"Thank you conference.
It is a privilege to be here and to address you as Leader of Labour in the Scottish Parliament.
We meet in difficult times. A global banking crisis. A worldwide economic slowdown. And for Scottish Labour too. The defeat of 2007. halfway through an SNP Scottish government. The loss of Glasgow East.
But my favourite author wrote:
The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
Conference. This is the task we are given by the time in which we live.
To learn the lessons. To regroup, recover and reinvigorate our Scottish Labour passion.
So that Scotland and Scottish labour plays its part in returning David Martin and Catherine Stihler to the European Parliament, returning Gordon Brown to Downing street in the general election and returning Labour to lead Scotland forward in 2011
And I tell you this. With members like young Callum Munro to show us how then we are already on our way.
Glenrothes showed Scotland that Scottish Labour is back.
It was a joint campaign across our Party – run together, by an MP and an MSP – Gordon Banks and John Park.
It was a campaign in which parliamentarians, councillors, activists and trade unionists combined and no-one was too big or too important to walk a street or knock a door or deliver a leaflet.
This was the first campaign led by me and Jim Murphy. Jim did a great job in Glenrothes and he is doing a great job for Scotland in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet.
We have heard already from Callum.
But I also remember Sally Powell from Shepherds Bush.
She and I were in the same knock-up team on polling night, out in the darkness and the pouring rain. The canvass sheets – indeed the canvassers – were soaked through.
Sally told me she could have gone to the states for Obama’s election. Instead she made her own way to Glenrothes and was campaigning early each morning and late into the night.
Sally. I think Obama would be proud of you for staying to make history at home rather than watching him do it in America. I know I am and I thank you.
In Glenrothes we listened to what mattered to the people. We responded to the people’s anger at the actions of an SNP council and rose to the people’s aspirations their communities.
In Glenrothes our candidate was a man who had served the community all his working life, a leader - in shaping young people and the nurturing their hopes.
Lindsay Roy MP.
He hasn’t been a politician for long. But his whole life has been an embodiment of Labour values.
In Glenrothes we fought with determination and with confidence. But we fought it too with pride.
Pride in the late John McDougall MP and his legacy.
Pride in a Prime Minister who came home to Fife – and led that campaign even as he led the international response to the economic storm.
Pride in all that Labour means.
That people that matter most.
That the most vulnerable must be treated with dignity and respect.
That everyone should have the chance to LEARN and GROW and WORK.
You can take pride too far though.
If you watched the teatime news on Nov 5 the day after Barak Obama was elected. At the end of the national news you saw Obama addressing 250,000 people in Grant Park in Chicago.
Impossibly Glamorous. Impossibly inspiring. Impossibly moving.
Then immediately, the Scottish news. And the picture switched to a windswept roundabout on the deserted edge of Glenrothes. To Alex Salmond and some other guy holding up a small poster with “yes we can” hurriedly scrawled across the bottom in marker pen.
Impossibly smug. Impossibly naff. Just frankly impossible.
Not just stealing Obama’s slogan, but claiming he had invented it.
Claiming that the SNP would win Glenrothes.
Claiming that their victory would shake the Earth.
Alex, we were neither shaken nor stirred.
Six months ago this party had a leadership election.
I’d like to thank all those involved in the running of those elections, especially our staff in John Smith House, and the trade unions who also organised hustings and ballots.
I want to acknowledge the strong and principled campaigns run by Andy Kerr and Cathy Jamieson, who now, day in and day out, are proving themselves leaders indeed in my shadow cabinet.
But I must pay tribute to every Labour MSP in Holyrood. They do this Party proud and none more so than their Chair, Duncan McNeil.
I want to thank East Lothian Labour Party for all their support in the leadership election and the strength I draw from them.
I know I’m biased but I think they are the best CLP in Scotland.
And I thank my Westminster counterpart Anne Moffat MP for her support in that election.
But most of all I want to thank you - and the thousands of members who participated in a debate on ideas and the future of our movement.
YOU were an inspiration.
Because we asked some hard questions of ourselves – about who we are and where we are going.
But we sought the answers with a determination that we will move forward with renewed purpose and rediscovered conviction.
And so we have.
Re – engaging with the real concerns of real life in real communities.
Reminding ourselves that we are strongest when we work together.
That all of us – members, trades unions, MPs, MSPs, councillors, MEPs - has a part to play.
Remembering the values that created our Party and unite us still.
The values of Keir Hardie, of John Wheatley, of the 45 government, of Donald Dewar
The values of the women of the Glasgow rents strike and the heroic women of the miners strike.
Sometimes people say to me “why do you want to be Labour leader?”. “Jobs don’t come any harder.”
But this isn’t a hard job.
Bringing up a family
Looking after a disabled child, or an elderly parent
Keeping your house nice in a bad street
Coping with illness or bereavement
Holding down work if you’re a single parent
Working shifts, fighting fires, being a nurse, policing our streets
These are hard jobs.
And our politics, should be about supporting the people who rise to those challenges EVERY DAY, but far, far too often are left feeling that they are on their own.
If our politics is not about that then it is about nothing. And if we are not just on their side, but right there, BY their side, then we are nowhere.
For us politics is what determines the quality of our people’s lives and the shape of our future. It is serious work and we are serious about it.
We will never, ever bring to our politics - the corrosive cynicism that says it is alright to promise the people anything, knowing that you cannot and will not deliver those promises for them.
They say that I tore up this SNP manifesto in the Scottish Parliament.
Some speculated how I had managed to do it.
Conference – it was easy. Because by the time I got to it there was nothing left in it anyway.
The SNP tore it up themselves: page by page, and broken promise by broken promise.
Student loans – not going to be paid off
A thousand extra police officers – not going to appear
Grants for first time buyers – ditched
35,000 houses a year – not going to be built
Class sizes of 18 – not for almost ninety years
Schools and hospitals – show me one Alex-, just show me one school or hospital the SNP have built.
The Scottish futures trust. It has destroyed 20,000 jobs in construction and replaced them with one – for Sir Angus Grossart as chair of the Trust.
Local income tax.
Not local. Not fair. Not workable. Not happening.
Then there is their referendum bill.
Let’s be clear about this. Labour offered Alex Salmond the chance to get this question out of the way, once and for all. Fair and square.
It was Alex Salmond who lost his nerve. It was Alex Salmond who was scared to give Scottish people their say.
This is the promise Alex Salmond should tear up.
He should concentrate on supporting people worried about their jobs, their mortgages and their businesses.
There is no-one left in Scotland who believes the SNP manifesto was real.
Except maybe Alex Salmond.
Because he is never around when his manifesto promises go in the bin.
He made John Swinney come and dump the local income Tax.
He made Kenny MacAskill admit there will not be 1000 additional police officers.
On one day we had:
The worst bedblocking figures for a year
The poorest housing figures for a generation
And the worst alcohol statistics ever.
Alex Salmond was 4000 miles away in Washington – making a speech about independence, at the taxpayers expense.
Perhaps he had to go that far to find someone who still believed his independence argument. Or maybe he knew those disastrous figures were coming out.
He likes to take the credit, but he never shoulders blame. Alex Salmond – always in the picture. But never in the frame.
The truth is they are letting Scotland down. The damage done is real and lasting.
Before the credit crunch ever hit Scotland we had already lost a £1billoin worth of construction, costing 20,000 jobs and local authority cuts had cost another 5,000 jobs.
Every country faces the economic slowdown, but only Scotland does so on top of the Salmond slump. The scale and the speed of the global crisis has been breathtaking.
But just as breathtaking has been the indolence of the SNP response. While Gordon Brown and Alistair darling moved decisively to save the banking sector the SNP were paralyzed.
While Labour in Wales drew all the sectors of the economy together and acted to boost employability programmes, the SNP dithered.
From opposition we produced a fifteen point plan to support the economy.
Accelerated building projects
Public transport investments
More help for people facing job losses.
New protection for mortgage holders
Increased support for manufacturing
John Swinney boasts now that he has implemented Labour’s fifteen-point plan. If he had thought of it, then, that might be something to boast about.
Conference, there is a difference between this recession and that of the eighties. We have a Labour government who believes we can and must act.
In the eighties the Tories sat back and let whole industries die - mining, shipbuilding and of course steel. Now the Tories are arguing again for a do nothing approach.
But in Scotland we already have the “Do Nothing” SNP in office. And there is nothing the SNP would like better than to see the Tories in power again.
In Holyrood every day we see the real Tories prop up the Tartan Tories. Thirty years ago this very month the SNP ushered Margaret Thatcher into power and they have not regretted it for a moment. Only last summer Alex Salmond said that Scotland didn’t really mind Thatcher’s economics.
And only this week one commentator who knows the SNP well wrote : There is nothing in the blood of Scots that makes them immune to Conservatism - indeed, the SNP minority government in the Scottish Parliament is doing good business right now by reviving a number of Tory political themes"
Conference. There is something in the DNA of Scotland which should make us immune to conservatism.
It is the memory in our mining villages and steeltowns and shipbuilding communities of exactly how much we did mind Maragret Thatcher’s economics.
There is between us and the SNP a fundamental difference about the way we create this country’s future. They believe that our greatest untapped resource is the remaining oil beneath the north sea.
But that resource is finite, and its value volatile.
We believe that the Scotland’s greatest resource is the untapped potential of our people. And that is a resource which is limitless and whose value is beyond calculation.
That is why Labour used the Scottish budget this year to force the SNP into providing almost 8,000 additional apprenticeship places. That is 8,000 young Scots who will have a start in life they would not otherwise have had. 8,000 Scots whose skills will build their own future and the future of this country at the same time.
And next year we will try for 8,000 more. So conference. In my first six months as Leader.
We have stopped the SNP in their tracks in Glenrothes.
We have exposed their record as a catalogue of failure and their manifesto as a tissue of lies. We have forced them into retreat on local income tax, futures trust and the referendum.
And we have delivered 8,000 apprenticeships.
But we have to look beyond tomorrow.
This conference is a milestone in the preparation of our manifesto for the 2011 Scottish election.
I appointed Margaret Curran to enhance our policy forum process and ensure that our policies resonate with the people whose trust we seek to implement them.
Each Policy Commission will work with a sounding board of experts from beyond the Labour Party to develop the most effective practical and deliverable policies commensurate with our values and vision.
I can announce today the FIRST four names who have agreed to work with us;
Stephen Boyd – Assistant Secretary of the STUC will work with the Commission on a prosperous and sustainable Scotland.
Kelley Bayes - former Head of Policy of the Aberlour childcare trust will support the commission on a Scotland of opportunity.
Graeme Pearson one of Scotland’s leading figures in policing will contribute to the commission on a safer Scotland.
Professor Hugh Pennington world renowned epidemiologist will advise the commission on a caring and healthier Scotland.
- A signal to Michelle Stewart and the C Diff campaign championed by Jackie Baillie MSP of how seriously Labour takes their concerns.
We will reach out to the voters of Scotland as never before. And we will start now.
Over the next year we will contact over over 750,000 voters on the door, online and using the virtual phonebank launched yesterday based on the Obama campaign.
Conference a child born today could well expect to see out the 21st century and into the 22nd.
That is how far ahead we have to look.
The decisions we take today will shape the century ahead and the whole life of that child.
We can make the 21st century a century of progressive politics, prosperity and fairness.
But to do so we MUST invest now in our young people.
Protecting and enhancing early years provision. Driving up standards in our schools, beginning with literacy and numeracy in our primary schools. Giving every young person the right to an apprenticeship, a college place or a place at university.
Some months ago I attended the graduation ceremony for 150 youngsters who had given up their holidays to attend a summer school aimed at helping them into university.
The enthusiasm, optimism and aspiration in that room was palpable.
Above all in each and every one of them burned the spark which will ignite Scotland’s future.
Widening access does not lower standards of entry to education, it tears down barriers and allows the brightest and best to flourish.
All politicians like to talk about green jobs – but the priorities we set today and the investment choices we make today will decide where those jobs really are tomorrow.
At a time when we are in a recession the SNP are not just stopping investment in key infrastructure, they are missing the opportunity to invest in green jobs and environmental tech.
I've already promised to double the Saltire prize for renewables if elected as First Minister. But there is so much more we need to do. More public transport, investment in greener houses, a revolution in our waste industries.
Just look at what China is doing to address the current global economic crisis. More than a third of their economic stimulus package - nearly 0m - will be on green investment.
On green jobs too Scotland is being left behind. It’s not enough to proclaim that you're going to create green jobs:
We need the apprenticeships,
we need to put the investment in place
and we need to have the political vision to follow it through.
But a child born today will never see the next century, if they are born in the wrong place, if they are born with a disability or if they are just born poor.
They will do less well at school than they should.
They will aspire to less than they might.
Their chance of finding a decent job will be less than it ought.
Unless we find the will to change all that.
That means targeting support for those who need it most in education and in health.
It means wider employability programmes and helping people back into work or in to work for the first time.
That means supporting those who come together in grassroots organisations to strengthen the communities in which they live and protecting those communities with action on anti-social behaviour and knife crime.
More help for women facing abuse until we drive the casual acceptance of violence against women out of every corner of our society.
No let up in the fight against racism, sectarianism and violence against those who are simply doing their job.
And a child born today will not live and grow as they should unless they live and grow in safety.
Brandon Muir died in Dundee. But this was not only Dundee’s tragedy. We must all take responsibility.
And we shall.
We will press the Scottish government to legislate, as we had planned to do, to require the sharing of information between agencies for child protection purposes. No child’s life should slip through the bureaucratic net.
We will demand that action is taken to identify the 40,000 – 60,000 children living with drug addicted parents, and the 80 – 100,000 children who live with alcohol addicted parents.
And if the SNP government do not respond then we will consider how we can introduce the necessary legislation ourselves from opposition.
And Conference I think the time has come to re-examine when and how we remove a child from their home to keep them safe.
Labour will also not forgot those who built our present. We will champion Scotland’s pensioners. Free bus travel for pensioners was the most popular thing we ever did in Holyrood.
Today I have appointed Johann Lamont to be our older persons champion . She will make sure that we weave the interests of pensioners through all our policy positions.
And I tell you this. If I wanted a champion I would choose Johann.
I want to see a Scotland with the skills and the education and the ingenuity to create new ideas and new inventions and new technologies.
But I want to see a Scotland with the will and the purpose to create new degrees of fairness, a new blossoming of opportunity and a new freedom from fear.
I want a Scotland in whose future lives and breathes inventiveness and ingenuity of James Watt and James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, Alexander Fleming and John Logie Baird.
I want a Scotland in whose future lives and breathes the intellect and humanitarian instincts of David Hume, Patrick Geddes and Robert Burns
But I want a Scotland in whose future lives the values and the vision of James Maxton and Keir Hardie, John Wheatley, Tom Johnston and Donald Dewar.
Those Scotland’s are linked by the belief that we shape our own future by our efforts, of hand and head and heart.
If Scotland created the modern world as some claim we did, then it was this democratic intellect and egalitarian instinct which did it.
And it is this Scottish democratic intellect recreated for the modern world and the Labour values it embodies which can build a 21st century Scotland equal to our passion for opportunity and social justice.
In Scotland and in Labour in the 21st century we stand on the shoulders of giants.
But the giants on whose shoulders I stand are my grandparents and parents and family.
The skills they learned and applied to their working lives men and women, created for me the opportunity they never had to go to university.
And the values they nurtured of decency and dignity, family and community set me on the path which has led to this podium today.
Is it not the same for you?
And should it not be the same for every Scot in the Scotland Labour wants to see.
The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.
When I was elected leader I contrasted my story with Alex Salmond’s.
Both Scottish, but our stories different.
I studied science in the centre of the Scottish enlightenment. He studied economics in the centre of Scottish monetarism
I taught children in a council scheme and then in Mozambique. My Minister was Graca Machel – now Graca Mandela.
He worked in the Scottish Office as an economist. His minister was George Younger.
I moved to Inveralmond community high school – he moved to Royal Bank of Scotland.
I spent 12 years leading campaigns for Oxfam. He spent 12 years leading the SNP at Westminster.
The SNP didn’t get it. They accused me of insulting bankers.
And while I know people are saying all kinds of things about bankers these days, I agree that saying Alex Salmond is one of their number would be a really low blow.
They accused me of saying that Alex Salmond is an elitist.
But I wasn’t.
I was saying our paths to politics have been different. I was saying that everything I have done in my life has been driven by the same values which drive me today.
Twenty years of supporting the efforts and the aspirations and the potential of people - whether they were kids in my class learning science, a village in Africa building a community dam or a tenants group in Wester Hailes.
All that I have done informs and inspires my politics today and fires the vision of the future I want to see.
Is it not the same for you?
Where have we been together?
Thirty years ago we were together resisting the rise of Thatcherism
25 years ago we were together on the picket lines with the miners, or collecting on our high streets to support their struggle.
20 years ago we were together fighting the poll tax. And for all of those eighteen years, Labour councils were people’s only protection against the Tories as they are now against the SNP.
Difficult times for Labour. Difficult times for Scotland. Sometimes they seemed like impossible times.
But they did not break us. We drew on the lessons. We took strength from the resilience of the communities they scarred.
Our belief that if we work together then we will be strong and we will prevail was tested but they did not break us.
Afterwards many are strong in the broken places.
So 12 years ago together we defeated the Tories. And ten years ago together we delivered a new Parliament for the people of Scotland.
The past is not dead it is living in us and will be alive in the future we are now helping to make.
That parliament we created was made to be a powerful instrument of social progress.
Labour used it to pass big legislation, which Scotland had waited decades, sometimes centuries for.
The abolition of the feudal system.
Land reform, transforming the ownership of Scotland.
The best incapacity legislation in Europe.
The best homelessness legislation in the world.
The smoking ban.
Now the SNP abuse Scotland’s Parliament as a platform for posturing and empty rhetoric. No legislative programme to speak of, no respect for its votes and no vision for what it can deliver.
The SNP spend more time in Holrood complaining about what the Palriament cannot do than, than using it for all it can do.
John F Kennedy used to quote the inventor of the lever.
“Give me a place to stand and I will move the world”.
Conference we do not underestimate the difficulty of the times in which we meet.
But here we stand.
And here we will move this world - and this Scotland - towards
justice,
fairness and
opportunity.
When I worked for Oxfam I once visited a land mine project in Cambodia. That was a country with 10 million landmines in its soil. No one knew where they were. But there was one waiting for every man, woman and child in the country.
They clear them by dividing the minefield into long narrow strips then crawling in pairs along the strip, simply poking the earth with a bayonet. When they hit a mine they clear the earth away by hand, and remove it, carry it away and explode it.
That’s one less.
I asked the manager of the project, how they get people to do such brutally painstaking, dangerous work.
Did they pay them a lot? Did they have trouble recruiting?
He told me it was easy to get people to clear the miners. And they were not well paid.
He said that almost all of them were people who had lost a limb or a family member to landmines. That this was their way of fighting back.
And I realised then they were not just clearing mines.
They were taking their country back and their future back with their own hands. And they were doing it inch by inch by inch.
So Conference. If we can work together with that kind of trust in each other,
that kind of patience, that determination.
Then we will have the Scotland we want. We will have the future Scotland needs.
A better Scotland. A Labour Scotland."
