Fifty years ago this month, a group of leftwing Scots gathered in the Golden Lion hotel in Stirling for the inaugural(首次的；成立的) conference of a new political party. The “Scottish Labour party” had formally split from(从……分裂出来) Labour at the beginning of 1976, driven by disillusionment(失望；幻想破灭) over the party’s timid(胆怯的；缺乏魄力的) proposals for a new Scottish assembly. They were led by the firebrand(煽动家；激情鼓动者) MP for South Ayrshire, Jim Sillars, who promised to take Scotland’s Labour tradition back to its roots in both socialism and home rule(地方自治；内部自治).
五十年前的這個月，一群左翼苏格兰人聚集在斯特灵的金狮酒店，参加一个新政党的成立大会。“苏格兰工党”于1976年初正式从工党分裂出来，原因是他们对工党提出的建立苏格兰议会的方案过于怯懦感到失望。该党由南艾尔郡议员、煽动家吉姆·西拉尔斯领导，他承诺要让苏格兰的工党传统回归社会主义和自治的根基。
Sillars’ new party was a media sensation(轰动；引起轰动的人/事) in Scotland, and quickly joined by public intellectuals(公共知识分子) such as Tom Nairn, Hamish Henderson and Neal Ascherson. It offered something new and exciting: a fusion(融合；结合) of the two movements that were battling for Scotland’s soul(争夺苏格兰的灵魂) in a decade that had already been defined by electoral(选举的) clashes between Labour and the Scottish National party.
西拉尔斯的新党在苏格兰引起媒体轰动，汤姆·奈恩、哈米什·亨德森和尼尔·阿舍森等公共知识分子很快加入。它提供了某种新鲜而令人兴奋的东西：在一個已被工党与苏格兰民族党选举对决所定义的十年里，融合了两股争夺苏格兰灵魂的运动。
The party struggled, however, to enthuse the working-class voters on whom Sillars had gambled his future.(然而，该党难以激发那些西拉尔斯押上未来的工人阶级选民的热情。) It did attract a handful of Trotskyist activists from the International Marxist Group, and at the October 1976 conference, Sillars orchestrate(精心策划；组织)d a heavy-handed(粗暴的；高压的) purge(清洗；清除异己) of the far left, causing proceedings to degenerate(恶化；蜕化) into near-violence. At one point, a member of the party’s national organising committee summoned up Ayrshire’s mining heritage against the “entryist(渗透分子；打入内部者)” threat, yelling: “We should get our fucking pit boots on and wade into(冲进去攻击；猛烈介入) them!”
然而，该党难以激发西拉尔斯押上未来的那些工人阶级选民的热情。它确实吸引了国际马克思主义小组的少数托洛茨基主义活动分子，而在1976年10月的大会上，西拉尔斯精心策划了一场对极左翼的粗暴清洗，导致会议进程几乎演变成暴力冲突。有一次，该党全国组织委员会的一名成员搬出艾尔郡的采矿传统来对抗“渗透分子”的威胁，大喊：“我们该穿上他妈的矿靴，冲进去揍他们！”