Alex Miller
In September 29 by-elections, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) polled 5.3% in Glasgow Cathcart and 1.4% in Livingston. Labour Party candidates with much reduced majorities retained both seats. The turnout in Livingstone was 38.6%, while the 31.97% turnout in Cathcart was the lowest ever recorded in a by-election in Scotland.
In the October 6 Scottish Socialist Voice, the SSP's Alan McCombes responded to corporate media allegations that these results constitute a major setback for the SSP. McCombes pointed out that the SSP had actually improved its position relative to the Greens: "The Cathcart result is a turnaround from the general election five months ago when the Greens beat the SSP into sixth place in the Westminster seat that covers the Cathcart constituency, Glasgow South. Over the two seats, Livingston and Cathcart, the SSP polled a higher aggregate vote than the Scottish Greens. Yet there are no lurid predictions in the press of the imminent demise of the Green Party in Scotland."
McCombes added: "The SSP's campaign in Livingston was tragically cut short by the sudden death of election agent Bill Lebrun, while campaigning on the street. Most of the planned activities were then postponed and the campaign was effectively abandoned after barely a week. In Cathcart, the SSP achieved a credible 5.3 per cent of the vote in a constituency where two-thirds of housing is owner-occupied — the highest proportion in Glasgow." In fact, Cathcart was once the Conservative Party's only stronghold in Glasgow, held by former British PM Margaret Thatcher's ally Teddy Taylor between 1964 and 1979."
McCombes explained that the SSP "was forced to fight on a shoestring", after "being effectively fined £30,000 by the other Holyrood parties" for a protest staged by SSP parliamentarians on June 30. "The SSP and the Greens were effectively blanked out by the media for the duration of these election campaigns ... Neither the SSP nor the Scottish Greens did spectacularly well. But nor did they do spectacularly badly."
The 5.3% gained in Cathcart was half the percentage polled by the SSP in the 2003 general election, yet McCombes explained: "In May 2003, the SSP achieved an extraordinarily inflated first-past-the-post vote — only half a per cent below the list vote. In 2003, the Greens did not contest any first-past-the-post seats. As a result, a large proportion of their constituency votes undoubtedly transferred to the SSP. If the Greens had stood in the Cathcart first-past-the-post seat in 2003, the SSP vote would have been substantially lower."
"For over a year", McCombes noted, "the SSP has been subjected to a sustained and vitriolic onslaught from the national media in Scotland. Any critical comment from inside or outside has been amplified full volume for the world to hear, while the politics of the party have been suppressed under blankets of silence. Yet the party's backbone of support remains unbroken. And the by-elections last week show that the SSP is now back on its feet and once again moving forward."
From Green Left Weekly, October 26, 2005.
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