Neil Findlay on the rise of Jeremy Corbyn

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, no matter how badly things are going in the world of politics, your prospects will improve measurably if your opposite number is accused of doing something disgusting with a dead pig.

Certainly, given the start he had, Jeremy Corbyn must have been grateful for anything to divert the media’s attention from him.

The MP for Islington North was elected as Labour leader on 12 September with a huge mandate. Yet within days, the knives were out for him, with opinion still seemingly split on whether Corbyn is capable of – not just winning an election – but lasting long enough to get the chance to try.

---

RELATED CONTENT

Labour conference: How Kezia Dugdale is sick of listening

Labour conference 2015 - new new Labour

Ian Murray on surviving the General Election

---

As his popularity became more obvious, newly elected Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale, had to quickly downgrade her comments about a Corbyn win leading to the party carping from the sidelines for years.

But despite mutterings from some corners of his party, Neil Findlay, Labour list MSP for the Lothians, and a previous leadership contender, is openly delighted by Corbyn’s election.

This is understandable. Findlay has always sat somewhere on the left of his party and the MSP’s office bears testament to a politician who might have felt uncomfortable with the direction taken during the New Labour years.

His office is littered with posters of socialist phrases and old newspapers. Slogans like ‘Right to Strike’, ‘Justice for Miners’, and ‘Comrade’ (written in red, obviously) are everywhere.

A picture of Che Guevara sits underneath a bright red full size flag. On the other side of the room a poster, above an old copy of Granma – the Cuban national newspaper – announces Guevara’s old slogan: ‘Hasta la Victoria Siempre!’, or ‘Until victory, always!’

None of it is very New Labour.

I remark on the decoration and Findlay accuses me of trying to paint him as some sort of socialist stereotype.

I point to his bookshelves, which are home to miniature statues of both Karl Marx and Fidel Castro, as proof he is doing that all by himself. Findlay laughs, “Ha – that’s only there to annoy the New Labour fuckers.”

But it is not the ‘socialism o muerte’ (socialism or death) poster that catches the eye. On Findlay’s bookshelf – above Castro and next to Marx – sits a small plastic pig.

In fact it is not Findlay’s pig at all – but Corbyn’s. And given the ongoing #piggate furore, Findlay swears its placement is a coincidence.

Picking it up, he says: “When Jeremy was in Scotland one of the Unison reps gave him this and said, ‘Look, if you’re needing a bit of stress relief going back down on the train, here’s a Unison stress-relieving pig.’ He chucked it to me and asked me to keep hold of it but I forgot to give it back,” he laughs, adding, “so I’ve called it ‘Dave’.”

And has the pig story brought Corbyn any stress relief?

“I think it couldn’t have happened at a better moment, it’s given him a bit of breathing space on the run-up to the conference. A chance to step back a bit.”

It is not just Findlay’s office decoration that marks him out as a slightly unusual politician.

Growing up in a West Lothian village, Findlay worked as a bricklayer for ten years, an experience he describes as “easily the best thing I have ever done”.

“I met the most intelligent, funniest, most entrepreneurial, clever people – many of whom would never have been to university but just the smartest people you would ever meet.”

Findlay’s family were not Labour Party members. In fact, he says his father voted SNP for most of his life. But through the miners’ strike, and the poll-tax campaign, he became politicised.

“I remember watching TV at that time and just wondering why the Government wanted to put my pal’s dad out of work and just not understanding that. So it got me interested and I was watching people like Scargill on TV and I was fascinated – seeing these articulate leaders, and working people, and they were inspiring for me as a teenager. That was the start of me taking an interest in the world around me. Eventually, my pal’s mum was the chairperson of the local Labour Party and she said, ‘you need to come long and get into this’.”

It was his interest in politics that led him to take an evening class, before going on to university.

“My brother and mother encouraged me, and my dad was the biggest encouragement because he was telling me, ‘you don’t want to be doing this for the rest of your days’. So I went to night school, really just for my own satisfaction, and I did a few Highers.

“Then my sister said, ‘why do you no just go to university?’ I was thinking, what am I going to be, the janitor or the cleaner or something? It didn’t even dawn on me I would be there. That’s not being disrespectful to janitors or cleaners, it’s just where I was at that time. So I applied and I was really surprised they accepted.”

After graduating, Findlay worked in the social housing sector for seven years.

“If anyone wants to see what goes on in life, that is the job to do. In and out of people’s houses every day and seeing all kinds of issues – antisocial behaviour, benefits problems, immigration issues, alcohol and drugs – you name it, you deal with it. That was fantastic grounding for going into representative politics.”

Apparently his politics didn’t change much over that time. But speaking to Findlay, it is fairly clear that he might have been uncomfortable with the direction taken by the party under New Labour. Likewise, it is no surprise he backed Corbyn’s campaign. Actually, though, he says before the contest, he didn’t know the new leader “that well”.

“I met him over the years at party conferences and at fringe events, I’ve bumped into him at various things. Am I his best pal? No. That’s not the relationship I had with him until the election. But clearly his philosophy and his politics are things I am very closely supportive of and so it seemed natural that he would be the candidate I would support.”

He adds: “He’s very like Tony Benn in the way he deals with people. He’s a gentleman.”

Findlay supported Corbyn’s leadership bid right from the start. In fact, he chaired his campaign in Scotland.

“At the start I was just the face of the campaign in Scotland. We had a full-time organiser – Martin Cook – who did fantastic work, and we had a whole army of volunteers who ran phone banks, went to Labour Party meetings to argue the case, went on social media, arranging meetings and did all the dull admin stuff as well as the campaigning stuff.

“I was really just the face of it. It was a huge operation involving a lot of people and I certainly don’t take credit for the work that went on in Scotland – no way.”

The campaign was impressive, gripping the attention of Scots in a way Labour has not managed in a long time. Tickets for his appearance in Glasgow sold out in two hours, forcing Findlay’s team to find a bigger venue. But despite his eventual success, Corbyn’s campaign took the whole of the UK by surprise. Surely Findlay did not believe Corbyn would win when the contest started?

“Well, I think if you had asked people at the start how they thought he would do, if we had not been last that would have been an achievement – and that is the size and the magnitude of what happened, because it’s no secret that it took a huge effort to even get him on the ballot paper.

“Picture the scene – there’s a room of people on the left saying to each other, ‘well, I’ve had a go before, what about you, have you had a try? Looks like it’s up to you, mate.’ And so Corbyn had a go.

“John McDonnell has run before, and Diane Abbott tried, Michael Meacher tried – so, you know, we were kind of running out of people to have a go.

“I don’t think, if you had asked Jeremy, he would have thought he would run either. I think that is the mark of him – he is very honest and there isn’t any spin or bullshit about him. He is a very honest, straight person.

“I think he just absolutely caught the mood at the time. If you look at what’s happening in politics across the world, or certainly across the western world, there is a desire for a move away from all the spin and the rhetoric and the rubbish that goes along with politics.

“Syriza just won again in Greece – which is quite remarkable, actually, considering all that’s going on. Then you are seeing, on the other side of politics, the rise of the Front National in France – which is really quite concerning – in Spain you have got Podemos, then in the US you’ve got Trump and Bernie Sanders. We are seeing remarkable things happening in politics at the moment. I think there is a mood to get away from the sharp-suited brigade.”

Findlay obviously takes a keen interest in international politics. He went to Venezuela as an election monitor a couple of years ago (hence a large Chavez picture) and says he was impressed by the transparency and efficiency of the voting machines.

And it is easy to see why he would have an interest in the anti-austerity politics of Syriza in Greece, or the rise of Podemos in Spain. But the examples he gives span the political spectrum – as well as Europe. Is it anti-politics that all of these disparate groups hold in common?

“That’s the phrase people are using, but I’m not sure if I’d use that, because people are very political – so they are not anti-politics – I would say they are more anti-crushing tedium.” He laughs, “where it’s just another person in a sharp suit with 13 advisers who isn’t willing to say anything that might be remotely controversial.”

The anti-establishment idea is something the SNP has exploited very well, while Labour has suffered from the perception of its recent past. Most of the recent wisdom has revolved around giving the Scottish party greater independence from the UK Labour Party so they can put forward slightly more left-wing policies. But does Corbyn’s election change that? Is that separation not quite so pertinent?

“In terms of being anti-establishment, I think what we have seen is the SNP has become the establishment in Scotland... They get their hooks into all sorts of organisations, and clearly they are putting people who are sympathetic in, then they become the new establishment and that is what we have seen happen.”

The public don’t seem to have recognised that process has happened.

He pauses: “Well, let’s see, it may take some time for people to catch up on that but that is what I think has happened.”

But, leaving aside whether the SNP is or is not the establishment, does Scottish Labour need more independence from its Westminster counterpart?

“I think we do need to have much more autonomy in Scotland, and that has to be about policy. And the one good thing about Jeremy’s leadership – he is the least egotistical person you will meet in your life. So Kezia will be running the Labour Party in Scotland and he will not have a problem with that. They will work very closely together, I am absolutely certain of that.”

He adds: “Jeremy has appointed Jon Trickett as spokesperson for Communities and Constitutional Convention, and that is interesting because one of the things he has always been very consistent about is that you don’t have constitutional reform just because there is an issue with nationalism in Scotland. That would be the wrong reason to have devolution. What he is saying is that there has to be a package of constitutional measures that modernises the UK constitution and devolves power across the UK, and I think that is a much more consistent and credible argument. So as well as having devolution for Scotland, you would have devolution across the regions of England, devolution for Wales, you would deal with House of Lords’ reform, you might look at the electoral system – all that stuff comes from a constitutional package, which I think is a very credible way of looking at it.”

But there must be times a socialist would oppose splitting the two wings of the parties too much? Or devolving issues that would benefit from UK-wide solidarity?

Take the Trade Union Bill. Findlay is, perhaps unsurprisingly given the various trade union slogans and ornaments dotted around the room, staunchly opposed to the legislation, which would force unions to give employers 14 days’ notice before taking action, while limiting the funding available for union campaigns.

The SNP’s answer is to devolve power so the changes do not affect Scotland. But how does that affect collective action?

“When I was standing for Labour leader, I said I was quite sympathetic towards devolution of employment law. But I understand the arguments on both sides. It’s not simple.

“There is this perception at the moment that if you devolve things it will always be better, but that is not necessarily the case. They have already had the opportunity, for example, to use the procurement legislation through the parliament to deal with a whole range of employment issues, living wage, anti-blacklisting legislation, zero-hours contracts, and they voted down our amendments, time and time again.

“As a trade unionist, the one thing I want to avoid at all costs is workers in one part of the UK pitted against workers in the other. We have to be careful we don’t end up in a race to the bottom on wages and conditions. Look at what the nationalists are doing, they wanted tax competition in terms of corporation tax between different nations of the UK. That would have been a disaster for working people because inevitably, if you end up in a race to the bottom on that, you end up with a race to the bottom on conditions as the different nations compete for inward investment. That would have been disastrous. But I will work with anyone to resist that bill. We need to build the biggest number of allies in the House of Commons in order to defeat it because it is outrageous. It is a fundamental attack on the rights of working people.”

But can it be defeated? How realistic is it to hope backbench Tories will back Labour on a Trade Union Bill?

“Well, we’ll see. If you go into any battle with the position of, ‘well, we’re going to get beat’, then you’re as well giving up and going home. I mean, we come in here every day up against a majority government but we fight the good fight and we continue to argue our cause based on the principles we believe in. You try and convince people and bring them on board – that is the whole point of politics. So we can either give up or get on with it.”

Upon his election in 2011 Findlay says he committed himself to continue the work he had been doing with unions before entering parliament. In fact, Kezia Dugdale’s election as leader of the party saw him appointed trade union liaison. Findlay answers directly to her.

He says: “I have very good relationships with people across the trade union movement so it was a natural role for me to play. I want the party and the unions to be absolutely at one again.”

The interesting aspect of all this seems to be the relationship between Kezia Dugdale’s wing of the party and Jeremy Corbyn’s. After all, it may be easy to imagine Corbyn backing phrases like “I want the party and the unions to be absolutely at one again”, but what would those closer to the New Labour wing of the party think?

Since her election, Dugdale has set about shaping the party north of the border. First, she created new titles for her shadow team – swapping ‘education spokesperson’ with ‘opportunity’ and creating the brief of ‘Public Services and Wealth Creation’. Findlay says the change is not a big deal.

But what about Dugdale’s next move – the decision to give the party a free vote on Trident? Or her decision to allow members to support Scottish independence? These are not just tweaks to party titles, but wholesale changes in direction. They are surely a risk. Will they work in winning back voters who went to the SNP?

“In terms of saying ‘people can vote however they want on that issue’, that just reflects reality, because a number of party members already did vote Yes during the referendum. So it is hardly a revelation that that happened. The media seem to be getting quite animated about something that is as plain as the nose on your face.”

It may be plain to Findlay, but it does seem to be a major change of position – to go from being part of the Better Together campaign to announcing that party members can support independence. I suggest that is probably why people are getting animated.

“We also have to remember that there was a significant number of SNP voters who voted No as well. That has been glossed over. When we were campaigning across Scotland, we met people who were saying, ‘yeah, I vote SNP but I’m no voting for independence’. Now for some that might be an illogical position but it was the reality on the doorsteps.”

So will the change work or not?

“I think we have a real opportunity to bring people back, because you have got two sets of people who voted in the referendum. There are people who say, it doesn’t matter when a referendum was called, they would vote yes – that’s just their belief and I respect that. Then you have got a whole load of other people that say they are not nationalists but say, ‘I want to see a better Scotland, a fairer country, I’m pretty sick of what’s going on and I just think, ‘it cannae be any worse’’. But now you can have a fairer and more equal Scotland by voting Labour for the prospectus Jeremy is putting forward. I think that will be very attractive to that section of voters.

“We are talking about mass council house-building programme, capping rents in the private sector, we are looking at Trident, the environmental agenda Jeremy supports, clearly a very growth-oriented economic policy, there will be a huge equalities agenda, stuff around workplace issues. I think this will all be very attractive to people who were Labour all their life but for one reason or another went to another party.

“I think SNP strategists will now be sleeping slightly less easily in their beds at night, knowing that this is what is happening. Because what they have sold people is that we are anti-austerity without doing anything to prove they are anti-austerity apart from saying the words. They say they are progressive but have no progressive policies. All that stuff that I call rhetoric over reality, and I think that is now very challengeable.”

SNP rhetoric obviously irritates Labour members, but it does seem to have worked well. Isn’t there an argument that Scots quite like that? Talking left and voting centre?

Findlay smiles, “Well, I guess we’ll see.”