Maggie Chapman believes new opportunities are now presenting themselves In the 1980s, communist stalwart, Joe Slovo, set out a two-stage transition for politics in South Africa. First, a national democratic revolution. Then a socialist revolution. This theory is of relevance to our politics in Scotland. We have witnessed over five years something that comes close […]
Peter Kelly says policies without powers behind them are coming up short in progress against poverty There are currently more than one million people locked in poverty in Scotland, a number that has been slowly rising over the last few years. If the predictions are correct, then we can expect this to increase further still. […]
Graeme Brown reviews progress on housing and homelessness since 1999 1999 seems both close and very distant now. It’s hard to recall the days when housing debate for Scotland, at a parliamentary level, used to be squeezed into an annual 90-minute slot and the very, very occasional piece of legislation. By the time the Scottish […]
Carole Ewart says it didn’t take an FoI request to work out all is not well in the new, open Scotland Rarely do politicians tell you what they really think of freedom of information (FoI) as it’s poor form to criticise a key way for the public to hold politicians to account. However, Tony Blair […]
Mick Cash argues opportunities have been missed but the struggle is not yet over Debates around the history of the Scottish Parliament often raise the question of powers, whether it has enough, and how it has used the powers it does have. With regard to the transport and offshore sector there has been a lot […]
Whether by design or default, Lynn Henderson calls for redistribution of the digital dividends Automation, digitalisation and data are the labour movement’s latest buzzwords, and mostly they express a mood of techno-anxiety more than techno-optimism. Perhaps, it’s no surprise to hear workers worrying about their jobs, particularly with forecasts of mass, tech-driven redundancies reported in […]
Jennifer McCarey and Brian Smith explain the organising approach that produced strength from weakness October 2018 saw Scotland’s and Britain’s largest women’s strike for equal pay. It represented a significant change in Scottish union strategies around equal pay because it included a combination of public campaigning and industrial muscle. It provided inspiring images of working […]
Mary Senior outlines the UCU successfully mobilised around pensions We were told that the Trade Union Act 2016 would mean the end of any national UK-wide industrial action. Our crucial lesson from 2018 is that when unions work systematically to get a vote out, when we are organised and put in the ground work, and […]
David Belsey outlines how the EIS is approaching the issue The EIS has had an active couple of years with several successful high-profile campaigns seeking to use the ‘organising’ model of campaigning. Organising is about empowering members, increasing their engagement so that passive members become active members and encouraging them to believe that their actions […]
Denise Christie explains the strategic approach to building from the workplace up 2018 saw the FBU celebrate 100 years of existence (see Scottish Left Review, September/October 2018) and we are proud we have sought to build a campaigning and democratic union specifically for our service – the Fire and Rescue Service (F&RS). We continue that […]