SSP: Supporting workers in struggle
by Peter Murray, Vice President, National Union of Journalists (personal capacity)
TRADE union organisation is at the heart of the Scottish Socialist Party, with hundreds of active trade unionists in the party’s ranks and dozens of our members holding key positions in several trade unions - from branch stewards building the magnificent fight against the government’s poverty pay policy in local government, to others arguing for socialism on the national executives of others.
The debates on the floor and the fringe of last week’s TUC conference
in Brighton visibly prove the appetite among trade union activists
for the campaigning programme of the SSP and others on the
left.
The stance against low pay, against the privatisation of public
services, against the illegal and wasteful wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan - and demands for equality, global justice and sustainable
environmental policies won the day in Brighton - not calls
for compromise with the bosses or the betrayals of New Labour.
That success grows from building a movement from below. Whether
it’s in the NHS, in the schools, nurseries and colleges or
whether its among fire fighters or financial workers - SSP
members in workplaces across Scotland have been in the front
ranks building for action in almost every local or national
strike of recent years.
Our activists have campaigned successfully in the PCS for instance,
moving proposals at its national conference for a minimum wage
of £8.00 per hour for all workers and trainees over 16 and
scrapping the lower youth rates.
The conference also agreed our proposals for free public transport
to combat poverty and pollution.
As the Convention of The Left meets in Manchester, key SSP
members continue to play a pivotal role in sustaining the industrial
action campaign across the three public sector unions - PCS,
UNISON and the GMB - challenging the government’s below-inflation
pay ceiling in Scotland’s 32 councils.
It was also abundantly clear during the Brighton TUC conference that
support is growing among broad sections of the trade union
movement to disaffiliate from New Labour.
Chancellor Alasdair Darling’s guileless refusal to consider a levy
on profitbloated power companies and Gordon Brown’s platitudes
to union leaders over their ultra-posh dinner at the Brighton Grand
Hotel demonstrate just how contemptuous New Labour leaders
have become of their natural supporters.
The SSP and our union activists at the heart of the party
have always known that New Labour under Gordon Brown would
be no different from New Labour under Tony Blair.
By throwing thousands of Remploy workers on the scrapheap,
by refusing to give prison staff the right to strike, by allowing
the shame of child poverty to rise year after year since 1997,
New Labour shows it acts for the profiteers, not the poor -
and Scotland’s SNP government is barely better: demanding cuts
council budgets which spell joblessness for thousands of workers
and fear for the future for their families in every local authority in
the country.
That is why the SSP will not compromise its support for workers in struggle in any part of Scotland, and why a party of principle fighting in the working class is as necessary for the left in Scotland as it has ever been.