Larry Flanagan explains the magnificent mobilisation of teachers so far The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) launched its Value Education, Value Teachers (VEVT) campaign last January. The aim of the campaign was simple: to seek to reverse the decade-long decline in the value of teachers’ salaries by achieving a significant pay rise for Scotland’s teaching […]
Sean Duffy argues that the beneficiaries of May’s meltdown are like to be Rees Mogg and his cohorts The Conservative Party’s 40 year war over Europe was once a political curiosity fit only for the most nerdish of democratic spectators. Yet as the winter grows cold, this conflict has come to define not only the […]
Mike Cowley says under Richard Leonard Scottish Labour is back on its way to influence In November 2017, Scottish Labour elected their first leader from the explicitly socialist wing of the party since the advent of devolution. On the left, it was a moment of jubilation and vindication of a long march spent largely in […]
Róisín McLaren argues Scottish Labour’s star cannot rise until it changes course on independence A YouGov opinion poll published on 16 December showed the Tories with 40% support at the UK level, up 2% from a fortnight earlier, Labour was on 36%, down 1%, and the Lib-Dems on 10%. If accurate, these figures are both […]
Drawing on her Leith experience, Linda Somerville argues there are new and effective ways of organising The good citizens of Leith are currently in uproar at plans to demolish a two-storey art deco sandstone building at the bottom of Leith Walk. Until recently, the proposed development site contained much loved local businesses and social enterprises […]
Angi Lamb recounts her experience of managing Ann Henderson’s successful rectorial campaign My participation began with an email to Ann Henderson a week before rectorial nominations closed on 26 January 2018. I’d just retired the previous year, after 27 years working at the university and serving as an active trade unionist. A former colleague had […]
Joseph McAleer recounts that power pacts have killed the dream of freedom in Nicaragua Eight months after students first took to the streets in Managua in April 2018 to protest against unjust social security reforms, Nicaraguans are living a de facto state of exception whereby newly introduced draconian laws brand any individual or organisation involved […]
George Kerevan argues what the international left does will influence the cause of Catalonian independence In 2018, the political crisis triggered by the Catalan independence referendum of October 2017 became a generalised crisis of the whole, corrupt neo-Francoist Spanish state that has existed since the death of the Caudillo. 2018 has seen mass public protests […]
Bill Johnston argues the left needs to start taking ageism seriously and act accordingly Part one (Scottish Left Review issue 108, November/December 2018) of this series of three articles discussed demographic ageing in terms of neo-liberalism and current developments in Scottish Government policy. That article also urged the left to incorporate an analysis of ageing […]
Mark Brown argues Modernism is the motor of Scotland’s belated and celebrated theatrical renaissance If 1968 was a year of political revolution, from Prague to Paris, the aesthetic revolution in Scottish theatre started the following year. In 1969, the board of the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow appointed a young Scot by the name of Giles […]