The Scottish Socialist Party Conference in February decided to stand in every seat in Scotland at the forthcoming General Election. There are 72 seats in Scotland and everyone realised this was a major commitment. Conference accepted a Financial Report that committed the Party to raise £100,000 to meet the costs involved.
Although the regressive first past the post election system will prevent the SSP gaining any seats, it will save its deposit in a large number of seats.
The party has set itself a target of 5% of the vote across Scotland; 100,000 positive votes based on around a 50% turnout. Whilst it has been polling above this level for the Scottish Parliament consistently for the last year, polls for the Westminster Parliament have lagged behind at between 2% and 3%.
Achieving 5% will mean convincing everyone who has voted SSP in recent elections to do so at the General Election.
This election will therefore be a test and an opportunity for the Party.
Most members are new to politics and have not participated in an election campaign before. The lessons from organising this election will prove invaluable in two years time for the Scottish Parliament contest, where we have real possibilities of electing between 3 and 6 members thus transforming our influence in and ability to defend the working class.
The initial organisation of the campaign has been successful. Candidates have been selected in all seats. Around £45,000 has been raised or pledged to date – enough for the deposits and for the election leaflet which will be sent to around 1.5 million homes.
The SSP will be entitled to at least 1 political broadcast and preparation for this is underway with SSP member and director Peter Mullin helping with production. The Scottish Parliament Party Political Broadcast had a major role in our success in the elections to the Scottish Parliament, which resulted in the election of Tommy Sheridan to the Parliament and won many new members to our organisation.
Scottish Socialist Voice goes weekly
Within the next few weeks the SSP paper Scottish Socialist Voice will become a weekly. For the last 2 years the Voice has been produced fortnightly. It has been sold through subscribers and the copies sold by the party membership.
Now a deal has been reached with distributers to deliver the Voice to around 1,000 newsagents throughout Scotland. This will involve some changes to the format (think Private Eye) with a magazine format and picture front page. The shop price will be £1 though the price on the street may differ.
In the run up to the election, using commercial distribution channels will allows us to reach a wider audience, recruit members and extend our influence.
Having a weekly paper and extended distribution will enable the Voice to reach the parts of Scotland other journals don't reach.
SWP to join SSP
To make Mayday 2001 truly historic, the SWP in Scotland has agreed to join the SSP on that date.
Discussions have been ongoing since October 2000 and whilst there was a willingness on both sides for the SWP to join the SSP, formal endorsement was required from both sets of members. In addition discussions had to be concluded on membership norms, integration of campaigns etc.
Within the last few days these have concluded and Scottish members of the SWP will formally join the SSP on May 1.
Amongst the more contentious issues was how SWP members in the SSP would sell Socialist Worker. The SSP conference decided that the norm should be that Socialist Voice should be sold publicly by all members and that other papers including Socialist Worker should only be sold to SSP members.
This is a norm, not a condition of membership and other groups already within the SSP disagree with this line.
The SWP stated that they disagreed with several of the positions of the SSP, most notably the line on an Independent Socialist Scotland. This was not considered a problem as other groups within the SSP also disagree with this – although the overwhelming majority support this position and it is one of its points of distinction within the Scottish left.
Whilst the SSP has around 2,000 members and the SWP around 200, this will be much more than an arithmetic strengthening of the SSP. The SWP represent a distinct tradition within British politics. Whilst their ideological distinctiveness on issues such as State Capitalism have become blurred since the collapse of Stalinism, they embody a group of cadre who have great experience in organising campaigns and responding to workers struggles.
The SSP whilst it has a core of such cadre is stretched by the need to respond to every issue in Parliament and locally throughout Scotland.
Hopefully this new injection of cadre will dramatically increase the SSP's organisational effectiveness and increase its strength. This could be a significant step in building the SSP as a workers party.
A Drug War
The Scottish Daily Record had welcomed Tommy Sheridan's election and given him a column in the paper. At this time the editor of the Record, whilst broadly supporting Labour, had been critical of New Labour and of Blair's Tory policies.
With a change of editor this has changed. Record circulation has fallen, and the editorial line is Labour best thing since sliced bread.
First to go was Tommy's column – the fee for this has always gone to keep open a Community Hall in Pollock which the Council tried to close. The Record decided it needed an issue to boost its circulation and found drugs.
'Shop a Dealer' had been tried before by the Evening Times a few years ago - to no lasting impact. With drug deaths at record levels in Strathclyde and police chiefs and all drug agencies close to saying the games up, the Record relaunched this discredited campaign.
First Labour were blackmailed into supporting the populist say no to drugs campaign - easily done given their lack of convictions. Then the Record noticed the SSP had a distinct line: No to drugs hypocrisy; legalise cannabis; decriminalise drug possession; free doctors to prescribe heroin if required; remove the profit from drugs. Indeed "Legalise Cannabis" is one of the SSP's main posters.
Suddenly the Record attacks on Tommy as "Working Class Zero", "Dopey Tommy" and so on were front page. The SSP responded vigorously, and defended their position and called a demonstration at the same time as the Record's "Say no to Drugs" march.
A public demo was banned by the Council but a Rally was then called.
The bastion of the reputable press in Scotland the Herald, for the first time carried a half page explaining the SSP drugs policy in a favourable stance and pointing out that a majority of SNP MSPs and no few from Labour privately supported this.
On the day around 20,000 turned up at the Record march. Most had no view other than terror at what the current policy is doing to working class communities. At the SSP rally, which was full, around 300 discussed how to take the profit from the dealers through legalisation and prescription.
Drugs will remain one of the SSP's lead policies during the election.