In an interview with our struggle friends from the Scottish Socialist Party, we talked about the elections in the UK, the situation of the working class in England and Scotland, the imperialist war, and international solidarity. We thank our friends for their contributions and share them with you in the hope that it will further develop our solidarity.
SSP: As Scotland’s internationalist, anti-imperialist socialist Party, the SSP is glad to make this connection with our comrades in Turkey. In times of increasing inequality and international turmoil, the problems and difficulties, the contradictions and absurdities (as James Connolly termed them) which abound in the very nature of capitalism are writ large for all to see. We believe it is our responsibility as a class struggle Socialist Party to seize the opportunities offered to us by geopolitical chaos and Capitalist crisis to display to the working classes the potential for radical socialist societal transformation. We know that you share our vision of a socialist world and work tirelessly to help to bring one about.
We thank Kaldıraç for this chance to present our analysis of the 2024 UK elections to your readers.
1. We’d like to begin with the recent elections in the UK. The elections have been described in the mainstream media as a major victory for The Labour Party and one of the Tories’ greatest losses. However, the election also saw one of the lowest turnouts in the country’s history, and the actual number and share of votes of The Labour Party was lower than Corbyn’s results in 2019. Can you explain the reality behind this narrative of victory for Labour? How should we approach the results in terms of the actual decisions and preferences of the working class, and the attitudes they demonstrate towards the ruling class?
SSP: The first thing that we should take into account is the overwhelming anti-Tory feeling which characterised this election. The Conservative Party has been the party of government for 14 years, and over the course of their rule we have seen inequality increase drastically: austerity was presented by former Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne as an absolute necessity rather than a political choice, and the consequence of this austerity has been the decimation of our public services and of the lives of millions. The NHS is in a state of absolute crisis, with waiting lists resulting in many patients waiting months for essential treatments and diagnoses; food bank usage has increased from sixty thousand to over three million since 2010; and a record number of Britons are experiencing fuel poverty. Combined with a total lack of trust in the Conservative Party exacerbated by the so-called Party-Gate scandal which helped to dethrone Boris Johnson, Liz Truss’ disastrous 50-day premiership, and a series of high-profile defections, these factors created the perfect circumstances for Labour to present themselves as the only viable alternative, and effortlessly win the election.
Despite the extent of this victory being exaggerated by the undemocratic ‘First Past the Post’ voting system – which allowed Labour to win 63.2% of the seats with only 33.7% of the vote – Kier Starmer and his team claim that the British public have put their trust in the Labour Party. Labour’s relatively low vote share – and the historically low turnout overall – paint a different picture. The British public have been largely unmoved by Starmer’s hollow promises of “Change”: 14% of votes cast went to Reform UK, a far right political party led by opportunistic reactionary (and now Member of Parliament) Nigel Farage; the social democratic Green Party more than doubled their vote to 6%; and independents won massive vote shares in seats nationwide, most of these independent candidates standing in opposition to Labour’s pitiful response to the genocide in Gaza.
Labour’s victory is ultimately down to the destruction of the Tory Party, with Labour basically winning the election by default. However, the aforementioned gains for the far right (who won 5 seats, but a large percentage of the vote share) should be a cause for concern for socialists organizing across the UK – these gains are of course an inevitable result of the working class losing faith in the neoliberal politics of the mainstream parties.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also stood as an independent in the Islington North seat which he has held since 1983, and defeated the Labour candidate by over 7000 votes: this result reportedly caused a great deal of distress across the Labour leadership, and challenged the narrative that Labour’s victory was a result of their rejection of Corbyn’s left-leaning politics.
Overall, the British working class have shown themselves to be largely disillusioned by mainstream politics. Many working class people have become apathetic, whilst others have turned to the far right in their search for an anti-establishment political party. It is the job of socialist organisations to build grassroots support and steer the British public towards Marxist conclusions, and away from the reaction and hate of the Reform Party and their fascistic bedfellows.
2. Can you describe the campaign promises and messages employed by Starmer and the Labour Party during the election period? What kind of alternative did they offer to the working class? How would you describe the feelings and expectations the working class had approaching the election?
SSP: Labour’s election slogan was a single word: “Change”. This focus-group-tested slogan would prove the most inaccurate and farcical tagline since Theresa May and her chaotic government’s declaration of themselves as the “Strong and Stable” option in 2017.
Before his landslide election victory in 1997, Tony Blair had taken the effort to lie to the British public about the changes they would see under a Labour government. During his 2024 campaign, Starmer and co. didn’t even bother to pull the wool over people’s eyes.
Starmer’s Labour would not agree to scrap the two-child benefits cap, which means that mothers will only receive benefits for their first two children, unless they can prove that subsequent children were born as a result of rape (or ‘non-consensual conception’, as official guidelines call it). With around 1.6 million children in the UK living in poverty, this barbaric benefits cap cannot be justified. Starmer has refused to commit any extra funds towards benefits, and has stated that there will be “no change” to the two child benefit cap under a Labour government. Labour have also refused to scrap the bedroom tax, an additional tax for those renting a council property with a “spare bedroom”.
Both Labour and the Tories were fighting on the same side of a manufactured culture war, attempting to move further to the right on immigration and social issues than their opponents (both were outflanked by Farage’s Reform Party, so this strategy wasn’t much of a vote winner). Immigration was made one of the big issues of the election, with both mainstream parties pushing the narrative that “Britain is full”. The Conservative election slogan – Stop the small boats – was not the subject of criticism from the Labour Party, who instead attacked the Conservatives for not being committed enough to deporting migrants. Combine this age-old tactic (“it’s not the ruling class who are stealing the wealth, it’s the migrants!”) with vicious attacks upon the transgender community designed to appeal to the most reactionary elements of the working class, and a healthy dose of Islamophobia. The divide-and-rule employed by the Conservative Party has been adopted wholesale by Labour, and this will be to the benefit of the ruling class.
Starmer has also pledged Labour’s commitment to strengthening Britain’s place in NATO, and to maintaining our TRIDENT nuclear weapons system, which is kept in Scotland. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has called Labour’s victory a “huge setback” for anti-nuke campaigners in the UK. Again, a clear statement from Starmer: “the status quo will not be challenged”!
The Labour leadership advocated for private involvement in our public services with as much gusto as their opponents. Their Blairite health secretary in waiting Wes Streeting openly called for bringing the private sector into health care provision. Their Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised to “stick to Tory spending limits”, buying into the right wing, Thatcherite idea that one of the richest countries in the world doesn’t have enough money to build decent council housing, run an efficient and fully funded health service, end food poverty and fuel poverty, provide decent benefits, pay public sector workers fairly, etc.
As has been the case with every Labour leadership – including Corbyn’s – Starmer and co. opposed Scottish independence.
During the election, the SSP adopted the slogan “Reject Red Toryism”: there was very little difference between Sunak and Starmer during the campaign. In his first few weeks as premier, Starmer has proven that the “Red Tory” label was an accurate one.
3. It was reported that 2022-2023 marked the biggest rise of absolute poverty in the UK in 30 years, with 12 million people, or 18% of the population, living in this condition. How would you describe the conditions the working class faces currently in the UK?
SSP: Working class life in the UK has become significantly more difficult over the past 14 years, accentuated by the Covid Pandemic, which saw the great hordes of wealth amassed by the ruling classes increase significantly whilst the majority were advised to “tighten their belts”. The lie spread throughout the pandemic by the richest in society that “we are all in the same boat” was exposed after a series of dodgy deals whereby huge PPE contracts were awarded to the friends and family members of MPs and government ministers came to light: the poorest in society were expected to rot in hospital corridors whilst doctors and nurses worked themselves to death without the support they needed, meanwhile the rich partied and amassed their corpulent, filthy wealth.
After the pandemic ended, this gap continued to grow at a stunning pace. Child poverty, fuel poverty, and food poverty reached record heights, and the number of foodbanks in the UK exceeded the number of McDonald’s restaurants.
Homelessness has been on the rise, and it has been left up to charities and non-profit organisations to ease the impact of the cost of living crisis on society’s most vulnerable. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman vowed to fight homelessness by criminalising it – targeting those who pitch tents on public property!
Workers have received real-terms pay-cut after real-terms pay-cut. After the pandemic, a strike wave shook Britain, and brought class consciousness to workers who had previously never stood on a picket line (unlike most UK political parties, the SSP have stood unashamedly with striking workers since our inception: whether they are in conflict with private companies, the Westminster government, or the SNP government in Holyrood). This strike wave however largely died down, though workers in several sectors (including college lecturers, who are in direct conflict with the SNP in Scotland) continue to fight against the cuts to their quality of life.
The key problem faced by those of us attempting to organise a fighting working class alternative is the apathy of huge swathes of the working class. This apathy is a result of the failure of party politics, and in many cases the failure of trade union leadership (the energy of the aforementioned strike wave was largely wasted, leaving newly active workers disheartened). Without a vehicle to fight back – in the form of an educated, organised vanguard party – conditions will continue to deteriorate for working class people across the UK.
4. What kind of internal policies concerning social services, taxes, social rights, etc. do you expect from the new Labour government? Will Labour resolve the problems you mentioned above, or do they actually really want to? Why or why not?
SSP: So far, the Labour government has already doubled down on promises to maintain the two-child benefit cap, to increase private sector involvement in public services, to ban puberty blockers (disregarding scientific evidence in order to appeal to anti-trans campaign groups), and to refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy and big business. Labour has styled itself as an “electable” party who can reliably maintain the status-quo, and have pandered to big business and media moguls throughout the election campaign. Evidently, many Conservative Party ministers believed that the Labour Party were – in fact – the continuity Conservatives, as several of them (including Natalie Elphicke, a devout right winger known for her anti-migrant rhetoric) defected to the Labour Party. The Labour Party have copied the Tory’s policy platform, and this lack of difference between the two major parties has been a key driver of the apathy that has swept the British working class. Labour have openly admitted they will not address the policy issues outlined earlier in this interview, and it is unlikely that they will solve the problem of voter apathy, given that they are one of the major causes of it.
5. Can you describe your general view of the changes in the Labour Party over the last decade or so, especially with respect to Corbyn’s ousting?
SSP: As Vladimir Lenin said, the British Labour Party is a bourgeois worker’s party. It has never represented radical socialist change, and whilst throughout its history the political shade of the leadership has varied somewhat (from social democrats like Micheal Foot to imperialist warmongers and Thatcherites like Tony Blair), it has always been an obstacle to worker unity. In the 1980s, when a militant tendency within the Labour Party successfully used the Party as a vehicle to further the interests of the working class in Liverpool, these militants were disciplined, and their leaders expelled. The Liverpool Militants were expelled under Neil Kinnock, the treacherous enemy within of the worker’s movement: Kinnock wholeheartedly endorsed Starmer, who has adopted the methods of his predecessor in his purging of the Left within the Labour Party.
When Jeremy Corbyn became the Labour leader, he was underestimated by the Labour Right and the British press, who viewed him as a scruffy red who would never be taken seriously by the British voter. When Corbyn came within inches of Downing Street in 2017 – despite his campaign being sabotaged from within by the right of his own party – the British establishment received a hell of a shock, and vowed never to let Corbyn or his allies near power again.
The Labour defeat in 2019 has been presented by the British press and by the current Labour leadership as a rejection of Corbynism, and – despite winning less votes than Corbyn received in the two elections he contested in 2017 and 2019 – Starmer claims to have transformed the Labour Party into an electable force, one which is “sensible” and “grown up”. The “sensible” and “grown up” politics of Starmer’s Labour are in fact nothing more than a continuation of the politics of the past 14 years: a politics of austerity, reduced standards of living, and wealth inequality.
Despite the flaws of Corbyn’s social democracy, he did present a genuine alternative for British voters: he promised that his first act as Prime Minister would be to end homelessness; he stood throughout his leadership (as he has done throughout his political career) in solidarity with oppressed peoples across the globe – including those in Palestine – and has opposed UK military intervention in Iraq and elsewhere; and he promised to repeal the draconian trade union laws and benefits caps imposed by the Tory government (as well as those introduced by the previous Labour governments of Blair and Brown). During the Labour leadership elections, Kier Starmer promised to keep the policies that Corbyn had stood for – one by one, Starmer broke his promises and abandoned the meaningful changes which Corbyn’s Labour had fought for.
The destruction of the Corbyn project by the Labour Right was blatant, and the full scandalous details of the campaign against him have come to light in the past few years. Starmer represents the establishment: he correctly boasts that he has changed the Labour Party, and he has indeed transformed it: into an openly right-wing, imperialist, capitalist party in the mold of Macron’s centrists in France and Joe Biden’s Democrats in the US. It’s no coincidence that Starmer’s idol – the butcher of Iraq, Tony Blair – has been vocally supportive of his protégé’s performance so far.
6. The Scottish Socialist Party fights for an independent socialist Scotland. Scotland has its own government and Parliament with devolved powers within the United Kingdom. Can you generally describe the politics of Scotland and its relation with the UK for our readers, including the official powers and position of the Scottish Parliament?
SSP: The SSP has always advocated for Scottish Independence, not on nationalist, Anglophobic grounds, but rather with the view that breaking away from the Westminster government would allow the Scottish working class to pursue their interests without being blocked by the government down South. It should be noted that we have no faith in the Scottish Government as it stands to deliver independence or the changes that it could bring about – we believe that only a worker led socialist movement can bring about these changes.
The Scottish Parliament is granted certain devolved powers (including social care, education, and local government), but devolution is limited, and many powers remain reserved to Westminster. The Holyrood government in Scotland is generally considered to be more liberal and progressive than the government in Westminster, and in certain respects it is: despite flaws in their Gaza, immigration, and LGBTQ+ policies, the SNP government in Scottish parliament is significantly better on these issues than the outgoing Tory government, or the incoming one. The Scottish Government also opposes the two-child benefit cap.
This said, the Scottish Parliament is by no means a beacon of progress. Ask any education worker: the SNP government has powers over education, and their incompetent, neoliberal handling of the sector has lost them a lot of support. Despite vocally opposing the genocide in Gaza, the Scottish Government still allows arms manufacturers to indirectly claim a significant amount of taxpayer money in subsidies. Furthermore, the new SNP leadership, with the thoroughly un-radical John Swinney at the helm and the outright right winger Kate Forbes as his deputy. Scottish independence is the only factor linking all SNP members, it is the broadest of broad tents.
As for the political makeup of Scotland, Scottish exceptionalism should be avoided. There are positive points in Scotland’s electoral history – the election of 6 Scottish Socialist Party MSPs in 2003 with 6.7% of the vote being a notable one – but our country is by no means free of reaction, nationalism, and racist sentiment. The split is by no means a unionist/nationalist one: the struggle for independence is one made up of trade unionists, socialists, and ordinary working class activists, but it also attracts more reactionary and right wing elements; whilst the unionist parties at Holyrood are – by and large – more rightward leaning than the pro-independence ones, many ‘No’ voters are lifelong trade unionists and/or socialists who’s analysis has brought them to a different conclusion – we would disagree with them on the issue of independence, but embrace them as comrades nonetheless.
Across the Indy split, right wing tendencies are undoubtedly present in Scotland: look to the 2024 Westminster elections, where 7% of Scottish voters lent their vote to the far right Reform Party. The aforementioned Kate Forbes, socially and fiscally Conservative, won 48% of the vote in the SNP’s internal leadership election in 2023: she was beaten by the center-left candidate Humza Yousaf by a bawhair (to use an old Scottish expression).
Scotland is by no means immune to a rightward shift in the political landscape. We share our material conditions with our English comrades, and our political makeup is not significantly different.
7. In the latest elections, the SNP lost a significant number of votes while Labour’s votes increased in Scotland. Additionally, while Labour in Scotland got 37 MPs with 35% of the vote, SNP got 9 MPs with 30% of the vote. Can you describe your view of the results of the elections in Scotland? What were the results like for your party?
SSP: Whilst the Conservatives will go down in history as the ‘losers’ of the 2024 UK elections, it is fair to say that the party that was most severely injured was the SNP.
Large sections of the Scottish working class are sick of the SNP. The SNP have been in power at Holyrood since 2007, and have overseen a tangible decline in the standards of living for many in Scotland and, notably, an increased level of strike action directly against Scotgov in recent years. Despite it being their key mission statement, the SNP have failed to deliver independence, and it seems that many independence supporters turned out to vote for unionist parties at the elections, as whilst the SNP vote sat at 30%, support for independence still hovers around 50%. A stench of corruption has surrounded the party over the past couple of years – with perhaps the most famous scandal being the caravan bought using campaigning funds. This will undoubtedly have played a part in the downfall of the SNP project, which prior to these elections had been one of the most electorally successful political machines in UK history.
Scotland wide the result was devastating for the SNP, the extent of the Labour swing left them with a worse result than many SNP activists and MPs might have feared – a reasonable prediction for the SNP would have been 13-18 seats, so the final total of 9 will be seen as a total rejection of the way Scotland’s ruling party have governed.
As for the Scottish Socialist Party’s result, we performed better than predicted. Our vote share was always going to be modest given the size of our Party, the political landscape of the present moment, and the fact that Westminster elections are historically the ones in which we pull in the weakest share of the vote (thanks to the unproportional voting system, the focus on England, and the hefty fee for standing a candidate), but the facts and figures are promising. In both seats in which we stood, we doubled our vote, and earned 1.3% of the vote in each constituency. The fact that we convinced 1000 voters to put their X in our box in an election where record numbers stayed at home, and the majority of voters seemed focused mainly upon getting rid of the Tories, is not to be underestimated.
It is also worth noting that we received the highest average vote of any far-left Party in the UK. Whilst there are many reasons to mourn the result of the election, our performance should be celebrated: historically, the SSP performs better under a Labour government (when the working class does not have the same illusions in the Labour Party, and begins to seek true socialist representation), and the upcoming 2026 Scottish Parliament Election presents much more fertile ground for us.
8. In the imperialist wars in Ukraine and Palestine, the UK state has been a staunch ally of the US. Its funding, and military and political support for Israel continue amid the ongoing genocide, and despite strong public protests against the UK’s support to Israel. One reflection of this situation was the election of 5 pro-Palestinian independent candidates in the latest elections, which were seats lost by Labour. Can you summarize the public reaction, protests, and resistance against Israel’s genocide in the UK? How do you interpret the wins by the independent candidates?
SSP: With regards to Ukraine, the new Labour government has been very clear that it takes the same stance as the Conservatives. A couple of weeks into his premiership, Starmer has stated that “Ukraine is, and always will be, at the heart of my government’s agenda” – meanwhile, the UK continues to support Israel with war planes and military equipment. The Labour leader – who last year forbade his MPs from voting in favour of a ceasefire – has long been the target of criticism from pro-Palestine campaigners: at marches across the UK since October of last year, the crowds could be heard chanting “Fuck Kier Starmer!”, his stance on Gaza has cost him dearly.
A major upset took place in Leicester South where prominent Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth lost his seat which he had previously held with 67% of the vote to independent Shockat Adam – the image of a victorious Adam holding a keffiyeh above his head and declaring “This is for Gaza!” proved to be one of the defining moments of election night. It is not only the victories which were noteworthy, but also the near-misses: new Health Secretary Wes Streeting (who has openly admitted his desire to see an increase in private sector involvement in the health service) held onto his seat by just over 500 votes after being challenged by British-Palestinian independent Leanne Mohamad. These two results display the extent to which Labour has lost the trust of large sections of the British public (particularly, but not exclusively, the British Muslim population) who would previously have been a part of Labour’s base. The victories of 5 independent candidates and near-wins of many others is a significant element of this election which the anti-war Left should aim to build upon.
Starmer and his colleagues (be they imperialists or merely careerists) will approach the genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine in much the same way as other neoliberal governments across Europe have done. The UK Left must point this out, and display to the British public that money spent on weapons would be better spent on – for example – our crisis-stricken health service.
9. One of Starmer’s first acts has been to announce that Ukraine can use British missiles to launch attacks inside Russia. He also committed to raising the defense spending to 2,5% of GDP, which is the same level of increase as what Sunak had announced in April. Sunak had also announced plans to introduce mandatory military service. Can you talk about your view of the UK’s position in the international crises of capitalism and imperialism, especially with regards to the ongoing and possible future wars? Do you expect any change in the UK’s foreign policy?
SSP: The new Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves was quick to declare after Labour’s landslide victory that “there’s not much money there” to invest in public services. Despite this alleged lack of funds, Starmer was able to scrape together £3 billion to hand to President Zelenski in Ukraine, with a promise of a further £3 billion in a year’s time. This should not come as a shock, as during his time as Leader of the Opposition, Starmer had stated “there will be no difference between the political parties on [Ukraine]”, and declared that “Labour doesn’t just hope for Ukrainian victory, we believe in it”. So there is little hope for peace if Starmer has his way: much like his former political opponent Boris Johnson, Starmer seems to believe that the only acceptable end to the war on Ukraine is outright military victory, and he is willing to see the war fought to the very last drop of Ukrainian blood.
This warmongering and rhetoric provides a great justification for the massive rise in defense spending, which the majority of the British public would see as totally unjustifiable given the state of our public services. This fits in with the saber rattling of other NATO member states, most prominently the USA, who are actively destabilising the world and preparing for war (most often, their bogeyman is the gangster capitalist regime of Putin in Russia). The SSP vocally condemned Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but also the expansion of imperialist NATO; this, at times has left us the subject of criticism, particularly in the early days of the war where anything short of full uncritical support for the Ukrainian government was considered Putin-apologism. The military dictatorship in Ukraine will welcome Starmer’s election, we have already seen the Prime Minister give Ukraine the nod to use British arms to commit war crimes.
To quote a Palestinian comrade, Kier Starmer is “a human rights lawyer who decided to join the other side”. The increasing jingoism and nationalism in the West is a cause for concern: Starmer’s Labour will play their part in ensuring that the specter of war is never far from people’s minds.
10. Can you talk about some of your party’s ongoing major campaigns to establish socialism in Scotland? What do you think are the immediate major challenges to advancing socialism?
SSP: Since October, we have campaigned in solidarity with Palestine, at demonstrations, protests, and on SSP street stalls. We have stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people since our inception, and our efforts to help fight several campaigns (the show Israeli genocide the red card campaign against the Scotland v Israel Women’s match, and the successful Ghassan for Rector campaign at Glasgow University, for example) have allowed us to spread socialist ideas to a wider audience, and to help that audience reach anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist conclusions – Capitalism means war without end is a message which has resonated with large sections of the working class. We have campaigned tirelessly throughout our existence against cuts to local services, calling on the Scottish government to rebel and pass a no-cuts defiance budget, this campaign continues and can only pick up more support as the Labour government continues to impose Tory spending limits. The campaign for free public transport is a popular and long running one, which allows us to engage with workers on the issue of public ownership. We continue to play an active role in the Scottish Independence struggle, and to drive the movement away from the pitfalls of narrow-minded nationalism and towards a vision of an independent socialist Scotland.
These campaigns have met with a great deal of success, but the barriers to building the movement have been significant.
One of the key obstacles we face in Scotland and across the UK – as has been mentioned earlier in this piece – is apathy. We must revitalise our movement and convince the working class that a better world is possible; through our campaigns and our tireless on-the-street work, we are doing our utmost to do this. The “socialism later” argument has also reared it’s head, with many arguing that “we need to get independence first, then we can think about socialism”, or “we have to get the Tories out – at any cost – before we can have radical change”: these attitudes are widespread in Scotland, but hopefully the collapse of the SNP and the reign of a right wing Labour government will allow large sections of the working class to realise that the fight for socialism can’t wait.
The increasing presence of the far right could also pose a problem, and the current system is much more hospitable to them than it is to us. Gone are the days of street battles with the National Front, today’s fascists (with the charismatic Farage at the helm) are far smarter and far more dangerous. The Reform Party utelises the soapbox presented by bourgeois democracy to spread their poison, buoyed by a sympathetic media which is always willing to offer them a platform. Farge himself appears on our screens most nights of the week, and now that he is an MP, the frequency of these appearances can only increase. All publicity is good publicity, and with a Reform representative on most political programs on UK TV, it is not a surprise that millions of working class people wrongly see Reform as the antithesis of the corrupt and chaotic mainstream parties – the anti-establishment alternative.
The SSP – and the left more generally – must present ourselves as the real, radical anti-establishment choice. In five years time when the Labour government have failed the worker again and again, the choice for the UK will be between right wing populism and internationalist socialism. As it stands, the socialist movement is not robust enough to tackle Farage and his band of reactionaries. We must convince potential Reform voters that the interests of their class are not advanced by the scapegoating tactics of Farage, and to do this we must be united. The SSP are constantly building, and we are confident that we will be ready to take on the fight against the far right in Scotland, but without a strong left movement in England the door is left wide open for Reform to waltz in to Downing Street come 2030.
Despite these obstacles, the SSP continues to grow at a steady rate, and we believe that this growth can only increase. As a Party, we have a long political memory, and we contain a great wealth of knowledge and experience which will allow us to tackle the battles which are to come. For now, we continue to build and to fight campaigns which resonate with working class people, and our message of anti-corruption, anti-careerism, anti-imperialism, internationalism and socialism continues to strike a chord and fill a space in Scottish politics which is otherwise vacant.
11. The international working class and the peoples of the world are at an important crossroads. With looming and continuing imperialist wars, the existential threat of climate change, and nationalist-racist political programs of the ruling classes advancing across major imperialist countries, we need international solidarity more than ever. How do you think we can develop our international solidarity? How should we challenge the imperialist war, both internationally and nationally?
SSP: Publishing this interview, and forging a connection with comrades in Scotland is a fantastic step towards building the international solidarity that our movement needs to survive. Efforts made by your organization and others to reach out across national divides are all too rare, and should be encouraged wherever possible. Coordinated international actions – which would show the ruling class that the workers of the world are indeed united – are necessary, and these actions must be organised by experienced Marxists. The socialist movements in our particular countries do some fantastic work to bring workers together on a national level, maintaining contact with likeminded groups across the globe will allow us to keep our members informed. Co-ordination between groups, cadre building, and regular activities are all vital.
Beyond this, sharing contacts and articles with other groups and helping movements to link up with one another is always to be celebrated. We applaud Kaldıraç for their efforts on this front.
12. Do you have anything you’d like to add or a message to our readers in Anatolia?
SSP: The SSP once again extends our thanks to Kaldıraç for offering us this chance to speak to your members, and we encourage any comrades to get in touch with the SSP should they find themselves in Scotland. We are proud to represent the Marxist tradition in our neck of the woods, and it strengthens us to gain this connection with comrades who are playing their part to carry on the struggle in Turkey.
The SSP operates on the core principles of Struggle, Solidarity, and Socialism; this solidarity does not end with the national border. We look forward to continuing this relationship with Kaldıraç and associated groups in Turkey. Keep fighting – La lotta continua!
Jamie O’Rourke – Scottish Socialist Party Executive Committee member and president of SSP Students Glasgow
