Issue 133
Mar – Apr 2023
Lift your eyes from the enchanting orb of party politics and government and you will see an unsettled Scotland. It is a country of workers moved to strike against bosses struggling to hold down wages. A country where asylum seekers are detained in hotels while fascists chant outside their windows. A country where sexual health […]
Olivia Crook, Lara, Paula Dixon, and Amber Ward paint vibrant scenes from the education pickets. ‘I didn’t know that anyone had ever written a song about a picket line!’ I laugh. Everyone I know outside of work knows every song ever written about pickets. But this morning, one of the probationer teachers at my school […]
Coll McCail detecs solidarity between students and staff that is regenerating a united movement that can face current challenges. Thirteen years ago, thousands of students stormed Conservative Party headquarters. The ramifications of the Millbank occupation reached far beyond the student movement. It was a critical juncture in the fight against David Cameron’s austerity agenda. Since […]
Allie Kerper’s erasure poem from the transcript of ‘Yoga for Golfers’ by Yoga with Adriene. The spine is collapsing.We’re gonna unravel time. Tired, rickety,we need to do this. Everything under the wrists,tension in belly. Deep breath, drop the Earthand look forward. Exhale, claw into the base.Up sweet spine, turn left, find a rock.Reach up in […]
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 […]
Rona Proudfoot describes the Valentine’s letters written for striking posties in Glasgow. I have recently joined a union and found myself part of the growing group from all walks of life who are volunteering their time on picket lines in support of striking workers. Although I’m new to this, some of my companions have been […]
Enas Magzoub finds that local authority decisions in transport and education have increased the burden on underpaid workers. More than half a million workers across the country have taken part in industrial action so far this year. Many are striking while facing the particular difficulties affecting rural Scotland. For instance, privately-owned and unregulated bus providers, […]
Peter Frase, New York, February 2023 My last visit to Scotland coincided with May Day 2022, and it’s always a pleasure for an American socialist to experience the workers’ day in another country. Despite having its origins in the 19th Century US labor movement, May Day in the States has long had the status of […]
Paul Malgrati, Villars-sur-Ollon, March 2023 France is being stirred by the most significant general strike since the beginning of the twenty-first century. On 7th March, French syndicats claimed more than 3.5 million protesters nationwide, with between 30 percent and 50 percent of striking workers in the education, energy, civil service, and transport sectors. This was […]
Esmond Sage surveilles the situation of renter and tenent organising in the silver city and explores the radical hearth of Union Street. Living Rent in Aberdeen has a new lease of life (if that expression can be used for a tenants’ union). The tenants’ movement isn’t new here, of course. There’s a history here that […]
James Barrowman reviews a recent exhibition in Dundee, leading us back through the factory gates. The Cooper Gallery’s show Consider Labour is the first major exhibition of work by the late filmmaker Harun Farocki in Scotland, and places Dundee within the international network of cities that have hosted the ‘Labour in a Single Shot’ workshop […]
Charlotte Lauder compares two malign media influences with their roots in Tayside. In Succession, the transatlantic TV show that depicts the Machiavellian manoeuvrings of New York City media mogul Logan Roy and his power-hungry family, the city of Dundee holds a special significance. As the place of Roy’s birth, it is central to the character’s […]
When Ellie McDonald’s uncle organised a union at Dundee’s media powerhouse, the bosses blacklisted the family. It never kept them down. In Dundee in the 1930s, unemployment was as familiar as the smell of jute which permeated the city. Among endemic poverty and lack of opportunity, my granny held a far-sighted belief in being well-educated. […]
Emma Òr attended the counter-demo to a rally at a hotel in Erskine. ‘Refugees are welcome here’ and ‘Nazi scum off our streets’ were the chants outside the Muthu Glasgow River Hotel in Erskine on Sunday 5th February to drown out Patriotic Alternative’s (PA) anti-refugee rally. Members of PA, currently the largest far-right movement in […]
Pinar Aksu reviews the reality that awaits people seeking asylum and refuge in Scotland. At the start of the pandemic and lockdown, when everything seemed unsure, people seeking asylum and refuge were evicted from their homes across Glasgow and placed in hotel accommodation. They were only informed on the day of the move and were […]
Submitted by the People’s Health Movement (PHM) Scotland ahead of their People’s Health Assembly on 10th June, this article was written by its Steering Committee: Tony Robertson, Mark Langdon, Sue Laughlin, Eva Gallova, Neil Quinn, Giulia Loffreda and Toby Pepperrell. The combination of the climate emergency and a crushing cost of living crisis have often […]
Quan Nguyen finds that some wear the label ‘New Scots’ as a badge of honour, but for others it’s less appealing. Last summer, at the ‘Progress to Yes’ conference in Aberdeen, I visited a workshop where a panellist introduced himself earnestly as a New Scot. A young white man, an EU immigrant from a Nordic […]
Iryna Zamuruieva reflects on the devastation wrought upon her native land, and the roots in language and culture that can sustain a deep sense of resistance and resilience. We’ve seen many images of the Russian war against Ukraine: there is pain and loss on scales that are difficult to comprehend. A year into the full-scale […]
Sean Sheehan reviews Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East, by Jonathan Parry (Princeton 2022). Promised Lands begins with a bombardment in 1799 against a town in what is now Israel, an opening salvo in the history of British involvement in parts of the Ottoman Empire. The intention of the bombardment was not […]
‘At least Liz the Lettuce waited until she had been elected party leader before she pressed the self-destruct button’. I’m currently working in Australia, but even here we felt the shockwaves of Nicola Sturgeon’s departure. As we enter the post-Sturgeon era of Scottish politics, many are still in the dark as to why the First […]
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 […]
This special online issue, supplementing the printed issue 133, features articles submitted to the magazine during its change in editorial staff, between November 2022 and February 2023. Contributors agreed for them to be printed to coincide with the online publication of the printed March-April issue, despite the delay. A New Phase of Politics in Scotland […]
Editorial introduction to this special online-only issue comprising articles submitted for the Jan-Feb issue of the Scottish Left Review. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely. If so, the limits of devolution mean Scotland’s First Ministers can only be corrupted so far. But within the SNP, concentrated power surely had something to do with the resignation […]
Stuart Fairweather surveys three groups campaigning for social transformation in Scotland: ‘In between the action of the unions, largely but not exclusively focused on wages, and the ideologically contoured world of ‘self-help’, a new political space is emerging.’ How do we build momentum for change? How do we create the conditions for meaningful action on […]
Clare Peden reports on one union’s campaign for an economy in the hands of workers not profiteers. In September last year, hundreds of trade unionists and campaigners gathered to stage a protest at the Glasgow headquarters of Scottish Power, one of the UK’s energy giants. Spearheaded by Unite’s ‘Unite for a Workers’ Economy’ campaign, it […]
There are better answers to the national question than ‘class versus nation’, argues Frances Curran At the end of November 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that only Westminster can grant a referendum. By mid-December, six successive polls showed majority support for Scottish independence. These polls were unprecedented; did the court ruling act as a catalyst […]
John Dennis asks: can socialist supporters of independence take the initiative to develop radical policies that allow it to make the most of a 2024 election? As a socialist and an independence supporter, I was not disappointed that the UK Supreme Court ruled against a referendum called by Holyrood. I can see that putting forward […]
Simon Barrow considers the politics of independence after the Supreme Court verdict and describes a strategy for the SNP to grow support for independence. The UK Supreme Court decided in November that the Scottish Government does not have the legal competence to hold an advisory referendum on independence under the Scotland Act 1998. The decision […]
James Mitchell argues that the focus on what would constitute a democratic mandate to negotiate independence has led us to lose sight of wider democratic deficiencies in Scotland. Democracy? It is a dream to suppose that we already know what it is, whether out of satisfaction with our present state or to attack its misery. […]
Chris Holligan considers what the Registration of Interests by Scottish MSPs reveal about influence as a strategic tool serving political and corporate elites. It is a questionable assumption that financially modest provisions of hospitality are necessarily not a potential source of influence. The economist Kevin Young and his colleagues argue the financial system is governed […]
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, […]
Returning to Jimmy Reid’s renowned ‘alienation’ speech, Graham O’Neill reflects on the prospects of wealth tax in Scotland today 50 years ago, Jimmy Reid delivered an insightful, deeply empathetic and inclusive speech. It was his first as the Rector of Glasgow University. His subject was alienation or, in Jimmy’s words, “The feeling of despair and […]
Dogged determination resulted in some gains at COP27 but they were few and far between. Ben Wilson explores the origins of one of the achievements of last years’s COP27, and Scotland’s role in taking it forward. As COP27 went into extra-time in Sharm-El-Sheikh, hopes of a successful outcome were not high. The beginning of the […]
Chris Sutherland warns that the relentless march of settlements and the dominance of right-wing ultra-religious Zionism points to the prospect of full-scale ethnic cleansing in the West Bank or the creation of many mini-Gazas. The 37th government of Israel that has taken power following the November 2022 elections is one of the most extreme ever […]
Jackie Bergson reviews Official Secrets (2019). Director: Gavin Hood. Writers: Gavin Hood, Gregory Bernstein, Sara Bernstein Her belief that GCHQ have duties to uncover truths which serve to protect UK citizens and inhabitants drives the film’s narrative. In parallel, journalists working for a London-based broadsheet newspaper determine to uncover and publish their findings about whether […]
John Wood reviews Scotland Rising: The Case for Independence by Gerry Hassan (Pluto Press, 2022) Gerry Hassan has made timely and valuable contributions to our political discourse for around three decades now. His most notable volume remains The Strange Death of Labour Scotland (co-written with Eric Shaw in 2012), examining the decline of Scottish Labour, […]
Mike Danson reviews two books on Scotland’s economic prospects: After Brexit. The Economics of Scottish Independence, by Gavin McCrone (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2022). ISBN 978 1 78027 762 2. £8.99. pp 188. The Bargain. Why the UK Works So Well for Scotland, by Tom Miers (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2022). ISBN 978 1 78027 769 1. £8.99. pp. […]
Gordon Morgan reviews Why the West is Failing – Failed Economics and the Rise of the East, by John Mills (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022) This book makes two major points. First, UK GDP growth is 1.4% compared to a world average of 3.5% and China’s rate of 9.1%. This low rate of growth is shared […]