Assemble 12noon, West gate of Dudhope Park (postcode DD1 5RE for satnav / GoogleMap). March off at 12:30pm. Route; Lochee Road, Marketgait, West Marketgait, Nethergate to rally in City Square (postcode DD1 3BA) commencing at approx 1pm. Provisionally, feeder marches are being investigated from Dundee University (via Hawkhill to join up at Marketgait Circle) and Abertay University (via Bell Street to join up at Marketgait).

TUs are asked to check & advise on speakers (Dundee or national officers). STUC speaker has been requested.

Further details; dundeetuc@ymail.com, 07951 443656.

Location: Burns’ Statue, Albert Square, Dundee
Time: 26 March · 12:00 – 13:00

There is an event set up on Facebook for further information.

On Friday 29th April there will be a demo starting from 11:30 in Hilltown park with a rally in the city square at noon.

Mayday2011

Later that night there will be a social in Lyrics in St Andrews Lane from 7:30pm. This will have Music, Raffle and Revolutionary Enjoyment tickets cost £10.

SocialPoster2001

Next meetings:

• Wednesday 12 January 2011
• Wednesday 26 January 2011
• Wednesday 9 February 2011
• Wednesday 23 February 2011

There is an Dundee anti-cuts meeting on the 19 January so to avoid a clash we have had an extra week break over the holiday period.

The main topic for the next meeting will be the coming Tory/Lib Dem cuts. To come along contact us in one of the listed ways.

Helping the Dundee folk in distress

A Dundee pair set up a Facebook page to co-ordinate helpers for vulnerable people in Dundee during the severe snowstorm we are experiencing just now. Volunteers are going shopping for elderly people trapped in their homes and clearing paths to make it safer for people to get about sheltered housing complexes etc.

Whether through this group or not it is instinctual for people to do these sorts of things. Most of the papers have praised the group whilst being shocked that about 30 years of individualist propaganda people will do these sorts of actions. Some seem to think that it is strange to imagine those of us who clear paths near us or chap our elderly neighbours to see if they are ok and if they need anything. This says more about the ideas constantly bombarding us through the media than the community spirit of the vast majority of society.

In the coming year some of those out gritting roads will be made redundant. Some of those out shovelling snow and shopping for neighbours will lose jobs or homes because of the recession. The bankers and politicians who caused this mess – how many of them will be out in their wellies helping their neighbours and friends? If the cold hits again next year will it cause more disruption when councils cut waste i.e. make some of those people clearing snow and gritting paths redundant?

It’s bad enough that relatives and visitors to the sick and injured are lining the pockets of the Vinci parasites but raising the charges just adds insult to injury.

Dundee SSP have campaigned against these charges for years. What is most galling is that most other hospitals have had them abolished. Only those with disastrous PFI deals remained.

Recently the newspapers were full of politicians outraged over the locked in contract which delivered terrible value for money on aircraft carriers.

It is worth noting that those same politicians are silent when it comes to worse contracts sucking money out of our schools and hospitals in PFI deals.

PFI – created by Tories, perfected by Labour.

A call to the people of Dundee

• The Tory / Lib Dem Government has proposed massive cuts in services, benefits,
  pensions, jobs and wages as their answer to the deficit created by the banking crisis.
• Dundee City Council is set to cut £40Million over the next four years, and that’s on
  top of local cuts in budgets for Police, Fire, Health, Universities and the Civil Service.
• The poorest are facing a bigger share of the cost of a crisis that was not of their
  making. The bankers, who caused that crisis, are still raking in their bonuses.
• Last year £123 Billion of UK tax was either dodged through loopholes (avoided),
  illegally not paid (evaded) or simply not collected. Google’s UK earnings were £1.6
  Billion. Using loopholes in UK tax law, they paid no Corporation Tax. They should have paid £450 Million. UK Boardroom pay went up 7% and bonuses by 22%.

There is a better way

• The Government’s vicious cuts are not necessary: Current UK debt is only 68% of
  GDP, compared to Greece 115%, Japan 217%, USA 83.2%, Germany 73%, Belgium 97% and France 77%. The average for advanced economies is 77.3%.
• The UK and Argentina are the only G20 countries to withdraw financial stimulus from
  their economies for 2010. The others are investing in infrastructure and growth.
• We should be supporting our economy by investment in jobs, industry, training and
  research. We should be building our way out of this crisis; creating a future for our
  young people by developing our green industries such as offshore wind generation.
• We should be supporting our students and our Schools, Universities and Colleges.

Public March & Rally

Dundee, 29th September 2010

The European Trade Union Confederation is staging a European Day of Action on 29 September next. This Day of Action follows a decision by the ETUC Executive Committee on 1 and 2 June. It will be made up of a Euro-demonstration in Brussels and trade union actions in the various European countries. The European trade unions will be demonstrating against the austerity measures adopted recently by many EU countries, and to demand recovery plans in favour of quality jobs and growth.

As Dundee’s contribution to this activity a March & Rally will take place;

Assemble Hilltown Park, 11.30am

March off; 12 noon: Route: Hilltown, Victoria Road, Meadowside, Albert Square (North side), Reform Street to City Square.

Rally: City Square from approx 12.20pm to 1pm.

Called by Dundee Public Services Campaign, comprising Dundee TUC, Dundee Joint Shop Stewards Liaison Committee, Right to Work Campaign (Dundee).

One of them is Head Fixing Industry by John Keracher. John was born in Dundee and later moved to America where he formed a group called the Proletarian Party of America.

Interesting stuff. Hopefully someone can find the time to run some text scanning software against it and get a text version of it.

The election of the Tories – the Twin Tories, with the treacherous Lib Dems joining forces with the Tory Butchers – marks a new threat to education workers, education services and communities. We all face a level of carnage to jobs, conditions and services not experienced since Thatcher at her most rampant.

Cameron and Clegg have lost no time in pronouncing their top priority is to cut public spending.

These upper class butchers want to wield the axe to jobs, pay, pensions, benefits, public services – to enrich their own class even further.

Cameron’s claims that we all face pain for years to come is false to the core.

The bankers who enjoyed a bountiful handout from public funds don’t face ‘pain’ – for instance, 100 of them at the RBS recently awarded themselves a £1m bonus each!

The richest 1,000 fat-cats whose incomes rocketed by 30% last year, to £353billion! – do not face ‘hard choices’ or ‘painful decisions’.

It’s Scotland’s 630,000 public sector workers, alongside workers in the private sector, our families, our communities, who face a massacre – unless a united, determined, militant campaign of resistance is built, starting now!

In resisting the cuts, EIS and other unions need two central guiding principles: unity in action is our best defence – and a convincing set of policies to explode the myth that cuts are unavoidable.

Teachers, civil servants, council and NHS workers have marched and taken strike action against cuts.

It would be fatal if these fights were kept separate and apart, or if any union adopted the notion that cuts are inevitable – but ‘not in our service’. That would weaken the resistance and guarantee cuts to all services.

So SSP members in the EIS (and in all other unions) strongly advocate united action – across all public sector unions and alongside community groups, anti-cuts campaigns, Save Our Schools campaigns…

EIS and other unions should build a united public rally on Saturday 26th June, after new levels of carnage are announced in the 22nd June Butchers’ Budget – as a springboard for building a mass march in the autumn, when even more cuts will be announced in the government’s Spending Review.

Such events would help build the fighting morale of tens of thousands who right now are terrified of what the future holds.

Equally important in building a rebellion against cuts from a government that has no mandate in Scotland – with 85% voting against the Tories – is a convincing set of policies that exposes the lie that cuts are necessary and unavoidable – a monstrous lie peddled not only by the Tories and Lib Dems, but also New Labour and the SNP! Otherwise many people will fall for the argument that there’s not enough money to defend jobs and services, that cuts are a necessary evil – and then fall out amongst themselves over where the cuts should occur.

That divide-and-conquer trickery lies behind the Tory plan to consult people over what to cut! There is no need for any cuts! There are oceans of wealth swilling around – but in the hands of the bankers. billionaires and boardrooms of oil companies – not in the hands of the public.

The SSP fights for alternatives that would create jobs, improve services, protect conditions. Commit EIS to action against the cuts – alongside other unions – and argue for socialist policies that would fund the expansion of jobs and services. And join the SSP – for an independent socialist Scotland.

Twenty’s Plenty in a class

The Scottish Socialist Party has an unrivalled track record of standing up for kids, communities and education. We have consistently fought school closures that lead to larger classes, job losses, increased stress for staff, worse education.

We have led several Save Our Schools campaigns, uniting parents, communities and trade unionists – demanding smaller classes and investment in community-based schools within easy, safe reach of children’s homes.

We led the mass opposition to Labour’s school closures in Glasgow last year. During that campaign we popularised the slogan Twenty’s Plenty in any class, and lobbied the SNP government to pass legislation to limit classes to 20 for all age groups.

At the recent STUC Congress, SSP members pushed this policy and won the backing of the conference for a campaign for classes of 20 maximum for all.

In East Dunbartonshire, when the Labour-Tory Coalition announced closure of 8 primaries last week,the SSP called a protest demo and public meeting to set up a Save Our Schools campaign.

150 local people joined the demo, the councillors took fright, and shelved their butchery – for now!

EIS shares the SSP’s policy of 20 max in a class. The time is rotten-ripe for the EIS leadership to lead action in support of this policy – including industrial action.

This would be cause for celebration if not for the comments of Councillor Lyall in the Courier this morning.

If the plans aren’t approved tomorrow, they’ll simply come up next year and the year after that until they are.

Utterly contemptible.

So for those who have missed this the process of consultation is as follows:

1. Consultation on downgrading
2. People say NO!
3. Fire station not downgraded
4. wait a year
5. go to start of list

I think you get the idea.

Saturday, 01 May 2010
Time:
11:40 – 12:50
Location:
Cowgate to Albert Square

The Fire Board have for the second year in a row marked it for cuts. It needs to be defended for the second year in a row.

Read about the campaign at the website Save Balmossie

If one of your councillors is on the Fire Board please contact them to ensure they vote against downgrading.

A list of members can be found at the campaign site

They include

• Elizabeth Fordyce (Maryfield)
• Helen Wright (Coldside)
• Rod Wallace (The Ferry)
• David Bowes (Coldside)
• Andy Dawson (North East)
• Richard McCready (West End)
• Christina Roberts (East End)

So basically 6 of the 8 wards in Dundee.

There are also other councillors from Angus and Perthshire.

Professional Firefighters in Tayside are on the Threshold of taking Industrial Action to Protect Your Community from cuts to Your Front Line Emergency Fire Cover.

Join us on Saturday 20th March 2010
Protest Once Again Against the Chief Fire Officer’s Proposals

Speakers include
Matt Wrack, FBU General Secretary
Jim Malone, FBU Regional Organiser
Local Tayside Politicians

Assemble 12.30 Castle Green, Broughty Ferry
March Begins at 13.00.
Rally at St Aidens Hall.

CUTS COSTS LIVES – YOURS

March will be led by the Mains of Fintry Pipe Band

For more information see the campaign site

Don’t forget to commemorate the Dundee volunteers to the International Brigade at Macmanus Galleries this Saturday.

We previously covered the re-dedication of the new plaque

Lilya 4 Ever free showing.

Date: 1st December 2009, 6pm.

The film will be followed by a period of discussion about the issues around trafficking and violence against women.

Details of how to book can be found here

This post is as good as any to also promote the White Ribbon Campaign and to encourage all men to join it.

Bus from Dundee :-

Bus – 33 Seater booked – spaces still available, If you would like to book a seat please get in touch as soon as possible

To reserve seat contact: Karen Grogan, karen1grogan@hotmail.com.

Bus leaves Meadowside, opposite Post Office, at 8.30 a.m.

Returns to Dundee by 5.00 p.m.

£10 per seat (£5 concessions).

Assemble 10.30am East Market Street, Edinburgh, leaving at 11am

Troops Out of Afghanistan Now / No to NATO / Scrap Trident

The NATO defence ministers are meeting at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre the weekend of the 14th. The war in Afghanistan is waged under the NATO banner. Opinion polls make it clear that a big majority want the troops home now.

Joan Humphries, whose grandson Kevin Elliott was killed while on foot patrol in the southern Afghan province of Helmand on 31 August, will be speaking at the end of the march and there will be music from David Ferrard

Called by Stop the War Scotland, supported by STW UK, CND, SCNDSACC

Dundee East and West branches of the Scottish Socialist party organised a public meeting in the city’s Queens Hotel on the evening of Wednesday, September 23, to protest at the continuing war in Afghanistan, and calling for the troops to be brought home.

It was a particularly poignant time to hold this meeting in Dundee, as two young soldiers from the area, one from Dundee itself and the other from nearby Monifieth, had lost their lives in the fighting in Afghanistan during the previous three weeks, in this pointless and senseless war.

Street stalls were held on the five days leading up to the meeting and the reaction from the public was overwhelmingly against the war and agreeing with the SSP‘s position.

Many of those signing our petitions and pledging support for our stance told us that they were either family or friends of service personnel currently on duty in Afghanistan.

In the two days leading up to the meeting, Dundee West member Angela Gorrie was interviewed on the two local radio stations, Radio Tay and Wave 102, giving her the opportunity to state the Scottish Socialist Party’s case against the continuation of the war in Afghanistan.

The meeting itself was well attended with around thirty members of the pbulic turning out to show their anger at Britain’s continuing involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

Speakers at the meeting were Colin Fox, national spokesperson of the Scottish Socialist Party; former MP and MSP and Scottish Socialist Party member John McAllion; and Mohammad Asif, of the Scottish Afghan Society.

First to speak was John McAllion, who highlighted the enormity of the lies and deceptions surrounding the war, while the next speaker, Mohammad Asif, told of the countless unnamed Afghan casualties who never seem to rate a mention as victims of a war being fought on their own soil.

In the final speech of the evening Colin Fox stated that on the run-up to next year’s general election the war in Afghanistan and the ongoing crisis of captitalism would be the main issues on which the election would be fought.

Following their speeches, the speakers then answered various questions from the floor of the meeting.

As regards further anti-war activity, it was agreed that we should use the time between now and the anti-war demonstration in Edinburgh on November 14 to build for the demo, and we should attempt to get the maximum number of people from Dundee through to Edinburgh for the event in order to keep up the pressure on the government.

Wednesday 23rd September, 7.30pm, Queen’s Hotel.

Confirmed speakers include Colin Fox and John McAllion

Afghanistan Public Meeting Leaflet

6th August 2009

A rash of factory and workplace occupations is spreading across the globe as workers defy the brutal consequences of the recession.

Instead of surrendering to mass redundancies and outright closures – sometimes at a few minutes’ notice, often without even redundancy packages – workers are occupying their workplaces as a central method of struggling for justice.

Every example that wins concessions is boosting the belief of other workforces that there is an alternative to just resigning to the butchery in the boardrooms – that belligerent, militant class action can win at least something where workers have nothing to lose.

Socialists have a duty to assist fellow-workers in deploying the best methods of struggle to save jobs – as well as uniting workers around fighting socialist policies that would challenge and eliminate the need for redundancies.

Victory to Vestas

The sit-in at Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight has created a storm of international publicity and sympathy for the 600 workers who face the dole, at the very time the Labour government pledges to create 400,000 new green jobs over 5 years.

The 25 Vestas workers who staged this factory occupation, supported by a mass rally outside every night, displayed tremendous courage in the face of numerous attempts by the bully-boy, anti-union Vestas bosses to evict them.

They tried to starve them out, blocking food supplies being sent in by supporters. They threatened the sack and removal of redundancy payments from the workers staging the sit-in. They took out an injunction to gain re-possession of the factory – in order to close it and move production to the USA and China!

Vestas had no union recognition. Some workers joined a union and started organizing others. A group of them established a campaign committee and organised the sit-in from 20th July. This bold action won the active support of hundreds others – Vestas workers, other trade unionists, environmentalists, the local community – on an island where there are no other jobs to go to.

Vestas workers have gone further than any of the other recent factory sit-ins in terms of the demands they are making from their ‘campaign headquarters’ inside the factory: “Gordon Brown – Nationalise this!” declared the banner from day one.

A statement from the workers’ occupation declared, If the government can spend billions bailing out the banks – and even nationalize them – then surely they can do the same at Vestas.

Every victory encourages action

As well as organizing solidarity for these heroic fighters for jobs and the protection of the environment, we have a duty to learn from workers’ experiences of sit-ins as a method of struggle, particularly as redundancies and closures sweep the land like a pandemic.

Vestas is only the latest in a series of workplace occupations in the UK. And Thomas Cook workers in Dublin, members of the TSSA union, on 31st July occupied in defiance of closure of 100 offices.

The recent outbreak of factory take-overs in Britain and Ireland began with Waterford Glass workers occupying the plant on 30th January, when the employers announced an immediate end to production and 480 job losses.
After 8 weeks’ struggle, they reluctantly accepted a deal that saved 176 of the 480 jobs.

Visteon occupations

But their example fed the appetite of other workers facing savage closures under brutal terms and conditions. On 31st March, over 600 workers at three Visteon (ex Fords) plants in Belfast, Enfield and Basildon occupied and picketed when they were declared redundant at a few minutes’ notice, without any redundancy pay and with their pensions frozen.

A month later, appropriately on May Day, the workers won enhanced redundancy terms, payments in lieu of notice, and holiday pay.

As Kevin Nolan, UNITE union convener at the Enfield factory put it,

People ended up with a year and a half’s worth of salary. That’s a victory when you consider Visteon were hiding behind the recession as a way of completely abandoning all responsibility for 600 UK workers and just dumping them.

Prior to that high-profile sit-in, a small group of non-unionised workers at Prisme in Dundee occupied their workplace, encouraged by Waterford Glass workers, (who subsequently visited the Dundee sit-in). They had been sacked without notice and without any redundancy pay Fifty-one days later, the sit-in beat off the redundancies by establishing a cooperative.

Vital part of history

Workplace occupations are not a new form of struggle, of course, but this new wave of sit-ins follows many years of the method receding into the background.

Italian car workers seized their factories in northern Italy in the 1920s. What were dubbed ‘sit-won strikes’ swept countries like France and the USA in the mid-1930s. Closer to home and to the present, the most famous workplace occupation was the 1971-2 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) ‘work-in’ – in reply to the Tory government’s closure of the yards with at least 6,000 redundancies. This triggered a mass movement, saved many of the jobs after the Tories were forced into a U-turn, and was the impetus to at least 200 sit-ins across the UK in the first half of the 1970s.

For a time such audacious actions receded, although Lee Jeans (mostly women) workers in Greenock occupied in 1981; Caterpillar workers in Uddingston in 1986; and Glacier Metal workers in Glasgow won an outright victory after their seven-week occupation in November-December 1996.

Now, as the global capitalist crisis bites, with even more catastrophic closures and cut-backs on jobs looming, this form of struggle could come back into its own.

Powerful weapons of struggle

Sit-ins are a powerful weapon, paralysing production; psychologically bringing the battle into the bosses’ ‘own territory’; preventing them from stripping the factory of machinery and equipment that they may want to shift to other production sites, including abroad, in their hunt for subsidies and cheaper labour; preventing bosses from bussing in scabs past picket lines that are hamstrung by anti-union laws and deployment of the police (as seen, for example, at Timex in 1993).

But a sit-in ‘with folded arms’ can still be defeated, or at best win shoddy concessions far short of the potential victories on the agenda, if workers’ occupations are not accompanied by concerted campaigning outside the sit-in.

When workers facing closures consider a sit-in they should also try to prepare for a campaign of seeking solidarity from fellow workers and local communities – or at least put that into action as soon as they occupy. Such outgoing, concerted campaigning is critical, firstly to help prevent employers evicting them, secondly to enhance the prospects of outright victory for their demands. That was the advice we put into action from day one of the Glacier Metal occupation in 1996. It is clearly what the Vestas workers are ably applying.

Touring other workplaces; taking to the streets with leaflets, bucket collections and megaphones to explain the case behind the sit-ins; organizing solidarity mass pickets, rallies and demonstrations – all this and more was done in conquering outright victory for the 1996 Glacier Metal workers sit-in, and is the method being applied at other recent occupations to one extent or another.

Demands from the sit-ins

The other key question that remains is: what do workers demand whilst they occupy their workplace?

Of course that depends on what they are fighting against! In the case of Glacier Metal it was mass dismissal of the entire workforce in the drive to smash the union and rip up hard-won conditions. Full re-instatement of every worker, with continuity of terms and conditions, and continued union recognition, were the demands of the sit-in. And that was what was won!

In the case of Visteon, workers occupied to win redundancy payments and protection of their pensions. They won substantial concessions, though they still lost their jobs.

Vestas workers have made the most far-reaching demands – and absolutely appropriate ones to the situation, occupying in support of nationalization of the factory. With the need to save jobs and simultaneously save the planet from catastrophic climate change, the best route is public ownership of the UK’s only wind turbine factory, as part of the call for public ownership of the energy industry as a means of democratically planning clean, green energy production.

Most occupations arise from closures or mass redundancies. So defence of every job is the starting point. And instead of pouring a fortune from the public purse down the throats of profiteering bosses who are hell-bent on racing across the globe in pursuit of super-profits, workers and their unions should champion the demand for public ownership of the assets, under democratic working class control, to sustain jobs.

Alternative plans of production

In situations where a workers’ inspection of the company accounts and the industry concludes that continued production of their pervious products are either unviable or undesirable, alternative plans of socially useful and environmentally friendly output comes into its own.

Way back in the 1970s, workers at Lucas aerospace plants constructed such workers’ alternative plans of production. In subsequent years, several other examples were produced by workers in struggle, with the help of sympathetic experts. And the unions and peace movement have published well-researched proposals for jobs diversification in the defence industry that would actually increase employment.

In the 21st century, this is especially important, with vast scope for job protection and job creation to match the need for green social production, such as energy-efficient housing, a vastly expanded, integrated public transport network, and production and distribution of clean green energy. 

Reverse the tide of closures

Workplace occupations are not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ method of struggle, applicable on every single occasion.

They should not be turned into a fetish. But they are an enormously powerful weapon of struggle that should be utilized far more widely in the teeth of closures and mass redundancies, and in the vast majority of cases have won huge concessions or outright victories.

Strikes are another indispensable means of fighting to defend jobs. Often they are the most viable method of resistance in workforces spread around scattered workplaces – as in the Royal Mail currently, the civil service – and places that provide services rather than being centres of industrial production. On the other hand, in some conditions, strikes against closures can sometimes allow the employers to just walk away, leaving whole communities wrecked. Strikes can sometimes be more akin to a boss’s lock-out, and less effective in stopping asset-stripping by employers shifting production to richer pastures for profiteering.

In stark contrast to both, appeals to the employers’ good nature to ‘change their minds’ about closures are a pitifully weak response to the boardroom boot-boys, who will only ever ‘change their minds’ when they know the alternative is carnage for their reputation and profit levels.

Many workers will increasingly see they have nothing to lose in the teeth of mass redundancies, and a lot to win by taking up the cudgels. As Visteon’s UNITE convener Kevin Nolan recently told Labour Research magazine,

We just thought: ‘What do we have to lose?’ So we just went for it. If anyone else is in the same position I’d say weigh everything up and if you think there’s a chance of winning something back or improving your situation by occupying the place, then go for it.

By seizing control of the company assets, including valuable machinery, plus halting production, whilst using the workplace as a huge campaign headquarters, occupations provide workers with an unprecedented platform to take on the bosses who want to heap the crisis they have created on the shoulders of working people.

We have a duty to concretely assist every group of workers who take such action; every victory won is a boost to the generalized struggle to save jobs, not profits, to reverse the tide of closures and cut-backs endured for far too long. The national unions, TUC and STUC should urgently call rallies and demonstrations in solidarity with all who have the courage to stand up for jobs, and give courage to those cowed by the Juggernaut of closures and redundancies.

Wednesday, September 23rd, 7.30 p.m.

Queens Hotel, Dundee

Confirmed Speakers—

Colin Fox,
John McAllion

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.

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.

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?

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.

Glasgow: Tuesday 26th May, 7.30pm, Piper In The Square, George Square

Dundee: Wednesday 27th May, 7.30pm, Queens Hotel, 160 Nethergate

Edinburgh: Thursday 28th May, 7.30pm, The Melting Pot, 5 Rose Street

Speakers in Dundee will be Angela Gorrie (SSP candidate), John McAllion and the visitor from the NPA.

We will also be showing our latest broadcast and various other bits and bobs.

Come along.

This Saturday we have an open meeting with Raphie de Santos leading us off on the crisis of capitalism, the recession, the credit crunch and economics.

In two weeks time we will be having a meeting as part of the election campaign. Speakers to be confirmed but we will have a candidate over from Frances new NPA – the New Anti-Capitalist Party. It will be at the DVA, 10 Constitution Road Queens Hotel on Wednesday 27th May at 7:30.

More details will be posted once confirmed..

Capitalism in crisis and the socialist alternative

Speaker: Raphie de Santos

12.00 Saturday 16th May

Abertay University
Kydd Building
Bell Street
Dundee

Respected economist and writer, Raphie de Santos was an advisor on derivatives and financial markets to several financial institutions including the Bank of England, the London Stock Exchange and the Italian Ministry of Finance.

He has been a guest lecturer on derivatives and financial markets at Harvard and New York universities and the London School of Economics and has spoken at the annual Nobel Foundation conference in Stockholm.

Raphie is co-author of recently published Socialists and the Capitalist Recession which will be available at the meeting. He is also a committed socialist and a member of the SSP and is a candidate in the European elections in June.

Prisme Packaging Occupation

Statement by the occupying workforce.

After 51 days in occupation the Dundee Prisme workers have decided to end their occupation. The reason we have taken this decision is that it looks like we have secured funding to take our co-op venture forward and save the jobs that we thought had gone.

Our occupation began to secure our redundancy payments and other monies that were denied to us by our employer when we were sacked. However, during the occupation we also decided to fight to safeguard our jobs because we believed there was a viable business, even if our predecessors did not. It looks like we have achieved this aim. A new company Discovery Packaging and Design Ltd is going to be launched on 1st May 2009.

This victory would not have been possible if it had not been for the support we have had from the general public, trade unionists, socialists and many others. This support and solidarity has been overwhelming and has helped give us the energy and determination to carry on for more than 7 weeks.

We said at the beginning of this that we were little people who had refused to be little anymore. We are proud of what we have achieved and our dignity is intact. We showed we would not be walked over by an uncaring employer.

We want to thank all those who have supported our struggle over the last 51 days, your support has been invaluable. Thanks once again to you all.

The Prisme workers will be leaving the factory together and united at 5pm on Friday 24th April.

SSP members are reminded that the elections for the European candidate list will be taking place over the next week or so. The regional hustings in Dundee and Edinburgh are taking place this Sunday – contact your branch or branch secretary if you have not received details.

How can we stop Israeli human right violations

By: Manawel Abdelal
Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions

Wednesday 22 April 2009 @ 7:00pm
Main Lecture Theatre, Tower Building
Dundee University

Event Organised by: Dundee Trades Council, Dundee University Islamic Society and Tayside for Justice in Palestine

• Wednesday 15 April 2009 – guest speaker Ken Ferguson, editor of the Scottish Socialist Voice
• Wednesday 29 April 2009 – no main topic decided yet
• Wednesday 13 May 2009, guest speaker Gerry from the SSP Cuba Delegation

If you would like to come along, please contact us

More to come soon…

The rumour mill was in full force and all eyes were on Borthwick to see if he would walk the walk having talked the talk. Distracted Dundonians didn’t expect the resignation of Lord Provost John Letford from the Labour councillors group and the party. This reduced the Labour group of councillors to 8 causing their spokesmen to go into a mud slinging rage.

According to Jim McGovern, Letford has overnight lost all his principles. Ironically he mocks him for previously stating what was at his core – Labour and the Trade Union Movement. He falsely concludes that because he left Labour this can no longer be true. It may be no longer true, but it is also possible that if he still has this at his core that’s the very reason he can no longer stay in the Labour Party. Twenty Four hours later his vitriolic attack had changed into the Labour losing an argument position of Draw the line under it and move on

Kevin Keenan, leader of the Labour group of councillors flip flopped all week long. From publicly requesting Letfords return to the Labour group (now unprincipled or not) to in desperation trying to hold an olive branch to the SNP by pledging to support one of their councillors to be made Lord Provost. Whether both these plans could be carried out at the same time was irrelevant, they were pure spin from the Labour group.

Other local Labour members from former councillors Jill Shimi, Chic Farquhar and former rent a quote MP Ernie Ross were wheeled out to sling mud too.

What’s interesting about those slinging the mud is only one of them is a Labour councillor. The other seven councillors have been strangely silent on the proposed change in administration.

The last twist in the saga before the council meeting to redraw up power was some claims about an OBE. Letford insists Kevin Keenan had urged him to stand down and he would arrange for him to have an OBE. A series of denials from those involved make it unclear what actually happened, but this would have been a large carrot to someone Keenan described as the biggest unionist I know. That Letford sees his best chance to be the Queens representative in the city has more chance by supporting the SNP than it does Labour says something about both of those parties. For Labour it is the final signpost in their demise in the city. For the SNP it shows how their politics lie on both independence and republicanism if they are making deals with the biggest unionist known to the leader of the Labour Party in order to keep the chains of office.

Ernie Ross had also made the bizarre claim that Labour are a democratic socialist party. Wrong on both counts Mr Ross! Why are the Labour Party fighting over the chains of office rather than trying to break them when in power if either of these propositions were true?

The two independents, Borthwick and Letford were expected to vote with the SNP, keeping their Depute/Lord Provost roles.

At the council meeting Ian Borthwick proposed to delay the meeting to try and have a majority administration of everyone. Apparently the recession means this is necessary. The issue that flagged up this change was not the economy going in to recession but the Lord Provost resigning from his former party. Seconded by the Tories it was lost to the votes of the SNP and John Letford.

The SNP had put forward this idea in 2003 and 2007, as had John Letford in private. Now it looked like the SNP would be in power, the undemocratic coalition who had kept them out of power and looked like losing it suddenly warmed to the idea.

The SNP then proposed John Letford and Ian Borthwick for Lord Provost and Depute as expected. Labour countered with a proposal for one of their councillors to be Lord Provost. Their third preference for the position in a week.

The SNP proposal won through with the support on John Letford with The Tories and Ian Borthwick abstaining.

Immediately all the Labour councillors raised their dissent at the decision. They subsequently opposed the decision to label committees as X Opposition instead of Labour, Lib Democrat etc. It should be pointed out that 20 minutes previously they had demanded the council choose from across the board for the best people for positions but were having trouble with doing that amongst the opposition – showing how unworkable their proposal was in the first place.

What does this mean for the people of Dundee. Well we have finally removed Labour from office, although at what cost? Look next door to Angus to see the actions of the SNP in power. They were one of the longest to hold out to the Nursery Nurses and gave one of the worst offers.

More recently they are attempting to claw back half a days wages from teachers. These teachers left school on an in service day due to the heavy snow. Buses were stopping and schools were closing across Dundee and the surrounding area. People were being advised left and right to get home safely whilst they could. The Council were holding a meeting in Forfar and decided to abandon it and go home as it was too dangerous for them to stay in the town. The teachers in Forfar apparently were in no danger of being stranded and should not have. (see comment below)

Or in other words, as happened in transition nationally between Tories and Labour in 1997, expect no noticeable positive difference.

The proposal from SNP for Borthwick and Letford to stay in their roles and the SNP to take convenership roles won 15 votes, the SNP and John Letford. The Labour proposal with Richard McCready as Lord Provost won 10 votes, Labour and The Liberal Democrats. The Tories and Ian Borthwick abstained.

The people of Dundee can now look forward to an even more anti-trade union administration than the discredited former regime.

The reasons for the strike are a pitiful pay offer and the workers bearing the brunt of commuters anger and frustration of cuts and changes to the services. This anger should of course be directed towards Travel Dundee management.

The line from the company and the media is of course appalling. Part of the work to rule action is that drivers, mechanics and others will no longer work through breaks to make up delays caused by faults and poor traffic due to the huge number of roadworks going on in the city recently. Their line is that this will bring disruption to customers and services are set to suffer.

The flip side of this is that the services are returning to their normal state. If not for drivers sacrificing break times to catch up we would see the real state of the services being provided – and that is what is set to happen from Friday April.

The reality of it is the services have only not been suffering because of workers sacrificing their own time. Managements contempt for workers both through their wages and time are the reason there will be disruption and why services suffer.

The power of workers collective action is shown in the statement by Travel Dundee boss Lawrence Davie when acknowledging that there would be no buses running on the strike day.

As the business is fully unionised, the proposed strike action on April 24 will result in a complete suspension of services for our customers he conceded.

We wish the workers every success in their struggle and would urge all those affected during the next three weeks to review the SSP policy on public transport.

Whether you are on strike, or the strike has affected you by showing how much the staff sacrifice to ensure your bus home arrives on time you should find it illuminating.

Bill Nuti, the Chief Executive of NCR has been awarded a bonus of £5.6 million. A month later he axes manufacturing at NCR in Dundee throwing 252 workers on the dole. They are not the only ones to lose out. Bill Nuti is feeling the pinch too – he has downsized from a private jet to a private helicopter. That’s spreading the cuts in the language of the head parasites of global corporations.

How many other workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts or wage freezes for the good of the company? There is no good of the company – only good of the shareholders. The worst part of these cuts is not that the factory is not profitable but is not profitable enough.

It is not enough that the factory is not making a loss and that it makes money to these people. They don’t value the skills and experience of the workers – the ones who create the profit in the first place. They only value their own dividends and the madness that is demanding increase upon increase in their return year upon year. This not only leads to the decisions such as these but also the short term view of the company. Who cares if the decisions taken by chief executives mean a company will survive for the next 10 years, getting a massive increase in profit in the next quarter guarantees them big bonuses then. They then have the cheek to talk about the good of the company.

The workers of Prisme have shown the way, not intent on taking a P45 and no redundancy from their boss they, are starting up without the boss.

We have been running this site for two years and it’s time for our first reader survey.

At the left hand side there are two polls, one asking why you visited the site and the other asking how you found us.

We would also like to know a bit about the direction our readers and supporters want the site to go. What do you think about the level of coverage of what we write about:

• Dundee SSP
• SSP nationally
• SSP in other areas
• local news
• national news
• international news

Do you want to see anything we are missing, should we have interviews? Do you want to send us readers letters about politics.

So far the use of the site has been pretty one way, we have posted stuff and loads of you have read it. Is there a reason barely anyone comments? Is the comment system hard to use (in which case contact us another way!)? is it because we are always right (unlikely)? Is it because you found us searching for some random phrase? We would like to know as we would prefer this to be a two way communication tool – that’s why we chose a blog for our site and unlike other local political parties, have left the comments open.

Please use the comments to let us know what you think. We have a couple of ideas for things to do already but want to get some reader feedback first before we decide what direction to go with them.

On Friday it was announced that manufacturing was to close down at NCR. This will also lead to a number of job losses at related companies including Taylor Group Diecastings Limited.

Texol also announced their closure.

The Evening Telegraph has a depressing list of the major job losses which have hit Dundee in the last two years: 1539 jobs in total. This does not include the recent announcements just in time for the end of the financial year and the big bonus payments to the bosses.

It is yet to be seen if these workers will fight back having seen the Prisme workers do so.

There is now a Prisme workers fund, send cheques with payment to: TUC Lobby Fund, to
Prisme Workers Solidarity,
c/o Mike Arnott,
Dundee TUC,
141 Yarrow Terrace,
Menzieshill,
Dundee,
DD2 4DY.

The other event overshadowed by these depressing reports was the election results in the Maryfield by election. As expected the SNP walked it, although surprisingly not in the first round. The SSP had a disappointing result but it was as we expected. In a two horse race like a by election the votes get squeezed for smaller parties. It is unknown how many second votes were given to the SSP after giving a first vote to Labour or the SNP. In a normal council election with multiple councillors being elected these may be passed to us, in this case there was no chance of them ever being passed to us.

The people of Dundee have resoundingly said they want an SNP council. They were the largest party returned at the council elections and at the two subsequent by elections won them both comfortably. It is yet to be seen if the anti-democratic coalition of Labour/Tories/Liberal Democrats. Ian Borthwick got off the fence last time and sided with the will of the voters in Dundee, it is to be seen if he will do so again.

Not that an SNP council will be an improvement for the working class of Dundee. Just ask teachers or nursery nurses in nearby Angus Council how an SNP council treats it’s employees.

You can vote SSP 1, Labour 2 or SNP 1, SSP 2 or whatever way you want. You can’t waste your vote. Vote in order of your preference.

You can still vote tactically.

If you normally vote Labour but want them to care more about working class people then mark SSP 1 and Labour 2. Labour will then get transferred the vote if and when the SSP are eliminated. It sends a message to them about what their voters other priorities are. If one party sees their votes coming to them as a second choice behind the SSP it sends them a clear message that their supporters think they are too right wing or authoritarian.

Vote for what you want not against what you don’t want.

See where you are politically at the Political Compass. For reference the SSP would be left wing and liberal (the same square as Gandhi). Labour would be right wing and authoritarian (the same square as the Tories and the Italian Fascists). You can also see the drift to be both right wing and authoritarian by Labour.

Unfortunately there is no Scotland wide table. On this graphic the SSP would be about the same place as the Greens, with the SNP being a bit to the left of the Liberal Democrats.

Take the test, see where you are and vote for the party or parties who most match your views.

This is the first and only hustings to have taken place in the by-election. If you live in the ward pop along to quiz the candidates.

Among them were members of the SSP and of Solidarity working together to highlight the Prisme occupation and raise funds for them.

The police, prompted by a complaint by a member of the public (most likely some Labour Party loyalist, approached each of these in turn to threaten them with further action should they not desist from their activities. The Palestine Solidarity Stall were spoken to for a while. The fatcat banker was warned over his possession of clearly fake money – something companies and churches use all the time for advertising and prosthletising respectively.

Most outrageously was the police action over the solidarity with Prisme workers. Those collecting were told that they must immediately stop collecting money. Their names, addresses and work details were taken. They were further informed that if they continued to collect money in a bucket they would be charged and that the money would be seized.

The rest is nonsense and worth fighting for a day in court, but the threat to seize donations raised for workers in struggle was believed to be most serious. The SSP unreservedly condemn the police decision in this case. Surely for one Tayside Police have better things to do such as continually and habitually break the speed limit without penalty, such as their 140MPH+ chief constable. Secondly the money is being raised for workers who have been treated appallingly by their employer.

We will continue to work with the striking workers and to raise money for them. Currently they have no mechanism for receiving donations other than directly in cash, so we will publicise any other ways to do so if and when they are available.

Rally Saturday 7 March 10am City Square, Dundee (5 minutes from train station), outside Labour Party Conference

12pm at Prisme Factory, Tannadice Street (next to stadium, across from Jerry Kerr stand, 20 minutes from city centre)

Also from group an interview with Matthew, one of the workers

On Monday we came into work as normal and the Managing Director came in and gave his letter of resignation. So we phoned the company secretary who was actually on holiday. We were told to speak to a guy called Alan Dand. On Tuesday he called us and an administrator came to look at the accounts. Then the company told us that they didn’t have enough assets to pay for the administrator and said ‘Looks like we’re just going to shut the door’.

We were told that the director and a legal representative were coming to tell us our rights but in fact the legal representative was for the director and wouldn’t tell us anything. They won’t even tell us who owns the company! We demanded that we be given a letter how much we were entitled to in redundancy payments, our P45’s and statutory redundancy forms. When we received the letter it stated how much our statutory redundancy payments were and that we were entitled to wages, pay in lieu of notice and accrued holiday pay. Then the next sentence of the letter said ‘Unfortunately, we do not have any money to make these payments to you’.

They said there were other routes we could take to get our redundancy payments but all they have suggested is speaking to the Citizens Advice Bureau.

After receiving these letters we were told to leave and come back at half nine in the morning but we decided we’re not leaving until we receive what we’re entitled to. We’re not giving them the opportunity to lock the doors while we’re out so we end up with nothing.

Prisme Packaging Workers Occupy Factory

Thirteen people at Prisme Packaging in Dundee lost their jobs on Wednesday the latest victims of an increasingly brutal recession. Their firm, which manufactures cardboard boxes, lost its biggest customer on Monday and has subsequently gone bust.

But this non union workforce found to their cost that they are more vulnerable with the treatment they received as the firms owners announced they were all sacked with immediate effect and would not receive any redundancy pay or even their wages for March.

They were each handed a letter telling them they would not get a penny piece even though some of them had worked there for 14 years and were legally entitled to severance pay as the firm had gone bust. Their response was immediate and unanimous, they occupied the factory and took control of the assets.

Since I happened to be up in Dundee on Thursday, campaigning for SSP candidate Angela Gorrie in next weeks Maryfield by election, I went along to offer my support to the occupation.

I was delighted to meet Matthew, Christine, David and the others and find them in such good spirits considering what had happened to them. I recounted my experience in the Caterpillar occupation of 1988 and pledged support from the SSP in helping them save their jobs or at least secure the redundancy monies they are entitled to.

Workers occupy Prisme video report

Courier report

Facebook Group

Indymedia report

A number of SSP members including Colin Fox, former MSP and Angela Gorrie, Maryfield by election candidate visited the workers today to show their support. Pictures and report to follow.

Messages of support can be sent to christinaf1956@hotmail.com [Appears to no longer work] , prismeworkerssolidarity@googlemail.com, or by text/phone to 07882804212.

Viva La Revolution St Andrews

Students at St Andrews University were in the headlines last week for occupying their College Halls in support of the Gaza Palestinians and in particular against the University’s links with Israeli defence contractors. Last Wednesday as their week long occupation drew to a successful conclusion they asked me to come up and address them. Many of the 200 or so protesters had organised my election campaign to become Rector of the University last October.

These are my remarks to them

I am very proud indeed to be back here at St Andrews tonight. I am especially proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with you at the end of this remarkable occupation. I am proud to see so many of the students who led the campaign ‘Fox for Rector’ in October involved in furthering the cause of the Palestinian people.

I am sure Kevin Dunnion [the successful Rector candidate] is delighted to see you take this action and demonstrate the strength of feeling on campus. – Kevin Dunion was, unbeknown to me, sitting in the meeting as I spoke!

I wish to congratulate you all on behalf of the people of Scotland and indeed the vast majority of the peoples of the world who like you share the view that a terrible injustice has befallen the people of Gaza in recent weeks. You have done both them and yourselves immense credit by the principled and dignified way you have conducted your protest.

You are a credit indeed to us all, to the people who have gone before you at this University and the spirit of learning which this place exists to promote. You have learned that it is right to stand up to tyranny and abuse. It is right to resist injustice and to rebel against exploitation. Read Shelley, read Oscar Wilde, read Malcolm X.

In my experience over 30 years now as an active participant in the international class struggle your actions do matter, they do affect change, you will give huge encouragement to the Palestinian people by this action this past week. News of your protest will have given great encouragement to hundreds of millions of people throughout the world who support the Palestinian cause.

Furthermore your action will have severely irked those who wish you hadn’t done it; the UK Government, the US Government and of course the warmongering Israeli propaganda machine.

They would have rather you hadn’t had this occupation. They would rather you had stayed in the bar drinking and mind your own business or stayed in your halls with a joint getting stoned. In fact they would have far rather you were protesting on their side in favour of BAe’s links to the Israeli military.

I see the Palestinians in 2009 as the black South Africans of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s – facing down the barrel of a gun and overwhelming military intimidation for their basic democratic and human rights.

The struggle for justice for the Palestinians today is every bit as important as the anti Apartheid campaign. The treatment of Palestinians is no less brutal that that meted out to the black majority in South Africa. The injustice is rife, the military odds stacked against them virtually insurmountable. Yet the international support is as it was for Nelson Mandela and the ANC.

And lets not forget they won and so will the Palestinains.

Your occupation this week has played its small part in bringing the day the Palestinians achieve the rights the rest of us already take for granted that bit closer. I salute you , you should be proud of yourselves and each other. Thank you.’

Open Branch Meeting
All welcome
DVA,
10 Constitution Road
Thursday 5 MARCH, 7.30 p.m.
Speakers—Colin Fox, SSP Co-Convenor,
Angela Gorrie, SSP candidate for the Maryfield by-election

Come along to the meeting and find out about the radical alternative to the council tax.

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

Dundee SSP announced our candidate in the Maryfield by election Angela Gorrie.

The by-election in the Maryfield ward of Dundee City Council, scheduled for Thursday March 12th, will be the first local authority contest since the SNP’s u-turn on Council Tax. In an area where Council Tax rates are among the highest in Scotland, this will not go unnoticed.

Although a win in the poll, triggered by the resignation of Labour’s Joe Morrow, will not be enough to give the SNP a majority, it will leave them just one seat away. The 29 member council is currently finely balanced with 13 SNP members, 10 Labour; 3 Conservatives; 2 Liberals and an Independent.

The ward, one of the largest within Dundee, ranges from the docks of the Tay, through the City Centre to the north edge of the City.

Unusually, it also straddles the boundaries of the Dundee East/West Scottish and Westminster parliamentary seats. Unfortunately for activists however, much of the area lies on a steep slope!
The SSP have consistently held stalls in this area over the past few years, something which many passers by certainly seem to appreciate.

Along with weekly City Centre stalls we try to hold earlier activities in the outlying areas of the city. Stobswell Junction, which sits at the top end of the ward, has always been a popular location.

While the early days of the campaign have so far focused on the SSP’s commitment to replace the hated Council Tax with our Scottish Service Tax, based on income and ability to pay, our other policies have also been well received.

The area has a large student population, so our message of abolish all fees and loans; bring back grants has been well received. Due to the location there are also a high number of council workers in the area. Dundee SSP members were highly active around the last Local Authority workers’ strikes last year, spending many mornings, before and after, leafleting workplaces and showing solidarity with workers.

This has not been forgotten, and we have received many positive comments on the streets about our support.

While the ward boasts enviable public transport links – Dundee Bus Station is within the area, and the Railway Station is just to the West – the costs continue to rise. When I first moved to Dundee four years ago, the standard fare was £1.10. This has now spiralled to £1.45. The cheapest fare increased to 80p earlier this year.

At a time when many local facilities are closing, this has put additional financial pressure on many who live in the area. The SSP’s Free Public Transport policy is recognised as a way to combat this, while going some way to save the environment at the same time.

Dundee, as a city twinned with Nablus, has always taken the fight of the Palestinian people to its heart. This was clear at the recent demonstration, one of the largest the City has witnessed in recent years. Dundee SSP is proud to be a part of this movement.

Scottish Peoples Charter

We need Change. We need Hope.

We need a fair Scotland and a [fair] Britain.

A fair economy for a fairer society

Progressive taxes without loopholes or tax havens. We must own and control the main banks. Guarantee all pensions, mortgages and savings. Tie pensions and benefits to wages. Give pensioners free transport and heating. Increase the minimum wage.

More and better jobs:

Defend and improve employment. Make a massive investment in new jobs particularly in green technology for our childrens’ sake.

Decent homes for all:

Create 250,000 new publicly owned homes in Scotland over the next five years. Stop the repossessions. Control rents.

Save and improve our services:

Energy, Telecommunications, Water and Transport to be owned by all of us. Remove profit making from the NHS. Support our public service staff.

For fairness and justice:

Equality for all. Together against all racism and discrimination. Equal pay for women. End child poverty. Give young people a future. Free child and youth facilities, education and training for all. Repeal the anti-trade union laws to fight poverty and inequality.

A better future starts now:

No more blood and money for war. Bring the troops home. No more £billions for nuclear weapons. No replacement for Trident. We want massive investment for a greener, safer world. Get rid of the debt economy in Britain and cancel the debts of the poor of the planet.

A website has been set up called VoteWise, it’s purpose is to allow a space for people to publicly challenge candidates up for election.

Maryfield by-election page has been set up. So send your questions to the candidate and whoever wins, make sure the stick to what they claim they will do and will not do on it and their leaflets etc.

The Maryfield by-election leaflet is now produced, the text is below with links to images of the leaflets. If you would like to help in the campaign by leafleting, canvassing or making a financial donation to help then get in contact with us. Unlike the SNP, Labour or Tories, we don’t have multi millionaire backers so anyway to help out would be appreciated.

Vote for the SSP

Leaflet front

Vote for the SSP the campaigning party

The Scottish Socialist Party campaigns on the streets of Dundee every week, not just during elections.

• The City of Dundee has one of the highest council tax rates in Scotland. The SSP has for years campaigned for it to be replaced by a tax based on income and ability to pay.
• Dundee has a student population of 17,000. The SSP says, Abolish all fees and loans. Bring back grants.
• The Scottish Socialist Party supports workers in struggle and during the local authority dispute last year stood firmly behind the council workers.
• When Post Office closures were announced in Dundee last year, the SSP mounted a campaign against the cuts.
• The Dundee SSP has taken direct action against the parking charges at Ninewells Hospital, with stalls both on the street and within the car park at Ninewells Hospital itself.
• The Scottish Socialist Party is the party committed to campaigning on behalf of working class communities.

To join the Scottish Socialist Party, or for more information, contact us at
PO BOX 6773
DUNDEE, DD1 1YL
or online at www.dundeessp.org

Leaflet back

Capitalism in crisis – Who pays?

The Scottish Socialist Party is an anti-capitalist party. We believe in people, not profit. As socialists, we fight for a different type of system where the needs of the many are put before the greed of the bosses. The current economic crisis is a result of the insatiable drive for profits of capitalism. While the bankers get obscene bonuses, we face redundancies, home repossessions and cuts in services. We believe it does not have to be this way:

• End the fat cat bonuses
• Stop all home repossessions
• Fully nationalise the banks under workers’ control

Wars and the attack on Gaza

The city of Dundee is twinned with the Palestinian town of Nablus, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967. During the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, the SSP has helped to organise demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Gaza, medical aid and the boycott of Israeli goods. We oppose all imperialist wars and play an important role in the anti-war movement in Scotland.

For free public transport

The Scottish Socialist Party believes that free and efficient public transport would benefit both the people and the planet.

As the world’s climate heats up it makes sense to reduce our oil dependency and get cars off the road. We should also be investing in research and development of alternative sources of energy for the future.

The effects will also be strongly felt throughout the public services where so called efficiency savings will increase.

Since it’s inception the SSP has fought to replace the hated Council Tax with the Scottish Service Tax, a system where the rich would be forced to pay their fair share.

While others have made promises, the SSP remains the only party to have put an alternative before the Scottish Parliament.

It is now clearer than ever that the SNP‘s priorities lie with big business, not the voters of Maryfield.

Angela initially moved to the city to study at Dundee University, and now works in Customer Services.

While at university, she was highly involved in the successful campaign to remove Special Branch from campus, and was active in the fight to prevent cuts to university departments.

In the wider community, she has taken up issues from public service closures and the need to implement a free public transport system to calling for an end to the slaughter in Gaza.

Outside of politics, Angela is a keen musician and enjoys walking and watching football.

Angela is a member of the Scottish Socialist Party because she believes in People not Profit – whether that’s fighting for local services, supporting striking workers or resisting the SNP’s big business agenda.

For more information on the campaign please contact contact@dundeessp.org

Promoted by Roderick MacGregor, on behalf of the Scottish Socialist Party, Suite 308/310, 4th Floor Central Chambers, 93 Hope Street Glasgow, G2 6LD

Over the past few weeks, working people are as likely to have been wringing their hands in anxiety at job losses as listening to the ringing of jingle bells.

Daily news reports and pundits’ commentaries harshly confirm two central truths: capitalism doesn’t work, and the working class are being pounded with the devastating consequences, to make us pay for the crisis created by the capitalist elite.

For years we were told – by New Labour politicians in particular – that the days of boom and bust were over; that the government’s fiscal ingenuity, extended credit and the inherent glories of the market system would guarantee a rosy future.

Now economists are competing for who can come up with the gloomiest forecasts for 2009 and beyond.

Typical headlines and predictions are: 600,000 jobs to go in 2009 – 1,600 a day; 100,000 Scots to lose their jobs; Worst level of redundancies in 30 years; Employers hold back on redundancies until after Xmas…

The Scottish Council for Development and Industry has just predicted the first year of ‘negative economic growth’ in Scotland since 1980.

Closures

Recent weeks have seen closure of the iconic Woolies stores on every High St, with 27,000 workers thrown on the scrapheap after a century of trading.

Other household names in retail, the finance sector and the car industry have seen equivalent levels of job decimation and threats to workers’ futures.

The merger of HBoS with Lloyds threatens up to 40,000 finance workers’ jobs.

The retail sector is poised on the brink of a slaughter: Experian forecast 1,600 retailers will be driven out of business this year, leaving one in ten shops empty.

Yet that was precisely one of the areas that mopped up previous mass unemployment, replacing it with mass low pay for hundreds of thousands of retail workers struggling to survive on pay just pennies above the pathetic minimum wage. Now it’s back to mass unemployment.

In the car industry, workers suffer mass lay-offs, job cuts and enforced down time. Toyota, Honda and Nissan have shut down production for two months. Vauxhalls have ‘offered’ their 2,200 Ellesmere Port workers a 9-month ‘sabbatical’ – on 30 per cent pay!

Pay Cuts

The other favoured trick of employers being deployed is pay cuts. In JCB, for example, they told the workforce in November that unless they took a 10 per cent pay cut there would be further redundancies – on top of the 600 since August 2008. The GMB union lay down and accepted this demand, which cut pay by £50 a week through reduced hours… and then JCB bosses proceeded to impose another fresh bout of 400 redundancies, plus announcements of zero pay rise for 2009, and removal of the profit-related Xmas bonus (which was £1,000 in 2007). A classic proof that weakness invites aggression, as the bosses pile the crisis of their own creation onto the backs of workers.

Public Sector

The private sector may be first in line for the wave of closures and job losses, but the public sector faces the same future. Behind all the hype around the government’s November pre-Budget, they kept hidden their plans to cut public expenditure by £5billion a year from 2011. That spells a devastating assault on public sector jobs and the services they provide – and will be even more deep-cutting given that public spending on unemployment benefits is set to rocket meantime.

The trade unions and socialists face their biggest challenges for decades, in the face of the destruction of communities, workers’ lives and living standards through capitalist crisis. In fighting mass redundancies and closures, there are never any cast-iron guarantees of victory. But one thing is certain: weak-kneed acceptance of the bosses’ demands guarantees terrible defeats for workers and their families. Talk in some union circles about a Social Contract between unions, employers and the government is a cruel road to ruin, which has been travelled before, particularly in the 1970s.

Class divide

Instead of pretending that workers and their bosses have a common interest that should be turned into some kind of ‘Spirit of Dunkirk’, we need to expose the gulf dividing the interests of these two classes. For example, the top seven directors in Fords last year had salaries and pensions totalling £100million – whilst they refused to invest that same amount in their Southampton plant to build the new Transit van.

Low-paid workers would spend the extra money gained if the minimum wage was boosted to two-thirds male median earnings – that would be a minimum of between £8.50 and £9 an hour currently – whereas the same bosses who echo Gordon Brown’s talk of setting aside ‘prudence’ and spending our way out of the recession are also calling for a freeze on the derisory £5.80 minimum wage.

Pay cuts at JCB did nothing to stop further redundancies – but boosted the employers’ profit margins.

Instead of covering up the truth behind the recession, the mighty potential power of the organised working class in the unions should be mobilised around a massive campaign to halt mass redundancies. They need to fashion an armoury of fighting demands that could rally workers in united action for an alternative to job losses and pay cuts.

35 hour week – without loss of earnings

Instead of pay cuts through lay-offs, they should demand the work be shared out without loss of earnings.

The unions should resist the calls from Brown and Cameron to allow the UK continued opt-out from the European Working Time Directives, which is only a mild-mannered protection from being compelled to work more than an average 48-hour week (workers can still waive this right and work it ‘voluntarily’ under the opt-out clause). And instead put on a ‘drive for 35’ – a united union fight for a maximum 35 hour working week, which would create vast numbers of jobs … but critically demand this be without any pay cuts.

This would raise the whole issue: where have all the profits gone… and where have all the state subsidies gone? Companies have been bailed out with taxpayers’ money, development grants etc, but now want to protect their profit margins at workers’ expense (as NCR did in Dundee last year).

The unions should demand open, public scrutiny of the accounts of any company threatening job losses – to expose the fact many of them have enjoyed an orgy of profiteering for years, dividends to the big shareholders and obscene bonuses to the top bosses – whilst leaving thousands who created that wealth without a source of income.

Seize company assets

The unions should also demand that the government seize the assets of companies threatening closures, to stop corporate asset strippers, many of whom shift their production to slave-wage economies abroad. By taking over their assets the government could then employ the skills of workers to produce for social need.

Production for social need

Back in the 1970s many fighting union leaderships – particularly at shopfloor level – devised alternative schemes of useful production for their workplaces. In the 21st century this becomes even more vital as one of the fighting weapons against mass unemployment: the skills and machinery are often there, available for adaptation to socially useful and environmentally sustainable production.

For example, rather than rely on the bubble of crazy credit and artificially created consumer spending – both of which are now in freefall – the unions could advance a programme of useful public works and green production around public transport, social housing, universal insulation of homes, alternative sources of energy, etc.

Public ownership – not bailouts of profit

The government has bailed out the bankers. Demands are growing for government investment in the ailing car industry. But instead of subsidising the profits of the capitalist gangsters who have ruined people’s lives, the unions should campaign for public ownership of the machinery, buildings, production and distribution, under democratic control.

Such a socialist alternative, combined with militant forms of struggle, would encourage workers that there is something can be done in the face of the capitalist recession.

There is no one-size-fits-all method of struggle, but workplace occupations may arise again as a viable way of halting closures, provided union leaderships encourage a fight rather than whip up surrender. Otherwise the danger is that many will be overwhelmed, feeling that they are being devoured by a Juggernaut that cannot be halted as it closes down workplaces and smashes jobs.

The recession throws down the challenges: socialists in workplaces and unions need to encourage a vision of ways of halting the slaughter of livelihoods and shaping a socialist future in the process.

1st prize-Acoustic 26 ins HD LDC TV
Winner R Reid – Glasgow

2nd prize-Samsung mini DVD camcorder
Winner K. Mc Nulty – East Kilbride

3rd prize- Bush desktop micro hi fi
Winner Ml Deighan – Paisley

4th prize- Prize –I pod shuffle
Winner N .Watson – Lasswade

5th prize – Acoustic DVD Player
Winner J Connor – Dundee

If you wish to contact Tayside for Justice in Palestine, the details are:

Email: taysideforjusticeinpalestine@gmail.com
Phone or Text: 07803 052239

Alternatively you can post here and we can pass on to the organisation.

The text from their latest leaflet is below. Several members of Dundee Scottish Socialist Party are involved in the organisation.

The Killing has stopped but the fight goes on

As predicted, the slaughter has stopped in time for the inauguration of President Obama. Now, when the children of Gaza ask their parents when they are going to die, they can be given a little reassurance. But this is only a ceasefire. Over 1,000 have died including 400 children, thousands of lives have been destroyed, Gaza lies in ruins, and the Israeli army could strike again at any time. Moreover, beyond the immediate horror, the political oppression, of which this war was a particularly bloody part, still continues. Israel has strangled the Gaza economy and sealed its borders so that it cannot even receive essential medical supplies; they show no signs of lifting their embargo. Meanwhile, on the Palestinian West Bank, Israel continues to take the best Palestinian land for Israeli settlements and to seal the Palestinians behind a concrete apartheid wall. Our campaign must go on to end the illegal occupation of Palestine and force Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders, as ordered by UN resolutions. We cannot forget the Palestinians just because Gaza no longer dominates our TV screens.

What can we do?

Boycott Israeli Goods

Stop buying produce from Israel or from the West Bank (which means the illegal Israeli settlements). Check the label, especially when buying citrus fruits and fresh herbs. This boycott is an international movement and it is growing. Wear one of our stickers to show what you are doing. See Big Campaign

Write to your MP and MSP and MEP asking them to put pressure on Israel to open Gaza’s border and withdraw from the occupied territories. Government action should include ending the export of arms to Israel; ensuring an immediate end to the favourable status awarded to Israel in the EU; and firm diplomatic pressure on the United States, which effectively underwrites the Israeli state.

Sign our petition

Contribute money for medical aid to Gaza. See Medical Aid For Palestine

Find out more about what is going on and play a part in counteracting Israeli propaganda

Some useful websites

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Scottish Jews for a Just Peace

Jews for Justice for Palestine

Palestine Solidarity Campaign

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Leave a contact email so we can alert you to further actions

Public report of police harassment and charging of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! street protest. Dundee, Saturday 17th January 2009.

The day had started very well with a militant, angry and noisy protest march against Israel’s attack on Gaza going into Dundee’s city centre. After the rally, activists from Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism, one of whom had spoken at the event, set up a protest stall in the Murraygate to continue building support for the people of Gaza and Palestine.

Once again the city centre ambassadors demanded we remove our stall as we did not have permission or insurance. Once again we told them no! The police were called this time and proceeded to threaten the comrades with Breach of the Peace or causing alarm. It was suggested they go and consult their law books and superior officers as we were not backing down to such contrived charges. They appeared to accept this but returned an hour later with a van and told those present that this time they had come up with obstruction as a charge.

Third time lucky for them maybe but the comrades then began speaking to the gathering crowds explaining what the police were doing and asking them to stay around as witnesses, sign the petitions and support political rights. People were told to check out the YouTube videos about the cops in Liverpool trying to close down protest there and to check out Dundee Arrest on YouTube where a comrade was violently assaulted and arrested by Tayside police for handing out leaflets about Cuba. Speakers explained that when people start to protest here about unemployment, low wages and rent rises that the same cops would be out attacking their rights too. We were speaking out for the people of Gaza who were dying at that moment and we would not allow the police to silence us.

Talk about obstruction! – by now there was 1 police van and 100 people prepared to listen to speeches and chants about free speech. Comrades from the Socialist Workers Party joined the protest having been harassed for doing political work for Gaza that week.

By now the police action was a very public affair and they were not looking so comfortable. They charged Michael with obstruction under Section 53 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982. As Michael explained to the youth present this was one of the hated Margaret Thatcher’s laws and it was no surprise that her favourite bobbies were digging it up now!

53. Obstruction by pedestrians.
Any person who, being on foot in any public place—

• (a) obstructs, along with another or others, the lawful passage of any other person and fails to desist on being required to do so by a constable in uniform, or
• (b) wilfully obstructs the lawful passage of any other person shall be guilty of an offence and liable, on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding £500

Michael was threatened with arrest if the stall was not immediately removed and after consulting with the comrades and the crowds it was decided to call a rally in the Murraygate at 12 the following Saturday to protest the harassment and charges.

We call on everyone to openly and publicly challenge this attack on democratic and political rights. Get up! Stand Up! Stand Up For Your Rights!

Defend Democratic Rights!

no to Police interference!

Rally at Murraygate. 12 Noon, Dundee, Saturday 24 January 2009.

Contact the campaign on frfiscotland@yahoo.co.uk

Venceremos!

We Shall Win! Shall Win!

Press Release from Tayside for Justice in Palestine

This Saturday, 17th January, the people of Dundee will be marching to show their support for the one and a half million people of Gaza, and their condemnation of Israel’s brutal war and policy of oppression. Even before the military attacks, the Israeli blockade had turned Gaza into an open prison. Now it is at the mercy of one of the world’s most well equipped armies, and its people have nowhere to hide. Over 1,000 Palestinians have died, thousands more are seriously wounded and the psychological damage is immeasurable. At the same time, while any death is too many, the total of 13 Israeli dead has been fewer than those killed on Israeli roads, and cannot even begin to justify what is happening.

This is an opportunity for Dundee to demonstrate the importance of its well-established links with Palestine, and the march follows on from two weeks of vigils and meetings in response to the current crisis.

The march will assemble at the New University Building at the corner of Hunter Street and Old Hawkhill at 11.30 a.m. and terminate in a rally at the City Square.
Speakers to be confirmed.

Poster for Dundee demo

Assemble 11.30am Saturday 17th January,

New Teaching Block, Old Hawkhill, (Dundee University)

March to City Square

The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known is his autobiography from 1998 to 2002. It is also available to buy online through links on his site.

Tuesday 13th January, 7:30PM, Queens Hotel, Dundee

Chair: Mike Arnott (Dundee Trades Council)
Speakers:

• Keir McKenchnie (Chair, Stop the War Scotland)
• Nadia El-Nakla (Tayside Justice for Palestine)
• Louise Whiteside (Student Activist)

This meeting is to organise support for the Palestinians and get people active in the movement against it.

The following week Dundee SSP will be having an open branch meeting on the situation to discuss the politics behind the situation. Supporters and friends of the SSP are welcome to attend, more details will follow once confirmed.

Edith Constable

We demand an immediate ceasefire, the lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, an increase in the flow of humanitarian aid, the re-opening of negotiations, an end to the expansion of Israeli settlements, the withdrawal by Israel to 1967 borders and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Nadia El-Nakla

The vigil is not intended to debate politics. The aim is to highlight the recent inhumane abuse of power, violence and excessive force along with the humanitarian crisis that faces 1.4 million people in the Gaza Strip.

Bus leaves Discovery Point (opposite Rail station) 10.30 a.m. Saturday. Leaves Edinburgh 3 p.m. arrive back in Dundee 4.30 p.m. £10 waged, £6 concession.

Assemble at Balmossie at 11.00 a.m.

Public Rally at St. Aidan’s Hall.

Speakers: Matt Wrack, Fire Brigade Union general secretary and Ken Ross, Scottish secretary.

The fire service wants to remove a night-time shift at the station and replace it with a retained crew as part of a structural overhaul that would see new appliances stationed in Perth and Forfar.

The parade was attended by about 200. Banners included the local FBU and PCS banners as well as SSP, Solidarity and CPB. Jack Jones, the 95 year old former leader of the TGWU, who fought in Spain, unveiled the new plaque.

This ceremony was followed by a public meeting where former Fire Brigades Union leader Ken Cameron spoke along with the Spanish Consul and a librarian from the National Library of Scotland who maintains the Spanish Civil War collection.

An exhibition entitled Dundee and the Spanish Civil War will be running in Dundee’s Wellgate Library from October 7th – 25th.

The two plaques

March moving up Reform Street

Jack Jones during rededication ceremony

Some of Dundee SSP waiting on the march to start

Sunday 12 October:
10.00; Showing of BBC documentary, The Guernica Children, Cinema 1, Dundee Contemporary Arts Centre (DCA), 152 Nethergate,

13.00; Unveiling of Basque Children’s Colony plaque, 17 Mall Park Road, Montrose (a bus to Montrose leaves from the rear of DCA at 11.20)

14:30 Bus back to Dundee.

The events today were terrific, a good turn out of over 200 for the march and rededication and 100+ for the public meeting in the Steps Theatre.

There is an exhibition at Dundee Library on Dundees contribution to the International Brigade which will run for a wee while.

There was a range of merchandise available including the excellent t-shirts and the Trades Council publication on Dundees International Brigadiers. T-shirts were £6 and the publication was £3. If you would like any of these let us know and we will pass on Mike Arnotts contact details for you.

I’m writing to request a big turn-out from Trade Unionists, especially with banners, for the parade up Reform Street from City Square to Albert Square at 11am on Saturday 11th October (assemble 10.45am). The event is to mark the rededication of the City’s Memorial to those who died in the Spanish Civil War, and the unveiling of a new plaque.

It is hoped that Jack Jones, the 95 year old former leader of the TGWU, and who fought in Spain, will be present.

The ceremony will be followed by a public meeting in the Wellgate Steps Theatre where former FBU leader Ken Cameron will be speaking, along with the Spanish Consul.

Tickets for the evening social, in the Apex Hotel City Quay suite are also available at £5 each, as are commemorative t-shirts at £6.

An exhibition entitled Dundee and the Spanish Civil War will be running in the Wellgate Library from Oct 7th – 25th.

Banners are important seeing as Dundee Trades Council banner was seized by Police whilst on an anti-G8 march.

Public sector Unions, Rally City Square, tomorrow.
Assemble: Hilltown Park, 11.00 a.m. march to City Square.

Aldermaston Big Blockade – Monday, October 27 2008

Help disrupt illegal work on WMD at Britain’s nuclear bomb factory

In 2006/7, Faslane 365 saw well over 1000 arrests during a year-long blockade of the Trident submarine base in Scotland. Last Easter, AWE Aldermaston saw its biggest demonstration in two decades as 5000 people surrounded the base to mark the 50th anniversary of the first Aldermaston march. Trident Ploughshares now invite you to a major blockade of the Berkshire nuke factory, where billions of pounds are currently being spent developing new warhead facilities that will scupper nuclear disarmament for another 50 years. Help us uphold international law by blockading this factory of death in what promises to be a colourful celebration of life and people power. There is a role for everyone. This event is supported by CND.

For further details, see: Block AWE and Trident Ploughshares.org

Trident Ploughshares is a campaign to disarm the UK Trident nuclear weapons system in a non-violent, open, peaceful and fully accountable manner. There will be a mini-bus(at least) going from Glasgow. If you want to join them e-mail Jane or phone 0845 4588 367

Scottish CND

This message has been sent to you by Scottish CND on behalf of Trident Ploughshares

If you with to change the types of messages you receive from Scottish CND, please visit Their site

Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
15 Barrland St,
Glasgow,
G41 1QH,

0141 423 1222

Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

IBMT T-shirt design

IBMT website

Saturday 27th September – 6pm

Drinks reception to follow

When Cuba lost access to Soviet oil, fertilizers, and export trade market in the early 1990s, the country faced virtual overnight economic collapse and an immediate crisis – feeding the population.

The story of how Cuba successfully developed permaculture in response to this crisis will be outlined in a thought-provoking lecture by renowned Cuban permaculturalist Roberto Perez in a major lecture at the University of Dundee.

Cuba has in the past 18 years transformed its food production using organic agriculture and Havana produces over 60% of its food requirements from within the city limits. The Cuban people’s hardship, ingenuity, and triumph over sudden adversity, through cooperation, conservation, and community, to create a low energy society is a truly inspirational story as evidenced in the documentary, The Power of Community in which Roberto features.

This lecture is being held in celebration of the University of Dundee being awarded Fair Trade Status earlier this summer.

The lecture is free and tickets can be obtained from the Tower Building Reception, or from the online store at: or by emailing: events@dundee.ac.uk events@dundee.ac.uk

Socialist Unity have an article about his tour which also links to some articles he has written.

One of the Post Offices being closed following the consultation was in Lochee Road and customers were told it was all ok because they could just walk up the steep hill to the stacks or pay for a bus to get there. Now even that won’t be an option.

Evening Telegraph article on closure

This highlights not only the fragility of the current Post Office network following the closure of branches but the short-sightedness of locating Post Office branches inside supermarkets and inside the premises of other private businesses.

Seeing a friend or relative in hospital can be stressful enough without this unfair
added burden says local activist Helen Fortune.

These charges are a galling example of
profit being put before people when the sick, their visitors and staff have what is in
effect an extra tax placed on them. This situation, brought about purely by private
involvement in public services, clearly shows the lack of control the Holyrood government
have when they enter into such partnerships.

Dundee SSP Members Outside Ninewells Hospital

Banners read (left to right)

• Abolish all car parking charges at Ninewells
• Parking Charges: If you want them oot then give us a toot!
• Abolish all car parking charges at Ninewells
• Parking Charges: If you want them oot then give us a toot!

Evening Telegraph

Their sham consultation resulted in no change of mind in Dundee, and they disgracefully boasted of the number of public meetings their representatives attended, whilst not organising any themselves in the areas affected.

From partial privatisation to massive bonuses for their bosses whilst attacking their workers pay & conditions the Post Office bosses have shown themselves to have no regard for anything but their own pay packets.

Do they not realise the Post Office network is a public service, run for the public, not them?

Press release to follow.

Fingers crossed that they have changed their mind.

During the six weeks of the campaign thousands of people expressed their opposition to the closures and we know of hundreds who sent off letters or signed petitions.

On Wednesday we will find out if it was enough.

Submission to Post Office Limited regarding proposed Post Office closures in Dundee from Scottish Socialist Party – Dundee branches

We believe that the Post Office network across the UK should not just be viewed as a chain of branches of a standard business, assessed solely on its ability to make a profit.

The nationwide network of Post Office branches is a valuable public asset that provides a vital social service in both rural and urban communities across Scotland. As a public service, Post Offices should be viewed and assessed on the wider role and benefits they provide to communities, not on the profit (or loss) they provide to Post Office Limited.

In light of the government’s recent £50 billion bail out of Northern Rock, Post Office Limited have strong grounds for going back to the government and asking for an increase in subsidy to protect the Post Office branch network, thus maintaining its positive role in communities.

It is also deeply insensitive to these communities, who are having to fight for their local Post Office service, that Royal Mail’s Chief Executive, Adam Crozier, earned £633,000 basic salary, topped up with a £3 million bonus in 2007/08!! How many Post Offices could have been saved with that £3 million?

In March 2007, Adam Crozier was appointed Chairman of the EFD.

At the time he stated

“I am extremely pleased to have been invited to take on this role. Ensuring equal opportunity for all is hugely important to us at Royal Mail and I look forward to helping to promote and develop the terrific work which Employers’ Forum for Disability does with employers throughout the UK.”
Source

On its website EFD states EFD has worked closely with government and other stakeholders, sharing best practice to make it easier to employ disabled people and serve disabled customers.

One has to question Mr Crozier’s commitment to EFD’s stated aims as the closure of Post Offices around the country is hardly going to improve Post Office Limited’s service to its disabled customers. It is going to make accessing post office services more inconvenient, more time consuming and more costly (public transport, taxis).

The recurring objections that have been raised by the hundreds of customers of the four Post Offices threatened with closure in Dundee to whom we have spoken over the last few weeks while campaigning, are:

Accessibility to the next nearest Post Office and the ‘fitness of purpose’ of those alternative Post Offices.

Lochee Road Post Office:

If this branch closes then the nearest Post Offices will be Ward Road, Tescos in the Stack, Brantwood or Blackness Road.

If walking, all of these alternatives involve either an uphill journey there and a downhill journey back, or vice versa. The bus services to both Blackness and Brantwood branches are infrequent. Any bus journey would involve added expense (For example, 2 visits per week to the Ward Road branch would incur a cost of £4.40).

This added expense would have a profound effect on those many Post Office customers who are on very low incomes and benefits. Many of those who use Lochee Road Post Office are elderly or disabled and/or on low income.

Although the public transport into the City Centre (Ward Road) is more frequent the extra expense is still incurred. The service at the Ward Road Post Office is already poor because of the lack of staff, resulting in long queues and standing time. At busy times, it is not uncommon for customers to have to queue for 10 – 15 minutes before being served. This adds to pressure and stress on staff and customers alike and can lead to a hostile atmosphere. Also some of the transactions carried out at Ward Road are the more complicated ones such as passports and car tax, which obviously increase waiting time.

Broughty Ferry Road Post Office:

Like Lochee Road, this branch serves a high proportion of elderly and disabled customers, who will find it extremely difficult to access other branches if Broughty Ferry Road closes.

Their alternative options are Ward Road branch (see above for comments); Maryfield branch or Arbroath Road. Both these branches involve a lengthy uphill walk and bus services in the area have recently been cut. Of course, the use of public transport will mean additional costs to those who can least afford it.

Nethergate Post Office:

The two alternatives for Nethgergate customers are:

• Ward Road branch (see above) and it involves crossing 2 busy main roads to access it;
• Perth Road branch, which is already extremely busy, often experiences lengthy queues in quite a small premise. So again there will be increased waiting times and queues, literally, out the door.

The Nethergate Post Office is also the nearest branch to the University of Dundee which is attended by thousands of students and hundreds of staff. The University has also recently built new premises in the Hawkhill area which might put even more pressure on Ward Road branch.

There are also many businesses in this area, such as Bank of Scotland, DVLA, HMRC and the new Alliance Trust offices being built just around the corner.

Fairmuir Post Office:

Again, there is an elderly population in the area of Fairmuir Post Office. An adjacent branch is the one in Arkley Street, which provides an excellent service, but the premises are very small. Under present circumstances, it can become overcrowded with four people waiting to be served. If it has to absorb Fairmuir’s customers then the service provided will decline. Elderly customers could be queued out into the street. This is surely not an image that Post Office Limited would want to be associated with, particularly during cold or wet weather.

All four branches are surrounded by independent, local shops or small businesses. Those shops we have canvassed have expressed their concern that the closure of the neighbouring Post Office will have a significant impact on their ability to survive. This is at time when they are already under pressure from the supermarket chains such as Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s.

Another factor that should be considered is that a significant proportion of Dundee’s population is on lower than average income and in receipt of social security benefits. Dundee also has one of the highest child poverty rates in Scotland.

Our extensive research and discussion with residents in all four areas leads us to conclude that none of the Post Offices in Dundee targeted for closure should be closed. We have found support for the retention of these four branches to be overwhelming among their local communities.

July 2008

DVA 10 Constitution Road
Dundee

Tuesday 1st July, 2008. 7pm.

Please sign the petition

Some articles from the local press on the issue

Saturday 14th June
Family face being torn apart after visa mix-up

Monday 16th June
MP fights visa case with Home Office

Tuesday 17th June
Community rallies round to keep Josie in Scotland

Tonight’s Eveneing Telegraph contained an article about the activity in Dundee

For more information on the issue visit www.freepublictransport.org/

When the policy was introduced in Hasselt in Belgium there was a massive uptake in the use of public transport. Massive numbers of people started cycling after encouragement from the local council (contrast with Dundee where the Council stopped a local bike recycling charityselling their cheap affordable bikes in the city centre!).

If you would like some stickers, posters or leaflets about the campaign, contact us.

*terrorists not being the dictionary definition of course, but New Labours makey upey definition.

A local political activist, Alan Hinnrichs had submitted a request to every Scottish Council about their use of the “Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act” to spy on members of the public and has compiled his results. These have now been printed today by the Sunday Herald today.

SACC article detailing his investigation

Sunday Herald Article detailing his investigation

SACC claims councils are abusing the civil liberties of the Scottish public and says civil servants and bureaucrats should not have such wide-ranging powers. The watchdog believes that spying on ordinary citizens should only be a power granted to the police or the security and intelligence services in cases of extreme danger such as threats to national security or to prevent major crime.

Of the councils which replied to the FoI requests, Edinburgh was found to be using the Ripa laws the most excessively, authorising spying actions 1252 times.

On the 30th May there was a Letter in the Courier from an independent councillor in Angus detailling what a Post Office closure means to a rural village. Because of the isolation and lack of transport the effect of a closure or service reduction is far greater than in a city.

Aberdeen City Council

Aberdeenshire Council

Angus Council

Clackmannanshire Council

Dundee City Council

Fife Council

Moray Council

Perth & Kinross Council

Sally Buchanan
Network Development Manager
C/o National Consultation Team
FREEPOST CONSULTATION TEAM
Email: consultation@postoffice.co.uk
Customer Helpline: 08457 22 33 44

There are 6 weeks before the end of the consultation process so 9th July 2008 (not stated in the documents).

The documents can be located here:

Area Plan booklet

Branch Access Report

Branch Access Reports – Outreach

In many cases, where cuts are made, the elderly and infirm may be
forced to travel considerable distances to their nearest branch. At
best they will face upheaval to their regular routines.

We should not just meekly accept the Post Office bosses’ decision. By
organising and resisting closures we can retain these community assets
for ourselves and future generations.

It is clear that the demand for the service still remains. Within two
weeks, at a time when cuts remained a distant threat, our stalls
collected hundreds of signatures against these unnecessary closures.

We stand in support of a service for people, not profit.

Closures announced for Dundee:

• Fairmuir, Clepington Road
• Ferry Rd, 82 Broughty Ferry Road
• Monikie, Panmure Road, Monikie, Broughty Ferry
• Lochee, 156 Lochee Road
• Nethergate, 123 Nethergate

Michael has learned through his Legal Aid solicitor that the procurator fiscal decided way back on 18 December not to proceed with the charge of Disorderly Conduct against him. Only they did not tell anybody. Does this mean that very useful CCTV evidence against the police may have been discarded?

Free School Meals pilot

A pilot has started of our proposal for Free School Meals to improve the health of a whole generation of children. We are immensely proud of the work in this campaign and the organisations who joined with us in campaigning for this essential health policy.
Free Prescription Charges

The SNP government have pledged to scrap prescription charges within the next four years. Both the SNP and Greens supported us in parliament when we originally proposed the Bill. It is essential for you to contact your MSPs asking them to support the eventual Bill.

Following the AGM of the International Brigade Memorial Trust held in Belfast this weekend, I can confirm that Dundee has been unanimously agreed as hosts of next year’s AGM on 11th October 2008. I will be in touch in due course to ask for your help in squeezing every possible ounce of assistance out of the Dundee labour and democratic movement (and beyond), to develop a full programme of events and activities for the evening of Friday 10th, Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th.

Mike

If you can assist, please contact Mike at: dundeetuc at hotmail.com

The hit of the day was a walking tour of parts of Dundee by Mike Arnott, Secretary of the Dundee Trades Council. Not only did he have to add a second tour later in the day but there was still demand, including from the Dundee SSP members who knew they ask Mike to do one again. We hope to in future have Mike do a tour as part of a locally held Day School so keep checking back for details.

On another note, an SNP member who was elected as both a councillor and MSP made the difficult choice of keeping the job with 4 times the salary of the other. Due to this a by-election will be held in Lochee on Thursday 22 November.

In October the SSP conference and Socialism discussion programme are coming to Dundee.

1. Independence Refurendum
2. Free Public Transport
3. 100,000 new council houses
4. Free School Meals
5. Scrap Council Tax

We hope that we have won support on these important issues at a local and national level. Bleary eyed and tired we will find out at about 6-7 on Friday morning.

Whatever happens, we will be back out in housing estates, communities and the city centre on a variety of campaigns over the next four years and beyond. You will see us again before the whole shibang starts again before the next elections and the big business parties remember you exist.

Hustings, public meetings and leafletting have been the main activities. In the next couple of days everyone in Dundee should be getting an SSP

On Tuesday night you can see the second SSPSee the first one here if you missed it)

And don’t worry, the Saturdays immediately after the election will still give you an opportunity to meet the SSP ]]> http://dundeessp.org/blog/2007/04/21/weve-been-busy/feed/ 0 http://dundeessp.org/blog/2007/04/06/our-candidates/ http://dundeessp.org/blog/2007/04/06/our-candidates/#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:12:14 +0000 nessppress http://dundeessp.wordpress.com/2007/04/06/our-candidates/ Dundee City Council – About our candidates standing for Dundee City Council

North East Biographies – About our candidates standing for the North East List in the Scottish Parliamentry Election.

According to the Courier they The SNP yesterday unveiled plans for the biggest tax cut in a generation, promising to scrap council tax and replace it with 3p on income tax across Scotland.

The Scottish Socialist Party have been fighting to replace the Council Tax with an income based tax for years. In 2005 we presented a bill to the Scottish Parliament to replace the Council Tax with our proposed Scottish Service Tax. We had hoped it would pass as the SNP and the Liberal Democrats had also claimed the wanted to Scrap the Council Tax, although neither has tried to actually do this in 8 years of Holyrood rule.

What happenned? on the 1st of February 2006, it fell and both these parties voted against it. At the time the SNP claimed that our proposal wasn’t really local as we wanted the Tax collected by the Inland Reveneue at the same time as Income Tax and National Insurance are deducted. This was estimated to actually save money over the current system which duplicates the same process all over the country. Now they are proposing the same collection scheme.

It’s always easy to see when an elections looming, the pro-capitalist parties start going on the street, holding stalls and proposing policies they have argued against for the last four years. You’d think they only wanted your vote or something…

If you want the Council Tax scrapped and replaced by a local income tax based on the ability to pay then its the SSP who have proposed this, argued for it and voted for it.

This is a great example of what happens when people put thir common interests before the interests of their own organisation. A turnout increase of 50% also shows that the students on campus aren’t apathetic when it comes to political issues.

Well done to Dundee Uni students

Courier report

Apparantly he thinks us knowing how he’s spending our cash means that if this reaches its logical conclusion, it will be easy for anyone who wants to kidnap, injure or assault an MP because they’ll know their exact movements,

Never mind that we already know when he will be holding surgeries etc, where he lives (from the electoral register), where his offices are and when he’s going to Parliament, if we know that he got a taxi somewhere 3 years ago how would that assist some mythical kidnapper in the future?

That’s if you manage to look at his argument and actually mistake his “logical conclusion” for being logical rather than paranoid fantasies.

Never mind that he’s supported Labours ID Card and Anti terrorism laws which mean the state can find out where you are.

SSP rallies round NCR workers

The SSP has been unequivocal in its condemnation of Ohio-based company NCR’s recent decision to axe 650 jobs in Dundee.

A decision that has left hundreds of families in abject panic, given that Dundee is a city with an already high level of unemployment, dangerously dependent upon corporate giants like NCR.

In the wake of the decision, SSP convenor Colin Fox travelled north with the party’s message of support for workers squaring up to this wretched decision.
He was also keen to distance the SSP from the attitude of all the other parties that nothing can be done and that the only option remaining is to follow the Scottish Executive lead and provide retraining, advice on setting up new businesses and educational routes forward away from NCR.

Colin, alongside SSP Industrial Organiser Richie Venton and Dundee SSP member Rod McGregor, spoke to local press, radio and TV, and met Scott Murray, Amicus union convener at NCR, to discuss the situation, the union’s approach and the SSP’s support.

The public meeting was organised by Dundee SSP members within days of the NCR announcement.
In building for the meeting, they held a successful stall in the city centre and in two local schemes, leafleted the NCR factory three days running, and got an article in the Dundee Courier.

The meeting was well-attended and constructive, with speakers Colin, Richie, and Mike Arnott from Dundee Trades Council.

Richie called NCR a “subsidy junkie. They have been handed £4million by the Scottish Executive in grants since 1993. And a further £2.2million off Scottish Enterprise just eight months ago.

Instead of offering more handouts to NCR bosses who lie and plunder, the Scottish Executive should seize their assets and keep the workforce and its skills.

Mike Arnott exposed NCR bosses as Corporation Tax-dodgers.
“They channel all their non-US profits – including those from Dundee – through a front company in Ireland. NCR Global Solutions in Ireland employs a grand total of 31 people.

“Yet by this legalised tax theft they can claim in 2005 that 31 people generated $186million profit – almost half their global total! Why do they siphon their profits across the Irish Sea? Because Corporation Tax there is only 12.5 per cent – compared to 30 per cent here.”

Colin Fox warned NCR workers not to be conned into relying on Task Forces that promise to re-train redundant workers.

“Look at Motorola. They didn’t even allow a trade union. But they had a works committee. I met the convener of the works committee when Motorola was closing down, promising re-training.
Six weeks later I met the same skilled worker in Harthill Service Station, sweeping up the forecourt!
Unlike the mainstream parties who wring their hands in pretend sympathy but preach there is nothing you can do, the SSP strongly believes that if the NCR workforce decide on powerful, united action, the jobs can be saved.”

Richie flagged up how Glasgow council workers forced the Labour council to drop plans to slash wages by up to £10,000 – and instead concede life-time protection of wages for most current staff – through mobilising for a three-day strike last month.

Mary McGregor, of Dundee SSP, said, Our party will continue to build support for the NCR workers and their families. We cannot let this devastation of the city go ahead without a fight.

The SSP is there to organise support for any action the workers take.

You can get the form from About My Vote

If you are currently living in Dundee then the form you need is: Dundee Vote Registration

Remember if you are a student you can register at your home and term time address so that you can vote (once) depending on where you are living at the time of the election