The Scottish Socialist Party has called for trade unions and other working-class organisations to compose a People’s Charter – material demands that will improve life for the working-class majority, and take on both the discredited establishment and billionaire-backed fraud far-right together.
SSP Workplace and Trade Union organiser Richie Venton was quoted in The National:
“John Swinney’s summit on ‘safeguarding Scotland’s democracy’ from the threat by the far right was dominated by politicians from the SNP, Labour, Greens, LibDems, Alba.
“The statement issued oozes amorphous words about ‘participation and openness’, but nothing concrete or material by way of an action plan, despite its laudable stated aim of ‘combating inequality and discrimination’.
“To say, as the statement does, that “we recognise many people feel distant from politics or failed by society” is the understatement of 2025!
“For the mainstream politicians present to make that comment without so much as blushing shows a remarkable lack of self-awareness; they are the people in office at local, national or UK government levels who’ve provoked the anger and alienation which multi-millionaire, far-right fraudsters like Farage tap into.
“All political forces and parties ultimately reflect material class interests. In the vast majority of parties, it’s the rule and furtherance of the fortunes of the millionaire and big business class that is represented in parliament.
“This was at the root of the viciously anti-working class, privatising, jobs-slaughtering Maggie Thatcher regime, enforced – as in the battle with the miners – by police thuggery.
“Subsequently, 13 years of Blair’s ‘New’ Labour governments continued this assault, retaining all Thatcher’s repressive anti-union laws, privatising schools, hospitals and other public service projects with their Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes.
“Then we suffered decades of Tory rule, only to be confronted by Starmer’s Labour government carrying on where the Tories left off.
“Millions of people are heartily sick of overpaid politicians telling us to ‘tighten our belts’, that ‘there is no alternative’ to escalating and life-threatening attacks on wages, benefits, pensions, jobs and public services.
“As the colour of party rosettes change, but conditions only get worse, no wonder people feel ‘distant from politics and failed by society’. The point is, what to do about it.
“The far right tap into the well of disgust and disillusionment with the rule of not just the Tories, or even ‘modern’ Labour, but also the SNP, who do nothing substantial to challenge and defeat Labour’s austerity with a fighting plan of resistance.
“But Reform UK are no friend of the working class, to put it mildly. They are backed by billionaires; 4 out of their 5 MPs are multi-millionaires; and behind their opportunist rhetoric lie policies that would devastate working-class people’s lives.
“They want to drastically reduce taxes on big business and the super-rich; slash spending on public services and jobs by £150billion-a-year; voted against Labour’s milk-and-water improvements to workers’ rights; and aim to dismantle our NHS, replacing it with private health insurance schemes for profit.
“Their main calling card is to divide and weaken working-class resistance to their arch-Thatcherite measures, by scapegoating immigrants; people seeking asylum from wars, starvation and climate catastrophes; and people of colour born in this country.
“The far right is the enemy of working-class people, regardless of colour, creed or country of origin. But to stop their growth, we first need to recognise their success relies on the utter failure of misnamed ‘centre’ parties to match people’s basic needs in life.
“Instead of an assembly dominated by politicians from the very parties which create the alienated, despairing conditions which fuel the far right’s growth, we need assemblies of the working-class majority to devise a People’s Charter of concrete, material demands, and a plan of action to win vast improvements in life.
“A People’s Charter offering a vision of an entirely different Scotland, where the nation’s fabulous natural, manufactured and human wealth is harnessed for the benefit of its people, not the enrichment of the profiteering capitalist and landlord minority.
“Let me illustrate examples of what the organised, 600,000-strong trade union movement, community and youth organisations, and genuine socialist forces like the Scottish Socialist Party, could and should wage a struggle for, cutting the feet from under the far-right fakes in the process.
“The average worker’s wage is £11,500 less now than in 2008, prior to the bankers trashing the economy and 20 years of austerity to pay for the bankers’ bailout.
“A guaranteed £15-an-hour minimum wage for all workers aged 16+, and pay rises to compensate for cuts, would unify and embolden hundreds of thousands into action.
“True, minimum wage laws are reserved to Westminster, but the Scottish government should declare a £15-an-hour minimum ‘living wage’ for all 550,000 public sector workers, plus those on public sector contracts, setting a benchmark for the private sector.
“Labour’s PFI schemes in Scotland’s schools and hospitals on average cost £5 in repayment fees from the public purse to consortia of bankers, venture capitalists and other speculators for every £1 invested.
“In the example of Hairmyres hospital, £700m in repayments for capital investment of £68m. Labour says “Buy 10 hospitals, get one”. The SSP says “Invest in people’s health, not moneylenders’ wealth!”
“A People’s Charter should demand cancellation of all PFI contracts, which have cost Scottish people £14billion in fees since 2007, and this year alone costs £27m in repayments for Hairmyres hospital – depriving the local NHS of funds to instead hire 850 nurses.
“Scotland officially suffers a housing emergency. The Scottish government should be pounded into building 100,000 quality council houses at affordable rent, creating jobs and apprenticeships, giving hope and renewed purpose to a generation that feels particularly divorced from politicians, prey to the false doctrines of cynical wide-boys like Farage – who owns two mansions, making him a property millionaire.
“Why can’t the Scottish government grow a collective spine, combine with workers and communities in a mass campaign, and win back some of the £billions stolen from Scotland in block grants by Westminster?
“Even within the devolution straitjacket, the Scottish government could abolish the unfair, regressive Council Tax and replace it with the SSP’s fully-costed Scottish Service Tax, based on incomes, on people’s ability to pay.
“That would literally double council funding from £2.7bn in Council Tax to £5.3bn from the progressive Scottish Service Tax, whereby 75% of people would pay less, but the rich cough up far, far more.
“That single measure would provide over £2bn in a year for council house-building, renovation, and District Heating Schemes to cut fuel poverty.
“A glaring source of bitterness towards the mainstream parties is their betrayal of Grangemouth workers. The SSP have persistently demanded democratic public ownership, with workers’ control and management, to rapidly transition to alternative green production, under the leadership of the true experts, the workers themselves.
“If the Labour government continues its treacherous refusal to nationalise Grangemouth to save jobs, the Scottish government should imitate its own actions as at Prestwick airport: nationalise Grangemouth without compensation to multi-billionaire Jim Ratcliffe – or perhaps buy it off him for £1, since he and his capitalist partners claim it’s a loss-maker!
“There’s plenty of wealth in Scotland, but it’s in the hands of far too few. Even a modest 5% wealth tax on all millionaires would have generated £260billion last year for jobs and services. Imagine what could be done with that to benefit working-class families!
“Of course, this would be opposed not only by the Tories and the multi-millionaire Reform UK, but also Labour (as Anas Sarwar explicitly stated last week) and the SNP leadership.
“So be it!
“The potential power of organised workers needs to be rallied behind such measures for wealth redistribution, giving millions of people a glimpse of a new Scotland, ultimately an independent socialist Scotland.
“The harsh truth is none of the mainstream parties are willing to champion such common-sense but radical measures. That was illustrated by the emptiness of their summit statement.
“But such an alternative is the best and only way to combat the rise of divisive demagogues trading on disappointment and rage with their racist, anti-working class, Thatcherite agenda.
“That’s one of the reasons the SSP candidate in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, trade union activist Collette Bradley, is standing to become a socialist MSP living on the average Scottish worker’s wage, in keeping with the SSP’s core principles.
“Readers should recall this was done by SSP MSPs between 1999 and 2007.
“When the politicians at John Swinney’s summit speak of people “feeling distant from politics”, no wonder! How can an MSP on £74,507 basic salary possibly relate to the daily conditions of ordinary people they claim to represent?
“When ‘Nine Jobs Nigel’ Farage not only takes his £94,000 MP’s salary, but grabs a further £572,000 in the past 6 months, how can this multi-millionaire claim to be ‘anti-establishment’, as he tries to seduce disgusted Labour voters?
“We urgently need a serious campaign for socialist measures to combat poverty, inequality, alienation, and the false gospels of Thatcherite racists who want to protect the rule of the millionaire class by dividing the working class.”
