Issue 121
Jan – Feb 2021
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As we begin 2021, 2020 should be remembered as the year in which politics trumped economics twice – on Brexit and Covid-19. The former was heavily opposed – especially in its harder forms – by the majority of businesses in Britain. The latter saw massive state intervention of the scale that could only have been […]
The founder of Scottish Left Review, Jimmy Reid, played a leading role in the one of the most successful campaigns of the post-war period. Starting in June 1971 and concluding in October 1972, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ work-in humbled the Heath Conservative government. It was a new industrial tactic without precedence. In this issue and […]
The editorial of Scottish Left Review (120, Nov-Dec 2020) ended with the statement: ‘As we go to print, Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended from the Labour Party. The reason given was Corbyn’s statement that the problem of anti-Semitism in Labour has been ‘dramatically overstated for political reasons’, an observation shared by the SLR. It is […]
Lilian Macer looks back on a year of failings and flaws in the battle against COVID-19. Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a new strain of coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China towards the end of 2019. Clinical presentation may range from mild-to-moderate illness to pneumonia or severe acute respiratory infection. COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by […]
Nick Kempe outlines the key principles and values that must underpin the reform of care in Scotland. The Scottish Government’s ‘Independent Review of Adult Social Care’, conducted by Derek Feeley, is due to report at the end of January and will ‘include consideration of a National Care Service’ (NCS). The principles upon which such a […]
Brian Boyd and Henry Maitles lay out a wide-ranging critique of what is right and wrong in education. The Covid pandemic has as a side effect in that it highlights weaknesses and contradictions in structures and focuses on them. Nowhere is this more obvious than in school education. The exam fiasco during the summer highlighted […]
Roz Foyer ask whether the Scottish Government will pass or fail the test of paying up. Since the first lockdown, we’ve hailed our key workers as heroes. They are. We owe them a great amount of gratitude. While many of us were tucked up at home, working online, the workers in our food shops and […]
Mike Danson asks what sort of economic renewal and recovery do we want in Scotland. As countries and governments struggle with the impacts of COVID-19, the positions of the city-regions and nations within Britain have come under scrutiny. The very limited rights and powers of the mayors and councils in the north of England have […]
Sandy Hobbs finds the EHRC report to be deeply flawed, amounting to a politically inspired hatchet job. In October 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published a report entitled ‘Investigation into Anti-semitism in the Labour Party’. Media coverage emphasised the ways in which the party appears in a bad light. In particular, the […]
Tommy Kane analyses changes inside Labour and calls for the left to stay, fight and win. When Keir Starmer won the Labour leadership, he did it on the back of a series of promises. Competence, he said, and unity. I will, he said, carry on where Jeremy Corbyn left off. He flashed his ten pledges […]
Kenny MacAskill reviews how the SNP will act after its leadership received a recent bloody lip. Where now for the SNP after its annual national conference in November? A virtual event is always likely to have the atmosphere of a football match without fans – interesting to watch but lacking the passion and intensity, never […]
Keir McKechnie reports on how AUOB is changing not just to meet the times but to shape them too. Support for the Union has never been more fragile. There have nearly 20 successive polls showing a majority in favour of independence. Parties favouring a break with Britain are on course to win a significant majority […]
Konrad Rekas ask those who want to be more than counted to stand up now. What do we need political parties for in Scotland? For everyday management or for just one issue, i.e., independence. If independence is won, then what? And, which is better: technocratic parties that stifle debate or ideological formations with a programme, […]
Many readers of Scottish Left Review will likely know the Rock Against Racism (RAR) movement intimately— that political and cultural phenomenon played no small part in the movement to defeat the National Front Nazis. We are the Glasgow branch of Love Music Hate Racism. We stand firmly in the tradition of RAR. We organise gigs, […]
Vince Mills assesses the Brexit deal and warns of imminent dangers. After what seemed like interminable debate and disagreement, on 30 December 2020, MPs voted 521:73 for the EU (Future Relationship) Bill based on the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). There is a fairly simple, but accurate way of describing the agreement: the Tories […]
Dan La Botz says Biden’s victory is a positive development but Trumpism remains a force and Biden is no progressive. Democrat Joe Biden defeated Republican Donald Trump by a popular vote of 81.2m to 74.2m, winning the Electoral College vote by 306 to 232, leading to dancing in the streets in some parts of the […]
Maggie Chetty recalls the life of Skinnider and the work to keep her memory alive. From the great political ferment of the first two decades of the twentieth century emerged a raft of revolutionaries across Europe. Within that ferment were the seeds of revolution in Scotland, Ireland, Russia, Germany and a catastrophic World War. The […]
Chris Sutherland unravels the class contours of privilege and power pervading a tiny town in Fife. The 2018 Times & Sunday Times Good University Guide, listing the worst performing universities for equality and social diversity, put St Andrews (StA) at 131 out of 132 universities, with Oxford and Cambridge competing for the bottom place. Writing […]
From her kitchen and computer, Annie Morgan thinks through the implications of mining and money for food and fairness As I cooked a bit tottie and chard from our community garden, I reflected on the refrain ‘Feed the World’. We recall our consciences being pricked some 35 years ago by Bob Geldof and an awareness […]
Derek McPherson tells a tale of corporate greed against the hoi polloi. British Gas (BG) is bound to comply with Schedule 5 of the Gas Act 1995, which constitutes an agreement between it and the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. This agreement commits BG to treat ‘propane estate’ customers, that is, gas […]
On the occasion of the beginning of the 50th anniversary in 2021 of the UCS work-in, we reprint a book review by Gordon Morgan from Scottish Left Review (no 67, Nov/Dec 2011). Betteridge, D. (ed.) A Rose Loupt Oot – Poetry and Song Celebrating the UCS Work-in, Smokestack Books, 2011 978-0956417503, £8.95. Oor faithers fought […]
Detroit (2017), director, Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter, Mark Boal Reviewed by Jackie Bergson. The first female to win an Oscar for best director with The Hurt Locker (2010), Kathryn Bigelow, has made a powerful mark on the moviemaking map. Tense, heroic tones underpinned that six-Oscar-winning thriller about American IED (improvised explosive device) detection crews working […]
Ben Jackson, The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland, Cambridge University Press, pp179, £18.99, 9781108883733 Reviewed by Colin Fox. The intellectual case for Scottish Independence and how it evolved over the past 50 years is the subject of this new book from Cambridge University Press. It claims somewhat […]
Victor Serge, Notebooks: 1936-1947, New York Review Books, 2019, £14, pp651, 9781681372709 Reviewed by Sean Sheehan. No one writing from personal experience has expressed more political joy for the achievement of the 1917 Russian Revolution and elegiac regret for its aftermath than Victor Serge. Born in Belgium to impoverished Russian exiles, it was in Paris […]
VLADIMIR McTAVISH – A KICK UP THE TABLOIDS Despite starting the year under lockdown, and despite the disaster that is Brexit and the uncertainty of quite how catastrophic it will prove to be, many are entering 2021 in the hope that it will be a better year for Scotland, the UK and the planet. Most […]