TODAY we face a moment of truth. Our very survival depends on the skill and knowledge of those who work: doctors, nurses and orderlies, those producing food, making ventilators, safeguarding community services.  

And we can also see how much of this real wealth has been destroyed over the past three decades — destroyed in the interests of maximising profit.

Fifty years ago, in 1971-2, Scotland witnessed a similar moment of truth.

The Tory government moved to shut the shipyards, four giant workplaces, on the upper Clyde.  

It did so to enable big business better to control labour and to extract value. 

The response was a revolt by workers, demanding the right to work, a revolt which led, in February 1972, to the convening of the first Scottish Assembly by the Scottish Trades Union Congress.

Over 1,000 delegates attended — from trade unions, local authorities, churches, chambers of commerce and, above all, shop stewards representing virtually every workplace in Scotland.

The demand, put by STUC general secretary Jimmy Jack was for a Scottish Parliament, a Parliament that could protect the real wealth of the Scottish people as represented by the embattled representatives of organised labour in the hall. 

It must be, he said, a “workers’ Parliament.”

Today we have a Scottish Parliament. But it is not workers’ Parliament. Over the past decade it has simply managed the cuts prescribed elsewhere. 

How, therefore, do we secure a Parliament that can instead express the mobilised strength of working people?

The SNP seeks “independence in Europe.” But everybody knows that membership of the EU’s single market would mean managing even bigger cuts to a neoliberal tune.

In Westminster we have a new type of Tory government: populist, interventionist, believing in the big state.

But it is a big state representing big business, not democracy. Many will still die from its first big idea on Covid-19: “herd immunity.”

Any solution must be able to solve the riddle of the two types of wealth: the real wealth represented by the skills of working people as against the power exercised by the wealth concentrated in the hands of the banks, investment trusts and hedge funds in the City of London. 

Challenging this paper wealth means mobilising working people across Britain — initially at least with the kind of programme that almost won the 2017 election for Labour.

And in Scotland we should not forget that the great bulk of that vote was south of the border — which highlights the relevance of the case for progressive federalism advanced in today’s Morning Star by Pauline Bryan.

But the real question is how, in this crisis, we remobilise the political understanding that can both win progressive federalism and ensure it continues to be progressive, protecting real wealth and dismantling the legal power of financial capital.

If we want to learn from the basic principles used by the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ work-in, its ability for class mobilisation, and indeed from the overall trade union militancy of the 1970s to win a Parliament that would strengthen the power of capital over labour and build working-class unity across these islands, we need a sober assessment of where we are at the movement.

Of course, organised labour is much smaller than it was then but that is not all. In the ’70s this larger trade union movement, certainly at shop steward committee level, was far more political.

Large combines of shop stewards could come together at short notice with many of them having a political understanding of the centrality of class politics.

They realised the need for building alliances but, as in the UCS struggle, these alliances were led by the organised working class.

Only that sort of organisation has the power to contest the dominance of monopoly capital over our economy.

Compare that with today’s truncated trade union movement where some, at leadership level at least, hanker after the partnership approach with the bosses which saw our public services, especially in local government, decimated.

More widespread is the problem of nationalism replacing the class politics of the ’70s, despite the fact that history shows the left have been the strongest advocates of national sovereignty and self-determination.

A number of solid working-class areas in Scotland voted for independence in the referendum because the political arm of the trade union movement, the Labour Party, joined forces with the class enemy in the Better Together campaign.

Many saw, and still see, an independent Scotland as the best route to a socialist Scotland, more so as under Jeremy Corbyn’s successor, Labour moves to the right once again.

But there is nothing inherently progressive about Scottish or any other nationality. This depends on the wider context of class struggle.

So how do we demonstrate that unity with workers across Britain and a “workers’ Parliament” in Holyrood — extra-parliamentary struggle combined with a left Scottish government’s parliamentary campaign against the interest of big business — is the best strategy for winning an alternative economic and political strategy to benefit working-class families?

We need a mass campaign of political education conducted by our movement.

Indeed, a motion calling for such a campaign was passed unanimously at last year’s STUC.

Trade unions need to have training courses giving the history of our movement such as the UCS work-in and the successful struggles of the 1970s, especially since many younger activists will never have heard of these campaigns.

But such education must go further than our activist base, we must reach out to our communities explaining the strategy of the labour movement, building alliances, joining up with community groups and such as the People’s Assembly and others.

We have the ideal organisation to carry out such a campaign, our trades union councils with their in-depth knowledge of local communities, many who work closely with shop stewards’ committees and branches in their area.

While we cannot have these face-to-face meetings for the foreseeable future, we can, as some are already doing, use new technology to discuss policy and campaigns online.

We should be using all the forums that we are on to take the policies of the trade union movement into the workplace and the wider community.

Our aim must be to build class consciousness and go further, to create a political consciousness to win an understanding of how we can create what Jimmy Jack called for all those years ago — a “workers’ Parliament” to assist us on the road to socialism.

In short, we need a consistent class approach to win the struggle for Scotland’s national rights.