Many people thought that Labour would lose control of Glasgow during the
local elections, this May. They didn't. Part of the reason was that
Labour was able to win the support of different interest groups and communities
with a range of promises contained in a manifesto document, called Labour's 100
Promises. The early indications, as revealed on Newsnet Scotland, that
Labour's Commonwealth apprenticeship scheme is not delivering the jobs which
have been promised, are not convincing.
During the election community leaders from across the city
launched a campaign, to win commitments from each of the political parties
standing for election, on what they would do if they were elected. This
was an expressly non-party political campaign, aimed solely at winning
commitments on a range of community issues. Many councillors who were
later elected committed to meet with community leaders to discuss their
concerns, but one commitment which stood out at this time was Labour Councillor
Mohammed Razaq's promise to up the number of socially rented homes at Maryhill
Locks from 143 to over 400. He was re-elected.
Labour's manifesto too contained a number of high profile
promises. In a make or break election for the party they gave some
commitments which were very bold indeed. Consider that in 2009, Labour
closed over a dozen schools and a dozen nurseries, in a second round of school
closures. The party's promise then that, "Labour will rebuild
or refurbish your local primary school," Was a marked change in tack.
Dozens of schools had been closed by the last Labour administration, and
yet here Labour promised to rebuild them all. Equally, Glasgow's sick man
of Europe health record was to be eliminated with the
party promising to eradicate health inequalities. Given that a man in
Calton in the East End of Glasgow can expect to live to 54, yet the city's
average life expectancy for men is 71.6, that particular promise is of huge
significance to lots of people. If they meant it.
It has become popular in recent times to say "all politicians
are @&!"(&(," and to leave any explanation for a lack of
political integrity with a kind of 'plague on all their houses' mentality.
It is certainly true that Labour in the past have been found to have lied
on important matters. And it is equally true that all politicians are
wont to be economical with the truth. That is how politics works in this
country unfortunately. However it is also very important not to let
politicians off the hook. Too often cynicism has actually allowed politicians to get away with
uncosted promises, to ditch manifesto commitments, and to slough off
accountability. However politics being what it is, at some point
politicians have to be held to account for their actions. If nobody was
paying attention, because everyone assumed that political promises are just
sugar coated lies, then this makes life easy for those who would take the citizens
of this country for fools. We need to ensure that if politicians are
found to be lying that we pile on the political consequences for doing so.
We need to shout from the rooftops wherever politicians are found to be
lying. This is the only way we are going to be able to restore power to
ordinary citizens. It is not on that a group of creeshy wheeler dealers
can play fast and loose with our democracy.
This takes us to another point, about Labour's campaign in Glasgow. The
party which was fighting for its political life during the local elections did
something unusual during that election: it made some very serious promises and
commitments which it believed set it apart from the opposition. The SNP
argue that these promises were uncosted, and that they were essentially a bunch
of fibs which Labour used as a springboard to cling on to power. But
Labour promised to wipe out health inequality, a very serious issue, and a
personal and tragic issue for the families of those in Glasgow whose lives
have been cut tragically short from ill health and poverty. If Labour
were just shooting their mouth off with that commitment, I'm sorry, but how
dare they? That would be an absolute scandal, to use the rotten life
chances of the poor like that for narrow political advantage.
There were a number of promises Labour made which it would be
utterly inappropriate, wrong and completely corrupt for the party to have made,
had they never intended to implement them. Indeed community leaders met
after the election to assess how our campaign to win promises from politicians
had impacted the city. We knew, given that Labour had made a bunch of
commitments and had been re-elected that our job in our accountability campaign
was not over once the ballots were cast. And so we assessed what we had
won, and we looked at Labour's manifesto. One of the leaders involved
drew up a shortlist of manifesto commitments which Labour made and put that
shortlist to a meeting of residents association, community council, and local
campaign group community leaders as the key promises in the Labour manifesto.
We voted unanimously to campaign around 40 of Labour's 100 promises, to
hold the party to account on these promises over the next five years.
How do we do that? Well, we
all know Labour's stance on the referendum: jam tomorrow. Whatever you
think about jam tomorrow as a political position, it relies primarily on trust.
In their Better Together campaign Labour will be asking Scots to believe
that they will provide greater devolution to Scotland to meet Scotland's
aspirations. So one of the things in our accountability campaign which
community leaders are currently focusing on in Glasgow, is to
produce a documentary film of our efforts to hold Labour to account. We
will show how they do, whether they have been honest and are keeping to their
word, or whether they have cynically taken the people of Glasgow for a ride.
We are currently looking for sponsors to make this film a reality,
but, should we be successful in meeting our funding target, we will be
releasing that film online, on DVD, and in
screenings across Scotland, in September 2014, showing just exactly how Labour
have implemented their manifesto in Glasgow. We will shout it from the
rooftops, and we will use that film to make our voice heard, loudly and
clearly. We know that will raise the
political stakes. More fool the Labour Party if it allows its narrow
self-interest in Glasgow to undermine
its 'Vote NO' referendum campaign. We know that this will raise the
stakes for Labour very significantly, as ‘Vote No’ is something that the Labour
Party leadership genuinely cares about. We hope that folk will agree that
this is the right time to be applying pressure on Labour to show us whether
they have integrity. Their political
message at this most significant of debates will rely on people believing they
do.
We will be launching our campaign in a very public way this
autumn, but in the meantime, please consider giving community leaders in
Glasgow your support.
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