Dundee SSP

Taken from the SSP Site

For an independent socialist Scotland

No cuts, no wars, for an end to corruption

On May 6th voters will be offered a dismal choice of cuts, sackings and wars by politicians tainted by corruption, duck houses and other expenses fiddling.

All three Westminster parties are in a race to see who can make the deepest cuts while the SNP wring their hands and blame London.

They all recommend cuts to vital public services which will hit the most vulnerable hardest and directly threaten the jobs of 100,000 Scottish workers.

In contrast the unequivocal message from the Scottish Socialist Party is that there is an alternative which avoids cuts and insists instead that the greedy pay for the disaster they created, that also ends our involvement in the Afghan war and offers jobs and justice not misery and war.

This belief is reflected in our programme for a Scotland which aims to meet peoples’ needs, not pander to the rich, for people not profit.

100,000 jobs are directly threatened by the cuts promised by the Westminster parties and vital services for our most vulnerable citizens will go.

We say that faced with such a threat words are not enough – action is needed. Scotland needs nothing less than a resistance movement of mass peaceful protest on the scale of that which defeated the poll tax. We will bring all the experience of the SSP to build such a movement.

Jobs for youth

The spectre of mass unemployment has returned twenty years after Margaret Thatcher was ejected from office. Many communities in Scotland are still suffering from the legacy of the 1980s with the poverty, heroin addiction, alcohol abuse and crime that goes with this chronic joblessness.

Today the SSP says: ‘Mass unemployment No More’. Instead of slashing Scotland’s budget, the SSP will fight for emergency funding to protect our young people from becoming another wasted generation.

Let’s Get Out of Afghanistan

This is a senseless military occupation which damages Britain’s international reputation and does nothing to make the world a safer place. We are occupying a country that doesn’t want us to be there. More than 50,000 innocent Afghan civilians have been killed. Some 280 British soldiers have also died. All the polling evidence suggests that 70% of the population here want our armed services withdrawn. The Scottish Socialist Party gives voice to that majority.

Clean up the Westminster ‘midden’

In just 12 months Westminster has gone from ‘the mother of parliaments’ to ‘the mother of all corruption’.

The public has watched open mouthed as MPs attempt to justify obscene expenses claims which would get an ordinary worker sacked. MPs have repeatedly shown how they are all out of touch with the people they pretend to represent.

For the SSP the answer is simple and it is to end the circumstances where becoming an MP brings a huge salary and expenses. We have long argued that MP’s should live on the wage of those they represent. Our MSPs did just that at Holyrood thus keeping them in touch with the real lives of voters.

For a Green, Socialist Republic

The Scottish Socialist Party is a pro-independence party – no ifs, buts or maybes. We say Yes to an independence referendum and Yes to independence.

We will work with other pro-independence parties to deliver a resounding referendum yes vote.

Beyond that, we stand for an independent socialist republic where the wealth is fairly distributed; where protection of the environment is paramount.

Such a republic would prioritise the needs of people over profit and our environment over the greed of profiteers.

The development of our colossal natural resources would be publicly owned to ensure the skilled jobs required are based in Scotland and the profits generated used to provide services not multinational profit.

All citizens would be equal irrespective of gender, race, religion or sexuality in a country where the economy is no longer driven by greed and profit.

Another 27 innocent civilians killed in an airstrike in Afghanistan. There is one marked difference between this and previous attacks, there appears to be no immediate denial, claim it was the Taliban the hit, claim it was the Taliban who hit them etc etc.

The SSP are holding a public meeting on the war on Wednesday.

Wednesday at 7pm in the DVA Constitution Road Dundee.

A Canadian Anti-War group have pointed out a cruel repeat of history.

The 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow were boycotted in protest of the Soviet Union’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Then–U.S. president Jimmy Carter announced the boycott in February 1980, and Canada and dozens of other countries soon followed suit. In his state of the union address that year, Carter made the case against the Soviet war:

“The vast majority of nations on Earth have condemned this latest Soviet attempt to extend its colonial domination of others and have demanded the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops. The Muslim world is especially and justifiably outraged by this aggression against an Islamic people. No action of a world power has ever been so quickly and so overwhelmingly condemned. But verbal condemnation is not enough. The Soviet Union must pay a concrete price for their aggression.”

Now Canada is part of a coalition occupying Afghanistan whilst hosting the Olympics.

Read the rest of the article at the link for more information.

Dundee SSP are holding a public meeting about the continued war and occupation in Afghanistan on the 24th of February at the DVA.

The current cold spell is making us all shiver, but as the major parties wind themselves up for a General Election this year, the money they’re spending will look positively balmy compared to the cuts and wage freezes that whoever wins will try to enforce in order to pay for the folly of the bankers.

The chilly blast of austerity will be felt by us all in the shape of cuts to public services and wage freezes.

However, the Scottish Socialist Party believes there could and should be some more welcome cuts made, including:

• Nationalisation of all banks, bringing the obscene bonus culture to an end.
• All MP’s and MSP’s to be paid an average skilled worker’s wage.
• Withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. These campaigns currently cost billions each year, and that’s without counting the appalling loss of life.

Note: Apologies for the delay, holiday meant there was a backlog of e-mail to sort through and this slipped back a bit.

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.

Bring the Troops Home! – Dundee SSP Public Meeting.

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

Confirmed speakers include Colin Fox and John McAllion

Afghanistan Public Meeting Leaflet

Troops Out of Afghanistan

Wednesday, September 23rd, 7.30 p.m.

Queens Hotel, Dundee

Confirmed Speakers—

Colin Fox,
John McAllion