Issue 127
Jan – Feb 2022
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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 […]
Stephen Smellie argues COP26 delivered on the low expectations of it but progress was made in building a bigger and more powerful environmental movement COP26 was Glasgow’s fortnight in the international spotlight as the nations of the world gathered to discuss the challenge of the climate crisis facing the planet, its governments, and its people. […]
Mary Church argues it’s hard to view COP26 as anything other than a resounding failure but the summit’s legacy is a movement fit for the fight for humanity and the planet Despite the IPCC’s ‘code red’ warning and the grim reality that without deep, systemic changes, we will hit the critical 1.5o Celsius threshold within […]
Dave Sherry reviews a recent contribution to union campaign to stop climate change Climate Jobs: Building a workforce for the climate was written and published by the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group (CACCTU) to coincide with COP26. It is a response to the urgency of the climate crisis and lays out the type […]
Alf Baird surveys the various energy options for greening sea transport, whether for passenger or goods As with all transport modes, the global maritime sector is required to reduce harmful emissions and rapidly move towards zero-emissions. This presents numerous challenges for shipowners, charterers and financiers in coming up with optimal solutions which are practical and […]
Patrick Phillips looks at a new way of transcending our system of endless economic exchange ‘There appears to be a sort of war of giants and gods going on amongst them; they are fighting with one another about ‘being’…’ (an ancient Greek teacher, cited in Heidegger and the Death of God by Duane Armitage (2017)) […]
We are pleased to published further poems by David McKinstry and David Bleiman. Cult of Career By David McKinstry Have we paid too dear For the cult of career? Are opportunities past For new friends and Wider horizons to caste? Are we too worn To change our way? Must we dole out Our dull day? […]
Nadia Lucchesi is an artist, illustrator and printmaker and has delivered bright and bold covers for Scottish Left Review. After many years, she has decided to hang up her ‘easel’, so this is a good opportunity to publicly thank Nadia for her work and to speak to her about her work. Her website https://www.nadialucchesi.co.uk/ provides […]
Scottish Left Review interviews Neil Findlay about a new project to bring capacity building skills to progressive community campaigners Neil Findlay left the Scottish Parliament in May 2021 after 10 years of being a Lothian list Labour MSP. With two others, he has now set up the social enterprise called Unity Consulting (https://www.unityconsulting.scot/). Neil was […]
Kenny MacAskill issues a rallying cry for those dispirited and disillusioned with the submissive and subservient SNP The local elections this May will be challenging for Alba but are equally a great opportunity for a still fledgling party. The mainstream media blackout imposed in May will likely continue but the party is growing in membership […]
Colin Kirkwood argues against the replicating of centralised systems of government under independence In the 1960s, the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, developed a concept he called ‘limit situations’, which he believed can evoke ‘limit acts’. Limit situations are experienced initially as blocks in people’s lived reality and which seem insurmountable like walls. But as their […]
Peter McColl looks back on the creation of the right’s dominance in the Irish republic in order to explain why independence did not mean revolution When, on the 24 April, Easter Sunday 1916 on Sackville Street, Dublin, a group of rebels seized the General Post Office, proclaiming an Irish Republic, one of the most prominent […]
Andrew Anderson looks at the lessons which must be learned from the case of Shetland for the rest of Scotland Shetland College was privatised on 1 August 2021. This was the first time in Scottish history a Further Education (FE) college has been transferred from public ownership and control into a private company limited by […]
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 […]
Steve Sprung, writer/director, The Plan That Came From The Bottom Up, 2018 Reviewed by Jackie Bergson The need for the human race to counteract, mitigate and reverse catastrophic impacts of climate change on an industrial scale is currently undeniable. In particular scientific, corporate and political quarters, it was no less so, forty years ago. This […]
Jim Aitken (ed.) Ghosts of the Early Morning Shift: An anthology of Radical Prose from Contemporary Scotland, Culture Matters, 2021, 9781912710409, £12, pp195 Reviewed by David McKinstry Ghosts of the Early Morning Shift is an anthology of radical writing which explores historical and contemporary Scotland, combining memoirs of grassroots activists and contemporary fiction. The book […]
Sally Rooney Beautiful World, Where Are You? Faber & Faber, 2021 Reviewed by John Wood Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You? was hotly anticipated by critics and by her broad fanbase after the acclaim and mainstream commercial success – aided by the popular and captivating BBC3 adaptation of her second novel, Normal People – of […]
Colin Burnett A Working Class State of Mind, Pierpoint Press, £9.84, 9781914090158 Reviewed by Sean Sheehan The title of the first short story in this set of twelve, ‘A Working Class State of Mind’, gives its name to the collection as a whole. The story transforms Robert the Bruce into a depressed young man contemplating […]
Jim Sillars A Difference of Opinion: My political journey, Birlinn, 2021, 97817802706830, £14.99, pp303 Reviewed by Will Podmore Jim Sillars is a talented man. This intriguing book covers many different topics, on all of which he has something interesting to say. Sillars opposed the SNP’s Hate Crime Bill, calling it ‘one of the most pernicious […]
Jane Hardy Nothing to Lose But Our Chains: Work and Resistance in Twenty-First-Century Britain, Pluto, 2021, 9780745341040, pp272, £19.99 Reviewed by Eleanor Kirk If there’s a central theme in this book, it is optimism. Drawing on both secondary data analysis and interviews with activists from across the union movement and beyond, the book provides a […]
The book will be available this April – further details in the next issue of Scottish Left Review. Contents Foreword Rozanne Foyer Introduction Gregor Gall The structural development of poverty and inequality Carlo Morelli and Gerry Mooney Towards climate justice Mary Church, Niamh McNulty and Eurig Scandrett Neo-liberalism and Scotland George Kerevan Economic democracy and […]
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 […]