Scottish Labour Party

Michael Marra and the Search for the Soul of Scotland Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, October 27th 2012 Scotland has had its moments in the last week: the drama of the SNP NATO vote, the revelations of the EU legal advice, and the tragic death of singer-songwriter Michael Marra. What if anything do politics, legal manoeuvrings and matters of life and death have in common? To take the last first, Michael Marra was a unique talent and voice, a gentle, unassuming man who spoke of his native Dundee, of Scotland and of the world in a quiet yet uncompromising manner which

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Searching for the ‘New Tartan Tories’ of Scottish Public Life Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 11th 2012 Scottish politics has certainly burst into life in the last two weeks if the scale of overblown rhetoric and insult is any gauge. The catalyst has been Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont’s speech challenging the consequences and cost-effectiveness of certain universal benefits in hardened financial times. The interventions from politicians and the ensuing public discussion tell us some revealing truths about our ability to have honest conversations. Firstly, lets look at some of the language used in this debate. Lamont talked about

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Lets Start the Debate over the Future of Scotland’s Social Democracy Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 29th 2012 A number of pantomime villains have crossed our screens of late with malicious intent on their mind, out to harm vulnerable people, make mischief and engage in duplicity. This is not the latest outing of J.R. Ewing in the return of hit TV series ‘Dallas’. Instead, I am talking about that other retro-outfit seemingly stuck in the 1970s – the Scottish Labour Party – and the dismissive response of many to Johann Lamont’s attack on the ‘something for nothing’ culture of

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Scotland, nationalism and the left A conversation between Douglas Alexander and Gerry Hassan Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, Summer 2012 Douglas to Gerry Before we get to where we’re going, I think it makes sense to be clear where we come from … My mother worked as a doctor in the NHS. My father was a Minister in the Church of Scotland. Both of them were inspired by their Christian beliefs to engage in the common life of the community. My first home was ‘Community House’ in Clyde Street, Glasgow: the mainland base of the Iona Community. We

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Back to the Future for a Democratic Politics for Scotland Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, July 21st 2012 The untimely death of Bob McLean in the last week might seem news from another era, but it offers an insight into the current and future state of our politics. McLean was a passionate home rule supporter, campaigner and catalyst for cross-party co-operation for a Scottish Parliament, who played an important role in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Labour’s slow journey from an Assembly to a Parliament, as convenor of the pressure group Scottish Labour Action (SLA). His political and civic

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What has happened to Scottish Labour and how can it shape its future? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, June 23rd 2012 Scottish politics were once seemingly filled with certainty - we were Labour, socialist, collectivist, and didn’t like those nasty Tories. Reality was actually always different but there was a Labour vision of Scotland which many of us grew up with, knew its positive aspects, and which made us feel ennobled and liberated. That vision lifted hundreds of thousands of Scots out of poverty, widened opportunities and brightened countless lives via education, health, housing and numerous other public services. This

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The Limits of Modernisation: Blair, Cameron and Salmond Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, May 12th 2012 ‘Modernisation’ is one of the defining words of our time, along with ‘legacy’ and ‘journey’. It is a word used by Tony Blair, David Cameron and Alex Salmond. It is an in-word for those who feel they shape and define the age, change and the world. It has had an interesting trajectory; it was once bright, shiny, confident, swaggering with confidence, impatient with opposition, and believing the future was theirs for shaping. It became associated with Tony Blair and New Labour; modernisation was about

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The Story the Media Should Have Told You About Glasgow Gerry Hassan May 7th 2012 The story of the recent Scottish elections was clear and unambiguous: voters are returning home to Labour and the SNP honeymoon is over. All of this is magnified in the Glasgow result: Labour holding or as most of the media interpreted it ‘gaining’ back the city it had briefly lost. All of this ‘analysis’ was done with no breakdown of the Scottish local election party share of the vote; no doubt we will have to wait until David Denver’s research several months down the

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The Glasgow Effect (and the Strange State of Scottish Democracy) Gerry Hassan May 5th 2012 This is a seismic weekend for politics and democracy. There is the French Presidential election and the Greek parliamentary election; therefore we need to put the UK and Scottish local elections in a bit of humble context. Saying that these were fascinating and complicated elections: Labour’s decent polling, the kicking of the Lib Dems and the narrow triumph of Boris over Ken. In Scotland the first mainstream media reaction has been to emphasise Labour’s performance, question the Nationalist momentum, and talk up the battle

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Breaking the Grip of ‘Fantasy Island Britain’: Social Justice, Scotland and the UK Compass, March 15th 2012 Gerry Hassan The Scottish independence debate has many dimensions, Scottish, English, British, European and global. It is also one that the insular London political class and media have only episodically covered the last forty years, being content to rest on ‘Braveheart’ and romantic, restless nationalist stereotypes. It is then timely and apposite that the Fabian Society in association with Compass held a discussion under the theme, ‘Debating the Scottish Independence Referendum: What Future for the United Kingdom?’ with Labour

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