The Scottish Socialist Youth invite you to march with them in support of their legalise cannabis campaign.

This Saturday, 22nd August, assemble 12 noon George Square, march to Kelvingrove Park.

Note: there is a demonstration against the closure on Sunday 26th July, 1pm, Howard Park, Kilmarnock

by Richie Venton – 16th July 2009

It’s a classic case of the greedy rich sacrificing human beings to amass even more profit.

The announcement by the world’s biggest drinks company, Diageo, that they will shut the giant bottling plant in Kilmarnock, plus the distillery and cooperage in Glasgow, have provoked a wave of justified rage.

The whisky firm has been in Kilmarnock since 1820, the Glasgow cooperage since 1810. After two centuries of workers’ skills, hard graft and sacrifice helping the owners stack up billions in profits, these ruthless exploiters have declared war on whole communities.

They want the ‘Striding Man’ to walk away from Ayrshire. It would mean the direct loss of 700 jobs in Kilmarnock (making it one of the worst unemployment blackspots in the whole of Scotland) and another 140 in Glasgow. And that’s not taking any account of the knock-on effects, with shops, haulage firms and others facing devastation from the decisions of remote boardroom bosses who put profit first, second and always.

And they can’t even trot out the lame excuse that “it’s the recession”! It is not due to plummeting sales. This is the world’s biggest drinks firm. In just the last 6 months of 2008 – yes, half the year – Diageo piled up £1.63billion in profit!

But their top bosses have blurted out the real reason for the threatened closures: We want to protect future profit levels.

Nor can they claim they are cutting back on all expenditure to save the company. They have just forked out to get the Johnnie Walker logo on Lewis Hamilton’s helmet at Grand Prix races. This is part of a £90 million leap in advertising expenditure – from £643m in the first half of 2008 to £732m in the second half.

The top dogs in Diageo will certainly not suffer. Chief Executive Paul Walsh last year ‘earned’ £2.3million! A million of that was his ‘basic’ salary; £1.19m a ‘performance bonus’; £39,000 in other benefits. And that takes no account of his 720,000 shares in Diageo, worth about £6m – or his pension pot of £8.26m, which makes the much maligned Sir Fred Goodwin look like a pensioner pauper!

These criminals have the cheek to make speeches about the social responsibility of corporations, and then announce annihilation for whole communities. Paul Walsh is European chairman of an outfit called the International Business Leaders’ Forum, which tries to promote big business as a way to build sustainable and equitable societies!

That’s a sick joke for starters: big business exists to make profits, not to help people, and builds a gaping chasm of inequality into society.

But if you think the idea of money-grabbing capitalists being the source of sustainable and equitable societies is monstrous, it gets worse. Paul Walsh told the International Business Leaders Forum conference

Above all, I want Diageo to become a byword for integrity, social responsibility and commitment to the communities in which it operates. I want business with soul!

The people of Kilmarnock and Glasgow are up in arms at this betrayal for profit. Window posters, petitions, summits with councils and government ministers, and a rally in Kilmarnock are all part of the resistance.

To add insult to injury, Diageo bosses try to say there is an option for the workers facing devastation: there are 400 jobs being created at a bottling plant in Leven, Fife!

Who the hell do they think is going to commute from Ayrshire or Glasgow to Fife to work? And why should families be uprooted for the sake of protecting future profit levels?

Big business is out for one thing only: profit. The only way to resist their butchery is through decisive action, people uniting in their unions and communities, marching, protesting, looking at industrial action to hit the profiteers where it hurts – their wallets.

The governments of Westminster and Edinburgh should not offer to subsidise these corporate gangsters’ profits from public funds; they should demand Diageo drop all redundancy and closure plans, and if they refuse to bow to public outrage, step in and take over their assets, to sustain the jobs.

As one Kilmarnock man put it: “What would the farm born grocer [Johnnie Walker] say? Shame on you Diageo, 189 years of tradition sacrificed for some fat cat’s wallet!”

The SSP will fight all the way alongside workers and their communities, united to fight the closures, putting people before profit – a real version of social responsibility.

Dundee/Tayside CND‘s annual Walk up The Law, Thursday, August 6th.

Assemble 8.15 p.m. march off 8.30 p.m.

Speakers: John McAllion (confirmed) others yet to confirm.

Bring candles, hand lights, banners, etc.

Also, to commemorate the bombing of Nagasaki, please join Erik Cramb on Sunday, 9th August, at 11.01 a.m. at top of Law.

Letter from Alan Mackinnon, Chair, Scottish CND

Dear Colleague,

I write to advise you of 2 important forthcoming events for peace movement in Scotland. I wonder if you would send this letter and the attachments on to your usual contacts.

1. A joint STUC/Scottish CND Conference entitled ‘Trident, Jobs and Scotland’s Economy’ to be held on Saturday 6th June at the STUC, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow from 10.30am to 1.30pm. The speakers will include Jeremy Corbyn MP, Bill Kidd MSP, Lynn Henderson, Jackson Cullinane(TGWU/Unite), and Dave Moxham STUC. Among other things the Conference will mark the launch of a new STUC/CND research report providing up to date figures on the job losses associated with the Trident programme. Contrary to other claims, Trident renewal is actually costing Scotland vital jobs now and cancelling it could release resources for new productive investment in its economy. Attached is a leaflet in PDF format. I would be grateful if you could circulate your contacts to inform them of this important event.

2. A march and rally in Glasgow entitled ‘Crunch Time for Trident’ on Saturday 20th June – assemble George Square 11am, march to Kelvingrove Park for a rally. There will be keynote speakers and songs specially commissioned for the event. The event is organised by Scotland’s for Peace. Again, I would be grateful if you could circulate your contacts and encourage them to bring banners etc to the event. I attach a copy of a leaflet to advertise the event. If you would like to receive copies of the leaflets for either event or posters for the latter event, please contact the Scottish CND office at 15 Barrland Street, Glasgow G41 1QH – tel 0141 433 2821.

Yours in Peace

Alan Mackinnon
Chair, Scottish CND

The recent long awaited showing of Comrades on Film4 comes at an anniversary of the movement.

It is 175 years since the protest march demanded their pardon and freedom.

A blog has been set up detailing events surrounding the anniversary of this extremely important movement.

Got to tolpuddlekx.wordpress.com/ for more information.

Footage obtained by the Guardian show Ian Tomlinson being attacked by a police officer shortly before he died of natural causes

No doubt it was just a bad apple in the barrel and one of the other decent human beings who make up the majority of the police force will be able to identify the person who has probably committed manslaughter. If not, the CCTV footage from the area may help. Or the footage the police took. Or the other footage the protesters took (which the police were forcing people to delete).

Occupation

Save Our Schools parents and education workers are occupying Wyndford Primary and St Gregorys in Maryhill. People living near by are asked to go to the school with food supplies and messages of support. Text messages of support to:

Wyndford: 07894 123721

St. Gregory’s: 07776 396152

Demonstration in support of schools occupations today (Saturday 4th April) at 12 Midday

The Glasgow-wide Save Our Schools Campaign is appealing to people from the local community and across Glasgow to join a demonstration in support of parents occupying Wyndford and St Gregory’s primary schools today at 12 noon.

The support event is at Wyndford and St Gregory’s schools, Glenfinnan Drive, at the back of Maryhill Rd Tescos.

SSP on the Save our Schools campaign

Indymedia has an excellent video up of the police tactics at the peaceful climate camp.

The tactics used elsewhere were reportedly worse, and they wonder why people fight back. A few people go for the set up of an open bank and it grabs the headlines whilst more police attacks on peaceful protesters goes unreported.

At the G20 protests in London Mark Thomas gave a rousing speech denouncing Labour and the politics they represent.

In it he points out some of the policies we should be demanding now that we own the banks.

Recently, if you have been watching the news or reading any newspaper you will have noticed the complete failure of whole sections of the private sector. Basing their business plans on profits they were expecting to make, the profits never arrived, but massive debts and write offs came instead. You will also have noticed that Labour threw hundreds of billions of pounds at the failed companies, some of which is being syphoned off by their greedy directors as bonuses, clearly not related to performance.

Now the Labour Party are planning to privatise 30% of Royal Mail. Twice disgraced Business Secretary Peter Mandelson claims that Royal Mail is in danger of running out of money and that the taxpayer could not be expected to fund potential liabilities in the region of £8bn in the companies pension fund. Part of the reason the pension fund is in deficit is that the return on the investment for them is based on Labours glorious Free Market which has just failed, spectacularly, again. The main part though, and this is good, is because Labour allowed the bosses to take a pension holiday for thirteen years!

They encouraged the bosses to not pay money into the pension fund, then use the fact it’s now, obviously, in deficit to attack the service.

Billy Hayes, leader of the Communication Workers’ Union hit the nail on the head:

The government is saying they want a foreign company to run the post office, which is ridiculous. We could be faced with a situation where the Royal Bank of Scotland is nationalised and the Royal Mail is privatised.

This is not an isolated incident, Labour and the Tories freed up the most profitable parts of the Royal Mail to competition, and more recently Labour have been attacking whole swathes of the service. This included disgracefully closing four post offices in Dundee, one of which was in the area they are now trying to convince voters to elect them in. Dundee SSP were out campaigning constantly getting people to sign petitions and write letters objecting to the closures and taking part in the Consultation.

The outcome of privatising the most profitable parts of the service is that Labours demands that the company turn a larger profit is harder than ever, because of Labour gutting the service in the first place.

New Labour for consultation is clearly English for proclamation and farce. The objections of hundreds were ignored. A handful of Post Offices have been saved from closure, only for others to take their place. Showing clearly they were not closing based on popularity or local need but purely because they wanted to close X number. The act of removing one from that list resulted in the adding of another.

There are two petitions on the issue, and the least you can do is sign them. After that write to your MP. There will no doubt be other protests and actions taking place over this issue so pledge to take part in any that do.

CWU petition

Petition on Number 10 site