On the 50th anniversary of Gordon Brown’s Red Paper on Scotland, a new book, Keep Left: Red Paper on Scotland 2025, seeks to address the key features of Scotland’s democratic crisis.

Speaking at the launch, the book’s editor Pauline Bryan said: “Tragically many of the severe problems that were written about in the original Red Paper of 1975 continue to impact on Scotland today in particular – a lack of genuine democracy, the centralisation of power and the dominance of overseas capital, contributing to a politics and economy that serves an ever wealthier elite. We are being failed by the UK and Scottish Parliaments. This book looks to set out a radical alternative to address this, so that power, wealth and opportunity are redistributed, unshackling workers and communities to build a society for the many, not the privileged few.”

Roz Foyer STUC General Secretary said: “The visionary proposals put forward in this Red Paper are important because it is only through real substantive change that addresses the material concerns of ordinary people that we will stop the far right from gaining ground.”

Brian Leishman MP for Alloa and Grangemouth added: “The problems of inequality in Scotland and the UK require bold socialist solutions. Keep Left: Red Paper on Scotland 2025 makes an important contribution to this challenge.”

Below Baroness Pauline Bryan and Vince Mills introduce the book’s main themes.

Keep Left: Red Paper on Scotland 2025, which marks the 50th anniversary of the original Red Paper on Scotland, appears, like the first version. at a critical point in history, although a point which may well be considered a good deal bleaker.

To begin with, there is a deteriorating international situation. The response has not been the growth of a serious left-wing fight back – at least not yet. Instead, the right is gaining power across Europe, encouraged by Trump’s nation-first politics, and that apparently, includes Scotland.  The book concludes that the situation in Scotland is being exacerbated by loss of control at many levels – social, economic, institutional and cultural. It seeks to explain these and offer alternatives.

Scotland is about to experience a fierce attack on social security which will impact hardest on the most vulnerable people in Scotland and the UK and the paid and unpaid carers on whom they rely. The book argues that Scotland must create a caring social security system and, using the powers already available, like a wealth tax, as well as additional economic powers, increase incomes and lift people out of poverty. 

To do this we need an effective local and Scottish government. Instead, local government has been sidelined by Scottish governments, both Labour/Lib Dem and SNP. The approach of Scottish governments has been to over-centralise, subcontract and outsource public provision to private and third sector organisations.  This has resulted in a lack of housing, and damage to education provision as well as the failure of care services. As noted above, the book argues that the Scottish Parliament must have the power to raise the resources necessary to address inequality through both redistribution and economic growth. 

But how do we get economic growth, especially at a time when the UK and Scottish governments are retreating from commitments to Net Zero and a Just Transition while aiding the same energy companies who have grown obscenely rich on fossil fuels and then rewarding them by allowing them to control renewable energy? The solution offered by the book is that we need to take a radical approach to reverse the damage done through decades of globalised and financialised capitalism. This is possible only if we challenge the power of the elite that has grown rich on the back of government policies during the last five decades. The challenge is to gain democratic control of the economy and this needs an engaged and militant trade union movement, 

The book does not forget culture in all its forms – comedy, cinematography, music, poetry, sport. These are not  ‘add-ons’.  They are part of who we are. Culture must be supported, not even if it is subversive, but because it is subversive. The alternative is an imagined world generated by companies interested in selling commodities, not celebrating working class life. 

Scottish Labour is currently preparing a manifesto for the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections. It must decide whether it has a programme for the people of Scotland that dares to be different from the Westminster government. 

Keep Left: Red Paper on Scotland 2025, edited by Pauline Bryan is published by Luath Press. Pauline Bryan and Vince Mills are members of the Red Paper Collective.