Galloway Predicts Labour Split

'You shouldn't underestimate the deep unhappiness that exists among people like me in the Scottish Labour movement about the current political junction.' George Galloway, Labour MP for Glasgow Hillhead.

The Beginning of the End for the Scottish Labour Party?

Labour MP George Galloway has forecast a split in the Scottish Labour Party if John Major wins another general election for the Tories.

Disaffection with Labour's thwarted attempts to establish home rule would be too much for the party in Scotland to bear, says the Glasgow Hillhead MP. But he rules out a mass exodus to the SNP.

Galloway's comments came in an interview for the latest instalment of BBC Scotland's Television history of modern Scottish politics "Restless Nation".

"If Labour loses the next election the party in Scotland will not survive in its current form" says Galloway. "There is no way that we can move into 20 years more of centralised, right wing Tory rule from London when something like three-quarters of the nation wants decentralised Labourist rule in Scotland. That is not a creditable or tenable situation."

"Disaffected Labour members would be unlikely to find a home in the SNP because of the 'split personality' between the Nationalists' rural heartlands and the Labour dominated central belt, he says. They would also be put off by the "whiff of the opportunist" about SNP leader Alex Salmond."

Revealingly, Galloway regrets the SNP is not a more suitable home for the disenchanted left. "In a sense I wish it were otherwise. I know many other would. You shouldn't underestimate the deep unhappiness that exists among people like me in the Scottish Labour movement about the current political junction"

Asked this week to expand on his comments, Galloway reiterated that given a Tory victory, the Scottish Party would be "very unlikely to survive" but added that it would be difficult to forecast what the practical outcome would be. "What form it would take is very difficult to imagine" he said.

Speculation for the prospects for a new breakaway Scottish Socialist Party that would be more left wing than than New Labour and more radical on constitutional issues has been common in the labour movement for some years. But for now it remains just speculation.

In his comments for the documentary, Galloway makes a point of emphasising that he thinks the chances of Labour losing the election as remote. "I believe that we shall have a Blair government in the spring, and it will then be for those of us who have carried this Scottish home rule banner long to apply ourselves dilegently and with skill, and for the Scottish people to rally behind that cause, if we are in this current period of history to deliver that sacred goal."

But Galloway appears to believe that the chances of winning home rule are bleak, saying Labour's referendum U-turn will "lead to ruin" and have "profound consequences for the Labour party's strength and position for perhaps a generation".

Galloway is a supporter of the nationalist-minded Scottish Labour Action presure group within the party. He was a founder member of the cross-party group Scotland United that sprung up in the aftermath of the 1992 election results. For his acriviries at that time, which included discussing Scotland United tactics with the SNP, Galloway was denounced by the Labour leadership as a "collaborator".

In some of his hardest hitting criticism of the leadership on the constitutional issue in recent months Galloway says "There is every likelihood that once in the swamp of parliamentary procedure and ambush the legislation will sink like a stone and we will have been robbed of the best chance we have had in a country of achieving that which the founders of the Labour party set out to achieve."

Galloway says that contrary to reports at the time of the U-turn, only five Scottish Labour MPs really support it. "I swear to you, and yet we are forced to publicly defend it and one shouldn't underestimate the damage that has done to the soul."

The effect of the referendum U-turn has been to "demobilise and demoralise" Labours supporters, he says. "It has created an impression of untrustworthiness about the Labour Party which is the one thing on the UK level which could yet rob us of electoral victory. It has contributed to this sense of Labour as standing for nothing, ready to sell anything, ready to surrender any position in pusuit of office. And that begs the question then in peoples mind: office for what?

SNP chief executive Michael Russell commented yesterday: "for a party that keeps telling us that they are on the brink of victory, Labour are very ill-at-ease with themselves and lacking in confidence, as highlighted by George Galloways remarks. New Labour are a one man band and there would be nothing for anyone else to stay for if Tony Blair failed to win the keys of 10 Downing Street."

George Robertson, the shadow Scottish secretary, said of Galloway's comments: " George like everyone else, expects Labour to win the election, and therefore the rest is pure speculation".