Dundee SSP

At our last meeting in Dundee we had a short discussion about our Free Public Transport policy. We want to look at it more locally than nationally.

What do you think of transport in the city? Is your street clogged up with cars? Does your bus take forever and not stop near your house? Quicker walking home after work than being stuck in a queue? Fancy riding a bike to work but not back up that hill again afterwards?

Feel free to comment below with your thoughts on transport.

Kevin McVey stands for socialism in Glasgow North East – 2nd July 2009

The Scottish Socialist Party has selected Kevin McVey as candidate for the Glasgow North East by-election.
A civil service trade union representative for 20 years, Kevin was brought up in the constituency, in Ruchazie.
Kevin joined the Labour Party Young Socialists in 1984 and was expelled from the Labour party 5 years later for being a socialist.

Kevin has a long track record of fighting the poll tax, against school closures, and for taxation of the rich to improve public services.

Kevin McVey said this evening:

At a time of daily news bulletins on the stench of corruption arising from Westminster, I am proud to publicly pledge that I will reject the £64,000 MP’s salary and live instead on the average skilled worker’s wage – not a penny more.

After the mainstream parties have been caught fiddling expenses for food, furniture, second homes, and Michael Martin was booted out for trying to cover up these crimes against people struggling to pay the bills, Labour now wants him promoted to the unelected, undemocratic House of Lords.

That’s an insult to ordinary hardworking people. Where I have worked you would be sacked for doctoring expenses or for failing to act against fiddles if you were in a manager’s post!

The people of Glasgow North East deserve a socialist MP who will fight for them, not another chancer who pockets the obscene salary and then grabs even more in expenses.

SSP Glasgow Regional Secretary Richie Venton said today:

We are proud to put up a candidate with such a long and principled history of fighting for the working class.

The SSP has been at the heart of fighting to save several local schools and nurseries from Labour’s butchery. We have helped stop the ambitious councillor Gordon Matheson becoming the Labour candidate, because even the out-of-touch Labour hierarchy knew he would be a complete liability in an area blitzed by school closures, which he was at the heart of. The SSP will make Save Our Schools a major issue in the by-election, demanding class sizes of 20 or less for all kids, to give them a decent start in life and to hire more teachers and nursery staff.

An appeal to sign the Glasgow Save Our Schools petition today calling for a Government inquiry into the impact of school closures on education, class sizes and democracy

From Richie Venton, Glasgow Save our Schools Campaign organiser

Please take 2 minutes to sign the e-petition for the Scottish Parliament; help fight for smaller class sizes and greater democracy in decision-making.

Dear friends and fighters,

We have been fighting the Glasgow Labour council’s closure of 25 primaries and nurseries since January. We have built a mass movement, using every conceivable method of struggle.

Now we have taken the battle to the Scottish parliament and the Scottish government, demanding they take a clear stance in opposition to the closures and their consequences – especially the regressive increase in class sizes.

Our massive efforts saved 3 of the 25, but the rest are now closed, with horrendous consequences for kids, families and communities.

The Labour Council cynically calculated that since there will be no Council elections until 2012, they would ride the storm, hope people forget, and save themselves £3.7m a year at terrible cost to communities in working class areas of the city. We are determined to make them pay for these crimes – and in the process, stop the threat of 34 further potential closures!

If you want more background information, just go to the Glasgow Save Our Schools website

At the heart of our battle now is that for smaller class sizes. Our Campaign has persistently demanded cuts to class sizes of 20 maximum for all ages. That would improve education and protect and create teachers’ jobs.

That is also the official policy of the teachers’ unions. And the Scottish government claims to aim at 18 maximum in Primary 1-3.

As one important strand of our ongoing campaign, we have lodged this petition in the Scottish parliament Public Petitions system.

In case you are not aware, the Scottish parliament allows the public to submit petitions to a committee of MSPs to consider, with the option of inviting representatives to address this Public Petitions Committee to justify the case, and the power to then lodge the issue as a matter for debate in the full parliament and its sub-committees.

So we need vast numbers to add their names to this petition online, to add pressure to the MSPs in favour of inviting us to address them when they meet again in September. We have a limited few weeks to maximise the numbers signing the petition online.

It is straightforward – just click here to sign the e-petition for the Scottish Parliament.

And you have the option of adding a comment on the discussion board to help add weight to the debate; but at least please add your name to the list of signatures today.

And when you’ve done that, get others in your family to do it; and others in your trade union or community group. Then forward this email to everyone on your list of email addresses, to encourage them to sign up as well.

Thanks for your help – sign up and spread the word!

Yours in struggle and unity,

Richie Venton

Sit-Richie Venton, Glasgow Save Our Schools Campaign organiser, spoke to parents inside the sit-in.

Parents have occupied Wyndford primary school in Maryhill since Friday 26th June, as the doors were slammed shut by Glasgow Labour council at the end of the school year.

This audacious action has thrown the arrogant council leader, Steven Purcell, who expected all to go quiet over the summer holidays, hoping that by the time of the next council elections in 2012, everyone would have forgotten about their dirty deeds against kids and communities across the city.

The council has made no pretence of negotiations with the sit-in. They have just fired out statements that the sit-in is pointless, the school is shut, end of story.

Yet despite all their arrogant strutting, the same council has thrown sops towards the local community in the form of proposals for a new Family and Recreation Centre, based in the neighbouring school (also shut), St Gregory’s.

This is a crude attempt to buy off the anger in the community, generated by their brutal closures, which leaves the Wyndford estate a desert in terms of facilities. None of this would have happened without the ferocious battle mounted by local people, through the Save Our Schools Campaign. And it is too little, too late.

I spoke to several of the parents staging the occupation, inside the school, about their aims and feelings.

I would appeal to everyone reading their comments below to:

• (a) contact them with messages of support on 0778 350 8740
• (b) try to visit the sit-in at Glenfinan Drive , near Tescos in Maryhill Rd – if possible with supplies of food and water
• (c) build attendance of adults and kids at the sit-in’s Water Festival, Thursday 2nd July at 1pm – in response to the council’s dirty tricks department – who today (Tuesday) cut off drinking water supplies under the disguise of checking an imaginary gas leak.

Bring the kids, bring water pistols, bring supplies.

Tell the Council that the school occupation won’t get dirty like the Glasgow Labour Council!!

What the occupiers say:

We want a school in the community. We have nothing. We are waiting for a Judicial Review on the issue of nursery parents not being consulted on the closure of the primary.

We don’t want a school – we need a school in this community!

The other schools offered by the council are too far away, along dangerous routes.

On 23rd June the council put a proposal to make St Gregory’s primary into a Family Centre, and to turn the existing Recreation Centre into a power station for the Wyndford estate.

So if St Gregory’s is good enough for a Family Centre, it’s good enough for a school. All we are asking for is one school in the estate, we’re not even being greedy, asking to keep both St Gregory’s and Wyndford primary.

Family Centres can be built anywhere, so why compromise a school for it? And the Glasgow council are only offering this because right throughout the campaign we shouted that we have nothing, no facilities, from one end of Maryhill to the other.

Our fear is that the council want to demolish the school building – possibly to use the ground for a part of the Family and Recreation Centre. CMI, a demolition firm, has already been in twice to inspect the building, for asbestos before demolition. That’s another reason we’re holding the sit-in, to stop demolition.

Since we occupied the school last Friday afternoon we’ve not seen the Council. No talks or negotiations. Then today (Tuesday) they sent along a council worker pretending to be looking for a gas leak, cutting off the water to the school. And it seems it’s just the drinking water they’ve cut off. Well that won’t shift us either.

In reply we are organising a Water Festival on Thursday (2nd July) at 1pm – a bit of fun for the kids, with paddling pools and water pistols. Our message is ‘join us – don’t let the school occupiers become as dirty as Glasgow city council!’

The community is still united. St Gregory’s parents have been in to help us occupy Wyndford, and they have helped stage the barricades on the gates to stop the Council getting equipment out of the building.

On Saturday they sent in 30 vans. They loaded up with school furniture and equipment. But because parents, kids and supporters refused to budge on the gates, we forced them to unload again and have the vans inspected by us before they went away!

On Monday they sent two vans to pick up the safe and photocopiers, but pickets on the gates appealed to them, sat down on the road, and the drivers turned away empty-handed.

We’re appealing for support and supplies – including food and water – from the local community and people from other areas and schools. We’ve had parents and grandparents from as far away as Barmulloch, St Gilbert’s and St Agnes schools here supporting us.

As Barmulloch parents we think it is great what Wyndford are doing. We are happy to help in any way we can.

We’re not moving until they give us a school; they can turn off whatever they want. Our message to the council is ‘you’ve shut our schools, but we’re still here, we’re still in your face’.

Taken from the SSP website

By an Iranian exile in Scotland – 22nd June 2009

Iran is experiencing the most significant popular uprising since the1979 revolution.

The angry people came to streets after the 10th presidential election result was announced on 13th June. Two weeks of colourful street festivals, where young people were exceptionally allowed to let off steam dance and chant Ahmadinejad bye bye ended up in bloodshed.

Fraudulent elections are not new in Iran, but the recent colossal “polls engineering” has astonished even the most pessimist observers. While millions of change supporting youth prepared themselves to celebrate a landslide victory over Ahmadinejad, Iran’s ministry of interior declared him as the winner, having two times more votes over his main rival, Moussavi.

Three candidates could get the official approval to compete with Ahmadinejad. Amongst them Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi were considered as reformists and the third one was a former commander of the revolutionary guard.

Moussavi, an architect and the ex-prime minister in the 80’s , entered into the contest after twenty years of political silence. He was strongly supported by many reformists, such as ex-president Khatami and Rafsanjani, the powerful head of the “Council of Expediency”. Moussavi, known for his clean economic record and his efficient management of the wartime economy, could specially gain a massive support among all the strata of the society, and turn out to be the first chance of winning the election.

He openly criticized Ahmadinejad’s term as wasting of oil revenues, unjustified social repressions and confrontational foreign policy.

Both reformist candidates pledged to relieve social repressions and limit censorship, curb 24 percent inflation, and rebuild foreign relation with the West.

On the other hand, Ahmadinejad, who is strongly backed by the revolutionary guard (RG) defended his achievement on earth and the sky and claimed that he had revived the dignity of the Islamic regime by taking the aggressive stance towards the West.

The televised debates between candidates, a new phenomenon in Iran’s narrow political scene, broke many taboos and exposed a long-lasting power struggle at the top between the Supreme Leader, and his so-called barrack party on one hand and the moderate Rafsanjani on the other.

Rasanjani’s wealthy men have financed Moussavi’s massive campaign. Ahmadinejad condemned all his precedent governments, including Rafsanjani’s, for cowardice and corruption. The others openly called Ahmadinejad an extravagant liar.

While reformists did not pose major critiques of Iran’s nuclear program, one noticeable shift from previous elections was that social movement’s demands found more vocal voice within the reformist agenda.

Both reformists published their charters of Human Right, pledging to sign the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and to relax state censorship and suppression, and to give more rights to ethnic and religious minorities.

Karrubi, a former head of the Parliament, backed by an important student organisation and more radical figures of reformist intellectuals, even went so far to ask for revising the regime’s Constitution. This was an ostensible breach from the official discourse, since the constitution was regarded as the most sacred asset of the revolution.

These debates raised hope among young people desperate for change.

The growing consensus to participate in the election eventually marginalised the opposition political parties, notably leftist in exile, who pointed to so-called reformist government of Khatami’s presidency as a proof of impossibility of reform from inside the regime.

The leftists called for their traditional policy of boycotting the so-called elections.
The turn out to the polls however was estimated to be over 85% which is a record since Khatami’s election in 1997. The reformists observers of the polls claimed that they got 30 million votes out of the 42 million polls. Based on these, Moussavi declared his victory at the night of vote counting, while complaining about widespread manipulations and bias.

However, at the night of 12th June the ministry of interior turned the tables and declared Ahmadinejad as the new president, obtaining an improbable 24 million votes, two times more than Moussavi.

The two reformist candidates called the result as dangerous charade and imaginary and absurd. People soon called the move a political coup by the Supreme Leader in order to keep the “barrack party” (i.e the Revolutionary Guard and its militia Basij) in power.

Thousands of people who invested their hopes for change in Moussavi and Karrubi, immediately came streets shouting Down with dictator and Moussavi, take back my vote for me. On the same night, the regime’s Basij, well equipped with all the light weaponry but in plain cloths, attacked university dormitories in major cities, beating and injuring hundreds of students, while there are unconfirmed reports of 5 being killed in the attack to Tehran University dormitory.

In a national-wide demonstration on Tuesday, which was banned by the ministry of interior, hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out. Moussavi and Karrubi came to the crowd and stressed that they will not surrender.

The riot police and notorious Basij dispersed protesters using electric batons, pepper sprays, tear gas and, in some instances, shooting at the people. At least 8 people where killed and dozens injured in Tehran. They suppressed people more brutally outside the capital. The supreme leader who was the first to congratulate Ahmadinejad took one step back and vaguely ordered to review the results. However, people are highly suspicious that this was just a trick to calm down the people.

On 19th June, when some were still hopeful that these widespread protests would soften the ruling hardliners, the supreme leader declared threateningly at the Friday Prayer that the loser should respect the law otherwise they are responsible for the human suffering in the street clashes.

This final word of the ultimate authority was regarded as showing the green light to security forces to escalate hostilities. Angry people who were not frightened by the threats came to streets on the day after, which turned out to be the most hideous day since the disputed election.

In Tehran, alone at least 19 people were shot dead by Basij agents and hundreds injured, among them the tragic death scene of young girl called Neda who has now become iconic. She had came with his father to participate in peaceful protest but get shot in the heart, her last seconds were filmed by a pedestrian, spread virally on Internet and shocked the world.

In response to these brutalities, a national strike is been called as we go to press. The call for national strike first announced by an officially banned leftist group called Sacrifice of the People. Local workers strikes in objection to the rigged election have already been held at some instances, notably in the country’s main car manufacturing complex, Iran Khodro.

At present, all the reformist websites are blocked, mobile communications are restricted and almost all of the foreign correspondents, even the BBC reporters which was traditionally among the most gentle ones, have been asked to quit the country.

To circumvent censorship people have extensively used creative ways, for example they widely use social networks like Facebook and Twitter to organise themselves and to let the external world to know what is happening in the country. On the other hand, a series of distributed Internet attacks by Iranian diaspora brought down some of the regime’s official websites.

Almost all of the reformist leaders, critics, prominent journalists, student activists, and ordinary protesters are being jailed.

Even aged reformist figures in their 80’s where not immune to the mass-arrests. Dr. Yazdi, for example, an 80 year old ex-foreign minister , has been taken to jail straight form the hospital bed, where he was being treated for cancer. Moussavi and Karrubi are still free and continue reclaiming for re-election. Perhaps because the ruling class fears that their arrest will put more oil into people’s fire.

Outside the country, Iranians are mostly surprised by the election results, and shocked by the regime’s brutalities, are protesting at Iranian embassies and urging Iranian leaders to respect their votes – Moussavi’s average vote outside the country, where it were closely observed and thus difficult to forge, was over 80%.

So not surprisingly almost all expatriates are urging their respective governments to not legitimise Ahmadinjad as Iran’s president and many are asking to cut all ties with the mullahs’ regime.

Given the lack of any established resistance organisation and regarding the iron-fist policy of the government the future of the movement remains to be seen.

Something that seems clear is that the political cost of the election for the regime was huge and particularly the legitimacy lost by of the supreme leader was irreversible. It is rather soon to say that history is repeating but I think it would be fair to say that Iran have definitely entered into a new political era.

The unsettling fact is that the ruling class have shown that they are not worried about the death tolls, as far as their power is at the stake.

Found on the Daily Maybe site

You can find out more about Ian Saville, the Socialist magician at his website.

I can just imagine the puns he can have during his show – sawing organisations in half, not just destroying one ten quid note, making Westminster disappear etc.

It’s a bit too soon to have done any proper analysis of the vote, no doubt we will discuss it at our meeting this Wednesday.

We would like to thank all those in Dundee and beyond who voted for a campaigning Socialist Party.

We saw a modest rise in our percentage both in Dundee and nationally. Clearly it was not as high as we would have hoped but it has been steadily rising in the city for the past 2 years and it is a start of the rebuilding process after the low of the 2007 results.

Unlike most other parties you didn’t only see us on the streets in the run up to the election and we won’t disappear immediately after it. Although at this election the other parties were seen even more rarely than usual. They wouldn’t have something to be embarrassed about would they?

A friendly reminder that tomorrow is the European Election.

Wherever you are in Scotland you can vote for the SSP by marking one cross next to us on the ballot paper.

As well as the regular stalls in Dundee, the SSP have also held a number of stalls over the region in the last few weeks. Activity has included stalls in Aberdeen, Montrose, Arbroath and Perth.

We have managed to dish out thousands of leaflets to passers by to let them know two things that not only are we standing in the European elections but that we are active in the area.

Today was glorious sunshine in Montrose surrounded by the excellent background music of the festival going on behind us. We look forward to our semi regular stalls in Arbroath and Montrose – the SSP, not just on the streets at an election.

Joaquin, the NPA activist who spoke at the Dundee rally last night is interviewed on the SSP site.

Extract:

For many socialists in Europe we have been inspired by those recent struggles in France – what is happening at the moment?

Sarkosy came to power partly because opposition to him was so poor. With all the parties pretty much offering the same policies Sarkosy may have appeared decisive and in control and someone who could sort problems out. Particularly with the economic crisis people now just see his government as arrogant and only interested in representing the rich. Worse than that this government is aggressive particularly against young people and is reacting to the increased conflict and tension brought about by increased class conflict by unleashing the police and stepping up surveillance, something I know is happening in Britain too.

From January to March this year there was massive protests across the country and a general strike was a possibility. Partly because of the role of trade union leaders this did not happen and this has meant that perhaps things are bit quieter just now. However I do not believe this will last and more struggle will take place only this time even stronger than before.