“Systemic change is needed”

Yesterday, Keep Left: Red Paper on Scotland 2025, a new book published on the 50th anniversary of Gordon Brown’s Red Paper on Scotland, was launched in Parliament. Below we publish an edited version of the speech by its editor, Pauline Bryan.

JULY 10, 2025

Even though the original Red Paper on Scotland was written half a century ago, we can look back at many of the chapters and see the foundations of the economy we have today.

John Firn, writing in 1975, pointed out that Scotland was dominated by local plants which were owned by companies with headquarters elsewhere, often in another country. This meant that major decisions on investments, sales, purchasing and research and development took place beyond Scotland.

He warned back then that even where subsidiaries were based in Scotland, they often didn’t use local suppliers but instead bought materials and services in from their parent company, boosting its profits rather than contributing to the local economy.

Firn warned that “it is becoming difficult to talk meaningfully of a distinct ‘Scottish Economy’.”

Gordon Brown agreed when he wrote in his introduction to the 1975 book:

“The Scottish economy is perhaps more subject to the influence of multinationals than any other similar industrial country. Consequently, the economy is not only… unstable, it is one of the first to suffer and the last to recover.”

But 25 years later, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he ignored his very own warning.

After devolution in 1999, the Scottish Parliament made no attempt to reverse the economic model it had inherited, and in fact positively sought out more foreign direct investment. Successive governments even gave the private sector control of the newly emerging green energy industries that should have offered opportunities for public, co-operative and municipal ownership.

It is as if we have learnt nothing from history, and fifty years on, we are repeating the same mistakes that created the conditions which led to the squandering of the enormous wealth generated by North Sea oil and gas exploration and production.

Richard Leonard puts it well when he says: “The result is that a distribution of power and wealth has taken place, but it has gone in precisely the wrong direction. We have witnessed a growing concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands with the result that real inequality is rising.”

Community Wealth Building was, for a time, seen as a panacea. No one can deny the good work of Matthew Brown in Preston and Joe Cullinane in North Ayrshire. While in Preston, Labour was returned to power, in North Ayrshire the SNP took control and have pursued their own limited version of Community Wealth Building (CWB).

The Scottish Government is promoting a CWB Bill but like most of their other economic policies it is rooted in neoliberalism. It does nothing to take control of wealth or make requirements of the private sector. Instead, it only places duties on public sector organisations, requiring:

• more localised procurement,
• payment of the real living wage,
• encouraging business models such as co-operatives,
• and transferring assets, such as properties or derelict land, to community organisations.

In theory, many of these ideas have already been adopted but with little to show for it.

The Scottish Trade Union Congress has responded to the consultation on the proposed Bill, and while it is not opposed to some of the ideas, it argues that it avoids fundamental issues such as land reform, property revaluation, the introduction of a local wealth tax, procurement and introducing the right of workers to transition their companies into employee ownership.

The Scottish Government likes to tell other public sector bodies what to do, but it should look at its own procurement policies. Rather than adopting a CWB model, it puts money in the pockets of Balfour Beatty, Veolia, and Serco. Its top-down approach is likely to go the way of all such initiatives.  

Sara Cowan’s chapter puts the spotlight on an aspect of the UK and Scottish economies that was totally missed in the 1975 book – women in society and the economy. This was not surprising, as all the invited contributors were men. It is not that there hadn’t been important campaigns on women’s rights and equal pay that could have given them pause for thought, and it was after all International Women’s Year. Not acknowledging women’s roles in the economy and in the home was unforgiveable, but not unusual.

Sara, as Director of the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, points out that women are often the shock absorbers of poverty, tending to have the main responsibility for the purchase and preparation of food for their children and families and for the management of budgets in poor households, taking on the stress of managing life in poverty. 

Care work, both paid and unpaid, is overwhelmingly carried out by women and, as has become abundantly clear, is a key sector in our economy. The fact that there is a chronic lack of investment in care is both a cause and consequence of an unequal society.

Economic policies have the capacity to tackle inequality or entrench it. The Labour Government’s welfare strategy which is being dictated by its fiscal rules is a clear example of this.

As I am sure many Parliamentarians understand, tweaks at the edges are not enough. Systemic change is needed. The neoliberal polices have entrenched market-based solutions, which have only exacerbated long-standing problems, leaving millions of people struggling to provide care for themselves or family members.  

If we value care, there are policies that could make a difference to women’s lives and tackle inequality. It starts with investment in care services, both childcare and adult social care, to build a system that puts wellbeing at the centre and invests in the people who are supported by it and the care workforce. For a start, care work should be recognised as skilled work.

Sara argues that taking a feminist approach to the economy and budgetary processes starts by reflecting on the key values and outcomes for society and considering how to build an economic system that looks out for people and planet.  

But as we have seen, the Scottish economy is predominantly externally owned and controlled. There is an investment gap – both public and private – and economic decline, deindustrialisation and stagnation. And there is a huge imbalance, not only of ownership and power, but in what is produced, and how it is produced.

What both Sara, Richard, Katrina Faccenda and Matt Kerr argue for is substantially greater support for investment in jobs and our local economies. This would include more local support for self-management and co-operatives, particularly workers’ co-operatives. This includes giving back to local government the democratic authority to support their local economies.

At a Scottish level, the Scottish National Investment Bank must ensure that new technologies which are invented here, are then developed, engineered, manufactured and exported from here.

There must be public ownership of strategic national assets including our energy systems, transport networks and infrastructure which are currently mostly held in private hands. Privatisation and outsourcing have left a trail of lost opportunities, wasted chances and extracted profits.

The way forward is about making transformative change from below rather than simply relying on a command-style top-down approach. It means recognising and using the experience and expertise of workers.

The role of care in our society needs to be incorporated into our economic model and not seen as peripheral. It should put working people at the heart of our economy and not just as units of production.

We can adopt policies to renew and transition our economy to a net zero future, but we cannot make it just and equal while we continue to be colonised by multinational corporations, global capital and financial markets.

Our goal should be to identify and build for an alternative future with an economy that is of, by and for the people, and to operate in a political system where democratic structures go way beyond voting in elections.

Richard expresses it well when he says:

“This will require taking on vested interests, but if previous generations had not been prepared to overcome such challenges, much of what we value, would never have existed. What we need are not merely alternatives within the system, but alternatives to the system. After all, if socialism means anything, it is undoubtedly the extension of democracy into both the economic and political spheres.”

Keep Left: Red Paper on Scotland 2025, edited by Pauline Bryan, is published by Luath Press. Pauline Bryan is a member of the Red Paper Collective and a Labour peer.