High time the Scots left woke up

the Scottish Parliament has been brought about in part by the existence and strength of a home rule consensus which grew in strength in Scotland during the 18 long years of Conservative rule. This perspective, which had advocates in all of Scotland's political parties and across civil society, held a certain view of Scotland as radical, egalitarian, community-minded, and, above all, different from the English.

This home rule consensus overlapped with an anti-Tory consensus which developed an idea of national homogeneity during these 18 years, seeing Scotland as left-wing and anti-Tory and England as right-wing and Tory. This allowed many Scots to over-emphasise the degree of difference between Scotland and England in terms of political beliefs, values, and support for policies, seeing the Scots as more in favour of radical, redistributive policies, when all survey evidence shows only marginal differences between the Scots and English.

A Scottish Parliament has been a beacon of hope to the disenfranchised Scottish left during the years of Tory rule. It is no accident that, after the debacle of 1979, the Scottish left in the Labour Party, SNP, and STUC returned to devolution, rather than finally abandoning their historic dream. Home rule during the Thatcher years provided an ideal framework on which to project all kind of unrealistic left fantasies on to: Scotland's traditional industries protected, Ravenscraig kept open, public services properly funded.

The Parliament represented to a large part of this opinion not so much a radical option, but the administration of the Scottish internal status quo, of stasis and inertia in the face of Scotland's vested interests from the professional classes to the public sector trade unions. A Parliament in short was about breathing new life into the seemingly dead body of Scottish social democracy.

To many a Parliament offered the prospect of turning back the clock on Thatcherism: of pretending it never happened or reversing its consequences in Scotland. This over-stated the power and potential of active, interventionist government in today's world.

In reality, Scotland has been as much affected by Thatcherism at an economic and social level as the rest of the UK, and it is high time the Scottish left woke up to this. A Scottish Parliament will have to operate in the environment bequeathed to it by 18 years of Thatcherite experimentation and broader economic and social changes which have tended to favour capital and big business at the expense of organised labour and national governments.

We need to develop a new home rule vision by acknowledging the changes that Thatcherism aided and encouraged post-1979, such as limited government, low taxation, increased labour market flexibility, and wider personal choice. Within this framework, we need to devise policies which will tackle the new priorities we set for the Parliament around achieving greater opportunities and widening social inclusion.

Scotland is ideally placed to develop new policies and institutions to address the needs of the global age. We have a highly educated workforce, we have good public services and infrastructure, and we have the skills and talents to make it in the new knowledge economy, but to do so we need to accept that Scotland has changed since 1979 and develop new thinking to reflect this new post-Thatcherite Scotland.

This will be a difficult and unwelcome task for many on the Scottish left and many home rule supporters. However, to make the Parliament a radical and liberating success which breaks with past practice, more is needed. We need to admit that Scotland is not entirely the rich, diverse, pluralist land made out in the blethering classes' talk of an arts and cultural renaissance. Scottish culture has undoubtably changed but, across a large part of public life, Scottish life is distorted by the dead weight of Labour one-party local states.

It is vital that we shift out of the defensive, oppositional politics that characterised

much of our thinking in the Thatcher era, and move to a new style of constructive and pluralist thinking.

The forces of the ''new politics'' are undoubtably stronger than in 1979, and Scotland is in some ways and in certain niches more diverse and confident, but we overplay these changes at our peril. In many ways, the profound shift in Scotland from 1979 seen in the devolution referendums is more a product of Scotland's inherent conservatism and its opposition to Thatcherism, reaffirming the Scottish status quo of social democracy, than it is a statement of radicalism.

Much of the ''new politics'' associated with the Scottish Constitutional Convention has aided this sense that the ''new politics'' has a narrow focus and roots. The convention and many groups in civil society decided to address the fears and flaws in the last devolution proposals of 1978, of Labour one-party rule and central belt dominance, and proposed electoral reform, gender balance, and more open government to ensure the Parliament was a break with Westminster and Strathclyde-style politics.

These have all been positive initiatives that have formed part of the Scotland Bill 1998, but they have emphasised the obsession of the Scottish political class with institutional politics to the exclusion of economic and social issues, and this confirms the possibility of the Parliament, by intent or by inaction, acting as an administrator of the Scottish status quo and its vested interests.

Time is running short on the political parties and various public agencies, think tanks and voluntary organisations, developing radical new ideas for the Parliament to make a difference and bring some enthusiasm, sense of dynamism, and a bit of uncertainty to this very Scottish sense of order and predictability.

While many ''new politics'' supporters talk of the need for more consensus politics, and less adversarial and confrontational debates, we need to ask what is so inherently commendable about consensus politics. Scotland has been marked by too much consensus and elite agreement and too little debate and pluralism; what is desperately required now is more challenge and provocation and less consensus.

We have to address the changing nature of Scottish politics where, with Labour and SNP running neck and neck for the Parliament, our politics could be profoundly changing. For the past 40 years, Scotland has been shaped by an asymmetrical system of Labour dominance and a divided opposition where the Conservatives and SNP were distant threats. Now, with the decline of the Tories and Lib Dems, it looks as though the SNP are acting as the repository of most anti-Labour feeling leading to a two-party contest between Labour and SNP.

If this were to happen, and a few months of opinion polls do not amount to a realignment of politics, it would require a new kind of politics from all Scotland's parties. Labour would have to adjust to the fact that it no longer had an unassailable command over Scotland's affections. The SNP would have to grow accustomed to the new interest, scrutiny, and scepticism which such influence would bring.

The shifting allegiance of Scotland's voters show that people want greater choice about the future of Scotland. For the past 20 years Scotland has been defined by a four-party system of conservative convergence in the centre ground where the only difference was the parties' perspectives on the constitutional issue. In reality, all Scotland's parties operated on the terrain of Old Labour tax and spend, even the Scottish Tories, who were as unsure of Thatcherism as the rest of us. This Old Labour agenda had as its main champions Scottish Labour, SNP, STUC, and large parts of Scottish civil society, and it was shaped by an oppositionalist mentality and social democratic values. This agenda has had its uses and its virtues, but Scotland and the world has long outgrown them and it is time to move on to a new agenda of hard choices and difficult thinking.

n Gerry Hassan is author of The New Scotland: Home Truths about Home Rule, published this week by the Fabian Society, and is organiser of the Scottish nexus group. He will be speaking this Saturday afternoon at the new Scotland conference in Glasgow organised by the Centre for Scottish Public Policy and sponsored by the The Herald.

THis weekend's New Scotland conference in Glasgow is organised by the centre for Scottish Public Policy and sponsored by The Herald. It starts this evening with a special lecture by the Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar. The lecture begins at 7pm in the Piping Centre, McPhater Street, near the Theatre Royal. A few tickets, priced #5 (waged) and #3 (unwaged), are still available from the Tron Theatre box office (Tel: 0141 552 4267).

The rest of the weekend is taken up by nearly 50 workshops spanning politics, society, culture, and the future of Scotland, and two more special lectures by Jim Wallace, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, and Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party. Each day's programme starts at 10am and takes place in the Tron Theatre and at a variety of venues nearby.

Participants should make their way to the Tron Theatre where a detailed final programme and tickets for all the workshop venues will be available. Mr Wallace is speaking at 4pm on Saturday and Mr Salmond at 4pm on Sunday.

Have YOUR say in The HERALD Forum

POST: Herald Forum, The Herald, 195 Albion Street, Glasgow, G1 1QP FAX: 0141 552 2288 E-MAIL: heraldmail@cims.co.uk