Prayer to a Worker
This song earned Victor Jara the first prize at the 1969 festival of the New Chilean Song movement. This arrangement is the one used by the Communist Choir in Edinburgh. Appears in English and Chilean.
Feature
Until Scotland Abolishes its Monarchy…
On Coronation Day, and on the day of a repubican rally on Calton Hill, Reuben Duffy explains why a Scotland with Charles Mountbatten-Windsor as its sovereign cannot be a full democracy and an equal society that can properly reckon with its colonial past. We are living through the likes of something precious few on this […]
We’ve Overcome the Mythical Separation Between Workers and Public
Roz Foyer explains why the season of strikes has brought the public into closer connection with the battles of our unions. This year’s STUC annual Congress follows a year in which industrial action was at its highest level for the past decade and takes place during a year in which that trend is most certainly […]
Humanity and Hope
Henry Maitles remembers the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This picture, showing Bundist survivors of the Holocaust on the May Day 1945 demo in the ruins of Warsaw, is both poignant and uplifting. The Bund was the largest grouping of Jewish socialists in the lands of the Russian Empire from 1900 until the Holocaust. It was targeted […]
Dickensian Dining
A poem by David McKinstry. In our digital Dickensian days Poor law’s long line, In which with hidden heads They queue to dine. Covid meant that They were out of sight And out of mind, Now the cost-of-living crisis Means they must Publicly queue to dine. As night approaches For them, there’ll Be little sleep, […]
Breaking, breaking – this just in: Holyrood can change things!
Tracey Dalling sets out what some creative thinking could achieve for raising revenue for public services Faced with demands for decent public sector pay, the Scottish Government tends to point to London and claim that budgets are fixed. There are many things union members simply won’t be buying this winter and the London blame-game is […]
A taxing matter: Sources of and dilemmas about new revenue streams for public services in Scotland
Mike Danson examines the constraints and options as we face a coming winter of discontent Few are against workers and citizens generally being protected against the cost-of-living crisis caused by Brexit, massive energy price increases and levels of inflation not witnessed for many decades. In a normal economy with a government armed with the fiscal, […]
Creating a gender equal economy in Scotland – what’s needed
Sara Cowan says women suffer disproportionately from Covid, climate change and the cost-of-living crisis The Covid-19 crisis is not over for communities across Scotland but it is being closely followed, or eclipsed, by the impact of cost-of-living crisis. Individuals, households and communities are facing uncertain and deeply challenging times as costs keep rising, while there […]
A New Scotland: Building an Equal, Fair and Sustainable Society
Contents Foreword Rozanne Foyer 1 Introduction Gregor Gall 2 The structural development of poverty and inequality Carlo Morelli and Gerry Mooney 3 Towards climate justice Mary Church, Niamh McNulty and Eurig Scandrett 4 Neo-liberalism and Scotland George Kerevan 5 Economic democracy and public participation Andrew Cumbers and Robert McMaster 6 Re-thinking public ownership for an […]
Towards gender justice in Scotland
Kirsty Alexander and Jenny Morrison argue for enhancing participation, reimagining economics and ending gender-based violence. Three inter-connected aspects of distributive gender injustice in Scotland are: unequal gender representation and participation in public life, gendered divisions of paid and unpaid labour, and gender-based violence (GBV). These are among the most historically and structurally entrenched and, thus, […]