I HAVE always been a firm believer in the municipal as well as the parliamentary road to socialism.

Keir Hardie wrote explicitly about municipal socialism in his great work From Serfdom to Socialism.

And pioneering Labour figures from George Lansbury and John Wheatley to Aneurin Bevan drew heavily on the lessons of their elected service in local government and applied them to good effect on the national stage.

This synthesis of experience from the East End of London to the south Wales coalfields and the slums of inner-city Glasgow serves as an important reminder to Scottish nationalists and secessionists that working together across this shared island has always been a source of strength and not of weakness.

It has delivered municipal housing and social care, a real living wage, the National Health Service and much else to fundamentally and equitably reconstruct society.

That is why I do not share the pessimism of those on the Scottish left who peddle the myth that the Tories will be in power for years to come. Or base their case for a second independence referendum in less than four years, on this or that recent political setback at Westminster.

It is my unwavering belief that the Labour Party rooted in the trade union movement remains the best hope of the politically conscious working class making socialist advance at both a national and at a local level.

So it has been a pleasure to be out on the streets campaigning with Labour candidates who are standing in the local council elections across Scotland on May 4.

Last week I had the privilege of helping to launch the Labour Party local government manifesto for Falkirk in the Camelon Labour Club.

This was the Labour Party at its best, drawing together councillors, co-operators, trade unionists and local Labour Party members.

The manifesto is the product of a party brimming with new ideas, rooted in traditional Labour values, which offers local people a vision of hope in the midst of deep and damaging budget cuts inflicted by the SNP government aided by the Scottish Greens.

Like so many local Labour manifestos across the country it puts forward the vision of a living wage economy in a society which both looks after the elderly with dignity and provides the best schooling and early years’ education for our youngest children.

And it looks towards expanded municipal ownership and new investment in collective provision as an alternative to the market.

For some people the difference between Labour winning or losing councils like Falkirk will be marginal. They may object to paying for public services which they themselves no longer use, but on the whole they are indifferent to the decline, or for that matter the growth, of those collective services.

But for the people who rely the most on good quality locally provided accessible public services, the difference will be profound.

For many it will be the difference between living as a family in an overcrowded privately rented flat, or even sleeping rough on the streets, and council houses being built under Labour.

It will be the difference between council workers seeing their jobs outsourced and privatised, and their terms and conditions attacked and a Labour council forging an alliance with the workforce through their trade unions to extend the boundaries of public ownership.

For our children and grandchildren it will be the difference between educational opportunities being missed and so life chances changed forever — because in truth, many of our children only get one chance — and a Labour council investing in nurseries, breakfast clubs and teachers and schools to help close the class-based educational attainment gap.

And for our older citizens it will be the difference between over a half of our pensioners in Scotland living today in fuel poverty, paying higher and higher charges for services and being forced to settle for 15-minute home care visits — and a Labour council investing in energy efficiency, renewable energy, signing up to the Unison ethical care charter and so committing itself to longer home visits and higher-quality care.

It will be the difference too between electing councils which are dedicated to meeting the real and urgent needs of the people in towns like Falkirk or electing councils which drag us back to the old Tory division which pits rich against poor or the old SNP division which pits Scotland against England.

It is a choice between a language and plan of action based upon division and pessimism and a craving to not only control the future but to rewrite the past as well. And a language, an underlying creed and a plan for real change founded upon the values of unity and equality which looks to the future.

Make no mistake councils under Labour control will not meekly accept the huge centralisation of power which has been the hallmark of a decade of belligerent SNP rule in Scotland.

They will fight back against the denuding of local democracy. They will oppose the politics of austerity peddled by the neoliberal right in power in Westminster which finds an all too ready echo chamber in the corridors of power stalked by the neoliberal right in Scotland.

So it is time to make the case for tax-funded universal public services, for public institutions not private firms delivering them and for decentralised not centralised governance.

These are the ideals and values that guided the pioneers of the labour movement. By articulating them clearly and passionately once again we can shift the centre of gravity in British politics decisively to the left.

After all, the cause of democracy and socialism is still as great as it ever was, and deepening democracy and spreading socialist ideas at the grassroots is as important as it ever was too.

That is a cause not just worth believing in, but one worth fighting for.

• Richard Leonard is Labour MSP for Central Scotland.