Article by SSP Trade Union Organiser Richie Venton, originally published in The National 31/03/26
The die is cast. Scottish Socialist Party members have selected candidates, collected cash for deposits, and duly submitted nomination papers. It’s now official – everyone over 16 can vote socialist on May 7, right throughout Scotland.
If you are anti-poverty, anti-capitalist, anti-war, anti-Trident, pro-trade union, pro-independence and pro-socialist, the SSP should be your choice on the peach-coloured ballot forms for each of the eight regional lists.
We are offering policies to cut household bills, raise people’s incomes and vastly improve universal public services. Our MSPs would live on a skilled worker’s wage, to remain grounded and uncorrupted. That is unique among parties. When we had six MSPs they all stuck to that principle.
In passing I would make a simple appeal to those who dreamt of a challenge by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new formation: surely it’s only right to vote for the single socialist choice available on the regional lists, campaign for an SSP vote, and maybe even contribute to the costs of getting socialist leaflets into the hands of three million households?
We don’t expect blind faith in what we promise. We regard elections as an extension of daily struggles people are involved in to keep their heads above water, improve community facilities, afford the bills and have a decent life for their kids.
We are ready and confident of being judged by what we do all year round, every year. We are, after all, the party whose founding motto is “Struggle, Solidarity, Socialism”.
Since the last Holyrood election, the SSP have shown active support on virtually every picket line of striking workers, against cuts to pay, pensions, jobs or conditions.
We initiated and successfully agitated and organised for a mass STUC demonstration on Holyrood during the 2021-22 wave of workers’ action on the cost of living crisis. We won widespread support among trade unionists for our demand for a one-day general strike to unify that movement.
When multi-billionaire Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos announced it was closing Grangemouth’s oil refinery – and London and Edinburgh governments failed to save these skilled jobs – the SSP marched alongside the workers.
We broadcast their case through our media; had the union convener as guest speaker at SSP conference; and throughout, stuck to our demand for democratic nationalisation of Grangemouth, under workers’ control, to apply the expertise of the workforce to an urgent transition to green production.
The SSP were the only party staging street meetings in Falkirk demanding public ownership of Alexander Dennis factories to build fleets of green buses, to help achieve our pioneering policy of free public transport for all. From the first week onwards of the genocidal assault on Gaza, the SSP were present on demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinian people and among the first to demand an end to Labour’s arms sales to Israel, and Scottish subsidies to the same war-profiteering arms companies.
We’ve been visible opponents of Trump’s criminal war on Iran too. We’ve consistently united with other anti-racists against attacks on people seeking asylum from war and climate catastrophe, at demonstrations in Paisley, Perth, Falkirk, Dundee, Aberdeen, Glasgow, etc – to the extent that the racist far right have displayed placards declaring “Scottish Socialist Party – the enemy within”.
Of course we’ve been part of every independence demo, advocating an independent socialist republic. In all weathers, we’ve been on Scotland’s streets demanding an end to fuel poverty and profiteering through democratic public ownership of energy; for a 5% wealth tax on millionaires to fund our NHS, education and housing; for expulsion of the PFI loan sharks from hospitals and schools, to save the £1.25 billion this year alone being squandered on repayments to consortia of bankers and venture capitalists.
On street stalls, in meetings with trade unions, at anti-cuts protests, we’ve fought for no-cuts budgets by councils and the Scottish Government, and championed our policy of immediate Council Tax abolition and its replacement with our income-based, progressive alternative, a Scottish service tax where 80% of people would pay less, while we tax the super-rich – something which would have doubled funding for councils last year from £2.7bn to £5.3bn.
Some people, heartily sickened by politicians, may ask “What difference would it make if a few Scottish Socialist Party MSPs were elected”? The difference would be enormous, because we would combine what Scottish Socialist MSPs did inside Parliament with our actions outside it.
When we had six MSPs, we pioneered several policies to transform lives. It was the SSP who lodged the bill to abolish prescription charges, through our Lothians MSP, Colin Fox. We didn’t leave it at shuffling bits of paper round Parliament. We were out on the streets engaging the public, winning support, and working with health professionals and their unions to end the taxation of sickness.
Labour and the Lib Dems defeated the bill, but it laid the foundations for the eventual abolition by the SNP Government, which removed the burden of the £10-per-item charge that people in England still have to pay.
The same method was applied to other measures presented by SSP MSPs. When we introduced the bill to abolish the barbaric pendings and warrant sales, with their humiliation of poor people, we took to the streets, built demonstrations, lobbied parliament, and brought sufficient pressure on other MSPs to get it passed.
We gathered support for the SSP bill for universal free, healthy school meals from teachers’ unions, parents’ groups and at street campaign stalls, unions and workplaces.
If SSP MSPs are elected this May, they will revive the party’s demand for universal provision of free, nutritious school meals, linking up with the likes of the STUC women’s committee, which is likewise also committed to that measure.
We organised a demonstration of thousands in Glasgow for abolition of the Council Tax as well as pushing it in Parliament. The SSP have taken that policy into the unions with renewed vigour recently and would prioritise a bill to “Axe the Tax”.
One of our flagship policies is free public transport for all, on buses, trains, ferries and subways, to combat poverty, social isolation and loneliness; health-threatening car pollution; and the new Highland clearances whereby lack of jobs, affordable houses and reliable ferry services is ripping young people out of their communities, depopulating island and rural Scotland.
If we get MSPs elected, SSP members would engage with transport workers’ unions, island communities and campaigns for better transport to try to force through a transformative free public transport bill.
That’s what’s on offer. Unlike a second vote for the SNP, voting SSP on the lists is not a wasted vote. It’s a vote for socialist change, for independence, against poverty and pollution, for workers’ rights, against forever wars and racism, against the pernicious Tory extremists of Reform UK.
Above all it’s a vote for action, to transform the lives of the working-class majority by collective struggle, with the people inside Holyrood to broadcast the case and assist the struggle for immediate, radical reforms on the road to an independent Scottish socialist republic.