Scottish Labour Party

Can Gordon Brown and Scottish Labour Save the Union? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, April 29th 2014 In the past week two Scottish prominent public figures with significant stature, both of whom have had major domestic and international profile, and proved ultimately that they couldn’t cut it at the top, covered the airwaves. One was David Moyes, the short-lived manager of Manchester United, the other, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The similarities don’t end there. Moyes’ reign at Manchester United was defined by the shadow of Alex Ferguson’s domestic league and European Champions League triumphs over two decades of success. Brown

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The Strange Story of Scottish Labour: Unloved and Misunderstood Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, March 19th 2014 The Scottish Labour Party tends to get a bad press. People say it stands for nothing. That for years all it was interested in was power and self-preservation. They thus discount its contribution to public life down the years – and in particular its role in the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. Scottish Labour may not be in a good way but stereotypes evoked of it by some of its enemies are as unhelpful as they are inaccurate. Some nationalists propose that ‘Scottish Labour

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Radical Nostalgia Scotland and Why We Can’t Go Back to the 1970s Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, February 5th 2014 Scotland’s current debate on independence comprises many conversations. They centre on what we were, are and could be, and who did what to whom in the past, and what it means about where we are now, and what we could become in the future. Many of these aspects were to the fore last week at a Jim Sillars-Alex Neil event to launch Jim’s new book, ‘In Place of Fear II’, under the auspices of ‘Yes Airdrie’. On a cold Thursday night,

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Why Scotland needs to stop living in the past Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 14th 2013 Who do we have such a powerful propensity to live much of our life backwards? This can be seen in the power of the past – from mythical wrongs and injustices, to symbolic, psychic triumphs and disasters – the latter ranging from the Darien scheme to Ally’s Tartan Army’s ill-fated expedition to Argentina. One defining moment of recent history which operates as a lodestar and hinge year politically is ‘the Year Zero’ of 1979. There are several versions of this. The most visible

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The Problem of Patriotism and the Left Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 7th 2013 This week Keith Vaz, chair of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, asked the ‘Guardian’ editor Alan Rusbridger, ‘Do you love your country?’. This was in relation to the ‘Guardian’s’ publication of some of Edward Snowden’s leaked documents on the activities of the US-UK surveillance state. Rusbridger, clearly surprised by the question answered in the affirmative, ‘We are patriots. One of the things we are patriotic about is the nature of democracy and a free press’. Patriotism, for all the uses and misuses of

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The crisis of Britain’s institutions is one of the labour movement too Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 23rd 2013 One of the defining characteristics of the Labour Party through the ages has been its moral dimension - its indignation at the inequities and injustices of a rotten, economically and socially divisive capitalist system. It has critiqued this via its early socialist, radical and religious roots  – more Methodist than Marx, more the Bible and ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist’ than ‘Das Capital’. As politics and society have changed - the post-war consensus, Thatcher, New Labour - these strands have weakened but

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What is the point of Scotland’s Westminster Politicians? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 2nd 2013 Once upon a time Scottish politics meant one of two things: what your local council got up too, and Scottish MPs standing on College Green talking on BBC and STV about what often seemed far-flung issues. The latter were our only articulation of national party politics. And while it now seems a long time ago it did produce a sort of effective politics and a range of ‘Big Beasts’ - from Tom Johnston and Willie Ross to George Younger, Malcolm Rifkind and Gordon Brown, to

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What did devolution ever do for Easterhouse? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, October 5th 2013 Labour likes to think that ‘devolution’, like the NHS is its exclusive project. ‘We legislated for the Scottish Parliament’ you hear on occasion from numerous party spokespeople. This is proprietorial, but there is also a Labour story which stresses that devolution is about changing Scotland, better governance and improving lives, differentiating it from the Tories and SNP. However, Margaret Curran, Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland in the last week made remarks at Labour conference which seem to raise questions about how the party sees

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Fighting Poverty is about more than the Bedroom Tax Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 14th 2013 This week’s Scottish Government Budget for 2014-15 and 2015-16 saw battlelines drawn on who and how best to mitigate the worst effects of the bedroom tax. Now in a week when the UN special rapporteur Raquel Rolnik weighed in against the measure, it has to be recognised that this is not the main challenge facing welfare in Scotland. In terms of the UK government’s recent welfare policies, the new guidelines in relation to the Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) with their harsh regime of sanctions and

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Minority Report Scotland:  Politics and Ideas in a Substance Free World Gerry Hassan National Collective, September 6th 2013 A week in Scottish politics. Two discussions and two long-term, deep challenges in the independence referendum debate showcased. These are how we address social justice, poverty and exclusion, and the way the mainstream media and broadcasters in particular are portraying this debate. The two examples I wish to draw from are a ‘Newsnight Scotland’ ‘special’ on Monday (September 2^nd) and a ‘Scotland Tonight’ ‘special’ on Thursday (September 5^th).  Both addressed, if that is the right word, the subject of welfare and pensions;

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