The Point
Last updated:
27 June 2022.
Last updated:
27 June 2022.
...red sky thinking for an open and diverse left
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In an important and thought provoking article for The Point Robin McAlpine attempts to frame the key questions everyone on the left has to answer if we are to carry forward the success of the YES grass roots campaign beyond the referendum
It is often believed that it is how you react to failure that defines your ability to succeed. It's the Nietzschian 'that which does not destroy me makes me stronger' idea of the truth of character being seen in adversity. In Scotland a parade of calamities from deindustrialisation to our football team has almost written this concept into our constitution. It's how you carry yourself when you lose that counts.
This is a big issue for left Scotland right now. Our losses over the last three decades have been innumerable and our responses (or how they are perceived) very varied. I actually think we responded to failing to prevent the Iraq war effectively, continuing to draw people's attention to those who should be blamed. I don't think many people would argue that that the UK left's response to austerity has been particularly impressive. No-one could find much merit in some of the domestic political feuds in Scottish left politics. But if nothing else, no-one could doubt our doggedness.
But this really is a loser mentality. It's not how you carry yourself in failure that counts, it's just plain-old how you carry yourself. At this moment in Scotland's history, the left is winning.
The left (in its most diverse sense) has taken a debate about independence that began in terms that sounded a bit like a prospectus for a leveraged subsidiary buy-out from within a transnational corporation and turned it into a mass grass-roots movement for left social change. We have networks and infrastructure we've never had before, a unity of purpose and a breadth which are new. We stare forward into a period where people are looking for change, not just of government policy but of ways of governing.
We did much of this ourselves. The question is, now that we have a sniff of success, how will we carry ourselves?
I think this is crucial. If we work well, work cleverly, organise and get our thinking straight, I really do believe there is no political prize in Scotland outside our grasp. We really could be in the prime influencing position. But we could of course still screw it up. I don't pretend to have all the answers to this but I do think I can suggest some of the crucial questions (and I think some of them help answer themselves). Here are five.
Who is the left?
This is the first and trickiest part. I talk in public meetings a lot with many different groups of people. Almost no-one isn't talking from the same perspective. And it is a left perspective. I've heard representatives from Business for Scotland say things that are to the left of SSP policy. I know some of them who don't really have any right-of-centre views at all and are strong believers in social democracy. Are they part of us or will we throw them out when the referendum is over? There are some on the left who complain about 'chattering class professionals'. Now they make up a good proportion of the movement. Do their critics want them to leave? Is 'left' and 'working class' going to become an indivisible duality? What about social democrats from the SNP? If they want to move towards the left, will they be welcomed?
Defining the left is one of the left's favourite pass-times. On the whole the Radical Independence Campaign overcame this tendency and just got on with it. Not without argument but pretty effectively none-the-less. Can we replicate that attitude, expand ourselves, embrace a wider community not as short-term partners but as long-term ones? If we can't do that, I suspect we will be back finding ways to explain away our failure.
Vanishing Purity Cult
A close relation of this question is whether we can avoid becoming a Vanishing Purity Cult. This is a tendency in all movements; you come together because of belief in something and define yourselves at least in part in opposition to those who don't believe the same thing. Of course, the problem is that it is very easy to question whether those on your own side themselves 'believe enough'. Al Qaeda had shrunk from a large movement to a handful of nutters in the desert by the time the US decided to make them the new Global Bogey Man in the late 1990s. Each schism took a group of believers and halved them, one half being branded insufficiently 'pure to the ideal' and expelled. It behaves like a cult, it bases its existence on a definition of purity and this makes it inevitable that eventually it will vanish.
There are at least three ways Scotland's left could get into Vanishing Purity Cult territory. We could get hung up on precisely where on the political spectrum 'left' begins – and then keep moving it further and further away until only the truly purest remain. We could believe that analysis matters more than policy and get caught in a perpetual loop critiquing the causes for capitalism's failure and believing that only once a Single Agreed Reason can be found will change ever come. Or we could get stuck up a linguistic or process purity trap. One believes that only one form of language is acceptable (I think we see this now with a small part of the left openly hostile to for example Wings Over Scotland because they believe its author uses languages which is the wrong kind of language). The other believes there is only one legitimate mode of operation – for example, that a hierarchy is inherently corrupt, even if it is a hierarchy of knowledge and expertise.
I think there are only two solutions. One is to focus on goals and actions rather than ideologies and processes. We need a policy plan and that has to be the core that holds us together. And we need to stop thinking in terms of 'tolerating' difference or even 'accepting' difference but 'expecting' difference – actively seeking it. At the Festival of Common Weal someone complained that our talks were hierarchical lectures. I pointed out that there were two concurrent completely open discussion groups taking place at the same time which were quite the opposite. This didn't matter – it was still wrong. And I found myself thinking 'but I like lectures, I like to hear the views of someone that has gained a lifetime's experience and on this occasion I don't want to hear the opinions of whomever in the audience is most determined to share their own possibly ill-informed opinion'. Expect difference. Don't read Wings if you don't want to but expect that others do. Don't go to lectures if you don't want to but don't try to ban them.
Class and language
Another big question is whether we can get beyond our ingrained assumptions about language and narrative. There are some who believe that a class analysis remains the only real analysis of capitalism and continue to believe in the class conflict model of progress. Others think class, while still important, doesn't really explain the whole of contemporary society, is certainly not a narrative that appears to communicate with people and that there is little evidence of class conflict really delivering the change people claim for it.
I find myself closer to the latter position, mainly for the pragmatic reason that even if class is the correct analysis, the language of class politics hasn't been an effective electoral force for decades and shows no more sign of becoming one now. Can we adopt, adapt and use language that works while still holding us together? In some ways I think that will be one of the biggest challenges. I really believe we all need to be much more rigorous in asking questions about our ability to communicate with the wider public and that must surely be a prime consideration.
Self-awareness
One of the problems of the left has been some degree of lack of self-awareness. Let's be honest, we all know perfectly well that loads of us have been claiming we're on the 'tipping point of revolution' for decades now. It's now hard to accept that it was ever true during that period. So why were we saying it? I use this example a lot but you know how we want to 'repeal anti-trade union legislation'? Which piece of legislation is that exactly? Which clauses and what replacement clauses? Knowing the basics about legislation you want to change is fundamental to having any chance of changing it.
Look at our media work. Do you think it's good? Look at our visual presentation. Is there any chance we still look a bit 1970s (and not in a stylish retro way...)? Look at some of our claims that we're really ready to take that leap forward. Does our size, scale, organisation and deployment of strategy make you think that is really true? Have we perhaps spent too many years blaming the biased media for our failures and perhaps not quite enough time asking how much we're responsible for our own failures?
Are we good enough? Do we ask the question enough? The only solution to this is to learn to be better – that in itself gives you a much more effective perspective on how well you're doing.
Strategy
Finally, do we even have a strategy? If you asked ten people from the Scottish left what the strategy is would they give similar answers? There is much talk about 'what comes after?'. I know the SSP is working to get back in shape as a parliamentary force. I know the Greens want to build their size and organisation to take the next step forward. I know lots of people who are talking about new grassroots activism being the vehicle for change.
But – and it's a big but – is saying something the same as having a strategy? Let's say the SSP really does pull out all the stops and gets back to a high water mark of five MSPs. Is that success? Will it make Scotland more socialist? If the Greens really do set a hard target of becoming Scotland's fourth party (or even its third) with up to 20 MSPs, how are they going to do it? Few in the Greens would argue that they really have all the necessary party apparatus in place just now to achieve it. Remember, we're much less than two years away from the election. And if we do get all that grassroots organisation in place incredibly quickly and very effectively, who are we going to get them to vote for in 2014? For those who want to vote for a 'mainstream party' (unfair as the concept is), how will grassroots organisation help them have that option?
In reality, strategy is a myth. It is the myth of believing that your present actions can magically change the future in ways you can predict. It's not really what happens. A much more accurate description of the process is that you work out what you want to achieve, do things that you think will create the best possible environment for letting that thing happen and then be ready to be opportunistic as the environment you create opens up possibilities and chances. Know where your goal is, shift the playing area as far towards that goal as you can and be ready when the ball falls at your feet.
Are we anywhere near having a shared, thought-through sense of what any of that might be in Scotland in 2014. It's a dull cliché but if you have no idea where you're going or how to get there, you almost certainly won't arrive.
All of this is written in the context that we are indeed winning. It is the left that is setting the agenda in Scotland and everyone can see it. In large part we are winning because we are tackling head-on some of the questions raised above. We are more accepting of people from other political traditions than in the past and appear comfortable in slightly wider coalitions. We are generally pretty understanding and comfortable with our differences. We have mostly avoided the trap of the Vanishing Purity Cult for these reasons. We may not have resolved differences in narrative approach and underlying analysis but we seem able to remain on the same ground anyway. We have vastly improved our skills during this campaign and many people are indeed much more self-critical than they were. And people talk, think and try to put in place strategies at all sorts of levels spurred on by the desire to win this referendum. It looks to me like it is working.
Will we keep this going or will we lose our focus and discipline when the unifying force of the referendum is done. That is up to us.
How will we carry ourselves in victory?
Robin McAlpine is the Director of the Jimmy Reid Foundation
