Scottish Labour faces up to its epic battle to come back from the dead
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Version 0 of 1. In Nicola Sturgeon’s south Glasgow heartland, they are raising money to erect a statue of one of her heroines, a great campaigner of the Labour party who has been all but forgotten. Mary Barbour was a working-class mother of two from a Govan slum who led the Glasgow rent strikes of 1915 that brought about social change across Britain. A pioneer in labour activism and a prominent Red Clydesider, she was one of five activists who in 1920 became the first women to be elected to Glasgow city council. She went on to be the city’s first female magistrate while endlessly fighting for the rights of the poor. Last month another child of Govan and Labour, Sir Alex Ferguson, donated £5,000 to the statue appeal, to the delight of Maria Fyfe, a Labour MP in Glasgow for 14 years before she stepped down in 2001 and the woman behind the Remember Mary Barbour Association. “Everyone regards Mary as a heroine,” said Fyfe, “but in terms of the politics of what she achieved, it belongs in the history of the labour movement. Obviously now is a time when we need a period of reflection. We have to consider where we go from here, and Labour could do worse than take a historical view.” Govan is steeped in trade unionism and socialist tradition but, as in the rest of the country, the Labour party has vanished. The former local MP, Ian Davidson, had shut down his Twitter account by Friday morning, avoiding further voter comment. As the Scottish National party emerged in possession of 56 of Scotland’s 59 parliamentary seats, there was little more to be said. Davidson was among the many in Labour to spectacularly misread their electorate. Last year he claimed that once the “conflict” of the independence campaign was over “all that will be required is mopping up and bayonetting of the wounded”. Directly over the river from Govan, on the north bank, the restored Clyde-built tall ship Glenlee is hosting an arts event to commemorate 100 years since the loss of another ship built here, the Lusitania, torpedoed and sunk in 1915, leaving 1,198 dead. But it isn’t all history – Glasgow still has a shipbuilding industry and the Unite union which represents its workers was a vocal critic of the independence campaign, with convenor [shop steward] Duncan Mcphee suggesting that they would “lose their only customer”, the Ministry of Defence. For former shipyard worker Jimmy Cloughley, 77, that approach showed a culpable lack of imagination. “On the Clyde, in an island nation, with all the skills, with our world-class nautical college, the potential for the yards to move into renewables, wind and wave power, into leisure craft and the type of vessels they are building across Europe, and getting EU assistance for, has been ignored.” Cloughley was one of the ringleaders of the watershed 1971 “work-in” of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, when shop steward Jimmy Reid took on the Tory government and forced a U-turn from prime minister Edward Heath, who had said he was willing to let 6,000 workers lose their jobs rather than give a loan to a “lame duck” industry. Cloughley saw potential in last Thursday’s vote. “I’ve been hoping for a situation like this all my life. The progressive elements in Scotland are on the move. Rather than opportunists and careerists, and hatred and aggression filling politics, the SNP showed they could do social justice, whether they’re to the left, right or upside down. Labour has a chance now to come back realigned. With two social democrat parties working for people, the population would be the winners.” Reid, who died in 2010, predicted Labour’s decline, saying that the end of heavy industry in the 1980s meant that the politics of revolution would be replaced by the politics of identity. “Jimmy wrote in 2001 about a lack of intellectual depth and principles in politicians, abso-blooming-lutely,” said Cloughley. “He could have written it today. People have been telling Labour they’d lost their moral compass and they didn’t listen.” The political runes pointing to Labour’s decline had been there to be read clearly since the referendum, as the SNP’s membership steadily rose from 25,000 on 18 September to more than 100,000 by March. Johann Lamont’s resignation as the Scottish Labour party leader in October 2014, accompanied by her comments that Scottish Labour had been treated like a “branch office”, was another sign. Big names agreed – former first ministers Lord McConnell and Henry McLeish said the party faced a problem of “historic, epic proportions”. “For us, losing some of these Glasgow seats is like Labour winning Kensington and Chelsea,” said Jamie Kerr, vice-chair of the Renfrewshire South constituency Labour party. “But the signs were all there for anyone who chose to see. “Labour can recover if it’s willing to make radical change in Scotland. I don’t mean jump left or right; I mean stand for Scottish people working alongside English Labour but autonomous. But it’s a perfect time for a Labour for Scotland party. When I and others first raised this last year there was a lot of hostility, but I think now there might be more interest in the idea.” Glasgow city councillor Jon Findlay agreed. “We’ve got this view that the Labour party is too left for England and not left enough for Scotland.” He also suggested a new search “for talent at a local level. We’ve lost some great people and we have a Holyrood election to fight next year.” Whether Scots will be kinder to Labour MSP candidates standing in 2016 than they were to those for Westminster is anyone’s guess. Voters like Magi Gibson, a Glasgow author and poet who voted SNP last week for “the first time in 43 years of voting”, are at peace with their political choice. “I was a Labour activist and stood as a Labour councillor, so for me to shift to the SNP was a big process. “The first step was the Iraq war and then the failure to stand up against the bedroom tax and welfare cuts. The country we were living in had social justice policies where food banks were existing. It’s disgusting. Myself and other people were against the concept of nationalism and I also felt worried about not standing with the people of Liverpool or whatever in trying to work for change under Labour. “But Nicola Sturgeon swung it for me. I disregard the word nationalism in the SNP because I think it is being redefined and it’s about having self-respect. It wouldn’t all be a land of milk and honey and I don’t feel guilty about supporting independence. I feel ashamed of the Labour party.” Nationalism was itself being redefined, agreed the Rev Douglas Gay, a lecturer in theology at the University of Glasgow and an ordained Church of Scotland minister. “The struggle with nazism and fascism meant, especially among the clergy and church leaders, that nationalism had been seen as deviant and selfish and arousing darker, dangerous passions,” he said. “But what I think has been happening in Scotland, which has been missed by the rest of the UK, is a detoxifying of the word. Since devolution it’s largely not an issue any more. People have become comfortable with it meaning social progressive, but the Labour party was way behind in understanding that. It may even embrace a federalist proposal. Scotland has reimagined itself and Labour has not.” There seemed to be little appetite for a new referendum, he said. “The economy was the sticking point for most people, so the SNP will play the long game, showing people that Scotland can run its economy using the new powers. Perhaps people will even be happy with a federalist system, who knows?” At the small Govan Cross shopping centre, where Barbour’s statue may soon stand, James Mackay, a retired bank worker, is running errands for a disabled friend who, he said, had been “wrecked” by worries over the bedroom tax and welfare cuts. “See, we’re no’ wanting to stand for it. I’m a Labour man and I’m sorry for them that feels aggrieved in England. I’m sorry if they don’t understand what’s happening in Scotland,” he said. “But you know we’ve had Tory government after Tory government we never wanted, so there’s only so much of that you can take. If down south wants to get agitated, then think how we felt when we got Thatcher. Scottish people and the English, none of us hate each other, but we are never going to see eye to eye on the voting, never. “We’re wanting to move forward, we’re wanting a fair society, and if you’ve not got your coat on yet, we’re away on without you.” |