I Was A Teenage Scargillite!



In the 90s I was possibly the only teenager in Scotland listening to Redskins and Billy Bragg, rather than Oasis and Blur.

In fact, exactly 28 years ago this February in 1996, aged 19 years old, I attend a meeting at the T&G Halls in Glasgow on a Saturday afternoon, to listen to Arthur Scargill and the late great Bob Crow from the RMT, launch the Socialist Labour Party in Scotland.


Bob Crow talked about attacks made on the working classes, through the anti-trade union laws, which New Labour had condoned by refusing to repeal them, if they won the upcoming General Election.

Describing the crappy train service, since the Tories had privatised British Rail, Crow quipped in his quintessential Essex accent, 'Never mind leafs on the track, there's theives on the track!'

Meanwhile, the typically passionate Scargill railed against recent change in the Labour Party under Tony Blair's leadership, especially the dropping of clause four.

I vividly remember being on my feet, clapping and cheering ecstatically as Scargill roared "I'm not ashamed to be a Socialist! I'm not ashamed to be a Marxist! I'm proud to be a Socialist, I'm proud to be a Marxist and I'm proud to be here in Glasgow today!" Amazing stuff!

As it happens, I didn't actually join the SLP, shortly after this meeting the Scottish Socialist Party emerged from the ashes of Scottish Militant Tendency and I joined the SSP and remained a member for a few years, until much later becoming involved in the early years of Maurice Glasman's Blue Labour tendency.

Unsurprisingly at the time, John Foster, Scottish secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, opposed the formation of the Socialist Labour Party, encouraging socialists to remain within the Labour Party. Just as the moribund CPB also later opposed the formation of the SSP and pretty much everything else.

The Morning Star newspaper had always been the link between the Communist Party and the Labour left, then and now.

What I could not understand was the way in which many of these Labour Leftists and Morning Star types were somehow left shocked and dismayed by New Labour, once Blair was elected as Prime Minister the following year in 1997.

Why were these Labour Party socialists surprised? Why were they speaking of a great betrayal and u-turns?

Especially when it was always abundantly clear what Blair was going to do - He'd even told us at party conference, the shift to the right wasn't a secret! This is exactly why socialist parties like the SSP and SLP were forming and establishing themselves, long before Labour were even in Government.

I was reminded of this cognitive dissonance from the old Morning Star Communists and Labour Party Leftists this week, while reading the reaction to Keir Starmer ditching Labour's plan to abolish the House of Lords.

Again, there are cries of betrayal, with members cutting up their party cards and tweeting classic 'I haven't abandoned Labour, Labour have abandoned me'

Yet, I've always wonder when this mythical red blooded Socialist Labour Party (or even Marxist Labour Party) which they pine for, ever really existed?

Have Militant, Momentum, the Bennites or the Corbynites ever really been anywhere near power for more than very brief periods?

Have my own tiny Christian Socialist Movement ever been anywhere near power since the long forgotten era of RH Tawney, George Lansbury and Donald Soper?

In reality, Labour is, was and always will be a centre-leftish/vaguely social democratic Party. And that means you get awful decisions, such as Starmer's refusal to explicitly call for a cease fire in Gaza or his recent refusal to reform the Lords, alongside the odd good thing like Starmer's commitment to re-nationalise the aforementioned rail network and trains once in office. (Bob would be pleased)

Just as New Labour done some terrible things like the invasion of Iraq, alongside some good policies like the Good Friday Agreement, Devolution and the national minimum wage.

This is the reality of mainstream centrist parties, if you want Socialism then join a Socialist Party but whatever you do, don't pretend to be shocked when Labour are in power later this year but don't do too much to scrap Trident, restore the welfare state or save the NHS. It won't be a huge surprise to most of us but it might still just be slightly less worse, than the current Tory misrule.

Sadly, this pessimistic truth is probably the best we can hope for and it's time Bennites, Corbynites, Trotskyists, Tankies and the remnant Labour Left, either finally accept this reality or just leave the party and join a fringe socialist party.

Until the British Left gets its act together, the best you can ever really hope for is a broad and wide labour and Trade Union Movement of platforms, with Cooperative Labour people alongside Christians, Pacifists, Social Democrats, Labour Zionists, Labour CND and so on and yes, even the old commies.

Popular posts from this blog

Have Gourock’s Catholics Brought The Bands To Town?

Image
  It’s probably worth stating from the outset that I am not actually opposed to Orange Walks and I didn’t submit an objection to the upcoming parade through Gourock. This is because, like many people on the west of Scotland, my own identity, religious heritage and ethnicity is a rich mix of Scottish Free Church Presbyterian, Irish Catholic and German Lutheran, alongside Episcopalian, Welsh, Ulster Scots and Highland Gael on my wife’s side.  As such, I can generally see things from both perspectives and I often suspect that much of the tension which surrounds marching season, is rooted in suspicion, rather than reality. For instance, a significant number of Scottish Catholics feel that those banging the big Lambeg drum outside the chapel each summer, are the descendants of the very same ‘Peep-o'-Day Boys‘, who once carried out the mass wrecking of Catholic cottages and burned their Irish forefathers out their homes, centuries ago. For some within the Catholic community, these se
Read more

Social History In 50 Objects Number 1. - Pioneers Of Total Abstinence

Image
  This beautiful little pin of the Sacred Heart came down to me from my Mum's Haggerty and McGarry side of the family, it once belonged to a Great Aunt who had been a member of the 'Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart'. PTAA members were known as pioneers and they had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart, pioneers wore a lapel pin just like this one. Abstinence and temperance have always been a big deal in Greenock, John Dunlop established Britain’s first temperance society in Greenock in in 1829. A few years earlier in 1820, the famous sugar baron Abram Lyle was born in Greenock, in the same year the Scottish radical James Wilson was executed for breaking prisoners out of Greenock jail during the Scottish Radical War. Abram had been the grandson of a weaver and the son of an alcoholic cooper, who left his son in debt and it was Abram's deep Christian faith which drove him to promote sugar and confectionary as an alternative to alcohol. Lyle once
Read more

Social History In 50 Objects Number 2. - Dockers Brass Tally

Image
  My Granda Haggerty worked as a docker for a period after the war, so today's object is my dockers brass tally which originally comes from East London. Y esterday I wrote about Cardinal Manning's involvement in the Temperance movement here in Greenock. Manning was also instrumental in resolving the London Dock’s strike of 1889; many of the Dockers were Irish, whereas lots of the shipyard workers at Thames Ironworks in East London were Scots mainly from Dundee, while Germans were mostly employed in the Sugar refineries in places like Whitechapel. Indeed, Cardinal Manning’s sincere empathy for the Irish poor informed his political outlook and his strong support for workers rights and trade unions. This brass tally of mines is a ' Docks and Inland Waterways Executive' brass tally from 1948 following nationalisation of the Docks by Attlee's post-war Labour Government. Before the Dock Labour Scheme was created in 1946, bringing with it at least some guarantee of p
Read more