When Jimmy Reid co-founded the Scottish Left Review 25 years ago, he was already famous for his strict command during the Upper Clyde Work-in that “there’ll be nae bevvying”. In his first editorial, he offered another stern warning: “Sectarianism will be frowned upon, putting it as delicately as I can”. This magazine was created to bridge Scotland’s sectarian divides and be a “forum of discussion” from which “no voice of the left will be barred”. As the Scottish Left debates the prospect of creating a new party, this first issue of our quarter-centenary year proves that we remain true to that purpose.
Sectarianism has been as integral to the society of Scotland as the seams of any suit. From split allegiances during the wars of independence, through the religious ruptures that pitted Piscie against Presbyterian, then Catholic against Protestant, Scotland is a synthesis of sides, a place “whaur extremes meet”, as Hugh MacDiarmid buttonholed it.
The Scottish left has never been immune from sectariosis, but sometimes we have had it under control. 1888 for instance was a year pregnant with potential for bridging sectarian differences. When in August 1888 the Scottish Labour Party was formed by two ‘Home Rulers’, it seemed to signal socialism’s potential to overcome constitutional disagreements that had simmered since the Jacobite risings. But within a few years, one of its founders, Keir Hardie, had shifted his career to London on a path to becoming Labour’s first Westminster leader, while its other founder, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Grahame, increasingly prioritised Scottish independence, eventually becoming first honorary president of the new SNP in 1934.
The ‘Scottish Labour Party’ badge was taken up again in 1976, when Labour MP Jim Sillars joined with others to take the name for a new short-lived Scottish socialist party, before he shifted to the SNP. In 1988, the ‘Claim of Right for Scotland’ became the basis for another moment of accord across the constitutional divide, and lay the base for the devolution campaign. But far from killing nationalism stone-dead, the restoration of the Scottish Parliament gave new life to constitutional politics in Scotland. It also provided space for the last electorally successful project to build an alternative Scottish socialist party, the SSP, which proved both the potential and the perils of left-wing charismatic leadership.
Meanwhile throughout the twentieth century and away from the parliamentary scene, many of Scotland’s most lauded left-wing figures danced between communist and nationalist parties: Hugh MacDiarmid, Tom Nairn, and of course Jimmy Reid. Like countless Scots, they had a yearning for a radical alignment that never quite cohered.
If a new left alignment does emerge now, it will go nowhere near the name of Labour, a term that stands these days for a grey-faced, genocidal government installed in London. It will also need to decide how it relates to the new party initiatives south of the border. As the articles in the first half of this issue demonstrate, there are many differences about which positions, perspectives and people a new left party in Scotland should align itself around. But this issue of the Scottish Left Review also brings many clues about what principles might unite any Scottish initiative with – or within – a new left party in England. It will advance collective over corporate power. It will demand spending on welfare over warfare. Its political economy will favour the workers not the wealthy. It is also likely to oppose all efforts to co-opt constitutional change into the service of any capitalist vision of the nation or the globe. And it will surely promote the principle of sovereign self-determination.
But the question of a new party’s position on Scotland’s culture and constitution is about more than principles of sovereignty. It is also about vision, communication and core messaging, and here the English debate has been tone deaf to the Scottish context. Jeremy Corbyn has said another referendum would be “fine by me”, in the indefinite tone of a permissive but vaguely absent parent. Meanwhile, Zarah Sultana chose to wear an English football top in her interview explaining what the party should be called, while Corbyn strategist James Schneider sketched his socialist vision with a quaint pastiche about drinking pints on pavements that might (who knows?) ring radical bells in Rotherham or Rotherhithe but is not going to resonate in Restalrig or Rutherglen.
Into this mix, we bring articles from a range of positions in Scotland: Labour Socialist, Revolutionary Socialist, Republican Socialist, Communist, Green Left, as well as the Left Alternative who announced their launch in issue 145. There are themes relating to how the party builds and the importance of the quality member engagement over the quantity of sign-ups; how it develops a political economic view of socialist plenty over scarcity; and why its positions must respond to the wider contexts of far-right organising and war-preparation. As our front cover depicts, whatever the left is doing, it does not do it in a vacuum but under a vault of surveillance, arbitrary policing, and interference, which will not and must not stop the work of building from below in every town and city.
The next sections in the issue add substance and depth to this challenge. Two articles address inequalities in population health and in additional support at school, which have been constant concerns of policymakers since devolution, but which Scottish instruments have never had the depth to reach at their source. Next, Ruth Boyle sets out the demands of an anti-poverty campaign mobilising to increase social investment. Panos Theodoropoulos offers lessons to organisers from years working with precarious migrants in Glasgow. These articles are testament to the class divide that underlies all other sects, and which has always been understood across the socialist tradition, as Henry Stead shows in his exploration of red antiquarians from Clydeside’s restive days.
Our final section turns to face beyond Scotland, with a trio of vivid poems from the Association of Scottish Artists for Peace, a brilliant study of how semiconductors and other tech are part of the supply chain of war, and a powerful triptych of poetry, prose and painting that capture the decision more and more Jews are making to acknowledge the genocide, stand against the complicity of silence, and take action for Palestine.
Email the editor, Cailean Gallagher, at editor [at] scottishleftreview.scot.