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SLR I24.Indd scottishleftreviewIssue 24 September/October 2004 Contents Comment ........................................................2 A new vision for a model parliament............12 John McAllion Feedback.........................................................4 Profit and Parliament ...................................14 Briefing ...........................................................5 David Miller Was this the settled will?................................6 Afraid of the bathroom mirror......................16 Derrick Whyte Susan Deacon New parliament, new view .............................8 Opposing but not imposing...........................18 Jim and Margaret Cuthbert Rob Gibson Silence built in ..............................................10 The ideas leaders..........................................20 Chris Thomson Lorna Bett The only mistake here is to believe that these diagnoses are Comment somehow unlinked or even mutually exclusive. In fact, these things are all true and all contribute to and feed off each other. f you stop and think about it, it makes no sense that a minute But why should this have happened? A suspicious Parliament Ibefore midnight on a friend’s birthday we studiously don’t cry has been created and this is in part because of the problem happy birthday; we do this because if we didn’t choose arbitrary of proximity. If you remove the Tories from the equation the moments to stop and take stock then we probably wouldn’t stop political parties in Scotland form an almost seamless strand to take stock at all. So it may be nothing more than a moving of political positions which moves across a comparatively of the furniture but the move to the Scottish Parliament’s new compact area of land between the left and the centre left. So Holyrood building feels like it could have the potential to be in a context in which the political parties think they have no some sort of fresh start. For that reason the Scottish Left major ideological differences (we’ll return to this) they have to Review invited a number of writers to consider the condition differentiate themselves simply by disagreeing in a disagreeable of the political family that is about to move into its new house. way. And because they largely know that their vote could quite What they have written give us cause both for concern and for happily shift to one of their politically-neighbouring opponents hope. they feel they must fight them in a permanent total war. (It is a cause for concern that it is possible to imagine the Greens and There is one theme which comes through clearly and that is that the SSP concluding at some point in the not too distant future our Parliament just seems too damn safe. There is a lack of that further advance for one must come at the expense of the ideas and a lack of vision and it is leading to a Parliament which other.) We wanted consensual politics in Scotland and we got it many people hoped would be bold and active being cautious and – but a mutant form of political consensus in which the fighting anaemic. In fact, it is a symptom which is identified by almost is even more vicious precisely because the differences between all of our writers. What at first seem different is their diagnoses. parties is so slight. Perhaps it is a structural problem in which procedures such as the control of the content of Parliamentary business are But surely if there is so much agreement the right things created in a way which tends towards a cautious middle ground. must be getting done, even if there is animosity built into the Perhaps it is a problem of the attitudes of individual politicians process? Well, no. There is a model of ‘radical consensual who seem not to have discovered the courage to make their own politics’ hidden in there (a consensus which ends up being voices heard. Perhaps it is a party system which simply will more radical than any of the stakeholders would themselves not tolerate anything other than total obedience. Perhaps the have made it). The best example might be the manner in which Parliament lacks the powers it needs to really inspire. Perhaps tuition fees were abolished. The Cubie Inquiry brought ideas the collective political body in Scotland has taken too long to together from opposing stakeholders and created a package come to terms with what is needed to function effectively in which was, frankly, a better outcome for all concerned than any a new parliamentary democracy. Perhaps there is a ‘group one of them could have hoped for. But that radical consensual psychology’ affecting collective behaviour. Perhaps we have model is rare. Much of the rest of what has happened has been underestimated the power of the interest groups hovering disappointing or worse. So how does such disillusionment around the Parliament and whispering in the ears. Perhaps emerge from so much consensus? Well, the answer is that civic Scotland has failed the country by failing to bring new we are largely still scoring the business of the parliament like ideas or enthusiastic engagement to the table. Perhaps the a boxing match; we award points for technique but fail to ask media has everyone too scared to raise controversial issues. what the fight is over in the first place. Or perhaps it comes from the top; from a commitment to ‘do There is one supreme example of this, and that is the vote less’. over the Iraq war. Again setting aside the Tories, there was a 2 3 Editorial Committee Aamer Anwar Jacqueline Kelly Andrew Noble Mark Ballard Isobel Lindsay Jimmy Reid (Convener) Ownership and control in Scotland ..............22 Bill Bonnar John McAllion Robert Sharp Moira Craig John Foster, Richard Leonard, Sandy Baird Robin McAlpine (Editor) Tommy Sheppard Roseanna Cunningham Henry McCubbin Alex Smith Reviews .........................................................25 Colin Fox David Miller Elaine Smith John Kay Tom Nairn Bob Thomson Web Review ...................................................26 Articles for publication: [email protected] Kick Up The Tabloids ....................................27 Letters and comments: [email protected] Illustrations: Website: www.scottishleftreview.org Tel/Fax 0141 424 0042 Cover: Tommy Perman Scottish Left Review, 741 Shields Road, Pollokshields, Glasgow G41 4PL [email protected] www.surfacepressure.co.uk Printed by Clydeside Press (TU) All other illustrations: Nadia Lucchesi [email protected] phenomenal consensus on this issue; hardly anyone from any once more remind the political classes in Scotland that the of the other parties would voice support for the war in private. Scottish people voted in 2003 to move the Parliament to the Scottish politics did not want that war. But Scottish politics left after it saw it in action for the first term? Labour and the voted for it. The means through which this happened was SNP argued over who was the businessman’s friend so the quite remarkable; the crucial waverers on the Labour benches electorate shifted away to their left. We have a block of 17 seem to have finally come on board with Blair on the bases that radical left (or at least independently-minded) politicians. And John McAllion (the leading anti-war voice in Labour) extended if anything the other parties have responded by moving even his criticism of the war to the Blairites who had championed it further to the right. How many votes do they think the business and that voting against war would be a boon to the SNP. The community has? So the first cause for hope is that there is positioning of the competing parties was a sufficient excuse for every reason to believe that the people of Scotland want them to one of those parties to collectively vote for something they did stop talking about tax cuts for business and start talking about not like one bit. On that occasion all of the shame lies with a fairer Scotland. Labour (and as we survey the smoking remains of Iraq through the lies one hopes that that shame lies very heavily indeed). But The second reason for hope is that as soon as this message the other parties are also culpable, with the SNP’s race to the can get itself through to Holyrood there is a naturally supportive right to make sure it is not out-free-marketed by Labour being consensus. If Labour MSPs had been allowed a free vote on particularly damaging. Iraq they would have voted with the people of Scotland and not against them. There are structural and cultural problems to be The parties think that they are ideologically close (all think they overcome (Labour and the SNP in particular need to find some are inheritors of left-of-centre Scottish collectivism) and yet way to work more constructively together). But there is also what they are most ideologically distanced from is themselves. hope that the biggest barrier – the terrible wrenching effect Labour has embraced privatisation (the ownership of public which Tony Blair is having on the Labour movement across the service infrastructure such as schools and hospitals by private whole of the UK – will one day disappear. As soon as Scottish companies is surely privatisation) and a very Tory approach to politicians have the courage and freedom to voice something law and order; the SNP has adopted Thatcherite economics like what they believe then we will see a radical shift in Scottish (when will trickledown finally be discredited in the political politics. imagination?). And yet politicians in both would profess a profound and deep-rooted ideological hostility to these things. But there is a final cause for optimism, and for that we return Make no mistake, the Parliament that we are dropping into to where we began. The views of our writers reflect the wider Holyrood is very ideological. The four big parties which provide views of the body politic in Scotland in at least one way. No-one the centre of gravity are all committed first and foremost to is happy with the timorous beastie at the top of the Mound, no- the business agenda (which at best they see as a necessary one wanted this pallid imitation of home rule, no-one wanted a condition for achieving their social goals).
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