Issue 134
May – Jun 2023
Download PDF
A couple of years ago, deep in the pandemic, a group of trade union and community organisers, arts workers, and teachers met to discuss how to develop political education in Scotland. Since then, radical learning networks and schools have emerged across the country, many of them outside established institutions. There are schools channelling counter-capitalist currents […]
Four organisers of a recent weekend of radical education reflect on the spaces and situations where we can grow anti-capitalist culture. In February this year, at Crianlarich youth hostel, over 20 people from different backgrounds, generations and political outlooks came together at a residential weekend hosted by the Popular Education Network (PEN). The aim of […]
Following the footsteps of folk who made history in our cities, we can learn how to carry on their work, writes Katherine MacKinnon. There are few better ways of getting to know a city than walking through its streets and learning about the histories of activism and struggles that changed the lives of its inhabitants. […]
Malcolm Petrie explores the rapid expansion and radical ethos of Scotland’s labour colleges more than a century ago. The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a significant movement for independent working-class education. This movement was, in part, a reaction to – and rejection of – existing paternalistic efforts to expand educational […]
A radical new mural in the Calton in Glasgow is a striking tribute to working class culture and a concrete medium for raising awareness about centuries of struggle in the city. Artist Mack Colours and organiser Claire Peden speak to the editor about its story and significance. What is featured in the mural as an […]
On March 30th, Feed the Weans, championed by Unite for a Workers’ Economy and Together Against Debt won its campaign demand for all £300,000 of school meal debt held by Glasgow City Council and individual schools across the city to be cancelled. Organiser Lucia Harrington explains the organising theory and practice they used to serve […]
Cat Wayland reflects on the UCU Marking and Assessment Boycott from the perspective of the University of Edinburgh branch. After yet another renewed national mandate for industrial action, April 20th saw University and College Union (UCU) members embark on a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) as part of the union’s Four Fights dispute with employers. […]
Thinking about transitions in tandem can help us to see autonomy and change in different ways, writes Niamh McNulty. When Westminster utilised Section 35 to overrule Holyrood on the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, I went down to Holyrood as a queer person and anarchist to hear how people had reacted. I was surprised that a […]
The SNP’s climate politics are a well-directed theatre production. Political change comes not from rhetoric but from struggle, boycott, protest and assembly, writes Calum Hodgson. Whenever we see protesters in the news – consistently interrupting FMQs, challenging the First Minister, delaying or disrupting sporting events – there is a debate about how effective their actions […]
Climate Camp Scotland organisers explain why it is preparing to challenge Scotland’s worst polluter and envision a Grangemouth beyond fossil fuels. About ten years ago, INEOS launched an all-out attack on their workforce at the Grangemouth refinery and petrochemical complex. After previous attacks on pension schemes and working conditions, INEOS’s owner Jim Ratcliffe, the UK’s […]
Six months after Sharm el Sheikh and six months from Dubai, the hard struggle continues to push governments to fund a just transition, writes Stephen Smellie. Strange to think that six months ago I was in Sharm el Sheikh at COP27, accommodated, like most other delegates, in a holiday complex with swimming pools, restaurants, beauty […]
The whisky industry is marketed with its history, but Macon St Hilaire finds its technicolour ‘archive tour’ is haunted by ghosts of the communities it left behind. The Johnnie Walker Experience opened in Edinburgh in 2021, to a media fanfare and a flurry of Instagram influencers posting picturesque views from the rooftop bar. I knew […]
When Scottish Parliament Committees dissected the principles of the National Care Service Scotland Bill, they found a dangerous agenda for marketisation and institutionalised insecurity. Stephen Low reviews their reports. What Nye Bevan didn’t do when constructing the NHS was base it on the idea that markets were the way to improve services, or the belief […]
A People’s History of the Cold War: Stories from East and West by Colin Turbett (Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 2023) Colin Turbett’s new book gives us a different angle on the Cold War, focusing on the stories of the people impacted by the events of the period. This is a refreshing change from the […]
Never Tell Anyone You’re Jewish: My Family, the Holocaust and the Aftermath by Maria Chamberlain (Vallentine Mitchell & Co Ltd, 2022). Reviewed by Hamish Kallin. Never Tell Anyone You’re Jewish is a brilliant title for an unsettling and unusual book. The author, Maria Chamberlain, now 77 years old, has lived in Edinburgh since her parents […]
Ralph Darlington, Labour Revolt in Britain, 1910-14 (Pluto Press, 2023). Reviewed by Dexter Govan. Since the pandemic, the contradictions around us have become ever more visible. The continued decline in our living standards clashes violently with images of billionaires’ rockets racing skyward. With each day that passes, reports of soaring inflation and poor growth increase […]
So you thought thirteen years of Tory rule had turned the UK into a banana republic ? Think again. We don’t produce bananas and we’re more certainly not a republic, more’s the pity. In a country where some people in work cannot afford to buy actual bananas and are reliant on food banks, where most […]