This Saturday the Scottish Labour Policy Forum meets to amend and vote on the final papers which will become the basis for next year’s Holyrood Manifesto. The Policy forum brings together representatives from local parties and our trade union affiliates.
Several CLPs have proposed an amendment to the document to support the power to call any future independence referendum, with appropriate safeguards, resting with the Scottish Parliament. This amendment was supported by CfS at our recent AGM and we have encouraged our members to bring this to their CLP’s.
Let’s be clear that this amendment is neither an argument for independence nor for another referendum. The Campaign for Socialism strongly believes that the current SNP idea of independence would be a massive setback not only for working class people in Scotland but in the entire UK. However, logically we cannot argue for a federal relationship between Westminster and Holyrood, which ought to be one of partnership and then on a fundamental issue such as this, accept that sovereignty is not shared but reserved to Westminster at the moment controlled by a politically incoherent and incompetent Tory Party.
Of course, we recognise that this must not become an opportunity for the SNP to call for a referendum every time the political landscape looks difficult for them in Scotland. That is why the amendment calls for protections to be put in place to prevent this. The detail of these safeguards would have to be negotiated by the Scottish Labour Party leadership.
We believe that many of the excellent policies that Scottish Labour has, are not getting across to the Scottish people. They are not listening to us and they will not listen until they believe that Scottish Labour rejects the dominance of Westminster and accepts that radical constitutional change is desirable and necessary. We believe that this amendment goes some way to addressing this and could be a game-changer when we go to the polls in May 2021.
Katrina Facenda Chair CfS
RSS Feed