Your Party: forging a new Scottish socialist party

This article seeks to make the following key points. Firstly, that Labourism is in terminal decline. Secondly, that the political landscape in Scotland has diverged significantly from that in the rest of Britain. Thirdly, that Labourism’s uncritical acceptance of the UK state and empire has to be replaced by a thoroughgoing democratic and republican socialist strategy.

Doing the Hokey Cokey: The Labour Party and socialism

Socialists have had an in-out relationship with the Labour Party since the formation of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in 1900. The Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF) left soon after the foundation of the LRC and the ILP disaffiliated in the 1930s. The Communist Party tried on a number of occasions to affiliate (following Lenin’s advice), but unsurprisingly with no success.

The Labour Party has its origins in the 1850s and ’60s after the demise of Chartism with the “respectable” skilled working class who were organised in trade unions. In 1867, when the franchise was expanded to include some of the skilled workers, they did not form a political party, but instead attached themselves to the Liberal Party.

However, the desire for independent working-class representation grew, leading to the (still mostly ideologically liberal) trade union leaders and socialist organisations coming together in 1900 to found the Labour Representation Committee. The name is very significant. The basis on which Labour was formed is the essence of Labourism. This gave the British Labour movement two particular characteristics.

A commitment to capitalism

Firstly, unlike the European workers’ parties that were formally committed to ending capitalism (though in practice they soon became increasing reformist), the British party was founded to gain Labour representation primarily at Westminster.

Labour was essentially the political wing of the trade union movement. This gave it, as it grew, a seemingly mass working class base, as – unlike European countries – Britain had a single unified trade union centre.

Mobilisation of this mass support by the Labour and trade union establishment was always for electoral rather than industrial purposes and reflects the socioeconomic position of the trade union leadership and later MPs. This right-wing trade union leadership has been used to silence the left in the Labour Party, and the block vote used to stop the adoption of left-wing policies.

In response, the left working within the political culture of Labourism has often sought to win positions in the trade union bureaucracy as a way of influencing Labour. This Stalinist, top-down practice was at the expense of organising the rank-and-file in the workplace and building union democracy from below.

We therefore define Labourism as the politics of the trade union bureaucracy. Like Stalinism in the old USSR, it has a stake in the system as it is – committed to capitalism, empire and later to US hegemony. It normally offers a left-wing face to the working class when in opposition or during elections.

From the start, Labour had a decidedly parliamentary character. Its objective was not to change society, but to gain entry into the existing political system for the working class. This character has been exhibited in its support for imperialist wars as in 1914. Even at its high point, post-1945, it was an enthusiastic supporter of Atlanticism and US hegemony, including nuclear weapons. It introduced charges in the NHS to support the American war in Korea.

A commitment to the UK state and empire

Secondly, the Labour Party has always accepted the existing state structures and believed it can gain whatever reforms it aims to introduce within the existing structures.

The Labour ‘left’ has provided no working-class, democratic critique of the UK state and its ‘unwritten constitution’. This is why it has been so weak on democratic and constitutional reform. It’s accepted a constitutional monarchy rather than promoting republicanism.

Labour has an almost purely parliamentary focus, and the leadership tends to oppose independent working-class action through strikes and civil disobedience, such as the anti-poll tax movement of the 1990s. Its limited perspective of electoralism has prevented the Labour left from effectively challenging the Labour leadership and right wing – hence Lenin’s description of Labour as a bourgeois workers’ party. All Labour leaders join the Privy Council and swear loyalty to the monarch (as do the SNP). They have been promising to abolish the House of Lords for over a hundred years.

Therefore, Labourism has from its historical beginnings been a class compromise project based on the limited objective of gaining access to the political system for the working class. This political goal came without any intentions of changing the system beyond very limited reforms. For the left, this has been the British parliamentary road to ‘socialism’.

With the current political crisis of the UK state and the ongoing relative economic decline of the British economy, Labourism is exposed as politically and ideologically bankrupt, increasingly emphasising British nationalism and patriotism rather than even a reformist class representation politics. It is now a neoliberal centrist party increasingly divorced from its roots and history.

There have been numerous other attempts to form socialist parties outside the Labour Party with very little success. Attempts to build any socialist organisation inside the Labour “broad church” have often resulted in expulsions and the proscription of organisations, for example the Militant tendency in the 1980s.

Now with Labour moving even further to the right, completely abandoning the working class, the space has opened up on the left. It’s time to stop doing a Labourist ‘hokey cokey’ and make a success of a socialist party in the world beyond dying Labourism.

From Thatcher to a new Scottish politics

Thatcher’s deindustrialisation programme led to a big fall in trade union membership and a shrinking of the industrial working class. This, and its defeat in the 1983 general election, led Labour to embark on a journey to “modernise”.

This was supposed to make Labour more relevant to the voters. This led to the abandonment of such ‘old-fashioned’ ideas as such socialism and collective organisation in the workplace. Trade unions had to adapt to “new realism”. By the time the slide to the right reached the reign of Tony Blair and “New Labour”, the socialist Clause IV had to go. Focus groups became more important than trade unionists, the membership and party democracy.

John Smith, Labour leader from 1992 to 1994, was responsible for committing the next Labour government to creating a Scottish parliament (Labour having abandoned home rule in 1958). This followed the work of the broad-based Scottish Constitutional Convention, which produced a detailed blueprint for a parliament. Blair included the establishment of a Scottish parliament in a package of limited constitutional reforms which revived liberal-nationalist (and Keir Hardie’s ILP) home rule tradition with “devolution all round”. In addition to a Scottish parliament, there was to be a Welsh assembly and the “peace process” and Good Friday Agreement in Ireland.

Blair claimed to be responding to rising discontent at the undemocratic nature of the union. But Blair’s motives were revealed by his Defence Secretary George Robertson when he declared that “devolution will kill independence stone dead”. Currently, it looks likely following the elections in Scotland and Wales next May that all three “devolved nations” will have pro-independence administrations.

The very Scottish demise of Labour

The initial relief of ending eighteen years of Tory rule (which of course Scotland never voted for) ended in deep disillusion when Blair’s Labour wholeheartedly supported Bush’s Gulf War. This resulted in a rare electoral advance for the left in Scotland when, in 2003, the SSP won six seats in the “rainbow parliament”.

For a moment the SSP MSPs, alongside some independents, made it look like the Scottish Parliament’s PR system might lead to a more diverse parliamentary politics. However, in 2007 the SSP and the independents lost their seats and mainstream party domination returned.

Nevertheless, the 2007 Holyrood election was the first time that the SNP made significant in-roads into Labour’s traditional urban working-class vote, a trend that continued when they supposedly “broke the system” and won an overall majority of seats in 2011. The process of destroying Labour’s electoral base continued post-referendum with the 2015 near wipe-out , following Labour’s collaboration with the Tories in Better Together.

The early collapse of Labour in Scotland was facilitated by the existence of a social-democratic alternative in the SNP. In contrast, the rest of the UK elected the post-economic crash austerity coalition of Cameron’s Tories and neoliberal Lib Dems. Not until the election of Corbyn as Labour leader was there any sign of an alternative to the variations of neoliberalism offered by Blairism and Tory austerity.

By this time, the Labour Party in Scotland had largely been abandoned by both the working-class electorate and the bulk of the Scottish left who now placed their hope in the cause of independence.

Support for a devolutionist unionist socialist politics has, since the 2014 referendum campaign, been reduced to a much weaker Labour left and the CPB/Morning Star supporters gathered around the Red Paper Collective, with their advocacy of more devolution powers – generally labelled “radical federalism” – having very limited support either in the Labour Party or the wider Scottish left. There is, in effect, no coherent support for a Westminster or “British Road to Socialism” strategy in Scotland.

“There is, in effect, no coherent support for a Westminster or ‘British Road to Socialism’ strategy in Scotland.”

Consequently, Corbynism didn’t gain much traction in Scotland. On visits to Scotland, Corbyn – no doubt badly briefed by Scottish Labour folk – showed he did not understand the national democratic question.

In the 2017 general election, Corbyn did very well overall, with the best Labour vote since Blair in 1997. However, in Scotland, Labour’s result was much less spectacular. From near wipeout, they won back just six seats (the Tories won back twelve), all of which they lost again in 2019.

So, the crisis of Labourism is deeper and developed earlier in Scotland than it did in the rest of the UK. The impact of the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the rise of the SNP, on the one hand, and Corbynism on the other, have shaped both the left and the wider political situations very differently in Scotland and the rest of Britain.

Crucially this makes the conditions for the formation of Your Party in Scotland distinct. Scotland is not England or Wales, and one size will not fit all.

Your Party, independence and the national question

We acknowledge that YP Scotland is going to face differences on the independence issue. Many coming to YP looking for a new party home will be from the left Labour tradition, disgusted by the ousting of Corbyn or finally driven out of Labour’s ranks by Starmer. Conversely, many on the pro-indy left have joined the Greens or the SNP. They may join YP if it is seen to be becoming a success, as the three Green councillors in Glasgow did in October, along with others generally seen as being on the left.

It is difficult to judge what the balance for and against independence is amongst those who have come together in YP so far. But a fudge/fence-sitting position on independence, like some halfway house, where the principle of the right to self-determination is recognised without a policy in favour of indy, won’t cut it with the electorate. If YP Scotland isn’t both a pro-independence and itself an organisationally independent party, we will have no credibility on the national question. Polls show independence is strongest amongst the working class and especially amongst the youth. A “branch office” of a London-based party won’t win YP the support – and members – it needs to be a success.

We feel that the shenanigans and splits amongst the UK YP leadership have shifted the balance amongst YP members in Scotland in favour of the creation of an independent, Scotland-based sibling party to YP England and YP Wales. Indeed, a People’s Party of Wales has been registered with the Electoral Commission, which has involved some members of YP Cymru, with other members dissenting.

Further, in early November 2025, we learned that from Karie Murphy’s perspective, proto branches won’t be recognised as ‘real’ branches until May 2026. Another reason, we feel, for YP Scotland to organise its own affairs ‘independently’ rather than waiting for instructions and or permission from YP central.

An electoral strategy: Why, when and where to stand?

The initial success of the SSP and the rainbow parliament shows that representation can be gained at Holyrood through the list system. The groundwork to win such contests needs to be done by YP in order to win contests. This is the lesson to be learned from the RISE fiasco in 2016, where the left alliance won just 0.5% of the national vote. Recent efforts by TUSC, barely managing to get above 1%, are no better.

YP must be serious about not just standing in, but winning elections. Arguably, with the PR electoral systems in local and Holyrood elections, we have far better prospects of winning elections in Scotland than through the Westminster FPTP system.

Reform of local government and local democracy are emerging as key areas of political focus. Branches of the party rooted in the local community, taking up the class issues of anti-cuts, housing, council funding and democratic accountability, could have considerable success and be very effective in combating Reform’s racism with socialist answers to the effects of austerity, cuts and underfunding of public services.

However, we need to be wary of the dangers of ‘electoralism’, where we water down our programme and make unprincipled concessions just to get elected. We also need to be wary of careerists and opportunists joining us as we begin to be successful.

Since devolution, politics in Scotland has had a dual outlook, active in two political arenas, Scottish and UK-wide. For YP in Scotland, the focus will be primarily on Holyrood and the increasingly different Scottish political situation. So many of the key issues of the failures of neoliberalism are devolved matters – the NHS, housing, transport, education and local government. Even the main reserved matters are viewed through a Scottish prism: immigration, energy, defence and disarmament. By the very nature of its political focus, YP Scotland will need to be an independent party.

A historical and strategic perspective for YP in Scotland

In the United Kingdom, the process of uniting the working class and building a left hegemonic force capable of carrying through the necessary democratic transformation requires the breaking and ending of the power of the UK unionist state and the abolition of the undemocratic Crown powers. This is the argument for the strategic perspective of independence and republican democracy.

The modern UK state developed out of the early development of capitalism in England. A political revolutionary process begun during the Cromwellian period (which included the defeat of the English Levellers) resulted in the so called “Glorious Revolution” of 1688. This led to the Act of Union of 1707 which incorporated Scotland into a greater Britain. Culloden marked the final defeat of Jacobitism and the hope of a return to a more reactionary monarchism which would have aligned Britain with absolutist France.

Importantly, consolidation of the Union State settlement also required the defeat of democratic and republican struggles across these islands in the form of the United Irishmen (1798), the Scottish Rising and General Strike of 1820, and the Merthyr (1831) and Newport (1839) Risings in Cymru/Wales.

In the second half of the 18th-century, Scotland experienced a rapid development of capitalism resulting from and dependent on the British Empire, which post-WW2 has undergone a demise and break-up. This has led to a decline and indeed a crisis of unionism in Scotland. It also produced the rise of ‘little Englander’ exceptionalism or a post-imperial British nationalism. This, along with Brexit, the current rise of Reform and the far right targeting of migrants as the source of the economic problems are evidence of a declining UK capitalism and its state.

This English/British nationalism has echoes amongst smaller ethnonationalist movements in Scotland and Ireland. Either socialists and the Labour movement can ignore this and continue with what are economistic arguments about “nationalism dividing the working class”, or we can recognise the democratic and republican content of the desire for independence and seek to steer this process in a progressive and even more democratic direction.

YP in Scotland should aim to aid the working class in its self-organisation to achieve national leadership and become the hegemonic class. This cannot happen if it confines itself to narrow class issues (economism). It must also consider the wider popular democratic aspirations and struggles of the people, which may not necessarily have an overt class character. Through such a strategy we can win independence on terms favourable to not just the Scottish, but the whole British working class, opening up the path for a further radical reshaping of society and the economy.

The UK ruling class itself has a permanent policy of divide-and-rule, which takes a multitude of forms. One of these forms is to bombard the people of England and Wales with an anti-Scottish agenda, usually involving how the UK state subsidises feckless Scotland amid disparaging references to “sweaty socks” (Jocks). This ferments an anti-Scottish feeling among the working classes of England in particular.

The mirror image of that is to bombard the people of Scotland with the idea that Scotland is too poor, too weak, too lacking in resources to stand on its own two feet (a parody of the truth). Expressions of Scottish culture, in particular the languages of Scotland, are disparaged. Until recently, Scottish history wasn’t taught in Scottish schools except as an adjunct of English/British history. These processes nurture an anti-English sentiment amongst the more backward members of the population.

A necessary counter is a democratic, anti-Westminster, anti-Crown-in-Parliament, republican response. To overcome these divisions requires the people of Scotland being allowed to express their right to national self-determination. It is no accident the Scotland’s greatest Marxist thinkers, James Connolly and John Maclean, were both republicans who advocated the break-up of the UK state.

The only good thing that can be said about Enoch Powell is that he coined the phrase ‘power devolved is power retained’. This is fundamental to the British “unwritten” constitutional settlement.

In the case of the Scottish Parliament, this was illustrated by the UK Supreme Court (founded 2009) ruling that we have no right to hold even an exploratory referendum around independence. Measures such as the Scottish gender reform law and legislation around recycling of bottles and tins have been slapped down.

Scotland may not be, from a working-class perspective, an oppressed nation in the classic colonial sense, but it could be described as a ‘repressed’ historic nation subjugated by incorporation against the will of the people. Any expression of national pride or move towards self-determination is attacked by the UK state and its supporters in the mainstream media.

However, there is a Scottish political tradition, going back at least to the philosopher Duns Scotus (died 1308) and expressed in the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath, of sovereignty lying with the people, not the monarch. This tradition is incompatible with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and the Crown powers deriving from the 1688 English settlement and imposed on Scotland through the 1707 Treaty of Union.

These conflicting constitutional positions sit in contradiction with each other in the documents that inform the (dys)functioning UK “unwritten constitution”. It is important to note that, for example, in the Scottish legal system, the people are sovereign, not the Crown-in-Parliament. Therefore, the constitutional position is very confused.

In 1989 every Labour MP bar one (Tam Dalyell) signed the document “A Claim of Right for Scotland”, which was the basis for the work of the Constitutional Convention. The document declared the sovereignty of the Scottish people, stating that “we… do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs”. This is not possible within the rules of Westminster parliamentary sovereignty. People’s sovereignty and the sovereignty of the Crown-in-Parliament are incompatible.

What is absolutely clear is that the Scottish constitutional position was suppressed in favour of the unionist doctrine of sovereignty lying with the monarch in parliament. Can socialists really support the continuation of the latter, or do we need to reassert the Scottish constitutional position of a sovereign people?

Looking for allies – internationalism from below

The UK economy and the British state are increasingly dependent on Scotland’s resources – land, water, oil and gas, renewable energy – to continue to hold onto its position in the global economy, and the nuclear weapons on the Clyde to retain some political importance as a military power.

The UK is still a major capitalist power, albeit a diminished force looking increasing dysfunctional. Therefore, the dissolution of the UK state has a positive international dimension from a working-class perspective. Its demise would be celebrated by workers and peasants across the old British Empire and further afield.

It is with the working class of the these islands, Europe and the world that YP should seek alliances that will enable us to bring about a positive working class resolution to the differing national democratic questions in Britain and Ireland – an internationalism from below.

Conclusions

Labourism is over. Any potential for progressive developments within this political tradition have been shown to be historically bankrupt.

For reasons both historical and modern, and particularly since devolution, Scotland presents a different historical landscape to the rest of Britain with its own potentials and challenges.

The UK constitution is based on the sovereignty of the Crown-in-Parliament (in Westminster). It is not democratic. In contrast, the Scottish constitutional tradition declares that sovereignty lies with the people.

We believe that there is no UK/Westminster road to socialism. Ending the union through a democratic dissolution of the UK should be the socialist strategy. Can any socialist support the Crown powers and the parliamentary sovereignty of the union against the sovereignty-of-the-people Scottish tradition?

All this points to the need for a Scottish party which is both unequivocally pro-independence for Scotland and is itself a fully independent Scottish party. It should be a sibling party of the parties in England and Wales.

It’s time for a republican strategy that champions the democratic sovereignty of the people and the creation of independent republics of the nations on the island of Britain as a necessary step towards the socialist transformation of society.