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Labour’s return to its socialist roots is to be welcomed
The Scottish party under Richard Leonard promises real change for working people, says LYNN HENDERSON
Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Leonard at the Scottish Labour conference
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AS the 122nd president of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), I spoke yesterday to offer fraternal greetings to the Scottish Labour Party conference in Dundee.
Our history is the history of Scottish Labour. The STUC was founded as an independent trade union centre in 1897, splitting from the British TUC over a dispute on political representation for the labour movement.
Our struggle for independent working-class political representation led to the formation of the Scottish Labour Party, taking the name of workers, which it has proudly retained.
Although the STUC remains independent of the Labour Party to this day, we positively engage with the party on our shared agenda for workplace and economic advances for working people.
We should be proud therefore to have one of our own, Richard Leonard as Scottish Labour leader. Richard, a former employee of the STUC before 20 years as a GMB union official, has brought socialist principles, labour movement economics and a deep understanding of contemporary workplace issues back into the Scottish Labour Party.
I have personally known Richard for 35 years. As a colleague and a comrade, like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, Richard is a friend to working people in Scotland.
My own union, PCS, is not affiliated to Labour, or indeed any political party, and we do not bankroll its operation.
However, PCS’s annual delegate conference in May last year adopted policy that stated clearly that a Corbyn-led Westminster Labour government is in the interests of PCS members.
That is because under the current leadership, Labour commits to return national pay bargaining to the Civil Service, invest in public services and improve the conditions of workers and trade union freedoms.
PCS has been working with the shadow teams on our alternative policies on key platforms including tax justice, social security and transport.
This is a new and positive relationship which our union has not enjoyed with previous Labour front-bench teams, in spite of our members being in the front line of government service delivery.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell, addressing PCS conference, said to roaring applause: “When Labour gets into government, we will take the entire trade union movement in with us.”
With socialists leading Labour north and south of the border with a pro-trade union agenda that is fully in tune with the material wants and needs of workers, there is a political platform for full recovery in Scotland that is positive and forward looking.
Lynn Henderson is president of the Scottish TUC and national officer for Scotland and Northern Ireland at Civil Service union PCS.
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