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Referendum Diary: May 2014

1 MAY: The baby ashes report is the big issue – Kezia Dugdale is working on this in Edinburgh and has done a really good job building relationships with the parent groups. There was a statement today with Johann leading for us. (Michael) Matheson rejected calls for a public inquiry but said Lord Bonomy will investigate. It now emerges the same may have happened in Aberdeen, Falkirk, Glasgow and other areas.

To West Lothian College for the annual Livingston Lecture. This year the trades’ council (of which I am an active member) approached the college asking them to host a lecture on cooperatives. Professor Robert Raeside, Hugh Donnelly (Cooperative Scotland) and Dr David Endal spoke passionately about the development of cooperatives and how they could be used to increase productivity, promote investment and a sustainable economy. It was an excellent event. Mind you, not a single SNP elected representative turned up – they don’t really get this kind of thing.

4 MAY: Shock, horror – the least surprising newspaper revelation of the year – the Sunday Herald has come out in favour of independence! The fact that its circulation has dipped below 24,000 may have had some bearing on their decision.

To Fauldhouse Miners Welfare Club for the annual concert by local musicians in aid of SOBS (Survivors of Bereavement and Suicide). Organiser is Des Murphy, whose son Christopher inexplicably took his own life a few years back. The support from the people of my village for this event is amazing. Around 20 local singers and musicians performed to a packed hall of 300, raising around £5,000 in the process. They always have a speaker from SOBS to remind people why they are there, and provide information about suicide and related education. Despite the tragic subject, people still enjoy themselves and the place is rocking by the end. So typical of the care, friendship and generosity of local people. The best folk you could wish to be around.

5 MAY: To East Calder for European Election campaigning with Councillor Dave King. He is recovering from cancer, has heart trouble, is diabetic and has God knows how many other ailments, but is ALWAYS first to volunteer when campaigning is on the agenda. He is a remarkable man and just goes on and on. If only we could bottle and sell his spirit and enthusiasm.

6 MAY: To Shadow Cabinet where Graeme Pearson introduced a justice paper. He is an impressive guy and we might have different politics but he is experienced and genuine. He was a deputy chief constable and has seen a lot of action, dealing with tough criminals like Arthur Thompson senior.

After months of frustration and calls for a Labour Referendum campaign, as opposed to Better Bloody Together, we were advised that it will be launched after the European elections. Well, pop the champagne corks at last!

To a play called From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks – the Henry Bridges Project. It was a superb one-man play about the rise of the leader of the US dockers union. It was a tremendous show but disappointing that Hugh Henry, James Kelly and I were the only MPS to turn up despite all being invited.

7 MAY: Audit Scotland figures out today and show major delays in A&E with over 100,000 waiting more than four hours to be seen. We have decided to lead with the NHS at First Minister’s Questions.

At a PCS parliamentary group meeting we discussed the dispute at the National Museum, which has been developing for a while as the management have withdrawn weekend allowances for new staff, thereby creating a two-tier system with low paid staff getting £3,000 less than their colleagues. Culture Secretary, Fiona Hyslop has refused to get involved. I will start to drum up support by asking PQs and putting down motions.

It was then into the chamber in time to hear that the Bedroom Tax will in effect be scrapped. The Scottish Government’s proposal, based on the bill Labour’s Jackie Baillie introduced, will be implemented. Great news, but it would never have happened without our input.

Went to the Crohn’s and Colitis reception with Tommy’s wife Diane, and daughter Caitlin, and my friend and constituent Steven Sharp. Steven has gone through hell with Crohn’s, while Caitlin suffers from ulcerative colitis. These are very debilitating conditions and have a big impact on people, especially adolescents. It was very moving to hear how people’s lives have been affected but also how they managed to get through it. Inspirational stuff.

8 MAY: To chamber for statement on continuing care, where patients are now going to be charged for this service. Alex Neil denied this, despite previously saying it would happen. It appears a very confused position, which Parkinson’s UK and others think is illegal.

Afterwards I met with John Pentland MSP and Craig Davidson to look at Freedom of Information requests that John had submitted on mental health services in Monklands. Alex Neil has been caught red handed contradicting his own stated policy to save a ward in his own constituency against the wishes of patients groups, who want to see mental health services moved from hospital-based to community outreach.

9 MAY: After a busy week it was good to go with Fiona, Chloe and her boyfriend Lee to the Ashmaan in Linlithgow for a fine curry and a few beers.

10 MAY: Up at 4.30am to get to London for a conference on Venezuela. I was an International observer in their Presidential election so was invited to speak about my experience. The one-day conference discussed many issues with contributions from Billy Hayes of the CWU, Seumas Milne of the Guardian, Chris Williamson MP, and academics and activists from the UK and Latin America. Afterwards I spoke to Alicia Castro, the Argentinean ambassador to the UK. She knew I was a friend of Tam Dalyell and asked if I could arrange for her to meet Tam to discuss ‘The Malvinas’. I will of course try to arrange this and am sure Tam will be happy to meet her.

Discussed the miners’ strike and Scottish Justice campaign with Seumas Milne, who wrote the fantastic book The Enemy Within, about Thatcher’s secret war against the miners. Seamus was very helpful and interested in some of my findings and research. I will send them to him.

12 MAY: Edinburgh University for Royal College of Nursing referendum debate with former GP, and SNP MSP, Dr Ian McKee. I felt a bit off form and ill-prepared for some reason, but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Quite a number of SNP folk in the audience but also a feeling that there are a lot of people who are No voters, but who don’t want to speak up. I think this may be an emerging theme with people perhaps feeling a bit intimidated and not wanting to say anything.

Headed home after it and went out for a run with Fiona. I hate keeping fit but really need to try and motivate myself to do something other than going for a pint and playing the odd game of golf!

13 MAY: To the STUC for UNISON retired members’ debate with Tommy Brennan, former convener at Ravenscraig. Tommy spoke well and said Labour had left him, and that he now supported independence. His arguments were nationalist arguments tinged with a leftist agenda. This is odd because Tommy was no left winger. He would have been supportive of Blair’s ‘new realism’ but now projects himself as socialist radical. Members of NUM hate Brennan because if he had supported them in 84/85, and refused to take coal into Ravenscraig, the strike may not have been lost. He did however make his arguments well in a relatively good-natured debate. The audience was split on the issue – reflecting the national mood.

Rushed back to the chamber for the Procurement Bill only to find out the ‘progressive, left wing’ SNP will again vote against our amendments to provide a living wage for workers engaged on public sector contracts. They will vote against action to stop blacklisting contractors getting public sector contracts if they have failed to self-cleanse, and they will vote against tax avoiders gaining contracts. They really are charlatans.

14 MAY: Met Clare Lally, Labour’s Carers champion. She has twins, one of whom is disabled. I want to work with her on a carers’ strategy. She is a really good person to front this. I also want to appoint Jim Leishman as our pensioners’ champion (although I hate that term). I will approach Alex Rowley about this as he and Jim are close.

15 MAY: The Herald has run the story on Alex Neil’s intervention in the Monklands mental health services fiasco – in his own constituency. Government policy is about ‘shifting the balance of care’ out of hospitals and into the community, and despite full support for this from the health board and mental health patients groups, who want to see more community outreach provision, he interfered for political reasons against the advice of clinicians and service users to overturn a decision to close a ward. At FMQs, Johann Lamont asked Salmond four times to sack him, but of course he refused. No one ever gets sacked or resigns in this Government. They have no shame and are unembarrassable, even when they are caught red handed.

16 MAY: Been looking forward to this day for a while. Off to York for my pal Norrie Dixon’s 50th birthday. Fiona, Jimmy and Kathleen Swift, and Phyllis and Norrie, are on the train first thing. Weather in York is scorching – quick change in the hotel and off to the racing. All ladies in their finery and the guys dressed up too. Fabulous day with only one 4/1 winner but Jimmy and Norrie did well with a 25/1 shot. Dinner and a few beers in the evening. Lovely day out, and getting away from it all was exactly what was required.

17 MAY: Up for a nice walk around York in the sunshine – what a beautiful place. This is my first visit and it’s really impressive. We had a fish tea then jumped on the train home. A great few days. Nothing better than being amongst pals and relaxing.

18 MAY: St John’s the Baptist Chapel for the first communion mass. Scotty and Lesley’s wee boy Sean is involved. Lots of kids beautifully turned out for a special mass. Then to the Miners Welfare for lunch (steak pie – it’s always steak pie in the club and it’s fantastic). The whole Scott and Toner clan are there. Lesley comes from a huge family so they almost fill the hall themselves.

Papers continue to cover the Alex Neil ‘Monklands’ story, and are now saying he demanded to keep wards open that were full of asbestos. The pressure on him is mounting.

19 MAY: Campaigning in Bathgate with Councillor Harry Cartmill, then to Edinburgh University for the Healthcare Alliance referendum debate on health and social care with Alex Neil. He is a man under pressure but did his best not to show it. I actually quite like him. He is a ruthless operator and can be full of bluster and bravado, but you can have a political ding-dong with him and afterwards he will chat and keep on good personal terms – unlike others. His performance in the debate was remarkable. He spoke of his desire to see community-based services developed and for people to be treated at home or as near to home as possible, and all this despite being caught preventing this policy from happening in his own constituency! The brass neck of the man was something to behold. As we were debating these matters, less than half-a-mile away, the party was submitting a vote of no confidence in him as Cabinet Secretary for Health. Rumour coming from some in the SNP is that he is to retire at the election. Now I need to prepare for the debate on Wednesday, which will be the first vote of no confidence in a Minister in over a decade or more and I will lead for Labour.

Newsnight Scotland with Jim Eadie MSP on the motion of no confidence, but I over-prepared and ended up doing a really shit interview. Annoyed with myself but you live and learn.

20 MAY: Into parliament and all the talk is of the forthcoming motion of no confidence in Alex Neil. The TV and papers are full of it and it’s the buzz around the corridors of Holyrood. Spent all day working on my speech. Craig Davidson from Johann’s team made some suggestions on language but after discussion with Tommy I ignored them and went with my gut feeling. Throughout the day I briefed the opposition spokespeople on our findings and why we were taking this route. I hope they are all on board. If we can unite the opposition we may just be able to get him to go. However the SNP are completely shameless, so I would be astonished if he did.

21 MAY: Up early for a radio interview on Good Morning Scotland, which thankfully went much better than the Newsnight rubbish. Spent all day preparing and running through my speech. The press are all over the story so I did several interviews for Radio Forth, Kingdom FM and BBC News. I sat beside Johann at FMQs, where she again raised the Alex Neil issue and called for his resignation. Salmond, as always, was in bullish mood.

The motion was taken right after FMQs (which is on a Wednesday this week because of tomorrow’s European elections) in front of a packed chamber with Michael Matheson leading for the Government. My nerves disappeared when I stood up to speak and I was determined to prosecute the case in a deliberate and methodical manner, staying calm and not rising to the inevitable provocation from the SNP side. As the debate proceeded it became clear the SNP were going to ride this out and Matheson did so in an arrogant, uncompromising way with no humility. There would be no acknowledgement of wrong doing and certainly no apology.

Jackson Carlaw, for the Tories, who is a friend of Alex Neil’s, said they would support the no-confidence motion, as did Jim Hume for the Liberals, but the biggest coup was securing Patrick Harvie and the Greens’ vote. All opposition parties were now on board. John Pentland MSP for Motherwell and Wishaw, the MSP whose Freedom of Information request secured the information, spoke in a straightforward, caring and compassionate way about the service mental health patients in his area needed and that Alex Neil had denied them this for political purposes.

Richard Simpson MSP, an ex-psychiatrist, closed for us – credible, knowledgeable and hitting the right tone. Salmond closed for the SNP, and in an awful contribution said Alex Neil did everything right and stood up for his constituents – completely ignoring the fact that it was, according to patients and the NHS board, a decision that was the worst option available. He claimed this was a cyclical debate to coincide with the European Elections despite the fact it was SNP managers who scheduled the debate for this time and day! And it was his government who refused the Freedom of Information request for 18 months. In the end we won the debate hands down – no question, but we lost the vote 57–67, as the independents voted with the SNP.

I was happy with how I performed and how the debate went. We managed to get all opposition parties on board and forced the government to back a minister who had been caught reversing his own policy, and all for political ends. If that had been a Labour Minister they would have resigned, but the SNP are so brazen and arrogant that no one resigns, ever!

22 MAY: European Election day (joy.) I really am and always have been a fierce critic of the EU. Ever since the Maastricht debate I have objected to its lack of democracy and accountability. I am very internationalist and love travelling and experiencing new cultures, people, and enjoy seeing cities like London become cosmopolitan and exciting, but I cannot stand the way the neo-liberal economic orthodoxy is forced upon states, and where competition and the free movement of capital and people is seen as essential and a must when in fact all it does is enrich the super wealthy and drive down wages and services as the poor undercut the poor, who undercut the poorer.

Being an MEP must be one of the dullest jobs going. No constituency party to be held accountable to, no surgeries, huge allowances and salary and general anonymity. It sounds awful and utterly boring! I will probably vote to leave if there is a referendum in 2015 or 2016.

Up early with the team to put up posters at polling stations then to East Calder. We dropped leaflets all day in key areas for us. My prediction is UKIP will win at least one seat in Scotland.

Stayed up to watch some of the English council results – Labour picking up a few councils and seats but not as many as expected. The Lib Dems are being hammered and UKIP are picking up seats.

23 MAY: Media stories this morning are that the Lib Dems have taken a beating in the English council elections and Clegg is under pressure to go. Tories losing ground to UKIP and Labour not nearly doing well enough. Everything is focused on Farage – they have taken 18 per cent and have 125 councillors – taking both Tory and Labour votes. They took 10 seats from Labour in troubled Rotherham after the child abuse revelations. Good to see Liverpool almost totally red, with 81 out of 90 councillors Labour. Oh, and best of all, the BNP totally wiped out in Dagenham and Barking.

Good result for Labour in the Cowdenbeath council by-election, where we beat the SNP convincingly – and winning a council seat in Oban of all places.

To the Bombay Spice restaurant in West Calder for the Labour Party fundraiser. Great food, music with Alan Brown on fine form and brilliant poetry from Jim Monaghan. The place was packed out.

24 MAY: Salmond on TV moaning about the BBC and its constant coverage of Farage. He has a point as the little toad is never off the telly.

25 MAY: To St Margaret’s High School, in Livingston, for the election count. Good results for Labour in the Breich Valley ward, although not so good in central Livingston.

The West Lothian results are: SNP 14,279, Labour 13,932, UKIP 5,228, Conservative 5,102, Greens 2,710, Lib Dems 1,425, Britain First 573, BNP 452, NO2EU 242.

Big news in Scotland is that David Coburn, a UKIP bampot, has taken the final seat north of the border. The SNP had targeted this and failed. They had talked up Tasmina Ahmed Sheikh as the new face of Scotland, but Scotland has voted for an old right winger. So much for us being so different! The SNP took 29 per cent of the vote, and Labour 26. In England, astonishingly or maybe not, UKIP won. Their MEP group will provide rich pickings for journalists as many are clearly bonkers. Nick Griffin and his BNP thugs are gone but Farage is now the receptacle for their votes. Very worrying.

I do, however, reject the assumption that all UKIP voters are racist, as they aren’t. What they have done is allow voters somewhere to place their vote on issues that frustrate them most. Voting UKIP is a reaction to housing problems, low pay, job insecurity and fear. Labour should be the party tapping into and providing answers to these issues, especially amongst the working class voters of the midlands and the north. This is the challenge for Miliband.

I have spent a while reflecting on this result, as it might impact on our referendum. There were 850,000 votes cast for parties who are opposed to independence and 500,000 for pro-independence parties – this is the challenge the Yes campaign faces in the next four months.

26 MAY: Due to speak at a conference entitled ‘A Healthier, Fairer Scotland’ but received an email to say it has been cancelled as speakers had pulled out due to sponsorship by Nestle, who have a very poor reputation amongst health campaigners. Well done to those who have taken action.

27 MAY: Met a representative from a major Scottish charity today. I am amazed at how people have become conditioned to accepting austerity and cuts to budgets. They seem to have accepted the government’s line that ’well, there really is nothing we can do until we get powers, so you will have to live with what we give you and don’t complain about cuts or we will cut it more’. The voluntary sector has been totally silenced as critics of the government and have instead become, in effect, passive in the face of repeated cuts to their budgets, as well as council budgets. It’s as if there is no action the SNP government can take to help the situation. Of course they can, but they have no intention of doing so. It’s an amazing state of affairs. They have complete control over the voluntary sector.

Research for the UK and Scottish Governments has been released today and both sides are competing against each other over whether you will be £1,800 a year worse off with independence according to Cameron, or £1,000 better off according to Salmond.

28 MAY: Met relatives of elderly people who had been resident at the Bupa-run Pentland Hills care home. The stories are heartbreaking and horrendous. This place should be closed and some staff and senior management prosecuted. What happened to some of our oldest and frailest people is a scandal.

29 MAY: Met with the Royal College of GPs to discuss the crisis in general practice. 26 surgeries across Lothian have closed lists because of shortages and the situation will get worse as people turn their back on the profession. A big crisis is brewing.

Up to St Augustine’s Church for a Unite-hosted debate on the referendum with Kenny MacAskill. Mary Alexander of Unite was the chairperson. A grand total of eight people turned up (the excitement of hearing MacAskill and me was obviously too much for them). I find Kenny an odd character. He is one of the few MSPs I have never spoken to. He is aloof and has a lot of tricks and traits and seems very uncomfortable around people. He doesn’t do small talk. We had an event discussion around the issues to an audience who had all made up their minds – all eight of them! So it was probably an entirely fruitless exercise for all.

30 MAY: To Glasgow Radisson Hotel for the national Care at Home conference, where I took part in a panel discussion with Jim Hume (Lib Dems), Susan Aitken (Glasgow SNP councillor) and a policy officer for a care organisation in England. What struck me was the absence of frontline care staff – it was all managers talking about managerial solutions. I raised political points about funding councils, ending competitive tendering that is driving down standards, raising wages, ending exploitation, providing job security and dignity for staff and clients and an end to the scandal of 15-minute visits. I’m very committed to all of this and it really gets me riled when I speak about it.

31 MAY: Played in the annual Silloth golf competition with my school pal Joe Murray. My golf was crap, but we had a great day, like a pair of 15-year-olds laughing at a load of nonsense!