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Richie Venton, the SSP Trades Union Organiser with a message to th SNP and Greens. Music -The Kara Sea
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Richie Venton, the SSP Trades Union Organiser with a message to th SNP and Greens. Music -The Kara Sea
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Hello, it's Richie Venton, the Scottish Socialist Party National Trade Union organiser. Just a few comments on what's happening in Scottish politics at the minute and what that means for ordinary people. We've had high drama and melodrama, deals and no deals, fallouts and pantomimes, people getting stroppy, stitch-ups behind the scenes, all the rest of it, surrounding the SNP-Scottish Green Party coalition of the past nearly three years. I don't intend to dwell a great deal on the minutiae of that, except to say this. We've seen a position where, I think in essence, the right wing of the SNP on the one hand and then forces within the Greens have begun to tear us under that coalition, but what's the underlying cause of it? In my view, it's because despite the claims after the divorce by the Greens that this is the squandering of a progressive coalition, frankly I don't think there's been anything particularly progressive about that coalition, when you look at the fact that there's been savage cuts in budgets towards the likes of local authorities, which has then in turn meant brutal cutbacks to the needs of the most in need people, where for example those who need care packages have to pay a minimum of £110 a week for a care package for the likes of the disabled and those with mental health issues and so on. We have lots of jobs, I think in total over the last ten years about 40,000 local authority jobs. We have the ongoing crisis in the health service, cutbacks to education in every different sector of education, and most recently the way in which colleges are in dire straits and threatening compulsory redundancies and job losses generally, not to mention pay cuts. So we have a situation where on the basic material issues there's not been progress for ordinary people and then also on one of the core questions that in particular of course has driven the Greens is the climate crisis, a crisis that the Scottish Socialist Party is also very preoccupied with, but which the government abandoned their targets, creating a crisis in the coalition, abandoned their targets and have actually presided over a 4,000 reduction in the number of offshore wind farm jobs in the last year, which is hardly progress, or the fact that when they do build expanded wind farms and the equipment that goes with that, it doesn't create jobs in Scotland, it offshores jobs to slave wager economies such as Indonesia, with the jackets for wind turbines being then dragged across 7,000 miles of ocean, belching out diesel fumes for example on the barges. It's in reality offshore and pollution as well as offshore and jobs, instead of having a proposal, a package of measures that would create jobs and tackle the climate crisis at least at our corner of the planet. So for me it's not been in essence a particularly progressive coalition, but I think the crisis that has thrown up is one that really for most people raises the question of what should be done, what should be done by the Scottish government that's different to the past few years. And for me as a socialist, I think it needs to start with issues that directly affect people on a day-to-day basis, with solutions that match their needs. Taking some of the points I've already made, I think it needs to be a case of saying we're not going to implement the vicious Tory government's austerity, we're not going to pass on and devolve the devastation to local authorities that are demanded by Rishi Sunak et al. Instead of that, we're going to be a Scottish government that stands up on its hind legs, stands up for Scotland to use a phrase, is strong for Scotland, to use another phrase fond of the electioneering slogans, and will in fact say no we're not carrying out your cuts, we're going to demand back some of the billions that have been stolen off Scotland over the past decade, and more locally in Glasgow, the estimated 600 million that's been robbed of the local authority over the last 10 years. We want money back in order to protect jobs, expand services, reduce the cost of social services in the area and so on, and do things like build council houses for rents that people can afford, instead of the housing crisis that's suffered. I think in terms of the health service, instead of following the path of privatisation not just implemented by the Tories, but threatened to become even more commonplace under the next Labour government, where West 13 has made it very plain and obvious that they're not going to rely on privatisation, American health insurance companies and others infest in the health service, that instead of following a similar path with the use of PFI schemes to build hospitals as the Scottish government have done, which means that you have to pay back something between £4 and £6 for every £1 borrowed off these moneylenders, then we should demand a health service that is properly publicly owned, that remains public or becomes fully public, and expands and gives decent treatment to the staff, but also decent treatment to patients, by tackling some of the problems such as not just privatisation of buildings, but the ongoing privatisation of the pharmaceutical industry, privately owned, dominating the health service and treating it as a source of profit, that should be brought into public ownership, which by the way is an added reason for independence, because if the Scottish government had the power to do that, then what a different world we could be living in, in our own corner of that world. I think also in terms of the climate crisis, then we would advocate that there should be a total reset, and that the Scottish government should say, we're going to develop a publicly owned, democratically controlled energy sector in order to create jobs, in order to build green energy infrastructure, in order to distribute energy that's affordable and green, instead of relying on overseas production of manufacturing goods, and we could, for example, divert the skills of the likes of shipyard workers towards the production of offshore marine technology, and other things including in the transport sector, instead of building for war, instead of building for component parts of F-35 stealth bombers that are currently massacring the Palestinians. I think that in other words, we need a socialist programme of change in the likes of energy, also things like public transport, so that we had public ownership of not just the railways, but the buses, the subway system and ferries and so on, some of which is partially publicly owned at the minute, but to have an integrated Scottish public transport service that's publicly owned and is free at the point of use. Just imagine what that would do for people's living standards, both in terms of their disposable income by saving a fortune in travel to and from work, opening up and liberating their opportunity to travel for leisure or to visit family across the country, and also the tens of thousands of jobs it could create, or research I did for the book Socialist Change Not Climate Change, then for instance, even in transport, you could create at least 60,000 new green jobs in Scotland, and probably around about 70,000 minimum in the green energy sector, just to give two examples. So I think that this crisis in the Scottish government, for me, I'm not particularly obsessed with who is crowned as First Minister, it's really what economic programme and what programme on the economy and on services and on climate change measures and so on, that they're going to carry out. And I have no faith that any of those who are being coronated, or whatever, will pursue that line of march. And that's what we need. We need a completely new direction for our government in Scotland, which is also the best way of convincing the vast majority of people that independence is worthwhile. Because right now, that's the task. It's not a question of what process we pursue, that's the discussion in itself. It's mostly the task of convincing an overwhelming majority, in particular of the majority working class population, that Scottish independence is in their material benefits. And of course, that does not mean we ignore the questions of equality, whether that be on the question of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any of those things. Of course, we stand up for equality, and an end to all forms of discrimination and oppression. But it needs to be in the context of creating jobs, of providing clean, affordable services, of providing free public transport for people of all ages, as a measure to tackle both poverty and pollution. Those are some, not the entire package, but some of the measures that could benefit the people, benefit our corner of the planet, and convince people that there's a different kinds of future with the powers that go with independence. So in other words, it's the beginnings of a summary of what an independent socialist Scotland would amount to. That's what I think there's an opportunity to discuss and to popularise currently, instead of obsessing about which of the mainstream parties are in coalition with each other, or which individuals are bearing the crown as force minister, or finance minister, or whatever, within our government, that frankly, I think, is in danger of moving to the right, even compared to the recent past, with those who are taken over at the minute, whoever, whether it's John Swinney, and or Kate Forbes, I think the same problem is central, that either of those will be in favour of a movement towards a more pro-big business agenda, one which does not tackle the powers of big business, which does not defy the Tory government, but instead tries to cut the cloth according to the demands of the market, which would be a disaster for the people of Scotland, if that were allowed to happen without a challenge. So my view is, the current crisis throws up the opportunity to review what's been going on, and have a really progressive alternative in the form of socialist change on housing, on public transport, on the health service, on education, on a redistribution of wealth, that can then in turn show that we could have a different kind of country that's there for the people, and for the planet, and not for the profit of the few.
