Time for SNP leaders to fight Tory austerity with more than words

By Philip Stott

Despite being elected on an “anti-austerity” platform, SNP leaders and public representatives are being found wanting when it comes to fighting the cuts and standing up for working-class communities they are supposed to represent.

The SNP-led Scottish Government have implemented every penny of Tory cuts since the austerity offensive began in 2010. In councils across Scotland, SNP and Labour administrations have voted through devastating attacks on jobs and public services in the last few years. A further £1 billion in local government cuts is planned in the next two years that will have desperate consequences for council workers and communities.

This is despite Holyrood and local councils having the ability to set legal, no cuts budgets. Such a stand would win massive public support, given the huge rejection of austerity both in last years’ indyref and the May 2015 general election. It would also provide a major springboard for a mass campaign involving trade unionists, communities and politicians to fight for a return of the billions stolen from public services since 2010 by the Tories.

This is the policy that Socialist Party Scotland and the Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is fighting for.

Despite having tens of thousands of new working-class members and an anti-austerity policy on paper, the SNP leadership are being increasingly exposed for their acquiescence to capitalist-driven cuts and privatisation.

gravy train

In addition, too many of their elected reps are exhibiting behaviour more in common with a traditional establishment pro-capitalist party, with life-styles and incomes completely removed from the reality of life for the majority in Scotland.

A recent investigation found that almost one-third of the recently elected Westminster SNP MPs have additional incomes from renting-out property, on top of their £74,000 parliamentary salary. Much media attention has rightly been focused on SNP MP Michelle Thomson who has been forced to resign the SNP whip. Thomson, a property dealer whose company has been accused of being involved in the buying of homes from people in financial distress and then selling them on for a profit, was described by SNP leaders in election literature as having a “commitment to how business can be used to support social justice”.

16 SNP MPs – almost one-third of their 55-strong Westminster group – receive income from the rental market. These include several who have multiple properties. The SNP MP for East Kilbride, Lisa Cameron, rents out a house and five flats. Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, a former Tory party member, rents out three flats in Glasgow and a house in the Highlands. The former treasurer of the SNP, Ian Blackford, owns two cottages on Skye which he rents out as part of his holiday property company.

A recent survey of SNP MPs, MSPs and MEPs found that 90% of them were drawn from the top 3 occupational groupings. Those from a trade union activist and working-class background are in a minority. Moreover, none of the SNP councillors or Scottish parliamentarians have, so far, refused to vote against budget cuts.

Embracing privatisation and big business

In recent months the Scottish Government has privatised part of Scottish Water. The contract for supplying water to council buildings, the Scottish parliament, hospitals and prisons was handed to a privatised English water company, Anglian Water, who paid no corporation tax in the last year.

When the contract for Scotrail came up last year it was given to the Dutch rail company, Abellio. A Scottish public franchise if set up by the Scottish Government could have been given the contract. In addition, there is an ongoing campaign by the RMT trade union to defend the public service provided by ferry company CalMac who run the Western Isles routes and which is in danger of losing the contract to the private company Serco.

The SNP claim they had no option but to put-out to tender these services under the pro-big business EU rules. Yet they could have defied these regulations and also used the issue of lifeline services to keep services in the public sector and under public control.

The SNP leaders are long-term opponents of even the nationalisation of the profiteering privatised energy companies. IN response to the North sea oil crisis they demanded tax cuts for the multi-nationals who have made billions from oil while axing tens of thousands of oil workers’ jobs and attacking wages and conditions over the last year.

A real anti-austerity alternative needed

These facts underline the chasm that separates many of the policies and actions of the SNP’s public representatives from the majority of the working class in Scotland, including many of their own members. It’s time therefore build a new workers’ party that will stand candidates committed to representing the working class, not least by living on a skilled workers’ wage and pledging to vote and campaign against all cuts and for public ownership and socialist policies like TUSC does do. It is also another reason as to why all sections of socialist left in Scotland should be taking a stand and helping to expose the policy and record of the SNP leadership and supporting a fighting no cuts policy by all councillors and MPs.