Scottish Socialist Party
Basque Country: ETA declares permanent ceasefire, Basque left set for gains
By Andy Bowden
October 21, 2011 -- Scottish Socialist Youth -- Amid the worldwide media coverage of Gaddafi’s death, a historic development in another conflict went largely unnoticed -- after more than 40 years of a military campaign against the Spanish state, the Basque armed group ETA announced a permanent end to its use of violence in the struggle for an independent and socialist Basque state. This follows previous announcements from the group, declaring a desire to pursue Basque independence through peaceful measures.
Scotland: The politics of integrity versus celebrity
Review by Alex Miller
Downfall: The Tommy Sheridan Story
By Alan McCombes,
Birlinn 2011
326 pages, pb
September 12, 2011 -- Green Left Weekly -- In the elections to the Scottish parliament in May 2003, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) polled just under a quarter of a million votes and won six seats. By any stretch of the imagination this was a remarkable achievement for a party well to the left of Labour. It was a beacon of hope and inspiration for socialists the world over.
By 2011, the SSP’s vote had slumped to below 9000. It failed to regain any of the six seats it had lost in 2007. The single biggest factor in the SSP’s electoral demise was almost certainly the civil war and split that followed the scandal surrounding the SSP’s former convenor, Tommy Sheridan.
In this well-written and often gripping book, Alan McCombes — the SSP’s former press and policy coordinator — gives the inside story of the events surrounding the scandal and split.
Nationality’s role in social liberation: the Soviet legacy
Painting slogans for the Congress of the Peoples of the East, September 1920, Baku. Photo from IISG.
By John Riddell
July 21, 2011 -- http://johnriddell.wordpress.com, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission -- Just under a century ago, the newly founded Soviet republic embarked on the world’s first concerted attempt to unite diverse nations in a federation that acknowledged the right to self-determination and encouraged the development of national culture, consciousness and governmental structures. Previous major national-democratic revolutions – in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the United States – had been made in the name of a hegemonic nation and had assimilated, marginalised or crushed rival nationalities. The early Soviet regime, by contrast, sought to encourage, rather than deny, internal national distinctiveness.
Europe: Statement by the Anti-Capitalist Left conference
Mobilisation of the ENOUGH campaign against the IMF in Dublin on July 16, 2011. One of the European actions the European Anti-Capitalist Left pledged to build.
The following statement was adopted by the anti-capitalist left organisations meeting together in London on June 11-12, 2011, on the call of the SWP (Britain) and the NPA (France) as a follow-up to the previous conferences held in Paris in June 2008 [1], December 2009 [2], and May [3] and December [4] 2010. Text from International Viewpoint.
Scotland: Why the left should back independence
By Alan McCombes
May 19, 2011 -- Scottish Socialist Party -- More than 150 years ago, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels called on the working
class of all countries to unite and fight for a socialist world.
At a time when there were no telephones, no cars, no aeroplanes, no TV and no radio, their internationalist vision represented an extraordinary feat of historical imagination.
In today’s world of the internet, satellite TV, high-speed air
travel, global capitalism and the World Social Forum, the philosophy of
socialist internationalism no longer looks like a utopian flight of
fantasy.
But what does socialist internationalism mean in practice?
“Imagine there’s no countries, I wonder if you can; nothing to
kill or die for, a brotherhood of man”, sang John Lennon in his
celebrated radical anthem.
Scotland: Political climate changes utterly; Voters bring break up of Britain closer?
Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond.
By Colin Fox, Scottish Socialist Party spokesperson
May 10, 2011 -- As landslides go the 2011 Holyrood election was huge. Scotland has been shaken to its political foundations as voters again voiced their contempt for the Conservative Party [Tories], its coalition partner the Liberal Democratic Party [Lib Dems], and also the Labour Party. The Scotsman newspaper described the result of the May 5 Scottish election as a "victory of hitherto unthinkable proportions" for the Scottish National Party (SNP). Even The Scotsman can be right some of the time!
For independence and democracy: Scottish Socialist Party election manifesto 2011
Scottish Socialist Party broadcast.
May 2, 2011 --Scotland goes to the polls on May 5. Below is the Scottish Socialist Party's election manifesto. For a PDF version of the party's detailed election platform, click HERE.
* * *
In a devolved Scotland the SSP is committed to implementing the following:
■ For a Yes vote in any independence referendum.
■ The introduction of participatory democracy at community
level by establishing local assemblies with the power to make and veto
decisions that affect their community.
■ An increase in the maximum number of councillors per ward from 4 to 6, to allow greater proportionality and more representative local government.
We will also campaign for the following measures, which are not within the Scottish Parliament’s powers:
Scotland: Respect votes to split left vote, Galloway opposes independence
On November 13, 2010, the English left-wing organisation Respect’s ann
By Colin Fox
October 21, 2010 -- The British people have a long and proud history of defeating repression, tyranny and injustice. They stood up to Hitler in World War II and defeated Thatcher's poll tax in 1991 by invoking an inspiring spirit of resistance against seemingly insurmountable forces. And it’s just a well because they need to call on those traditions once again to defeat those behind the unprecedented and brutal cuts proposed for our public services.
When you stand back from discussions like the one BBC Scotland broadcast on October 14 in which Glen Campbell quizzed an invited studio audience on where the axe should fall you realise there’s an enormous injustice at the heart of this debate. It is the people, the masses, the vast majority, who are being forced by the elite, the rich, landowners, factory owners, bank owners and those who "own" our politicians to pay for this crisis. As usual the hired "commentariat" cannot see "the wood for the trees". They are apparently oblivious to the fact the victims of this economic crime are again being punished by its perpetrators.
Basque Country: Armed struggle ends, mass struggle continues
Basque trade unionists protest against the capitalist crisis.
By Jack Ferguson
September 8, 2010 -- Scottish Socialist Youth -- On September 5, 2010, the Basque armed group Euskadi Ta Azkatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom, ETA), which has fought an armed struggle for Basque freedom for decades, released a video declaring that several months ago it had decided to stop armed actions, and announced a ceasefire.
In its statement, ETA said:
Scotland: The election everyone lost
By Colin Fox
May 10, 2010 -- Did you hear the one about the election everyone lost? On May 6, 2010, Labour the party in power lost 100 seats and with it the chance to continue in government after 13 years. The Conservatives lost the victory all the polls had been promising them for the past 18 months. The Liberals suffered perhaps the most devastating humiliation after Cleggmania turned out to be a complete and utter mirage. The man who apparently wowed us so much in the great TV leadership debates actually lost a significant number of seats rather than gaining any.
The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) also lost seats. Instead of going from seven to 20 as SNP leader Alex Salmond confidently predicted they actually went back to six.
April 29, 2010 -- The Scottish Socialist Party is standing in 10 seats across Scotland in the UK general election on May 6.The video above was broadcast on BBC TV on April 23.
SSP election manifesto: `For an independent socialist Scotland'
No cuts, no wars, for an end to corruption