Chair's AGM Report

The reconvened CfS AGM was held on Saturday 25th March. After the procedural difficulties of the first part of the AGM, the previous Executive was tasked with redrafting the constitution and standing orders to allow for a clearer process and impaired gender balance in the Executive. The first act of the AGM was to pass these changes, and allow for the meeting and organisation to progress under the new rules. They are now on the website HERE. 

There was an agreement that an EGM would be called within 6 months to allow members an opportunity to amend the constitution and standing orders, and make changes for the following year. Setting a date for this will be tasked to the new Executive.

Speeches and elections for the new Executive then took place. We would like to thank everyone who took part. The new Executive Committee is as follows: 

Convenor: Neil Findlay MSP
Chair: Martyn Cook
Vice Chair: Lesley Brennan
Secretary: Sean Duffy
Treasurer: Linda Clarke
Women's Officer: Maureen Sharkey
Ordinary Members: Nathaniel Blondel, Mike Cowley, Agenda Feeney, Lisa Hughes, Stephen Low, Siobhan McCready

The women’s caucus then elected Maureen Sharkey as the Women’s Officer. The report back also highlighted that there will be a day away planned for the 6th-8th October. More information will follow about this in due course. We would also like to thank Hazel Nolan who provided the ambassador’s talk while the women’s caucus met. 

When it came to the debate on Momentum and CfS’s relationship with it, two motions were passed. The first of these reaffirmed that CfS would be the organisation that coordinates and mobilises the Labour left in Scotland. We will be a sister organisation to Momentum, but maintain our joint membership scheme (meaning CfS members can take part in Momentum elections and vice versa) and also voting to accept the reserved seat on Momentum’s new National Coordinating Group. We will circulate details on the vote for this reserved position shortly. 

The second motion passed was submitted by Edinburgh Momentum. It was in effect a unity motion. As CfS is a separate organisation form Momentum, we are in a position to work with both sides of the recent dispute in Momentum. The motion allows the new Executive to attend meetings of both groups and to try and foster unity.

This meeting allows us to move forward as an organisation, and I would like to thank everyone who attended and made it a success. The new Executive will be meeting shortly, so we will welcome any contributions or suggestions for the agenda, and notice of this will be circulate din the next week or so. Priorities for the Executive will include starting to build forums to engage our membership, as well as looking at campaigns for the coming year. 

There is much work to do.

In solidarity,

Martyn Cook
Chair, Campaign for Socialism

The Citizen: Winter 2016/17

Click the square 'Fullscreen' button in the bottom right of the window to enlarge.

National Policy Forum Conference 2016

Despite having been elected to the NPF as a Scotland CLP rep in 2015, the first full NPF meeting only took place on the 19th and 20th of November in Loughborough.

It was a very general meeting and was more focussed on identifying priority issues for the coming months and years. This report is therefore lighter on policy details than may be expected, but instead focuses on ways for you as a member, your CLP, or other affiliated body to get involved in the policy making process.

Labour 2020

Although there is speculation that there may be a snap election, the current timetable is focussed on the General Election taking place in 2020, and building a manifesto for that. There will of course be a change in the plan if this changes.

The starting point for the NPF was Jeremy Corbyn’s 10 Pledges to Annual Conference, which was a document that was voted through by Conference earlier in the year. This laid out parameters and goals for Labour to expand on in greater policy detail, and are:

1. Full employment
2. A secure homes guarantee
3. Security at work
4. A strong public NHS and social care
5. A National Education service for all
6. Action on Climate Change
7. Public ownership and control of our services
8. A cut in inequality of income and wealth
9. Action to secure an equal society
10. Peace and justice at the heart of foreign policy

The NPF Conference in November looked to give focus to how the manifesto will be structured, and give priority to certain areas in each Policy Commission. The previous 7 Policy Commissions were expanded to 8, with the new Work, Pensions and Equality Forum being added.

The 8 policy Forums and their remits can all be found HERE.

Timetable

The below table lays out the planned schedule of meetings and policy drafts, starting from now until spring 2020. (Unfortunately it seems that the timetable has slipped already, as there haven’t been any initial meetings or conference calls set up for December…)

How to Get Involved

At Annual conference, the older ‘Your Britain’ website, which was the way members could suggest policy proposals to the NPF, has been replaced by the new Policy Forum site:

http://www.policyforum.labour.org.uk/

Here, you can submit a policy idea, comment on others, and view the suggestions that are being submitted to the policy process. The ‘Your Britain’ Twitter account has also been changed to the ‘Labour Policy Forum’, and can be followed HERE.

You can also of course hold policy discussion events in your own CLP, or across a regional area. I would be happy to attend any such meeting or event as an observer to report back to the NPF and the relevant Policy Commission. If you would like me to attend a CLP meeting as an NPF rep, please do not hesitate to contact me:

E: martyn_cook@live.co.uk

P: 07827 962 960

T: @MartynC86

Trident Motion

In my last NPF report I advised that the motion passed by Scottish Conference calling for investment in Defence Diversification and opposing the renewal of Trident submarines had not been included in the International Policy Forum report on defence.

The General Secretary of Scottish Labour, Brian Roy, helpfully clarified that the motion had been submitted to the (now suspended) Defence Review, as opposed to the NPF’s International Policy Forum.  Brian has asked that the motion (along with the Scottish Labour Party’s motion calling for outright opposal to TTIP) be again submitted to the NPF, which I have undertaken to do.

Chair Elections

Finally, congratulation to Katrina Murray, who is a fellow Scottish CLP rep, as she was elected as a vice-chair to the NPF for the CLP section.

National Policy Forum Update

By Martyn Cook

Below is a report on some the work I and others have been taking part in as part of the National Policy Forum (NPF).

Pre-Conference

Firstly, it is worth flagging up that a full meeting of the NPF did not take place in advance of Conference. One was scheduled for July in Nottingham, but as a result of the leadership contest that took up most of the party’s focus this summer, a full NPF was unable to meet as planned.
Smaller working groups had met throughout the year to discuss priority areas, but the final policy documents put to Conference had not been scrutinised as normal. This was actually highlighted at Conference itself on the Sunday morning, where Sim Elliot, an NPF representative for South East CLPs, advised that he had read every submission to the Britain’s Defence and Security Priorities section, and noted his disappointment that the final policy document did not reflect the fact that the majority of party members who submitted policy suggestions were opposed to the renewal of Trident and had called for a change in party policy on this matter.
As you will remember, Scottish Party Conference also voted overwhelmingly to oppose the renewal of Trident, and the agreement was that we would submit a recommendation to the UK Party that this was our position. The final NPF reports record which organisations have made submissions: Scottish Labour is absent from the list of organisations. Regardless of whether you support or oppose this position, I find it concerning that the Scottish Party’s democratic decision making process was not incorporated in to the UK Party’s process.

I will therefore be writing to both the General Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party and the chair of the National Policy Forum to clarify what happened to the submission.

Conference

The NPF is split in to seven policy areas, and within them they each had a priority area to look at. I was placed on the Communities Policy Commission, and our priority area within that was Housing.
At Conference, reports from each Policy Commission and their priority topic were put to Conference to debate and vote on. There were obviously too many contributions and details to fully include in this report, so I thought I would provide some brief summaries of the key points, and contributions from Scottish Delegates.

• Communities. Susan Carstairs from Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch CLP spoke on the need for environmental issues to be at the heart of all our policy areas, citing the work of Sarah Boyack and Claudia Beamish in Scotland. Susan called for more governmental intervention to prevent the failings of the free market, and for sustainable resources to be put at the centre of all we do.

On housing, Cllr Frank McAveety spoke about the achievements of Glasgow City Council, and the historic struggle of the labour movement in winning better housing for workers; from Mary Barbour and John Wheatley through to the present day, and our need to challenge the SNP on their record on this topic.

• Transport. There was no Scottish delegates speaking on this paper, but it was clear from the range of contributions at Conference that there was strong support for re-nationalisation of the railways and municipal ownership of local buses.

• Economy. Marc Winsland of Dundee East CLP seconded a composite motion on improving pensions. Marc spoke personally about the experience of his own grandmother and the difficulty she had in obtaining support from the DWP after years of work. The motion supported introducing flexibility to retirement ages depending on the retiree’s sector of work or personal health issues.

• Health and Care. Although a devolved matter in Scotland, it was encouraging to see that the party is now taking steps to ensure that mental health is given parity of esteem with physical health issues. Several delegates spoke very emotionally about their own experiences and health problems, and the support they received from the NHS or other support services.

• International. Jackie Baillie MSP contributed to the debate on defence and security, stating that she was a multi-literalist and therefore supported the renewal of Trident, as a means of protecting jobs in her constituency. Other contributions to the debate focussed on the on-going conflict in the Middle East and Africa, as well as the fall out form the EU referendum

• Children and Education. Again, this is a mostly devolved area, so the focus for Conference was understandably centred on the Tory’s plans to re-introduce grammar schools in England and Wales, which was opposed by all the trade union and CLP delegates who spoke.

• Home Affairs. I was pleased to see a motion on providing increased support to refugees carry unanimously. With racist attacks on the increase across the UK, and some extremely xenophobic headlines appearing in the press, it is important that Labour is seen to be leading on this issue, and providing support and protection for those who need it.

Finally, and although not strictly a part of the current NPF process, it was agreed that Women’s Conference would now be given a formal role in shaping party policy. This development is a welcome step forward.

Post-Conference

With the leadership matter now settled, this will hopefully now result in the entire party concentrating on making one of the largest political parties in Western Europe able to enter government; be that after a snap General Election or in 2020.
Members – new and old – will of course be vital to this. Not just by knocking doors or delivering leaflets, but in shaping the very manifesto we take to the country.
The whole NPF process and structure is under review, and the Party has launched a new website for members and supporters to make contributions. This has replaced the older Your Britain website and Twitter, and the details are:

Website: http://www.policyforum.labour.org.uk/
Twitter: @labpolicyforum

The NPF has now been rescheduled to meet on the 19th and 20th of November in Loughborough. If there are any issues you want me to raise or questions you’d like to ask then please don’t hesitate to contact me:

Email: martyn_cook@live.co.uk
Mobile: 07827 962 960
Twitter: @MartynC86

Remembering and Reliving 80 Years Ago

By Rhea Wolfson, Scottish Labour Young Socialists Co-Chair and NEC member.

Last night I had the privilege of commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street with my local Labour Party watching Dare Devil Rides to Jarama.

The play follows the story of a young working class sportsman who is politically awakened through his realisation that those running the race tracks do so only for profit and at the expense of the safety and security of participants. Eventually, as a natural progression from his international socialist work, he joins the International Brigades.

Throughout the play we encounter Oswald Mosley standing on his Union Jack draped soapbox yelling in his black shirt about England, surrounded by violence. We are reminded that Mosley argued for fascism (quite directly) as a solution to broken promises by traditional government.

He is a long lasting reminder that where government abandons people; leaves them without security or certainty- this discontent must urgently be channeled into ideas of freedom and a fight for the rights of every person. If it is not, this vacant space will be occupied by the far right who will take advantage of strife and destroy our communities.

The fight against Mosley was the united fight of working class communities showing solidarity and realising that to fight fascism is to fight a force that threatens us all.

It’s not an historical battle but one raging right now. This week we are seeing bubbling tensions take form in policy at Tory Party conference. The first announcements focussed on foreign students and then the proposals moved onto workers. The underlying theme to these proposals is that our current system is broken and individuals are to blame.

Amber Rudd is right when she says that there are too many people out of work but her response is to ensure that society blames not her government but foreign workers. The effect of these proposals is harmful on a personal, day to day level and also because it serves as a way for government to continue to shirk from their responsibilities to crack down on unfair business practices, job insecurity and a housing crisis.

The stirring up of tensions between workers isn’t a new trick- it is one that has been used to divide those who might otherwise join together and organise against oppressive power for centuries, if not longer. This hate and anguish isn’t coming- it is here and our duty is to stop every seed of hatred before it truly takes root.

Remembering the International Brigades and Cable Street 80 years on, in the context of a Britain that saw hate crimes increase by 42% after the EU referendum, forces us to ask- are we doing enough?

Now is the time that we must be clear on our red lines and this must include absolutely no capitulation to nationalism.

We must remember that Internationalism is not fighting for a small group to remain in the common market but the common fight of all peoples with and for each other.

To the Labour Party: our duty now is to be the voice for marginalised communities. When Tories talk of missed immigration targets, we must force them to tackle the real issues that put our society in crisis and challenge every instance where Tories seek to blame our neighbours for their disasters.

And to those who fight for independence in Scotland, radical or otherwise: I cannot help but picture the scene, post Scottish independence, where socialists look at the wall they have built and try to imagine that their comrades on the other side will thank them.

No pasarán.

---

This article originally appeared on the Scottish Labour Young Socialist's blog.

The Citizen: Post-2016 Conference

Click the square 'Fullscreen' button in the bottom right of the window to enlarge.

Kezia Dugdale risks hammering the final nail into Scottish Labour's coffin

Over the past decade, the Labour Party in Scotland has gone from a position of decline to one of decimation. After winning 69 per cent of Westminster seats in 2005, we lost control at Holyrood 2007 and then, following the independence referendum, fell back to a single seat in 2015. In 2016, Labour came third behind the Conservatives, a party until recently so toxic that it was struggling to maintain its credentials as a credible party in Scotland at all.

The process that drove this collapse is complicated, but it began with Scottish Labour’s disconnect from its founding purpose – and, if Kezia Dugdale’s endorsement of Owen Smith is anything to go by, it is one that the leadership of the party still apparently fails to grasp.

On the working class estates and among the community-minded voters that were once Labour’s backbone, a single phrase keeps being heard: “I didn’t leave Labour - Labour left me.” The SNP have not changed the basic values of Scotland’s Labour base, but they have changed the solutions that people believe in.

The SNP has managed to position itself as the common sense centre-left choice, touting free school meals and well-funded public services as central to their ethos. But the truth is that the SNP is not a left-wing party – it is predominantly funded by big business and has maintained a position of reducing corporation tax to undercut the rest of the UK. Before the 2008 crash, Alex Salmond used to talk about Scotland’s post-independence prospects with reference to the “Celtic tiger” – the deregulated low tax model that is now bringing misery to Ireland. Only in a special kind of political void could Scottish nationalism convincingly portray itself as the new, left-wing populism.

Scottish Labour created that void when it became the party of the Scottish political establishment, committed to austerity politics and tainted by the legacy of the Iraq War. Johann Lamont, leader for 3 years until the independence referendum, staked out her ground by opposing free education and universal benefits. Then the party elected Jim Murphy, a figure whose politics lay even further to the right, as leader. As a result, Scottish Labour’s brand has become toxic. When Kezia Dugdale tried to shift to the left of the SNP on tax and spend in 2016, polls found that voters overwhelmingly agreed with her – but only when the policy was presented without Labour’s name attached to it. 

This article was originally feature on The Independent

CfS Responds to Scottish Labour's Consultation

Renewing Scottish Labour Party Consultation

The Scottish Labour Party is currently consulting members on internal party structures. Below is the response submitted by CfS to the consultation process. Supporters may want to use this template as the basis for their responses, which can be submitted to the party until Friday 17th June. 

CfS Response

Introduction

The Scottish Labour Party should not secede from the UK Labour Party. The principles of our party are socialism and solidarity – these will not be served by the setting up of artificial boundaries with comrades outside Scotland. 

Scottish Labour does of course require the freedom of action to be able to advance labour principles in Scotland and to contribute to the party at a UK level.  Policy on devolved issues should be made by the Scottish Labour Party and endorsed at Scottish Labour Party Conference – The Scottish Labour Party should have the capacity to feed in a collective view on reserved issues, primarily through decisions taken at Scottish Labour Party Conference or through the Scottish Executive Committee of the Labour Party.    

In this regard key reform that needs to be made is for the Annual conference of the Scottish Labour Party to be the primary decision making and policy forming body. This will mean a much greater use of resolutions and votes than has been the case in recent years (Nov 2015 being a welcome exception). Decisions taken at Scottish Conference should be reported to the National Policy Forum and other policy reviews such as the Defence Review. Scottish representatives on the National Policy Forum should be mandated to support policies adopted by Scottish Conference.

In the longer term it makes sense for the Party to mirror the structure of the UK and to change as and when there are changes. Deciding the best structure should take account of the same criteria that we would use to assess constitutional change: does it enable the redistribution of resources; does it enable democratic control; does it promote class solidarity across the UK? 

Policy - What mechanism could be used to reconcile Scottish Labour Party policy positions where they differ from UK Party, into a single, agreed position for UK and European elections?

No special mechanism needs to be used. The positions adopted by the Scottish Labour Party feed into the UK policy making process. The overall policy adopted by the UK may not match with that of the Scottish Labour Party – just as the position argued by a CLP or affiliate may not be supported by the Labour Party as a whole.  On UK wide issues the view of the UK party has to take priority. This is democracy.  What is important is that the Scottish Labour party has the opportunity to be part of the decision making process.  This can happen. 

Candidate Selection - Should the process of agreeing and administering selections be devolved to the Scottish Labour Party?

In the event of Westminster, Local Government and European selections being devolved, how do they remain compliant with gender and positive action requirements of the UK Party?

The procedure and administration of selections should be devolved however they should remain compliant with existing UK rules both in general and on Gender and positive action in particular.  There should be a right of appeal to the NEC 

Shared Services - To what degree should responsibilities for administration of membership and services be devolved to the Scottish Labour Party?

Given that we are all members of the same party this is far more a matter of administrative convenience than it is an issue of principle. The party as a whole should spend as little of resources as possible in running it’s internal administration and as much as is feasible in campaigning. Given the scale of the task facing Labour in Scotland it is likely that there will need to be a net transfer of resources from the party as a whole towards the Scottish labour Party  

CLP Management - Should the Scottish Labour Party be responsible for the management of CLPs, including individual membership disputes?

This should be within the remit of the Scottish Labour Party but with the option of appeal to the NEC or other appropriate committee.   
Kezia’s introduction says “decisions about Scotland would be taken here in Scotland by me and my team”. It is not clear who makes up her “team”, but it is not the place for unelected people to make decisions.

The Citizen - Summer 2016

Scotland: No short cuts ahead. Just Real Labour Politics

By Martyn Cook, Maryhill & Springburn CLP and CfS Secretary

NO MATTER HOW WRONG THE POLLSTERS were in the 2015 General Election, it’s unlikely that the polls in Scotland will be so wildly wrong that we will face anything other than five more years of an SNP government. They have been in power since 2007 and – barring a significant and unexpected shift – will remain in power until 2021. This will be hugely damaging for workers and families in Scotland as, despite the SNP’s anti-austerity rhetoric, they have consistently failed to provide any genuine alternatives or willingness to challenge the economic orthodoxy followed by the Conservatives at Westminster.

Unlike the Westminster election where we have been left with a solitary MP, we will retain more Labour MSPs via the proportional list system. However, with the Scottish Conservatives snapping at the heels of Labour for second place, we aren’t in a great place right now to put it mildly.

The rebuilding of Scottish Labour will take time. But recent Scottish Conference and policy announcements from Kezia Dugdale have indicated that the Party is beginning to grasp the scale of the task.

As was noted in earlier editions of Labour Briefing, Scottish Labour Conference has now adopted an anti-Trident policy, as well as outright opposition to TTIP and the Trade Union Bill. Since then, we have also announced plans for enough new homes to seriously tackle the housing crisis and made a call to raise the Scottish Rate of Income Tax (SRIT) to protect local public services.

The second of these is particularly significant. When former leader Johann Lamont said in 2012 that we can’t have a “something for nothing” culture, the quote was taken out of context and used to give the impression that Scottish Labour was against benefit claimants. (And to be fair, the particular policies at both Scottish and UK levels at that time probably gave some fuel to this fire.) However, her actual point was that we can’t have decent public services and welfare provision without paying for them. And that means redistributive taxation.

Now, for the first time in years, Scottish Labour is making the case for progressive and redistributive fiscal policies to protect and fund public services. The SNP’s response to Labour’s calls to raise the SRIT has been particularly revealing. They have came up with a series of excuses for why it isn’t progressive, can’t be done or why it would damage the economy, describing it as a “tax grab”. That is not the language that a socialist, let alone an anti-austerity social democratic party (which they and their more ardent supporters claim to be) would use when it comes to increasing tax on higher earners.

On issues such as progressive taxation, public ownership of the railways, the tendering of Calmac ferries or introducing a living wage, we have put pressure on the SNP and exposed their lack of genuine left wing credentials. Collectively, these policy positions were the first steps to reorienting Labour towards voters whom it had taken for granted for too long.

The damage done to Scottish Labour’s reputation in the Independence Referendum still casts a long shadow, and it will take some time for the gloss to fall off the SNP’s machine and for the majority of voters to trust Labour. As a party we are, however, beginning to learn the lessons and starting to move in the correct direction.

Complementary to this at the UK level, there is no doubt that Jeremy Corbyn will help that process further. Calling us ‘Red Tories’ was an easy way to dismiss Labour in recent times, but that lazy insult has been utterly skewered. No one could credibly claim that someone with Jeremy’s voting record is a Tory of any colour.

Out of Jeremy’s leadership campaign a new generation of young party members have come forward and organised themselves as the Scottish Labour Young Socialists. Last month’s issue of Briefing included an article on their recent success in Scottish Young Labour elections and plans for the future. The seeds are being planted for the next generation of Scottish Labour activists and elected representatives who champion explicitly socialist policies.

So while the immediate prospects for the Scottish Parliament election may be downbeat, there is a growing sense that Scottish Labour is changing. It is still an incomplete project with much distance to travel, but only the Labour Party allied with the trade union movement can offer a class based response to Tory austerity.

This article originally appeared in Labour Briefing.