SOCIALISM - INDEPENDENCE - INTERNATIONALISM
Single Status Pay Pay Deals
The issue of single
status is boiling over in councils across Scotland.
Since 1999 council’s have had a responsibility to ensure equal pay
but have dragged their heels.
Now they are trying to impose deals which involve sacking workers and re-employing
them on inferior pay with pay cuts of over £2,000 a year or more in
some cases.
Last week the SSP
used its debating time at Holyrood to highlight the issue and in particular the many thousands of pounds owed to largely female workers
who are owed large sums of back pay.
Earlier workers from Glasgow’s newly relaunched Kelvingrove museum
and gallery told Carolyn Leckie MSP that the deals they had been offered
would involve a pay cut of up to £4,000 a year on a pay of £16,000.
Unison members in Glasgow are currently balloting for industrial action on
the issue.
10 years of Scottish Socialist Voice
This
month the Scottish Socialist Voice celebrates its 10th birthday. Our first
edition was published on 22 November 1996, by Scottish Militant Labour, one
of the organisations who went on to form the Scottish Socialist
Party as we know it today.
It was the first time in decades that a socialist newspaper was written,
edited and printed in Scotland. The Voice maintains the same ethos that it
began with - battling for a Scotland which puts people before profit.
We have no big business backers, no millionaire owner who pulls the strings
to protect his own interests and predilections.
Show your appreciation of the Voice by donating to our 10th anniversary financial
appeal
Read More >>
Scottish Socialist Voice online >>
Free School Meals Bill Blocked
"Democratic Outrage"
Frances Curran MSP tonight slammed as a “Democratic
outrage.” A decision by the Scottish Parliament’s communities
committee to block the progress of her Free School Meals Bill claiming there
is not enough time to deal with it.
“The letter may be signed by Karen Whitefield communities committee convenor but it has the fingerprints of Jack McConnell all over it.”
“I have not the slightest doubt that this is the work of a Scottish Executive running scared of an idea whose time has come. The Bill has the support of scores of children’s, educational and other bodies and the support of thousands of Scots.”
Free School Meals campaign
leaflet (PDF file)
Petition
for street campaigning (PDF file)
PUBLIC MEETINGS
16th November,
7pm, St John Vianney School, Inch, Edinburgh, Speaker: Frances
Curran
28th November, 7pm, Bonnington Primary School, Leith,
Edinburgh, Speaker: Colin Fox
30th November, 7.30pm, Bathgate
Community Centre, Bathgate, Speaker: Colin Fox
7th December, 7pm, Lochgelly Centre, Lochgelly,
Speaker: Frances Curran
Register To Vote in 2007
The
Scottish Socialist Party is calling on all our supporters to ensure that
they are registered to vote in the Scottish Parliament elections to be
held on the 3rd May 2007. If you are 18 prior to this date you are eligable
to vote. To check if you are on the electoral roll and further information
on voting check out the Vote
Scotland website.
Britain out of Iraq ! Scotland out of Britain !
Iraq War a disaster
"If
we are honest, the one issue in the wider world today with Scottish involvement
that towers over all others is the war in Iraq. The involvement of Scottish
soldiers in Scotland's name, spending Scotland's money—billions of
pounds of it—on the invasion and brutal suppression of another nation
militarily and without legal or moral authority, degrading a people who did
not want us to be there and who are now desperate and determined to see us
driven out: that is our international reputation, at least in part, and it
is one of which we should be ashamed."
Read Colin's regularly updated blog here
Rosie Kane on life in Cornton Vale
"If
a society can be judged by how it treats prisoners then we are a cold, empty
and bleak place.
I thought I was prepared when I was sentenced to 14 days on Friday, October
27.
But I was a fool for thinking I was ready. Nothing can prepare you for the
cell door slamming behind you.
I arrived at the prison in Stirling just after 2pm but the radio had already
been reporting I was on my way.
So within five minutes of my arrival, three of my 269 fellow inmates were
at my cell to greet me. They were welcoming and kind and I was grateful. I
was already Prisoner 99451 and in my jail clothes. I'd rather have had a suit
with arrows up it than those black, torn trackie bottoms.
Despite stories about prisoners enjoying hot and cold running luxury, I wasn't
expecting the Hilton. Just as well, really.
After just six days, I came out a stone lighter despite eating every meal.
The hunger was constant. So was the cold."
Rosie's full story in the Sunday Mail
BBC
News story: MSP Kane free after jail 'misery'
Pictures from the protest that Rosie was jailed for here
Scottish Socialists Fight On
"We
are the Scottish Socialists, and we fight in hope"
Roz Paterson
"We cut against the grain of the political consensus, refusing to accept
that 'in the real world', millions must live in poverty for a few to live
in unimaginable wealth, that weapons of mass destruction must be moored in
the Clyde to keep us safe from weapons of mass destruction, that wars mean
peace, and a diminishing democracy delivers us greater security.
We fight in hope, for people everywhere.
"Our MSPs take only the workers' wage,
donating the rest to the party; we have no career politicians in our ranks.
Our focus is always at street-level, our aim being to build a mass movement
to promote and develop the ideas of socialism. To put the idea of real equality,
real social justice, back on the agenda. To make this a better world for the
upcoming generation.
Join us in the only war worth fighting - against
poverty and greed, and for humanity and peace. People, not profit."
The Party That Dared To Tell The Truth
Collection of documents and articles relating to the recall in November 2004 of Tommy Sheridan as National Convenor of the SSP and his subsequent court case against the News of the World.
SSP: What We Stand For
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In Pictures
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An annual event organised by the Edinburgh May Day Committee |
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Organised by Trident ploughshares outside the Scottish Parliament |
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Long walk for peace from Faslane to the Scottish Parliament Organised by Scottish CND |
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Unity demonstration, in defence of asylum seekers Glasgow, October 2006 |
Poll puts SSP on 5% in Holyrood list vote
The
Scottish Socialist Party is currently on 5% in an opinion
poll for the Sunday Mail, just 1% behind our breakthrough at the 2003
election, confirming the SSP as Scotland's 5th political party.
The Greens are on 4% with all the other small parties including 'Solidarity'
only managing to scrape togther 1% between them. This is now the second poll
that has confirmed the SSP's strength as the party that dared to tell the
truth after a Herald poll put us on 6% in August.
SSP Takes Radical Position On Prostitution
"The
SSP, after much debate and discussion, concluded that prostitution by definition
was violence against women and therefore harmful to them. There can be no
tolerance of it. Drug addicted women, migrant women and adult survivors of
child sexual abuse make up the vast majority of prostituted women. Those women
enslaved by the industry, whether by traffickers, by addiction problems, by
poverty, violent partners and pimps or poor mental health must be given support
to escape."
Mhairi McAlpine speaks after SSP Conference debate
Read Mhairi's background to the debate on
prostitution
Read the SSP Women's Network discussion pamphlet on prostitution (PDF file)
There are 3 video's available of speakers during the debate
Housing Stock Transfer Victories
Tenants win fight for accountable publicly owned services
In
the space of a week tenants in two areas of Scotland have rejected the transfer
of housing stock away from the public sector. Tenants
in Stirling who voted to reject housing stock transfer have been joined
by council
tenants in Renfrewshire who have defeated an attempt
to effectively privatise the council house stock.
In December of 2005 tenants
in Edinburgh secured a famous victory when they successfully defeated
similar plans.
SSP Renfrewshire branch have been campaigning on the issue
and Branch Secretary Gerry McCartney welcomed the news;
“The amount of public finances wasted in trying to manipulate a ‘yes’
vote is a source of disgust as it was clear from our private polling, as it
must have been clear from theirs, that the council tenants of Renfrewshire
were fundamentally opposed to such a transfer.
"The RHA Ltd. including the council members, however, continued to pour
money into their campaign, hoping against hope, and in increasing desperation,
that the massive inequality of resources between the two competing bodies
would be enough to sway the result in their favour. The council members who
supported the transfer should be ashamed.”
Unite Against Islamophobia
“Ban
The Veil” screamed the Daily Express, in Glasgow Imam Shamsuddin is
subject to a violent assault, in Liverpool a Muslim woman has a veil ripped
from her face by a man shouting racist abuse, in Falkirk a mosque was deliberately
set ablaze.
The cause of this renewed wave of attacks on the Muslim community?
Home Secretary Jack Straw's political ambitions. Such is the all pervading
climate of Islamophobia, it is now regarded as a political badge of honour
to outbid your political rivals in being seen to be racist towards Muslims"
SSP member Eddie Truman writing for Scottish Socialist Voice and Islamophobia Watch
SSP Conference Election Results
There
are 23 members of the SSP Executive. Just over half of the EC, 12, are female.
Two are members of Scottish Socialist Youth. Nine members overall are on the
EC for the first time.
Pamela Currie is the new national secretary of the SSP.
Pamela welcomed the election of the new Executive, saying; "The SSP has
come through a difficult and traumatic period but has elected a new, young,
vibrant leadership. There will be many challenges ahead but the party that
dared to tell the truth looks ahead with confidence and optimism".
Full list of SSP Executive members
and other election results
Videos from the conference are available on YouTube
PEOPLE NOT PROFIT
The
Scottish Socialist Party's People Not Profit campaign will challenge the politics,
the economics and the morality of free market ideology.
The People Not Profit campaign is based around a simple ten-point programme,
which includes opposition to war, low pay and privatisation - and support
for free school meals, cheap public transport and an independent socialist
republic.
Read Alan McCombes' introduction to the People Not Profit campaign.
PDF & Word Doc files of the first editions of leaflets for the People Not Profit campaign
STOP THE M74
No-one
wants it, we can't afford it, the Public Local Inquiry came out against it,
yet the Labour-controlled Scottish Executive has given the GREEN LIGHT to
the M74 extension.
Read Rosie Kane's rallying call to stop the M74:
A 1960s solution to a 21st century problem - the M74 is out of time, money and credibility
Justice For Gordon Gentle Campaign
Gordon
Gentle was a young man from Pollok, Glasgow who joined the British Army when
he went to sign on as unemployed. Like many young Scots he signed up because
he thought his prospects in the Army were better than in the community where
he lived. At least the army offered a chance of getting a trade.Just 6 weeks
after finishing his training Gordon was sent to Iraq as part of the illegal
occupation by the British and US armies.