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Today’s banner:
Girl on the bridge,
The Mound, Sutherland,
by Islay McLeod
Drawings by Bob Smith
Euan McColm, writing in Scotland on Sunday, bemoaned the lack of policies and ideas coming from Scottish Labour. The party, he said, ‘had nothing interesting to say’ but ‘there are internal shenanigans and Holyrood chamber clashes to satisfy the nerdish’.
The Sunday Herald, meanwhile, was revealing details of internal divisions that seemed to be a little more serious than mere ‘shenanigans’. It was reported that Rami Okasha, the party’s head of communications and policy, had been suspended pending disciplinary proceedings over alleged ‘insubordination’. Specifics were in short supply but anonymous Labour sources painted a picture of a party hierarchy divided between Johann Lamont and her Holyrood team and those based at John Smith House in Glasgow.
A source claimed that Okasha and Scottish Labour general secretary Colin Smyth (who announced on Tuesday that he was standing down) were among a group at the party’s Glasgow headquarters who were perceived by some as prioritising the needs of MPs and Glasgow City Council over MSPs. It was also revealed that staff at John Smith House are employed by the UK organisation and this fact probably explains why his suspension will be dealt with by UK Labour’s human resources department. But it also undermines what was meant to be the key reform following from the internal review carried out by Jim Murphy and Sarah Boyack – a unified party with Lamont at the apex. It seems as though there are tensions that remain unresolved.
The surfacing of recent disputes plays into older, negative stereotypes about Scottish Labour as a party vulnerable to factionalism, machine politics and the cultivation of personal grudges. It might also be construed as a waste of time, energy and imagination when many traditional Labour supporters are using theirs to try and survive a prolonged period of economic crisis. Furthermore, it raises questions about the party’s ability to collaborate with others as part of the Better Together campaign when key figures seem to be having difficulty managing their own professional relationships.
Arguably the most damning allegation, particularly in the current political climate, was that some Scottish Labour figures see Glasgow City Council as more important than the Scottish Parliament. Claims made in the heat of what seems to be a fairly serious and acrimonious internal dispute should, of course, be taken with more than a pinch of salt. But it is still a claim that will ring uncomfortably true for those who see the culture and attitudes of Scottish Labour as being shaped by the concerns and intrigues of its west of Scotland heartlands.
The basic fact of the party’s headquarters being located in Glasgow might be seen as tangible evidence of this and it isn’t unreasonable to suggest Scottish Labour’s base should be in Edinburgh some 13 years after the opening of the Scottish Parliament. Perhaps the aesthetic merits of John Smith House are at the root of this failure to relocate? There are, however, suggestions that Lamont intends to implement such a move as part of strategy to prioritise the Scottish Parliament. This is unlikely to be greeted with much fanfare and will, if anything, lead to questions about why it took so long and wasn’t undertaken by one of Lamont’s four predecessors.
It is understandable that the west of Scotland should provide a form of spiritual sustenance to Scottish Labour: in 1922 the party’s national breakthrough was heralded when it won 10 of Glasgow’s 15 parliamentary seats and, more recently, the party managed to hold the city council when many had predicted a SNP triumph. The area, in short, is a psychological and electoral comfort blanket for Scottish Labour which allows the party to wrap up and dream of other times.
The SNP has faced accusations of failing to understand the west of Scotland but Scottish Labour runs the much more serious risk of being seen to not understand the rest. This problem was identified by Gerry Hassan and Eric Shaw in their recent study of Labour Scotland. The authors described a party rooted in the west of Scotland and lacking ‘any real grasp or recognition of other Scottish traditions and progressive cultures’.
A reliance on old certainties and old comforts will only lead to complacency in the face of the daunting economic and political challenges currently facing the Scottish Labour Party. As the most significant unionist party, it is tasked with providing the impetus and imagination for the Better Together campaign. As Gerry Hassan noted last week in the Scottish Review (13 September), the pro-union parties need to acknowledge the many problems characterising British society and convince the public that these can be meaningfully addressed within the current constitutional framework.
Scottish Labour needs to be seen to be playing a prominent role in this process, even if this means acknowledging its own contributions to failures, whether at Westminster or North Lanarkshire Council. It doesn’t speak for Scotland in the way it used to believe, but too many people still have too much invested in it for key figures to be wasting time deciding who is or is not speaking to whom.
Alasdair McKillop is a writer based in Edinburgh
