Airdrie and Shotts- Labour Gain?

All aboard!

It’s early days yet and perhaps I’m jumping the gun a little, but there is currently no Tory candidate for Airdrie & Shotts. In the 2015 election Neil Gray romped home when the independence vote coalesced around the SNP to kick out Pamela Nash who has since gone one to take over as the Chief Executive of British Nationalist extremist organisation Scotland in Union. Helen McFarlane of Labour almost came close to making Gray a one term wonder reducing his majority from around 10,000 to a mere 196. Or did she?

In the 2017 election the SNP famously campaigned while trying not to say i*******e and shed votes across Scotland. Turnout in Airdrie & Shotts was down by around 7% with many SNP voters simply not turning out. The Labour vote dropped and the Tory vote rose, with many in the area enthused by the Ruth Davidson Party for Ruth Davidson’s North Britain and unwilling to vote for the allegedly “pro-IRA” Jeremy Corbyn.

It would be not only overly simplistic but indeed extremely silly to assume that the voters who failed to turn out for the SNP somehow jumped to the Tories. I think many Scot’s voted for the SNP out of a sense of deep personal shame at their No vote in 2014 and were unlikely to jump ship. The real realignment in the vote was within the British Nationalist bloc. Ruth Davidson at least realised that the Tories, Labour and the Lib-Dems were all fishing in the same pot for a share of the 55% and falling who backed the UK, and this led to many working class people turning a blind eye to their previous behaviour and rallying to the fleg. The Conservatives gain was probably what led to Neil Gray clinging on.

Unionist guide to voting 2019

With the Tories and Labour in a loose coalition in North Lanarkshire could it be that they have realised that they will have to work together again to remove the seat from the SNP? With no  Lib Dem candidate announced and no Tory candidate either, are they giving Labour a clear run at the seat? Between that and the Greens perhaps siphoning off vital votes there’s every possibility that the seat will go from SNP back to Labour, and the SNP have only themselves to blame. Their failure nationally to campaign on independence cost them dearly, and locally the party shed members hand over fist. They made no attempt to enthuse new members, to train them and to turn them from voters and supporters to activists and agitators. Recently attempts have been made in North Lanarkshire to drain the SNP swamp but it may be too little, too late. The lack of activists will tell dearly and Labour will not struggle on that score, with trade union backing courtesy of Leonard and McFarlane, and more reinforcements in the north of England available a short bus ride away. The clock is ticking, and on current form Neil Gray will not see the inside of Westminster again.

Two Jobs Gaffney and the Monklands Hospital

I was amused to read that Hugh Gaffney MP is now demanding that the present Monklands Hospital site be included in the evaluation process for the hospital upgrade. This will be the same Hugh Gaffney who stated in June last year that he was “delighted” that Gartcosh had been shortlisted, and highlighted the attributes of the Gartcosh site, one of which included cycle routes, a grreat comfort to those who would rather avoid the circuitous train ride to Glasgow and back. Mr Gaffney has held his two jobs for a while now but surely he cannot also hold two diametrically opposing views at the same time, although that is a trait being displayed more and more by the Labour Party; for and against Brexit. For and against nuclear weapons. For and against a new hospital.

Mr Gaffney is not alone in trying to occupy two positions at once. Richard Leonard also petitioned to keep the hospital on its present site and later, to hedge his bets, was photographed with a sign demanding that the health board keep the hospital in the “Monklands area”.
Labour appear to have more positions on this issue than a Rubik’s cube, and are unable to hold one position on it for any length of time. The cynic in me might think that they are merely trying to find a position contrary to that of the SNP (also to be to keep the Monklands in the Monklands) and are churning out petitions simply to ensure they remain in the papers and at the end of the process may inadvertantly have backed the winning site and can claim victory. Or defeat, depending on their mood at the time. Groucho Marx famously said “those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others”. In respect of the Labour Party on the issue of Monklands Hospital, I can think of nothing more apt.

As a final point, with all this arguing and flip-flopping going on no one seems to be asking the most important question: whatever the outcome, wherever it may be built, is the funding to build it available? If not then all the arguments about where it should be are utterly pointless.

/ /irdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser, 07/08/19

 

Making The Headlines

On Monday I went along to Glasgow Central Station to help hand out leaflets on behalf of the TSSA rail union, calling for the renationalisation of the rail network. I’d seen it advertised on Sunday and thought I would go along. I feel it’s important that there is a visible YES presence at these events, and wore a Yes t-shirt for that purpose. I arrived at around 7.40am and there was no one there, although the organiser had said she would be there from 0730. To pass the time I wandered off, got a drink and came back to find two Labour Party activists with some placards and a couple of boxes of leaflets which they were handing out. There are four entrances at Central so I headed off and checked them all out. No activity at the east and west entrances, and the south entrance had already been claimed by a Christian group. So it was back to the north entrance, where the first two activists had been joined by another two.

Labour Leaflet handed out on 070119

It was becoming quite clear that this was not a TSSA protest, but a Labour Party one, albeit organised under the banner of TSSA. I decided to observe what was going on rather than join in. I was approached by one Labour Party member who handed me a leaflet and told me that there had been a “3.2%” fare increase. “3.2%? Don’t you mean 2.8%? It was 3.2% in England wasn’t it” I replied. “Was it? I thought it was 3.2%. Oh well. 3.2%, 2.8%, it’s all the same isn’t it?” he responded vaguely.

The merry band of “protestors” as the BBC TV and Radio, STV and print media had dubbed them saw their ranks swell to around 15 in total. These ranks did include 3 others (myself not included), ONE from TSSA, one from the DPAC, a disabled passengers representative group, and one from Get Glasgow Moving. Richard Leonard arrived and spent the majotity of the morning chatting with other activists, posing for photos, or being moved along because he was causing an obstruction in the road opposite Sainsbury. On Saturday he had tweeted about the film “I Daniel Blake” and the “misery the Tories have inflicted on working class people”. Only yards away from him, unmissable from his PR photo location,  a man lay in a sleeping bag in a doorway, ignored completely. I imagine Mr Leonard and his chums had other issues to concern themselves with.

I posted a few photos on twitter which exposed the protest as what it was- a Labour Party publicity stunt. The stunt was part of a simple exercise in media manipulation, the timeline of which goes something like this:

Saturday/Sunday: TSSA Inform press of the protest.

Monday: Newspapers, TV and Radio all carry news of the forthcoming protest. It’s then rebroadcast on their social media. Close up coverage of the event hides the fact there were a few activists. Footage is then used as lead item on BBC Scotland news at 6.30pm.

Tuesday: Newspapers cover the previous days protest.

Wednesday: Labour raise the issue in Holyrood. Manufactured news in four easy steps.

Panto season- It’s behind you Dick!

The majority of the general public see the TV news, hear the radio or see the TV. They will, in the main, go away with the impression that there was a protest and that the Labour Party are going to do something about it. At least in this case there was significant notice of it on social media that it was picked up by Wings Over Scotland and The National.

There is a clear lesson here. It only takes one person to go along to these events and document them independently to expose them for what they are- manufactured news coverage. So many of the independence movement seem to have forgotten that we are still the underdog, we are still the ones who have the majority of the Scottish media against us, and if we are to expose these “protests” for what they are then we have to get up early, get off our arses and go out there and do something. Every pro-independence group should be making a point of watching what is going on locally and ensuring that they have a presence wherever it is required. Otherwise our opponents will get away with making the headlines. Every single time.