Having idols is dangerous, especially when they are still alive. Declaring yourself for an individual can lead to dissolution, or the heartbreak that comes with the realisation that they are not what you thought they were. The best examples of this come in the Labour Party. While I have enormous respect for what remains of the 'Labour left', I reserve the right to criticise Dennis Skinner, Owen Jones and Jeremy Corbyn and more for their continued affiliation with a party that has continuously abandoned the working class and socialism.
While I share many of the beliefs of Corbyn and admire him as a principled and hard working MP, his attempts to revive the labour party are akin to drawing blood from stone.
While I'll concede that English politics is very different; a voting system that is skewed to favour the establishment parties leaves no alternative like the SSP; Corbyn and others have allowed Labour governments to be formed that attack the sentiment and solidarity that they were elected on. In Scotland, hundreds of us have taken the brave decision to build a new left with real socialist principles. I have met many of talented and passionate SSP members who could have easily taken the 'easy route' to candidacy and a well paid job in Labour or the SNP however make the principled decision to donate their time to the cause and pledge to take a workers wage if elected. And they would make the same choice a thousand times over.
It would be wrong however to tar the whole Labour party with the same brush, during the referendum I met Labour/'Better Together' activists who argued that they share our vision for the world but have a "different way of getting there". Take that with a pinch of salt, but believe it or not Alisdair Darling used to be a radical Marxist calling for a Scottish Republic. Margaret Curran used to be in the militant movement and I've been assured still has a picture of Karl Marx on her kitchen wall. It is evidence of the corrupting forces within the Labour party to see what these people have become.
It would also be wrong to suggest that Labour's disconnect from socialism was a recent as Murphy or Blair. The reality is that they have been shifting to the right steadily from the end of the second world war. An example can be seen in prescription charges, allowed to be reintroduced by the post-war labour government as a 'temporary measure' then doubled by another Labour government in the sixties. Then look at the Labour run-councils who have implemented warrant sales in the face of poll tax protests- selling working class people's livelihoods and dignity in their front gardens at the orders of Thatcher. The modern day labour party that had 13 years of government and failed to undo any of Thatcher's anti-trade union laws, invaded Iraq and jumped into bed with the Tories to 'save the union' is just fulfilling the real labour values- corruption and greed.
This has happened because political defeat leads to conservatism. In 2015, Labour looks likely to react to election defeat by shifting to the right, just as they did with Blair and almost every labour leader before him. Neil Kinnock famously claimed, "Here are my policies, if you don't like them then I'll change them!". Labour judge success on election victories- not the levels of inequality or standard of living of their constituents. Happy to accept their everrising MP's salaries, they have forgotten to rise with their class, not out of it.
"Stand for something or you'll fall for anything" Malcolm X.
If the Labour party could be changed then it would have been done by now, great socialists have tried and failed. More recently, Bob Crow eventually lead the RMT to disaffiliate and allow branches to join the SSP. Even if Corbyn does win the leadership race, he will preside over right wing MP's who don't hold his socialist values. Only 48 broke the whip last night to vote against welfare cuts.
The truth rarely makes for easily listening, the Labour party is long dead and we must start again- we already have. The SSP should put the final nail in the coffin by building an electable, broad, socialist party for the working class.
By Hugh Cullen