Seeking equality: Interview with Alex Neil

Arriving at the Parliament before sunrise, drenched by sleet and snow and feeling miserably cold, the sight of Alex Neil looking spotless and cheerful is a shock to the system. 

In fact, the new Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners’ Rights looks perfectly fresh, suggesting we do the interview in the Parliament’s Garden Lobby, rather than his office.

“It’s quiet here – and there’s no chance that any of the MSPs are going to be in before 8:30 in the morning anyway.”

Neil chuckles at the sight of me brushing the snow off as we settle into the still deserted lobby. The new CS has a flat in Edinburgh and has avoided the trouble of getting through the storm from his home in Ayr to his ministerial office, though he will need to get back again that evening.

And he is certainly in typically cheerful form. At one point we get on to one of the most important matters now affecting the SNP; the prospect of the party holding the balance of power in Westminster and entering negotiations with the Labour Party over some sort of voting arrangement. I ask whether there could be lessons to be taken from the Lib Dem experience of coalition government, leading him to takes one look at me before bursting out in laughter, announcing: “I would not recommend doing anything that the Lib Dems do.”

But his good mood is perhaps justified by more than just dodging a storm, having been given responsibility for the Scottish Government’s programme against inequality less than three weeks before. 

My views have never actually changed all that dramatically in so far as my fundamental motivation has always been to fight for social justice. But at one point, I became convinced that independence was the right thing for Scotland and the best way of bringing social justice

Known as one of the furthest left among the SNP group, it is a position that seems to suit Neil down to the ground. 

Announcing her cabinet, the FM said: “The aims of my government are clear: to create a nation that is both social democratic and socially just, a nation that is confident in itself and governed effectively and a nation which will address poverty, support business, promote growth and tackle inequality.”

And Neil may even have been surprised by Sturgeon’s decision to not only keep him in the cabinet – some had predicted he would be a victim of the reshuffle – but to give him responsibility for an area that will be so important in the Government’s legislative programme.

Social justice became a key battleground in the independence debate and, with the SNP seemingly still intent on taking votes from Labour, it looks set to continue to be.

He has been busy since taking over, announcing a £25m investment aimed at building 450 new affordable homes one week and slamming the growth in food banks the next. 

Jim Sillars at least was not surprised that Neil was given the position, having known him since he joined the Labour Party as a schoolboy. In fact, he signed him up.

“Alex has not changed one little bit in his ideological viewpoint from the day I enrolled him in the Labour Party when he came to my office as a young lad from Ayr Academy. He hasn’t changed at all. And being in government in Scotland he is more able to do something, however limited that something might be, rather than to be outside the tent looking in.”
I put the question to Neil as to how his views have changed.

“My views have never actually changed all that dramatically in so far as my fundamental motivation has always been to fight for social justice. But at one point, I became convinced that independence was the right thing for Scotland and the best way of bringing social justice. 

“The reason I came to believe that is because of the maxim that you can do more for Scotland in five years within the Scottish Parliament than you could do in 25 years or 50 years in Westminster. So my belief in independence is totally driven by my belief in social justice and full autonomy.”

This seems to sum up Neil’s approach. Growing up in the 1950s, the Labour Party was the only viable option for a boy living in an industrial village in the west of Scotland.

“I was born in Patna, which was established by a man called William Fullerton and named after a town in India. He was a bit of an explorer, he went to India, and when he came back he founded the village around 1802 – and despite the rumours, I was not around at the time.

“So Patna was a mining village and that whole area, the Doon Valley, from that period, the late 18th century, had been an area of heavy industry, mining, steel, lead, but mining was the dominant one when I was being brought up in the fifties.

“Everyone was a miner, everyone was employed, and the only people who were not were those that were not fit to work, disabled people. So I got my politics from living in Patna, and if you were living there in the 1950s and 1960s then you were Labour. So as a result of listening to Harold Wilson, and also from fighting as the Labour candidate in a mock election in school – which I won, by the way – in the 1966 election I was 15 and that got me interested in politics. So I joined the Labour Party in Ayr because there wasn’t a branch in south Ayrshire. So from that point on, I became more and more interested both in economics and politics.

“I went to Dundee University where I formed a Fabian society and was first chair of the Scottish Organisation of Labour Students and then I became the first chair of the National Organisation of Labour Students.”

Neil’s rise through the Labour Party seems to have been a pretty quick one, from his decision to join up through Sillars to his taking a full-time position after graduation. 

“When I left university, my first ever full-time job was as the first ever Labour Party Research Officer. Now that was in March 1974 and that brought me into contact with the senior parts of the party. I attended the Scottish Executive Committee meetings of the Labour Party, I went to the Home Policy Committee meetings in London, which were chaired by Tony Benn at the time, I was in and out of Downing Street, the Treasury, the Privy Council Office. I was offered a job by Ted Short as a special adviser but I decided to stay in Scotland, so by that time I was very heavily involved in Labour politics.”

It was a critical time for Labour and for devolution, with the SNP winning eleven seats in the House of Commons during the second general election of 1974.
Labour was concerned by this and launched the Kilbrandon Commission to explore devolution. On 22 June, the party’s Scottish executive met to vote on the devolution measures being proposed, with the majority firmly in favour of handing greater power to Scotland.

Unfortunately, though, the meeting coincided with football. Scotland was playing Yugoslavia in the World Cup that day and only 11 members of the executive turned up – leading to a six-five vote against devolution. 

Wilson had been rattled by the result and he demanded that his team do something. Neil describes sitting in on a meeting in London with the deputy PM, Ted Short, along with special advisers and union bosses, to discuss a solution. The party was torn between interfering with the executive and the need to head off the SNP.   

Then a 23-year-old researcher, Neil was asked for his views. He says: “I told them, ‘normally I would agree that this is for the Scottish party to decide, but it is a matter of political survival’.” 

He says: “Of course it was presented better than that, it was put out as a response to union demands.”

This push for devolution was just the beginning for Neil, who then went on to form the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) with Jim Sillars. 

Neil believes that it was the SLP and the prospect of it making real inroads into the party’s support that pushed Labour into doing something.

When you only have a handful of MPs in Westminster you need to do stunts to get noticed. But when you are the party of opposition you can no longer be the party of stunts.

But Labour reacted accordingly, giving Scotland more autonomy, and the SLP was wiped out by Labour in 1979. Both Sillars and Neil were hit financially and while Sillars went into the SNP pretty quickly, Neil took a break from politics, heading to the US.

“My son had only recently been born and I wanted some time out. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I would work in politics again but I needed to be convinced about the SNP, which had been much further to the right than it is now.”

The SNP has certainly changed a great deal since Neil joined – with the present membership surge serving as an example of just how far it has travelled from the periphery to the mainstream. 

“We have changed a lot, when you only have a handful of MPs in Westminster you need to do stunts to get noticed. But when you are the party of opposition you can no longer be the party of stunts.

“We had to learn a lot, even Alex did – also Holyrood works completely differently to Westminster and we had to adapt.”

This adaptation has seen the party move in on Labour’s territory. I ask whether part of the motivation for Sturgeon making social justice so prominent in the legislative programme is the need to appeal to these members who could perhaps go back to Labour.

“It is too late for that now, they have crossed the Rubicon.”

Neil says that the new members will likely bring a change in the party, but the process will need to be handled carefully.

“The new members will need to be managed, and I don’t mean that in a dictatorial sort of way, but any organisation that sees its membership increase four times needs to be careful about how it does that. 

“It is important to remember that we have seen our membership balloon before and then fall back and we need to learn lessons from that. We had a huge increase in numbers in 1979 but we couldn’t sustain it. We didn’t have the structure in place to incorporate the new members.”

Part of the reason for the structural issues that Neil talks about came from what he calls ‘tensions’ between the Scottish party of the SNP and the MPs in Westminster.

“We had eleven MPs and they formed a very powerful group that drew media attention. The press are always going to go to MPs for stories, rather than a member of the national executive.”

But is there a danger that tensions between Westminster and Holyrood could occur again? The former FM has announced his candidacy as the Westminster candidate for Gordon after all. 

At the time, Salmond said: “I have been First Minister of Scotland. I have no interest in titles and fully support Angus Robertson who is an excellent leader of the SNP at Westminster, a close friend and a fine MP. I am perfectly content as a constituency member of parliament and will seek to have a role in negotiating the progress for Scotland which would arise from a powerful group of SNP MPs and our allies.”

Yet critics have been unconvinced, finding it hard to believe that a man who had led the party for 20 years and served as FM for two terms could sit back and let others run the show. Does that not leave the party open to the sorts of tensions it experienced in the 70s? To Neil there is no comparison. 

“We are a completely different party from the one in 1979, completely different. The centre of the party is in Holyrood now, not Westminster. We need to work in Westminster to ensure that the promises made in the vow are delivered but the leadership is here under Nicola. We are one party, with one aim – to work for Scotland’s interests.”
So is Labour still the party of social justice? 

“Well, they certainly pay lip service to it but I think that Blair has destroyed the Labour Party, quite frankly. I think that when the history of the demise of the Labour Party is written – because we are currently witnessing the death throes of the Labour Party as the major political force in Scottish politics, or in UK politics, I believe. 

“If John Smith had lived the history of the Labour Party would have been very different. For a start, Peter Mandelson would not have been in a senior position and Blair and all that New Labour stuff, none of that would have happened. John would have stuck to the basic principles of the Labour Party. He would have modernised policy.”

But would he have won? 

“Oh absolutely, Smith was seen as a Prime Minister in waiting. Unlike Neil Kinnock, Smith had credibility as a possible Prime Minister. A lot of people thought he looked more like a Prime Minister than John Major at the time. And John Smith would never, ever in a thousand years, have taken Britain to war in Iraq, and it was war in Iraq that was the final nail in the coffin for a lot of people in wondering what Labour stood for. The Blair and Brown years were disastrous for Labour.”

Still, Labour or not, Neil’s job will be a challenging one.

His old friend Jim Sillars is glad Neil has it: “For the left in Scotland, whether it is the SNP part of the left or parts of Labour or the SSP or Radical Independence, the question of inequality and poverty and the injustice that goes along with it, particularly for children, has been perhaps the foremost factor driving them politically. That has certainly been the case with Alex and I am very happy that he has a portfolio where he is required to bring everything that the Scottish Government has to bear on the issue. But you have to bear in mind that the Scottish Government is operating with a block grant, and a diminishing block grant, so Alex has significant responsibility for attacking poverty but he doesn’t have the instruments or the finance to do what he no doubt would like to do in reversing inequality.”