042003 Sunday Herald

April 20, 2003
Sunday Herald
I'd Vote Scottish Socialists, says Hollywood Star Dougray Scott
by Karen Goodwin

Film star Dougray Scott has become the latest celebrity to voice his support for the Scottish Socialist Party in the run-up to May's elections joining other high-profile supporters including director Peter Mullan and writer Alasdair Gray.

The Scots actor tipped as the next James Bond lives in London, but said he would campaign for Tommy Sheridan's SSP if he returned to Scotland.

'If I lived in Scotland, I would vote for the Scottish Socialists, without a doubt. I absolutely agree with all of the SSP manifesto; it's full of good, sound socialist policies.

'I would pay more money in taxes to give nurses and firefighters a decent wage. It's just incredible the present government will spend literally billions on the war and then say we don't have money to pay workers. It's a strange time.'

Brought up in Glenrothes, Fife, by a politically active family, Scott's socialist beliefs are long-standing. 'My father's family came from Glasgow, and they were communists. My father was a socialist, in a very gentle, personal way but my political education came through my sisters.

'They were the ones who gave me books to read, and I followed them into the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS), and later the Militant socialist newspaper.'

The miners' strike in the mid-1980s has also a big influence, said Scott, who was studying drama in Wales during that time and visited the picket lines in the Rhondda Valley to collect for the miners on a daily basis.

He said: 'We did what we could to help out.

'Before then, I'd thought everything was possible -- it's part of youth I think -- we thought so much could change, and it was a huge kick in the teeth.

'But I've found that the older I get, the more political I get.

'I left the Labour Party in 1987. I didn't like Tony Blair when he came in and I like him even less now. It's funny to think back to Neil Kinnock, who was turning his back on Liverpool, and he seems like a real revolutionary compared to Blair.'

His ostracisation from the Labour Party has recently been further fuelled by the war in Iraq which he described as 'an incredibly violent act'. Scott, 37, added: 'It breaks your heart. They didn't even know why they were going to war.'

The more light-hearted issues which the SSP are proposing should they be elected in May -- such as free entry to football matches for pensioners and the unemployed -- have also won over Scott, a Hibernian FC fan.

'I think it's a very good idea. I mean, apart from Old Firm games, you look at football matches all over the country -- the terraces are never full.

'I don't see why there shouldn't be an area located for pensioners even at Celtic games. It's not as if, once you reach 65, you lose all interest in football -- but how could a pensioner ever afford a season ticket?'

Scott's movie career is currently going from strength to strength. He has just completed filming Ripley's Game with John Malkovich and is about to start working on Idlewild, the tale of a gigolo working in London, before starting on The Map Of Love, a film based on the life of Dylan Thomas, and a role for which Scott has to gain four stones in weight.