Durham Miners’ Association chair STEPHEN GUY speaks to Ben Chacko about the Reform threat, what’s needed from Labour and why the Big Meeting will never lose its politics
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Alex Salmond: a transformative but limited political legacy
JOHN FOSTER examines how the late SNP leader shifted the party leftwards and upwards, bringing Scottish independence to the forefront while fundamentally failing to address deeper issues of class and corporate capture
Alex Salmond speaks at the SNP conference in Glasgow, October 14, 2016
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Andy Burnham’s message of hope will defeat Reform if Labour delivers the New Deal for Working People in full, says JOANNE THOMAS
General Federation of Trade Unions president and bakers’ union general secretary, SARAH WOOLLEY, guides us through the GFTU’s Summer School happening this week at Quorn Grange Hotel
The government’s latest asylum proposals abandon labour movement values and fuel division by aping Reform UK, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP
Can Andy Burnham’s programme deliver a productive economy – or merely a softer version of capitalism, asks VINCE MILLS
IAN LAVERY MP warns that decades of neoliberal policies have left former industrial communities behind — but a renewed Labour commitment to working people could change the political landscape
DURING his two periods as SNP leader, from 1990 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2014, Alex Salmond transformed Scottish and, thereby, British politics. In doing so, he helped ensure that Britain’s character as a multinational state could no longer be ignored.
What led to this transformation? Salmond was a forceful and charismatic speaker. He could read his audiences — whether trade unionists or bankers. But it was his politics that were key. They transformed the SNP.
In the 1930s, the SNP had been a right-wing, and sometimes very right-wing, party representing a mixture of romantics, eccentric aristocrats and minority elements within what used to be called the petty bourgeoisie — but it was squeezed to virtual non-existence between a dominant Unionist Party, that harvested a significant Orange vote, and a challenging and relatively radical Labour Party.
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