Leaders versus bureaucrats

The recent industrial action (to say nothing of what happened in Respect) got me thinking about the question of bureaucracy. This is a piece for issue 3 of Socialist Resistance. As always I’m open to positive suggestions to improve it.

This year has been the first time that many thousands of workers from young local government staff, to tanker drivers and teachers have had their first ever opportunity to go on strike. And they always say two things. The first is “why didn’t we do this earlier?” The second is “wouldn’t it be better if all the unions did this at the same time?”

On the first point they are right to ask the question. Most trade union leaderships make their members have indicative ballots before moving to a vote on taking action as a way of delaying it or trying to prove that there is no stomach for it. When action does come it seems that the leaders don’t want to make it effective. They restrict it to a day or two and seem to wilfully prevent it from developing any momentum.

On the second point the answer to the question is “yes”. Combined union action is always more effective. UNISON and the National Union of Teachers could have broken the government’s will to cut their members’ pay by sustained joint action. Other forms of joint action include refusing to cross another union’s picket line are almost always the focus of an explicit taboo from every union’s headquarters. A rare honourable recent exception to this is Jeremy Dear’s advice to members of the National Union of Journalists reminding them of this union tradition and recommending that they observe it.

Is there any way to explain this apparent unwillingness to fight and win that most trade union and leaders of parties that claim to represent working people display? This is a problem that Marxists have tried to understand since the nineteenth century and have developed a theory of working class bureaucracy to clarify it.

National unions do not spend the majority of their time organising strikes. They fill it with a whole range of other activities – some of it only tenuously connected to their core function of defending members’ jobs, salaries and working conditions. They offer insurance, mortgages and run large administrative offices. Of course any organisation which has a membership of tens or hundreds of thousands requires a professional staff to collect money and provide specialised support services. A huge task like that can’t just be done by voluntary workers in their spare time. Parallel with the administration every union has a group of elected and appointed officials who mediate between workers, employers and government. These are the general secretaries, their deputies, treasurers, chairs, regional officials and many more besides. Together they make up the bureaucracy in a party or union.

Demagogy – an indispensable skill

This separation between the workers they represent and the bureaucracy mirrors the division of labour in capitalist society. Workers don’t have the free time to dedicate themselves to fulltime union or political activity and often have to rely on union or party staff to keep them up to date with developments. These officials have access to a lot more information than the average worker about wage negotiations or the political situation and with this knowledge comes power and an aura of authority. The Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci remarked that many of the individuals who rise to the tops of unions often do so because they combine administrative competence with the useful skill of demagogy. They can claim to have the full picture and understand the real complications and will do so in a way that often makes it difficult for rank and file workers or party members to challenge. Gradually the people who are supposed to be the servants of the members have a vast amount of autonomy inside the organisation. They know how to use the rule book to get what they want and will not think twice about using it to keep the members in line. The members’ main duty is to passively obey the officials and obediently strike, not strike or suffer passively as instructed. The rhetoric about conferences being the sovereign decision making body of an organisation with a strong bureaucracy is transparently false to anyone who has ever sat through a trade union or Labour Party conference. Deals are stitched up behind the scenes and when conference makes a “wrong” decision it’s just ignored until the following year.

Another consequence of the division of labour in capitalist society is that individuals end up seeing the thing that they are doing as an end in itself. The union treasurer sees her job as solely that of keeping the union on a sound financial footing. The prospect of members taking industrial action which could result in a court stealing the union’s money is the last thing someone in that position wants. This caution is understandable. The union’s offices and bank accounts have been won as a result of previous successfully struggles. However these gains are both partial and reversible. The working class is still exploited in its workplaces and, as the current round of pay cuts demonstrates, the capitalist state’s first instinct is to make the working class pay for capital’s troubles. For the bureaucrat though the organisation is synonymous with the working class. What is good for the union or the party is good for working people and for most bureaucrats there is no clear line between what benefits them as a group and what benefits the organisation.

Unofficial action – the bureaucrat’s nightmare

Members’ passivity is the customary justification that bureaucrats offer when they are challenged about the dominating positions that they hold. But the quickest way to get the bureaucrat out of the office is when members do start acting for themselves. An unofficial strike is a bureaucratic nightmare. It gives rank and file members a sense of their own power and at the same time denies the paid official her or his vital function of mediating between workers and management. Recent industrial history in Britain is punctuated by industrial action cut short as soon as the union officials arrive and they are not reluctant to use disciplinary sanctions against members who are unwilling to defer to their superior wisdom. Demoralisation, scepticism and lack of workers’ confidence are a bureaucrat’s best friend. A decline in militancy allows them to tighten their grip on the organisation which sets in motion a cycle of enhanced bureaucratic control. Effectively the bureaucracy is policing its members on behalf of the courts and the employers.

Even the earliest socialist organisations were alive to the risk of bureaucratisation. Marx and Engels were able to learn some valuable lessons from the experience of the Paris Commune which signpost steps a workers’ state or organisation can take to avoid the problem even in a society where the working class hold power. In The Civil War in France Marx proposed that all proceedings of government be completely transparent. This can apply with equal force to any working class organisation. Decisions should not be made in secret and contending points of view should be freely aired. To prevent officials becoming autonomous Marx argued that they should be subject to the right of recall at any time by the people who elected them. This proposal is always vigorously opposed by union officials who both enjoy the sense of prestige that goes with their position as well as the more intellectually rewarding work that they do.

As if the prestige and the mental stimulation were not reward enough there is usually a significant difference in salary between trade union officials and their members – and that’s before the expense accounts are included. In social democratic parties MPs do not give their salaries to the party and that too creates a gulf between them and other, less affluent party members. The revolutionary Marxist solution to this is that the officials of workers’ organisations should receive wages equivalent to those of a skilled worker. No imagination is needed to see how enforcing this rule on trade union officials would make them a lot less willing to accept below inflation pay deals.

A fact of life

In a capitalist society the bureaucracy in working class organisations is an inevitable fact of life. The problem is a real one is based on social conditions and material interests as much as the bad intentions of some individual union leaders or officials – real as these often are.

The trade union bureaucracy is a strongly conservative tendency and the struggle against it is essentially a fight around democracy. Through this struggle it is possible to create some protection against the bureaucracy’s influence. The struggle has to be based on an analysis which takes into account the needs of that union’s members and the working class as a whole. As several recent divisive pension deals have shown trade union leaders are willing to split their members by negotiating settlements which privilege one group of workers over another.

Providing an alternative analysis is a prerequisite for building class struggle currents inside the trade unions which are willing to challenge the bureaucracy’s arguments and strategic decisions. Networks of activists who are self-confident and are willing to provide a fighting leadership to protect members’ standards of living in the face of rising fuel and food prices and New Labour’s pay cuts are the nucleus of a real opposition to neo-liberalism

You’re not allowed to talk to him - political ostracism

Ostracism  has been part of the repertoire of the playground bully since the first Australopithecine youngsters were obliged to study basic flint knapping. At least kids have the excuse of not knowing any better.

The Namibian newspaper reported that Erasmus ‘Kaptein’ Hendjala was told of his expulsion from SWAPO by a letter accusing him of gross misconduct and violating the party’s constitution. His alleged offences include calling the President a “drunkard” and giving a lift to members of another organisation. The terms of the expulsion state that he “should no longer carry put any activities in the name of Swapo, speak to or address Swapo party members”. This could make his domestic life a bit complicated since his wife remains a party member.

According to Giuseppe Fiori’s book Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary something similar nearly happened to Gramsci in prison. Fiori, who had good access to Gramsci’s surviving family says that Gramsci strongly disagreed with the Italian Communist Party’s Stalin dictated characterisation of social democratic parties as “social-fascist”. His views were known to other PCI members in prison with him and Fiori claims that some of them proposed ostracising the ailing Gramsci but that their proposal was not accepted, partly because his brother deliberately misled PCI leader Palmiro Togliatti.

Compounding imprisonment with internal isolation for dissenters was something of a habit for European CP members in the 1930s and 40s. A couple of years ago I summarised an account of the jailing and subsequent murder of French Trotskyists. In at least one case a comrade got the silent treatment, was prevented from using the toilets, had his food tray knocked over and his letters destroyed his letters.

Mercifully one of these cases happened far away and the other two were long ago. Is it possible to draw any conclusions from them?

Well the obvious point is that if you want to hold a group of people together one thing you can do is to make a nasty example of individuals who express transgressive views. This has the added advantage of allowing you to spend a lot of time explaining how awful the person is without saying anything about their opinions.

Based on the little I learned about SWAPO the organisation is severely bureaucratised. The boundary between the state and the party is not always clear and complaints about this are a staple of the local press. Prominent figures in the organisation regularly make speeches and statements asserting the party’s right to be hegemonic and a lot of them have carved out very comfortable niches for themselves. No one could claim that anyone active in a European Communist Party in the 1930s was interested in an easy life. However the intolerance of dissent which went beyond very narrow limits became embedded during the Stalin era and it still affects politics today.

Help is just a phone call away

It’s pretty obvious from reading some of the comments left on this site that a lot of people need a lot of help. I’ll draw a veil over some that don’t make it past the moderation stage. Anyway here is something I picked up in Luderitz - where the action isn’t. It’s an advert from a local newsheet offering assistance for anyone wanting to be liked, having problems in the trouser department or just a bit unlucky. The code for Luderitz is (264) 063.

Distance shouldn’t be an obstacle to Dr Joseph and you can let the rest of us know how you get on.

Agriculture in post-independence Namibia

Normally dining with other people is a bit of a chore. They expect you to talk to them and it’s considered rude to watch the TV when you are eating. Different rules apply when you are on holiday and find yourself in circumstances not of your own making.

 

An insight into how Namibia fits into the world economy was given to me by a junior manager of a meat haulage firm over dinner earlier this week. By chance he originally comes from a village in the north of Ireland where they paint the kerb stones red, white and blue to make plain their views on papal infallibility.

 

He said that the last time he and his wife had had good quality beef for dinner was when a friend had given them some. On his salary he could not afford to buy it. Namibian beef fetches the same price on the world market as British beef. Local processing costs are much cheaper since meat produced in Britain is processed, transported and sold by workers on at least the minimum wage. So even after transport costs a Namibian farmer makes more money by exporting meat than by producing for the domestic market.

 

The link between the world market and his dinner plate was not lost on him. He just didn’t see the problem.

 

His wife’s understanding of the world was not a great deal sharper.

 

Her farmer father amuses his guests by shooting his automatic rifle out of the living room window. The farm is adjacent to a squatter camp just outside Windhoek. We can assume that if junior managers find it hard to put good meat on the table then it’s even rarer for the camp dwellers.

 

They tended to make a nuisance of themselves by digging under the farm’s electric fence to take firewood. Sometimes they would kill a cow or pig and make off with as much meat as they could carry. The farmer’s daughter was annoyed at this wanton greed. Her father’s reaction was to use his rifle to earn himself a reputation as “shoot first ask questions later” type of guy. The locals at the table found this funny.

 

Three words were unspoken. “Colour”, “black”, “white”.

 

As best I can judge all the big farms are still white owned. Many of them are diversifying very successful into tourism. It’s a given that only blacks live in the squatter camps. All the farm labourers are black too.

 

The Alte Feste museum in Windhoek has an extensive display devoted to the liberation struggle including photographs of the children of SWAPO fighters in the GDR and Czechoslovakia. The peace deal that brought independence was brokered by the United States. So too was the subsequent socio-economic setup. There is a formal democracy. Literacy rates are above 80% and the infrastructure is pretty good, including free condoms in the post office. There is a strong PR spin on the theme of “upliftment” which is code for getting black Namibians into high profile senior posts. What is not changed from the pre-independence period is the overwhelming white domination of the land and the economy

Normal service? Not for a while yet

This is the first access I’ve had to a computer, newspaper, tv or radio in a week. It’s in Luderitz in Namibia and the connection is very slow. Normal service will resume on Friday of next week.

Auf wiedersehen

I’m away for two weeks and will have pretty limited Internet access. The moderation policy will stay in force which means that it could be a while before comments from new contributors are released. You know it makes sense.

Tschüss!

What was that about demoralisation, John?

An under remarked side effect of Sinn Fein’s capitulation to British imperialism is how it is making Belfast a more dangerous place. This was brought home to me by two incidents on two consecutive nights on a visit to Provielandia.

Last night leaving a pub after an extended survey of the Irish political landscape, in which we explored the demoralisation of Sinn Fein’s base,  I heard shouting on the other side of the street.  The bar is close to a roundabout half way up the Glen Road and has two bouncers on each door. I left at chucking out time and there was a fair number of people hanging around waiting for taxis and chatting. Only one of them was daft enough to walk towards the sound of the woman screaming and the man shouting.  When I got there she was on the ground while he was alternately dragging, slapping and kicking her. His version was that he was kicking her handbag.

Over the next five minutes - though it seemed longer - only one other person tried to give any real help. One woman who did come over was pulled away by her friend saying “it’s nothing to do with us”. That was pretty much the view of every other spectator other than the man who got her into the taxi. Not one of the bouncers assisted, likely as not because no one bothered calling them and no one else helped me trying to prevent the man getting in the same taxi as the women he’d just been thumping. It was hard to say if they just couldn’t be bothered or were too frightened.

Pretty much everyone who drinks in the bar would identify themselves as a Republican. That would explain why no one thought of calling the cops either. The Republicans’ political collapse has been accompanied by a collapse in their political and moral authority and the vacuum gives license to anti-social, lumpen behaviour that was much rarer even a decade ago. When there was more political self-confidence and a more evident sense of solidarity the chances are that the woman would have got a lot more support than was on hand last night.

The other incident was a lot more trivial involving some vodka swilling fourteen year olds in the park who must have felt disrespected when I declined their offer of a chat in what was their park

Perverse it might be but the hard fact is that Belfast used to feel like a pretty safe city. So long as you stayed away from the bits where you might be picked up by the UDA or get a kicking from drunk Orangemen. In the new dispensation casual street violence is becoming socially acceptable.

Baby swans reunited with mother - Martin Mc Guinness praises SAS heroes

The BBC news in the north of Ireland ran two swan related stories this week. The first reported that six swans died in a oil spill in the picturesque and loyal town of Carrickfergus. The good news came on Friday when viewers were told that two young swans had been reunited with their mother after a clean up. Aaah!

What’s odd is the type of story that the BBC is choosing not to cover. Earlier this month there were riots in Ardoyne in north Belfast. These are a traditional part of the preparations for the 12th of July. It’s an incontrovertible fact that the marches and bonfires on and before the 12th are a reactionary sectarian provocation. That’s why it is entirely reasonable that the people at the receiving end of the Orange bacchanalia try to force it off the streets near their homes. This usually involves local youths rioting, trying to attack the bonfires and fighting with the police.

In the new colonial dispensation the police’s principal allies are now members of Sinn Fein and other Republicans. We can translate that as “IRA”. People in the area are now saying that when the rioting began well known Republicans arrived and pepper sprayed some of the rioters. This made it easier for the police to arrest them. This is widely known in Belfast but the local TV stations’ journalists are now effectively press officers for the local administration and prefer not to embarrass the politicians too much. They leave that to Iris Robinson who seems driven by some demons to make her husband’s life uncomfortable.

Irish Republicanism has completely run out of ideas. One of the dissident groups has started leaving hoax bombs on the railway line during the evening rush hour - having concluded that one of the most imbecilic ruses of the IRA in the 20th century might just work in the 21st century. Completely missing from any Republican critique of the imperialist victory is a glimmer of insight how the organisation has ended up as ancillary police offices defending a carnival of bigotry and why this is reactionary. They don’t even bother asking how they have ended up as a Sinn Fein as a Catholic party sharing patronage with the Loyalists and helping them secure their sectarian state

As for Martin Mc Guinness and the SAS - give it time.

Respect National Conference

The Respect National Conference will take place on Saturday 25 October 2008 at the Bishopsgate Institute in London, near to Liverpool Street Station.

The conference will be open to all members of Respect Renewal and visitors. Only members of Respect Renewal who are fully paid up on 24 October will be allowed to vote. Membership until the end of 2008 is now available for £5.

The conference fee will be £10 per person.

Resolutions – must be submitted by 16 September 2008; they can be on any subject. They should be succinct.

Send to

conference@respectrenewal.org

Any six members can submit a resolution. Anyone wanting to submit a resolution and seek support from five others can ask for it to be posted on the website.

Any branch can submit up to three resolutions. Branches will be determined by the Standing Orders Committee.

Amendments to resolutions must be submitted by 10 October 2008.

There is a Standing Orders Committee which will organise conference business and prioritise resolutions.

The conference will elect a National Council but the size and method of election will be discussed further at the Respect National Council which meets on 6th September.

Nominations for the new National Council must be received by 10 October 2008. People can nominate themselves. Anyone nominated for the NC must be a paid-up member by 1 September 2008.

If you would like any further information about our conference then please contact us by writing

to us at: conference@respectrenewal.org

Download the members’ newsletter.

respectnewsletter_25jul08

Labour humiliated. That’s the good news -updated

Winning a by-election by 365 votes is normally nothing to get to excited about. Unless you manage to overturn a majority of 13 507 and get a swing of 22.5% in your favour.  That’s what the Scottish National Party managed in the Glasgow East by-election. The results that are of interest to readers of this site are below:

• John Mason, SNP - 11,277
• Margaret Curran, Labour - 10,912
• Davena Rankin, Conservative - 1,639
• Ian Robertson, Lib Dem - 915
• Frances Curran, Scottish Socialist Party - 555
• Tricia McLeish, Solidarity - 512
• Dr Eileen Duke, Scottish Greens - 232

A similar swing in a general election would lose Labour 150 MPs’ seats. The appalling Des Browne has already been traipsing round the studios saying that the government must “hold its nerve”. Coming from the man with day to day oversight of the imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan it’s pretty clear what he means. He could have thrown in some detail about bringing the private sector into the NHS, a winter of fuel poverty for millions and below inflation pay rises for public sector workers but decided not to.

The SNP government have repositioned themselves to New Labour’s left. Not a major hurdle but an electorally successful one to jump. For example prescription charges were reduced to £5 in April and it is intended to abolish them completely by 2011. New Labour bulwark UNISON has supported the move. Scottish students no longer have to pay tuition fees and SNP leader Alex Salmond has established a profile for the party as combative and willing to take on London. The fact that that the same time the SNP has been cultivating its support in the business world and has not reversed any significant Labour privatisation reminds us that it is a bourgeois party, albeit one that is picking up lot of working class support including from the SSP and Solidarity.

Both organisations had disappointing results and there is no doubt that the pre-split organisation would have fared better, though probably not much better. The Lib Dems and the Greens had poor votes too and these are parties which often serve as the protest option.

The essential message from this election is that almost every Labour seat is vulnerable to a serious challenge and that is welcome. The bad news is that in only a tiny handful of areas will it  be possible to launch a challenge that is more than a propaganda campaign.

What a result! by Richie Venton

This comes from the SSP’s site.

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What a phenomenal result on two parallel levels: the earth-shattering defeat of Labour in Red Clydesider John Wheatley’s seat, Labour’s 3rd safest seat in Scotland, held by them since 1922; and the tremendous achievement for the SSP in winning 5th place, the highest position for any of the smaller parties, despite all the apparently insurmountable obstacles we faced.

If we compare the votes with those of the 2005 Westminster election in the identical Glasgow East seat, Labour has gone into freefall from 18,775 to 10,912; the SNP rocketed from 5,268 to 11,277 - in a turnout down from 48.2% in 2005 to 42.1% this time.

Thousands of Labour voters simply stayed at home in disgust with their record on food and fuel prices; failure to tackle poverty and inequality; assaults on the sick and disabled, and their wholesale neglect of the working class. Others did a straight swap to the SNP, as punishment for New Labour in an area they have treated with decades of contempt, stepping on people’s heads en route to grossly overpaid political careers.

The disgust at Labour politicians, and indeed politicians in the mainstream parties in general, was palpable on the streets, people spitting out angry words about them, responding warmly to the SSP’s policy of ‘A workers’ MP on a worker’s wage’.

Class differentials

There seems to have been a significant class differential in the turnout, with higher voting in the more affluent parts, such as Garrowhill, parts of Baillieston, Mt Vernon – which would be to the SNP’s advantage, because John Mason has been councillor for Garrowhill/Baillieston since 1998. The most deprived districts had generally far lower turnouts, to Labour’s further disadvantage.

The squeeze between the two political Juggernauts that we predicted, whilst agreeing we should stand an SSP candidate, took place with a vice-like vengeance. For example, 85% of those who voted went to either the SNP or Labour. In 2005 the equivalent figure was 77%.

My first impression of the voting figures is that the SNP upsurge was also substantially boosted by defection to them from both the Lib Dems (who plummeted from 3,665 votes three years ago to 915) and even some Tories (who fell from 2,135 to 1,639). In both cases, defecting voters judged that the best way to boot Brown and New Labour was to vote SNP.

This is an unqualified catastrophe for Labour and Gordon Brown. Labour activists were devastated, with talk of the need for a ‘lurch to the left’ amongst a couple of the most unlikely Labour hacks I spoke to at the count.

The national question

There was not widespread, overt, explicit talk on the streets of this being a vote on independence. But it clearly is a clash of contrasting opinions on the Westminster Labour government compared to the Holyrood SNP government – and is a massive impetus towards independence … which will be exponentially added to when Labour’s thrashing in Glasgow East adds to the Labour crisis and therefore increases the likelihood of a Cameron government in Westminster.

All of which positions the Scottish Socialist Party well over the next couple of years, with our pro-independence but unashamedly socialist vision for Scotland, in contrast to the pro-big business agenda of the SNP.

The SNP are riding high in the opinion polls right now, and will be an even more rampant force in the aftermath of Glasgow East, but the contradictions in their all-things-to-all-classes approach are beginning to be revealed to more far-sighted sections of the working class. They face strikes by civil servants against their imposition of a 2% pay ceiling; anger from council workers facing cuts where the SNP are in control or coalition, and growing questions over why they dumped their previous commitment to bus re-regulation in the wake of SNP party funding by multi-millionaire bus tycoon Brian Souter.

SSP: the biggest small party

Given the monumental squeeze on all the smaller parties – and even the Lib Dems – the Scottish Socialist Party scored a fantastic achievement, winning 5th place with 555 votes – ahead of the Solidarity vote of 512, and with a crushing lead over the Greens (despite them having 2 MSPs) who could only muster 232 votes.

Of course we need a sense of proportion. Our 555 compares to 1,096 in the 2005 general election, before the split in the SSP. But what is quite remarkable is that the combined left vote held up so well (1,067 – almost literally identical to that of 2005). And in fact the combined share of the vote rose from 3.5% in 2005 to a combined 4.1% this time!

Given the far tighter squeeze in the focussed intensity of this by-election, the prevailing objective conditions that nurtured that dog-fight between SNP and Labour, and the serious, deep damage done to the credibility of the left through the split, it is remarkable that this was achieved, that the left vote held up so well.

This also serves to underline the destructive, wreckless consequences for the socialist left caused by the small minority, led by Tommy Sheridan, who split off from the SSP two years ago. If they had instead accepted the decisions of the majority of members in the SSP and kept a united party intact, the combined vote of 1,067 would have put us in 4th place, above the Lib Dems – and that is taking no account of the huge additional vote a single, united SSP would have won.

In the tragic circumstances of a divided left, which the SSP was founded precisely to overcome in 1998, there is a profound significance in the relative votes of the SSP and Solidarity. Obviously we can’t compare figures with 2005 on this as we had one party then. The nearest comparator is the 2007 Scottish election results for Baillieston (which makes up roughly two-thirds of Glasgow east) and Shettleston (the other third).

A mere 12 months ago Solidarity got 5 times and over 4 times the SSP vote in these two seats respectively. In Glasgow East, the SSP got 53% of the total left vote!

Solidarity boasted about their 5:1 vote advantage in the by-election campaign, including at press conferences. Tommy Sheridan contacted journalists declaring the SSP was “as dead as a Dodo”, repeating the 5:1 differential of last year to try and convince people there was only one party of the left – his.

Solidarity will have got a very substantial family and friends vote for their candidate, and some votes from the family and friends of the child killed by an airgun in Easterhouse.

On top of that they crudely attempted to confuse people into thinking Tommy Sheridan was the candidate, with their one and only leaflet taking the format of a message from him, and the party name on the ballot forms being ‘Solidarity – Tommy Sheridan’ … not even the softer option of ‘co-convener Tommy Sheridan’ which they could have legally used.

Given all this, it is a signpost to the future when the SSP not only closed down the 5:1 differential but actually won the biggest vote for a left party in horrendously difficult circumstances.

For the broad mass the headline is Labour’s slaughter, the SNP’s victory. But for an astute and observant minority the SSP/Solidarity result helps explode Solidarity’s false claims to be Scotland’s foremost socialist party.

A conscious socialist vote

Considering the weight of the aforementioned squeeze on us, every vote for the SSP was an extremely conscious vote for socialism, for the rich traditions of Glasgow’s east end, in the full knowledge we were not going to win, but that our undiluted socialist message deserved support. A very courageous, conscious, socialist vote.

Some parties and journalists are trotting out claims that the good SSP vote was due to confusion over the two Currans – Frances for the SSP, Margaret for Labour. That is arrogant, patronising nonsense. Labour put out tens of thousands of leaflets explaining which Curran to vote for. So did we, with the theme that ‘there’s only one socialist Curran in this election – Frances Curran’. We spelt out the two opposing worlds these two candidates represented.

The visibility, colour, dynamism and élan of the SSP’s campaign on the streets left nobody in any doubt about what or who they were voting for. We never held back on our socialist message, in leaflets, a newspaper delivered to 45,000 homes, giant banners, through street meetings, and in media appearances. The quality of our campaign – which started out with literally no money or material exactly three weeks before polling day at the meeting of members where we selected Frances Curran as our candidate – was praised by the Greens, SNP, Lib Dems and letter writers to the Herald.

SSP pivotal to the future of socialism

We shouldn’t exaggerate what this result for the SSP signifies, given the very modest votes involved at this stage. But we have to feel vastly proud and confident that the SSP is pivotal to the medium-term unification and growth of a united socialist party in Scotland. It is a time to be proud of the principled socialism the SSP stands for; a time to join us and give renewed impetus to the rehabilitation of the socialist traditions of Red Clydeside in one of its historic strongholds.