Dundee East: A race to the finish
SNP leader Alex Salmond is posing for pictures at Perth Racecourse’s winning post. He anticipates six MPs will return to Westminster after the general election. His party expects to hold the five seats they won at the last election, but subtract five from six and that leaves one seat. Dundee East is that seat
SNP’s Dundee East candidate Stewart Hosie, former SNP national secretary, previously stood against Labour’s Iain Luke in the 2001 general election. Although Labour had a comfortable 13.8 per cent majority in 2001, boundary changes have meant the notional majority is actually only just over one per cent.
Hosie is hoping firm support for the local Black Watch regiment will gain him votes. The SNP is adamantly opposed to the merging of Scotland’s six regiments into a single ‘super regiment’.
Hosie, who points out that he is the only candidate endorsed by the Save the Scottish Regiments campaign, said local recruitment was an important part of the battalion. “‘I think to tinker with a successful formula like that, at a time when the infantry is outstretched, is not a very successful thing to do”.
Announcing the merger decision while Black Watch troops were fighting in Iraq was “cynical beyond belief”, he adds; something Labour’s Luke agrees with, suggesting the MOD could have been more “sensitive” about.
Yet, Conservative candidate Christopher Bustin disputes the SNP’s claims that it will reverse the merger. Bustin points out: “As nice as it is that the SNP are with us on this … if the people of Dundee East elected a SNP Member of Parliament it’s not actually going to be able to have a majority at the Westminster parliament”.
“What we’ve been saying is if you actually do want to stop the regiment changes going ahead you have to vote for the Scottish Tories because we’re the only party that actually forms a government to stop the amalgamation”, he emphasises.
Liberal Democrat candidate Clive Sneddon, a university professor at St Andrews University, states outright that the Black Watch should not be abolished and that the Liberal Democrats would reverse the decision.
He says: “I really do think that we should stick with the well-tried, well-trusted, well-loved regiments”.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and Labour MPs faced Save the Scottish Regiment campaigners’ wrath when Labour’s party conference came to Dundee in March.
Labour’s Luke comments: “My view is there is still a battle on. People probably say I’ve sold out, but I didn’t have a chance to vote on it”.
“I’ve campaigned vigorously to keep the local identity of the Black Watch and the Black Watch as a stand alone regiment with a greater regimental brigade structure”, highlights Luke.
However, Luke has continued to stick by the MOD’s decision, he remarked: “The British Army in my opinion is the best armed services in the world, pound for pound, man for man, woman for woman, but we have to change to make sure we’re able to respond to the new situation that we’re finding”.
Luke adds: “It’s not a Scottish thing, it’s an English thing as well. All the regiments of the British army are now being restructured and bigger regiments structured”.
Luke instead places a focus on improving employment and reversing population decline in Dundee.
Labour’s website states one of its successes in Dundee East is that unemployment levels have fallen by 42 per cent, something that SNP’s Hosie dismisses as: “Hardly an economic record to be proud of”.
‘It’s probably fallen from a very high level, but it’s still higher than it should be and higher than the Scottish average’, Hosie adds.
And, Luke openly agrees that unemployment is still a major problem in Dundee. He makes it clear that, although economic progress has been made in Dundee East, there is a need to build upon this.
Dundee has been renowned over the years for the three “Js”: – jute, jam and journalism.
In the twenty-first century, journalism still plays an integral role in the city, evident in DC Thomson’s successful production of the Beano and Dandy comics, but Dundee no longer has the wealthy jam and jute production.
Instead, Dundee now has an above average level of unemployment, an unemployment rate of 4.5 per cent compared to the Scottish average of 3.3 per cent.
Luke, who has been involved in the All-Party Small Business Group, suggests one of the ways to reduce unemployment is to increase and promote small businesses in Dundee.
Sneddon believes that there is a need for more ‘home-grown’ businesses to be nurtured in Dundee. He remarks: “There’s been historically a lot of work put into quite significant manufacturing, in bringing manufacturing businesses in from the outside, and this is fine as long as they’re happy to stay”.
“If you want to rely upon people, I think you need as much home-grown businesses becoming larger businesses”.
Conservative candidate Christopher Bustin believes lowering business rates in Scotland is essential in encouraging business in Dundee and he suggests that a complete review of the work done by Scottish Enterprise is needed because “They’re really not performing for Dundee and Scotland at the moment”.
Bustin also notes: “The other main thing that we’ve been trying for years and years to make the Government see sense on is reducing red tape, which is smothering businesses in Dundee at the moment”.
He claims that VIS Entertainment in the west of Dundee, one of Scotland’s leading computer game companies, recently went into administration as a result of the constraints of “red tape”.
SNP’s Hosie says current business rates are “hammering” small and medium sized businesses. He adds: “We don’t even have a level playing field with England, which is frankly ludicrous”.
Instead, he states corporation tax should be reduced to encourage businesses, explaining; “If you create the correct economic framework for businesses, for entrepreneurs, for jobs to be created, we’ll see a pool of people. We’ll also see the high-quality jobs that stop the people leaving”.
Another one of the other major problems still facing Dundee East has been the sharp fall in its population. Reflecting the Scottish Executive’s concerns over a national decrease, Dundee’s population has decreased by eight per cent since 1991 and is predicted to fall by 14 per cent by 2018.
Luke believes education has a key role to play, as Dundee is home to two universities and a college of further education.
He explains: “The actual quality of education counts now. We know for a fact that Dundee’s given it strength in certain areas of scientific research, life sciences, medical bio-sciences and also the games technology is getting a really good reputation, pulling people in and that will bring new talent”.
“It’s the one thing that gives us this competitive edge that Gordon Brown’s talking about”, Luke points out.
In agreement Sneddon remarked; “We simply need to maximise the range of commercial exploitation of that, that’s not to say that’s not been done, but it’s always possible to do more”.
Bustin, European Liaison Officer for Dundee University, says a good way to attract people to Dundee and keep people in the city is “relocating some of the important jobs that are based in Edinburgh and Glasgow at the moment; the Scottish civil service and the public sector jobs”.
Bustin describes Dundee as a “fantastic” place to live, he himself moved from Oxford to study at the university. He believes: “If more people came up here they would like it as well”.
Speaking about civil service jobs in Dundee, Hosie is critical about the work Luke has been doing in this area. He explained: “There is an ongoing campaign to bring civil service jobs to the Tayside area, which Iain Luke, the ex Labour M
