Statement on 2012 council elections and left renewal

This new participation of young people in the anti-cuts movement is a product of the changed attitudes in society. Today, opposition to capitalism is no longer a fringe political viewpoint. Millions of people have lost faith in the entire economic and political system – from the raw greed of the banks, the expenses scandal in Westminster and the police cover up of News of the World phone hacking. The ideas of the socialist left – that capitalism is unsustainable, unworkable, unfair, corrupt and that mainstream politicians slavishly defend this system – are much more widely held amongst the population than ever before. But despite this change in public consciousness, it has not translated into votes for the parties of the socialist left. In fact at the last Holyrood elections, the socialist parties got their lowest vote since devolution. At the height of the SSP’s success in 2003 it got 130,000 votes and 6 MSPs – despite the obviously rosier situation for capitalism and the free market at that time.

The fact that the SSP was a united party at that point, and has since been divided is the biggest single factor in the collapse in the left vote. In the five years since that split, there have been several unity initiatives – including No2EU and TUSC – that have attempted to unify sections of the left but with little electoral success. As the council election approaches, a similar initiative has been put forward – four leading left wing trade unionists have proposed a meeting to discuss standing anti-cuts candidates in next year’s local government elections.

Any moves towards genuine left unity are to be welcomed. But for initiatives like this to be successful, they must take account of the fact that currently, the majority of people on the left and in the anti-cuts movement are not in any established Socialist organisation – be that the CWI, SWP, Solidarity, SSP, ISG etc – but are rather unaligned, from trade unions, anti-cuts campaigns, the student movement and so  on. If there is to be a meeting to decide terms for standing anti-cuts candidates, SSY believes it must be done in recognition of this fact, with the involvement of these independents and a feeling that they have ownership over the process as opposed to a perception that it is simply a front or carve up between existing socialist organisations.

Therefore SSY is calling for the meeting on October 22nd not to take any immediate decisions regarding the standing of candidates or in what council seats, as the majority of the left and anti-cuts movement has not been involved or aware of this process.

To ensure the involvement of these forces instead we call for:

• The meeting on the 22nd to call for an open conference to discuss a socialist and anti-cuts slate at a later date
• That this meeting is widely advertised to all left and anti-cuts campaigns in unions, workplaces, educational institutions and communities
• That there are open pre-meetings to discuss the agenda for this conference
• That the conference is organised in a bottom up format, splitting into groups to encourage participation and deter dominance from speakers from any one political group or party

No final decision on involvement in an anti-cuts electoral slate can be take until it is discussed in respective organisations, in our case the SSY and SSP. There is also already a sitting SSP councillor, Jim Bollan in West Dumbartonshire, which will need to be taken into account in any anti-cuts council elections slate. But we believe that if a campaign to form an anti-cuts slate is conducted with the proposals we outline above – that candidates are not chosen just now and that time and energy is taken to include a broad swathe of the newly radicalised forces in Scottish society, then there is a much better chance of genuine left unity that encompasses all those who want to fight the cuts, not limited to the existing socialist organisations.