate targets and restoring our natural environment.”
But the left can only take advantage of that opportunity in Scotland, if there is a group of socialists in the Scottish Parliament who can offer a different agenda for Scotland, socialist MSPs elected on a Scottish Labour ticket. I mean active, campaigning socialists like Katie Clark, Monica Lennon, and Carol Mochan. Undoubtedly, after this election Scottish Labour needs a re-set, but a socialist re-set requires the experience and commitment of socialist MSP. So, get out and Vote Labour on May 7th and help get the Labour vote out as well. Let's do all that we can to make sure we return socialist MSPs.
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