For the left, the ‘test of war’ is said to be the ultimate test of their politics. This phraseology follows the collapse of socialist internationalism at the beginning of the First World War in 1914 when nearly all socialist parties in the countries of Europe dropped their commitment to defend the interests of their fellow […]
The hope of humanity? There is a relatively well-known saying on the left that ‘the cause of labour is the hope of the world’. It is one which the left-wing magazine, Tribune, for example, continues to promote. Labour here is not the Labour Party but workers whose labour creates the wealth of the world but […]
On the road to hellfire, damnation and floods: the great COP-out With BoJo’s leadership of the Tories and the Tories themselves both in freefall, it may seem odd to lead this issue on COP. Anyone on the left craved such a Christmas present for 2021 – or to start the new year of 2022 with […]
Dougie Harrison recalls why he joined the Communist Party in 1968 and and resigned from it in 1990 Few reading this article who are under the age of about sixty will have any first-hand understanding of how important the Communist Party of Great Britain remained in Scottish life for many years, and not just in […]
Few have made the transition from COP to flop with such outstanding speed as Boris Johnson. He had, in the space of five short weeks between the conference and mid-December, gone from hobnobbing with world leaders to being a dead man walking. Everything is unravelling around him at such an alarming pace that the knives […]
COP26 ≠ much cop On the face of it, there may not seem to be a much of a theme to the articles that make up the front half of the content of this issue of Scottish Left Review. However, they all do gather around the crux of ‘power shifts’. Power shifts has several meanings […]
Wilma Brown reports on her experience of an overstretched and under-resourced NHS in Scotland We know staff in the NHS are suffering from years of being underpaid and overworked, even before COVID. Despite this, we have seen a huge effort from NHS staff over the past 19 months to meet the needs of the public […]
Though our cover celebrates reaching issue 125, this should not detract from the major global issue continuing to be the climate emergency
Non-death of neo-liberalism and ‘new’ Labour returns This is an editorial of two parts. The first parts deals with the strange non-death of neo-liberalism and the second with the changing class alignments and voting patterns, especially in terms of Labour. So, nothing much about the new SNP Scottish Government or independence as nothing much has […]
Though Charles Dickens did not say ‘It was not the best of times. It was not quite the worst of times’ as he began his novel, A Tale of Two Cities (1859), this is what it feels like for the left after 6 May 2021 elections for the sixth Scottish Parliament. After months of electioneering […]