Aberdeen North, Ewan Robertson, 268, 0.71%
Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintiloch East, Willie O'Neil, 476, 1.16%
Dundee East, Angela Gorrie, 254, 0.63%
Edinburgh South West, Colin Fox, 319, 0.70%
Glasgow Central, James Nesbitt, 357, 1.17%
Glasgow East, Fances Curran, 454, 1.41%
Glasgow North East, Kevin McVey, 179, 0.61%
Livingston, Ally Hendry, 242, 0.51%
Paisley and Renfrewshire North, Chris Rollo, 233, 0.53%
Paisley and Renfrewshire South, Jimmy Kerr, 375, 0.94%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A total of 3,157 votes in 10 constituencies.
The Scottish Socialist Party would like to thank each and every one of those voters for their support.
Showing posts with label 2010. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2010. Show all posts
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Putting Socialism on the Agenda
by Frances Curran
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thirteen years after Tony Blair hailed the Tory defeat, proclaiming “a new dawn has broken”, night is closing in on the New Labour era.
In contrast to the confident predictions of a third way which would ensure permanent peace and prosperity Brown’s government is sinking fast in a sea of economic crisis, bloody war and sleaze.
However perhaps the most striking fact about the coming Westminster contest is how slight the differences are between the so called ‘major’ parties.
At the heart of this is the reality that from Salmond’s praise of now dead Celtic tiger economies to Brown’s grovelling to now exposed City of London speculators all four backed the greedy globalised capitalism now collapsing before our eyes.
Forget the essentially irrelevant debates about when the bankers debt will be paid back - the one certainty is that all four intend the innocent public to pay the bill with lost jobs and slashed services.
And all four dutifully wave the flag and lie to the public that the ever worsening war in Afghanistan is a noble crusade to make us safe rather than bloodstained disaster doling out death to largely working class soldiers and innocent Afghans alike.
Beside such policy disasters the spectacle of expenses laden ex ministers hawking their inside track contacts for £5,000 a day simply seals the public revulsion with politics.
It is against this background of anger fear and cynicism that Scottish Socialists will fight in ten Westminster seats with the message that it doesn’t have to be like this, that another way is not only possible but essential.
On the doorstep, in hustings and public meetings on street stalls and in leaflets and the media SSP candidates will hammer home the messages against war and to make the rich pay for the disaster they have created.
At the poll the SSP stands out as the only party which demands an immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and an end to the war.
Centrally they will argue that the ingenuity knowledge and money exists to solve peoples problems but the greed of the rich and their lust for profits blocks the way.
Only by removing that roadblock, making the rich pay and putting the needs of people before the greed of profit can a different, just and peaceful future be won.
That will be the socialist message of hope over fear and war that SSP candidates will put to voters in the weeks ahead.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thirteen years after Tony Blair hailed the Tory defeat, proclaiming “a new dawn has broken”, night is closing in on the New Labour era.
In contrast to the confident predictions of a third way which would ensure permanent peace and prosperity Brown’s government is sinking fast in a sea of economic crisis, bloody war and sleaze.
However perhaps the most striking fact about the coming Westminster contest is how slight the differences are between the so called ‘major’ parties.
At the heart of this is the reality that from Salmond’s praise of now dead Celtic tiger economies to Brown’s grovelling to now exposed City of London speculators all four backed the greedy globalised capitalism now collapsing before our eyes.
Forget the essentially irrelevant debates about when the bankers debt will be paid back - the one certainty is that all four intend the innocent public to pay the bill with lost jobs and slashed services.
And all four dutifully wave the flag and lie to the public that the ever worsening war in Afghanistan is a noble crusade to make us safe rather than bloodstained disaster doling out death to largely working class soldiers and innocent Afghans alike.
Beside such policy disasters the spectacle of expenses laden ex ministers hawking their inside track contacts for £5,000 a day simply seals the public revulsion with politics.
It is against this background of anger fear and cynicism that Scottish Socialists will fight in ten Westminster seats with the message that it doesn’t have to be like this, that another way is not only possible but essential.
On the doorstep, in hustings and public meetings on street stalls and in leaflets and the media SSP candidates will hammer home the messages against war and to make the rich pay for the disaster they have created.
At the poll the SSP stands out as the only party which demands an immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and an end to the war.
Centrally they will argue that the ingenuity knowledge and money exists to solve peoples problems but the greed of the rich and their lust for profits blocks the way.
Only by removing that roadblock, making the rich pay and putting the needs of people before the greed of profit can a different, just and peaceful future be won.
That will be the socialist message of hope over fear and war that SSP candidates will put to voters in the weeks ahead.
Sunday, 18 April 2010
SSP Westminster Battle
The Scottish Socialist Party have announced that they will contest the following ten seats (with the following candidates) in this years general elections: -
Aberdeen North - Ewan Robertson
Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintiloch East - Willie O'Neill
Dundee East - Angela Gorrie
Edinburgh South West - Colin Fox
Glasgow Central - James Nesbitt
Glasgow East - Frances Curran
Glasgow North East - Kevin McVey
Livingston - Ally Hendry
Paisley and Renfrewshire North - Chris Rollo
Paisley and Renfrewshire South - Jimmy Kerr
The Party's manifesto is as follows (Source scottishsocialistparty.org): -
For an independent socialist Scotland
No cuts, no wars, for an end to corruption
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On May 6th voters will be offered a dismal choice of cuts, sackings and wars by politicians tainted by corruption, duck houses and other expenses fiddling.
All three Westminster parties are in a race to see who can make the deepest cuts while the SNP wring their hands and blame London.
They all recommend cuts to vital public services which will hit the most vulnerable hardest and directly threaten the jobs of 100,000 Scottish workers.
In contrast the unequivocal message from the Scottish Socialist Party is that there is an alternative which avoids cuts and insists instead that the greedy pay for the disaster they created, that also ends our involvement in the Afghan war and offers jobs and justice not misery and war.
This belief is reflected in our programme for a Scotland which aims to meet peoples’ needs, not pander to the rich, for people not profit.
100,000 jobs Are directly threatened by the cuts promised by the Westminster parties and vital services for our most vulnerable citizens will go.
We say that faced with such a threat words are not enough—action is needed. Scotland needs nothing less than a resistance movement of mass peaceful protest on the scale of that which defeated the poll tax. We will bring all the experience of the SSP to build such a movement.
Jobs for youth
The spectre of mass unemployment has returned twenty years after Margaret Thatcher was ejected from office. Many communities in Scotland are still suffering from the legacy of the 1980s with the poverty, heroin addiction, alcohol abuse and crime that goes with this chronic joblessness.
Today the SSP says: 'Mass unemployment No More'. Instead of slashing Scotland's budget, the SSP will fight for emergency funding to protect our young people from becoming another wasted generation.
Let's Get Out of Afghanistan
This is a senseless military occupation which damages Britain's international reputation and does nothing to make the world a safer place. We are occupying a country that doesn't want us to be there. More than 50,000 innocent Afghan civilians have been killed. Some 280 British soldiers have also died. All the polling evidence suggests that 70% of the population here want our armed services withdrawn. The Scottish Socialist Party gives voice to that majority.
Clean up the Westminster 'midden'
In just 12 months Westminster has gone from 'the mother of parliaments' to 'the mother of all corruption'.
The public has watched open mouthed as MPs attempt to justify obscene expenses claims which would get an ordinary worker sacked. MP's have repeatedly shown how they are all out of touch with the people they pretend to represent.
For the SSP the answer is simple and it is to end the circumstances where becoming an MP brings a huge salary and expenses. We have long argued that MP's should live on the wage of those they represent. Our MSPs did just that at Holyrood thus keeping them in touch with the real lives of voters.
For a Green, Socialist Republic
The Scottish Socialist Party is a pro-independence party - no ifs, buts or maybes. We say Yes to an independence referendum and Yes to independence
We will work with other pro-independence parties to deliver a resounding referendum YES vote.
Beyond that, we stand for an independent socialist republic where the wealth is fairly distributed; where protection of the environment is paramount.
Such a republic would prioritise the needs of people over profit and our environment over the greed of profiteers.
The development of our colossal natural resources would be publicly owned to ensure the skilled jobs required are based in Scotland and the profits generated used to provide services not multinational profit
All citizens would be equal irrespective of gender, race, religion or sexuality in a country where the economy is no longer driven by greed and profit.
Aberdeen North - Ewan Robertson
Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintiloch East - Willie O'Neill
Dundee East - Angela Gorrie
Edinburgh South West - Colin Fox
Glasgow Central - James Nesbitt
Glasgow East - Frances Curran
Glasgow North East - Kevin McVey
Livingston - Ally Hendry
Paisley and Renfrewshire North - Chris Rollo
Paisley and Renfrewshire South - Jimmy Kerr
The Party's manifesto is as follows (Source scottishsocialistparty.org): -
For an independent socialist Scotland
No cuts, no wars, for an end to corruption
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On May 6th voters will be offered a dismal choice of cuts, sackings and wars by politicians tainted by corruption, duck houses and other expenses fiddling.
All three Westminster parties are in a race to see who can make the deepest cuts while the SNP wring their hands and blame London.
They all recommend cuts to vital public services which will hit the most vulnerable hardest and directly threaten the jobs of 100,000 Scottish workers.
In contrast the unequivocal message from the Scottish Socialist Party is that there is an alternative which avoids cuts and insists instead that the greedy pay for the disaster they created, that also ends our involvement in the Afghan war and offers jobs and justice not misery and war.
This belief is reflected in our programme for a Scotland which aims to meet peoples’ needs, not pander to the rich, for people not profit.
100,000 jobs Are directly threatened by the cuts promised by the Westminster parties and vital services for our most vulnerable citizens will go.
We say that faced with such a threat words are not enough—action is needed. Scotland needs nothing less than a resistance movement of mass peaceful protest on the scale of that which defeated the poll tax. We will bring all the experience of the SSP to build such a movement.
Jobs for youth
The spectre of mass unemployment has returned twenty years after Margaret Thatcher was ejected from office. Many communities in Scotland are still suffering from the legacy of the 1980s with the poverty, heroin addiction, alcohol abuse and crime that goes with this chronic joblessness.
Today the SSP says: 'Mass unemployment No More'. Instead of slashing Scotland's budget, the SSP will fight for emergency funding to protect our young people from becoming another wasted generation.
Let's Get Out of Afghanistan
This is a senseless military occupation which damages Britain's international reputation and does nothing to make the world a safer place. We are occupying a country that doesn't want us to be there. More than 50,000 innocent Afghan civilians have been killed. Some 280 British soldiers have also died. All the polling evidence suggests that 70% of the population here want our armed services withdrawn. The Scottish Socialist Party gives voice to that majority.
Clean up the Westminster 'midden'
In just 12 months Westminster has gone from 'the mother of parliaments' to 'the mother of all corruption'.
The public has watched open mouthed as MPs attempt to justify obscene expenses claims which would get an ordinary worker sacked. MP's have repeatedly shown how they are all out of touch with the people they pretend to represent.
For the SSP the answer is simple and it is to end the circumstances where becoming an MP brings a huge salary and expenses. We have long argued that MP's should live on the wage of those they represent. Our MSPs did just that at Holyrood thus keeping them in touch with the real lives of voters.
For a Green, Socialist Republic
The Scottish Socialist Party is a pro-independence party - no ifs, buts or maybes. We say Yes to an independence referendum and Yes to independence
We will work with other pro-independence parties to deliver a resounding referendum YES vote.
Beyond that, we stand for an independent socialist republic where the wealth is fairly distributed; where protection of the environment is paramount.
Such a republic would prioritise the needs of people over profit and our environment over the greed of profiteers.
The development of our colossal natural resources would be publicly owned to ensure the skilled jobs required are based in Scotland and the profits generated used to provide services not multinational profit
All citizens would be equal irrespective of gender, race, religion or sexuality in a country where the economy is no longer driven by greed and profit.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Independence and Socialism
By John McAllion
THE class struggle in Scotland has always been both nationalist and socialist.
The 1787 massacre of striking Calton weavers by British soldiers near what was then Glasgow is generally recognised as marking the beginning of an organised, effective Scottish labour movement.
The weavers’ banner on that day, and subsequently on many other days up to its seizure by Tory magistrates in 1819, showed Scotland’s national hero William Wallace striking down the beast of tyranny.
Scots Wha Hae, Scotland’s unofficial national anthem penned by Robert Burns in 1793, deliberately sided with early working class struggles against the reactionary Pitt government in London and its despotic manager in Scotland
Henry Dundas.
The Scottish radical uprising and general strike of 1820 united behind the slogan “Scotland Free or a Desert”. So, from the very beginnings of the labour movement in Scotland, there has existed a radical tradition that consistently connected the struggles for workers’ rights with the demand for Scottish independence.
That tradition was carried into the 20th century by the likes of Keir Hardie who throughout a parliamentary career in which he represented only English constituencies remained a passionate believer in the cause of Scottish home rule.
Most notably, of course, it was upheld by the great internationalist John Maclean who was calling for an independent Scottish Socialist Workers’ Republic at a time when Ramsay MacDonald was priming the British Labour Party for its historic role as a safe and respectable alternative to Tory government trapped within a capitalist, imperialist and constitutional monarchy.
Today Scottish socialists like Jimmy Reid, one of the leaders of the 1970’s UCS workers’ struggle, continue to campaign for socialist change from within the SNP, while the bulk of the Scottish nationalist Left carry on the fight for Maclean’s socialist republic as part of the SSP.
They represent a continuing tradition of libertarian and democratic struggle from below that stands in stark contrast to the Westminster model of a parliamentary elite making change happen from above.
Breaking free from the stranglehold of that Westminster model remains one of the key challenges facing the Left across Britain today.
Genuine popular control over state institutions and the economic levers of power cannot happen in a British state in which the people are designated as subjects and political sovereignty rests with the Crown-in-Parliament.
The radical participatory politics that characterise revolutions in Venezuela and other Latin American countries are ruled out here by a British two-party electoral system that effectively blocks radical change and restricts political choice to voting for either of the two big pro-business parties committed to defending the neo-liberal status quo.
A democratic revolution cannot happen in a Britain in which an hereditary monarchy and an unelected House of Lords keep a tight political rein on a Commons majority elected last time with the support of less than a quarter of those entitled to vote.
It cannot happen either in a Britain without a Bill of Rights and where citizens can be arrested and held without hard evidence or charge for up to 6 weeks.
It is time to recognise that the breakup of the authoritarian British state is now a precondition of securing progressive socialist change for the peoples of this island.
The national struggles that will follow the break-up of Britain open up opportunities for the Left to force a radical political agenda that otherwise remains excluded from mainstream politics and forever stymied under the ancient regime of the British constitution.
The ending of the British warfare state, constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, republican citizenship, participatory democracy, genuinely popular control of public services, an economy run for the people rather than for profit - these and many other important areas of policy will be thrown into the melting pot from which people’s republics in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland will emerge.
The alternative is to remain ensnared within the carefully contrived limits of a constitution that for more than 300 years has been successfully blocking all threats of radical change in order to preserve the stability of the oldest capitalist state form in the world. Socialists owe no kind of loyalty to that Britain.
We do have a responsibility to help its peoples escape from the chains of British history.
THE class struggle in Scotland has always been both nationalist and socialist.
The 1787 massacre of striking Calton weavers by British soldiers near what was then Glasgow is generally recognised as marking the beginning of an organised, effective Scottish labour movement.
The weavers’ banner on that day, and subsequently on many other days up to its seizure by Tory magistrates in 1819, showed Scotland’s national hero William Wallace striking down the beast of tyranny.
Scots Wha Hae, Scotland’s unofficial national anthem penned by Robert Burns in 1793, deliberately sided with early working class struggles against the reactionary Pitt government in London and its despotic manager in Scotland
Henry Dundas.
The Scottish radical uprising and general strike of 1820 united behind the slogan “Scotland Free or a Desert”. So, from the very beginnings of the labour movement in Scotland, there has existed a radical tradition that consistently connected the struggles for workers’ rights with the demand for Scottish independence.
That tradition was carried into the 20th century by the likes of Keir Hardie who throughout a parliamentary career in which he represented only English constituencies remained a passionate believer in the cause of Scottish home rule.
Most notably, of course, it was upheld by the great internationalist John Maclean who was calling for an independent Scottish Socialist Workers’ Republic at a time when Ramsay MacDonald was priming the British Labour Party for its historic role as a safe and respectable alternative to Tory government trapped within a capitalist, imperialist and constitutional monarchy.
Today Scottish socialists like Jimmy Reid, one of the leaders of the 1970’s UCS workers’ struggle, continue to campaign for socialist change from within the SNP, while the bulk of the Scottish nationalist Left carry on the fight for Maclean’s socialist republic as part of the SSP.
They represent a continuing tradition of libertarian and democratic struggle from below that stands in stark contrast to the Westminster model of a parliamentary elite making change happen from above.
Breaking free from the stranglehold of that Westminster model remains one of the key challenges facing the Left across Britain today.
Genuine popular control over state institutions and the economic levers of power cannot happen in a British state in which the people are designated as subjects and political sovereignty rests with the Crown-in-Parliament.
The radical participatory politics that characterise revolutions in Venezuela and other Latin American countries are ruled out here by a British two-party electoral system that effectively blocks radical change and restricts political choice to voting for either of the two big pro-business parties committed to defending the neo-liberal status quo.
A democratic revolution cannot happen in a Britain in which an hereditary monarchy and an unelected House of Lords keep a tight political rein on a Commons majority elected last time with the support of less than a quarter of those entitled to vote.
It cannot happen either in a Britain without a Bill of Rights and where citizens can be arrested and held without hard evidence or charge for up to 6 weeks.
It is time to recognise that the breakup of the authoritarian British state is now a precondition of securing progressive socialist change for the peoples of this island.
The national struggles that will follow the break-up of Britain open up opportunities for the Left to force a radical political agenda that otherwise remains excluded from mainstream politics and forever stymied under the ancient regime of the British constitution.
The ending of the British warfare state, constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, republican citizenship, participatory democracy, genuinely popular control of public services, an economy run for the people rather than for profit - these and many other important areas of policy will be thrown into the melting pot from which people’s republics in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland will emerge.
The alternative is to remain ensnared within the carefully contrived limits of a constitution that for more than 300 years has been successfully blocking all threats of radical change in order to preserve the stability of the oldest capitalist state form in the world. Socialists owe no kind of loyalty to that Britain.
We do have a responsibility to help its peoples escape from the chains of British history.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
