Campsie Socialists mark 31 years of the Peace Camp

Last week local socialists teamed up with a theatre group to mark the 31st anniversary of protests against trident Nuclear weapons based on the Clyde. The group invited members and members of the public, and ran a mini-bus from East Dunbartonshire, to a “cabaret” at Faslane Peace Camp.

Acting Strange Theatre Group, a radical theatre group based in East Dunbartonshire, staged drama, comedy and music, ranging from satirical sketches through to poignant stories of casualties of war. Joining them this year were Rosie Kane, who performed an excerpt from her very funny one woman show; Pauline Bradley, who sang a number of folk and protest songs and singer song writers, Andy McGarvey and “Citizen Smart.”

Ron Mackay and Maggi Sale at the Gates of Faslane.  Photos Maggi Sale

Campsie Socialists protest outside the North Gate alongside Acting Strange theatre Company and original Peace Camper and author, Maggi Sale.

The highlight of the day were the testaments given by Maggie Sale, one of the women involved in setting up the original camp, who shared her 70th birthday with the “celebrations” and East Dunbartonshire resident, Ron Mackay who, in his 90th year, expressed his disgust at the weapons of war stationed just thirty miles down the road from Glasgow.

Ron said, “My father was jailed as a socialist conscientious objector during World War One. I was jailed in 1962 as an objector to the Polaris nuclear weapon system imposed on Scotland by the Americans. I thought after seeing action in World War 2 that we would end all wars, but the militaristic Westminster system has proved in the many interventions it has sanctioned since 1945, including the recent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan that war is too profitable for the rich for them to give up sacrificing our young men and women. In my 91st year next year, I want to see these dreadful machines of death sailing out of the Gareloch for good.”

Author Maggie Sale said, “It has been amazing to share my birthday with so many committed peace activists at the Peace Camp I helped set up over thirty years ago. From 4 years to 90...and me, a mere stripling,..... and approaching my Prime!

I am mindful that 31 years after the establishment of Faslane Peace Camp, the Powers-that-be, of all political colours, still hide behind the delusion that the possession of Nuclear Weapons will somehow save us from 'enemy' attack and dissuade others from instigating a Third World War for fear of instant annihilation.
That 'WAR' has already started for every person on the Planet who is deprived of clean water and sustainable living as a result of Billions being spent on the design, production and maintenance of Weapons of Mass Destruction that we have found, to our cost, to have no defensive purpose what-so-ever.
That 'WAR' has already started for every victim of ideological war, fought largely to control the world's diminishing fossil resources, in the absence of appropriate Funds to address the underlying causes of international conflict.
That 'WAR' has already started for each of my nine grandchildren as they scrabble for diminishing Educational funding into alternative Research and Development that would create new ways of co-operative living, producing, consuming and ethically-sharing in a finite and fragile Planet.

We can see how infantile these 'games' are, when played out by a volatile North Korean who is systematically depriving his own people. But we are blinded by the myopic rhetoric and vested interests of our own policy-makers. The results are the same… and the 'enemy' can sit back and watch as we bleed from within.

When we first came here and occupied this piece of land for peace, we hoped the world would see sense and get rid of these dreadful weapons. We were wrong. They are still there – all 200 of them. People do not need these weapons of death. We are a family that stretches across the world, we have no need to kill. We're a' Jock Tampson's Bairns.... if we but knew it!”

Campsie Scottish Socialist Party organizer, Neil Scott said, “Hopefully next year’s anniversary of the peace camp will be a focus for the anti-war sentiment that should build around the anniversary of the first industrialized killing fields of the first Word War – and hopefully next years anniversary of the Peace Camp is it’s last as the nuclear weapons are disposed off after a Yes vote in the referendum next year.”

Acting Strange's blog - http://actingstrangetheatreco.blogspot.co.uk

Local man, 90 year old RonaldMackay’s testament at the camp on youtube

Today's SSP conference in Maryhill

An Olympic Smartie Party!

It’s bread and circuses, except there’s no clowns or sad, unkempt lions, just some people having a wee swim and a shot on some horses

Posted by Rogue Reporter, Graham Martin.  Originally posted HERE

Mister Sport - David Beckham fronts up London Olympics 2012

Sport, sport, sport, Clarkson, sport, sport, David Beckham’s dick, sport, more sport, sport, some fucking pandas, sport, sport and sport.

That’s pretty much it these days, isn’t it – that’s the National Conversation.

It’s all we care about. Sport and David Beckham’s dick, and even that’s quite sporty because the person that pees out of it plays some SPORT.

Sport. You can stop reading when the over-use of that word gets annoying. Here it comes.

Ever feel like you’re out the loop? Then the next time you’re standing at a bus stop, grab the person next to you by the lapels and scream into their face: “Sport, sport, sport, sport, Clarkson, sport, sport, David Beckham’s dick, sport, more sport, sport, some fucking pandas, sport, sport and SPORT.”

They won’t be annoyed. No, they’ll shake you by the hand and take you for a pint, because you too like the SPORT, and the pandas, and can talk about it as well.

This might be the time to add that sport is pretty much a closed book to me. I’m not talking about football, which as a male from the west of Scotland I am obliged to admit that I like, because I don’t regard the watching of football as anything to do with sport, it’s more a therapeutic way of giving the part of your brain that last saw action when we were sprouting limbs in the Carboniferous a wee run-around, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Playing football on the other hand, well, that’s sport again and it’s utterly mystifying. Why would you?

It’s the other sports I really don’t get. Golf, rugby, tennis.

Throwing old batteries at stray dogs down the lock-ups. Believe me, that’s a sport in Lanarkshire. All essentially rubbish.

And then we move onto the frankly unpopular sports, the ones that involve running from one spot to another or throwing things.

Because they’re everywhere these days. We’re supposed to be creaming into Union Jack hankies because it’s the London Olympics this year.

Now, we’ll put aside the odious politics and the obscene waste of cash here, though we may stop to reflect upon the arrogance of those who think that a boring vanity festival of people rowing and playing ping-pong based in London can somehow wipe a magic sponge over the cracks in the Union. It that sense, they’re doing us a favour.

What annoys me is having all these essentially minority pursuits foisted on us. Let’s face it, most people think athletics is deathly dull. There’s maybe a few thousand people who are truly into it, and fair enough. Good luck to them.

It’s the same with gymnastics, though there is at least some interest there as I’m told there’s an event called the Men’s Rings, but maybe I’m being wound up, because I’m too scared to Google it.

But I play this game where I use a dice to eat a tube of Smarties.

It’s a great game, and political as well. I call it my Smarties General Election game. You should try it.

It goes like this – there are eight colours in a Smarties tube, you divide them all up into their colours and you eat the two with the least colours, they’re out of the race, leaving you six colours. You then assign tags to the remaining colours all the way through the political spectrum ­the black ones are fascists, blue ones Tories, yellows are liberals etc. all the way through to reds, which are us.

Then you give them a number – one is the fascists, through to six, the socialists. And then you roll the dice, and you eat one from whatever number you roll. Roll too many fives, and whoops, it’s not looking like a good night for the social democrats. The winning party is the one with the last Smartie standing.

It’s a great game, it really is.

You can rig it as well. If it looks like the fascists are about to seize power, you can just eat them. For all the sense Trotsky talked about how to stop the Nazis in Germany, he never thought of that one.

So I’m beating him there.

Anyway, I admit this game is probably somewhat more of a minority pursuit than athletics. Or Men’s Rings. In fact, it might just be me that plays it.

But it’s still a minority pursuit and I’m not demanding that whole communities are bulldozed out of the way, a la Glasgow’s ridiculous Commonwealth Games (a colonial, throbbing Ralgex­sprayed bell-end of an event) so people can go and watch me eating Smarties.

In a velodrome.

But that’s what’s happening with the SPORT and the Olympics and all that. It’s bread and circuses, except there’s no alcoholic, pee-stained clowns or sad, unkempt lions, which are at least worth watching (or even any bread, thinking about it), just some people having a wee swim and a shot on some horses.

Oh, and come the summer, we’ll be able to add exciting words like “Chris” and “Hoy” into the aforementioned National Conversation. I think he’s famous for being quite good on a children’s toy. He can go round and round on it dead fast.

He even gets to advertise things like cereal in some of the most comically stilted ads that have ever been broadcast.

I see he’s now punting razor blades for Gillette or someone.

Well, come the summer there might be a use for those at least.

Reform? No - TORY DESTRUCTION morelike!

- from Ron Mackay

I welcome the new Holyrood committee set up to examine UK welfare reform 'destruction' as reported by Robbie Dinwoodie. Unlike Tory Alex Johnstone, I do hope it “drives a wedge between Scotland's two governments. 

The Westminster government, run by millionaires, is out to destroy the welfare state. Whatever their words their actions indicate their aims. Holyrood, on the other hand, “appreciates the severity of the concerns on welfare reform”. 

 Reform implies improvement -  the Tory policies do anything but. Destructive changes would better describe the Westminster policy on welfare.

WORKERS HAMMERED FOR PROFIT

by Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organiser

7 February 2012 Working people and their families face the worst assaults on their rights and conditions in generations, and the leaders of the multi-millioned trade unions need to rise to the challenge and defeat the Tories, if they are not to allow a lost generation. Young people, the disabled and women workers are amongst the hardest hit, but nobody is exempt, except the obscenely overpaid top company executives. Over a million young people are unemployed in the UK, 250,000 of them for over a year. In Scotland 230,000 people are jobless, a third of a them aged under 24. A recent Commission on youth unemployment calculated that the long term impact on young people includes a loss of £2,000 to £3,000 a year after they reach the age of 25, even if they manage to then get a job.

  Parasite capitalism

 The destruction of the manufacturing base of the country from the days of Thatcher in the 1970s; the turn to service sector and finance as the main source of profit; and the complete dominance of the monetarist razor gang in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank have all piled on the misery and destitution for a whole generation. School leavers now usually face a choice of low-paid or even unpaid work experience; insecure 'precarious' jobs; pressure to take on voluntary work on pain of loss of benefits; or shoddy training schemes. Even University places are shrinking, with a massive drop in applications recently reported, through a combination of rocketing fees, cuts to student support grants and fear of rising graduate unemployment or underemployment. In the further education colleges, increasingly an escape route from poverty and unemployment for some working class people of all ages, savage cuts threaten to choke off people's chances. Behind the noisy battle between the SNP government and the imperialist arrogance of Cameron & Co, the SNP quietly slashed student support grants by over 10 per cent, from £95.6m to £84.2m. And that is on top of about £54m being hacked off FE college funding.

Cameron out of Scotland!

 When Cameron breezes into Scotland on 24 March to address Scottish Tory Party conference in Troon, he should face a furious demo against youth unemployment, cuts to education and cuts in general. The unions need to make a massive event against the Westminster butcher. They should likewise mount pressure on the SNP government to stand up for Scotland's future in terms of jobs, education, and housing (which they have cut by an appalling £150m, or 40 per cent, despite 120,000 Scots languishing on the housing waiting lists), as well as on the constitutional issue.

  Recession an excuse to attack workers

 As the recent survey by Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS) confirms, employers are using the recession as a golden opportunity to hammer workers' rights, wages and conditions. Over the past two years CAS has dealt with 107,000 cases of unfair treatment at work - and that is only the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands more are afraid to object to pay cuts, withheld wages, longer hours, illegal changes to contracts and victimisation of those who dare to object. As the CAS report comments, often these are low paid and low skilled workers, who do not even know their legal rights. The unions have a massive job to do to organise and defend these vulnerable sections of workers, who are being hammered to pay for the capitalist crisis and the naked greed for profit of those at the top of society.

  Mad-dog Tories on rampage

 Of course the Tory Coalition is egging on all the worst employers to do their damnedest. They are planning further anti-union legislation. An obnoxious cabal of right wingers in the Tory party has launched what is called the Trade Union Reform Campaign. This extremist outfit has been praised in writing by David Cameron. It is chaired by Aidan Burley MP, who was sacked as Transport Minister after it was revealed he had strutted round in a Nazi SS uniform, toasting the Third Reich, with Nazi salutes, at a stag party in France. It's most prominent members include Eric Pickles, local government minister, and the disgraced Liam Fox. At their launch meeting in Westminster they boasted that the government is about to produce a White Paper to slash trade union facility time in the civil service, issue 'helpful guidance' to councils on how best to cut facility time for union reps, and charge unions for deduction of union subs from wages across the public sector.

  Shackling workers' reps

 These creatures of profit and reaction want to outlaw unions, to abolish the ability of elected shop stewards to defend workers from abuse, as highlighted in the CAS report. In doing so, they ignore inconvenient facts, like the report by Hertfordshire University showing that the role of workplace union reps in reducing staff turnover, cutting down on the number of Employment Tribunals and reducing workplace sickness and injuries, saves the economy about £700m a year! Compare that to the paltry sums paid in wages to shop stewards, who in real life invest vast amounts of their own time in defending workers from the unscrupulous attacks that are running riot across workplaces, especially now the employers have the whip of mass unemployment to try and cow workers who live in fear of their jobs. And contrast too, the vast sums of taxpayers' money consumed by the salaries and expenses - legal or otherwise - of MPs and government ministers, who then use hobnail boots to walk all over workers' rights! The bankers, bosses and billionaires rely on capitalist politicians to pass laws that help to shackle workers whilst this class of robbers dip their pockets, with pay cuts, benefit cuts, job losses, grinding more work out of fewer workers, and vast amounts of unpaid overtime, squeezed out of workers through terror tactics, fear of losing their job and family livelihood.

  Wealth transfusion to the rich

 It is no surprise to discover that a new study proves workers today are paid £60billion a year less in real terms than 30 years ago! This shocking revelation goes alongside company executives' pay rising 10 per cent in 2010 and another 17 per cent in 2011- a planet apart from the pay cuts workers have suffered, with economists predicting their wages will not recover their pre-banking crisis value until at least 2020. This appalling transfer of wealth to the rich from the rest of us, from those who actually produce and deliver the goods and services, is causing such widespread fury that the parties of the capitalist elite have to pretend to do something about it - whilst actually making it easier to exploit workers and those on the likes of sickness benefits through their legislative changes.

  Sops and diversions

 The recent hue and cry about stripping Sir Fred Goodwin of his knighthood is cheap diversionary tactics, a tiny sop to the public outcry at greedy bankers. He still has his £650,000 a year pension, on top of the £2.7m lump sum he walked off the job with in the middle of the taxpayers' bailout of the banks. If a worker had wrecked the state of his company (let alone a whole banking system), he would at best have been sent packing without a penny or a reference, and probably jailed. Likewise the headlines greeting Stephen Hester's decision to hand back his £963,000 bonus as head of the RBS diverted many people's gaze from the fact that his fellow executives are to get £425m in bonuses, that Hester himself got a package worth £7.7m last year, and that the Coalition has said they will not 'micro-manage' future RBS bonuses. So they intend it to be 'big business as usual', with a thin smokescreen of one or two high profile 'sacrifices'.

  Stand up and fight!

 Fighting for a reversal of the wealth transfusion from the millions to the millionaires is at the heart of every specific struggle against cuts to pay, jobs, benefits, education and workers' rights. Without powerful union memberships, workers will be left defenceless against ruthless employers out to maximise profit. And unless the unions are seen to stand up on their hind legs for the members they already have, young workers in precarious jobs, or workers of all ages in the least-organised sectors, will see little point in joining the unions.

  Pensions battle continues

 That is one of many reasons why the battle over public sector pensions is of critical importance, to the future of the entire working class. Well over 2 million workers showed their readiness to battle the Westminster pension robbers on the magnificent 30 November strike. To their eternal shame, central leaders of the TUC, UNISON, GMB and other unions caved in to the pre-Xmas offer from the government, despite the latter boasting it still contained every single penny in cuts to pensions that was threatened before the N30 strike. And to their eternal credit, other union leaders - and a vast army of active members who have bombarded their leaderships in protest any dirty betrayal of their pension rights - are standing firm and preparing for further united strike action to try and force the Coalition into retreat.

  United strikes in March

 The national executives of several teachers' unions (NUT, NASUWT, UCU, EIS), the civil service PCS, and UNITE in local government and the NHS have all rejected this shoddy offer, which would still mean workers paying more, retiring older and getting less in their pensions. The PCS, NUT and UCU have called for strike action in March, before some of these attacks take effect in April. In addition, members of the SSP have spearheaded the demand for a recall delegate conference of UNISON branches in local government, to debate and overthrow the attempted sell-out by the union's national figureheads, led by fake-radical Dave Prentis. And UNISON's Scottish NHS committee has thrown out the deal, calling a series of strikes in months to come.

  Put a million on the pickets

A united strike in March - one day or if possible two days - of over one million workers would be a powerful impetus to the resistance to pension cuts, a revival of the flagging momentum, and could help members of UNISON and GMB rescue their own situation from the capitulation by their 'leaders'. SSP members in all the public sector unions will continue to strive for this courageous course of united action, confident in the knowledge that the Coalition is not some all-knowing, all-powerful dictatorship that cannot be beaten. In fact, as several partial retreats and sops to public opinion shows, they are susceptible to the pressure of a mass movement - but only if that opposition goes beyond verbal outbursts into united strikes, demonstrations, peaceful civil disobedience, and a real political challenge too.

  Defy Coalition, Labour and SNP cuts

Labour clearly won't provide that; Miliband & Co have spelt out their support for continued cuts to pay, services, pensions and jobs even if they were elected in 2015. The SNP government has rightly made mincemeat of Cameron's interference in a Scottish referendum, but they have capitulated like wee timorous beasties when it comes to Westminster's cuts, passing on the pain to councils, colleges, the NHS - to workers, students and communities that spurned the Tories by 85 per cent in the last election.

  Give youth a future

 The Scottish Socialist Party stands up for Scotland, for working class people and young people whose future is lost unless we unite and fight back. We demand the choice for all school leavers of a well-paid, secure job, or proper training, or a place in education with a living grant. We demand taxation of the rich and big business, and democratic public ownership, to fund vast investment in jobs, public services and decent pensions and benefits - not a few token nail-clippings from a handful of individual bankers or 'rogue' bosses. It is not just these notorious individuals that need to be tackled: the entire capitalist system of profiteering and exploitation is rotten to the core, with the chasm between rich and poor, the corruption in 'high' places and rule by Old Etonians just as prevalent as in the Victorian times portrayed by the great Charles Dickens.

  Struggle or starve!

Employers and pro-capitalist politicians of numerous party colours are trying to hammer the working class and young people, to grind even bigger profits out of them. In the 1930s, one of the slogans common on banners was 'Struggle or Starve'. That same choice has come back to haunt us in the 21st century. They might be the millionaires, but we are the millions - and united in action with a fighting socialist alternative, we can win. Join the SSP and help to secure a future worth fighting for.

SSP Campsie BBQ in Mugdock this Saturday CANCELLED!

CANCELLED!!

...Starting 2.30/3pm... coals will be lit - bring your own food and drink.  Ring and Ride Bus will leave Milngavie Station at 3pm and then leave Mugdock again at 7.30pm.

Meet at the POND BBQ area (click on map below)

Elvin Revolution!

Received from newswires:

Rumblings of revolution in Lapland. --STOP--

Santa issues a statement, "all is well. Totalitarian capitalism prevails. Any elf caught plotting will be deported to Antarctica." --STOP--

Deported elf, Leanon Jetski, has declared commune in workshop 1. --STOP--

Elves make statement,"Santas egotistical reign of terror over impoverished exploited elves is over. Boys and girls around the world will learn that their toys are from the Lapland Collective and also hear of Santas role as an installed dictator by the Coca Cola company. Henceforth Lapland is free of Capitalist marketeers..." --STOP--

Claus is secreted out of Christmas land... --STOP--

America launches attack on new socialist elvin regime. Intense fighting around the 'Bay of Reindeer' --STOP--

Elvin socialist leader Sleigh Guitara takes on US military might. US Coca Cola ousted entirely from Christmas land and reforms initialised --STOP--

Elves declare a socialist state and set about sharing the wealth 365 days a year and no longer differentiating between naughty and nice. --STOP--

Elves say ALL to benefit from Christmas land's wealth and hard work. Christmas declared all year round. --STOP--

-Disgraced Christmas land exleader Santa reportedly living in Saudi Arabia. US announce a blockade saying their children can do without socialist toys. Children of the USA rise up! –MESSAGE ENDS--

Christmas is a Christian festival and most religions have some festival at the end of the old year and the beginning of the new year. 

The Scottish Socialist Party has believers and non-believers, we're a broad church and we send seasonal greetings to all. 

Our wishes are for peace and an end to war-- all war, Afghanistan and where-ever. 

We salute those who struggle against Trident and the even more fiendish weapons being developed at Aldermaston and Porton Down.

In the testing times ahead the S.S.P. will be there to help maintain and develop the health and well-being of the Scottish people and ensure a happy new year!

SSP Campsie Christmas Podcast:

Powered by Podbean.com

Great ideas for advancing the BIG society

Bill Newman

I see that the noble traders of Milngavie are doing shift work to operate the town's public toilets themselves in order to save the Council money and to promote, presumably, the "big society". But why stop there? Residents could be volunteered to organise their own refuse collection, unpaid of course, and hard-working voters could be encouraged to maintain the roads in their spare time. No-one could then complain to the Council about the pot holes endangering motorists and discouraging cyclists from venturing out. Perhaps graves could also be dug by grieving mourners.

The main drain on the Council's coffers is our schools, however. There is a simple answer to this problem. Scotland has a huge pool of unemployed teachers and these could be used without pay to gain valuable experience in educating our youth. Should this prove insufficient, then surely there are many retired teachers who would relish the opportunity to renew their joy in front of the eager faces of school students; naturally, there would be no need for monetary compensation. Nor need the size of classes be limited. Academic studies on the merits of small class sizes are ambiguous at best.

Should all this sound too idealistic, readers should bear in mind the great new scheme from Strathclyde Passenger Transport that residents in remoter areas should organise their own bus transport needs.

You may think that the implementation of these imaginative advances towards the "big society" would save the Council sufficient money to reduce Council tax, but it must be remembered that the future cost of the private funding of school construction and refurbishment has to be paid for at great expense into the remote future and we have to continue paying the wages and expenses of our senior executives and our governing Labour-Conservative councillors.

If none of this appeals, then it is surely time that we return to the concept that our Council gives priority to the real needs of our community and endeavours to meet these needs. But this, of course, suggests a socialist alternative where needs take priority over greed and opportunism. This may be unfashionable to our current breed of politicians, but it is a realistic alternative whose time will come again.

SSP Campsie Podcast - featuring Thee Faction!

Show featuring Thee Faction - website HERE (@theefaction on Twitter) - May 1985 interview with the group HERE

Also mentions - @ocicat_bengals, @lisaansell and @joswinson

superb music in this episode from Thee Faction, Manu Chao, the Manics, Paolo Nutini and Gil Scott Heron.

Listen if you dare...

Powered by Podbean.com

SSP Campsie Radio!

SSP Campsie Radio!

Click on the link to go to our test podcast! This is also available on itunes...

This is the first foray into podcasting by SSP Campsie. Please leave comments/suggestions below; by email eastdunbartonshiressp@hotmail.co.uk; by Twitter - @sspcampsie or by text - 07541392522

Be kind!

SSP Campsie AGM

Left Banker - WILL THE EURO FALL APART? HERE

CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE LARGER VERSION:

Campsie voice No.7

Click on image for larger copy...

SAVE OUR SCHOOLS IN EAST DUNBARTONSHIRE - Public Meeting

Public Meeting

Wednesday 9th June at 7.30pm

Campsie Memorial Hall Lennoxtown (Hall opens at 7pm)

Chair:

Willie Telfer – local SSP campaigner

Speakers:

Gerry McTiernan – Lennoxtown Primary Parents Council (in a personal capacity)
Richie Venton – Glasgow Save Our Schools organiser
Charles Kennedy – Campsie independent Councillor

Unite and stop all school closures!

Demand smaller class sizes- not fewer schools – 20’s plenty in any class!
Unite and campaign for the funds from Holyrood and Westminster to invest in our schools and other community services!

Attend the meeting to hear a report of what is happening. Help set up a campaign- to make sure we are ready for the next attempt at making our children pay for the bankers bailout.

See below for reports

Campsie Socialist Voice

Click on image to see larger pages:

Public Meeting in Lennoxtown Wednesday

Scottish Socialist Party Public meeting this Wednesday 31st March in Campsie Memorial Hall, 7.30pm. Details click HERE

A new decade... Welfare - not warfare.

Letter to the Glasgow Herald:

We start the decade 2010 – 2020 with elections. With this in mind the recently published book “Democracy Kills: What’s So Good About The Vote” by Humphrey Hawksley makes some telling points. There will be elections here and in the U.S. Whichever political group wins most of the power will remain with the military industrial complexes. The U.S. policy of perpetual war is a world war waged against the rest of humanity.

Lies and deception accompany all wars. Your columns have included many excellent letters ( Ruth Marr, Iain Mann, Ian St-Yves and others) condemning Blair and questioning the Chilcott inquiry. We should accept there were Lies ,and indeed still are ( re Afghanistan ) and concentrate on efforts to oppose the U.S. policy of perpetual war to which our main political parties are committed.

“There is a universality of what people want in any particular situation even ones with different ethnic and religious situations” - H. Hawksley. People want housing, health, education and welfare -not war.

Hawksley also exposes “the double standards of the rich West’s own – and largely still unwon — struggles for economic and social justice on home soil.

We’ll , shortly, be deluged with the double standards in the political manifestos. Politicians will endeavour to ignore or excuse their acquiescence of the policies of war, but even the rich man’s Wall Street Journal acknowledges you can’t have guns and butter i.e. war and welfare. Let’s make it clear to the politicians ordinary people want welfare not warfare and ordinary people are the overwhelming majority.

Ron Mackay,
Campsie SSP

March for Jobs this Saturday!

Details HERE

Campsie car boot...

Ron and Alan giving it the "Barras patter"

Campsie branch Scottish Socialist Party braved the weather today and went along to the car-boot sale in Milngavie. We sold lots of bric-a-brac and books - and despite the reduced crowds because of the terrible weather, we managed to raise nearly £70 for Kevin McVey's campaign in Glasgow North East.

To Join the SSP - or to find out how to donate to our campaigns, click HERE

Two new articles from Richie Venton and Raphie de Santos

Cuts in Services, Jobs, Wages and Pensions to Pay for Their Crisis by Raphie de Santos

Landslide for National Postal Strikes By Richie Venton SSP national workplace organiser

Cuts in Services, Jobs, Wages and Pensions to Pay for Their Crisis

by Raphie de Santos

Cuts: that’s what all the major parties - Labour, SNP, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - are arguing about. But not if there is an alternative to the cuts but who would be the best at making the cuts. But let’s be clear we are bailing them out of the complete mismanagement of their economic and financial systems.

Bring on the Clowns

Governments led by Thatcher, Blair, Brown, McConnell and Salmond have supported the changes to the running of the financial and economic system that have led to the greatest crisis since the 1930s. They have overseen the deregulation of financial markets and institutions and the liberal use of interest rates that created a huge speculative bubble in every type of debt and a mountain of 700 trillion US dollars of unregulated derivatives. They bailed these systems out with hundreds of billions of pounds of borrowed money which they are asking us to pay back through cuts.

Having all cheered from the sidelines patting each other on the back for their wonderful creation they now blame everyone but themselves for the mess and are asking us to pick up the bill for their reckless folly.


Bailouts

The shortfall in money has come from a bailout of the crisis ridden financial system and a deep UK recession caused by the resultant collapse of consumer credit. So far the government has spent about £150 billion (bn) bailing out the banks and another £150bn on quantitative easing (QE) – where they print money and buy back government and other debt from financial institutions. They are going to spend another £25bn on QE and are prepared to underwrite another £700bn of the banks bad debts. Practically none of the money spent so far has found its way into the real economy - about £2bn has gone into mortgage lending helping to temporarily stop the fall in house prices. Most of the bailout money is being horded by the banks to pay off losses and to have for any future potential losses. So far the money spent amounts to 25% of what we produce (gross domestic product) annually.

At the same time central government revenues are falling because of the recession they have caused. Rising unemployment has a double edged sword of reducing tax revenues and increasing benefits payments for central and local government. In August of this year there was a £17bn deficit in the UK budget from this trend.

One way to pay for the shortfalls is borrow money on the international financial markets through issuing UK government debt – called gilts. Then pay it back over several years with increased revenues from a growing economy. The average that was raised in the five years prior to 2009 by the UK government in this way was £47 bn per year. In 2009 the estimate is £146bn and in 2010 the forecast is £180bn. The problem with this model is two fold: one the economy will not recover (if at all) sufficiently to create extra tax revenue to make these payments; second the UK economy is so fundamentally weak that Bank of England interest rates will have to remain at very low levels which means a weak currency and therefore nobody – domestic or international – will want to buy these UK government bonds.

That is why all the plans put forward to make cuts by the major parties are so vague: nobody knows how much will have to be cut to cover the unknown developing black hole in the UK’s finances. That is why there is a general message of we are all going to have “bear the pain over several years” to sort out their mess.


But if we are correct about the prospects for the UK economy – years of stagnation or decline – then the cuts will be on a massive scale year after year with the dire social consequences that will bring for the majority of the working class.

The SNP

These cuts will affect central and local spending. Local spending by councils is financed by a block grant from central government making up about 75% of the local budget – the rest comes from council tax. Similarly the Scottish government receives a block payment from central government to finance services such as heath and education. The SNP minority government are in effect administering the cuts from London whether Tory or Labour. They have made matters worse for local councils by freezing council tax and refusing to implement a progressive local or national income tax. Even if such a proposal was defeated by the other parties in Holyrood it would have the effect of galvanising a campaign amongst Scottish voters for a commitment for such future tax changes from the next Holyrood election. It would also have strengthened the argument for independence for Scotland.

But the SNP did not want to rock capitalism’s boat and instead be quite happy to implement the cuts and makes some noises that it is all London’s fault.

Alternative

There is an alternative to the bank bailouts and cuts.

• take all the banks under full ownership and control turning their toxic loans into social rents and social projects and cancelling their destructive derivative contracts;
• a redistributive tax – a one off greed tax would repair the damage already done to our public services and a permanent progressive tax could generate an extra 33% to the total Scottish budget; and
• scrap the expenditure on nuclear weapons, withdraw from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and reduce our armed forces to one for defence not invasion.



This is the alternative the Scottish Socialist Party is fighting for in the Glasgow North-East by election and the forthcoming UK and Scottish elections. It is the rationale alternatives to what the major parties are offering us - that we pay for their crisis. It is the start of the building of a society that operates in the interests of the majority instead of the few.