Alex Miller
In the May 5 British general election, the ruling Labour Party lost 46 seats and saw its parliamentary majority slashed to 67 seats. As a result of Britain's antiquated "first-past-the-post" electoral system, the Conservatives gained 38 seats with just a 0.6% improvement in their share of the vote, while the Liberal Democrats gained only 15 seats with a 3.8% increase in their vote share. Nationally, the Labour share of the vote declined by 5.4%.
In Scotland there are 59 constituencies for the Westminster parliament. Labour held 41 seats and the Liberal Democrats won 11, the Scottish National Party (SNP) six and the Conservatives one. Labour lost five seats and its share of the vote fell by 4.5%. The Liberal Democrats gained two seats on the basis of a 6.3% increase in its share of the vote. The SNP gained two seats despite its share of the vote falling by 2.4%.
The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) contested 58 of the 59 seats and polled 43,514 votes. Its share of the vote fell to 2% from 3.1% in the 2001 Westminster election. In Scotland's biggest city, Glasgow, the SSP polled 4%. The Scottish Greens ran in just 19 seats and gained 25,760 votes (1.1%), while the Socialist Labour Party polled 6696 votes (0.3%) across 10 seats.
In an analysis posted on the party's website, SSP press and policy coordinator Alan McCombes reflected on a disappointing election for the SSP: "There is a time-honoured tradition in politics for parties who have suffered a setback to put on a brave face and to spin defeat into glorious victory. Last Thursday, five of Scotland's six parties had poor results. Of these, only the SSP refused to put a gloss on a gloomy result. Convenor Colin Fox expressed our disappointment in colourful language by quoting the words of former Manchester United manager, Tommy Docherty: 'We got beat four nil and were lucky to get the nil'."
McCombes identified at least seven factors that contributed to the SSP's result. Firstly, the "first-past-the-post" system effectively renders a vote for the smaller parties a waste: "In the Scottish elections of 2003, and in the European election of 2004, every vote potentially counted towards the election of a Scottish Socialist MSP or MEP. But in this election we had no possibility of winning any seats — and made that clear to our supporters from day one".
The second factor was that "the party itself has come through the most difficult period in its seven-year history. Following the resignation of Tommy Sheridan, we were subjected to a sustained media onslaught, mainly based on ignorance and misinformation." In addition, the party hasn't "had time to fully establish the public profile of the new convenor, Colin Fox".
Thirdly, "Labour was able to whip up fear among working class voters of a Michael Howard victory. The Daily Record, for example, set out to scare the living daylights out of voters who might have been tempted to abandon Labour. 'Today your house is in danger. So is your home, your pension and your kid's school', screeched the paper on election day, its front page depicting Michael Howard morphing into Margaret Thatcher."
"An even bigger problem for the SSP, the SNP and the Greens was the emergence of the Liberal Democrats in the guise of a left opposition", said McCombes. "They promised to tax the rich and scrap the Council Tax while portraying themselves as a progressive anti-war and anti-racist party, in stark contrast to the Tories and New Labour."
McCombes pointed out that the Liberal Democrats will not have this advantage in the Scottish election scheduled for 2007: "In practice, the Lib Dems are a right-of-centre party. In Holyrood, they have opposed the abolition of warrant sales, voted down free school meals, supported privatisation ... and failed, even after five years in coalition government, to move one millimetre towards scrapping the Council Tax.
"They oppose public ownership of the railways, support nuclear weapons on the Clyde, and refuse to call for troops to be brought home from Iraq. But in politics, perception is everything. In a grand hoax ... the Lib Dems managed to create an illusion of an old labour style reformist party. In this, they were assisted by uncritical blanket coverage in the UK media and by the inability of the big parties to tear away the mask. Like the spectacular vote for the UK Independence Party in the 2004 European election, this Lib Dem breakthrough is unlikely to be consolidated into a permanent revival, especially in Scotland. In 2007, they will be fighting the Holyrood election, not as a critical opposition party, but as a governing party defending a dismal track record."
The fifth factor McCombes raised was the marginalisation of Scottish-based parties — particularly the smaller parties — by the British broadcast media. "The Scottish Greens and the SSP received virtually zero coverage, even from most of the Scottish media ... While the big three parties enjoyed saturation exposure in the media, the SSP was forced in most of Scotland to make do with our single A5 leaflet and a four-minute election broadcast. This was like trying to drown out the cacophony of a chanting football crowd with a tin whistle."
A class-based "differential turnout" also affected the SSP vote. "While middle-class constituencies such as East Renfrewshire and East Dunbartonshire had turnouts of over 72%, the turnout in some working-class seats in Glasgow slumped well below 50%. Within these seats, some wards had turnouts no higher than 25%."
Finally, "Both the Greens, and especially the SSP spread our meagre resources thinly — across 58 seats, in the case of the SSP. This effectively prevented us from seriously countering the BBC, the ITN and the daily media."
Looking forward to 2007, McCombes suggested that there is an argument "for at least discussing a more focussed, targeted approach in future first-past-the- post elections, including the constituency elections for Holyrood".
It was not all gloom, however. In Orkney and Shetland John Aberdein increased the SSP's share of the vote to 5.6%. In the only seat not contested by the SSP, Rose Gentle, mother of soldier Gordon Gentle who was killed in Iraq in 2004, stood as an independent anti-war candidate against Labour armed forces minister Adam Ingram.
The May 5 Scottish Socialist Voice reported that Ingram lacked the courage to participate in a pre-election debate with Rose: "Adam Ingram, Armed Forces minister and Labour Party candidate for East Kilbride, finally agreed to face anti-war independent Rose Gentle at a hustings on Tuesday. Then, to no-one's surprise, announced he was unable to attend. This is not the first time Mr Ingram has been unable to attend a debate with Rose, who has had similarly little success trying to get an audience with his boss, Tony Blair. Indeed, throughout this election campaign, Ingram has met with Rose in public a total of zero times. However, he did say he would be 'willing' to arrange a meeting between Rose and Blair ... after the election."
Ingram retained the seat, although his vote dropped by 4.3%. In his "victory" speech, reported in the May 6 Evening Times, the best that Ingram could muster was: "Freedom and Democracy are precious commodities. Sacrifices have been made to give us the vote."
Elsewhere, Scottish Labour MPs revealed their low political calibre. The same issue of the Evening Times reported that Tom Harris, Labour MP for Glasgow South, said: "When [Blair] goes, I'll support Gordon Brown." Harris was philosophical about the rise in the Liberal Democrats' share of the vote: "I knew that would happen when I voted for the war."
With opposition of this quality, the SSP is already learning from the experience of this election and looking forward to 2007. "Although this was a difficult election, the SSP lives to fight another day", McCombes concuded. "Despite the fact that we have just come through the most difficult period in our seven-year existence, we were able to mount a national challenge in 58 seats from the Borders to the Northern Isles ... We distributed 3.2 million election addresses plus hundreds of thousands of street leaflets — and during the campaign received hundreds of applications to join the party.
"We now move onto new challenges, most immediately the G8 summit in Perthshire in July, which will provide the opportunity of taking our vision for Scotland and for the planet to a new generation of young people. Electorally, we now have a welcome two-year breathing space. And as convenor Colin Fox pointed out after the count: 'This Westminster election was an away game for us. Holyrood will be home game, where we're playing to home fans.'"
From Green Left Weekly, May 25, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.