The Presbytery of Perth is an unlikely spearhead of solidarity action, but its role in a recent campaign proves the breadth of support for Palestine across Scotland’s oldest democratic institution. Early in June, as daily reports began to emerge about Israeli soldiers firing on Palestinians queueing for food, the Trustees of the Church of Scotland announced their intention to evict Hadeel, the craft shop on George Street which for twelve years has been selling the most beautiful range of goods from Palestine. According to the Trustees’ Convenor, expressions of interest from other businesses in renting the space “indicated that we could charge a significantly higher rent to a commercial tenant”. The decision was met with indignation across the Church, especially since it came soon after the Church’s General Assembly, whose ancient process of homologation or formal authorisation had been deemed unnecessary by the penny-pinching Trustees. But a steady drip of letters from clergy and parishioners soon became a deluge, voicing the duty of the Kirk to stand with those resisting oppression, to recognise that it cannot serve both God and money, and, as put in the letter of one friend-of-the-cloth, to “place the imperatives of peace, love and justice above everything else”. Before long, the powerful Presbytery of Perth waded in, formally urging a reversal in the decision. On 26th June, the Kirk announced a lease extension.
The effort to stall Hadeel’s eviction means there is, at least for now, a Palestinian hub in the heart of Edinburgh’s commercial core. In May, Europe’s first museum of contemporary Palestinian art opened just round the corner from Hadeel, on Dundas Street, whose display of extraordinary artwork ranges from portraits capturing the bold beauty of unflinching defiance, to warm and vivid pastorals depicting the land of Palestine once it is free. These places puncture the invisible cloak that commercial society throws over the evidence of war and empire. They help defy the insidious ubiquity of goods from Israel in our shops and high streets despite the apartheid and genocide, like the Israeli-made soap bottles which activists in Aberdeen tipped from the shelves of Home Bargains into trolleys, and for which they are standing trial for breach of the peace. When surreptitious thumbs are stuck into Israeli avocadoes, when nimble fingers peel open Sabra houmous on supermarket shelves, and when the Co-op decides to stop stocking Israeli products, the supply of Israeli goods is disrupted, stalled, and undermined. These events are signs that the long boycott movement, which has been building up for years before the start of the current genocide, is starting to have effect in the streets.
Even more powerful than interventions in commercial supply chains are of course the efforts to disrupt the supply of arms to Israel. This magazine is proud to have published many articles documenting this work in Scotland. Anti-war activists now and always place their duties as part of a community of resistance above their obligations as individual citizens. When the state removes the rights of the collective to act – or even to exist – the members’ commitments are untouched. While government prohibits certain organisations, it does not inhibit the duty that drives thousands to protest and resist.
The theme of duty runs deep through this issue. Our first section offers three positions on Scotland’s changing situation and significance in a world of growing geopolitical tensions. As the West lashes out against the pressures building against it, Sophie Johnson and Jonathon Shafi present the challenge of building public opposition to the remnants of British imperialism that our woeful politicians seem incapable of mounting. Samuel Rafanell-Williams explains why nuclear proliferation is still central to the UK’s strategy for rearmament, and why the anti-nuclear movement must rebuild. And an article from Climate Camp Scotland confronts the alliance of the far-right with fossil capitalism, and the rising fascist tide which regards climate change as an opportunity for harnessing power. Combating all these tendencies require new alliances and action on the left.
The second section explores a series of historical catastrophes caused by ethnic and imperial agendas, whose causes and consequences the left often failed to confront. Owen Schalk documents the devastation that the Western response to the Lockerbie bombing had for Libya and its people. Henry Maitles reflects on the unimaginable death and devastation wrought on the people of Bosnia thirty years ago, which should motivate the anti-racism movement today. Bill Bonnar remembers the bittersweet celebration fifty years ago in response to the liberation of Saigon following the murder of millions of Vietnamese people by US bombs. And Mark Brown describes why the current situation in Georgia is reason not to take the side of either Russia or the EU in their struggle for domination and control.
In the third section, we turn to communities at home which are subject to the power of the state or capital, and are disparaged, degraded, and required to fight against the odds for dignity and justice. As the far-right feeds on the demonisation of football fans, Sean O’Neill makes the urgent call for the left to support fan communities’ demands. Paul Chambers speaks to the sex work decriminalisation campaign on their fears about empowering the state to crack down on their industry, rather than empowering the workers who do it. Helen O’Connor argues, by contrast, that commercial sexual exploitation of women’s bodies should never be acceptable to socialists. Flick Monk reflects on how a failed Just Transition venture in Shetland resulted in both wildlife and communities being thrown to the wind, with no winners but SSE.
Our final section shares some theoretical and philosophical lessons drawn from time-tested left principles and practice. In response to an article we published in the last issue promoting a new left alliance, Colin Fox argues that past efforts to form parliamentary alliances are bound to fail without the material and strategic infrastructure to realise them. Walter Humes surfaces the radical pedagogies and projects of a series of Scottish educational thinkers, and how they might inspire a new generation of resistance against the energy of global capitalism. Stephen Smellie considers what issues the Scottish Left should have at its core, in its efforts to rebuild a movement of the workers and the young. And following the death of the extraordinary Scottish philosopher and one-time Marxist Alasdair Macintyre, Quân Nguyen suggests that morality does not exist apart from the communities and movements that act as one, but gives meaning to the duties, commitments and virtues that distinguish those struggling for a better world.
