Campaign for Socialism Group
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This article is outdated. (November 2010) |
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This article does not cite any references or sources. (August 2007) |
The Campaign for Socialism (CfS) is a left wing organisation within the Scottish Labour Party. It was formed in the aftermath of the vote within the Labour Party to remove Clause IV from the party's constitution. Those in the CfS opposed the removal of this clause which committed the Labour Party to supporting the "common ownership of the means of production", and despite their failure to stop it, those who had been involved in campaigning to do so in Scotland felt it was worthwhile to organise as a coherent organisation, hence CfS was born.
The CfS included figures such as Alex Falconer and Alex Smith, who were both Labour MEPs, and they approached Vince Mills who published a left-leaning paper, entitled The Citizen with a view to making it the official publication of the CfS, to which he agreed.
The CfS are still active within the Labour Party and continue to publish The Citizen. Elaine Smith, a Labour Member of the Scottish Parliament is a high-profile member of the organisation.
The CfS ran John McDonnell's campaign for Labour leadership in Scotland.
Recently the CfS issued the following statement:
The CfS is a small but growing body of Labour Party members active the length and breadth of Scotland. Our supporters are drawn from a wide range of labour movement opinion, from trade union officials to MSPs to Party members, including those who have allowed their membership to lapse in recent years. We are committed to a non sectarian, pluralist agenda of Socialist renewal within the Party, and wish to take this opportunity to invite you to join our numbers.
The priorities of New Labour have, over the past decade or so, triggered an almost unprecedented haemorrhaging of active members from the Party. None of us commit our time to a collectivist organisation simply to stand by as it falls into line behind the orthodoxies of unfettered markets and deregulated labour. We join up filled with a burning sense of injustice at the social inequalities in income, housing and education that afflict our society. We seek out practical expressions of our principles of human solidarity, where all of our fates are intimately wrapped up in the fortunes of others. The neo liberal consensus – where markets are accommodated with rights many of us can only dream of – represents the antithesis of these truths, truths we see as self evident, that all economic activity must be geared to the maximum social benefit of all, not simply a minority.
New Labour meekly, ultimately even enthusiastically, bought into the shibboleths of the New Economy. Status and consumption were raised to the highest of human experiences. Inequalities were tolerated, even celebrated as inevitable consequences of dynamic economies. And as we became embroiled in neo conservative adventures abroad, this corrosion of our political fibre began to percolate into our attitudes to civil liberties. We now find ourselves in the position of complicity in war crimes, rendition and torture. Implicitly, our environmental policies accepted the impossibility of seriously challenging the slide towards ecological meltdown.
Ed Milliband has rightly argued that our culture can be changed through political leadership. There is no ‘natural’ Tory majority in the UK. Through patience, consistency and conviction we can persuade the Scottish and British public that now more than ever the earth cries out for a planned, regulated approach to production that has as its highest priority recognition of the equal worth of each and every one of us. There is now compelling evidence – alluded to by Ed Milliband in his acceptance speech – that class inequalities undermine the lives of each and every one of us, irrespective of background. The direct causal link between these inequalities and dysfunctional societies is now demonstrated for all to see. With looming public sector and welfare cuts threatening to splinter our social fabric even further, a Party that can articulate these truths can again win a majority capable of transforming our culture into the type of society we all envisioned when we first joined the Party.
The CFS and its periodical The Citizen is committed to developing the arguments and policies we will need if these ambitions are to be realised in our lifetimes. However much time you can give will be significant, no matter how big or small. A membership form is printed below. With the world heading towards environmental disaster and the moral outrage of cuts to services that maintain a veneer of civilisation in our dog eat dog society looming, now more than ever the Labour Party has a role to play in saying ‘enough!’
