I DO not know Professor Bob Holman; however I do know about Glasgow and its social and economic problems ("Why a Yes vote is the best thing for the people ...
and the Labour Party", Herald Agenda, February 6). I also know about the Labour Party, which I joined in 1977.
The Polish philosopher Lesjek Kolakowski tells us: "The trouble with the social democratic idea is that it does not stock and does not sell any of the exciting ideological commodities. It has no prescription for the total salvation of mankind … [it] requires, in addition to commitment to a number of basic values, hard knowledge and rational calculation …"
A Yes vote is exactly an "exciting ideological commodity" with prescriptions for the total salvation of Scotland, as seen in the White Paper by which Prof Holman sets such great store.
However, let us take some of Lesjek Kolakowski's "hard knowledge" and apply it to Prof Holman's home patch in Easterhouse.
Glasgow's public housing has now been transformed from some of the worst in Europe to some of the best: this came about because the UK Treasury wrote off £300m historic debt on those houses. This includes Easterhouse. Furthermore, Easterhouse pensioners have a guaranteed income of £145.50 per week (£222.05 for couples), due to Pensioner Credit. And working people are legally entitled to the National Minimum Wage of £6.31; in addition families have Working Families Tax Credits of up to £2720 for each child.
These polices have not solved all of the problems of Easterhouse, but no-one can deny that they - and others - have improved the lives of thousands of its people. And all are the direct result of the Labour Party being in power at Westminster from 1997 to 2010.
So we should turn to Kolakowski's "rational calculation", and apply the acid test, which is to examine what was achieved in office.
Like Easterhouse, Labour made Scotland better, but with plenty still to do. In fact, Scotland is not one of the world's most unequal countries as the SNP White Paper sensationally states. It is actually somewhere in the middle rank - about as equal as France or Switzerland, and more so than Canada and Australia.
And most crucially, Labour's policies did not stop at Gretna: they were replicated all over the UK.
As a result, the Child Poverty Action Group described Labour's countrywide achievement of taking 900,000 children out of poverty as "a remarkable achievement, certainly without historical precedent in the UK". This, together with devolution itself, adds to the great historic advances made by Westminster - first by Liberals - old age pensions, universal suffrage - and then by Labour - like the NHS, the welfare state, decolonisation, equal pay and maternity and abortion rights for women, and equality for ethnic and sexual minorities. I am proud that Labour has served so many and so widely. As Kolakowski also says: social democrats have "an obstinate will to erode by inches the conditions which produce avoidable suffering, oppression, hunger, wars, racial and national hatred, insatiable greed and vindictive envy". Which means we will not, and should not, give up our cause lightly.
Peter A Russell,
87 Munro Road,
Glasgow.
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