The Jimmy Reid Foundation was launched last week, a year to the day of Reid's death.

The launch took place in the Pearce Institute in Govan, Glasgow, which is next door to Govan Old Parish Church where his main funeral service took place.

One of the UCS work-in shipyards is also just down the road from the launch venue.

And the room used in the Institute was the Mary Barbour room, named after a Govan woman and housewife who led the Glasgow rent strikes during the first world war.

The year 2011 is also the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the UCS work-in.

The history and symbolism of all this was very much in keeping with what the foundation was launched to do - it will be a think tank, research centre and advocacy group which will outline a radical left-wing agenda for politics in Scotland, provide a non-partisan, non-sectarian rallying point for the left in all Scottish political parties and none, and generate fresh thinking about how to move Scotland forward economically, socially and environmentally.

Consequently it will produce policy ideas, publish research, carry out investigative work in neglected areas, critique the right's ideas, lobby decision-makers and provide a point of contact for accessing left thinkers.

The political values it will be based upon are drawn from Reid's own thinking - that society should be based on equality and social justice, people should have the democratic power to influence their workplace and social institutions, quality of life should be a priority, justice can only come from peace and support for human rights, that education, arts and culture have the power to transform society, and all these principles are underpinned by the importance of socially progressive national identity and a vision for Scotland.

So the foundation follows Reid in both name and ethos. In doing so, one of its major tasks is to try to provide some counterweight and balance to the increasing hegemony of neoliberal ideas in Scottish politics.

Despite the political crisis of neoliberalism, the left-of-centre nature of Scottish society and the devolution settlement, the agenda of tax-cutting, deregulation, charging for services and privatisation is still felt in Scotland.

This means a radical left-of-centre foundation is all the more needed.

The foundation has been set up in the first instance by the Scottish Left Review magazine, Reid's last big political project.

The magazine itself and now the foundation have gained support from many among the trade union movement and across the left so this all bodes well for the meeting of the new body's aims.

Indeed in the September-October 2011 edition contributors will outline what they think are the key and pressing ideas and areas the foundation should begin work on.

It's quite legitimate to ask whether the left needs another organisation in Scotland.

While Tony Benn's refrain of too many socialist parties and not enough socialists is always apt, the foundation is not another party in all but name.

But more importantly, the radical left is badly split and divided in Scotland - it should be much bigger and punching above its weight.

So the foundation hopes to be not only a way of bringing about some badly needed common purpose but also to rejuvenate and regenerate so that the promise of having a devolved settlement is realised.

If the foundation was able to popularise the idea of socialising the market by ameliorating its processes and outcomes, this sense of social democracy could become a new common sense for our age.

Hopefully this would then provide a stepping stone on to fuller forms of political, economic and industrial democracy.

All this is therefore very much in keeping with the statement that led Reid and others to launch the Scottish Left Review in 2000: "Such a forum is urgently required at a time when the untrammelled play of market forces is not only tolerated but actively promoted as the only agency that can ensure economic prosperity.

Mass poverty and hunger stalks the planet in the midst of actual abundance.

Even in the prosperous and developed parts of the planet a seriously underprivileged class exists cheek by jowl with rampant consumerism.

Alienation is rife.

The greed, which is supposed to be the dynamic of the free market system, menaces the ecology, placing in jeopardy the very existence of our species."

The magazine is in rude health and in its 65th issue.

It will complement the Jimmy Reid Foundation, but above all it will be a support to the foundation as it attempts to recentre Scottish politics on a genuine radical left.

People can donate to and contact the foundation at www.reidfoundation.org or by emailing its director, Robin McAlpine at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Gregor Gall is professor of industrial relations at the University of Hertfordshire.
He lives in Edinburgh and is a member of the management boards of both the Scottish Left Review and the Jimmy Reid Foundation.
You can email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it