THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES – PART 3
A feature on the Scottish Election and its aftermath
By SSP election campaign organiser Richie Venton
We are carrying a series of articles, making up this feature, written two days after the Holyrood election results. In this article, we reflect on the SSP’s socialist campaign and our final vote tally.
In the face of all these big machines, media blackout and prevailing factors, the SSP’s vote was always going to be badly squeezed.
However, during decades of experience of organising socialist election campaigns, I’ve never encountered a bigger discrepancy between the warmth, enthusiasm and active support for the SSP and our socialist policies, compared with our final vote.
Every SSP member, including our 21 candidates, can be immensely proud of the socialist campaign we conducted.
So too can the hundreds of supporters and sympathisers outside the SSP who generously donated towards the cost of printing 3 million leaflets for delivery by Royal Mail posties; who raised donations in their trade union branches; who invited SSP representatives to hustings; and who advocated a vote for the SSP among friends, family and fellow workers.
Many contacted us for supplies of leaflets to deliver long before they joined the SSP.
Support of trade unionists and campaigners
Our answers to questions from the GMB Scottish Further Education branch were circulated to the entire membership and gained widespread praise.
FBU members were circulated with very positive comments on our manifesto commitments on the Fire and Rescue Service.
Numerous RMT activists spoke to us on the street and while we leafleted railway stations saying they would vote SSP on the list and for nobody in the local constituencies.
The WASPI Scotland campaign circulated our policy of immediate compensation of £10,000 each from the Scottish government, who should then mount a campaign to get that money back from the Westminster government who imposed the appalling injustice on women born in the 1950s in the first place.
Mothers Against Genocide Scotland paid glowing tribute to the track record of the SSP in standing up for the rights of the Palestinians, and co-hosted social media posts calling for an SSP vote.
I got SSP Election Fund donations from members of the SNP and a few people who until recently had been Labour Party members.
All these and other examples should bury the lie peddled by one or two bitter opponents claiming the SSP is sectarian. Our track record of struggle and solidarity, as well as our undiluted socialism, has won many friends and influenced thousands of people.
Bold, tenacious, principled votes for socialism
Every one of the 8,326 people who voted Scottish Socialist Party had to climb political and psychological mountains, withstanding the predominant message that it was a wasted vote, sticking to their guns to vote for the one genuine socialist party in Scotland.
All that bodes well for the future of the SSP, as does the large number who have joined the party – particularly in the final two weeks of the election, and indeed in the days immediately after the results were announced.
We’ve come out stronger, with infinitely greater public awareness of the party – especially as we hadn’t stood openly as the SSP in Holyrood elections since 2011… 15 years ago!
Some people on the streets asked us, “Is this a new party?” or slightly older people said, “I didn’t know the SSP were still around.” They do now! We have more experience accumulated, more people well versed and confident on how to argue the case for socialism, and eager to do so.