LABOUR'S Scottish leader has urged trade unionists not to be "seduced" by the SNP and to recognise that progressive politics cannot be "bolted on to another cause".
Johann Lamont addressed the Scottish Trades Union Congress in Inverness yesterday and spoke about the link between Labour and the unions as "our mission". She poured scorn on the Scottish Government as having "deception and deceit at its heart".
Ms Lamont said: "If truth is the first casualty of war, then we are in a hell of a conflict. The Tories may be brazen about their Thatcherite agenda, but this Scottish Government has deception and deceit at its heart."
She spoke of a Government that talked radically about childcare but never delivered, trumpeted new investment months after it was withdrawn, and accused others of lying about NHS patients sleeping without blankets until the evidence is "literally thrown into their faces in the shape of a 92-year-old victim".
She added: "It is not flags or borders which fires me up. It is injustice and inequality which raises my blood and makes me fight."
Ms Lamont added: "Progressive politics is not something to be bolted on to another cause. Fighting injustice and inequality is not a cloak to another end.
"It is our inspiration. It is why trade unions were founded. It is why trade unionists founded their own political party – the Labour Party."
Margaret Boyd, who chairs the STUC Women's Committee, spoke of last week's "shocking" academic findings that just 23% of candidates at the council elections were female, calling this a betrayal of the STUC-led 50/50 campaign which led to better representation in the first intake at Holyrood.
She announced: "The Women's Committee will be relaunching the 50/50 Campaign, bringing the university research, political parties, and women's groups together – all those who want to speak up – after the local government elections.
"In 2011, for the first time in its history, the STUC Congress elected a General Council with a majority of women members.
"Don't tell us that there are no women with experience, no women who are prepared to speak up for their colleagues, families and communities."
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