Comrades come rally - to the Mugdock International Music Festival!

SSP Campsie Branch BBQ - Saturday 16th June - starting at 4pm, Mugdock Country Park. Transport details to follow.

Check out the Mugdock website and you will see that our BBQ coincides with an international music festival. Comrades come rally - with your instruments! And we can sing/ play some left wing music to the music fans!

Bring yer own food and drink - we will supply charcoal, fire, paper plates and music! Bring a banner/ flag!

Our next meeting is in Milton of Campsie Village Hall, at 7.30pm on Wednesday 13th JUNE. New members are welcome. We will be giving an update of the fantastic developments in the Twechar Housing Campaign (see below for update). Also, come with ideas on a new branch banner and topics you would like to hear speakers on - or discussions you would like to have in branch in the future.

All comrades in the branch will have recieved this letter from Joint Branch Organiser, Pamela Page. Click on image to read -

TWECHAR REGENERATION MEETING

Twechar Miners Welfare - Monday 11th June 7.30 pm
Since the Q&A session at Twechar Healthy Living Centre, confusion over the regeneration of Twechar has increased.

As one local resident put it - if you asked ten people who were at the meeting the same question you would get ten different answers!

People want answers to such questions as how many houses are being built and how many are being allocated to those being decanted? Where will people be decanted to and will amenities be adequate?

Older people are afraid that they will not be allowed to return to the village once they are moved -one of these a 93 year old woman who has lived in Twechar all her life...

and why is disturbance money being used to pay off rent and council tax arrears?

When one local resident contacted regeneration manager, JOHN GREY to ask some of these questions, she was informed that he did not speak to the public and that she should contact a housing officer. Where is the resident participation and transparency from Edinvar?

People are pleased that the village is being regenerated but are concerned and want answers to basic questions about their future.

Edinvar representatives, local Councillors and MSP's have been invited to this meeting. Come and put YOUR questions to those who should be giving you the answers YOU- THE PEOPLE OF TWECHAR - DESERVE.

TRANSPORT IS AVAILABLE.

For more information: Willie Telfer - 07966 782752

Tesco workers sacked by taxi

Click on the "Value for Shareholders" sign for a leaflet you can print out and send to the TGWU in solidarity:

Drivers at the Tesco delivery depots in Scotland are striking against brutal threats from the multinational’s bosses.

Management have insisted drivers must sign up to pay cuts of between £3-6,000, and accept de-recognition of their trade union, and have in fact just spent a day scuttling round Scotland in taxis delivering redundancy notices to their drivers’ homes. The drivers deliver food and supplies to 100 stores across the country, which will be hit hard by the three-day strike on the eve of the busy bank holiday weekend. Tesco bosses are using the excuse of a move to a new site - 50 yards across the motorway from the existing Livingston depot.

ACTION YOU CAN TAKE: something everyone can do is ring up the Tesco Customer Service line on 0800 50 55 55. It's a freephone number.

One SSP member has said:
After discovering it I have just rung up and said as a regular Tesco shopper. I am concerned that they have sacked their drivers and used cowboy driver company Yuill & Dodds. [It is important to be polite and friendly in manner - it's a low-paid call-centre worker you will be speaking to.] I asked if this report was true, because if so I would be ending my custom and advising others to do likewise.

The lad said it was a strike because of a move to new depot - but I was able to advise him the strike only started last night whereas drivers were sacked by taxi deliveries two days ago, etc. In fact I think he was genuinely shocked at the facts of £3-6,000 pay cuts, union de-recognition, sackings of the drivers etc.

They will ask for your name and address, and I asked for a written explanation from top management - which is unlikely to happen, but all such calls are logged and passed on to top manmagement! So it's a simple and free way to pressurise Tesco bosses.

Please act on these suggestions - and let us know of any interesting responses you get!
Please pass the word.

More information will be posted on the SSP website.

Meeting and BBQ

Our next meeting is in Milton of Campsie Village Hall, at 7.30pm on Wednesday 30th May. New members are welcome. We will be giving an update of the fantastic developments in the Twechar Housing Campaign, a real example of how people can make a huge difference, amongst other things.

SSP Campsie Branch BBQ - Saturday 16th June - starting at 4pm, Mugdock Country Park. Transport details to follow. Bring yer own food and drink - we will supply charcoal, fire, paper plates and music! Bring a banner/ flag!

Click on picture for info on Mugdock Country Park.

WILLIE TELFER MAKES BIG IMPACT AT PCS CONFERENCE

Scottish Socialist Party members who are delegates to this week’s PCS national conference in Brighton have made a huge impact.
They’re speaking on issues like privatisation, and are moving a major motion to commit the union to an £8-an-hour minimum wage for all workers and trainees over 16.
Colin Fox, the Scottish Socialist Party’s national convener, was a guest speaker at the Department of Transport PCS group conference on our case for free public transport - which was then debated and agreed as policy, moved by Campsie Branch SSP member, and Twechar Housing campaigner, Willie Telfer and supported by the union’s Group Executive Committee.


Willie has also been re-elected as UK-wide Assistant Group Secretary of the union in the transport section.
Meantime longstanding socialist and SSP member John Jamieson has been elected to the PCS national executive committee, as part of an almost total clean sweep for the Democracy Alliance of socialists and democrats.
And our efforts are not restricted to the PCS. At the Fire Brigades Union national conference Scottish Socialist Party members were at the heart of a solidarity collection for the Sunvic strikers, raising £1,500 to help sustain their battle against vicious treatment by scab-hiring bosses.
And in a debate around the FBU and political links, during which a motion to re-affiliate the union to New Labour was overwhelmingly defeated, SSP member Jimmy Scott successfully moved an amendment which re-stated the FBU’s commitment to “a socialist form of society”, a longstanding FBU rule-book clause which collides with New Labour’s whole philosophy and practice.

Alan McCombes on election result

Click here for election analysis from Alan McCombes:

We fought in hope, and we got beat. Big time.
But last Thursday’s electoral rout does not mean that the Scottish Socialist Party is a spent force, or that we’re about to implode for months on end to indulge in self recrimination and doubt before tentatively hitting the streets again.
While the media lens was turned on the race for Holyrood, time didn’t stop and life went on inexorably, the rich getting that little bit richer while the poor got poorer, the private sector expanding while public sector waiting lists sprawled off the end of the page, luxury flats going up while council housing came down, war raging while peace foundered, people dying of excess while others were wasted through want.
And just as surely as this goes on, so too does our fight for the radical alternative.

More on the SSP main website - click here:

East Dunbartonshire Council election results

Click here for East Dunbartonshire Council results:

EAST DUNBARTONSHIRE PLAN

The East Dunbartonshire Council are asking for comments for the new Local Plan.

Please go to their site and read what they are wanting comment on and LET THEM KNOW WHAT YOU WANT FOR YOUR AREA!

Developers will be lobbying the council in order to make as much money as possible, so make sure East Dunbartonshire does not become a place where profit is given more importance than the people of the area. Think about what young people need. Pensioners. Unemployed. What do you think Council policy on Public Transport should be? Health? Town Centres? Housing?

This is an opportunity to lobby the council on issues that pertain to People, not Profit!

Please look up our recent manifesto for help on issues you may want to lobby the council.

Click on the map for the East Dunbartonshire website dedicated to the plan documents. Click on the picture of our manifesto to read what we envisage for Scotland.

From Campsie Branch Organisers

Well done all of the SSP comrades who worked their socks off during this election. Unfortunately this was not our election. Changes in the electoral system and a surge of votes for the SNP have meant the SSP as well as other small parties, have been squeezed out.

A year is a long, long time in politics. A year ago we were riding high and had ambitions for more seats and for a plethora of council seats. And a year ago we in Scotland on the left were hoping Tommy Sheridan would not take the path he had planned. We hoped that sense would prevail from him and the groups around him. This was not to happen. Egged on by the SWP and CWI, and other individuals, Sheridan set about the destruction of the gains the left had made in 2003.

The verdict? Tommy’s foray into the courts and his subsequent slandering of SSP colleagues has meant the decimation of the left in this years elections. This is a disgrace, and all of those who surrounded and advised, or at worst encouraged this man should be disgraced in the eyes of the left.

The only way is up, comrades, and we should ensure the socialist message is still on the streets for the next four years.

The SSP is a party of integrity, and we will be back into the Parliament, though the Parliament should not be our priority. Our priority is working to help people and facilitate the Socialist message.

We have work to do – and that work starts now.

Neil Scott
Pamela Page
Campsie Branch SSP Organisers

VOTE FOR THE SSP TEAM IN WEST OF SCOTLAND AND EAST DUNBARTONSHIRE...

Place an X beside Scottish Socialist Party, Pamela Page for your regional MSP.

Read more about Pamela here:

http://eastdunbartonshiressp.blogspot.com/2007/04/introducing-west-of-scotlands-ssp.html

Council Candidates
More information about your candidates here:

http://eastdunbartonshiressp.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

Willie Telfer, East Kirkintilloch and Twechar

Neil Scott, Bearsden North

Bill Newman, Milngavie

Moira Brown, Lenzie and Kirkintilloch South

The RIGHT side of the road!

WE STAND TOGETHER!

Well comrades, it's been a brilliant campaign. We've delivered 100,000s of bulletins, and collectively campaigned our socks off! I couldnae be prouder of everyone and every word in our 'People not Profit' manifesto.

So much positive has come out of this campaign. Personally, I've got to know some really amazing people who would walk from here to the end of the earth for other people and the party has really pulled together. We've lots to celebrate!

We are The Party setting the political agenda.

Election Day will come and go but we'll still be here fighting shoulder to shoulder in our communities for a better world. We've done it all in good humour and real 'solidarity'. That, my friends means we're already on the winning side.

We'll be having a get together 'Doon the watter' on the Waverley on the 27th May and a BBQ in Mugdock in June. Be there!

Tuesday

Pam, Wullie and I leafleted Wullie's council ward of Craigton. Our sitting councillor Keith Baldessara's ward has been split in two, but his popularity should help in this new ward and hopefully get Rosie support too. He's easily the hardest working councillor in Glasgow. His record is inspiring. Like Jim Bolan in Renton it really shows what a socialist can do if elected.

It was a scorcher today and we put in a serious shift before heading for a smashing wee Italian cafe for fuel! After lunch the socialist 'gods' were shining on us when we bumped into George McNeilage who joined in our efforts. Halfing our work in the process. Wot a gem that man is!

Monday

Met Pam and Frances at Buchanan street bus station at 8am to campaign on our free public transport policy. We had a stall and leafleted until about 930. Then we headed off to pick up a few things in Stanley street and Wullie McGartland joined us to campaign on free school meals in Cardonald.

Although it was sunny, it was freezing in the wind and Frances and myself used that as the excuse for how ravenous we were all day. Though how she managed to sneak a gigantic yum yum out of greggs without me seeing i'll never know! We also leafleted the college before doing a stall in a different area of the Cardonald in the afternoon. We were really well received and a few folk said that they would like to rejoin the party. Brilliant!


Sunday

In the evening it was the hustings at st mary's church on home turf in Kirkintilloch. About 100 folk came along with the constituency candidates, ourselves and UKIP.

I was chuffed that a few of my students and their parents turned up in support.

I was chatting, as you do, with the other candidates before it and Stephanie from the Tories said that she had been interviewed about the election. She apparently said that she had learned from the most 'surprising of people' and name checked me! Then went on to say how she admired the fact that I was able to speak without fear or notes in some quite middle class environments. It was nice of her to say and she's a decent enough wumman but i'll let her intae a secret..... It's easy when you believe in what you're saying.

SSP candidates are not in this as a career move. We've the small matter of the world to change and will do so whether we're inside or outside the parley! Millions of people around the world agree and share this passion for justice and equality.

It's a shame for the other candidates, they may have paid agency workers to wear their garb and do the canvassing for them, but we have real comrades who make huge sacrifices for each other in a shared belief in humanity and the fight for a better world. That gives you amazing confidence.


In the morning I met with some of the other women SSP candidates to highlight the invisible nature of women and women's oppression in this election and politics generally. The SSP aims to take this seriously. We have a 50/50 policy in terms of our candidates, we are also working towards more inclusive methods of organising. We also have real demands. Listed below are some of our commitments. I am particularly proud of our progressive policy on prostitution. The Herald covered the story on Monday. Makes a change from constantly judging women politicians by their appearance. ( Though it must be said i'm on a mercy dash to the hairdressers on Thursday to get my roots done!)

We agreed to hold event at the Sandyford Initiative, 2-6 Sandyford Place, Sauchiehall St., in Glasgow at 12 midday. We want to highlight the demands below but also campaign for more and better non judgemental and supportive services for women.

We will have purpose made banners and a giant women's symbol and boards with our agreed priorities taken and and adapted from the manifesto in this order:

1. The decriminalisation of women involved in prostitution
2. Increased resources to enable a clamp down on kerb crawlers, teh closure of saunas, massage parlours and lap dancing clubs which operate as legalised brothels.
3. Free emergency contraception available across the NHS and pharmacies and women's centres regardless of where women live and equal access to women's health services, including non judgemental support, information and services for women who want terminations.
4. Greater funding for women's aid and other agencies which provide services for women who experience men's violence, abuse, rape and child sexual abuse.
5. Equal access for all women to fertility and insemination services.
6. A minimum of 12 months maternity leave, on full pay for public sector workersd, with the right to return part time. (with full powers over employment that should apply to all workers)
7. Free, publicly funded nursery places for all pre school children.
8. After school weekend and holiday clubs in every locality for school age children
9. Full implemenatation of equal pay in the public sector by levelling up, not down, including full settlement of back money owed. Equal pay is a right not a negotiation.
10. Free environmentally friendly sanitary protection for all women.