Seven Oaks Magazine.

Carolyn Leckie is a member of the Scottish Parliament, one of six MSPs representing the Scottish Socialist Party. She is a midwife and former leader of the Unisol health care union. Last year, she visited British Columbia at the invitation of the Hospital Employees Union.

1. You visited B.C. last November, and spoke at the B.C. Federation of Labour convention. What were your impressions of B.C. under Gordon Campbell?

First of all, I was shocked, actually, to see the scale and concentration of the Thatcherite onslaught going much further and faster than Thatcher dared to do at the time. I guess that they [the B.C. Liberals] feel confident that they can do that with the massive majority they have. I also got the impression that people in B.C., including trade unionists, were extremely angry, but a bit in shock themselves at the scale and concentration, probably because they weren’t prepared for such a government. In previous years, having had the NDP -- where there were problems -- but certainly comparatively, it was a period of peace.

2. Given your experience in the labour movement with Thatcherism, or neo-liberalism, what is your advice to working people here, in terms of fighting back?

Well, that there is only a short window of opportunity to defeat it at its beginning. And the alternative to not facing it during that short window of opportunity is probably a lengthy period of time until a firm recovery happens. Here, the trade union movement is making that recovery, but it’s 20 years later and it’s still quite slow and patchy. And I think that there is a risk that history will repeat itself. So, I think what you’re experiencing there is very similar, but maybe on a shorter time scale even.

3. After the ravages of the Thatcher-Major years came Tony Blair. Is it fair to say that the Scottish Socialist Party emerged as a response to Blair’s “New Labour”?

Yes, the Labour Party gave up any pretence of being on the Left. It had been completely taken over by right-wing forces and adopted the neo-liberal agenda on Thatcher’s behalf. Thatcher has claimed that Tony Blair is her biggest achievement, and I think I would agree with her on that. I don’t agree with her on much, but I would agree with her on that assessment. This left a big vacuum on the Left.

The Labour Party’s definitely no longer a mass party representing working-class people. It’s no longer a working-class party. And so the Scottish Socialist Party was formed, bringing the forces together on the Left, many who had previously been in the Labour Party, independents, and all those radical, progressive left forces. The majority of them were brought together to form the SSP. But it has now gone beyond that. Most members of the SSP don’t come from any previous political background, and the intention is for the SSP to become a mass party, a mass socialist party in Scotland.

4. There has been massive, broad opposition to the war in Iraq in the U.K. Has this opposition to Bush and Blair’s war helped the SSP towards becoming a mass party?

It has definitely increased our support over the last year, including going from having one member of the Scottish Parliament to six, including me. And the second biggest achievement over the past year is that we have achieved one union’s break from New Labour. Obviously, the links between Labour and the unions is something that has withstood even all the Blairism of the Labour Party. The railway union, RMT, chose to allow branches in Scotland to affiliate to the SSP, and the Labour Party expelled the RMT. So, that historic link that has been there between the Labour Party and the trade unions for 100 years has certainly been broken. It’s not complete. There is still a long way to go in terms of the other trade unions. But that’s the two biggest things that have happened in terms of being on our way to becoming a mass party over the past year -- the electoral success and the relations with trade unions.

5. The SSP advocates for socialism and independence. Why is independence still a critical demand?

The whole national question and the history of independence for Scotland is very much tied up with socialist forces, right back to John MacLean. Achieving independence would make progress for socialism in Scotland, but beyond that as well, because of the whole chaos that would be created in breaking up the United Kingdom state, which obviously is a capitalist state. That in itself would create more favourable conditions for the development of socialism. And, there are things that can be done in Scotland, as an independent country with a socialist agenda, that are more likely to move people progressively towards socialism.

6. Is socialism, in the twenty-first century, still a viable alternative to neo-liberalism, and if so, what are some examples that we can point to in terms of that alternative?

I think that the attempts and experiments that have been made in the last century show that certainly economic reform can have benefits, and that a socially planned economy can have benefits. I think Cuba is a case in point that demonstrates that when you look at life expectancy rates, the health care system there, the education system, etc. But I don’t think you can have socialism without democracy -- genuine democracy, not representative democracy. And I think that that is the most fatal mistake that any attempt at socialist government has made, the lack of genuine democracy. You can’t achieve socialism by forcing it. It’s about raising everyone’s consciousness -- collective consciousness -- for a socialist economy, socialist country, and indeed socialist society across the world. And if we can get majority support for such a plan, such a society, such an economy in one country, and deliver it democratically -- with all the pressure that we would come under -- that example would be the most important sort of flag, an alternative for the world. So, we support any movement, anywhere. Venezuela, I think, is interesting; the way that movements there are developing. I think there’s definitely new movements. The whole anti-globalisation movement hasn’t developed as much in England and Scotland as it has in Europe and other places. But I think there’s a new sense of democracy. I don’t think these new movements will adopt the traditional organisational methods adopted by left-wing movements and parties in the past. I think that whether organisations called themselves Trotskyist, Leninist, or Stalinist even, they adopted the same sort of organisational methods, and I think they’re anti-democratic.

7. What was your initiation into politics, and what would your advice be to young people just getting involved in the labour movement and activist politics?

I’ve always had a socialist consciousness, I think. I was first involved in a trade union when I was about 17, 18. Then I had my children. But it was through union activity, workplace struggle, the campaign against hospital closures -- that’s been the majority of the focus of my political activity. I had never been a member of any political party before I joined the SSP, and it was because the SSP was a socialist party. It was uniting the Left, and supported Scottish independence. That actually matched my politics, and gave me a party that I wanted to be part of.

I’d like to say to young people: Stick to your principles, stick to your beliefs, express yourself. Don’t be intimidated by people who seem more educated than you are.
For left-wing organising, in terms of the culture, you’ll not get vibrancy, you’ll not get progress, if you turn out robots. You need people who can think for themselves. You only get progress with diversity, pluralism, discussion, and argument, even. All of this, open discussion, is very encouraged in the SSP. We don’t think that, as progressives, we should just feed people lines. They have to think for themselves.