SNP, Social Democratic Politics in the Anniesland aftermath III - from Scotia 05/12/00
[another Scotia list member stated]The BBC man obviously didn't know that the long-term poor are more likely to be demoralised than revolutionised. Militant trade unionism was rooted among the relatively well-paid workers and not the ill-organised poorly paid. If the ill-organised poorly paid had been well-organised too, they would not have been poorly paid in the first place. If extreme poverty signalled rebellion then Africa and the Indian subcontinent would be permanently convulsed with uprisings. (Agree/disagree?)
I think that militant trade unionism won many important social gains pre-WWII but whether it ultimately was beneficial for the miners say to follow a bunch of ideologically obsessed communists like Scargill and McGaghey only a few years before the collapse of the Berlin Wall is not clear to me at all. Some of todays demoralised poor may have been yesterday's militant trade unionists who didn't know when to stop being militant and when to start trying to have a meaningful social dialogue with other social strata in British society. The problem with the FPTP Westminster system was that it led to an ideologically based lurching see-saw between social forces on the left and right that was inherantly divisive and confrontational rather than a politics of coalition building and consensus seeking from the middle ground in the liberal centre that many supported but felt they couldn't vote for in a predominantly 2 party system. The d'Hondt system at Holyrood lends itself to something very different to slowly take shape in Scotland.
[another Scotia list member stated]Even so, the SNP is nowhere near learning how to deploy the class argument in Scotland's Labour strongholds. Its social-democratic credentials place it further to the left than New Labour, which means the SNP is potentially more attractive for the non-demoralised poor than Labour, whose policies, in government, are basically Thatcherite. (Agree/disagree?)
I agree that the SNP is to the left of Labour but that's not exactly difficult these days. Whether being to the left of another party automatically translates to support amongst working class people is highly debatable IMO. Factors like being a credible party of governance are a much more important factor than ideological purity for a lot of people from all social backgrounds which is why 3rd party protest vehicles tend to do better at by-elections than in general elections.
[another Scotia list member stated]The SNP has failed to communicate this new >reality to the Scottish punters, who do not as yet know that in today's political contextthe SNP is a party of the left and New Labour is a party of the right. (Agree/disagree?)
This is where I disagree. I think most people are well aware of this by now but there appears to be no huge backlash from the voters. I'm not altogether surprised as I am not convinced that working class Scotland was ever in any way inately socialist. This is a society in which the Sunday Post had a near monopoly on Sunday newspaper sales until recently after all. ;-) Some people were obviously taken aback by the social forces behing the Section 28 row. I wasn't in any way shocked by what happened as Scottish society has a partially hidden small "c" conservative streak that has never really found consistent political expression. Militant socialist ideology was definitely strong in mining areas like Fife and there was a sizeable segment of working class people who adopted that ideological stance but you don't need to go too far back into Scottish electoral history to get to a point where Labour didn't automatically win over the Conservatives even in working class areas in Glasgow.
A lot of Labour's traditional support was based on them being perceived as being better than the Tories not because of socialism but more based on a social sort of them and us basis. When a politician like Teddy Taylor came along who knew how to interact with people in areas like Govanhill the Tories could and did win. I don't think that's really changed amongst people who see things as a choice between Blair's people or Hague's people even today. Blair's people are on balance probably still a lot more in tune with the concerns of working class people than the people you see on the TV at Conservative Party conferences. Hence the lack of a huge ideologically based backlash to New Labour's rightward lurch.
[another Scotia list member stated]Could it be that the SNP has a problem in trumpeting its modern left credentials in the central belt lest it antagonise zealous supporters in the north whose nationalism has a bourgeois tinge? The SNP cannot win Scotland without winning the lowlands. That's the arithmetic of Scottish politics. The SNP and the SSP have got to be in there with the punters and the demoralised poor, between elections, helping them fight back on issues that impinge on their everyday life. (agree/disgree?)
Here I disagree. The SNP is engaged in a politics of national social consensus not one of class struggle. It is not about taking the side of one set of Scottish people against another set of Scottish people. It is about building a better more egalitarian civic Scottish society for all Scotland's residents. This myth that the central belt is one big Labour voting council scheme does not stand up to too close examination. There are 15-20 seats that are rock solid Labour in and around Glasgow like Anniesland that the SNP are unlikely to win any time soon but there are plenty of other seats elsewhere in Scotland that are much more winnable and under d'Hont the SNP doesn't ever have to win Anniesland FPTP to be able to win a Scottish election IMO. The SNP's approach in seeking a consensus across the social classes is similar to the electorally successful politics of the governing Liberal party in Canada where the Liberals were never eclipsed by the socialist left as happened in Britain. The SSP are the party of continuing UK traditional class struggle. Whether a consensus approach based on social dialogue and cooperation or a confrontational them and us approach is the better way to go in the context of the modern global economy is up to the voters. I would suggest that within the context of coalition building politics at Holyrood the traditional "them and us" Old Labour vs Conservative mindset that Jimmy Reid seems to be stuck in is becoming a wee bit obsolete. It will be the national consensus civic based politics of the SNP rather than those of militant class struggle of the old style British socialist hard left that will slowly win out at the end of the day amongst younger voters even in Annielsland but it certainly won't translate into FPTP electoral success overnight. It will maybe take another generation or so before Labour strongholds in the Clyde valley start to switch to the SNP in the FPTP component of Holyrood elections.
PS I'm not really knocking everything Jimmy Reid ever did with UCS and all that but things have simply moved on IMO.