SNP leader Alex Salmond yesterday accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of pursuing policies which ran counter to ''the Scottish political mainstream'' that survived the Thatcher years by retaining a firm belief in society and in the twin virtues of compassion and enterprise.
He said it was a fallacy to argue that the pressures of globalisation could be contended with by a reduction in social benefits and by a society that skimped on compassion and democracy.
''If that is not obvious to New Labour, then it should look at the present unrest in Indonesia, where public reaction to an unequal social and political system is forcing a series of changes that will better equip the country for participation in the global economy,'' he told a weekend conference, The New Scotland, held in Glasgow and sponsored by The Herald.
Economic success without social justice - enterprise without compassion - was a recipe not for progress, but for eventual disruption and decline.
But just as that lesson was being painfully learned elsewhere, New Labour seemed determined to unlearn it here.
Mr Salmond claimed New Labour was proposing a wholesale slaughter of support mechanisms for the least able in society with its welfare reforms and planned to set the minimum wage at a level below that required for a decent standard of living.
Not only the SNP held this view but also trade unionists and much of enlightened industry. Former deputy Labour leader Roy Hattersley also agreed and last Friday in a speech in Stirling had commented that this was probably the only British Government that had created a distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor, and in doing so had consigned one in seven people to a life of poverty.
The SNP leader claimed the social orthodoxies of Blairism were the orthodoxies of Thatcherism ''with a grinning face''.
They were being challenged in Scotland, not just because they did not reflect Scottish values, but because they were inherently wrong in the Scottish situation.
Governments, far from undermining the welfare state, should be strengthening social cohesion and eradicating poverty as a necessary part of building an effective and internationally successful economy, he said.
Mr Salmond cited the example of Ireland, whose economy, he said, had grown and prospered as the country had solved its social problems - as it had reduced youth emigration, increased social benefits, and built a strong state educational system at every level.
He told the concluding session of the conference that our new democracy would also require to be enterprising as Scotland had its way to make in the world and already exported more than its southern neighbour.
We were more likely to be advantaged by an early positive decision on the Single European Currency.
It was the SNP's policy to establish a Scottish Exports Unit which would assist Scottish business to compete, supported by a network of trade offices that could also promote Scottish tourism the Scottish heritage, and Scottish creativity in the arts and sciences.
He accused the chairman of the Scottish Tourist Board, Lord Gordon of Strathblane - formerly James Gordon - of being ''extraordinarily unambitious'' to want to continue to shelter behind the British Tourist Authority when he and his colleagues had the possibility in front of them of Scottish promotion tailor-made for the job and selling directly a country which many many people in the world wished to visit.
Lord Gordon: under attack
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