Dundee SSP

A lot of people in Dundee will have received a big pile of election leaflets through the door today. Sadly the SSP is quite low on finances and opted to only have a Royal Mail delivered leaflet in a small area of the country. SSP activists will be out in other areas, holding stalls and putting leaflets through doors ourselves.

We hold stalls and leaflet houses throughout the year, not just at election time. All done by activists and members of the parties. Unlike some which we won’t mention, we don’t hire non-members to go and leaflet for us…

On May the 5th Vote SSP on the regional list.

Now Strike Together!

By Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organiser

It was a human flood that clogged up the streets of London for several hours.

The biggest demo, by far, in the UK since the 2003 marches against the Iraq invasion.

The biggest trade union-led demo for several generations, some say for a century.

Half a million strong, loud, proud, colourful and determined to fight the cuts.

All ages represented, from kids in buggies to pensioners; veterans of many marches, complete newcomers on their first ever; mostly public sector workers, but supported by big private-sector contingents.

Overwhelmingly working class, an almighty display of the potential power of the organised trade unionists in this country; a devastating rebuttal of the sneering jibes and whingeing pessimism about the ‘death’ of the workers’ movement in modern Scotland and Britain.

Marchers were still trying to leave the assembly points four or five hours after the head of the march had arrived in Hyde Park . This was a mammoth display of unity and working class solidarity, attracting tens of thousands of young people not in a union, boosted by the sheer scale and sense of power on the streets.

The TUC’s 26 March demo against the cuts was a decisive turning point in the battle to save benefits, pensions, jobs, pay and public services from the millionaire assassins trained on the playing fields of Eton and Oxbridge. At least 10,000 Scots made the horrendously long trek by train and bus, from every corner of the country (including Shetland!) and from every section of public sector workforce – plus students, claimants and community campaigners.

What next?

The critical question on most people’s lips then (and since) was: what next? How can this powerful force be turned into an unbeatable army of resistance to the butchers of Westminster, Holyrood and local councils?

On the train from Glasgow , for instance, we held a succession of discussions – lasting four hours there and at least two hours on the return journey – with groups of workers on every coach, from every union present, where we discussed ideas on how to build on the TUC mass march.

Virtually everyone, from trade union veterans of struggle to new fighters, was wide open to the suggestion of a one-day public sector strike, as we advocated in the SSP leaflet and the Voice. The only real dissent was from Scottish Prison Officers’ Association members – who thought it didn’t go far enough!

Coordinated strike action

Everyone echoed the SSP’s view that the TUC demo should be just the start, a launch-pad to go into workplaces, communities and colleges with the call for further action – including coordinated strike action, as spoken of in resounding speeches at TUC conference as far back as last September.

Likewise, all those we discussed with shared the SSP’s opinion that there is absolutely no excuse for any cuts; that there’s more than enough wealth around, but that we need to tax the rich and make them pay for the crisis they and their system created – instead of attacking the poor and the working class, who played no part in causing the economic crisis.

This openness to a clear-cut plan of action and a principled socialist alternative to the cuts was confirmed by the response to speakers at the TUC Hyde Park rally. The more hard-hitting the speech, the warmer was the reception. And perhaps the best received of all was PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka’s demolition of the excuses for cuts from tax-dodging millionaires, and his call for those who had just marched together to now strike together.

The enemy prepares

The employers and their vicious puppets in government are deadly serious about imposing the cuts and preparing for a showdown with workers and their families, in mortal fear that they face mass resistance. That upper-class fear and ruthless preparations have increased with the spectre of mass resistance displayed on 26 March.

Already reports have leaked out of plans to use the army against potential industrial action by prison officers. Tories like Boris Johnson and others more outwardly serious have called for bans on the right to strike in essential services (which of course they refuse to deem ‘essential’ when it comes to cutting them!). NHS bosses have let slip their plans to build up a strike-breaking force of volunteers in case their staff revolt against cuts to their pensions and jobs. And the Coalition is discussing “a war plan” on how to resist coordinated strike action across the public sector by use of the existing anti-union laws and the enlistment of a scab army to replace strikers.

Workers prepare for action

It is high time the national trade union leaders made similarly serious preparations.

The response to their call to demonstrate is a sure sign of people’s readiness to resist the cuts, given even half a lead, especially if it is not restricted to one union or one workforce, but coordinated across the board.

And already, several sections of workers are squaring up for action, balloting for work-to-rules and strikes on issues such as pensions – a common form of cut that lends itself to helping the unions coordinate common days of strike action.

The fifth-biggest union in the country, PCS, is about to ballot 250,000 public service members for strike action, in June, on pensions, jobs and pay. They are seeking coordination in their action with teachers’ unions UCU and NUT, and others.

EIS members are up in arms at a deal with COSLA being recommended by their national leadership – the same leadership who marched through London just days before – which would include a 47 per cent pay cut for supply teachers, a cut of two-thirds of training time for probationary teachers, a two-year pay cut of 10 per cent, and removal of payments to teachers on maternity leave or falling ill during annual leave.

NHS workers – contrary to the charming lies of Cameron, Clegg, Nicola Sturgeon and NHS bosses – are facing drastic cuts; £60m of them this year alone in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board.

Council workers are starting to feel the full force of the savage cuts, despite the pre-election delaying tactics by the SNP government.

Royal Mail workers face devastation if the planned privatisation of the service goes unchallenged.

Education is particularly in the firing line – which helps to explain why UCU members have been on strike, EIS members been on several rallies to stop college/university cuts, and why students have staged some of the most daring anti-cuts deeds to date.

STUC: name the day!

The role and duty of the trade union leaders who had the influence to muster a monster march of half a million weeks ago is to now pull together the different strands of struggle. They should give a lead, and name the day for a simultaneous strike across the entire public sector against the simultaneous attacks from all the governments of all the various pro-business parties.

Such a stoppage would dwarf even the impact of the biggest trade union-led demo in a century. It would hammer a wedge into the Demolition Coalition, whose retreats on woodlands privatisation and some benefits cuts have already shown how vulnerable they are to mass pressure.

One golden opportunity for such a call to ‘strike together after marching together’ is the forthcoming STUC conference.

Last week’s NUJ national conference passed a powerful anti-cuts motion, including the call for a 24 hour general strike against the cuts. A similar motion should be agreed at the STUC, and then a concerted campaign launched to explain and convince Scotland ’s 600,000 public sector workers that they can and should defeat the cuts by staging such united action.

Combined with direct action exposing the tax-dodging corporations whose wealth could pay for the protection of public services several times over, and occupations of threatened facilities in communities and colleges, united strike action could not only halt the cuts, but rock the entire Millionaires’ Cabinet.

United action – and socialist arguments

The fight against the cuts is also an ideological battleground. All four mainstream parties – Tories, LibDems, SNP and Labour – accept the case for cuts. They only fight over the scale and timing of the butchery, not the principle, not the fact there is absolutely no excuse for any cuts.

In contrast, the Scottish Socialist Party stands four-square with everyone prepared to resist the cuts, whilst arguing the case for measures to prevent any need for any cuts.

We have exposed the £120billion a year tax that is avoided, evaded or uncollected from big business and the rich.

We have exposed the simple fact that the 100 richest Scots have combined wealth of £16.4bn, which means a modest 10 per cent wealth tax on just these 100 parasites alone would raise £1.6bn – far in excess of the vicious cut to Scotland’s block grant, imposed by Westminster, spinelessly passed on by the SNP government, implemented by a rainbow coalition of cutters from all four mainstream parties in Scotland’s 32 councils. For 12 years, we have championed abolition of the Council Tax and its replacement by an income-based Scottish Service Tax, which could raise an extra £1.6bn this year for local jobs and services.

And we have spearheaded the case for democratic public ownership of the vast fortunes stashed away in the banks, big business and utilities, as a means of freeing it up for the construction of a clean, green, nuclear-free, poverty-free socialist Scotland .

In the looming Holyrood elections, every opponent of the cuts has the opportunity to vote for these measures by voting Scottish Socialist Party.

Every vote cast is another voice of reason in revolt against the most obscene attacks on living standards in generations.

Claim the future

As two of the SSP’s banners on the TUC demo declared, No cuts – tax the rich, and Defy all cuts – unite, strike, occupy. The time is ripe for united strike action, occupations and an ideological struggle for a socialist alternative to the cuts. The SSP will play its full part in campaigning for the unions and community organisations to take up these twin weapons in a war to survive that could shape the kind of society the next generation inherits.

As an election approaches you will see some activists from the mainstream parties crawl into public view for the first time since the last election. No doubt when you ask them about public ownership of the key state infrastructure like water and transport you will hear that there’s no money for it. The same answer given before billions upon billions were immediately found for failed banks.

So how do the SSP differ? We have both a different political programme from the banks fans and also the will to implement it.

As the build up to the Holyrood elections approaches the major political parties are putting forward their modest economic proposals for what they would do if they formed the next Scottish government. But what could a government do to radically change the landscape of Scotland to transform it from a country of mass unemployment and cuts to one where people had a bright future, communities were regenerated, the austerity that people are facing is reversed and instead the social needs of society is met? What follows are the measures that such a government could take in its first 100 days in office to take Scotland along that road.

Full article on SSP site

Demonstrate in Edinburgh, Saturday October 23rd

Called by the Scottish Trades Union Congress

11.00 am: Assemble East Market Street Edinburgh
11.30am: March off
12.30 pm: Rally Ross Bandstand

Unite and Defy Demolition Coalition Cuts

The Twin Tory millionaires’ Cabinet gloated and cheered as Osborne declared war on over 100,000 Scottish jobs; benefits for the most vulnerable; schools and community services; the NHS; workers’ pay and pensions. Slashing Scotland’s block grant by £1.3bn this year spells devastation in local government, construction, education – public and private sector. The vast rise in unemployment will worsen the deficit! The poorest will be hit hardest. The hour has struck for united, decisive action – as well as alternative policies – to stop this slaughter. The thousands marching today are critical to building a rebellion on the scale of the anti-poll tax movement – through your union, community, pensioners’ or students’ organisations – and by building local anti-cuts alliances.

• Demand the SNP government and Councils set ‘No-Cuts’ Defiance budgets that refuse to pass on Westminster’s butchery.

  SNP, Labour and other politicians who claim to oppose the Twin Tories’ cuts now face a stark choice: defy or destroy.

  If the SNP government was serious about defending Scotland, they should set a budget next month without a penny cut in pay or services, not a single job loss, and demand the missing £1.3bn back off the Westminster thieves who stole it to bail out the bankers and billionaires. They should call workers and communities into action in support of their defiance, with rallies, demonstrations, peaceful civil disobedience and industrial action. A nation in rebellion could win back the £1.3bn for next year’s Scottish spending needs.

• Build a mass lobby of Scottish parliament

  Given the SNP’s record so far, they won’t show the spine to do this unless they face a rebellion from below. The STUC should use today’s demo to call a mass lobby of the Scottish parliament to stop tartan butchery next month. If the STUC fail to, public sector unions should call it.

• Make councillors fight

  Councils face the same stark choice: defy or destroy. Bombard councillors with demands for No Cuts budgets, mounting mass campaigns to demand the stolen millions back off Holyrood to balance the books, with no cuts.

• Axe the Council Tax

  Demand an emergency Bill in the Scottish parliament to replace it with the income-based Service Tax; to raise £1.6bn extra in 2011.

• Build a Scottish one-day public sector strike in early 2011

  No cuts are acceptable – or necessary. Neither Coalition cuts, nor lesser, slower Labour or SNP cuts. The STUC should today declare plans for a united one day strike of the entire 600,000-strong public sector in early 2011 – to force back the Scottish butchers, before the council budgets are set in stone. To build the rebellion in the workplaces that would embolden communities too.

The butchers’ Coalition – with 23 millionaires and 4 ex-bankers in a Cabinet of 29 – spew out the monstrous lie that cuts are unavoidable and necessary.

The public debt is mainly the result of the £1.3trillion bankers’ bailout, mass unemployment, loss of taxes. But it is still only 70% of GDP – whereas it never fell below 100% of GDP from 1918 ‘til 1961. Job cuts will massively add to the debt. There are numerous better ways – without a penny cut in pay, benefits, pensions, or the loss of a single job or service – with vast scope to improve the shoddy system we endure already:

• scrapping the unfair, regressive Council Tax and replacing it with a Scottish Service Tax based on income would raise an extra £1.6bn next year – more than Osborne has slashed off the Scottish budget!
• £120bn a year in taxes on the rich and big business are avoided, evaded or uncollected – that’s 75% of the 2009 deficit!
• a modest 10% wealth tax on the richest 1,000 fat-cats would raise £35bn a year – enough to create 1.4 million jobs on a £25,000 wage.
• restoration of tax on the richest elite and Corporations to pre-Thatcher levels (a policy the SSP shares with the PCS union) would raise up to £250bn a year extra.
• scrapping Trident (whilst guaranteeing Faslane workers’ jobs through diversification into peaceful, socially useful work) would save £100bn.
• full and democratic public ownership of the banks would give us access to £560bn in liquid cash and £5trillion in assets.

There is nothing unavoidable or necessary about this Coalition’s butchery.

The cuts are driven by ideological hatred of public services, a ruthless intent to reverse the gains made by past working class struggles – a mission to use the whip of mass unemployment and starvation-level benefits to drive wages down even further, boosting profits even higher.

The ultimate ‘better way’ is a socialist Scotland, independent of the Westminster butchers, with democratic public ownership and control of the vast wealth and resources; an end to war and Trident; and a plan of clean, green production and services, based on people not profit. Join Scotland’s genuine socialist alternative, the SSP, to build that future.

The SSP Campsie podcast has a three parter with Richie Venton discussing the struggle in Liverpool.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

SSP Campsie Radio are proud to host Richie Venton who recalls the titanic struggles that took part in the city of Liverpool against the Thatcher Government in the eighties. Richie was part of the Militant Tendency in the Labour Party.

This is a valuable first-hand account of a struggle that can inform today’s battle against an uncaring Tory/ Liberal Democrat coalition.

Main parts of our leaflet for EIS conference at the Caird Hall in Dundee.

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.

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.

The excellent new branch in Aberdeen have made a video for the election. Ewan Robertson, their candidate in Aberdeen North has written a song especially for the election.

If you have discussed politics in the last 12 years and you will have undoubtably heard a comparison to Labour and the Tories that resulted in someone saying they are just the same.

You may have even heard it go one step further and a description of Labour as Blue Labour instead of New Labour.

Well the Lib Dems have went one further and re-branded themselves in blue.

If you’ve been saying for years that Labour, Tories and Lib Dems are all the same – it’s good to see one of those parties agree with you.

The SSP of course are a bit different. We don’t get donations from millionaire businessmen – so aren’t in their pocket. Our elected representatives take a reduced wage and as far as we know none ever had the public purse pay for building work on their castle.

In Dundee West we are of course aware of the cost of a DVD player and that computer desks shouldn’t cost you £800.

Friday 5th February-Saturday 6th February.
Maryhill Community Centre, 304 Maryhill Road, Glasgow, G20 7YE

The SSPs annual educational weekend is taking place soon.

Friday night will have a rally with international speakers, expected guests include members of Frances NPA, Portugals Left Bloc and Denmarks Red-Green Alliance.

Saturday will have workshops and educationals on a variety of subjects

More details posted soon, or keep checking the SSP site