Vince Mills reports on the recent Scottish Labour Party Conference.

Scottish Labour Party Conference on the last Friday of February was a strange affair. It happened, of course, on the day after the disastrous (well, disastrous for Labour)  Gorton and Denton by election, a string of polls saying that the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) was toast in the May Scottish Parliament elections and a futile attempt by Anas Sarwar to defenestrate his best pal Keir Starmer, a couple of weeks previously.

None of this would have been obvious to a passer-by who had inadvertently found themselves drawn into Paisley Town Hall’s half empty main assembly space. Instead, they would have seen a collection of political actors on the stage who, for all the world appeared like characters in an Agatha Christie play stepping gingerly over the body of the SLP bleeding out on the stage while they discussed the pattern of the wallpaper.

The main event and most blatant act of denial was Sarwar’s speech in the afternoon where he mentioned none of the problems described above but managed to find space, in a largely vacuous contribution, to defend using the private sector in the Scottish NHS, should Labour win in May. But before that, in the morning, delegates were invited to sit through three debates with no motions and titles that could have meant anything. Debate number one, for example was: “Scotland’s Best Days Lie Ahead.”  I did not contribute but if I had I would have taken the Kenny Daglish position: “Mibbies Aye, Mibbies Naw.” 

But without a motion, or any outcome of the discussion, participation was pretty well pointless, although credit to Lynn Davis of Unite who used the second debate on jobs and skills to attack the continued decline of Scotland’s manufacturing base and argue for public ownership. She was unfortunately a lone voice and the vacuum was filled by candidates for the May elections strutting their stuff to a half-empty hall.

For real politics you had to wait for the Campaign for Socialism fringe which took place after the conference in Glasgow. It was standing room only with a largely young audience. Chaired by Mercedes Villalba MSP, there was a panel of two other MSPs, Katy Clark and Carol Mochan as well as Councillor Katrina Faccenda.

The consensus that emerged was the need to stay in the SLP, for all its faults,  and fight to push it left. Whatever happens in May, the day after the elections will surely open up opportunities for a politically coherent and organised left.

Vince Mills is a member of the Red Paper Collective.

The Conference also saw the first full issue of The Citizen – a fantastic collection of articles on Parliament, culture, youth issues and socialism, available here.

Main image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paisley_Town_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1220986.jpg Paisley Town Hall Source: From geograph.org.uk Author: Thomas Nugent,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.