Richard Leonard argues for deep-seated change across the whole of Britain after 18 September

People are right to be angry and right to be crying out for change. The crisis in the global financial markets caused by the richest in society has been used to attack the poorest in society through an austerity programme which for four years has driven up inequality by dismantling the welfare state and cutting public services. Those responsible for the crisis appear to be proceeding with ‘business as usual’ whilst those who are not see their living standards and quality of life eroded yet further. No wonder some people saw a ‘yes’ vote in Scotland’s referendum as a way out from a social and economic model which is not working. Who wouldn’t be seduced by the mirage of no more Tory Governments?

As a trades union, we said all along in the referendum debate that the status quo was not an option. Drastic constitutional change was put forward by some in the Yes campaign as the best means of ushering in that change. Some of the Yes campaign argued a raw nationalism and others were imbibing it without realizing it. But the change that most people demanded was not first and foremost a shift in power from one Parliament to another and from one set of politicians to another. It was, and is, a demand for a shift in power from the elites of politics to the people in the form of a more direct and active democracy. Emergent from the debate too are questions not just on where powers lie, but what it is you intend to do with them, for what purpose and whose interests they will benefit.

So the appeals which we must now insist upon and the hopes that we need to lift are not nationalistic but distinctly democratic socialist ones. Not putting Scotland above all else or an exclusive concern for Scotland and Scotland alone but applying instead universal and cosmopolitan principles. For the Labour Party especially, it means articulating a vision of change not confined to the most deprived areas of Scotland but one which can be embraced by every left behind poverty stricken communities right across the whole of Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland. After all the fundamental decision which the people of Scotland made on the 18 September was that we should continue to share a state not create a separate one. And even regardless of that democratic political decision, we continue to share a highly integrated economy in which power is centralised and needs to be challenged. We also share ideas, value systems, collective institutions and almost identical experiences of community decline and decay not least in the wake of decades of deindustrialisation. In short, we share a common identity of interest.

The referendum debate filled the vacuum in the democratic process created by years of political disillusionment, economic alienation and the corrosion of trust. It saw the building of bridges from the realm of ideas to the domain of orthodox politics. To sustain this engagement, and spread it across these shared islands, calls for a simple but timeless message of power to the people, power not just for 15 hours on one day for 4 million people in Scotland but popular power on a continuing basis through a far more participatory democracy for every citizen across the UK. It means at its root challenging the casino economic system which not only brought about the latest financial crisis but the failing economic order which underlies it. If socialism means anything at all, it is the extension of democracy into the economic as well as the political system, transforming the relationship between capital and labour. Tinkering with problems will not work.

Power is not only derived from parliamentary majorities or the ballot box but from the power of ownership and the over accumulation of wealth. So we need a shift in power to working people and their unions in the workplace. Not a repeat of the failed experiment of Directors on Boards as set out in the SNP’s Scotland’s Future White Paper but a newer, much broader industrial democracy as part of a newer much broader economic democracy.

That demands a redistribution of power and not just wealth from those who own the economy to those who through their hard work and endeavour create the wealth in the economy. It represents a challenge to the over concentration of power in the economic as well the political sphere, so that never again can a country be held to ransom by Ineos’ Jim Ratcliffe’s of this world.

It means legislating for statutory powers for workers and communities to own enterprises when they are put up for sale, facing asset stripping, a strike of investment or closure by their owners. It means giving working people who through their pension and insurance funds own some of the commanding heights of the economy greater democratic powers over investment managers in the City of London and so to control and hold to account the leviathans of the economy.

It requires us to look to international alternatives to neo-liberalism, to those European national and regional states that have fostered co-operative economies like Mondragon in Spain and Emilia Rogmana in Italy, and to those for whom public and indigenous ownership remain a cornerstone of economic life like France, Germany and the Scandanavian states. People understand that ownership is power so public ownership and economic planning not merely price freezes and better regulation should be back on the public policy agenda.

We also need a renaissance in powers for elected local democracy, to local government and the empowerment of local communities. It means ending the great inequalities of power as well as wealth in our hardest hit communities where feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness and, therefore, despair and abandonment are greatest. It means equal access to power for women as well as men and reawakening an understanding of the primary role of working people in collectively making our own decisions and so shaping our own politics and in turn making our own history.

In communities where workless-ness has become a chronic problem it means investing in sustainable local initiatives instead of solely relying on flagship projects. It means a demand led approach in local labour markets instead of concentrating exclusively on the price and supply of labour. It means the resurgence of community not its decline. It means the principled re-adoption of the goal of meaningful work for all based on local community social, environmental and economic planning. Every community in every part of the country should be asked to identify its social, economic, environmental and cultural needs and link those to employment demand.

The decisive struggle before us is one shared with working people right across this devolved, multinational, unitary state. The labour movement’s role is critical in changing the balance of power in society which is after all precisely why it was created by the pioneers as a movement in the first place. That’s why its relevance as the agency for change must at this point in history be revitalised. Our common goal is to transfer power and so tackle inequality and injustice at home and abroad in an outward looking vision of change. It is to draw upon the high level of engagement led off by the Scottish debate whilst casting aside its chauvinistic, intolerant, and base elements. It is to go forward in a spirit of co-operation and shared endeavour to build a better society in a peaceful world on the foundation of a democratic economy and a participatory form of politics.

Richard Leonard is the GMB Scotland Political Officer and a member of the Red Paper Collective