Dysfunctions
Labour Faces Split with Left
By Eddie Barnes, Scotsman 23/3/08
Mar 23, 2008 - 8:42:13 AM

A coordinated campaign will be staged at this week's party conference in Aviemore, with left-wingers demanding that Gordon Brown and Scottish party leader Wendy Alexander ditch the Blairite policies of New Labour and return to old-fashioned Socialism.

The group – who include union bosses, executive officials, and MPs – fear their traditional support will defect as the SNP is seen to fill the vacuum on the left.

However, their plans are being bitterly resisted by the centre-left with one high-ranking insider claiming they simply wanted to return to the 1980s and Old Labour. "It's like they want to watch UK Gold," the source said.

The row comes with the party heading for its Scottish conference following a debilitating 12 months which has seen them lose power at Holyrood and face internal turmoil.

New leader Alexander has been forced to fight off revelations she accepted an illegal donation to her leadership campaign. The party has also been rocked by damaging claims that Brown sought to deal over the heads of Scottish party leaders during last year's election campaign in a desperate bid to keep the SNP out.

Left-wingers within the group now say the party should make a clean break from the UK party by showing itself to be a genuine socialist movement. They are supporting a petition which has been put together by the left-wing pressure group Compass for the conference. Among those backing it is Union chief and vice-chair of the party Dave Watson, Falkirk MP Michael Connarty and Dave Moxham, assistant general secretary of the STUC (Scottish Trade Union Congress).

The petition states: "People know they're not living in the 'good society' promised to them. The Scottish people wanted Labour to do this for them, to explain what we did wrong and address it; it failed to do so. Labour forgot or was scared to do what the Left has always tried to do; to critique capitalism and to make markets the servants of society."

Willie Sullivan, the Scottish convener of Compass, said: "The problem with New Labour is that they are not new and they are not Labour enough. Compass is calling for Labour to use the Scottish defeat as an opportunity to try and make the political weather, not just find the best place to shelter from it."

Connarty said he would like to see a different approach to issues, including the closure of Post Offices and the rights of temporary agency workers.

However, Blairites in the party last night hit back. One senior figure said:

"People are going back to their gut instincts and they are not thinking clearly. Appealing to our traditional core of voters is not enough."

Meanwhile, in a pre-conference interview, Alexander insisted that the party would remain 'New Labour'.

And in a pamphlet to be published this week, she declares: "We in the Labour party have been fortunate to live in a time when politics in the English-speaking world has been dominated by three of the most gifted politicians of the centre-left – Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown".

But Labour party insiders said that the mood in the party remained grim following last year's defeat. One MSP said: "There is almost a recognition that we're out of power for the foreseeable future. We're also thinking the unthinkable that Gordon is going to get booted out as well."

More power for Holyrood 'would help stop English anger'

A beefed-up Parliament at Holyrood would help to dampen growing English resentment against Scotland, Wendy Alexander will declare this week.

The Scottish Labour leader uses a pamphlet to warn that the current devolved settlement "is helping to fuel English irritations".

She says that her plans to claim greater powers for Holyrood, so that it no longer would rely entirely on a £30bn grant from Whitehall, would ease that tension.

Alexander will address the Scottish Labour Party conference in Aviemore this Saturday. In her pamphlet, she says: "I intend that we should be the party of change. We must be bold, united and Labour."

The SNP last night seized on one section of the pamphlet which appears to hint that some powers could be handed back to Westminster. SNP MSP Keith Brown said: "This is an utter humiliation for Wendy Alexander. Her Commission and her credibility are now in tatters."