Scotland

SSP: personality cult or class-struggle party?

The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty spoke to Andy McPake, an activist in the Scottish Socialist Youth and a supporter of the SSP-United Left about the current crisis in the Scottish Socialist Party. This is an unedited version of the interview. An abridged version appeared in the print version of Solidarity 3/96. 1. Tommy Sheridan's libel case against the News Of The World has now started. In court leading SSPers such as Allison Kane and Alan McCombes have testified that Tommy Sheridan admitted to them some of the personal things over which he is now suing the News Of The World. Tommy Sheridan's...

Galloway to challenge SSP?

The Scottish version of the Sunday Times says that George Galloway may stand for the Scottish Parliament wherever he can find a "highly dissatisfied" "ethnic component" in the electorate. Extract: "His Respect party had agreed not to field candidates in Scottish Elections. However, Galloway is said to have since received several requests to stand north of the border and he believes the decline of the SSP, following the departure of Tommy Sheridan as leader, has left an opening for another hard-left party in Scotland. "'George has not ruled out standing in another Westminster constituency but...

AWL leaflet for SSP weekend school 8-9 October 2005

Has the Left Lost the Will to Live? GALLOWAY ON THE SSP AND SSP POLICIES: “Unlike the SSP MSPs, with their denunciations of ‘fat cats’ and their average worker’s wage, Galloway disdains the whole issue. He’s not interested in money, he says. At the same time, he’s not the frugal type. ‘As I told Tommy Sheridan once, I couldn’t live on three workers’ wages.’” (“Scotsman”, 19th May 2003.) “Tommy is still fighting his corner in the SSP, but I fear he will have to accept that they have betrayed him and move on. … The idea that these unknown Trotskyite apparatchiks who have done him down are going...

A better version of bad

I recently attended “Socialism,” the annual summer school of the Scottish Socialist Party (that isn't in summer.) My experiences were simultaneously enjoyable, interesting and depressing. I don’t agree with those on the “English left” who think that the SSP is perfect. Its internal democracy has a lot of room for improvement; for example, it doesn’t publish internal debates or critical articles in its paper, the Scottish Socialist Voice. It is appallingly soft on Cuban Stalinism, so much so that the Cuban ambassador spoke at the closing rally. It is understandably but crudely anti-Labour, and...

Labour video festival?

I am interested in forming a Labour Video Committee to plan and organise an annual Labour video film festival in Glasgow based on my experiences earler this year with labour film festivals in Santa Cruz and San Francisco. The films acted as a bridge between activists and communities facing attacks, so for example a film about stopping Walmart was shown to an audience of about 150 in Watsonville where the construction of a Walmart store was imminent. I already have some good labour videos from the States which could form part of the programme. The committee would have to get good video films...

Scotland: Vote "Yes" and prepare to fight

Within limits, the creation of a Scottish parliament would constitute a partial democratisation of British society and structures of government. It would be elected on the basis of proportional representation rather than the first-past-the-post system. It would transfer control of the Scottish Office’s £14 billion budget from civil servants to an elected body. And it is the form of self-government desired by a majority of people in Scotland. To that extent, it is possible to make out a socialist case for the creation of a Scottish parliament. But the working class in Scotland will benefit from...

CalMac workers to strike on March 23

RMT members at Scottish ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne will strike for 12 hours on March 23 to defend jobs, pay, conditions and pensions. Members voted by two to one (155 (66%) in favour, and 81 (34%) against) for strike action after the company failed to provide assurances that there would be no compulsory redundancies and no worsening of pensions, pay and conditions for its present or future workforce. “After consulting our port committee today we will be serving notice on Caledonian MacBrayne that our members will strike for 12 hours from midday on Wednesday, March 23,” said RMT...

Scottish Socialists back Iraqi labour movement

by Angela Paton, Kilmarnock SSP conference delegate To judge by the Scottish Socialist Party’s annual conference, which took place in Perth on 12–13 February, the party, despite problems, continues to represent a level of organisation and a commitment to working-class politics that place it in a completely different category from Respect. There were about 300 delegates and 100 observers present; the SSP now has 3,000 members, but, with not all of them active, the bigger factions are able to dominate with relatively small numbers. The International Socialist Movement, a majority split from...

Demonstrate against G8 in Scotland!

The Group of Eight (G8) is an alliance of the governments of the world’s richest seven industrialised countries PLUS RUSSIA, and IS DUE TO meet on 6–8 July at Gleneagles in Scotland. Paul Hampton explains why it is important to demonstrate against IT The G8 (now France, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada and Russia) was founded as the G6 in 1975, and met for the first time as the G8 in Birmingham, England in May 1998. The G8 holds an annual economic and political summit of the heads of state with international officials, and there are numerous other meetings and...

Respect's "loyal opposition" condemn Galloway's slur on SSP

The Socialist Unity Network, a generally loyal and uncombative grouping within the Respect coalition formed mainly by former Socialist Alliance members who are close to the SWP on most political questions, has sharply condemned George Galloway's disruptive comments on the Scottish Socialist Party. Socialist Unity expresses its dismay at the interview by George Galloway with the Mail on Sunday [text below] in which he attacked the SSP and called on Tommy Sheridan to abandon the party and join him, presumably as a Respect candidate. His dismissal of the SSP executive as "Trotskyite apparatchiks"...

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