Jim Sillars: SNP needs to get away from the Yes movement

"When he came back home he had decided to do something in similar in Glasgow," he said.

“But rather than do this outside a museum, he put on the same show outside a supermarket in Castlemilk. He told me that their responses were no different from those in New York.

"One woman had approached him afterwards and was crying. ‘Thank you very much for believing it was worth bringing this here,’ she’d said.”

We’re discussing why, after 25 years of devolution, working-class people have effectively been knocked back at the doors of the building they paid for and voted for. “Working-class people didn’t lack self-confidence in my era,” he says. “There was a sense that they were every bit as good and knowledgeable as the highest in the land.”

He cites the belief that political leaders in the Labour movement had belief in their own people. He also speaks fondly of the colleges and education programmes the trade unions established for their own workers. Here they’d be schooled in both sides of the economic argument and on the major developments in international affairs. The current Scottish Government seems to be embarrassed by Scotland’s working-class.

READ MORE: Jim Sillars says independence has been damaged by the current SNP

It’s why he’s currently striving to establish a National Organisation bringing together the 10 or so pro-independence bodies and formulating a detailed strategy for achieving independence. “These organisations are doing the work and formulating ideas that the SNP have neglected,” he says.

“Vital to this is setting up the structures that can immediately take the opportunity of the new situation (independence) that develops. The National Organisation would take the political lead in the Yes movement – including electorally – and take it away from the SNP as it stands at the present time. Humza Yousaf and his cabinet are no longer accepted as credible in that role.”

Jim Sillars has never courted popularity at the expense of his principles and you sense that his despair at Scotland’s current political class is rooted in this. He had first emerged as a serious talent in the Labour Party as the eloquent young MP for South Ayrshire between 1970 and 1976.

And then, in a move that met with acclaim and disdain in equal measure, he founded the Scottish Labour Party and made authentic socialism and Scottish home rule its principle drivers. He continued to represent South Ayrshire for the new party until the 1979 UK General Election and the dawn of Margaret Thatcher.

“The fundamentals and ideology of socialism lie in economics: who owns economic power and who distributes it. You have to accept we live in a capitalist world and that a country of five million people can’t create a socialist society on its own. But you can have huge elements of socialism built into society that can strongly mitigate the raw interests of capital.

“Airports, for instance, are not just places that take you on your holidays; they’re an economic tool. They are part of a country’s link to the international trading community and they’re employers of labour.

“If you can’t have total public ownership of them then you can have public participation in the equity and on the board. The decisions taken by airports have an impact on your economy both locally and nationally.”

READ MORE: SNP Hate Crimes Act shows how much they hate us

It’s at this point that he becomes withering about the current economic strategy – or what passes for it – of the Scottish Government. “My party is mired in stupidity,” he says. “If we become independent we must reconstruct the Scottish economy and crucial to this is the amount of capital investment that becomes available. The cost of energy then becomes fundamental to any economy.

“But my party doesn’t want anything to do with the North Sea. Where is the capital going to come from then? The Clair oilfield west of Shetland has more than 40 years of development and has 19 development applications. The big lie in 2014 was that the North Sea was finished.

“What we should be doing is formulating policies and talking to the oil companies as my old Arab colleagues did in the early stages of oil production in The Gulf. You target equity. The black stuff is where the wealth lies, but we don’t own a cup of it.

"China does; Norway does and we don’t. So you negotiate for a share of the black stuff, or at least impose a well tax. Then you have a capital flow. Yet, we’re saying we don’t want it. How then will we create a Scottish economy?”

He expresses frustration that too many political leaders in Scotland have reached for the low-hanging fruit of cultural identity – the path of least resistance – at the expense of real innovation and the ideas that change lives and improve communities.

“I’m a socialist,” he declares. “I haven’t changed the fundamental principles of what I was taught in the Labour movement. I’m still a member of the Labour movement. I’m still a member of my own union.

"The language of Nye Bevan - that socialism is about priorities - is at the heart of my beliefs. Of course the Scottish Child Payment is good, but your entire economic policy should be to make it unnecessary.

“We must have an economy where working-class people can be sure they’ll have a job and can relax about having a job and that they can be free from the pressure that comes from low pay or the job being taken from under them.

“The baby box doesn’t compare with the need for a house. We have 250,000 people who can’t get a mortgage and who must rely on housing associations or the local authorities to get a house. And then you think of the damage being done children’s education from not having a permanent settled home where they can do their homework and enjoy the things that other families have. These are the priorities.”

He reaches into Scotland’s Labour past to show what can be achieved when proper political leadership is allied with innovation, sharp intellects and a heart for working class communities. This was in 1964 when Willie Ross became Secretary of State for Scotland in Harold Wilson’s first Labour government.

“We had two major problems in Scotland then,” he says. “We had a housing problem and we had an education problem. My first wife and I waited seven years after I came out of the Navy for a council house. Others were waiting up to 12 years. In the schools we had uncertificated teachers at primary and secondary.

“So, Willie built teacher-training colleges all over Scotland and within 10 years we had solved the teacher-training problem. To address the chronic housing problem he created the Scottish Special Housing Association, a big organisation that could buy land; build the houses and then rent them.”

Nothing, it seems, typifies the Scottish Government’s poverty of intellect and its callous attitudes to working-class communities than its recent £200 million cut to the housing budget.

“Fifty years ago, China was a failing state,” he said, “while Indonesia and India were struggling to develop and Vietnam had just finished a devastating war. Today they are powering ahead economically and taking to new technology with confidence and ease.

“Power in these areas has shifted from the Atlantic Axis to the Asia Pacific. China is now the greatest manufacturing nation we’ve ever seem. India has a healthy growth rate; Indonesia and Vietnam are also flourishing.

"That is the competition we will have to face. But we’re stressing the importance of pronouns to our children and we have teachers who are fearful of saying the wrong thing. The stupidity we’re now engaged in is unbelievable and the damage will be enormous.”

He dreams of winning the Lottery Euro Millions and using it to set up political education centres for working-class people.

“I’ve already chosen the people I would get to organise it," he adds. "We’d go into the schemes and start with maybe just half a dozen people, but it would grow.”