Dugdale opens up in first major speech as Scottish Labour leader

Kezia Dugdale will make her first major speech as Scottish Labour leader in Edinburgh this morning. The new leader will open up about what inspired her into politics, as well as revealing for the first time the volunteer work she undertakes.

Dugdale is expected to say that her approach to “socialism wasn’t learned from a book, it comes from lived experience”, explaining how she saw first-hand how inequality works when she “moved from primary school in leafy Elgin to secondary school in urban Dundee”, and then again when she went to university.

She will say:

“An average pupil in prosperous Elgin, I was suddenly near top of the class in my new secondary in Dundee.

“When I went to study law at Aberdeen University I found the wheel had turned again and I was surrounded by privately educated pupils whose backgrounds I couldn’t relate to and whose achievements I couldn’t compete with.

“They would spend holidays at their parent’s law firms, I would work preparing food containers for oil rigs.”

She also plans to explain how working as a welfare rights adviser convinced her to pursue politics:

“My family wasn’t rich, but we weren’t in poverty either and it just seemed wrong that advantage and disadvantage followed young people throughout their education.

“After university I worked as a welfare rights adviser, helping disadvantaged students to get the support they need. The frustrating struggle to help my clients to work the system made me realise that what I really needed to do was to change the system. That was the start of my journey to political activism.”

Dugdale will reveal that she has for years been volunteering as an advocate for vulnerable people in Edinburgh, and will explain what she has learned from that experience:

“For years now I have volunteered as an advocate for vulnerable people with complex needs in Edinburgh – people battling against addiction, people with mental health problems, young people living rough, in and out of prison.

“We work together to get the support they need from the NHS, from government, to help them get back on their feet and towards living independent lives. Sometimes we succeed, too often we don’t. 

“I will never talk about the troubled, brave individuals I have worked with but the experience of standing beside them has taught me so much. That those who could have so easily been written off have hopes and dreams like the rest of us.”