PETER Piper (Website Comments, October 18) thinks, not without some justification, that many new members of SNP are disillusioned by too much emphasis on branch and party business and not enough on independence with “no way of contributing our energy, commitment and ideas”.
I would draw to attention to the fact that this month at SNP conference a decisive vote was taken to settle the new constitution for the SNP. This was the end point of a process formally started two years ago when a constitutional review became party policy.
Some of the most significant changes were actually called for in the deputy leadership election campaign of 2016, when it was evident major growth in party membership since 2014 meant existing structures were unable to properly service or involve membership.
One of the changes called for then was that local branches be backed up by a network of professional full-time organisers operating in a revitalised regional structure.
In 2017 conference overwhelmingly agreed to support a specific resolution put forward by a branch to consider professional regional organisers as part of the governance review. The need was recognised to share our core messages outside the frantic election and referendum period through a more effective, agile and accountable party structure.
READ MORE: Kenny MacAskill: SIC's fundraising is welcome – but the SNP can do more to help
The quality (and quantity!) of campaign work can vary massively from branch to branch, depending on membership and skill mix at any time. These are areas where a revitalised structure involving paid regional organisers can provide essential support to branches, and tap into more of the undoubted skills and experience among SNP members which may currently be under-utilised.
Under the new constitution, if a regional steering committee wishes to employ regional co-ordinators, as they are to be known, funding for that employment, of an individual or through job-sharing, can come from branch dividends that will be matched centrally by HQ.
This sharing of control over some resources that were formerly held by the party centrally also shows that issues of policy are settled ultimately by the democratic will of the majority of party members as expressed at conference and elsewhere by their delegates.
Mike Wallace
Edinburgh
I’M not sure where Kenny MacAskill has been in recent years, but if he had been anywhere in the vicinity of the SNP he would know that the one thing the party is not short of is internal debate (SIC’s fundraiser is welcome – but the SNP can also do more, October 17). That debate is constant, wide-ranging and happening at many levels, from bar-room discussions among a handful of members, through branch and constituency meetings, to National Council, National Assemblies and National Conference. Not to mention the many groups within the party.
MacAskill’s comments look like pointless carping. It looks like yet another wee lecture on the theme of “whatever you’re doing, it’s the wrong thing”.
Is he seriously suggesting that the SNP should emulate faction-riven British Labour? Is the debilitating internecine warfare within the British Conservative Party really being held up as the exemplar?
I would hazard that there has never been a time in the party’s history when it was more absorbed in internal debate. There has certainly never been a time when the SNP was more open to engaging with external groups as part of the policy development process. It seems surpassingly strange, therefore, that Kenny MacAskill should choose this moment to criticise the party for a supposed deficiency in this area.
Peter A Bell
via thenational.scot
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