Editorial: Eyes on the planetary prize
Though our cover celebrates reaching issue 125, this should not detract from the major global issue continuing to be the climate emergency
Issue 125
Cop 26
Sep – Oct 2021
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Climate, jobs and justice
Matthew Crighton reviews some core messages from a climate conference and their relevance to debates in post-election Scotland and at COP26. The idea of a ‘Just Transition’ (JT) has moved from the fringes to centre stage since 2016 when Friends of the Earth Scotland and STUC set up the Just Transition Partnership. Having been a […]
Their Just Transition and our Just Transition
Dave Moxham says it’s not so much the devil is in the detail but the visions are quite different. Up until relatively recently ‘Just Transition’ (JT) was a term used by a relatively narrow group of people in policy circles, unions and environmental campaigners. Over the past few years, the term has become more commonly […]
How green are our valleys and how green will they become?
Maggie Chapman gives a frank and honest view on the Scottish Government and Scottish Greens deal. Some on the left have wondered about the Scottish Green Party’s (SGP) left credentials, but the day SNP and SGP members both accepted the Cooperation Agreement, Andrew Neil, in the Daily Mail, gave a high accolade: ‘Anti-monarchy, anti-Britain, anti-wealth, […]
Overheated and over here: our planet on fire
John Wood reviews two books about the environmental emergency. As the climate crisis comes into sharper relief by the day, it is no exaggeration – if perhaps something we have heard in previous years – for the UN to describe 2021 as ‘make-or-break’ for our planet’s future. Glasgow’s COP26 should focus the minds of global […]
More Chaplin than Churchill? We will be laughing at Boris Johnson as the ‘Great Dictator’?
Peter Lomas argues prime ministers hold dangerous amounts of undemocratic and unilateral powers. Questioned, at the G7 July summit, about the problematic status of Northern Ireland in the EU Withdrawal Agreement, Johnson hinted at ‘pragmatic solutions’. So far these have meant the UK government twice breaking the Agreement, in principle and in detail. Next step […]
Uniting for change in UNISON?
Stephen Smellie gives personal reflections on UNISON’s newly elected national leadership. Glaswegian Christina McAnea was elected as general secretary of UNISON, the first woman to lead one of the big unions. Leither Gary Smith was elected as GMB general secretary. In UNITE, Sharon Graham was elected as the ‘left’ change candidate. The election of a […]
Working out a workable plan for an independent Scottish economy
Raphael De Santos dissects GERS, arguing for managed expectations as the first steps on a longer path. Once we get past the arguments on a second Scottish referendum and the infighting within the independence movement, unionists’ focus will shift to the economy and finances. This was the Achilles’ Heel of the ‘Yes’ movement in 2014. […]
1971-1972: Bohemians, Beatles, Bankies and a bouquet
Chris McGachy recalls a time when music was a political force to be reckoned within workers’ struggles. Fifty years ago in the summer of 1971, John Lennon was putting the finishing touches to his global anthem, Imagine. At the same time, Heath’s Tory government announced the imminent end of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS). Within […]
Rebuilding the Scottish economy through worker ownership
John Bratton and David Erdal argue for one specific method for ‘building back better’. The global Covid-19 pandemic, which has caused unprecedented job losses in Scotland, has highlighted just how out of kilter our current arrangements are for providing well-being, security and prosperity for individuals, businesses and society. Here, we explore what a reimagined system […]
Consummate consumers of the world unite!
Mick Rice argues workers have potential power in another arena under global corporate capitalism. It has always galled me that unions do all in their power to organise in the workplace but then carelessly allow their members to go back home and spend their wages on products made by anti-union employers. General secretaries and other […]
Pleasing political poetry
Ravenscraig by Robert Graham Before the steel mill shut the kids had toys and bikes, their brothers bought old banger cars they’d tinker with and polish till they shone. After the steel mill shut, the toys were gone. Before the steel mill shut the streets felt safe to stroll, to meet with friends and share […]
Film Review
Robin Bissell, director, The Best of Enemies (2019) Reviewed by Jackie Bergson Durham, North Carolina, 1971. A school which educates black pupils only is on fire. This catalytic scene follows the film’s opening images, of a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) initiation, which are accompanied by a voice-over of real-life antagonist, C P Ellis, talking about […]
Book Review
Hall, E. (ed.) New Light on Tony Harrison, Oxford University Press/British Academy, 2019, pp246, £45 (hb), 978-0197266519, and Hall, E. Tony Harrison: Poet of Radical Classicism, Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, pp248, £45 (hb), 978-1474299336. Reviewed by Sean Sheehan Edith Hall is at the heart of two books about the aesthetics of resistance in the […]
Book Review
Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen, Finntopia: What we can learn from the world’s happiest country, Agenda Publishing, £18.99, 9781788212151 Reviewed by Mike Danson This book is barely ‘okay’. To anyone accessing Nordic Horizons online, on Facebook or Twitter there is nothing surprising nor new in this publication and they will probably find the massive data […]
VLADIMIR McTAVISH – A KICK UP THE TABLOIDS
So, it would appear that Boris Johnson may have finally got his moment to be compared to Churchill. As the withdrawal from Afghanistan resembles Dunkirk without boats, the PM had to face an emergency session in Parliament, where he was roasted by Theresa May for his shambolic reaction to events. Phrases like ‘make a sentence […]