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FIRE SERVICE CUTS LEAVE SCARS and CUTS COSTS LIVES!
New Proposals will Devastate Fire Cover and Risk Lives!
Less Fire Appliances & Less Firefighters Costs Lives! Article by Ken Ross – Retired Firefighter & Former FBU Scottish Secretary
I retired from the Fire Service over five years ago, after thirty years service. I spent most of my career serving the communities in the Southside of Glasgow. During my service, I attended thousands of incidents, including fires, road traffic collisions, chemical incidents and water rescues.
I was also a Fire Brigades Union (FBU) Official, holding numerous positions over the years, up to and including Scottish Secretary. I was involved in many campaigns, locally and nationally, fighting against attacks on members pay & conditions and cuts in the Service.
The generations before me, since the formation of the UK Fire Service in 1947, did the same, and in the process of doing so, won many significant victories that protected pay, conditions, pensions, jobs and the Service itself.
In my time, we continued that legacy, in order to ensure that the communities we served received the best, high quality, professional service possible.
The Fight Continues
Today, the current generation of firefighters are having to fight those same fights.
Over the years, successive Governments, in their desire to make financial savings, have failed to provide adequate funding for all Public Services, and senior managers have looked to balance the books by making cuts to mainly front line services. The Fire Service is no different.
In the aftermath of the Fire Service National Pay Dispute in 2002/3, new legislation governing the UK Fire Service was enacted. Coupled with the removal of key UK wide standards and regulations, this opened the door to the reduction in Service establishment’s (jobs), and the removal of appliances and stations, which were previously protected, due to being linked to risks within communities across the UK.
We were told that this was all part of a programme of “modernisation“, but of course, it was nothing more than an exercise to reduce budgets and save money.
Since then, across the UK, many fire stations have been closed, appliances removed and front line firefighter jobs lost.
Scottish Fire & Rescue Service
In Scotland in 2013, the eight Fire & Rescue Services were merged into a single Scottish Fire & Rescue Service (SFRS). This was supposedly to harmonise standards and working practices, protect front line jobs, appliances and stations, and make communities safer.
However, in the ten years since the SFRS came into being, £57m has been stripped from the Service budget resulting in station closures, five of the eight fire control rooms closed, average response times increases by up to 14% and over 1100 front line jobs lost.
None of these losses has made communities safer… NONE!
More Cuts!
In May this year, Shona Robison MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, announced a five year Public Sector budget freeze.
The consequence of this for the SFRS is that savings of £11m will need to be made in 2023/24, with further savings of £25m made over the following three years.
Subsequently, SFRS management has proposed to remove 10 fire appliances*, 14 high reach appliances and downgrade the crewing on the River Clyde Rescue Boat in Glasgow (see below)
*Fire Appliances will be lost from Maryhill, Govan, Cowcaddens, Hamilton, Greenock, Perth, Kingsway, Dunfermline, Glenrothes and Methill stations.
Whilst they have said that the removal of these appliances will initially be on a temporary basis, it is clear that once they are removed, they won’t be re-established in the future and will be gone for good.
The consequence of these proposals, will mean the loss of life saving firefighter posts and appliances to local communities and further increases to response times to incidents.
Crucially, there is already an under establishment of jobs in SFRS due to a current recruitment freeze. This, coupled with the proposed further losses, would bring the overall number of front line firefighters posts lost to over 600!!
Less appliances, less firefighters, increased response times! This is devastating to the communities affected!
River Clyde Rescue Boat
The St Mungo Rescue Boat on the River Clyde As stated above, as well as the proposed removal of Fire and High Reach Appliances, SFRS management are also looking to downgrade the crewing on the River Clyde Rescue Boat in Glasgow.
Currently, the rescue boat has a dedicated crew, who are based at Polmadie Fire Station. This has been in place since 2007.
It has proven to be an invaluable resource, as it has ensured the best possible response times to incidents on the river, and the best possible survival rates of casualties rescued from the water. Many lives have been saved over the past 16 years.
The proposed changes would mean that a “dual crewing” arrangement would be put in place, meaning that personnel who crew a fire appliance at Polmadie, would also be the crew for the rescue boat.
This means that when an incident occurs in the river, the crew would come off the fire appliance to crew the rescue boat.
This would render the fire appliance no longer available for incidents as it would no longer have a crew, hence reducing fire cover in the area.
However, if the rescue boat crew are at an incident on the fire appliance and an incident takes place in the river at the same time, they would be required to be relieved from the incident by another fire appliance from another station, in order to attend an incident on the River Clyde – ie, mobilise a relief crew from another station to the incident; the Polmadie crew then leave the incident and return to home station, transfer onto the rescue boat support vehicle and transport to the rescue boat berth on the river, then mobilise to the scene of operations on the river.
This cannot be achieved in the required 30 minutes!**
**Rescue 3 Europe / International, worldwide specialists in water rescue, indicate that the survival time of an individual submerged in water with a temperature that is 10 degrees centigrade or under, can be as little as 30 minutes, if not less.
The temperature of the river Clyde is less than 10⁰C for at least seven months of the year, with the remaining months only a few degrees higher.
Consequently, in these circumstances, many people who up to now would be rescued from the river in time and survive, would perish.
Campaign
The FBU is campaigning to fight the proposed cuts. Two demonstrations are taking place in Glasgow in the coming weeks.
• Saturday 29th July 2023 at 11am, at the Clyde Arc (Squinty) Bridge (specifically in relation to the rescue boat).
• Thursday 24th August 2023 at 1pm, in George Square.
Currently, FBU members in the stations affected, as well as elsewhere, have been actively lobbying Councillors, MSPs and MPs, seeking their support.
The support of the public is also important, and the campaign is seeking to publicise the issue more over the coming weeks.
I would hope that discussions are ongoing between the FBU and SFRS management, to explore alternative options for making the savings, whilst maintaining the current front line cover.
Indeed, when a proposal is made that constitutes the loss of jobs, management are required to negotiate with the FBU (not merely consult). This means that both parties must strive to reach an agreement.
If no agreement is reached and management decide to go ahead with their cuts anyway, then you have a dispute.
It is unclear at this stage what the status of the negotiations are, or if a dispute has been registered.
What is clear, is that if these cuts are implemented, lives will undoubtedly be lost, where they currently would be saved.
Irrespective of how much money the Scottish Government want to save, this is a price that is not worth paying and is contrary to the whole ethos of the service.
Support
The mantra that Cuts Costs Lives has never been more appropriate.
Please support your firefighters. Attend the demonstrations, sign the online petitions and raise the issue with your local Councillors, MPs and/or MSPs, as well as the Chief Fire Officer of SFRS and the Chair of the SFRS Board.
Help our firefighters to keep us and our communities as safe as possible.
Their fight is our fight!
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Ken Ross, Retired Firefighter and Former FBU Scottish Secretary
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FBU LINKS
Websites:
www.fbu.org.uk/regions-nations/scotland
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/firebrigadesunionscotland
Twitter:
@fbuscotland
@fbuscotlandwest
@fbuscotlandeast
@fbuscotlandnorth
@fbunational
@ Polmadie_FBU
@CutsLevenmouth
@stopfirecutsfif
@SaveN0501
ONLINE PETITIONS
Govan Appliance
Maryhill Appliance
Hamilton Appliance
Greenock Appliance
Perth Appliance
Kingsway Appliance
Dunfermline Appliance
Glenrothes Appliance
Methil Appliance
Polmadie Rescue Boat
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POLITICAL INFORMATION
Siobhian Brown MSP, Minister for Victims and Community Safety
Ministerial Address: Scottish Government, St Andrew’s House, Regent Road, Edinburgh, EH1 3DG
Email: ministervcs@gov.scot
Scottish Parliament Address: The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh, EH99 1SP
Phone: 0131 348 5089
Email: Siobhian.Brown.msp@parliament.scot
Constituency Address: 9 Beresford Terrace, Ayr, KA7 2ER
Phone: 01292 810034
Twitter: @siobhianayr
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SiobhianBrown
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Local Councillors, MSPs and MPs
Write To Them: https://shorturl.at/lKZ68
MSPs: https://www.parliament.scot/msps
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SFRS INFORMATION
Ross Haggart (Chief Fire Officer, SFRS):
Address: Scottish Fire and Rescue Service Headquarters, Westburn Drive, Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, G72 7NA
Email: ross.haggart@firescotland.gov.uk
Kirsty Darwent (Chair, SFRS Board):
Email: kirsty.darwent@firescotland.gov.uk
Twitter: @SFRSChair
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UNITED STATES ILLEGAL AND BRUTAL SANCTIONS REGIME AGAINST CUBA CONDEMNED BY 185 VOTES TO 2 AT UNITED NATIONS – WHEN WILL AMERICA THE WORLD’S BULLY AND PRIMARY ‘ROGUE NATION’ ABIDE BY INTERNATIONAL LAW AND LIFT THE DEADLY SANCTIONS AGAINST CUBA?
You can be forgiven for ignorance about it because the billionaire owned western media chose to blank any reporting yet again but at the beginning of November the United Nations in New York, sitting in full session representing the world’s governments, voted for the 30th successive year, that’s 30 years in a row, to condemn the United States of America for it’s illegal, deadly, cruel and sociopathic sanctions regime against the socialist island of Cuba.
The mightiest economic nation on the planet and the forthright proponent of economic and human freedom across the globe was exposed yet again as a giant fraudster, bully and isolated ‘rogue nation’. Say it loud and say it clear the United States is not a defender of human rights and international law it is the primary abuser of both, and Cuba has suffered significantly since 1962 from America’s international brutality and rancid hypocrisy.
On November the 3rd the world’s representatives met, discussed and debated UN resolution A/76/405, officially titled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,”… It was voted on at the 77th session of the 28th plenary meeting of the General Assembly. By an incredible 185 votes in favour and only two against over 90% of the world’s governments voted to condemn the US illegal blockade of Cuba and demand its immediate cessation.
ONLY APARTHEID ISRAEL VOTES WITH UNITED STATES TO UPHOLD INTERNATIONAL LAW BREAKING
Only the puppet apartheid state of Israel voted against the motion alongside America and the stooge US client state of Ukraine abstained as did Bolsonaro’s right wing representative casting Brazil’s vote. Given the ousting of Bolsonaro last month and welcome re-election of socialist Lula https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/30/lula-stages-astonishing-comeback-to-beat-bolsonaro-in-brazil-election Brazil will join the rest of the world in condemning the US in future. Last year the right wing government of Colombia abstained on the identical motion but after the election of the left wing former rebel Gustavo Petro https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2022/06/23/colombias-first-leftist-president-2022-historical-perspective/ Colombia joined the vast majority of the world’s states in supporting the motion condemning the US for it’s illegal and punitive actions.
The document received more than 170 pages of responses from dozens of member states and UN bodies explaining why Washington must end its illegal blockade.
Numerous international organizations explained how the U.S. embargo greatly harms the Cuban population as a whole.
US SANCTIONS DESIGNED IN 1960 TO CAUSE ACTUAL HUNGER AND DESPERATION IN CUBA
The excellent article by prolific investigative journalist Ben Norton https://mronline.org/2022/11/05/entire-world-votes-185-to-2-against-blockade-of-cuba-u-s-and-israel-are-rogue-states-at-un/ should be read and widely circulated. It is a graphic and excruciating exposure of US exceptionalism and repugnant wickedness against the Cuban people. He highlights the fact from day one the US imposition of the extensive sanctions regime was literally designed to starve the Cuban population:
“The US embargo was officially declared in 1962, but in reality Washington began imposing illegal unilateral sanctions almost immediately after the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
Why has the United States waged such relentless economic war on Cuba for so many decades? An internal State Department memo from 1960 clearly explains Washington’s imperial intentions.
In the document, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lester D. Mallory admitted that the “majority of Cubans support [Fidel] Castro” and there “is no effective political opposition.”
“The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship,” he concluded.
The top State Department official insisted that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.”
Washington’s goal, Mallory wrote, was to make “the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
Please pause and consider this information from the heart of the United States government. A policy devised in 1960 had the explicit aim of causing HUNGER and DESPERATION in another country merely because they chose to overthrow the brutal US supported tyrant Batista and usher in a new leadership committed to tackling poverty, inequality and ignorance across the island.
THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF SOCIALIST CUBA IN THE FACE OF DEVASTATING US SANCTIONS ARE INCREDIBLE – LOSSES TOTAL $144 BILLION
In the face of US imposed sanctions aimed at causing hunger and desperation Cuba under Fidel Castro flourished and now boasts one of the highest mortality rates in the world (life expectancy in Cuba is 79 and compared to 76 in Scotland) https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CUB/cuba/life-expectancy; the best health service across the whole of the Americas and a higher doctor to population ratio than the developed world https://medicaltravelmarket.com/news/cuba-interesting-healthcare-facts; and an education system which is the envy of many, even in Europe with Cuba dedicating more of it’s national wealth to education than any other nation on the planet. A record worthy of applause https://www.huffpost.com/entry/world-bank-cuba-has-the-b_b_5925864.
Cuba has been disgracefully blockaded and economically handicapped by it’s more powerful neighbour for six decades, but it exports doctors and medical professionals to poorer parts of the world and dedicates her precious resources to the development of life saving medicines and sustainable energy production not weapons of mass destruction. For such laudable priorities Cuba is hated and punished by the loathsome United States political establishment.
When empty headed political pundits question the legitimacy of socialism and suggest Cuba’s persistence of problems with living standards and economic development proves socialism is not a viable economic system, please educate them with the facts concerning the 60 year long economic blockade imposed by America. An illegal, inhumane and very destructive blockade which in 2020 prices amounts to $144 BILLION dollars of goods and services denied to Cuba.
For Cuba to have achieved so much in the teeth of such an extensive blockade on goods and services, including vital medicines, is nothing short of remarkable, but imagine what could have been achieved with an extra $144 billion worth of goods and services???
“In the 2022 General Assembly resolution, the UN Development Program (UNDP) stated clearly that the U.S. “embargo limited the acquisition of medicines and medical equipment and supplies, it affects the external economic relations of Cuba, and its impact can be observed in all spheres of the country’s social and economic activities.”
“The embargo has an impact on the population’s most vulnerable groups and on human development in general,” the UNDP wrote, adding that it “affects opportunities for national and local development and creates economic hardship for the population.”
The UN body cited official estimates that the illegal U.S. blockade caused Cuba’s economy to lose $144.4 billion from the early 1960s to 2020” https://mronline.org/2022/11/05/entire-world-votes-185-to-2-against-blockade-of-cuba-u-s-and-israel-are-rogue-states-at-un/
WILL AMERICA EVER DO THE RIGHT THING AND RECOGNISE INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE WILL OF THE UNITED NATIONS?
So, for the thirty years in succession the United States has been condemned by the majority of the world for imposing an illegal, deadly and highly punitive programme of economic and cultural sanctions against Cuba and for thirty years the US has dismissed the will of the world and continued to do what it wants despite international law and the weight of the United Nations. In fact, rather than take heed of international law and the almost universal opinion of the UN the selfish and vile US has recently imposed more sanctions under Trump and they have been disgracefully upheld and enforced under Biden despite making public commitments to the contrary:
“Disappointed doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of how I feel about the Biden-Cuba policy,” said Ben Rhodes, who served as Obama’s deputy national security adviser, in an interview for the Yahoo News’ “Conspiracyland” podcast. “The Cuban government made an agreement with me based on the idea that they could trust that we would keep our agreement.”
“Granted it was Trump” who initially reversed Obama’s policy of normalizing relations with Cuba, he added. “But then Biden doubles down” on Trump policies, Rhodes said.
“Why would any Cuban official ever, ever negotiate anything with America ever again after this? We had Trump — in the most grotesque, callous way — politicizing this. But then to have a Democratic administration legitimize what Trump did by continuing it — it’s a gaslighting to those people in Cuba, you know” ?
America stands exposed yet again as a despicable ‘Rogue Nation’ that preaches adherence to international law but practices illegality on a daily basis. Cuba proves beyond any doubt that America should never be trusted.
Author Tommy Sheridan
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Each 30th November Don’t Just Celebrate St Andrew’s Day Also Remember Scottish Socialist Icon John MacLean
John Maclean is remembered in Glasgow’s People’s Palace Museum of History
On the 2nd of December 1973, a large crowd gathered on a cold winter’s day to witness the unveiling of a stone cairn erected in the centre of Pollokshaws in Glasgow to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of John MacLean’s death. The cairn was paid for by public donations and followed an enthusiastic campaign led by the John MacLean Society. The inscription engraved on the cairn reads:
In memory of John MacLean
Born in Pollokshaws on 24 August 1879,
And died there on 30 November 1923.
Famous pioneer of working-class education,
He forged the Scottish link in the
Golden Chain of World Socialism
The name John MacLean should mean something to every thinking Scot. He should inspire recognition of the vast injustices which scar society and a determination to fight them in all their ugly guises. The mention of his name should remind Scottish citizens of the futility of capitalist wars and the grotesque inequalities of wealth and power which cause grinding poverty and want amid plenty. Every day we should dedicate ourselves to follow the example of John MacLean’s peerless commitment to the cause of human emancipation and the conquering of poverty and hunger across the world but on the day of his death, 30th November, we should particularly make time to remember MacLean’s contribution to humanity and the socialist movement. It is officially Scotland’s patron saint day, St Andrews Day, but for me it is also John MacLean Day.
Sadly John MacLean Does Not feature On The Scottish Education Syllabus
Unfortunately, the life and times of the Great John MacLean is not taught in Scottish schools despite the rich illumination of real history his life contains. While the pathetic reigns of various Kings and Queens are spoken of in lesson after lesson the real makers and shapers of history like MacLean are ignored lest they give the masses seditious ideas beyond their life stations.
There are several books, articles and chronicles of Maclean’s life which deserve study and attention including his daughter Nan Milton’s ‘John Maclean’, ‘The Red and the Green – A Portrait of John Maclean’ by Gerry Cairns and the fabulous collection of Maclean’s own speeches, articles and letters ‘In the Rapids of Revolution’ amongst others https://www.glasgowwestend.co.uk/people/johnmaclean.php
Maclean was born at 59 King Street, just south of the Shawbrig over the River Cart, and a street now subsumed by Shawbridge Road. His parents were both immigrants to Pollokshaws, and both victims of the process of clearance and famine which drove many Highlanders to come to Glasgow in the mid nineteenth century. His father Daniel was a potter who came to Glasgow from Mull, after a spell working at Bo’ness. He worked in the Victoria Pottery of Lockhart and Sons in Cogan Street, a couple of minutes’ walk from King Street: the works opened in 1855 and finally closed in 1952. Daniel died in 1888 from silicosis (“potter’s lung”) contracted form his work. The Victoria pottery occupied the land now given over to the car park of the Auldhouse Retail Park.
Daniel’s death left John’s mother, Anne, to look after four children. Anne had married Daniel at the nearby mining village of Nitshill in 1867. As a child Anne had walked with her mother, neither speaking a word of English, from Corpach near Fort William to join her own father working as a quarryman in Paisley. She had been a weaver before marriage and resumed this trade as a widow at the Auldfield Mill, which lay just across the road in Cogan Street from where her husband Daniel had worked.
Religion played a huge part in John MacLean’s early life and although his boyhood Calvinism lapsed, his associated belief in the overriding importance of education never waned. Calvinists believed a study of the Bible must lead to God; with equal fervour Maclean believed the study of Marx must lead to socialism. Maclean is often portrayed as a violent revolutionary. In fact, he believed that Marxist education would eventually led to a peaceful triumph for socialism at the ballot box, and that violence need only be used in self-defence.
Macleans own education was interesting. He first attended Pollock Academy, which had been established as an elementary school through the efforts of the Burgh council and Sir John Maxwell 8th bart. This was built in 1856 and was part designed by Alexander “Greek” Thomson. It lay on Pollokshaws Road, just opposite the present entrance to Pollok Park, on the vacant site south of the Burgh Hall. It was later converted to a secondary school, and eventually demolished in the 1960s. This school was again only a couple of minutes from the MacLeans’ King Street home – though for his secondary education John had to leave The Shaws and go to Queens Park Secondary. But this did not end his connection with the schools and schoolmasters of Pollokshaws.
Maclean completed his teacher’s training at the Free Kirk Seminary at Trinity in Glasgow’s Park Circus area from 1898-1900; he walked from The Shaws to Trinity every day, a round distance of 10 miles. Later he did his M.A. via evening classes at Glasgow University, again using shanks’ pony, apparently in a deliberate attempt to maintain his fitness.
His father’s death and his brother’s developing tuberculosis had a deep effect on him. He worked as a message boy for various shops in The Shaws and also as a caddie on the nearby Thornliebank Golf Course, which doubtless developed his pedestrian abilities, as did his postie round on student holidays. Maclean was a typical lapsed Calvinist in that he could not be idle, always had to be doing something. On the few short holidays, he took in his life, he always fretted to be back to his propaganda work in Glasgow.
John Maclean The Scottish Teacher – The Fighting Dominie
As a schoolteacher Maclean worked in various parts of the south side of Glasgow; in Polmadie, in Strathbungo and in Kinning Park, but he did also teach in Pollokshaws. In 1854 Sir John Maxwell, 8th bart had set up an industrial school in the village, training boys for useful trades. This was rebuilt in a new site at Christian Street in 1907 by a partnership between the Burgh council and Sir John Maxwell, 10th bart – and the school was named after him. From 1908 to 1915 (when he was sacked by the School Board from his day and evening classes for his agitation against the First World War) Maclean taught industrial history and economics at the Sir John Maxwell to classes of industrial workers, using Karl Marx’s Capital as the main text book! Hundreds of workers passed through these classes, their fees paid by their trades unions or by local authority grants, over those years, large numbers of them came from the huge new industrial complex of Weir’s of Cathcart.
Maclean gave many factory gate meetings at Wier’s during strikes before and after 1914, and interestingly Weir’s is one of the few industrial plants surviving from that Red Clydeside period today.
Many of the shop stewards who attended these classes became prominent in the industrial unrest (Red Clydeside) during and after the First World War. What is astonishing is that the Eastwood School Board initially paid Maclean to give these classes, and that Sir John Maxwell himself was a member of the board. The village atmosphere of the Shaws at this time is further emphasised by the fact that one of Maclean’s assistants at his evening classes was another Shaws boy whom he had converted to socialism, James Maxton (later M.P. for Brigton 1922-46). Maxton’s own father had taught at Pollock Academy when Maclean was a pupil.
As well as his formal daytime classes at the Sir John Maxwell school MacLean organised free evening classes on street corners and public parks where he would explain basic economics and the ideas of Karl Marx and capitalist profiteering. His classes attracted thousands and the authorities soon had him marked as a ‘troublemaker’.
John MacLean was a ‘troublemaker’, a proud and conscious troublemaker who would not accept the inequities and injustices which he witnessed in his own life and read about across the world in books and newspapers. Throughout his life he often found himself on the wrong side of the law and he was imprisoned five times and spent many hard months behind bars, but he was always on the right side of the ordinary people.
MacLean Was Labelled ‘The Most Dangerous Man In Britain’
MacLean was an ordinary Scot who became a socialist icon. An ordinary Scot who led opposition to the First World War despite ruling class promoted jingoism and the collapse of official labour movement opposition. An ordinary Scot who helped organise and lead the famous Glasgow Rent Strikes of 1915 which forced the Rent Restriction Act which helped millions of families across the UK afford to live in their homes during the war. An ordinary Scot who advocated the organising of workers across the Clyde into the rank and file led Clyde Workers Committee which organised a strike for shorter hours in 1919 which was interpreted as an attempted revolution by the British ruling class and led to the despatching of English troops by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to impose three days of martial law across Glasgow and the arrest and bludgeoning of all strike leaders.
After the world changing Russian revolution of 1917 John Maclean was named Moscow Consul for the new Bolshevik government in 1919 in recognition of his unflinching support for the Russian revolution and world socialism. Maclean was also a strident supporter of the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916 and the socialist ideas of James Connolly. They shared the belief that breaking the British Empire was necessary to advance the cause of ordinary workers.
Centenary Stamp Created By Soviet Union in 1979 To Celebrate The Life Of Scotland’s John Maclean
According to recently released records the head of military intelligence at the time, Basil Thompson, labelled Maclean “the most dangerous man in Britain” and embarked on a state supported project to smear him and question his sanity. The state smearing of Tony Benn, Arthur Scargill and more recently Jeremy Corbyn gives an inkling of what Maclean was subjected to in those years. The leading suffragette, Sylvia Pankhurst, was also a target of the smear campaign carried out by the British military intelligence chief.
British Nationalism Is The Unconscious Position Of Many Socialists
As millions of Scottish citizens with progressive and/or socialist thoughts in their minds contemplated how to cast their votes at one of the most momentous general elections in UK history on 12th December 2019 I advised any who would listen to delve into John MacLean’s treasure trove of articles and speeches to seek valuable guidance.
In 1923 MacLean was standing for the Scottish Workers Republican party in the Glasgow Gorbals constituency. The election was set for December 6th and MacLean issued an election address on November 23rd. It and all his inspiring and educational material can be found in the aforementioned book ‘In The Rapids of Revolution’:
“If Baldwin’s capitalist policy is to bind the empire closer together to fight American capitalism and incidentally keep the workers enslaved, then the working-class policy ought to be to break up the empire to avert war and enable the workers to triumph in every country and colony. Scottish separation is part of England’s imperial disintegration and is a help towards the ultimate triumph of the workers of the world.”
John MacLean was internationalist to his core, but he recognised the advance of his class, the working class, was integrally linked to the break-up of the British imperialist union which prevented Scotland, Ireland and Wales from realising their divine right to self-determination as small nations.
The SNP Was A Progressive Left Of Centre Political Party – Now ALBA Represents The Real Threat To Britain
Independence for Scotland is not narrow or chauvinistic nationalism but rather the cause of international progress for all workers across the world. Those socialists in Scotland and England who dismiss voting for the SNP and independence as the hallmark of nationalism have to understand the logic inherent within their criticisms of Scottish socialists like me who view independence as a fundamental principle.
If I and millions like me who voted SNP in dogged pursuit of Scottish independence and the break-up of the British Empire are to be cast as narrow Scottish nationalists, then those who vote for parties which seek to maintain the British union we so oppose must accept the label of British nationalists. It is the flip side of the coin tossed by socialists who dismiss Scottish independence but enthusiastically, and correctly, endorse and encourage the independence of Ireland, Cuba, Venezuela, and countless other nations subjected to imperialist subjugation and exploitative interference.
The SNP was without doubt a left of centre political party. It advocated the immediate removal of nuclear weapons from Scotland. It supported an open and positive immigration policy which welcomes new Scots with a hand of friendship not a fist of fury. It supported legislation to enshrine the National Health Service forever as a publicly owned asset providing healthcare to all on the basis of need not profit. It used to also support the building of a public energy company to provide affordable heating and electricity for all in a sustainable fashion and the founding of a National Bank to enable the funding of much needed public investment programmes in the fields of housing, schools and hospitals. The fact the SNP is rapidly shifting to the political right under its current leadership and mimicking the New Labour metamorphosis that witnessed a party take its core support for granted once too often before near disintegration does not alter the correctness of the strategy of voting for parties which stand for the destruction of the British imperialist union. A union which the recent Supreme Court judgement proves is neither voluntary or equal but a modern day form of constitutional imprisonment, the antithesis of democracy.
Voting To Break-Up Britain’s Imperialist Union Is Progressive
The fundamental aim of the SNP used to be the pursuit of independence for Scotland. That made them a serious threat to the British Establishment. Unfortunately the vast majority of the SNP MPs are far too seduced by the trappings of power at Westminster nowadays to represent a threat to British Unionism. The motto of sending them down to England’s den of inequity to ‘settle up not settle down’ has been abandoned for years by the obedient British Parliamentarians more concerned with their Westminster status, salaries and sinecures than leading a serious movement of defiance to break the chains which hold Scotland to ransom and allow the theft of our vast wealth and resources while child poverty, the advance of working poverty, homelessness and avoidable drugs deaths continue to rise to shameful levels.
The SNP counterparts in Holyrood also lap up the generous wage packets, pensions and expense accounts satisfied to manage the British State’s devolution settlement rather than rock the constitutional boat and lead any civil disobedience or grassroots campaigns to force Westminster to take notice of the numerous mandates for independence referendums. The fact they put their eggs in the legal basket at the Supreme Court recently and expected anything other than the outcome they received is testimony to their political naivety and absence of a serious strategy to deliver independence for Scotland. Saying you stand for independence amongst SNP leadership ranks now is as sincere and realistic as Starmer and his red Tories proclaiming their belief in socialism.
Socialists in Scotland should continue to campaign for Scottish independence and cast their votes at elections for parties which stand for the break-up of Britain but the need for a more seriously committed political project is more urgent than ever. ALBA is still in its infancy but it has already attracted some of the most committed advocates of Scottish independence including thousands who used to for decades campaign relentlessly for the SNP. ALBA is also determined to present a radical case for Scottish independence in terms of economic policies designed to tackle poverty, immediate nuclear disarmament, a referendum on delivering a Scottish republic and clear support for the trades union movement and workers in struggle. Supporting and voting for ALBA is a declaration of support for progressive change, for a party serious about independence, unilateral nuclear disarmament and ending Tory austerity. ALBA is not just a progressive anti-Tory party it is also a progressive anti-British imperialist party and should be seen as such by other socialists in England and internationally.
Maclean Prison Photograph From 2016 in Peterhead Prison
Sadly John Maclean died before the general election of 6th December 1923 aged only 44 but his socialist ideas and vision can still guide us as today in our attitude to politics and life. Principles are rocks in your life not empty rhetoric spoken without conviction or intent. As we remember the Great John Maclean I leave you with his own words from his November 1922 election address under the title ‘All Hail, the Scottish Workers’ Republic’:
“For some time past the feeling has been growing that Scotland should strike out for national independence, as well as Ireland and other lands. This has recently been strengthened by the English government’s intention to rely mainly on Scottish troops to murder the Irish race.”
“Genuine Scotsmen recently asked themselves the question: “Are we Scots to be used as the bloody tools of the English against our brother Celts of Erin?” And naturally the instinctive response was – No!”
“Scottish students of history now realise that Edinburgh lawyers and politicians sold Scottish independence in 1707, although most blame has fallen on on the Earl of Stair. Many of us are convinced that ever since 1707 the Edinburgh kings’ and queens’ counsels and politicians have been in the regular pay of London to keep Scotland as the base tool of the English Government. These scoundrels in the eighteenth century helped to ruin Burns, the peasants’ and people’s poet.”
Well said John Maclean.
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Russian Ban From World Football And Sporting Events While Israel Is Permitted To Compete Exposes Rank Hypocrisy
The stream of sanctimonious claptrap that emerged from my car radio this morning made me want to puke. Listening to BBC Radio 5 Live coverage of the Group B World Cup game between Iran and Wales had me seething with anger at the rank hypocrisy and sheer ignorance of the British Establishment lackeys hosting these shows and the Western media coverage of the whole tournament.
Apparently Iran’s players were refusing to sing their national anthem in protest at the policies of the Iranian government and suppression of women and gay rights. This was applauded by the commentary team. Iran is bad. That is the scripted narrative that they all stick to religiously. Because singing along with the national anthem would of course equate to supporting the policies and behaviour of your government. To hell with the ‘its only a football game’ defence singing the anthem makes you an accomplice in whatever your nasty regime is up to. So far so clear.
Yet where was the encouragement of the Saudi Arabia players to remain silent during their national anthem? Their team’s magnificent result against Argentina, which has seriously dented my world cup winning tip, featured none of the political commentary that is regularly attached to Iran and Qatar.
Saudi Arabia denies basic human rights and freedoms to women, the gay community and anyone who remotely opposes the tyrannical rule of the Saudi royals. It is a nation steeped in the blood of tens of thousands innocent Yemeni men, women and children who have perished under the rubble of bombed schools, hospitals, fishing boats and homes during the eight-year war led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Saudi regime is responsible for committing scores of war crimes that have been investigated and documented https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/country-chapters/yemen and been at the heart of a dirty conflict that has brought mass starvation, malnutrition to millions, the destruction of water supplies and sanitation facilities and the indiscriminate killing of children and civilians involved in fishing activities to try and feed their families and communities.
Using their huge financial clout the immensely powerful Saudi regime, which can organise the killing of journalists in foreign soil with impunity as the premeditated murder of Jamal Khashoggi involving one of the crown Princes and at least 26 other Saudi nationals illustrates https://rsf.org/en/saudi-arabia-four-years-after-orchestrating-killing-jamal-khashoggi-crown-prince-s-predator-chief, to not only commit international war crimes at will without fear of sanctions or international condemnation but force investigations into their war crimes to be suspended as happened last October when the UN Human Rights Council, after intense lobbying from Saudi Arabia, agreed to cease further investigations of war crimes in Yemen https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/7/un-ends-yemen-war-crimes-probe-in-defeat-for-western-states.
In March this year the same Saudi regime which has committed heinous war crimes consistently over the last eight years and created the most severe humanitarian crisis on the planet in Yemen conducted further mass executions of individuals convicted of ‘crimes’ by the very unsafe Saudi legal system. Eighty-one people were beheaded in the one public session with some murdered for daring to “organise and/or incite sit-in protests”. Amnesty International has long documented and condemned such state organised deaths, particularly given the systemic weaknesses of the Saudi Justice system:
“This execution spree is all the more chilling in light of Saudi Arabia’s deeply flawed justice system, which metes out death sentences following trials that are grossly and blatantly unfair, including basing verdicts on “confessions” extracted under torture or other ill-treatment,” said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“Such a shocking number of deaths also reveals Saudi Arabia’s lack of transparency in death penalty cases since we know that the number of trials resulting in prisoners being placed on death row is always significantly higher than what is publicly reported. Many individuals today in Saudi Arabia are at imminent risk of execution” https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/03/saudi-arabia-mass-execution-of-81-men-shows-urgent-need-to-abolish-the-death-penalty/.
Many individuals are at “imminent risk of execution” in Saudi Arabia according to Amnesty International and the regime is a serial war criminal in Yemen responsible for the slaughter of thousands of innocents and mass starvation, malnutrition, homelessness and displacement in the midst of the worst humanitarian crisis on earth but hey none of that is on the official British media notes during this world cup so lets keep highlighting Iran players not singing their national anthem and refuse to ask why the hell Saudi Arabia’s players ARE singing their national anthem…
While we are on our moral high horse why don’t we use our newly discovered human rights compass to lambast the pesky English for singing their national anthem? After all the nasty Tories who have been in power for the last 12 years have presided over massive cuts in public services resulting in qualified nurses and teachers regularly relying on foodbanks for survival. As a result of the Tory austerity measures more working people are poor than ever https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/26/poverty-rate-among-working-households-in-uk-is-highest-ever and child poverty is at record levels also https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/breaking-child-poverty-hits-record-23793336. These players singing the national anthem, using the Iran players’ slide rule, must be endorsing government policies. Are these multi-millionaire super stars tacitly consenting to policies that create mass poverty and despair by singing their national anthem before a football game? They must be. If the rule applies to the Iranian players it must surely apply to the English.
Of course, as soon as controversial questions are raised we are lectured about there being no space for politics in football, unless it is FIFA/UEFA/NATO sanctioned politics in football.
Expressing support for the corrupt and Nazi infected Ukraine regime is not only sanctioned but encouraged by the European and world footballing governing bodies because Ukraine is subject to a Russian invasion. No context or history is allowed. Even when the Pope highlights the fact Russia was provoked into the invasion in fear of imminent danger to her own security https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/russia-ukraine-latest-news-2022-05-03/card/pope-says-nato-may-have-provoked-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-E7VAcqXGK8xNoHxJPQFs no adult or informed conversation and debate is permitted. Everyone must support Ukraine because her sovereign territory is occupied and Russia is the aggressor, no matter what the Pope and anyone else with half a brain cell and even a rudimentary command of world politics knows and says.
But if being an invader and illegal occupier of another country’s sovereign land is an automatic red card in the footballing world and results in bans from international and European tournaments what about Israel? Since 1973 Israel has not only illegally occupied Palestine but aggressively expanded the area of its illegal occupation and imposed a brutal and inhuman system of apartheid upon the people of the country whose land it is occupying. Its called apartheid and it is recognised as such by independent international observers and the United Nations, despite concerted pressure to overlook the illegality by Israel and her United States sponsor. Consider these words from March this year:
A UN expert called today on the international community to accept and adopt the findings in his current report, echoing recent findings by Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organisations, that apartheid is being practiced by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory.
“There is today in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 a deeply discriminatory dual legal and political system that privileges the 700,000 Israeli Jewish settlers living in the 300 illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank,” said Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.
“Living in the same geographic space, but separated by walls, checkpoints, roads and an entrenched military presence, are more than three million Palestinians, who are without rights, living under an oppressive rule of institutional discrimination and without a path to a genuine Palestinian state that the world has long promised is their right.
“Another two million Palestinians live in Gaza, described regularly as an ‘open-air prison’, without adequate access to power, water or health, with a collapsing economy and with no ability to freely travel to the rest of Palestine or the outside world.”
The Special Rapporteur said that a political regime which so intentionally and clearly prioritizes fundamental political, legal and social rights to one group over another within the same geographic unit on the basis of one’s racial-national-ethnic identity satisfies the international legal definition of apartheid.
“Apartheid is not, sadly, a phenomenon confined to the history books on southern Africa,” he said in his report to the Human Rights Council. “The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court came into law after the collapse of the old South Africa. It is a forward-looking legal instrument which prohibits apartheid as a crime against humanity today and into the future, wherever it may exist.”
Lynk said that Israel’s military rule in the occupied Palestinian territory has been deliberately built with the intention of enduring facts on the ground – primarily through settlements and barricades – to demographically engineer a permanent, and illegal, Israeli sovereign claim over occupied territory, while confining Palestinians in smaller and more confined reserves of disconnected land” https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights.
Until British Establishment football presenters and safe pundits start to call out the rancid hypocrisy that sees Russian football teams and the Russian international team banned from European and world football tournaments while apartheid Israel is permitted to continue to participate despite their illegal occupation of Palestine and brutal daily repression of the Palestinian people then I will continue to dismiss their comments as empty gestures and bleating of ignorant or cowardly people who should know better.
The Celtic fans who proudly display solidarity with the repressed people of Palestine are punished by a blatantly biased football governing body who encourage displays of solidarity with occupied Ukraine but punish displays of solidarity with occupied Palestine https://www.joe.co.uk/sport/celtic-handed-uefa-fine-for-palestine-flags-89186.
If only the same level of concern was raised by the sanctimonious BBC/ITV presenters about the refusal to allow displays of Palestine flags at football grounds as has accompanied the controversy over the rainbow flags and emblems apparently banned in Qatar. Of course football and sport in general are never separate from politics as politics occupies our everyday lives and that includes sport but the authorities must never be allowed to select for us the issues which we wish to express concern with or support for. Wearing rainbow armbands is a welcome show of solidarity with the LBGT plus community world wide but displaying Palestinian flags is every bit as important in the face of a 55 year long illegal occupation that continues to bring daily brutality and repression from the Israeli state.
Regardless of the complicated context and consciously ignored background to the Russian invasion of Ukraine the banning of Russia from world football amounts to nothing more and nothing less than biased treatment in the face of similar action against Israel https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/russia-ukraine-uefa-euro-2024-28036462.
The world of sport cannot pick and choose which invasions and occupations to support and condemn without being guilty of rank hypocrisy. While countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel are free to compete and America, England and France, despite supporting illegal invasions, occupations, and bombings of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and others, are also allowed to field teams without condemnation then we can only conclude that not only do politics and football mix but that the ingredients are toxic, biased and Western produced. And don’t even start on Qatar without considering first the fascist Italian hosts in 1934 and the military junta hosts of Argentina in 1978. Hypocrisy is a stench which definitely pollutes our planet and engulfs the world of football and sport.
Tommy Sheridan
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Ian Hamilton QC – A Nationalist Icon Who Deserves To Be Remembered Fondly
My wife Gail and I visited Ian at his home in the spring of 2015
Last month Scotland laid a true patriot and nationalist icon to rest. The name Ian Hamilton QC should always be remembered with pride and affection. He dedicated so much of his life to fighting for the restoration of Scotland’s independent identity and sovereignty and against social and political injustice in all it’s many forms. Printed here is a special eulogy which deserves to be read widely and shared with fellow Scots who hold in common an unshakeable belief that Scotland one day will be and should be free again to shape her own destiny for future generations. A destiny devoted to equality of opportunities, genuine fairness and welfare of her sons and daughters not warfare, continued inequality and shameful and unnecessary poverty.
The eulogy below was written and expertly delivered by a dear friend of Ian Hamilton QC and a fellow nationalist and patriot committed to a new and better independent Scotland. Alex Neil is a former SNP MSP and Government Minister who always speaks with just the right mixture of passion, intellect and content about social injustice and the need to tackle Scotland’s shameful poverty. It was he, alongside fellow socialist MSP John McAllion of the Labour Party in the 1999-2003 Parliament, who co-sponsored my Private Members Bills to rid Scotland of the inhumane practice of warrant sales in pursuit of debts and to introduce free and healthy school meals for all Scotland’s students to both tackle poverty and our poor dietary record. Alex has always sought to champion the cause of both an independent Scotland and a fairer Scotland and has never hidden his socialist beliefs.
When I was contacted by one of Ian Hamilton’s son’s last month our conversation was a combination of sadness and pride. Sadness that Ian had passed but pride that he had left explicit instructions that I was to be invited to be one of the pall bearers at his funeral. Ian and I developed a friendship in 1999 when he visited the reconvened Parliament with another SNP member and asked to meet with me. He confessed his admiration for the anti-poll tax campaign which defeated Thatcher and her despised tax and applauded my leadership role. We became friends and used to meet regularly for lunches and long chats in his beloved Rogano restraunt in Glasgow. He very much enjoyed the company of both myself and my wife Gail and invited us to his home to meet his wife Janette and spend some quality time with him. He accorded me the honour of writing the foreword to the 2nd edition of his engaging book ‘A Touch of Treason’ in 2014.
I had the pleasure of sharing many public speaking platforms with Ian over the years but our most memorable was the jam packed rally for independence held in Oban’s Corran Halls during the 2014 independence referendum campaign which attracted an audience of near to 500, the largest the venue had ever hosted. It was recorded for posterity and can be viewed here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBF8Iw4f0Io. The arguments for independence Ian and I articulated that night are every bit as relevant now as they were then. More so in fact given the disastrous Tory governments we have been subjected to since 2014.
Ian’s funeral service was held in the Connel Village Hall on the 12th of October https://www.thenational.scot/news/23041273.funeral-ian-hamilton-set-take-place-connel-argyll-bute/ where we heard tributes from his two loving sons and the eulogy from Alex printed below.
I was honoured to help carry Ian’s sustainable whicker coffin from the village hall to the hearse and then from the hearse to a specially dug plot near to Ian’s home where we jointly lowered Ian into the ground. We toasted Ian and his contribution to Scotland before travelling to a small reception at the Falls of Lora Hotel where many tales of Ian’s life were regaled with laughter and affection. I was determined that the lovely words of Alex Neil that morning would reach a wider audience so here is his eulogy in full. Please read it it with pride and share it with fellow patriots who believe in a new, better, and fairer independent Scotland. Rest In Peace Ian Hamilton QC.
Ian with his wife Janette and my wife Gail in 2015 outside their home in Connel
Tribute to Ian Hamilton – 12/10/22
Friends, fellow patriots, I am deeply honoured to have been asked by my late, great friend Ian Hamilton to give this eulogy.
Like everyone else here, I wish that this sad day never needed to happen and that Ian could still be with us.
I want to begin on behalf of everyone here and the many people from Scotland and beyond who loved Ian by offering our sincere condolences to Jeanette and all the family.
We have lost a nationalist icon and a dear friend. But Jeanette and her family have lost a dear husband, a father and a grandfather.
Our thoughts go out to each and every one of them
Sometimes when you’re asked to pay tribute to someone who has just passed away it is difficult to know what to say about them. In Ian’s case, it is difficult to decide what not to say because he packed so much into his 97 years.
As long as there’s a planet called earth and a nation called Scotland, Ian Hamilton will always be remembered. A thousand years from now Ian Hamilton will be revered as much then as he is today.
For the last 72 years, when anyone mentioned Ian’s name, people would immediately respond by talking about the Stony of Destiny and how Ian and his compatriots made their daring raid on Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950 to recover the Stone and bring it back to Scotland.
Ian was rightly proud of his leading role in planning and executing the recovery of the Stone but he did not want his whole life to be defined entirely by it. Nor should it. Because there was much more to Ian Hamilton than the Stone of Destiny.
It’s nevertheless appropriate for us to remind ourselves of how daring and how historically important the Recovery of the Stone was both for Scotland and the British state. The Stone incident kept Scotland’s national identity alive at a crucial time in our history
In his brilliant book published in 1954 called “The Flag in the Wind” the late John MacCormick, the father of modern nationalism in Scotland recounted how Ian, whom he described as a “rebellious but brilliant student”, played a huge role in promoting and propagating home rule for Scotland long before the idea of recovering the Stone of Destiny was conceived.
Ian ran his own highly critical magazine at Glasgow University called “The Girn” until the University Senate suppressed it.
During the Rectorial elections for the University which John MacCormick eventually won as was the Home Rule candidate, Ian and his pals got up to numerous pranks.
My favourite one was their purloining of a monkey cage from Glasgow Zoo, locking up the President of the University Tory Club in it and publicly feeding him with buns in George Square.
Ian wasn’t just a prankster and a hugely effective campaigner. He was a serious thinker.
John MacCormick recalled Ian saying to him that the Home Rule Movement had to do something dramatic; something he said which “will call the attention of the whole world to our movement.”
And he made it happen
But the Stone was only the beginning of Ian’s lifelong work for Scottish self-government
Three years after the Stone, Ian launched his next great exploit, to challenge the new Queen’s title of Elizabeth the Second.
Although England had had an Elizabeth the First, Scotland had not. Therefore, ER in Scotland was ER the First, not the Second.
Ian rightly claimed that naming the Queen Elizabeth the Second in Scotland would cause great offence and would suggest that Scotland had been incorporated into England,
Ian and John MacCormick raised an action in the Court of Session to stop it happening.
Although they lost their case, Lord Cooper pronounced from the bench that he had difficulty in seeing why it should have been supposed that the new Parliament of Great Britain, created after the Act of Union, must inherit all the peculiar characteristics of the English Parliament as if all that happened in 1707 was that Scottish representatives were admitted to the Parliament of England. That was not what was done, he ruled
Although not widely realised at the time, that ruling was a huge victory for Ian and John and for the Home Rule Movement.
But Ian’s work wasn’t done
On being called to the Scottish Bar a year later Ian refused to swear allegiance “in proper form” to Elizabeth the Second.
He was told that if he didn’t he could never become an advocate.
He said refusing to take the oath took more courage than anything he had done at Westminster Abbey
However he stuck it out until the authorities caved in. this time he won his case.
The Queen’s title in Scotland became Elizabeth without the appendage of a numeral and so it has remained since Ian won his battle over the Advocate’s oath.
Needless to say, John MacCormick and Ian were sent to Coventry by the legal establishment in Scotland but they grinned and bared it. They were bigger and better than their Unionist detractors
Fortunately times have changed.
When Ian died the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates paid him a glowing tribute as one of the finest ever defence advocates in Scotland.
Ian had huge respect for Scots Law. Whenever it came under threat he was one of the first to defend it.
He was a true servant and proponent of the Scottish legal system because it was founded on the fundamental principles of fairness and justice.
But being a brilliant lawyer wasn’t enough for Ian. He was always seeking new challenges and adventure
One of his most exciting and as it turned out dangerous adventures happened when he left Scotland to work in Zambia in December 1966.
Ian wrote about his adventures in Zambia in his autobiography “A Touch of Treason”, a book that should dawn every bookshelf in Scotland.
There isn’t time today to cover everything that happened.
Suffice to say that Ian had to leave Zambia in a hurry.
He was being threatened by the Zambian Government because he had spoken out about the injustice of a fellow lawyer’s house being illegally raided by the authorities
Ian was ordered out of the country by its Solicitor General and to be on the first plane out.
Unfortunately, the plane wasn’t due to leave for three days so Ian was advised by his African friends to go into hiding
An English family hid him at the behest of an Irishman with whom he had been in the habit of playing chess
A great crowd of people turned up to see that Ian got away on the plane safely and fortunately he got out of Zambia unharmed.
This incident demonstrates how courageous a man Ian Hamilton was. Instead of turning a blind eye to injustice, he fought for the rule of law.
He was always prepared to take on the might of the state, any state, when he felt that somebody’s human rights were being undermined or threatened.
He often did so at great personal sacrifice.
Ian’s whole life was devoted to fighting for justice
As a young man too young to join the RAF he nevertheless signed up to fight Hitler even although he was under-age when he enrolled.
As a QC he built a reputation as one of the most successful defence lawyers in the country
He had spells when he worked in jobs which had nothing to do with the law.
He was for a while the curator of the JM Barrie Museum in Kirriemuir, a market gardener, hotelier, bus driver, publisher and playwright.
He spent two years in Canada and ended up becoming a wanted man again, this time for flying unauthorised over certain terrain in the Canadian Rockies.
When I last spoke to him a few weeks before he died, he said he was still a wanted man in Canada, a situation he found highly amusing.
In 1994 he stood as the SNP Parliamentary candidate for Strathclyde East in the European elections.
He was also for three years the Rector of Aberdeen University
There was a lot more to Ian Hamilton than the Stone of Destiny.
When he invited me to do the eulogy at his funeral, he specifically asked me to read out the following quote from his book about the Stone of Destiny:
“I have always been afraid of the sameness of life in which each day is worn to a thinness and night brings only the promise of an identical dawn. I wanted to make my life an adventure and already (1952) I was filling it with bright things. I thought that morning that if I always sought adventure I could go on to the end without security. I would have a pageant in my mind of a life lived to the full. I would trade wealth for the richness of life itself even if it meant dying a pauper”
That is Ian Hamilton summing up Ian Hamilton. He lived life to the full
All his wishes came true. I can’t think of anyone in Scotland who has had a more adventurous life than Ian
Neither can I think of anyone who was a better man, a more intelligent man, a greater human being, a better friend or a more loyal Scottish patriot
Ian, we are very proud of you
We are very sorry to lose you
We will always remember you
On behalf of the people of Scotland we thank you
Rest in peace my friend
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On Remembrance Day Of All Days Remember The Words Of Harry Patch
The words of Harry Patch should be remembered and highlighted every day of the year but particularly on Remembrance Day. Harry was Britain’s oldest surviving soldier of the First World War.
Even an ounce of understanding surrounding the First World War is enough to convince me that far from being glorious, necessary, or justified it was nothing short of inhumane carnage which destroyed millions of lives.
Harry Patch survived the living hell to tell his story and warn future generations to avoid such futile and bloody conflicts http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/last_tommy_gallery_03.shtml
Harry’s words and reflections on war should be on every school curriculum to teach children the reality of wars as opposed to the cynical and artificial portrayals in Hollywood films and expensive computer games. The pious words of politicians and the excessively prescriptive red poppy authoritarianism of the British Establishment BBC and other media outlets fails to convey the anti-war passion of the likes of Harry Patch and others who have actually experienced the inevitable trauma, bloodshed, fear, loss of limbs and premature death that forms the DNA of armed conflicts. Wars are not about glory and pageantry. They are about pain, sorrow, loss, suffering and the brutalising of humanity. Harry Patch’s words should be learned by every child and then future generations will grow up with different attitudes to war;
“I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder”.
“Legalised mass murder”, that is how Harry Patch described the war he was conscripted to fight in under instruction by Tory politicians and orders from Commanding Generals like Earl Haig.
Many ex-servicemen I have met during my life despise the way war is effectively glorified at this time of the year.
Smug Politicians Display Rancid Hypocrisy As They Lay Remembrance Wreaths
They detest the smug politicians who stand in line to hypocritically lay wreaths of remembrance while continuing to fund the war industry and support conflicts across the globe.
Surely the way to truly remember the war dead is to dedicate ourselves to peace not to fund nuclear weapons and order young men and women into illegal invasions and occupations of other sovereign countries.
Proper provision for those who have served in the armed forces should be the job of government every day of the year not subject to emotional appeals aimed at those often least able to financially support others.
By all means wear a red poppy in memory of the fallen in all wars but don’t demand others remember the fallen in the same way. Some don’t require to wear poppies to remember the war dead.
Many in Ireland see the red poppy as a symbol of bloody repression and injustice. A reminder of the armed forces who shot dead innocent unarmed civilians in the Ballymurphy massacre of August 1971 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/ten-shot-dead-in-ballymurphy-massacre-entirely-innocent-coroner-finds-1.4561691 and the Derry ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre of January 1972 https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/fintan-o-toole-bloody-sunday-the-10-minute-massacre-that-lasted-decades-1.4776688 not a neutral symbol of fallen soldiers in past conflicts. Their refusal to wear red poppies is grounded in justifiable rage at British army atrocities committed on their soil.
White Poppies Represent Remembrance Of All War Victims And A Commitment To Peace
Others prefer to wear the white poppy. White poppies represent remembrance for all victims of war, both civilian and military, of all nationalities. They also stand for a commitment to peace and a rejection of militarism. They have been worn since 1933 and are distributed by the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), a UK-based pacifist network.
Celebrated poet Benjamin Zephaniah is passionate about his white poppy:
“Peace is not just the absence of war. Peace is something that we should really be working towards.”
“We have to work for a world where there is no war. We can do it. If we can put people on the Moon, if we can invent computers, if we can do all of these great wonderful things that we claim to do all the time, then why can’t we undo war, and do peace?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtjCGCxT_PU
The Prime Minister and his Government Minister cronies will lay wreaths on Sunday at the Cenotaph in London. These are the people who continually fund illegal and immoral nuclear weapons while ex-service men and women struggle to get by on inadequate pensions and welfare support. These people more than any need a political commitment to welfare not warfare. Yet the Tory toffs and Establishment lackeys wear smug expressions alongside their red poppies as if they actually cared about the millions now dead as a result of their war mongering policies throughout the years.
Ever since I learned the words of Wilfred Owen’s haunting classic poem/song highlighting the grim realities of wars I have been opposed to them and committed to nuclear disarmament. If you want to remember those who have lost their lives in wars, read that poem over and over again here http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html then understand why he wrote with such passion and anger against those who sought to glorify wars;
My friend you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
There is nothing sweet or right or wonderful or glorious in fighting and dying for one’s country. It is tragic, brutal, dehumanising and more often than not completely pointless. War represents human failure not triumph. It is the worst trait of humanity not the best. Condemn it don’t glorify it.
Tommy Sheridan
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The Heart of Scottish Independence is a belief in fairness and democracy – That’s why so many reject Monarchy and believe in a modern democratic republic
Our new Scotland should be democratic and fair – it should be a republic Below we republish an opinion piece written on May 29th this year arguing for the abolition of the Monarchy and support for the Make Elizabeth The Last campaign and petition run by the campaign group Republic that believes in a modern democratic society with active, informed and educated citizens not a docile, ignorant and servile existence as subjects.
After the recent passing of the Queen it is imperative that those who endorse the idea of a modern democratic republic speak louder and more frequently as the speedy pronouncement of a new king reminds us just how ancient and archaic British society is.
We witnessed a new Prime Minister being foisted upon the four nations of the so-called United Kingdom without a democratic process involving the consent of the people. Only Tory party members, representing less than 0.1% of the whole UK population, and a 0.1% which represents the most bigoted, racist, privileged, elderly and male sections of the population, got to vote on the successor to disgraced and deposed Boris Johnson.
Tories like Truss constantly attack striking workers and often claim that strikes are somehow undemocratic yet the fact is over 85,100 CWU members voted for their strike action last week while only 81,326 voted for Liz Truss in the Tory leadership election https://leftfootforward.org/2022/09/todays-royal-mail-strike-received-more-votes-than-liz-truss/.
Next time a Tory MP questions the legitimacy for these strikes, remember that they have a bigger democratic mandate than the person running the UK.
Of course the scant almost invisible democratic legitimacy Truss has in England is non-existent in Wales or Scotland. Neither country voted Tory in 2019. Truss has no democratic mandate in either country. Indeed in Scotland it has been 67 years since the Tories won a General Election. In each of the last three General Elections the overt party of Scottish Independence won comfortably, 2015, 2017 and 2019. Additionally the same party of Scottish independence also won the last four Scottish Parliament elections, 2016 and 2020 since the independence referendum of September 18th 2014.
So the Prime Minister of the UK was replaced without any consent or democratic consultation with Scotland and the Monarch selected to rule over the UK was done so without any democratic input whatsoever. To call the UK a democracy surely risks ridicule from any informed and educated observer and perhaps even prosecution under the trades description act. The UK is an undemocratic dictatorship of the rich and powerful who run society through institutions steeped in inherited privilege and with a compliant and obedient media bought and paid for willing to promote the interests of the rich and powerful at every turn.
No one got to vote on a new Monarch despite the post carrying enormous wealth and power and only less than 0.1% got to vote on the next Prime Minister. It is a truly grotesque state of affairs. How dare the UK lecture any other nation on the planet on democracy or how to run their society.
In the aftermath of the Queen’s death the British Establishment has closed ranks and demanded collective mourning and deference to her 70 year reign. The uniform nature of the mainstream media is exposed for all to see. Despite more than one third of UK citizens declaring themselves for a republic absolute respect is demanded when a 96 year old millionaire who lived her life in the lap of luxury passes away. What utter nonsense.
Death is always sad for the loved of ones of the deceased. As socialists we celebrate and love life. It is part of our political DNA. We can be sensitive to the loss of a human being without losing our integrity and deceitfully expressing respect. I refuse to ‘respect’ the monarchy as an institution or the individuals who embody the rotten, corrupt and outdated monarchy. They are representatives of obscene inequality, outrageous usurping of wealth and power, and theft of resources and life all across the globe through brutal colonial rule. British imperialism is not some benevolent exercise it is a blood soaked history of plunder, murder, rape, and torture deceitfully wrapped up in tales of progress and liberty. The Monarchy is the beating heart of that imperialist disgrace.
YESTIVAL – 18th September in Glasgow’s George Square On Sunday 18th September I and thousands like me will assemble in the cetre of Glasgow to declare for a new and a better Scotland. A Scotland free from Westminster misrule and exploitation. A Scotland that is fundamentally fairer and more compassionate than the UK. A Scotland that is more progressive and democratic than the UK. A Scotland without monarchy or nuclear weapons prioritising tackling poverty and inequality. A Scotland which rages against hideous wealth and power inequalities instead of glorying in them as the UK does.
Some have suggested gathering in George Square to rally for independence the day before the Queen is buried is somehow ‘disrespectful’. I say nonsense. This event has been planned for months. The desire of thousands to proclaim their belief in a new and free Scotland on the Sunday does not interfere with the intentions of any who wish to respect the burial of the Queen on the Monday. Are we so servile and lame that we stay silent and sit at the back of the bus in relation to our support for Scottish independence because a British State that we want to break away from commands collecting mourning unless you play cricket, rugby or golf?
The YESTIVAL in George Square, Glasgow on 18th September celebrates the 8th anniversary to the day since our first referendum when 45% of Scots defied the liars and bullies within the unionist ‘Better Together’ campaign and voted for freedom. We declared we were big enough, smart enough and courageous enough to run our own country. We now have at least five mandates for IndyRef2 and the SNP have named 19th October 2023 as IndyRef2 day and introduced a Bill in the Scottish Parliament giving legal effect to that day. Supreme Court judges will no doubt declare we are not ‘allowed’ to vote in a referendum without ‘permission’ from Westminster. We are there in the Square to say we don’t need the permission of unelected judges or unrepresentative Tories. We have the right to vote on our future again next 19th October. If you also believe in Scottish independence come and join us. Stand tall, stand firm, and stand united.
Lizzie Must Be the Last Queen – Abolish the Monarchy and the Royal Privileges, Prerogatives and Parasites
MAKE ELIZABETH THE LAST #AbolishTheMonarchy is the latest campaign poster devised by the campaign group Republic and those posters deserve to be festooned all across the constituent parts of the United Kingdom as we approach a specially extended bank holiday period of public displays of servility and stupidity that make me want to boak on the one hand and shout in rage on the other.
We are twenty-two years into the 21st century and yet still we have idiots and useful fools willing to ‘celebrate’ the existence of an institution which determines that a family bloodline entitles some to rule over others and be empowered to live in several castles, own vast swathes of land and receive hundreds of millions in public handouts whilst demanding oaths of allegiance and acceptance of the second-class status of subjects to these superior beings. It is both a farcical and tragic situation which requires the abolition of the monarchy as a matter of urgency and necessity.
Right wing media outlets and their politician puppets often thrive on forthright denunciations of the poorest and most vulnerable in society as ‘scroungers’ and ‘parasites’ who drain public funds with benefits claims based on fraudulent applications for assistance. Detailed research conducted over a decade ago based on a sixteen year analysis of newspapers highlighted almost of third of stories were based on such allegations despite DWP statistics revealing only 0.7% of their budget was apportioned to fraud. In other words, fraud amongst benefit applicants is miniscule and grotesquely over-reported by the gutter press.
Yet the real ‘scroungers’ in society, the undeserving recipients of public support, are not the hard-pressed single-parents and underpaid care sector workers or disabled citizens but the toffs with double-barrelled names and claims relying on feint bloodline connections stretching back over centuries.
The weekends’ Royalist jamboree was very nearly de-railed by exposure of the real character of one of the senior royals. A £12 million pay off fourteen weeks ago was a necessary bribe to avoid Prince Andrew being dragged screaming and kicking into an American court where accusations of underage sex and regular partying alongside convicted paedophile sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein would have been laid bare for all to see and the already tarnished image of the Royal Family would have been dragged even deeper into the gutter. The headlines then should be examined in detail as we approach the much hyped Platinum Jubilee celebrations marking 70 years of Lizzie on the throne.
The Monarchy is at the very centre of the British Establishment and is the beating heart, a dark and distasteful heart, of the British Empire. Its existence is an open sore filled with the pus of pampered privilege and parasitic pomp guaranteeing continued consent for a society riven with hideous inequalities and millions of families and workers condemned to reliance on foodbanks, job insecurity and homeless heartache whilst the minority at the top gorge themselves on the proceeds of excessive profiteering, tax cuts for the rich, government subsidies, and various immoral tax avoidance schemes. The rich really have never had it so good and wielded so much power in corrupt and amoral Tory Britain.
Who could forget how the soap opera of the Royal Family and the various fallouts seeped into the morning news cycle triggering phoney anger from snivelling royal sycophant and Good Morning Britain (GMB) anchor Piers Morgan? The contrived walk out had the authenticity of a two-bob note. Dodgy Piers Morgan with form for making things up and condoning illegal phone tapping while a tabloid editor stormed out of the GMB ITV studio in London last March like a spoiled child bully who had been confronted by an adult and made to confront his atrocious behaviour.
For months Morgan conducted a one-man mission of slurs, abuse and malicious criticism of Meghan Markle but when a man dared to call out his bullying and racism pitiful Piers stomped off in a silly strop having already arranged his next job with the right wing crazies at GB News. Thankfully that venture has proved humiliating for him so far.
The fact many in the billionaire owned and controlled media have referred to the Meghan and Harry interview with Oprah as the worst Royal crisis in 85 years highlights how protected and molly coddled that rotten, decaying, and offensive institution is by the British Establishment.
The Royal Family has done all in its power to protect and defend a man suspected of child sex offences with close links to a convicted paedophile but did nothing to defend a woman from racism and bullying. There is nothing honourable about the Monarchy. It is a blight on the notion of a fair and equal society, and it should be abolished immediately or at the latest the day after the Queen passes away.
Royals Defend the Alleged Sex Offender but Not Meghan Markle
Mendacious Morgan had effectively stalked Meghan Markle for years but he used to smother her with lavish praise before her decision to entirely blank him burst his over-inflated ego and led to an embarrassing series of back-tracks on his earlier opinions. He joined in the gutter press sport of racist and nasty stories and comments directed against Markle and the Royal Family did nothing to defend her with the Oprah interview revealing that racism is at the heart of the Royal Household and that racism was the prime reason Harry and Meghan decided to move to America.
I was not an objective observer in that Royal bun fight. I despise the Monarchy and everything it represents. Inherited privileges, outrageous rights to land, castles, and stately Homes and the continued heritage of divine rights to rule and be obeyed. While the Monarchy exists, it is impossible to build a truly modern democracy committed to fairness and equality. The institution itself is what I find offensive. The idea that a person’s birth right entitles them to such wealth, privilege and power turns my stomach. I don’t advocate we chop off heads to end the Monarchy, but I do advocate the abolition of the institution and the release of the vast lands, estates, castles, and other properties for public good not continued private enrichment.
Royal Family Offensive Institutionally and Personally
However, many of the individual Royals are also personally offensive. From past Nazi links and pictures of Nazi salutes to Prince Phillip and his incessant racist remarks many of the Royals epitomise the futility of expensive private education as it often produces ignorant, arrogant, and snooty oafs who merit hearty chastisement not respect. The case of Prince Andrew is a perfect illustration of the obnoxious effect of a privileged upbringing.
While Royal sycophants refer to the damage caused by the Meghan and Harry interview to their precious institution and openly vent their anger at meddling Markle their relative silence in relation to the appalling Prince Andrew interview in 2019 spoke volumes in relation to their blind loyalty to an out-dated, antiquated, feudal relic of the past. The guy displayed all the characteristics of an uncomfortable liar as he squirmed his way through a light grilling at the hands of the BBC’s Emily Maitlis and his denials of underage sex, knowledge of the sex trafficking activities of Jeffrey Epstein and blindness to the convicted sex offender’s despicable behaviour was as convincing as his yarn about the temporary loss of the ability to sweat.
No wonder he and the Royal Family continued to avoid proper questioning by the FBI in relation to his knowledge of and involvement in a series of seedy and illegal activities. He had already stepped back from official Royal engagements before the slippery settlement in February, but he should have been compelled to step onto an American bound plane to be legally grilled. Fear that he may have ended locked up and dragged the whole Royal Family down to his unscrupulous level explains the refusal to cooperate with the Epstein investigation.
Queen Regularly Interferes in Laws to Protect Her Wealth and Power
The notion that the Royal Family is some benign old symbol of British stiff upper lip stability without any real political power should be scorched forever by the revelations revealed by the Guardian newspaper in a series of articles last February which exposed the Queen’s consent to legislative proposals from the Westminster Parliament is not a straightforward formal process but in fact a device which has allowed the Queen to intervene regularly in the formative stages of new laws to ensure her and her family’s personal and wealth interests are always protected.
We know the Queen is one of the richest people on the planet but the reason we don’t know just exactly how much she is worth is because she personally intervened in proposed legislation designed to make wealth and wealth sources more transparent to secure a personal exemption from such transparency. That is not the action of a benign and harmless institution it is evidence of the profoundly undemocratic and unfair wielding of power without accountability.
As noted earlier when politicians bark incessantly about the need to control public spending and clamp down on the ‘scroungers’ in society they invariably target the poor, the vulnerable and the voiceless. Yet the biggest ‘scroungers’ are the Royal Family and their army of hangers on who live off public subsidies and incomes generated from land and properties that should be in public hands. The Royal enthusiasts would have us believe the public cost of the Royal Family is £82.4 million this year but closer scrutiny of the actual costs to the public purse of pampering and protecting the Royals while foregoing the large income their landed estates generate for them instead of us reveals the real cost to the public purse is closer to £350 million a year.
We Can Afford Higher Wages For Nurses But Not to Subsidise the Royals
The real cost of a 5% wage increase for England’s one million nurses, midwives, health professionals and NHS support staff would only be £330 million according to London Economics consultancy whose detailed economic analysis and report last January revealed 81% of the cost of a 5% or 10% pay rise would be recovered by the government. Those workers deserve 15% not 5% but it is time we informed society that subsidising the Royal Family costs more each year than a 5% wage rise for one million essential NHS workers. We can afford to increase the wages of NHS workers, but we can’t afford the Royal Family.
The Royal Family represents an unacceptable drain on valuable public funds and whenever a toffee-nosed Tory asks how we can afford to pay nurses, care workers and other public sector workers more we should say by scrapping the Royal Family to begin with.
Almost a decade ago the lack of integrity at the heart of the Royals was exposed when it was discovered they tried to syphon off public money ear-marked to help low-income families pay rising fuel bills to pay for heating Buckingham Palace instead. Think about the mindset of these people who thought it appropriate to divert money for those struggling to heat their cold and draughty council homes to allow Buckingham Palace to be heated with less cost to the Queen instead. What a loathsome bunch of people they are.
There is no Royal Family or Monarchy in my vision of an independent Scotland. I believe in a modern, democratic, transparent, and accountable republic. An essential step towards the socialist state I believe in. That’s why I have signed the online petition to abolish the Monarchy and I invite you to join me. I strive to live in a country which prioritises equality, fairness, and mutual respect amongst equals not an antiquated kingdom of subjects and royals. Abolish the Monarchy and reclaim our land, castles, and vast estates for the good of all in society not the enjoyment and enrichment of the privileged few.
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JOHNSON CAN STICK HIS NEW KETTLE WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE – WE IN SCOTLAND MUST BACK THE WORKERS BUT ALSO REDOUBLE OUR EFFORTS TO DELIVER SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE
Buffoon Boris Bumbles About New Kettles Whilst Millions Face Misery and Despair Two news items tonight, 1st September 2022, painfully highlight the complete and utter descent of the UK into a deep pit of despair and decay. On the one hand doctors and other medical professionals have issued a warning of a “significant humanitarian crisis” across the whole UK as half the 28 million households are driven into literal fuel poverty by spiralling electricity and gas bills meaning many adults will miss meals and children’s physical development will be harmed. This is the UK. One of the richest territories on the planet yet 50% of households are condemned into fuel poverty.
Meanwhile the fucking plonker who the people of England elected to lead them less than three years ago makes his final speech as PM after being forced to resign in disgrace for a litany of lies, misdeeds and incredible incompetence and suggests the millions struggling to make ends meet amid the economic despair they find themselves in should throw away their kettles and buy a new one for twenty quid in pursuit of a ten quid annual saving in their bills … What a complete clown Boris Johnson is. An utter privileged prat who embodies the very essence of British Nationalism.
The British Medical Journal publishes a detailed report warning of a “significant humanitarian crisis” within the economically rich nations of the UK and Boris Johnson urges everyone to buy a new kettle to save £10 a year on energy bills that have rocketed by over 80% to an outrageous average of over £3,500. Satire doesn’t stand a chance. Farce has become the norm.
The Resolution Foundation also released a detailed analysis of the economic prospects for the UK today and over the next two years and the predictions are truly dire. Household incomes and living standards face the biggest drop in over one hundred years and at least three million more people will be plunged into actual poverty. The record inflation of 10% today is expected to rise to at least 13% and very possibly 18% making the costs of essential foodstuffs, energy, transport, clothes and other everyday items unaffordable for millions of families:
“Furthermore, this living standards crisis will stretch well beyond this winter into next year and 2024. Real earnings, which are already falling at their fastest rate since the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, are forecast to continue falling until at least mid-2023, by which time all real pay growth since 2003 will have been wiped out.
This unprecedented two-decade-long wage depression is a consequence not just of record inflation today, but of over 15 years of economic stagnation driven primarily by historically weak productivity, says the Foundation.
The overall impact of these forecasts, which show what will happen without further significant interventions from Government, would see real household disposable incomes fall by 5 per cent this year (2022-23). And although inflation will ease in the following year (2023-24), typical incomes are set to fall even further, by 6 per cent, as the one-off government support for incomes comes to an end.
This stark 10 per cent income fall over two years – equivalent to £3,000 for the typical household – would be the deepest living standards squeeze in a century.”
The Biggest Drop In Household Incomes For Over 100 Years Is The Cost Of The Tories The UK is facing the biggest drop in household incomes for 100 years and serious medical professionals are warning of a major humanitarian crisis and the Tory PM England elected lectures us about old kettles taking ages and advises us to buy new ones… I know what I want to do with my old kettle and Johnson. Keep the former and throw the latter into the political scrap yard where he and his whole rotten party of thieving and cruel bastards belong.
I appreciate foul language can sometimes offend but frankly my rage is now at boiling point, and I don’t care about the sensitivities of the liberal elites who report on and comment about poverty but have never experienced it and likely never will. Far too many children’s lives are being ruined by the economic mismanagement of a bunch of Tory millionaires and malignant parasites to be bothered about offending the human vermin who promote the Tories and vote for them. I despise the Tories and everything they stand far. They think nothing of scapegoating the poor, the lone parents, the asylum seekers and striking workers for the ills and despair which engulfs millions today. Never forget these swine have been in power for 12 years now. Twelve years of the Tories and their policies designed to enrich the wealthy and powerful while plundering public services and ordinary workers is why we are in this malaise.
What we have all across the UK is a cost of the Tories crisis. Workers faced with two whole decades of lost wage growth are fed up to the back teeth with bosses and their Tory pals pontificating about wage restraint and belt tightening while they gorge themselves on salary, bonus and pension settlements that are beyond obscene. Read the recent High Pay Centre Report and acquaint yourself with the fact pay for the bosses in the top 100 British companies has rocketed by a whopping 39% in the last 12 months and their average salary has risen from £2.46 million a year to £3.41 million a year. How dare the media question workers about the affordability of inflation matching pay deals while the bosses take home rises near to 40%. When did you ever witness a boss being grilled about their excessive pay in the face of economic hardships across society?
The British Establishment Always Looks After Their Own – Boris Johnson Looked After His Elite Friends Always In the face of such disgusting wealth and income inequality the duty of all decent people is to back striking workers from whatever industry or workplace they emerge. Workers must join a trade union and get organised lest they remain isolated and powerless in the face of boss greed and Tory dictats. After nearly two decades of falling real wages and amid inflation of over 10% if workers don’t fight back now when will they ever fight back? I was proud and privileged to join picket lines in support of RMT and CWU members recently. I support the bin workers, other local government workers, firefighters, teachers, carers, NHS employees and telecommunications workers who are compelled to take strike action now in defence of working conditions and in pursuit of wage increases which at least match inflation. A wage rise of less than 10% right now is effectively a wage cut. ‘Back ALL the workers’ has to be our mantra.
On the CWU Picket Line in Stirling – Solidarity With All Striking Workers Of course, in the face of a generalised assault on the living standards of workers we urgently require a generalised response. The TUC is the body charged with leading all trade union members. They must bring the union leaders together and organise a series of general strikes against Tory austerity, threats to restrict the right to strike, and the economic policies of rewarding the rich while starving public services and public service workers of funding. The billionaires could all strike tomorrow and no one would notice but when rail workers, refuge collectors, posties and other workers strike we all notice because the work they do is essential to society. Trading in stocks and shares, moving vast sums of money from one hedge fund to another is neither essential or productive. The bosses now receive salaries 109 times greater than the average salaries in their workplaces compared to 79 times greater in 2019. That is simply immoral and debauched.
Privatised Royal Mail made £758 million in profits last year, paid £2 million in bonuses to already overpaid CEO’s and the Chief Financial Officer and an incredible £400 million to shareholders but offered its workforce a derisory 2% wage increase with derogatory changes to their contracts attached. The hypocrisy is sickening and must be exposed.
Reject any suggestion of common suffering. It is ordinary workers who are paying for Tory incompetence and economic mismanagement over the last 12 years not bosses or big businesses.
Whilst the CEO’s are raking it in like there is no tomorrow the UNITE the Union Report in June confirmed company profits are massive and responsible for at least 60% of the high inflation and although energy companies are at the top of the pile they are not alone in ripping off the consumer with price hikes higher than supply cost increases resulting in excessive profits across the whole of the business sector.
Profits in the energy sector are 73% higher in the last year but across other sectors profits are up by over 50%. There is no equality of sacrifice or pain. Workers and ordinary families are suffering but not bosses and big business:
“Unite report finds that in the last six months company profits are responsible for almost 60% of inflation rise.
“It’s not hard pressed workers who are driving inflation, it’s Britain’s bosses.
It’s inflation and corporate profits, not workers’ wages, which are at the heart of the cost of living crisis currently gripping the UK according to a compelling new report. The Unite report ‘Corporate Profiteering and the Cost of Living Crisis’ argues that it is time to demand restraint on profiteering not pay.
An analysis of the FTSE 350 reveals profit margins for the UK’s biggest listed companies were 73% higher in 2021 than pre-pandemic levels in 2019. Even though sales were down in 2021, profits still rocketed. Even removing energy companies from the tally, average profit margins still jumped an astonishing 52%.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said:
“The weight of evidence shows that the UK is in the grip of a profiteering crisis. Workers’ wages and what they can buy, are being squeezed by corporate wreckers pursuing runaway profits, literally at our expense.”
With company profits soaring indecently and bosses wages more obscene than ever its no wonder so many workers are angry and trade union leaders like Mick Lynch, Sharon Graham, Dave Ward and others are receiving mass support and acclaim from their members for being prepared to organise resistance to further reductions in living standards. As Mick Lynch said at a recent packed rally in Glasgow “We refuse to be poor anymore”.
The Bosses Are Overpaid Not The Workers The response to the trade union backed ‘Enough Is Enough’ campaign has been remarkable. Over 500,000 citizens have signed up to a set of demands that the billionaire owned media label radical but in reality are merely reasonable and practical.
The national day of action EIE have called for October 1st will be a huge show of opposition to the Tories and rejection of the exorbitant energy price hikes. They highlight how much worse things will get under the tsunami of price hikes and why workers need to fight back https://twitter.com/eiecampaign/status/1563440405462392833?s=20&t=zy6h3d0Fyu_VPG7zbB_OcA.
Although backing workers in struggle and demanding economic policies which benefit the 99% instead of just the top 1% in society are our collective priority, we in Scotland have an even deeper justification to be raging with what we face. We didn’t vote for the Tory shower of chancers and liars. In fact, we haven’t voted for them in Scotland since 1955. For 67 years Scotland has voted against the Tories and in the last three UK General Elections (2015/17/19) we didn’t just reject the blue Tories we also rejected the red Tories and supported the principal party of Scottish independence, the SNP. That party also won the last two Scottish General Elections (2016/2021).
When a party formed specifically to pursue Scottish independence wins five successive elections in a supposed parliamentary democracy since the passage of the independence referendum of 2014 then the idea that a second independence referendum can be denied to our country is simply outrageous and unacceptable. While supporting workers in struggle is our duty all progressive minded people and proponents of democracy must also redouble their efforts in support of independence. Neither unrepresentative Tories in Westminster nor unelected appointed Supreme Court judges in the High Courts can deny the Scottish people their right to decide on their constitutional future.
The British Union is an imperialist construct, a brutal and greedy advocate of colonial plunder and violent theft of resources from others. Being anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist is a badge of progressive honour. Supporting Scottish independence is fundamentally anti-imperialist and pro-democracy and self-determination. It is to be on the side of human rights and freedom.
Support ALL Striking Workers But Redouble Our Efforts To Secure Scotland’s Independence Once Again In this time of industrial strife and turmoil those of us who carry the flag of Scottish independence should declare without hesitation our support for the workers, but we should not drop our flag of independence in such times but instead raise that flag higher and with more vigour. Britain’s decay and degeneration is illustrated by the election of such a clown and oaf as Johnson to lead it but make no mistake Liz Truss is every bit as incompetent, dishonest, and politically decrepit and cruel as Johnson. She will be both worse than him and even Thatcher in the 80’s. The urgency of Scottish independence has never been greater. We must march with and for the workers in struggle but also for Scotland’s freedom from Westminster’s chains.
Author – Tommy Sheridan
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EXECUTIVE PAY GROWTH AND COMPANY PROFITS GREED ARE OBSCENE – GENERAL STRIKE ACTION IN SUPPORT OF ALL WORKERS IS NOW REQUIRED – OVER TO YOU TUC
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TAKE BACK THE ENERGY INDUSTRY – RENATIONALISATION IS NECESSARY AND URGENT
A Time To Rage
Blog of the Solidarity Socialist Network
A Time To Rage 