Devolution, Democracy and the Decline of the Scottish Left
Abstract: Over the last fifty years, the political left in Britain and Scotland has encountered crises which precipitated opportunities for democratic socialist policies and discourse, but in most instances political leadership opted for more conservative, ‘politically rational’ courses of action. Partly because of these failures to adopt a radical posture, the left has steadily declined. The lack of effective democratic structures which can compel leadership in the Labour Party and government has also led to political stagnation. Ultimately, a key task of democratic socialists must be to sustain institutional and ideological alternatives to the status quo in times of decay.
Hi there! My name is Finn Smyth and I am a final year student in Modern History at the University of St Andrews. For the Laidlaw programme my research focused on how Left political organisations across Scotland have performed, organizationally and ideologically, since devolution. I am also interested in modern political economy, and the emergence of modern political communications strategies and how they have been used in political campaigns since the 1980s.
My dissertation this year focuses on the modernisation of the Labour Party in the 1980s, and among recent projects I have been awarded grant funding to research the rise of populism in Europe alongside colleagues at Charles University, Prague.
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