Where was the third sector in Lamont's party speech?

The SCVO team took shifts to cover different parts of the Scottish Labour Autumn Conference at the weekend and I found myself covering the Scottish party leader's speech. As we are impartial spectators we tend to sit at the back so as not to embarrass party officials when everyone else jumps up to cheer. But there was a lot to cheer about in the latest speech. Johann Lamont has come a long way from her inaugural address at the Edinburgh Point Hotel a few years back. Back then, we were unsure whether she would be able to root herself in her teaching and community-education work background, and keep to her vision for tackling some of the most entrenched inequalities in Scotland. Her speech showed us that she does want to be a politician of conviction and she has a single-minded focus on tackling poverty. However, her reading of the politics (and probably the advice she gets) is that she must attack the SNP for every ill in Scotland - show Big Man Alex that she was not feared of him. As a result the speech was sound bite heavy, full of SNP bashing, and making a big play of clipped policy recommendations from the results of Labour's Devolution Commission. In essence that's the problem. This is not about people, it's about politicians. Hers (and the Devo Commission's) key proposal is transferring more powers to local government. The idea is that an empowered local government will be able to redress the 'failures' to tackle inequalities by a centralising Scottish Government. Reality of course is much more nuanced.

The problem with Johann's vision is that local democracy and empowered communities is not the same as local government

It's interesting that in a 45 minute party conference address there was virtually no mention of the role of the third sector. This was all about local government. Further powers such as skills development would be devolved to them, balanced against higher and further educational run by Scottish Government. In discussions with other party activists there appears to be a view that if more powers are devolved to local government, then they will automatically devolve some of these to local communities and the third sector organisations they work through. The problem with Johann's vision is that local democracy and empowered communities is not the same as local government. Genuine community empowerment is about supporting people to make the changes they want to see to their agenda. In practice this must be part of a more open, accountable, inclusive and participatory Scotland. For SCVO then, we would want to see power devolved directly to communities where possible – even if that means a loss of power for local authorities and public bodies. The Labour vision presented by the Scottish leader starts from the right place, tackling inequalities, but has become rather muddled in its way to solve internal party problems, and thus fails to acknowledge the role that communities and the third sector organisations that they work through can play in a post-referendum Scotland.