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Ben Wray
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Contents

Introduction

1. The case for an electoral party

2. The case for training and expertise

3. The case for tolerant democratic discipline

4. The case for politics, not just beliefs

5. Rethinking the relationship between party and
movements

6. The case for revolutionary reforms

7. A new party for a new Scotland












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6

8

10

13


16

20

24






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Introduction

The Scottish left is a contradiction.
On the one hand, if we do win the referendum, a new Scottish nation-state will
be built on the back of a movement that was, at minimum, influenced and
affected by the left. The remarkable Radical Independence Conferences of 2012
and 2013 have shown a degree of political maturity and unity that has rarely
ever been seen on the Scottish left. The anti-neoliberal Common Weal Project
led by the Jimmy Reid Foundation has had a major influence on the mainstream
debate over what an independent Scotland would look like, including being
supported in principle at the SNP conference last year and unanimously backed
by SNP councillors. The overall independence movement is driven forward on
the basis of being to the left of Westminster austerity politics, as reflected by
voting patterns which show the rich voting no and the most deprived voting
yes. The left is a serious part of a movement that could break the British state
on the premise of wanting a more socially just and equal society free of
militarism and Thatcherism.
On the other hand, whilst the broad left in Scotland may never have been more
influential than it is today, the radical left in party-form may never have been so
divided and dysfunctional. When the radical left has stood in elections as TUSC,
the SSP or Solidarity over the past half-decade, it has achieved minuscule
votes. Since the Sheridan split of the SSP in 2006, the radical left has not been
able to recover itself electorally or organisationally, if anything becoming more
split on a party level since then. Whilst initiatives like RIC have been shaped
and to a large extent led by the radical left, this doesnt get round the fact that
we have failed to recover in any way in a party-form in Scotland.
Does this matter? Do we need a left party at all? It may not seem a key issue
now in the context of the referendum campaign entering its final six months.
However, post-referendum, regardless of the result, a question mark which
may seem marginal now will quickly rise to the fore: Where now?. Whilst,
hopefully, the broad left that has built itself up through RIC and Common Weal
will maintain itself in the post-referendum climate, there will be forks in the
road which will require new answers pretty quickly. The 2016 elections will be a
major challenge as to the sustainability of a left challenge post-referendum. We
should also be aware that it is easier for us all to get on when the debate over
what sort of Scotland we want is theoretical in the cold light of day political
realism will quickly emerge; we should not be so naive as to expect that at
least some of those who speak warm words now wont buckle when it comes to
the crunch. The radical left will lack teeth if all it can rely on to pressure the
mainstream after the referendum is broad-based campaigns.
If we did enter the post-referendum scenario with the left in its current form,
what would we look like? The left is currently broken into, very roughly, four
parts:
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those of no party, who believe it is sufficient to work purely through
movements and campaigns or who dont think any of the existing parties
can achieve what they are after
far-left parties and groups
mainstream parties who have a consistent left element within them the
SNP and Scottish Labour would both fall into this category, we wont
bother arguing over which falls more into it than the other
the majority of the Green Party
None of these options provide, in my view, an effective force the left can rely
on to carry us into a new Scotland, certainly not in their present form. Not that
they cannot play an important role as part of a wider left challenge, but the
sum of the four parts does not and can not strike any sense of dread into the
vultures of global capitalism that will swarm over Holyrood the day after a yes
vote. Indeed, if we dont win the referendum the situation is all the more in
need of reconstruction the movements that have taken us this far will need a
new direction to galvanise a renewed challenge to the British state in a different
form. The 2016 elections would surely be the only feasible option in that
scenario.
So, one way or another, we need something better than what we have now. My
contention is not that if we create the perfect left party then capitalisms days
are numbered. The left has always and will always be reliant on the
determination of the working class to challenge the system. But waiting for a
working class revolt to wash away all our problems is not a plausible option
even if it did arrive in a flood like in Paris May 68 it will fall short if the left are
not well organised, well rooted and dynamic in their leadership. The only way
you can tackle this with any efficiency and effectiveness is through a party
form. Some will not like that word, will consider it to have too many bad
connotations and will seek to address the problem in different terms. However,
the problem itself must be addressed. At the end of the day politics involves the
organisational combination of individuals the options are either to embrace
that fact and deal with it consciously or ignore it and experience it
unconsciously.
After the SSP split in 2006, the radical left in Scotland still have a long way to
go to regain credibility and purpose. The independence movement has got us
to a position where we are campaigning together again and with many new
people in common cause. Now we need to work out how we are going to take
the next step and become a serious force again, with lessons learned from past
mistakes but with renewed vigour grounded in the understanding that Scotland
is on the cusp of historic changes and we can play a major role in shaping
them.
I am going to express my case for what sort of Left party we need across seven
cases, one each week:
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1. The case for an electoral party
2. The case for training and expertise
3. The case for tolerant democratic discipline
4. The case for politics, not just beliefs
5. The case for a more effective relationship between party and movements
6. The case for revolutionary reforms
7. A new party for a new Scotland
Lots of readers will have already decided they want nothing to do with my
vision for a left party merely by observing the titles of the nine articles. That is
fine, I dont expect to convince everybody. But I challenge those people to
prove that Im wrong by building a successful left another way. Explain to me
and show me how to do it better, and if you do Ill be more than happy to
admit that Im wrong. There has to be an increased intellectual rigour from the
Scottish left. Its not enough to know what you dont like you have to be able
to provide a way forward for what you want to see happen and provide an
evidence-based case for that strategy. Thats what I aim to do here.
Finally, this doesnt necessarily mean we need a new party it could come
about from the reinvigoration and renewal of an existing party. My contention
here is that what we currently have isnt adequate and what follows are
proposals for the sort of left party I believe we need. Hopefully it will help
encourage debate on this subject amongst those on the left of all parties and
none.
NOTE: A lot of what follows is contextualised by my experience on the radical
left. I realise that for (hopefully) most readers this is a vantage point that may
seem peculiar or maybe even off-putting if you havent yourself been part of
the radical left (lucky you) with its fairly narrow intellectual influences. I can
only say that one can only write from experience, and that if any terms,
references or emphasis are confusing Im happy to clarify in the comments
section.
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1. The case for an electoral party

The only reliable and sustainable basis on which to build a left party is to
orientate it towards the only democratic institutions that everyone can engage
in and the only institutions that have democratic authority over society
parliamentary elections. In Scotland that means, most importantly, Holyrood.
Some leftists will recoil immediately, arguing that parliament isnt democratic, it
doesnt serve the people and the working class increasingly dont trust it and
dont vote. This is all true but it isnt a convincing argument against engaging
in parliamentary elections because there are no alternative democratic
institutions which possess anywhere near the same democratic legitimacy in
society as parliament does. Those who dont vote arent setting up co-
operatives to run communities or workers councils to run workplaces. Their
process of re-engagement and democratic renewal will likely pass through
parliamentary elections on their way to participatory democratic control of
society, if we are to ever get there.
Millions of people vote and even those that dont vote accept the democratic
authority of parliament to make decisions over society. The quicker we wake up
and realise that this is the only mass democracy we have and that we therefore
better try to engage with it, the more likely we are to start winning people over
on a mass scale. And when they are won over to the idea that change is
possible, they are on a path which leads them to more revolutionary change,
including going beyond parliamentary elections.
Yet what of the declining faith that the public have in the political parties and
political process? This only raises the stakes for the left, as the parliament is
vulnerable to a credible left challenge. Syriza is the optimal example of this as
the centre ground disappeared Greeks did not turn on mass away from
parliament, but turned instead to the radical left in the form of Syriza because
they were the only people putting forward an anti-austerity agenda through the
call for a left government against austerity.
Elections provide a barometer against which to test our ideas on a societal
scale. I have tried to build non-parliamentary political parties and because they
have no society-wide barometer by which they can judge their activities, they
quickly lose sight of who they are trying to win over. Yes, they can pick up pace
when one movement or another gathers momentum or if a major strike action
takes place, but not enough people want to participate in a non-parliamentary
party on a consistent basis. Activism around strikes and movements is tiring
when you lack the power or potential power to actually make decisions. The
only way to be able to make decisions or even threaten to make decisions is if
you have the democratic authority to do so through winning elections. Indeed,
funnily enough, the left could do much more to help strikes and movements if it
could be a voice for them in parliament, challenging the dull neoliberal
consensus by using a platform by which the media and the general public can
hear what we have to say. Most people on strikes dont need to be told how
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right they are to do what they are doing they need effective solidarity and
that means political support.
What happens outwith parliamentary competition is the left judges itself on its
own merits, and quickly descends into an echo-chamber: with no wider basis
for assessing effectiveness, we judge our performance in meeting turnouts,
facebook shares or, worse, plain self-aggrandising. The result is we begin to
take much more seriously the minority concerns of activists than the majority
concerns of the people we are suppose to be trying to convince/mobilise. This
process culminates in faction fights and splits over issues most people wouldnt
have the first clue about.
Whilst we bicker over the finer details of the internal democracy of tiny groups,
the big picture is that UKIP are winning working class support because theres
no anti-establishment alternative from the left to challenge them. The
neoliberalisation of mainstream politics has created space to the left and right,
but its only those on the right who are taking advantage of it. Surveys of UKIP
voters show that whilst they often hold reactionary positions on immigrants and
the unemployed, they hold left-wing positions on redistribution of wealth,
taxing the rich, public services and opposing foreign wars. We should be
fighting against UKIP for working class support, instead were fighting over the
scraps of the far-left comfort zone.
Dont get me wrong, I am not for becoming like the politicians. I believe
representatives should take a workers wage; I believe they should be
accountable to the community they are elected from and the party in that
community; I believe they should take a stand on issues which may be
unpopular with the majority of voters, in support for example of welfare
claimants and asylum seekers; I believe they should try to highlight the plight
of the most oppressed in their community and try to give them a platform to
speak for themselves. We need all this and more a real peoples politics but
we cant get close to this unless we realise where the starting line is. And thats
a left party orientated on parliamentary elections.
Put it this way what do you think the capitalist elite want us to do? Leave
parliament to their mates and focus on extra-parliamentary activism, or
challenge for democratic control over society? The question should answer
itself.
In part 7 The case for revolutionary reforms I further develop this idea of
challenging the system at its point of greatest weakness: the governmental
level.

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2. The case for training and expertise
Most left-wingers become politically engaged on account of learning something
of the world and having the curiosity to further expand and develop this
knowledge. It is surprising therefore how little emphasis the organised left
places on developing the skills we require to change the world we seek to
know. Everyone involved in the left should embrace training to learn skills in
order to effectively engage in trying to change society, while we shouldnt be
afraid to embrace listening to those who have expertise in particular areas
either.
The left has a very limited conception of the skills and expertise it takes to be
effective. Being an activist commonly means you set-up stalls, you organise
meetings and demonstrations, you speak at these meetings and you might
phone people to motivate them to do the same stuff too (this isnt exactly true
of trade-union activists, but well leave discussion of that to one side for now).
If you are a theorist you read Marxist literature, read Marxist websites and
write for said websites about issues relevant to said literature. You can be an
activist and theorist on the left while hardly engaging with anyone outside the
left. This is another way in which the left becomes self-referential, the leaders
being the people that are best at doing these things, but these things
themselves being extremely limited and representing only a small part of the
skill-set we all should be developing.
Ive been actively involved in the left for seven years and there are some
essential skills that I am only just finding out about. Take, for example,
canvassing and data collection. The SNP have built up a sophisticated database
system which allows any activist at a click of a button to know which way
people in their community vote, what issues they are concerned about, how
likely they are to get out and vote and what leaflets and information they
should be targeted with to convince them of the SNPs case. When I used to
sell socialist newspapers I got peoples address and email on a petition before
selling them the paper, but I didnt care about the data that was just a tactic
to sell the paper. We didnt store the data anywhere, we didnt put it into a
spreadsheet, never mind a sophisticated data technology system. How could a
left party plausibly compete if it doesnt know who or where its supporters are?
Another example is media strategy. One of the last things I used to think about
when organising protests, stunts or events was a media strategy. Sometimes
we didnt even bother to put a press release out. It was all about (a)
pressurising the Vice-Chancellor or boss the action was against (b) building
cohesion and confidence amongst activists and (c) getting the support of the
people who saw our action. When we didnt get results wed blame the media
for not taking it seriously when we done nothing to encourage them to do so.
In an age when professional journalism is in decline and the journalists that
remain operate under time-pressure, there are opportunities to create stories
for them if you think about how to appeal to their readers. Thinking through a
media strategy also focuses minds rather than thinking about what messages
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work for the activists on the protest, we think about what messages are
actually going to resonate with the public. Theres a whole skill-set required to
do media strategy effectively. If we cant use the media to our advantage, how
do we expect to win any arguments beyond our own ranks?
All training should be carefully co-ordinated strategically: a community
engagement strategy requires a specific set of skills that need to be trained
systematically, the same for an internal education strategy and the same for a
national political strategy.
Its about professionalism: in any discipline there are specific skills that need to
be learned and strategies followed to have a chance of success. Those skills
should be taught by people who have experience in them and have learnt the
right ways to do it and the wrongs ways to do it. The left too easily conflates
being anti-establishment with being anti-professional the reality is that if we
actually want to convince people of anti-establishment ideas we need to be
more professional than other political organisations.
Training is the only way to effectively undermine the male, pale and stale
problem of prominent leftists being predominantly white men. If there is a
culture of improving the skills of everyone, members of oppressed groups have
much more chance of genuinely taking leadership roles rather than being the
object merely of tokenistic efforts.
Theres an incredible amount of arrogance on the left about training and
expertise theres so much we dont know and we spend so little time trying to
learn it. A party must be committed to teaching core skills and ideas to its
members if its ever got a hope of achieving anything serious. Of course it is not
necessary for everybody to know everything people should be able to get
involved in the left with minimal knowledge or skills and shouldnt feel
pressured to do more than their circumstances allow for. But there should be a
culture of endeavouring to learn knowledge and skills as best we can, from the
most experienced member to the newest.
As the neoliberalisation of education advances apace, we have to create our
own spaces for learning about how to change society that are informed by
sound ideas and expertise. A left party should be a school of radical thinkers
and activists.


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3. The case for tolerant democratic discipline
Jokes relating to the lefts tendency to split are repeated so often as to become
tedious in the extreme. The reason we split is because we have so little power,
without which theres little to hold together people who have to live in the real
world of neoliberal capitalism. You dont see the Tories splitting although they
have as much in-fighting and as many principled disagreements as we do this
is because they have power to hold their organisation together. If the left was
in the position of making serious decisions affecting the lives of millions of
people, we wouldnt split, or such splits which did occur would be much more
likely to express divisions within genuine social forces, as with the UKIP split
from the Tories in 1993 over Maastricht. But until we get there we need a
formula that maintains unity whilst warding off tendencies towards stagnancy
and immobilisation, which keeps us looking and engaging outwards whilst
keeping a lively culture of debate inwards. Such a formula is difficult and is
impossible to work out exactly in the abstract, yet I would roughly describe it in
terms of tolerant democratic discipline, each word being important in itself and
in combination with the others.
The tolerant part means we have to be willing to respect difference of
opinion. This is something the left struggles with different views are often
seen as a problem and a threat. They shouldnt be. You have to let your
members breathe politically and that means you let debates work themselves
out at their own pace. Is everything really going to come crashing down if some
members take a stance that is different from the majority position? Over time
there is normally a convergence anyway, while those who consistently find
themselves in a small minority dont usually hang around for long. After all, its
not much fun being involved in something where everyone disagrees with you.
One could argue that this emphasis on tolerance represents a break with the
traditional Leninist model of democratic centralism, but that concept has been
so distorted by now that it bears little relation to reality or history: Lenin
proposed a particular model of organisation for the Bolsheviks specifically to
make their operation in feudal, Tsarist, police state Russia more effective. Many
Leninists see their organisational methods as time and context resistant, but
this couldnt be further from Lenins own intentions. Even in the context of
Tsarist Russia, there was no precedent for expelling members and silencing
minority views in the pre-stalinist Bolsheviks like there is in most of todays
actually existing micro-Leninist groups. Zinoviev and Kamenev opposed the
October revolution in a rival newspaper, but were still elected to the Central
Committee after the Soviets took power.
However, we should not reserve criticism for lack of tolerance solely for the far-
left. If you are in Labour or the SNP and you elect someone in your local branch
to be your candidate and the party leadership dont like it, they may simply
change the candidate. The decisions made at party conferences are rarely
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binding on the party leadership if they decide they dont want to pursue them
thats a real top-down and authoritarian approach.
Tolerance and respecting difference is also far better than fossilising difference,
which is what the platform and faction approach tends to lead to. Why is it
that whenever parties have permanent platforms or factions the people in them
never seem to disagree with others in their platform or faction and never seem
to move between platforms or factions? The tendency is for historic
disagreements that have little bearing on political decisions today to become
fossilised in factions and platforms, making it very difficult for views to change
within the different sections of the organisation. People become set against one
another and artificial differences emerge which have more to do with loyalty
than anything else.
Tolerance, however, can become ponderous if it is not combined
with democracy, which entails actually making decisions and having majority
positions. Tolerance without democratic decision-making is what is often called
consensus decision-making where nothing is decided unless everyone agrees
to it. The main problem with this is time and scale: the world doesnt move at
the pace of your own organisation and we cant all be in one place at one time
if we want to organise on a national (and, hopefully, international) scale.
Consensus decision-making can help build trust in the context of a student
occupation, but when one has to live in a world where people work 45-hour
weeks while trying to bring up children, the model becomes positively anti-
democratic.
A more common argument is a watered down version of consensus decision-
making whereby the internet and social-media is used to get around the
problem of scale. The idea goes that we can all contribute to every decision
because messages can be posted online and everyone can have the chance to
participate. Ive experienced a vague form of this type of democratic
organisation, and it quickly reveals itself to be neither very democratic nor very
tolerant. A tyranny of the hyper-activist inevitably develops; everyone else
quickly switches off to 50 comment discussion threads. Furthermore, whilst
social-media is great for speedy communication of information, it doesnt
encourage such vital elements of a democratic culture as empathy,
understanding and compromise: debates often become confused and
unnecesarily polarised (users of facebook will know what I mean). Large-scale
horizontal democracy via the internet or other means is impossible, and it has
never been practiced for any length of time in any sizeable organisation that
has intentions to actually do things as a collective.
The fact is theres no short-cut around the need for delegation, and with
delegation come committees and with committees come leaderships. You either
have an official leadership that everyone in the party is aware of and is held to
account on the basis of their decisions, or you have an unofficial leadership
which is shrouded in mystery and unaccountability.
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This doesnt mean participatory democracy cant be utilised at a local level:
branches should use democratic techniques which encourage debate and new
ideas. Neither does it mean that the leadership shouldnt be democratically
decided: there should be a national assembly or conference with elections
based on one person one vote, a national council that is made up of branch
delegates and whose decisions are binding on the leadership, and the ability to
call an emergency conference if two-thirds of branches want one. There are
numerous ways to realise this type of model, but the key should be to try to
realise a mixed democracy approach, whereby elements of participative
democracy and representative democracy are productively combined.
But this is nothing new: ultimately attempts to introduce all sorts of new
mechanisms into parties to make them much more democratic usually fail
because they try to do too much and quickly prove to be unsustainable in the
real world. When it comes to discussing and making decisions theres no
substitute to meeting up in person. In truth, none of this is rocket science, nor
are contemporary circumstances so exceptional as to necessitate re-inventing
the wheel. What is in my view required is a clear, simple democratic system
which is properly implemented and is carried out in the context of engagement
with real social forces and is subjected to a culture of constant renewal. I would
add to this, however, that the left should embrace things like codes of conduct
and safer spaces policies to provide a framework in which everyone
understands what sort of behaviour is expected of them. I also think womens
only groups should be embraced if women consider it will help them play a
bigger role in the party.
The final element alongside tolerance and democracy is discipline. This is
the point at which many leftists usually object, the concept offending many
peoples anti-authoritarian sensibilities. Yet an outright rejection of discipline is
essentially a rejection of democracy in practice if majority decisions cant be
enforced, then theres little point in making these decisions. There should be a
culture of doing what was agreed, which sadly doesnt exist on the left at the
moment. People do what was agreed if they want to and dont bother if they
dont. 95% of discipline should come from within: its not about being told by
someone what to do and obeying authority, its about having conviction in the
power of the collective and following through in the method and in the
principles that you yourself have helped to democratically decide upon.
There has been certainly much wrong with the British left organisations of the
twentieth century, not least among which are the under-representation of
women and ethnic minorities. But if such critiques are to be expressed in the
predominance of logics of individual autonomy over those of democracy in
practice, the result will be complete organisational dysfunction, if not
collapse. Indeed, such a trajectory is entirely compatible with neoliberalism,
inasmuch as the latter works to concentrate and consolidate capitalist power
and wealth whilst dismantling working class corporate organisation and
atomising society at large. David Harvey, in A Short History of
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Neoliberalism makes precisely this point when discussing the recent history of
the American left:
neoliberal rhetoric, with its foundational emphasis
upon individual freedoms, has the power to split off
libertarianism, identity politics, multi-culturalism, and
eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social
forces ranged in pursuit of social justice through the
conquest of state power
Formal discipline is mostly important for two sections of a left party: the
leadership and the elected politicians. They should have to hold the same
position as the party on every issue because they have been chosen by the
party to be their representatives. This is the only way to be able to hold
representatives to account; if they break with this discipline there should be
penalties and potentially a vote on their re-call.
A tolerant democratic discipline is an acceptance that you cant have your cake
and eat it: you cant have the perfect democracy as it would suffocate minority
views and you wouldnt be able to get anything done; you cant be perfectly
tolerant as it would mean you could never make a decision and never show
leadership; and you cant be completely disciplined because you need to have
room for difference and you need to accept that people live in the real world
and arent an army. Maybe, just maybe, if we accept we need a proportion of
all three tolerance, democracy and discipline in combination with one
another, we might succeed in building a stable yet dynamic organisation.

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4. The case for politics, not just beliefs
What is politics? The definition, as it is found on Wikipedia is the practice and
theory of influencing other people on a civic or individual level. Therefore
politics is something more than a set of individually held beliefs, even when
publicly expressed. It is about influencing other people.
Many leftists and left parties either dont believe in politics or misunderstand it
as just expressing your views and beliefs. In observing the Left Unity
Conference in England which established the Left Unity Party, it was interesting
to note the facebook arguments of the socialist platform as against the left
platform. The former accused the latter of selling-out their true beliefs, not
saying what they really think and even not telling the truth because they
wanted Left Unity to be an anti-neoliberal, left party rather than a strictly
Marxist, socialist party. The socialist platform appeared to have little interest in
politics, the practice and theory of influencing other people, and only in re-
stating their beliefs about the world.
Propagandism
The problem with the socialist platform approach, which Ill call propagandism,
is that it has no hope of success. Let me use just one example the avowed
commitment of a great number of far left groups today to smashing the state.
The message was taken from Lenins State and Revolution in 1917 and has
hardly been altered since. Relevant here of course are theoretical debates
concerning the character of the capitalist state in advanced capitalist economies
as against the early-twentieth century Tsarist state in Russia. However,
bracketing these for now, the call to smash the state, issued in abstraction
from the balance of political forces and the consciousness of working people,
sounds bizarre. For most people of a progressive inclination who live in the real
world and hear this message, it sounds like it comes from the tea party
movement in America or from libertarians like Douglas Carswell MP in Britain.
Opposition to the state is dominated by the radical right in the present context
because of the dominance of free-market ideology. You might alternatively say
you want a democratic state rather than one run by corporate lobbyists, civil
servants and millionaire politicians, but thats a different political message
entirely.
We live in a world of uneven consciousness and the only way to bring people
closer to your ideas is to understand why they think the way they do, identify
key aspects of what they think which are most likely to be compatible with your
values and put your message across in a way which will appeal to them, such
that it becomes much more likely that they will listen to, vote for, support or
join your party. Of course, this does not mean that a left party should either
pander to ignorance or accept the orthodoxy of the elites, but rather that we
must begin from the existing ideas of working people and the particular ways in
which our own values are (contradictorily) expressed therein. Politics involves
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compromise and it involves a willingness to be flexible about the message you
put across and the policies you pursue.
Of course you can go too far with this; politics can become an end in itself and
the beliefs a distant memory. This is what often happens, for example, to
young members of the Labour Party and the SNP: they join because they
believe in a socialist society, then they get caught up in the political game, the
winning of which becomes an end in itself. Therefore your politics have to be
based on a real commitment to principles, yet you must engage in politics
nonetheless.
The other problem is when politics
is reduced to simply an expression
of the issues that affect you as an
individual. This is often (if a little
unhelpfully) called identity politics.
It is of course imperative that
people express anger and
discontent about the manifold ways
in which they are oppressed under
capitalism that should be
encouraged at every opportunity.
But politics is more than just the
expression of your own individual
experience of oppression. Politics is when you mobilise that experience and
crystallise it into a systematic critique of the society in which we live,
formulating a message that can influence wider people and bring about change.
For example, someone who receives racist abuse can quite rightly say I suffer
from racism and that is wrong but their message becomes a political one when
they say I suffer from racism and that is wrong, further, this is how my
experience of racism relates to broader problems in society and this is what we
should do to change it as a collective of people. Raising ones oppression to the
level of society and collective struggle is when ones identity is utilised to bring
about wider political change.
Identity politics and propagandism have the same root problem neither begin
from a consideration of how to influence the mass of society with your ideas.
Lenins legacy, missed by most leninists today, was to leave us
a methodology for socialist politics. He said of politics:
Politics begins where the masses are, not where there
are thousands, but where there are millions, that is
where serious politics begin.
What was the correct political message yesterday can be downright reactionary
tomorrow, it all depends on the effect it will have in the given political context.
Socialist politics therefore necessarily involves a prioritisation of ideas: there are
many ways to present arguments, and there are many possible arguments to
present, the challenge of politics entailing the selection of the arguments which
Beliefs a distant memory Labour party
members prefer socialism at 2013 annual
conference
16

will be most likely to have the desired impact and bring you closer to achieving
your goals.
On compasses and swamps
In the Stephen Spielberg film Lincoln, the eponymous president is depicted
trying to convince the more radical Republican, Thaddeus Stephens, to tone
down his comments in order to get the bill through to abolish slavery. He says:
The compass I had when I was serving, it will point you true North from where
youre standing. But its got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms
that youll encounter along the way. If you proceed to your destination (by)
plunging ahead needless of obstacles and achieve nothing more than to sink in
a swamp, whats the use of knowing true North?
The left has sunk into a fair few swamps in its time. For an effective leftist
politics we need to build our own compass to avoid Lincolns swamps, deserts
and chasms. The starting point needs to be a clear understanding of our
principles; then we need an analysis of the objective political climate; a strategy
based on a clear prioritisation of political objectives given this political climate;
the use of the most effective possible tactics to carry out that strategy and,
finally; a plan for activity to carry out those tactics.
This is obviously highly abstract, yet everyone who is politically active makes
choices like these everyday on any given evening there may be a choice
between canvassing for Scottish independence, participating in a Marxist
reading group or attending a trade union branch meeting. We have to make
decisions about what to do and what not to do based on some set of criteria. It
is much better for those criteria to be premised on a conscious assessment of
whats most likely to achieve our goals than through an abritrary selection
process.
The point of a left party is that as a collective we are more likely to be able to
make the right political decisions and to carry them out in an effective way, as
opposed to simply expressing our beliefs as individuals.

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5. Rethinking the relationship between party and
movements
What are movements? In lieu of a commonly held definition, Ill venture to
provide my own: citizens standing up against exploitation and oppression and
for political change by combining together on the street, in communities and in
workplaces in a distinct, conscious continuum of action. Distinct in the sense
that it is identifiable in its own right from more formal political formations like
parties and NGOs, and conscious in that those involved are aware that they
are part of something bigger than the sum of its parts. Given this definition,
movements will always be essential to any process of systemic change because
they provide the energy which creates the possibility of a rupture with the
status quo. Unfortunately, sometimes this knowledge can be a curse for leftists
because its raised to a level of sublime faith in the power of movements to
change the world.
The history of movements should have taught us by now that whilst they open
up great possibilities for transformation, they all at some stage in their cycle
fracture and dissipate on account of the very contradictions which make them
so powerful in the first place. The contradictions are obvious: people combine
together in large numbers usually because they have a shared aim, but they
continue to have different ideological and political perspectives about the world.
As far as any organisation exists in movements, it is by its very nature loose
and temporary, having incorporated a large number of people in a short space
of time. The movement is held together as long as there is a clear trajectory
towards achievement of those shared aims, but when that trajectory becomes
unclear or when some limited concessions are achieved, movements can quickly
run out of steam. The energy with which movements rise cannot be sustained
indefinitely and only through the achievement of regular successes on our side
and regular mistakes on their side can it continue to renew itself for any
prolonged period of time.
The student movement of 2010/11
An obvious example of this is the student movement that kicked off against the
coalition governments move to raise the cap on tuition fees from 3,000 to
9,000 in November 2010. Despite achieving a number of minor reverses, the
movement was unable to prevent the governments bill passing largely intact by
a small minority of 21 amidst a significant parliamentary rebellion. The energy
created by hundreds of thousands of young people taking action against the
measures was deflated and the movement quickly fractured. The next
significant action after the major 9 December demonstration against the bill
was on 30 January 2011. Whilst the stated purpose was to reverse the decision,
it was quite clear that the leadership of the movement had already turned their
attention elsewhere, such that the protests were marked by the left of the
movement shouting at National Union of Students (NUS) leadership, and NUS
calling the left of the movement splitters.
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The residue of this movement has taken on a variety of forms, some activists
having joined the Greens, others becoming active in Palestine solidarity groups,
joining feminist networks, signing up to Labour or the SNP, continuing work
through official student union structures or joining the ISG in Scotland. Many
more remain between such organisations or have fallen out of political activity
altogether. Yet nothing that came out of the student movement in Scotland or
in the rest of UK could claim to have been able to have bottled the energy of
the student movement and directed it towards an effective, long-term challenge
to capitalism. I may be biased, but in my view the most effective initiative that
could be said to have emerged out of the student movement is the Radical
Independence Campaign, which is not student-led at all, but was initiated and
is to an extent led by activists who cut their teeth on the student movement of
2010/11.

On 10 November students occupied 30 Millbank, campaign headquarters of the
Conservative Party
The point is this a left party needs movements and movements need a left
party but we havent got the relationship between the two correct as of yet. On
the one hand we place too much emphasis on the transformative potential of
movements when we should be aware from experience of their in-built
contradictions. On the other hand we do little to provide effective frameworks
of organisation that can both support movements on the up and accommodate
the movements activists on the way back down. The tendency is to scramble
for leadership on the up and when the movement fragments bring as many
people with your part of the leadership on the down, which leaves most
activists disorientated and demoralised.
19

Supporting movements
What do I mean by supporting movements? First, it should be understood in
distinction to a scramble for leadership. That is not to say members of a party
shouldnt try to exercise leadership within a movement where strategic or
tactical re-orientation is necessary, but that any party which attempts primarily
and by default to seize control of any given movement will jeopardise that
movements success as well as inevitably weakening its own credibility.
The role of a party should be to support a movements development first by
trying to win political support for its cause in wider society. This is important
and is often ignored. Movements can quickly believe they are the centre of the
universe when most of society doesnt know what theyre arguing for and how
it relates to their lives. This is why there is often a tendency for ultra-leftism to
emerge in movements the energy of the movement radicalises those involved
more and more, but this energy has little relation to how effective the
movement is in winning broader political support. Generally the most important
aspect of winning support in wider society will be orienting activity toward
parliament: whilst most elected members will inevitably condemn movements
for their radicalism, socialists can use parliament as a platform to highlight the
real aims and goals of the movement to wider society. The tendency is for left
parties to obsess about convincing those involved in movements of their case,
rather than trying to influence and shape the broader societal debate about the
movement. We should emphasise the latter over the former because it is what
will actually help the movement achieve its aims.
The second part of supporting the movement is to provide practical solidarity.
This can come in many forms such as connecting students with trade-unionists,
raising funds and organising rallies, but the point is that the party should use its
resources and networks to help the movement achieve a victory. In this the left
has a better record.
The final aspect is that the party should have an honest political analysis of
what needs to be done for the movement to achieve its objectives over the
long-term. This shouldnt be presented in a preachy, partisan manner which
presumes the necessity of membership of a given organisation. It should be
done rather in a practical and political way most people involved in
movements are aiming for systemic changes to society and therefore explaining
a broader strategy for achieving that is not an insult as long as it comes across
as a genuine effort to achieve political goals not just a partisan attempt to
promote ones party interests.
When he visited Scotland for the first RIC conference, Benoit Renaud of Quebec
Solidaire the Quebec left party that has representatives in parliament
described in similar terms to those developed above the way in which their
party supported the huge Qubcois student movement. This support was both
political and practical while many of the student leaders were members of
Quebec Solidaire, the party itself focused on its role in spreading the message
beyond students, providing practical solidarity and explaining the political
20

implications of the movement.
Quebec Solidaire members
handed out tens of thousands of
broadsheets and newspapers and
when the movement dissipated
after the government was
defeated, they were respected for
their role in supporting it.
Engaging with movements on
their own terms
There is an important distinction I
am making here between a party
that tries to be the movement
and ties all of its purpose to the success of the movement, and one that
accepts it has separate end goals to the movement but tries to support it
politically to achieve success on its own terms. The pace of politics for an
electoral party and a movement are entirely different; if you try to crudely build
the former through the latter its likely the trajectory of both will take the same
path. But if you maintain the wider aims and policies of the party and try to
help the movement achieve success on its own terms then the party can be
respected for its role and be genuinely useful in building a movement that can
achieve its stated objective. If a serious electoral party of the left had existed in
Scotland when the student movement was at its height, it would be a natural
home for many of the activists afterwards. A clear distinction between
movement and party and the different pace of politics and stated objectives
of both can make it much more likely for both to grow strong.

Qubec Solidaire played a key role in the success of the
Qubcois student movement
21


6. The case for revolutionary reforms
We need revolutionary change. Theres no two ways about it if the
exploitation of labour by capital continues to be the central dynamic driving
economic development, we are headed for human and environmental
catastrophe.
But as Ive discussed in the previous five parts of this series, getting from
where we are to a revolutionary transformation that overthrows the dominant
property relations of the capitalist economy and replaces them with social
relations based on democratic control of the worlds resources is not as simple
as declaring our desire for it to be so. I saw a petition on change.org the other
day proposing the overthrow of capitalism. If one million people signed that
petition and one million people signed a further petition to introduce full
collective bargaining rights for trade-unions in the UK, which one would move
us closer to the overthrow of capitalism? I wager the latter.
Whilst having an end goal in sight is important, most people dont change their
thinking about the world based on bold visions of what could be done at some
point in the future: they change their ideas based on evidence from their
material lives which points to the inadequacy or irrationality of the status quo.
In other words, we need to have ideas that build upon peoples lived experience
of capitalism, and since that it is within the framework of a representative
democracy system, we need ideas based around proposals for reforms. At the
same time those reforms have to help rather than hinder a move to more
revolutionary transformation that challenges the very core of the capitalist
system.
The dialectic of reform and revolution
What we need, therefore, is a strategy of revolutionary reforms. Such a notion
would appear as a contradiction in terms to many who identify as reformists or
revolutionaries and see the two as dichotomous, but there is no reason why this
should be the case. Indeed, history has shown that revolutionary
transformations have always happened as a dialectical interaction between
rapid, revolutionary movements and more institutional, reform-based
challenges. Even the revolutionary part of that dialectic has always been
motivated by the immediate needs of the participants involved land, bread
and peace being the first half of the slogan of the Russian Revolution.
What does a strategy of revolutionary reforms entail? Ed Rooksby explains that
it is a political strategy that builds towards revolutionary change by using
reforms to push up against the limits of the logic of capitalism in practice:
At first these feasible objectives will be limited to
reforms within capitalismor at least to measures
which, from the standpoint of a more or less reformist
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working class consciousness, appear to be legitimate
and achievable within the system, but which may
actually run counter to the logic of capitalism and start
to push up against its limits. As the working class
engages in struggle, however, the anti-capitalist
implications of its needs and aspirations are gradually
revealed. At the same time, through its experience of
struggle for reform, the working class learns about its
capacity for self-management, initiative and collective
decision and can have a foretaste of what
emancipation means. In this way struggle for reform
helps prepare the class psychologically, ideologically
and materially for revolution.
The late Daniel Bensaid expressed this argument through the lens of the history
of the socialist movement:
In reality all sides in the controversy agree on the
fundamental points inspired by The Coming Catastrophe
(Lenins pamphlet of the summer of 1917) and the
Transitional Programme of the Fourth International
(inspired by Trotsky in 1937): the need for transitional
demands, the politics of alliances (the united front), the
logic of hegemony and on the dialectic (not antinomy)
between reform and revolution. We are therefore
against the idea of separating an (anti-neoliberal)
minimum programme and an (anti-capitalist)
maximum programme. We remain convinced that a
consistent anti-neoliberalism leads to anti-capitalism
and that the two are interlinked by the dynamic of
struggle.
So revolutionary reforms means a policy agenda that, as Alberto Toscano has
put it, at one and the same time make concrete gains within capitalism which
permits further movement against capitalism. The Italian marxist Antonio
Gramsci described this approach as a war of positon.
The neoliberal context
To understand what all of this means in practical terms for a left party in
Scotland today we need to understand the economic and political context we
live in. The last forty years of neoliberal capitalism has seen a rolling back of
the gains of the post-war era, as the rate of exploitation has increased
enormously, the strength of trade-unions has decreased significantly, and major
chunks of the welfare state and public-sector have been shrunk or sold-off. The
outcome is a massive redistribution of wealth and power to a narrowing
capitalist elite, who increasingly use money to make money through
financialisation, bypassing the productive aspects of the capitalist economy
entirely. Britain is part of the vanguard of this neoliberal offensive. The political
23

consequence of this is that mainstream parties, whether they be centre-left or
centre-right, are unwilling to challenge the supremacy of neoliberalism in the
British economy. The economic crisis if anything has seen a further
radicalisation of neoliberalism.
Therefore a left party that challenges neoliberalism is also challenging
capitalism. What may have been a reform the capitalist system could easily
have absorbed or even desired forty years ago is now a fatal threat to its order.
Indeed, the word reforms today is used to justify all manner of counter-
reforms which further dismantle the safety-net of public services and the
welfare state. Global capital is trying to go further than ever in stripping away
the rights of states and judicial systems that dont work in their favour.
One particularly terrifying example of this is the Trans-Atlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership which is a single-market agreement between the EU
and the US. What is in the fine print is an investor-state dispute settlement
mechanism whereby in the situation that a particular nation-state doesnt want
companies to, say, mine in particular areas or sell goods produced unethically,
the decision can be overturned by a secret arbitration panel of corporate
lawyers which has the power to bypass domestic courts and ignore the will of
parliaments.
Given this context of hyper-capitalist authoritarianism, the reform-revolution
dialectic is intensified today compared to forty years ago. As the Candian
Marxist Leo Panitch puts it:
Perhaps the greatest illusion of 20th-century social
democrats was their belief that once reforms were won
they would be won for good. In fact, we can now see
how far the old reforms were subject to erosion by
expanding capitalist competition on a global scale. They
have been so undermined by the logic of
competitiveness that it now seems very difficult to see
how state protections against markets could be secured
in our time without additional measures that would be
seen as revolutionary.
Genuine reforms, such as democratic public control of the money supply, would
cause panic amongst credit agencies and the markets, potentially leading to a
run on the banks of the nation-state in which such a proposal was made. This is
global capitalisms way of threatening the state to tow the line, and usually
states and their political parties are responsive to its needs.
Pressure points
But modern capitalist states are not one dimensional whilst they serve the
basic function of wielding a monopoly of violence in defence of private
property, modern capitalist economies also require a civil and political society
including a range of regulations and universal services (skilled labour, schooling
24

and regularly renewed political leadership through democratic elections would
be three of these) to ensure the optimal circumstances for (re)production of the
system. The state, therefore, creates its own points of weakness: the parts of
the state that require mass participation to further capitalist accumulation can
be used to undermine capitalist state power itself.
If, through a strategy of revolutionary reforms from a left government, one can
divide the state between on the one hand those undemocratic elements like
civil servants, MI5 and the heads of the police which will always protect the
capitalist elite no matter what and on the other hand the parts of the state
which contain democratic elements, like parliament, it can create a situation
whereby a left government encourages and needs greater impulses from below
to defend its policies and its government against the reactionary elements of
the state who want to return to normal capitalist state relations. A left
government can help foster and provide direction for new forms of democratic
organisation from below; workers, community and student control, which can in
turn provide support and pressure upon a left government in a synthesis of
working class power.
A rough agenda
What would an agenda for revolutionary reforms by a left government look like
in a country like Scotland today? It would have to constantly change to meet
the evolving requirements of politics, but as it stands some of the following
points would be fundamental:
Democratic state-control of the banking and monetary system to control
finance and the money supply
A range of taxation measures to redistribute wealth and ensure the
super-rich cant take their wealth elsewhere or hold it in possessions
A range of capital controls and state seizures of natural assets to prevent
the rich taking social wealth out of the country
Maximum wage ratios, reductions in the length of the working week and
the public ownership of those aspects of the economy especially
necessary for social reproduction (e.g. transport, energy and housing)
Radical decentralisation of democratic power including employee right to
buy, co-operativisation, industrial democracy, participatory budgeting
and citizens juries as well as the re-organisation of local government
based on community participation
This last point is important: I am not proposing centralised state control of
everything. The Scottish socialist Andy Cumbers book Renewing Public
Ownership explains how public ownership must also mean bottom-up,
genuinely democratic control if it is to not become bureaucratised and sclerotic
like many state-owned institutions did in the post-war era.
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A left party would obviously propose a whole range of other policies pertaining
to international and social issues, including policies that dont neccessarily
challenge the logic of capital but are redistributive and generally positive for the
mass of society. The SSPs policies on free school meals and free public
transport would be examples of this, as would much of the Common Weal
agenda. A distinction has to be made between rupture policies, that attempt to
build an alternative balance of power to capitalist society, and general policy
demands, which attempt to improve the lot of people within the framework of
the existing society. The emphasis upon rupture policies and general policy
demands is entirely dependent upon the context.
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7. A new party for a new Scotland
I began this series by emphasising that my intention is not to detail the specific
form which a left party should take, but rather to contribute to a much needed
debate. A left party will only have legs if it involves a coming together of
various forces and productively combines the different experiences of people
who are actively engaged in diverse communities. This cannot become a mere
platitude a party entirely led by one faction of the left is not worth pursuing.
We have to build something sustainable over the long-term with genuine
grassroots involvement or else we are setting ourselves up for another fall
when the initial enthusiasm wears off.
In the last part of this series, I aim to analyse the political context which makes
a new party not just possible, but a neccessity if the independence movement
is going to have a fighting chance of achieving its goals.
The most important thing we have to understand about Scotland in 2014 is
that, whatever happens now, theres no going back. Better Together needed a
thumping victory to convince Scots to go back into their box and swear
deference forever more to Westminster; the shift in the polls shows that there
is now no chance of that happening. We already live in the era of new
Scotland, the real question being what new Scotland looks like and how quickly
we can break entirely from the old.
New Scotland is cut across by two principal axes of division one relating to
economic and social justice, the other constitutional in nature. These dividing
lines, regardless of the result in September, create a dynamic that means a new
party up to the challenge of achieving the goals of the independence movement
a democratic, independent Scotland committed to achieving social justice is
a neccessity. Let me explain.
Hypothesis 1: a narrow defeat for yes
Perpetual austerity
Scotland faces unprecedented Westminster austerity regardless of the 2015
general election result. According to Seumas Milne, Ed Balls has already told the
Shadow Cabinet that some departments face up to 33% cuts. Its possible that
as little as 20% of the cuts to the public-sector have been made thus far. In
such a scenario, Holyrood will struggle to hold back the tide indeed it has
already struggled, since 100,000 children in Scotland have been put into
poverty by the coalitions welfare reforms. Endemic problems of inequality,
poverty, unemployment and alienation (with all of its subsequent social and
health repercussions) are likely to intensify. What then is the future direction of
a social and economic justice agenda in the New Scotland post-No vote?
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100,000 children in Scotland have been pushed into poverty by coalition austerity
With the SNP continuing to be the governing party until at least 2016, what is
their strategy, with the referendum lost, to pull Scotland out of the mire? The
SNP could implement new taxation policies to raise more money in Scotland,
like a land value tax, and they could raise the council tax or replace it with a
more progressive income-related tax, but they have so far resisted such an
approach and its unlikely they would change course. Scottish Labour, after
convincing Scots to stick with the union, have to have a compelling argument
for how Labour-Labour rule at Westminster and Holyrood will see the lives of
working class Scots improved. Since theyve provided little evidence of this out
of power, theres little reason to believe that a new dynamic and radical
Scottish Labour in the union is just round the corner. An explicitly anti-cuts
party in the new Scotland will be a must.
SNP: the devo-max party?
Perpetual austerity will of course interweave with the new constitutional
debate in the post-NO political climate. Its widely touted that the SNP have a
plan, in the short-term, to redefine themselves as the devo-max party,
shunning full independence for a future day. There will certainly be intensive
pressure on the SNP from the ranks of Better Together and the unionist media
to commit to ruling out a second referendum if they win the 2016 elections.
Salmond and Sturgeon will likely take this path they have long sought to
present themselves as more than a single-issue party and they will want to
avoid that tag with the 2016 elections on the horizon. Additionally, there is a
prize for the SNP in commiting to devo-max as their constitutional priority
they can outflank Labour in the renewed devolution debate, who are not going
28

to get much more radical than an increase in income tax powers. An SNP 2016
election majority could then raise the spectre of a devo-max referendum.
There is an obvious problem for the SNP with this strategy: they are supposed
to be the party of independence, abandoning their primary aim will not be
achieved without a backlash. They have also helped unleash a historic grass-
roots movement that has a life of its own outside of the SNP machine. That
movement is unlikely to accept conclusive defeat for the foreseeable future. I
would also wager that in the context of major cuts to Scottish budgets coming
in the years after the referendum, opinion polls will show a majority for yes. In
this context, a party committing to a referendum on independence after the
2016 elections would receive a lot of support within the independence
movement and the public at large.
Hypothesis 2: a yes victory
Negotiations, constitution and soveriegnty
In this scenario, Scotland immediately enters the negotiation phase. Salmond
has already said that the negotiating team will include people from the No side.
Theres likely to be back-sliding with regard to some SNP white paper
commitments and although the specifics cant reasonably be predicted, its safe
to assume the independence movement will be in some respects disappointed.
Any backsliding on Trident, for example, would have an explosive impact within
the SNP and in the wider independence movement. The partial solution of a
negotiating team democratically elected by a citizens assembly, proposed by
both Robin McAlpine and Colin Fox, is likely to fall on deaf ears.
29


SNP back-sliding on Trident would be explosive

Fissures are likely to open up over the negotiations, but also over the creation
of Scotlands new constitution. The SNP are going to implement an interim
constitution through to 2016, and then it looks like part of the first parliament
will be taken up with debating the constitution. But this isnt likely to meet the
appetite of the independence movement for democratic participation in the
creation of new Scotland.
More long-standing constitutional divisions within the independence movement
are also likely rear their head in the context of independence: will we get that
referendum on the monarchy that is still in the SNPs manifesto? If the Bank of
England becomes our lender of last resort, how long will such an arrangement
last and to what extent will it curtail our soveriegnty? What impact will NATO
membership have on our defence and foreign policy? Scottish Labour will not
be well positioned to challenge the SNP on any of these matters given they
opposed independence in the first place, such that the challenge must come
from the wider independence movement, which would need to have an
electoral edge to have any purchase.
Achieving social (and economic) justice
On social justice the stated purpose of independence for the vast majority of
the independence movement expectations will run high for the first party
manifestos of the 2016 elections. The SNPs white paper outlines many
progressive measures which, if implemented, would be of great significance,
such as free childcare. However in other areas, like transport, energy and
30

finance, its still too much like old Scotland: taking its lead from Westminsters
neoliberal economic orthodoxy. Some argue that the SNP have been cautious to
get all of Scotland on board, and that radical Salmond will emerge post-yes
vote on this I am sceptical. Sensible Salmond is more likely, desperate to
show the Scottish elite of their ability to manage an independent Scotland in a
prudent fashion, just like any other Western country. The SNP will need to meet
much of their social justice obligations, but they will continue to attempt to
seperate this from economic justice, when in the long-run the two cannot be
pulled apart. A party of economic and social justice willing to challenge the
British economic model head on will be required, if for no other reason than to
provide a counter-pressure on the SNP to Scottish capital in the new Scotland.
Could Scottish Labour be that party? Whilst I have no willingness to dampen
the enthusiasm of Labour supporting independence campaigners who envisage
that Labour will finally rediscover its roots in the new Scotland, I fear that it
amounts to so much wishful thinking. Labours visceral hatred of the SNP will
ultimately drive policy, and they will find as much room to try to outflank them
on the right as on the left. Its quite easy to see the narrative already, as it has
a continuity with Lamonts message now: See they promised the world but
they cant deliver, we are the party of realism, we know that Scotland cant
afford universal services, so were going to put those at the bottom first by
means-testing. This is, surely, at least as likely as Nye Bevan emerging from
within the bowels of Scottish Labour. Down-trodden pessimism has become
woven into the fabric of Labour I dont see it disappearing overnight.
Third Scotland and the new Party
New Scotland opens up new fissures in Scottish politics that only a new party
can address to the benefit of working class Scots. But is there a force that can
actually generate a serious electoral challenge to Scotlands establishments old
and new? The independence movement has thrown up new alliances that
would not have been possible without the common purpose of the referendum
many of us who have been part of this process have been surprised by the
degree of consensus we have found. Gerry Hassan has called this new
community third Scotland:
Sceptics pour scorn on what this third Scotland stands for, but its political
agenda is clear. It is for self-government and independence as not an end in
itself, but as a means of bringing about social change. It is suspicious of the
SNPs rather timid version of independence, always being described as being
about the full powers of the parliament which is hardly a language or
outlook for transformational change. And they see the old mechanisms of social
change such as the Labour party, labour movement and British state as having
consistently failed and colluded with inequality, power and privilege.
Common characteristics of Third Scotland can be identified in Jim Sillars In
place of fear II, Lesley Riddochs Blossom, Green Yes, the Radical
Independence Conferences, Colin Foxs pamphlet for an independent socialist
Scotland, James Foley and Pete Ramands Yes: the radical case for Scottish
31

independence, the Common Weal Project and much of the cultural inspiration
behind National Collective. There is certainly much more politically that unites
than divides. It broadly represents a red-green alliance based on a commitment
to bottom-up democracy and an economy that puts people and planet before
profit.
Could at least some of the eclectic forces that comprise so-called Third
Scotland be bound together in a new party? It would require great sacrifice and
humility from existing parties like the SSP and the Greens, but the prize of
being a new force in the new Scotland is far beyond the limits of its individual
parts. It would also have to be aware that it needs to reach out and build
broader alliances: some of the old mechanisms Hassan refers to like the
labour movement are still the biggest and most effective mechanisms working
people have to challenge inequality, power and priviledge, but they need new
political leadership at the ballot box. Building a sustainable Third Scotland that
becomes embedded in the fabric of Scottish society means being aware of the
limits of the new and renewing the old.
Third Scotland has a choice in the new Scotland: are we happy to be a
disparate voice of dissent, or worse a group of warring left factions, or do we
take responsibility for Scotlands future, put aside apprehensions, and combine?
Im for the latter.