Talk for the Morning Star Conference 4th October 2015

By Vince Mills, Chair of CfS

One of the interesting things about the concept of class and class politics is the number of times historically, right wing political leaders and commentators tell us that the very idea of class is an impediment to progress.  Class, it seems, is always about to be replaced by a national, or socio-economic shift that renders it redundant or irrelevant to that particular historical epoch. 

So in Ireland in 1918 a special party conference of the ITUCLP voted by 96 votes to 23 not contest the 1918 general election. This was to allow the election to become in effect a plebiscite on Ireland's constitutional status, rather than, as the minority in the Irish Labour movement had wanted the launch-pad for a movement to transform the country from impoverished, backward, agrarian state dominated by big landowners and Bishops, to a modern industrial society. Sinn Fein said in 1918 that Labour in Ireland must wait. It is still waiting, for it is impossible to look at contemporary Ireland and see a country that is not ridden with class inequality.  

More recently, in 2010,  the political writer and commentator Peter Kellner wrote: 

“Half a century ago the typical Labour voter belonged to an utterly different tribe from the typical Tory voter; now they occupy slightly different slots on the same continuum. Vast changes to the jobs we do and the lives we lead have swept old loyalties aside. In that sense, class is dead.” 

In the first example offered, Ireland in 1918, class, or more accurately ending class society, is simply denied as the central purpose of politics, in favour of the primacy of nation, defined in the terms of dominant reactionary classes and their allies in Ireland. 

In the second example class difference is defined as social markers such as how we consume and how we earn in order to consume as opposed to the fundamental issue of economic power relationships. Even on the basis of social markers, incidentally, Owen Jones has argued in Chavs, that there is still discrimination against working class forms of dress, speech and recreation.  

But to be clear, class, and the tensions between classes, usually described by the left as class struggle, exist because it is still the case in all capitalist societies that those who carry out the actual process of creating goods and delivering the services have limited or no control over the means to make those goods or create those services. In contrast the wealthy -  individuals or corporate entities  - enjoy a vastly disproportionate share of the fruits of the labour of others.   

This can be clearly seen in incomes. The Equality Trust website tells us that people in the bottom 10% of the population have on average a net income of around £8,500. The top 10% have net average income almost ten times that (£80,000).However this does not reveal the full extent of the difference between the richest and the rest of society. This is because the top 1% have incomes substantially higher than the rest of those in the top 10%. In 2012, the top 1% had an average income of around a quarter of a million pounds and the top 0.1% had an average income of one million pounds.  

Although averages can be misleading it worth noting that the average salary in Scotland is £27,000. And that is important when we consider another aspect of the appropriation of wealth that the dominant class engages in.  For simply to consider individual incomes disguises the extent to which, using its control of the state and aided and abetted by the supra-national EU, the dominant class has appropriated many of the resources previously publicly owned. I refer here to the programme of shrinking the state through privatisation and outsourcing and attacks on welfare otherwise known as the politics of austerity supported by New Labour and Tory and SNP governments alike.  

Given the level of income in Scotland it is impossible for ordinary workers to afford services necessary for a decent life on a private basis - health, education, housing, and supportive welfare services. However, instead of resources being directed into the public domain there has been a significant shift of public wealth towards what John McDonnell terms ‘Corporate welfare’.  

How do we change this? 

At the Labour Party conference John McDonnell told us. He set out a programme firmly based on an understanding of class and the state and how we begin to attack inequality and state support for capitalist appropriation.  In other words how we mount an attack on austerity. 

He argued that  

Austerity is not an economic necessity, it’s a political choice. He promised: a real living wage; that Labour would force Starbucks, Vodafone, Amazon and Google and all the others to pay their fair share of taxes; that there would be cuts to subsidies paid to companies that take the money and fail to provide the jobs; that there would be cuts to the billion pound tax breaks given to buy to let landlords for repairing their properties, whether they undertake the repairs or not. 

By contrast he said that Labour would raise money from fairer, more progressive taxation.  

Labour can’t wait in Britain in 2015 any more than it could in Ireland in 1918. Since the Corbyn revolution, in Labour we now have a party and a leadership in that is capable of winning political power and taking on capital but only a fool would imagine that this is anything but an enormous task. So it is over to us. Only we can win hearts and minds. Only we can combat the insidious lies of the right wing in our society in whatever party or movement they are located.  

We need to begin a campaign that seeks to enfranchise the thousands that have fallen off the electoral register coupled with information about how voting Labour will tackle austerity. 

We need to recruit new members enthused by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell’s message and help in the process of transforming the Labour Party  

We need to organise in every Constituency Labour Party and Labour Party unit and turn the Labour Party outwards to the wider community committed to promoting the anti-austerity message.  

We need an incessant social media campaign rebutting the lies and prompting the anti-austerity vision. 

I will finish with the same words John McDonnell used to conclude his speech: 

“We remain inspired by the belief and hope that another world is possible.

This is our opportunity to prove it.

Let’s seize it.”

A Tribute to Alan MacKinnon

Alan MacKinnon, who died last week was a communist who fully supported and respected the work that the Campaign for Socialism did in trying to reclaim the Labour Party for left politics.

I can’t remember when I first met Alan. I expect it was at a CND event. But I do remember when I worked most consistently and intensely with him and that was in the Scottish Campaign for Justice not War, the broad based committee that provided the basis of the opposition to the war in Afghanistan and the massive anti-war in Iraq demonstration in Glasgow in 2003. In that organisation Alan was consistent, thoughtful and firm – pretty much how he was in every political encounter I ever had with him.

The consistency was an integral part of his Marxist philosophy and Communist Party membership. But it did not make him uncritical of the Communist Party or members of it, for that matter. And like many involved in socialist politics he was driven by a profound humanitarianism. That explains why, despite significant risk to his own health and while he was being treated for cancer, he went to Sierra Leone to work for Medecins San Frontieres after he retired as a GP. He sent back a series of letters describing the situation he found there. These became popular on the CfS user group.

I was hoping to meet with some comrades this weekend to celebrate his life, however, I will be at the Labour Party conference in Brighton so I will miss it, but I know that Alan would have understood that the struggle continues. How we will miss the enormous energy, insight and humanity that he brought to it.

On behalf of the Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism our deepest sympathies to his wife Karin and his children, Maeve and Ian.

Vince Mills

Chair, Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism

Something Very Special

Denise Christie, CfS executive member

Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign exploded into Scotland for a non stop two day tour engaging with over 2000 supporters covering Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. I was honoured to have been asked to chair the Edinburgh and Glasgow events.

Like many of Jeremy’s events, they were all over subscribed, with overspill rooms having to be used. Supporters also heard from life time social justice campaigners such as Neil Findlay and first time speakers like April Cummings - who as a youth voter felt very disengaged until she got inspired by the campaign.

April told us that Jeremy respects the membership and looks to learn from them. His priorities of fairness, equality and social justice are expressed in a manner that is free from the jargon and hollow sound bites that have become the standard in parliamentary politics. In doing so he breaks boundaries that never should have existed, between people and politicians, the party and its members.

The noticeable thing about the campaign is that it is very organic and natural and from the grassroots. It's real people talking about real issues with a sense of honesty and sincerity.

During the events, you could hear a pin drop when Jeremy spoke from an audience whose make up was gender balanced, expanded over many age groups and many ethnicities. He's engaged with our youth and brought tears to the eyes of the maturest of audiences.

It feels like this is the moment that many have been waiting for and his politics of hope have reignited the fire in everyone's belly. People are passionate about him and that's why the emotions shine through.

Glasgow's rally was electrifying. The beautiful setting of the Old Fruitmarket could have been packed out twice over. Jeremy came onto a standing ovation when he took to the stage. Before he spoke he looked out at the audience and whispered in my ear "Tony Benn would have loved this." He realises that this isn't about Jeremy Corbyn the man but Jeremy Corbyn the movement whilst reflecting on many who have campaigned before him.

As he finishes the crowd start to chant "Jez We Can" The band (who Jeremy renamed the socialist band) finished off the evening with a rendition of Bandierra Rosa. We were all in full voice and you suddenly get that feeling that we are all part of something very special indeed.

This article originally appeared in the September issue of Labour Briefing. 

The Corbyn Effect

Liam Burns – Maryhill and Springburn Youth Officer and Scottish Labour Young Socialists

Enthusiasm, forward momentum and success are not things the Labour Party in Scotland has been familiar with for a long time, and given the depressing situation the Party finds itself in, they are desperately needed. It should be good news to all in Scottish Labour then that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign has all these things; in addition to the necessary politics required to give the party a fighting chance of dealing with the big problems it faces: reconnecting with its traditional working class caucus and engaging a new generation of people seeking to help build fairer society.

In every metric that has so far been made available, Jeremy is leading the contest. Already Corbyn’s campaign has the support of the largest number of Scottish CLPs and among many of those where another candidate was nominated, Corbyn has been the runner up. Campaign phone canvassing has found support for Jeremy is consistently strong amongst members, and there’s very little indication that the large numbers of new members and supporters signing up will be voting for a candidate other than Jeremy.  Rallies, social media and polls have all shown Jeremy’s support. The appetite for Jeremy’s candidacy in Scotland is just as big as has been seen elsewhere: within half an hour of being publicised, tickets for Jeremy’s campaign visit to Glasgow “sold out”, and a bigger venue had to be found, which of course, “sold out” too. Similar events have followed the same pattern in Dundee and Edinburgh.

Despite the hysterical reaction in the media and amongst some Labour commentators, what Jeremy’s candidacy represents isn’t seen dangerously radical or a retreat to a comfort zone: it’s desperately needed, nowhere more than in Scotland. Jeremy’s stance against austerity and his commitment to bring vital industries back into public hands would not only help to make our society more equal but also reconcile the Labour party in Scotland with constituency and its purpose.

Labour has been struggling for more than a decade and this can make the issues faced complex, but they can be largely understood as a reaction against Labour’s concessions to neoliberal doctrines in the 90s. Though there were some distributive successes of the 97-10 Labour administrations, the failure to reverse the Tory deindustrialisation and workplace disorganisation was the start of a process that ended with Labour timidly accepting the argument for austerity and misguidedly campaigning with the Tories during the referendum. The warning signs were there as throughout this period turnouts declined and Labour slumped.

This sorry scenario is exacerbated by the idiosyncrasies of the Scottish political environment and made apparent by an ostensibly safe alternative in the eyes of the working class and some on the left: the SNP. The SNP have deployed leftist arguments and an anti austerity position in their battles with Labour, as well as their traditional nationalist narratives. Their successes continued in the recent council by-elections triggered by SNP overachievement in May, with more than 20% swings from Labour to the SNP the pattern.

Yet for all the success and grandstanding, there’s little to be seen in practice from the SNP. Their top priority remains Scottish independence, not an equal society. Instead of increasing tax on those who can bear it, the SNP has frozen council tax, to the benefit of middle and high incomes families but to the detriment of the poor who rely on the council services that must be cut to uphold this freeze. In putting Scottish public services out to tender they have continued with the PFI agenda that helped to put the Labour Party in the muddy political terrain it is in just now. Their commitment to Full Fiscal Austerity and corporation tax cuts once they are available not only indicates a fiscal policy at odds with socialist principles but also with economic reality. Even their position on austerity was similar to Labour’s at the 2015 election: cut little less over a little longer.

Labour in Scotland needs to challenge this situation by realigning itself with its core purpose, giving it legitimacy in the eyes of the working class once more and the ability to frame the debate in Scotland that revolves around the same key issue as elsewhere in Europe: the approach to austerity. Austerity inhibits the future; the decline of the state and transfer of wealth toward the rich increases inequality and reduces the ability of people to look forward to some kind of stable and desirable future. Zero hours and short-term contracts, unorganised unskilled workplaces and a market that favours employers have caused wages to depreciate continuously since the 70s. Debt hangs over the head not only of those who want to go to university, but those who want to start a family, learn to drive or have a roof over their head. It’s a deeply alienating reality and Labour should be at the forefront of challenging it but to do this it needs to reassert the core values that made it the political force it once was. This is what Jeremy’s campaign is all about, why it is popular and why it must succeed.

This article originally appeared in September's issue of Labour Briefing.

The Panic in the Elite

By Vince Mills

The panic in the Labour elite, (and I would add the Tory elite for that matter) and their friends in the banks and financial institutions not only because Jeremy Corbyn might win but because  there has been a shift left by existing and new members and supporters of the Labour Party, has led to an orchestrated media campaign proclaiming that the process for electing the leader of Labour Party is flawed and for that matter so is the candidate himself.

The latest accusation that he had the temerity to suggest that assassination rather than due process of law is unacceptable, even if the victim is Osama Bin Laden, has sent the right wing press hysterical. This rather gives to the lie to the contention that the Tories would love Jeremy to be Labour’s leader. The Tory loving Sun is certainly not behaving that way.

The emphasis on process as opposed to policy content is beneficial to Corbyn’s Labour opponents on two fronts: firstly it means that the popular political initiatives he has been promising that really deserve public airing and debate – for example on reviving the economy by ending austerity or the need to apologise for 165,000 deaths in Iraq, are buried beneath stories about eccentric Tories and ultra-leftists trying to get a vote in the leadership contest; secondly it may also, as the New Statesman argues, give the defeated candidates the hope of some sort of political afterlife if Corbyn does win, by claiming that it was all a fix in the first place.

What has happened, you might ask yourself, of the Right’s initial howl of rage that Corbyn was unelectable? Probably the Daily Record, that moderate bastion of the Scottish Labour Party, drowned that noise out on 18th August by declaring its support for Corbyn’s candidacy. 

The hype and hypocrisy in all of this does of course need to be exposed, but ‘it is in an ill wind…’and all that. What I mean is that some of the issues that the Right wing of the Labour Party have raised might in fact create the political space needed to discuss just how the Labour Party should relate to radical political groupings in a way that is democratic and transparent. Or in the words of none other than Tony Blair in his attack on Corbyn’s campaign -  ‘what a political organisation looks like today’

Trade union and Socialists who opposed it,  will well remember how we got the current system for Leadership elections in the first place.  It was a consequence of the debacle over the reselection in Falkirk West in 2013, where Unite was accused of illegitimate practices in recruitment with a view to having a Unite member as the Labour candidate in the seat. This was used as the pretext for a review and subsequent reform of Labour’s relationship with the trade unions.

The Collins review in 2014 dumped the three-way electoral college system in favour of One Member One Vote (OMOV). In the college system which recognised the institutional role of the Unions, equal weight was given to member, parliamentarian, and the trade union and affiliated societies sections. The new system, where candidates are elected by members and registered and affiliated supporters both denies the special relationship between unions and party and treats membership in relation to the key function (you might say privilege) of electing the Leadership of the Party as equal to someone who decides to have no relationship with the party at all other than a one off payment to allow limited participation in the local party and full participation in the election of the leadership.

Make no mistake about the intention of the Right wing of the Labour Party here. They believed that if radical influence was going to be exerted on the Labour Party it was going to come from the Trade Union movement. They further believed, based on the highly successful cheese and wine initiatives of New Labour in recruiting party members to the ranks of New Labour,  that new supporters would almost certainly come from the ‘engaged’ middle classes who were likely to be sympathetic to the anodyne politics of the likes of Cooper or better still the reactionary doctrines of Kendall. Their denunciation of the process in the current campaign therefore reeks of hypocrisy.

In line with the CfS, I opposed the Collins review proposals and  I fully accept that I made the same gross miscalculation about who might sign up as supporters as Labour’s Right, because I, like the Right of the Party, did not foresee the possibility of a serious left wing candidate who would galvanise support for an anti-austerity movement.

And now for some more good ideas from unlikely sources. In June 1982 the Labour Party was struggling with the influence of the Militant tendency. While the internal Hayward-Hughes inquiry, rather undermined the objectivity of the approach it advanced by finding that Militant was guilty of breaking the Labour Party constitution before their ideas were even implemented, the inquiry proposed a radical break with Labour’s tradition of only recognising affiliated groups by proposing the setting up of a register of non-affiliated groups who would be allowed to operate within the Labour Party.

Under a Corbyn leadership where Labour would be trying to build alliances with as many radical groups as possible, assuming of course such groups share a fundamental loyalty to the Labour cause, the idea of such a register might well offer a way forward. To meet clause 1 of the Labour Party constitution such groups could not of course stand candidates in elections, however, many groups campaigning on broad anti austerity, political platforms as well as specific issues like housing, health and education could be welcomed into the Labour family where they would simultaneously help shape the course of and be shaped by, the river of political change that Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign has unleashed.

Keir Hardie's anti-war stance still resonates in the UK today

By Jeremy Corbyn

On February 15, 2003, well over a million people marched through London to oppose the intended invasion of Iraq.

It was the biggest ever demonstration in British history. Six hundred other demonstrations took place all aroundthe world, on every continent.

They all knew why they were marching and, by sheer force of numbers, turned media and popular opinion around from the Government’s intended story that somehow Iraq presented a threat to us all and that only by bombing could we secure the peace of the region and,indeed, the world.

More than a decade later, billions spent, hundreds of thousands dead and more wars than ever, the sheer futility of war and its waste is there for all to see.

The victims lie dead in unmarked graves amid the rubble, or the soldiers from the West are in heroes’ graves, in well-tended cemeteries, but still dead in their youth.

As Europe goes through a strange paroxysm of mawkish memorial of the Great War and a nasty dose of xenophobic, inward-looking behaviour, we need to learn from history of those who tried to stop that war and tried to point out where it could lead.

Keir Hardie’s life, impressive by any standards, had a universal and global vision that was verydifferent from many other great labour figures of the pre-1914 period.

It seems astonishing,at this distance, that on August 2, 1914, two days before war was declared, he spoke in Trafalgar Square at a rally where a declaration was adopted, which concluded bystating: “Men and women of Britain, you now have an unexampled opportunity of showing your power, rendering magnificent service tohumanity and to the world. Proclaimfor you that the days of plunder andbutchery have gone by. Send messagesof peace and fraternity to your fellows who have less liberty than you.

“Down with class rule. Down withthe rule of brute force. Down with thewar, up with the peaceful rule of thepeople.”

Eighty-nine years later, Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair told Parliament that there was no alternative to going to war with Iraq, even after he and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had failed to gain a second UN resolution specifically authorising war.

The legacy of Hardie, and indeed the contradictions in the Labour Party between the ideal of national war asthe supreme form of patriotism andthe wider global tradition of peace and fraternity, is still there and self-evidently not resolved.

Hardie had an amazing global view. For someone who was born with no privileges of any kind, no opportunity to travel and very limited education, he had a thirst for learning and a deep appreciation of the unity of peoples in different circumstances all across the globe.

Hardie’s own world view came through the prism of a vast British empire which nurtured British children in the belief that somehow they benefited from the empire and were superior to the rest of the world.

The inherent racism in that message was powerful and remains so. In his early days as a trade union representative, he opposed Irish immigration into Scotland. Later, however, he went on to oppose segregation in South Africa during his visit there and went well beyond anyother opponents of the Boer War insupporting the African and Asianpeoples of South Africa.

In India, he was threatened with deportation for supporting home rule and consorting with the newly formed Congress Party.

But it was his attempts to build an international peace organisation that was his most groundbreaking work. The late 19th century saw the founding of the First Working Men’s International and, almost in parallel, the attempts by the Tsar of Russia and others to found an international treaty through the Hague Convention.

Hardie worked hard to unite all peace groups as though he knew the dreadful day would arrive when Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the Ottoman empire would all be at war with millions ofworking men lined up against each other.

As war fever intensified, Hardie stepped up his efforts and in 1913, only eight months before war was declared, hepresided over an enormous peace rallyin the Royal Albert Hall.

Hardie died two years later, essentially a broken man. All he had striven for in the sense of international working-class unity against the industrial killing machines of the Great War had been overridden by the jingoistic, crude propaganda of the Allies.

A century later, the general mood is more sanguine about World War I. A war between nations, all led by cousins and nephews and a son of Queen Victoria, it was at once a war led by a massively dysfunctional family and the huge commercial interests that were involved.

The above is an extract from a new book "What Would Keir Hardie Say?" edited by Pauline Bryan, which can be purchased here.

"Something different, something subversive…"

The following article was published by the recently launched Scottish Labour Young Socialists.

Yvette Cooper today summed up the fear and panic that has gripped the Labour Party’s establishment. Yesterday around 165,000 people signed up to either join the party or become registered supporters, taking the total electorate in the leadership election to around 610,000. That is just under 1% of the country, roughly the population of metropolitan Glasgow.

However, the predominant response from the Labour mainstream has been disquiet, shock and disbelief at the mounting support for Jeremy Corbyn which is fuelling the growth of genuine, mass Labour Party politics. There is little sign of celebration at the enthusiasm coming from young people who, we are told, have been “a-political” for so long.

Cooper railed to warn of the threats to social democracy that exist across Europe, and that the same inclinations that drove support for ‘insurgent’ forces such as UKIP and the SNP might now be finding a home in Labour:

But when times are tough, and the old answers, and the old parties don’t seem to be working, people cast around for something else. Something different. Something subversive. Something to kick out at the system, to express anger, frustration and the demand for change.

From the 2010-11 protests to the ‘Yes’ campaign, to the rise of electoral support for the Greens, there is plenty of evidence that our generation precisely craves “something different, something subversive”. In Corbyn those of us who marched and protested over the last 5 years, and many more who didn’t, finally have a voice which is shaking up what is possible in mainstream politics. This is not before time. To us the idea of a Labour Party which supports and includes social movements and seeks to empower workers and communities is far from old fashioned.

We don’t live in a time where grey policy prescriptions and technocratic niceties, the sensibilities of the ‘sensible left’, can deliver or inspire. The patronising bombasts of New Statesman and Guardian columnists have been grist to Corbyn’s mill. Those of us with no guarantee of economic security and experiences of the draconian benefit system and zero hour contracts don’t need lectures on moderation and making the market work.

We’ve been labelled extremists for supporting workers’ rights, building houses, nationalising the railways and worst of all suggesting that economic policy should be designed with full and decent employment in mind. This only confirms the death of any kind of reasonable ‘centre ground’, for good or ill.

In this age of social media and antipolitics, we are the new modernisers. The Corbyn wave has shown the mood for an outward facing socialist Labour politics. Scottish Labour Young Socialists will be a platform for those who wish to continue what the Corbyn campaign has started. Partisans of subversive politics cannot let this historic opportunity pass.

Get in touch at:

https://www.facebook.com/ScotLabYngSocialists
@SLYSocialists

CfS recommendations for NPF and CAC

As well as the UK leadership election (which is obviously dominating headlines across the UK) there is also a chance to vote for candidates to the National Policy Forum and Conference Arrangements Committee.

These internal Party institutions have a key role in shaping Party policy and structuring Conference.  How representative they are of grass-root activists and socialist opinions will depend greatly on who is elected to these potions.  

Campaign for Socialism is standing candidates who, as well as fully supporting Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Leader, will also acts s a strong voice for ordinary members within the Party.  Should Jeremy win the leadership election is will be more vital than ever that we have socialists within the positions of influence within the Party to support him in building a genuine anti-austerity movement. 

Members can vote for up to four candidates for the NPF section (with an extra position available for the youth section should the member be under 27) and for two positions for the CAC.

CFS recommends the following candidates:

National Policy Forum (Iona Baker, Mike Cowley, Martyn Cook, Suzi Cullinane & Lyndsay Clelland - youth)

Conference Arrangements Committee (Katy CLark and Jon Lansman)

Scottish Labour and CND

By Mark Gallagher

Scottish Labour Party activists opposed to nuclear weapons met in Glasgow on 31 May to discuss how to campaign against Trident renewal in the United Kingdom, both now and if there is a No vote in the Scottish independence referendum. The meeting was chaired by Chair of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND) Arthur West, who said that while Scottish CND have now affiliated to Yes Scotland, “some of our members and supporters have other reasons for not making this choice and we respect that.”

Former Member of Parliament for Glasgow Maryhill Maria Fyfe, now a National Policy Forum (NPF) Representative for Scotland, said, “It is a priority that Scottish Labour also has a response to the assertions of the Scottish National Party (SNP) that independence is the only way to scrap Trident.”  She also reminded the meeting unilateral disarmament was still the policy of Scottish Labour Party Conference. George McManus, NPF Representative for Yorkshire and Humberside, further highlighted how former Labour cabinet ministers such as John Prescott, Des Browne and Nick Brown have declared opposition to Trident replacement (as planned) on the basis of cost in an age of austerity, the emergence of new threats to which nuclear weapons are not a deterrent and the bad example such a decision sets to other countries.

Alan Cowan, SCND Executive Member and meeting organiser said,  “Scottish Labour CND will be in contact with trade unions and the other National Policy Forum members representing Scotland. Most people in Scotland want to scrap Trident” and that “We will ensure that our Labour representatives are empowered to say No to Trident and No to Separation.” When it does come to the vote at the meeting of the NPF the importance of trade union support for amendments was also stressed by several activists as union abstention at previous meetings has meant support for this and other progressive issues has not been what it should be.

Writing in a personal capacity in the Morning Star on 16April, Jackson Cullinane, a political officer of Unite Scotland, stressed the importance of reminding trade unionists of Trident’s impact on cuts to services, wages and conditions, their job security and how it actually costs jobs in the defence sector. This was proven by such reports as a 2007 study conducted jointly by SCND and the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) which demonstrate whatever the referendum result urgent action is required to diversify the defence sector. The establishment of a Scottish Defence Diversification Agency which should engage with trade union representatives to make some concrete proposals for a transition to alternative but equivalently skilled and paid employment would be a good start.

The deadline for submissions to the current NPF process is the 13June and so far there have been no submissions in support of Trident and 21 CLPs have made submissions to the process on the issue. Eight other CLPs have promised to make submissions but those have not yet appeared on the Your Britain website (yourbritain.org.uk).

From Labour CND following Mark’s article:

With CLP submissions to Labour's National Policy Forum consultation now in, Trident has emerged as a key issue. Almost a third of all amendments submitted to the Britain's Global Role paper, which covers all aspects of international policy, were on Trident. Almost 50 CLPs have submitted an amendment on Trident and 90% of them want to see it scrapped.

With submissions overwhelmingly in favour of decommissioning Trident and carrying out the UK's historic nuclear disarmament commitment, it is time Labour delivered.

It is vital that CLP representatives on the NPF submit this issue and represent members by voting for decommissioning Trident and delivering disarmament.

CfS response to Jim Murphy's Resignation

When Jim Murphy announced last Saturday that he was standing down as Scottish Labour Party leader, he took it as an opportunity to lambast Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey for his supposedly “destructive behaviour” towards the Labour Party. 
 
Murphy claimed that he had been “at the centre of a campaign by the London leadership of Unite the Union, (who) blame myself or the Scottish Labour Party for the defeat of the UK Labour Party in the general election.” 
 
He continued:  
 
“Sometimes people see it as a badge of honour to have Mr. McCluskey’s support. I see it as a kiss of death to be supported by that type of politics. … We cannot have our leaders selected or deselected by the grudges and grievances of one prominent man.” 
 
“The leader of the Scottish Labour Party doesn’t serve at the grace of Len McCluskey, and the next leader of the UK Labour Party should not be picked by Len McCluskey.” 
 
Such statements are, to put it mildly, problematic in a number of respects. 
 
McCluskey has twice been elected Unite’s General Secretary – in 2010, and again in 2013 – through Unite’s democratic structures and electoral procedures.  
 
If McCluskey really is guilty of “destructive behaviour” and his politics the “kiss of death”, then the Unite members who have twice elected him their General Secretary must be either: really stupid not to have seen through him; or willing accomplices of his destructive behaviour. 
 
Either way, Murphy’s criticisms of McCluskey amount to a gross insult of the majority of Unite members who have backed McCluskey in two successive union elections. 
 
Murphy’s claim that support from McCluskey amounts to a “kiss of death” is problematic in another respect as well. 
 
In mid-2013 Ed Miliband announced the Collins Review, involving a fundamental change in the relationship between affiliated trade unions and the Labour Party, one which will lead to unions having much less of a say in the Labour Party’s decision-making processes. 
 
McCluskey backed the Collins Review from the outset. Although many Unite activists opposed it, McCluskey argued for support for the Collins Review in Unite and in the broader trade union movement. 
 
But Murphy, and those who share his politics, did not denounce McCluskey’s support for the Collins Review as “the kiss of death” and more evidence of his “destructive behaviour”. On the contrary, they welcomed his support. 
 
Murphy’s claim that who Unite decides to back in Labour Party elections is the product of “the grudges and grievances of one prominent man” is another claim that does not stand up to a moment’s scrutiny. 
 
Unite’s approach to the Labour Party, including national and regional Labour Party leadership contests, is defined by its Political Strategy, adopted by the union’s Executive Committee in December 2011.  
 
The essence of the Strategy – publicly available on the Unite website – is summed up in a single sentence: “Winning Labour for working people, and winning working people for Labour.” 
 
When Unite decides who to back in Labour Party leadership contests, it does so on the basis of which candidate best represents the union’s policies, as summed up in its Political Strategy and in resolutions adopted at the union’s biennial policy conferences 
 
This is about as far away from making decisions on the basis of “the grudges and grievances of one prominent man” as you can get. 
 
And when McCluskey stood for re-election in 2013, support for the implementation of the Political Strategy was part of his election platform – underlining the point that McCluskey has not acted on the basis of “grudges and grievances” but on the basis on which he was re-elected by Unite members. 
 
Murphy was equally wrong in claiming that in the week between the general election and last weekend’s meeting of the Scottish Labour Party Executive Committee he had been “at the centre of a campaign by the London leadership of Unite the Union.” 
 
He had certainly been at the centre of a campaign calling on him to resign. But the driving force behind that campaign were ordinary members of the Scottish Labour Party who regarded Murphy’s position as untenable after the debacle of 7th May. 
 
The campaigning was initiated, organised and conducted by ordinary Labour Party members – only a minority of whom were Unite members. And even those who were Unite members were acting at their own initiative, not under the instructions of “the London leadership of Unite the Union”. 
 
Murphy was particularly angered by what he described as McCluskey having “blamed myself or the Scottish Labour Party for the defeat of the UK Labour Party in the general election.” 
 
But McCluskey’s actual argument was straightforward.  
 
The leadership and politics of Jim Murphy, following on from the Labour-Tory-Lib-Dem ‘Better Together’ alliance, had allowed the SNP to pick up the votes – in large numbers – of traditional Labour voters.  
 
The growth in support for the SNP had then allowed the Tories in England to win votes through an appeal to English nationalism, by presenting themselves as the people who would stick up for the English against the SNP. 
 
And that argument is backed up by facts. 
 
Anyone who canvassed during the election campaign will have experienced longstanding Labour voters saying that they were switching to the SNP because of – although certainly not solely because of – ‘Better Together’ and the politics embodied by Murphy. 
 
That was the sentiment which the SNP opportunistically played to in their election material (which would have been tried and tested on multiple focus groups before being published and circulated): 
 
“Labour used to stand up to the Tories. Not any more. Labour and the Tories campaigned together in the referendum. And they voted together at Westminster for deeper spending cuts. The only way to lock out the Tories and force Labour back to its roots is to vote SNP.” 
 
The surge in SNP support was then exploited by the Tories in England. We know this for a fact because the Tories subsequently boasted of the success of that strategy to the pro-Tory press: 
 
“Under the plan set out by Crosby the Conservatives would attempt to squeeze UKIP and Lib-Dem votes by playing on fears of the SNP while highlighting David Cameron’s leadership and fears of economic ‘chaos’ under Labour. All the messages had been extensively tested on focus groups in key marginals.” 
 
Instead of insulting the messenger, Murphy would have been better off listening to, and reflecting on, the message.