“Socialism: Endorsed by James Connolly” tee shirt and other new items at Calton Books, Glasgow
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In his tour of TV studios this week, RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch was asked on ITV’s Peston show who his political hero was and immediately answered “James Connolly”.
The presenter looked quizzical and Lynch had to explain that Connolly was an “Irish, Socialist, Republican … trade unionist … hero of the Irish Revolution”.
Although of Irish descent and describing himself as an “Irishman”, Connolly was also a Scot, born in Edinburgh, he spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. After serving in the British Army and deserting, he became a socialist and the secretary of the Scottish Socialist Federation, standing for local elections. He moved to Dublin for work at the age of 27. In Ireland he founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party. After several years working in America he returned to Ireland and helped found the Irish Labour Party before opposing the First World War and taking part in the Easter Rising against British rule over Ireland in 1916. He was executed by the British State for his part in the Rising.
ecosocialist.scot thought it was therefore highly appropriate that this week, Calton Books in Glasgow launched a new tee shirt: “Socialism – endorsed by James Connolly”. It looks like we are going to have more RMT picket lines over the summer before their battle is won, so what could be a better picket apparel than this Socialism – Connolly tee shirt?
We encourage all our readers to get down to Calton Books in Glasgow’s east end – the ‘best wee radical bookshop in the world’ – and get themselves kitted out for a summer of protest, alongside many of their other new items.
SOME OF THE NEW ITEMS AVAILABLE FROM CALTON BOOKS
Calton Books quality postcards now available including We Still Hate Thatcher!
As always many thanks for supporting the ‘best wee radical bookshop in the world’!
red clydesider reports on the ongoing struggle for bodily autonomy and specifically the fight for safe zones around abortion services and health clinics in Scotland.
The latest attack on reproductive rights in the United States of America has stirred a fury that has leapt beyond the borders of the troubled republic. This is no surprise. Whatever happens, over there have repercussions that are felt all across the globe, and these latest events show how easily cherished democratic and civil liberties can be rolled back by determined reactionaries and fundamentalists. As such, they stand as a stark warning to the rest of the world. Whatever has been gained by struggle, can only be protected and sheltered by struggle. This fact cannot be ignored.
Here in Scotland, anger at the assault on Roe vs Wade has mingled with a home-grown cause, the fight for buffer zones around healthcare sites offering abortion services that would insulate them from anti-abortion protests. Since 2017, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and Back Off Scotland have recorded a series of repeated protests at seven different hospitals and clinics across Scotland. Just this year, there was a candlelight vigil of around one hundred people outside the Maternity Wing of Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, and in recent months smaller pickets by preachers have been plaguing clinics like Sandyford, with those using the clinic being harassed and condemned as they approach the building.
To address this, the Green MSP Gillian Mackay has proposed a bill for the Scottish Parliament to establish legally protected safe access zones of a perimeter of 150m for abortion clinics and healthcare settings, in order to protect the persons and the privacy of those going to these clinics for abortions. Within the buffer zones, the bill aims to prohibit behaviour such as impeding or blocking somebody’s path or an entrance to abortion services, intimidating or harassing people, and photographing or filming a person within the zone. There is currently a consultation for the bill taking place online.
As the consultation progresses and the bill moves through parliament, however, there is still a continuing menace being faced by clients of clinics all across Scotland, as at Sandyford, where the previously mentioned religious protesters have tended to make so much noise that the staff within cannot actually give consultations, check-ups and treatment to patients, healthcare that also includes rape counselling and sexual health services for the LGBTQ+ community. Action must therefore be taken in the meantime to give clinics support, protection and solidarity against harassment. As the feminist movement agitates for political change at the level of rights and legislation, there must also be a spirited defence of treatment at the ground level.
Beth Douglas is a woman that has been involved with great energy in exactly these struggles, and it’s for that reason that I sat down to talk with her about the fight for buffer zones.
To begin with, I asked Beth about who she is, and what she does. In the broadest terms, she describes herself as an activist, with a particular focus on equality campaigning and bodily autonomy. In addition to her work on the abortion rights issue, she fights for trans health care and for the destigmatisation and decriminalisation of sex work. In more narrow party terms, or, as Beth put it, “If you want to push me into a box”, she is a member of the Scottish Green Party and a co-convener of its LGTBQ+ wing, the Rainbow Greens.
Not just this, but she has long been active in protest against how Pride marches are often co-opted by corporate money and used as an image-laundering opportunity for big business and the state, particularly arms traders and the military. Indeed, those of you who followed or participated in Glasgow’s radical scene in the 2010s may remember her as one of the “Pride Five”, who were unjustly arrested at Glasgow Pride 2017 for protesting against capitalist influence on the event and the participation of a Police Scotland bloc in the march. Perhaps a few of you may even have been there at the courtroom solidarity demonstrations.
And, as you may have gathered from her advocacy for trans health care, Beth is a transgender woman. How does this facet of her identity shape her conception of feminism? What perspectives does she, a trans woman, bring to this movement? And in what ways do the struggle for trans rights link up with the struggle for abortion rights? I was particularly interested to find out, so I got right into the questions about her work and her views.
As for many of us, American events have been a painful sight for Beth to witness. But it isn’t simply a well-meaning sympathy that spurs her into action around abortion rights. What primarily drives her is her own experience of the ways in which society constricts bodies to fit rigid gender and sexual norms.
“As a trans person,” Beth says, “I am very used to being told by the state what I can and cannot do with my body,” so she is eager to fight against any attempt by the state to tell others what they are allowed to do with theirs.
“As a trans person,” Beth says, “I am very used to being told by the state what I can and cannot do with my body,” so she is eager to fight against any attempt by the state to tell others what they are allowed to do with theirs.
Additionally, she recognises that these political issues are not neatly separated from each other: “We are about to see millions of people lose their right to reproductive healthcare across America, and it is horrific to see people being robbed of their bodily autonomy. And even though I will never need to have an abortion, it still has a knock-on effect and matters to me.”
The strengthening of patriarchal state control over bodies, the denial of free choice for people to make decisions about themselves, only gives the state a stronger position from which to police other aspects of gender and sexuality, to keep anyone who dissents from a strict patriarchal idea of “proper” gender and sexual roles in line by force. Therefore, Beth concludes that “if you weaken bodily autonomy on abortion you weaken it for trans people too and vice versa”.
It is a stance that calls to mind that slogan of the workers’ movement, “an injury to one is an injury to all,” or the admirable sentiment of old Bakunin, that the freedom of others, far from negating or limiting my freedom, is, on the contrary, its necessary premise and confirmation. These are fine socialist principles from which to go forward, and they animate Beth’s political practice.
To return to actions of solidarity: It is with a grimace that Beth concedes that “unfortunately, American politics are global politics.” Indeed, one can scarcely avoid being shaken by even the slightest stumbles of an imperial giant.
Feeling those tremors, Beth really wanted to do something to show solidarity with her American sisters. So, she and another trans woman, Heather, got together a demonstration at the United States Consulate after the Edinburgh May Day march on May 7th. With a couple of days’ notice, the demo brought together about eighty people, and the speakers included activists from Backoff Scotland, the Green MSP Gillian MacKay and a member of the Scottish Trans Alliance.
People from the crowd also took the mic, and some of them were Americans who spoke about how they felt sad and desperate for their loved ones over there, and how they felt scared to go back to their home country because of the way things are going.
Not only this, but speakers from the crowd also talked about how they themselves had been confronted by bigoted protesters on their way into healthcare settings when going in for not just abortions, but for STI checks, menopause checks, and HIV check-ups and rape counselling.
Testimony like this served to underline the contributions of Gillian MacKay and Backoff Scotland, who raised the demand for Buffer Zones in their speeches. It wouldn’t even be a week before yet more service users were being harassed outside clinics, as would happen to someone close to Beth just days after the consulate demonstration.
Beth’s friend was on their way to the Sandyford clinic to receive rape counselling, and right outside the building were two religious preachers, who yelled at them to “stop killing babies!” as they entered. The two preachers had their own sound system, and they were so loud that Sandyford couldn’t offer care on one whole side of their building for that day.
Hearing of this from her friend, Beth was furious and immediately went over to Sandyford to film the preachers and expose what they were doing on social media. This footage would quickly find its way to the national press, and with the word getting out on Twitter, more counter-protesters came down to join Beth and help drown out the preachers. She remembered hearing “a whole cocktail of bigotry coming out of these men’s mouths”, including rants about Islam, and at one point when some gay men came out of Sandyford and were told by the preachers that “they had chosen a life of sin.”
She remembered hearing “a whole cocktail of bigotry coming out of these men’s mouths”, including rants about Islam, and at one point when some gay men came out of Sandyford and were told by the preachers that “they had chosen a life of sin.”
Eventually, faced with opposition from the crowd, the preachers packed up and left. “In the end,” says Beth, “it wasn’t the police who moved these bigots, but the people who showed up and argued with them. The whole time the police didn’t take action”. That kind of inaction, Beth argued, shows why buffer zones are hugely important: “The patients who use Sandyford, whatever they are using the clinic for, are just trying to get healthcare, and if we allow people to stand outside and harass them then we are denying their right to healthcare.”
It wasn’t long before Beth was back at the United States Consulate agitating on this theme again. After the first consulate demo, there was an American woman named Lindsay Jaacks who wanted to organise another protest at the consulate in a week’s time. She asked Beth and Heather for help, so Beth got the Scottish Activist Legal Project (SCALP) involved to do legal observing. Thinking of how the Irish police have consistently hassled and targeted abortion protesters over there, Beth was keen to involve SCALP going forward.
Demo two had a similar number of people, but a different crowd. Following on from Edinburgh May Day, demo one was mostly younger people, but at the second demo, there were some new faces. Now, while the first protest was taking place, gender-critical activists were not present, instead holding a lunch meetup over on Glasgow Green, a tradition inaugurated by the ultra-rich Blairite J. K. Rowling and aped by her middle-class adherents.
When Beth expressed surprise and disappointment on Twitter that, in a situation when women’s rights are being rolled back, gender-criticalists are more focused on hobnobbing and complaining about the Gender Recognition Act than showing up to demonstrations, she was met with odd accusations her criticisms amounted to “daring to tell women they couldn’t have lunch.”
In any case, it seems the consciences of some gender-criticalists were stung into action by this, and they turned up to the second demo at the consulate. This is something Beth welcomed: “It doesn’t matter if they hate me or not, the important thing is we work together to protect the very concept of bodily autonomy- You can’t attack the bodily autonomy of one group and expect it to remain for yourself.”
“It doesn’t matter if they hate me or not, the important thing is we work together to protect the very concept of bodily autonomy- You can’t attack the bodily autonomy of one group and expect it to remain for yourself.”
Unfortunately though, when Beth spoke on the microphone, to talk about how the American religious right has been using its money and resources to stoke division in the feminist movement, and about how when bodily autonomy is weakened for one group it is for all groups, she was heckled by the gender-criticalists in the crowd.
The heckles were predictable, simplistic and parochial. To Beth’s linking of struggles, she heard shouts that the issue “was just women’s’ bodies” and women’s’ bodies alone. When Beth spoke about showing solidarity with our trans brothers and non-binary siblings, who also need the right to abortion, the gender criticalists shouted “they’re women!”
The first set of heckles can easily be dispensed with by pointing out that, given, as we have seen, that the range of treatments impacted by anti-abortion protests goes beyond abortion to HIV check-ups, rape counselling, LGTBQ+ health services and so on, it is clear that the Buffer Zone struggle is overall a fight against a generalised assault on reproductive/sexual healthcare which expresses itself primarily as an abortion rights issue.
The gender-criticalists who shout about the issue just being women’s’ bodies have not paid close enough attention to what is happening at Sandyford and elsewhere. Additionally, they wilfully ignore that the abortion struggle is an issue closely tied to all other struggles against rigid patriarchal gender and sexual norms and that it represents one front in the fight to resist a largescale reaction by the patriarchy against any challenge to its power.
Is it a coincidence that the same Republican Party zealots leading the charge against abortion in the United States are also the same bigots stoking a panic about LGBTQ+ people? That these are the same Jim Crow capitalists that ruthlessly oppose the Black Lives Matter movement, striking workers and tenants unions? Of course not!
As for the second set of heckles, Beth is frustrated about how the gender criticalists are obsessing over whether trans men are actually women, and so making the struggle about identity rather than rights- In doing so, she argues, “you are changing the argument from ‘Everyone deserves abortion’ to ‘Are trans men actually women’”. She considers it a distraction from the real core of the issue, one that is utterly pointless given the high stakes and the urgency of the situation.
the heckling behaviour of the gender-criticalists toward Beth provides a clear example of unsystematic, narrow, single-issue thinking that fails to connect movements into a robust united front, and which foolishly rejects solidarity from other oppressed groups.
In summary, the heckling behaviour of the gender-criticalists toward Beth provides a clear example of unsystematic, narrow, single-issue thinking that fails to connect movements into a robust united front, and which foolishly rejects solidarity from other oppressed groups.
Thankfully, a better example of political unity was close at hand. Another important event Beth wanted to highlight was the Trans Pride march in Paisley on the 20th of May. Members of the Scottish Greens, along with members of other parties, brought along a banner reading “Trans and Queer People Support Buffer Zones” and took it on the march.
“It was very heart-warming to see how many people marched behind that banner,” Beth recalled, speaking of the warm response they got from attendees of Trans Pride. For her, the march served as a clear marker that the trans community is ready to support abortion rights and back the demands of the feminist movement for the protection and the advancement of those rights.
“This is how solidarity is supposed to work.” Beth feels that for some lefties, “Solidarity has become the new ‘thoughts and prayers,’ a slogan you can say as a token gesture of support without actually doing anything. “True solidarity,” Beth argues, “is waving your flag for one group but campaigning for another, whether that’s trans people fighting for the bodily autonomy of all people, or lesbians and gays supporting the miners’ strike”, a clear nod to the legendary Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) group of the 1980’s.
So, where next for the struggle from here?
Since my interview with Beth, she certainly has been busy, organising further demonstrations against the continued targeting of the Sandyford Clinic by fundamentalist preachers. While buffer zones are being sought through parliament, it is essential that the movement is able to organise for the protection of abortion clinics wherever and whenever.
Along with concrete defence of clinics goes the agitation for political change. Beth called on everyone reading this article to fill out the consultation as soon as possible: “We need as many people filling it in as we can!” The link can be found below, and I emphatically urge all of you reading this to complete it, and help show the Scottish Parliament how crucial Buffer Zones are.
With the Summer Pride season coming up, Beth was keen to spread the call for buffer zones all over Scotland. “We’re going to keep using that buffer zone banner. It’s important it goes to as many prides as possible.” She aims to bring the buffer zone struggle wherever it can be brought, to demos, marches and events of all sorts. “We really need to get around and defend the idea of bodily autonomy wherever it is threatened regardless of who or where. If you can deny that to someone you can deny anything to them.”
I ended by asking Beth how people can show support for the cause and how they can keep up to date with her. Her first port of call was the Safe Access (Abortion Services) Scotland Bill Consultation, which can be found here The Consultation runs until the 6th August 2022. Once again, Beth was eager to point people in its direction. “It is important that as many people fill in the buffer zone consultation as possible,” Beth said, and she implores all of you to take part in it as soon as you can. As well as that, she directs everyone reading this to follow and support the work of Back Off Scotland.
If you want to keep up with Beth’s own work, check out Beth’s Twitter, her recent article for Ungagged and the Twitter of the Rainbow Greens.
And finally, if you want to hear from the woman herself, make sure to come along to Anticapitalist Resistance’s Zoom meeting, “The Overturn of Roe vs Wade: The Struggle for Reproductive Justice in the US” which takes place on June 30th at 7.30 pm. The speakers include Zora Monico, an activist with the Michigan Coalition for Reproductive Liberation and co-founder of WWN, Whenever We’re Needed, Kerry Abel, Chair of Abortion Rights UK, and Beth Douglas whose work you are quite acquainted with by now. Signup here and share on Facebook.
International Youth Summer Camp, France, 23-29 July 2022 – support the Scotland delegation!
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Are you one of the hundreds of thousands of activists who mobilised for COP 26 in Glasgow last year? Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement? Eager to defend migrant and refugee rights? Furious about the way workers and young people suffer the cost of living crisis while profits soar?
To fight to fix a world torn apart by war, greed and climate catastrophe, it’s essential to understand why these things happen, and how you can organise to change them. That’s what the Fourth International’s annual youth camp is all about.
During a week in the sun with hundreds of young students, workers,and campaigners from across Europe and beyond you’ll havethe chance to:
join meetings, workshops and self-organised spaces to discuss ecosocialism, feminism, anti-racism, LGBTI struggles, internationalism and fighting austerity
meet leaders of campaigns that are on the cutting edge of radical youth activism
socialise, share experiences, debate ideas and plan joint actions
This is a unique opportunity for young activists from Britain to meet with other environmentalists, feminists and socialists.
The International Youth Summer Camp in July is hosted by comrades of the Fourth International in France.
23 JULY TO 29 JULY 2022,
La Bordé, 03430 Vieure, France(about 320 kms directly south of Paris.)
Socialist Resistance is the Fourth International organisation in Britain. SR will be working with comrades in ecosocialist.scot in Scotland and Anti*Capitalist Resistance in England and Wales to send a delegation to the camp.
If what we talk about here chimes at all with your politics you’ll love the camp.
Already in a different organisation? Ask it to contact us about sending people.
You will need your passport, and you’ll need to sort a tent and sleeping bag.
The camp costs roughly £130 for the week, including food – plus travel to France. We are trying to organize transport collectively from both Scotland and from London – and maybe other places if there is enough interest. And the sooner we book the cheaper – so get in touch now if you are interested and we will tell you more
We know that many people may need financial support towards the costs so we are working on raising money to help – that hasn’t been a barrier on previous occasions and we hope it won’t this time either.
Get ready to change the world and contact us by email: SRYouthCamp2022@gmail.comor via facebook (scan QR code)
Help fund the FI youth camp – £5,000 financial appeal
The Fourth International’s annual youth camp for young environmentalists, feminists and socialists who want to discuss changing the world will be held in France at the end of July.
There is already a lot of interest in joining our delegation both from people who have been to the camp before and from new activists.
And if you can help us get the word out further on protests and other events you are going to email us at socialistresistanceoffice@gmail.com to ask us to send you cards.
Some of the young people wanting to go, however, will need financial assistance. Young people are one of the groups worst hit by the cost of living crisis so many will need our support. We have therefore launched a £5,000 financial appeal in order to give them the assistance they need.
Can you help?
Please give generously.
You can pay:
by making a bank transfer to Socialist Outlook 080228 70935370 and send an email to socialistresistanceoffice@gmail.com saying you have made a donation for the camp
by Paypal to resistance@sent.com (please state that this is for the Youth Camp appeal)
Defend abortion rights in Scotland and globally
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Abortion rights are under attack across parts of the world including here in Scotland, writes Mike Picken. [Photo Edinburgh abortion protest US Consulate 14 May 2022, photo: Gillian Mackay]
A solidarity rally against repeal of Roe v Wade was held at the US Consulate in Edinburgh last weekend by pro choice groups and attracted publicity and support (though unfortunately clashed with three other major protest events on other issues in Glasgow).
The attacks on abortion rights by the right wing in the USA have also encouraged anti-abortion activists in Scotland to scale up their intimidation of women attending clinics, with recent reports from the Back Off Scotland campaign of up to 100 protesters appearing at venues around Glasgow for example. These protestors intimidate women attending the clinics, whether for abortions or other reproductive rights and health support.
ecosocialist.scot is pleased to see the start of a robust response, both by pro choice organisations in Scotland and by sections of the Scottish government and parliamentary representatives of Labour, SNP and Scottish Greens. At First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament recently, Scottish Labour backbench MSP Monica Lennon raised the attack on abortion rights and received strong support from First Minister, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, who also offered to chair personally a summit on defending abortion rights.
Speaking at First Minister’s Questions, Ms Sturgeon insisted that “women have the right to access abortion without fear or intimidation”, adding that demonstrating outside healthcare facilities was “deeply wrong”.
She added: “I strongly support the introduction of buffer zones and the government is actively considering how this parliament can legislate in a way that is effective and also capable of withstanding legal challenge.
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Turning to calls for her to chair a summit on the issues, Ms Sturgeon said: “I am very happy to convene and indeed, I will personally chair a roundtable summit to discuss buffer zones and indeed any other matters that need to be addressed to ensure safe and timely access to abortion services in Scotland within the current law.”
Ms Lennon said she would “warmly welcome the First Minister’s agreement to convene an urgent summit that more than a dozen women’s organisations have called for”.
Green MSP and ecosocialist Maggie Chapman defends abortion rights on Twitter
This week, Scottish Green MSP Gillian Mackay launched a Bill in Parliament to create a ‘buffer zone’ around healthcare facilities offering abortion services. Mackay has made clear that unlike measures introduced by the Tories in the UK parliament against protest, her bill was not supressing civil rights for legitimate protest but was aimed at giving women freedom to exercise their right of choice without fear of intimidation. Other Scottish Green Party MSPs gave their full public support (see picture) and the Party wrote individually to all its members and supporters asking them to campaign in defence of abortion rights.
The consultation phase of the Bill introduced by Gillian Mackay has now opened and we urge readers to indicate their support for defence of abortion rights.
The Scottish Government have yet to indicate their formal support for the Bill, though it is welcome that Nicola Sturgeon has indicated her personal position.
Nevertheless pressure needs to be brought across Scotland both widely and within the SNP for the Scottish Government to take defence of abortion rights seriously.
Similarly, although Labour MSP Monica Lennon has campaigned strongly and rightly on this, the full weight of the front bench of Scottish Labour needs to be deployed to back abortion rights. This is particularly important given the seemingly increased presence among Scottish Labour’s ranks of members of the Orange Order, with the former “world leader” being selected and elected as a Scottish Labour council candidate recently to serve in an council administration where Labour appear to be doing a backroom deal with Tories. The Orange Order are an important political force in Scotland and are just as virulently anti-abortion as the Catholic church worldwide.
Trade Unions defend abortion
Trade unions are a key part of the campaign to defend abortion rights as well: working class women will always be the first to be affected by any weakening of state abortion health services and don’t have the resources to seek private treatment. Time after time has shown that restricting or obstructing access to free state abortion services simply results in a rise in backstreet abortions, with all the misery, suffering and death that causes working class women.
With over a million women in our union, we believe passionately in defending the right to choose. Access to abortion is a trade union issue.
Abortion is also a class issue. Rich women can always access abortion, whatever the legal status where they live. It is working class women who always suffer.
Abortion rights are high in the priorities for our [Unison] national women’s committee.
As the UK’s largest organisation representing women, UNISON ran a webinar about defending abortion rights as part of our programme of events around International Women’s Day earlier this year.
It’s brilliant to see bold local leadership on access to abortion from Ealing, Manchester and Richmond Councils. They are to be congratulated for putting buffer zones in place to protect women from the protestors handing out leaflets and harassing vulnerable women.
UNISON wants to see a change in the law to see buffer zones to protect women in all such places.
The Fourth International has been part of the worldwide movement for women’s rights and defending abortion globally for many decades as an integral part of the struggle for Women’s Liberation. As Fourth International supporters in Scotland, ecosocialist.scot gives our full support to campaigns to defend abortion rights both here and across the world.
Mike Picken, 21 May 2022
Nuclear Subs and Rolls Royce’s Silver Bullet
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Politicians everywhere seem to boundlessly attracted to hubristic grand projects, from the Pompidou Centre to HS2, and Boris Johnson seems to be particularly addicted to them, writes Sean Thompson on the Red Green Labour website.
His career has involved numerous doomed attempts to create a permanent monument to his greatness; Boris Island, the proposed new airport in the Thames estuary, the Boris Bridge One, over the Thames, Boris Bridge Two, between Scotland and the North of Ireland and, most ludicrously, the Boris Tunnel, between either Anglesey and Dublin or Stranraer and Larne. Now, his new great enthusiasm is for building nuclear power stations, announcing on 2 May that ‘Nuclear power stations…are absolutely crucial to weaning us off fossil fuels, including Russian oil and gas. Instead of a new one every decade, we’re going to build one every year’.
Clearly, not even even in Johnson’s most fevered moments of techno fantasy can even he imagine that such a wild promise could be fulfilled by building more behemoths (or is it dinosaurs?) such as that being built at Hinkley Point – estimated cost £18bn, actual cost £23bn and counting, and proposed for Sizewell – estimated cost £20bn, actual cost £?bn. The [UK] Government is desperate to find someone to take on construction of a new reactor at Wylfa on Anglesey but will have to come up with such a hugely generous deal to get it off the ground (if ever it does) that it’s unlikely that any more sites will even be proposed. In order to meet its proposed target of expanding nuclear power generation to provide 25% of Britain’s electricity capacity by 2050 (it’s currently at 16% and due to fall to 10% by 2030), Johnson’s government will have to rely on the successful development and rapid roll out of the SMRs (small modular reactors) being touted by Rolls Royce.
On the face of it, this might seem to be a good idea, since Rolls Royce has been producing small pressurised water reactors, to power submarines, at its Marine Operations plant in Derby since 1965. Rolls-Royce aims to build 16 SMRs, which it says would have a ‘target cost’ of £1.8bn each (as long as at least 5 are ordered simultaneously – so a sort of super BOGOF deal). Rolls Royce claim that the reactor itself will be ‘only’ about 16 metres by 4 metres, and thus able to be transported by road, rail or sea, although each plant will have an area of around five and half football pitches.
This all sounds like a very attractive option to those who look to nuclear energy as the silver – though hugely expensive, and radioactive – bullet that might allow for the continuation of business as usual in the face of global warming. However, Rolls Royce and Johnson are ignoring a number of inconvenient issues; so far, not one SMR has actually been manufactured and operated in the real world, the costs – like all large engineering projects using untried technology, will almost certainly be very much higher than estimated – and, like all other nuclear reactors, they will have a limited life before they must be decommissioned and even during their active lives they will produce highly toxic waste that must be safely disposed of.
Of course, the problems of safely dismantling and disposing of small nuclear reactors must surely have been sorted out by now, since Rolls Royce have been manufacturing small pressurised water reactors for nuclear submarines for 57 years? Unfortunately not.
Britain’s first nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1966 and decommissioned in 1980, has now been tied up in the naval dockyard at Rosyth [on the Forth Estuary in Scotland] far longer than she was in active service. In all, there are currently 21 former Royal Navy nuclear submarines awaiting disposal, 7 in Rosyth and 14 in Devonport, with another due to go out of service next year and five more to be scrapped by 2040.
The original plan was, like the USA and the USSR, to dispose of decommissioned nuclear subs by filling the them with concrete and sinking them in the deep ocean but thankfully the disposal of nuclear waste at sea was banned by the London Dumping Convention in 1983. By now more than £500M has been spent on submarine storage and maintenance since the Dreadnought was retired and the bill is going steadily up each year.
One of the reasons for the extraordinary delay in dealing with this ever growing pile of radioactive junk [much of it in Scotland – eds] is that, while in the civil nuclear industry, operators are required by law to put aside funds and make plans during the life of the plant to pay for decommissioning – which partly accounts for electricity generated by nuclear reactors being by far the most expensive energy source available – no such requirement was made of the MoD and successive [UK] governments failed to make arrangements for the timely disposal of these vessels.
Planning for the dismantling of these submarines should have been started at the time of the London Dumping Convention almost 40 years ago, but only in the last 10 years, as the space available for storing nuclear hulks steadily filled up (Rosyth is full and there is currently space for only one more at Devonport) has there been any serious effort to deal with the issue. As a result, in January Forces Net the MoD’s in-house PR website proudly announced a ‘world first’ – the MoD was going to start to cut up and dispose of its old nuclear submarines. According to the MoD the total disposal cost will be at least £3bn over 25 years and continue into the 2040s.
However this claim looks, to say the least, rather optimistic. In 2003 the facilities for de-fuelling were deemed no longer safe enough to meet modern regulation standards and the process was halted, meaning that 11 of the hulks are still full of uranium fuel rods. And even if or when the fuel rods can be removed, disposing of the 10% of the hulks that are classified as Intermediate Level Waste remains an unresolved problem.
Low-Level Waste from the hulks can be stored at Sellafield in vaults along with the huge amounts of radioactive detritus generated by Britain’s nuclear power stations, and, according to the Navy Lookout website, in 2017 a partly UK Government owned company, URENCO Nuclear Stewardship, was commissioned to provide an interim site at Capenhurst in Cheshire for the more dangerous intermediate level waste, which includes the Reactor Pressure Vessels removed from the submarines. The waste will be ‘temporarily’ stored in purpose-built buildings above ground but, according to the MoD PR handouts, will eventually be moved to a permanent underground ‘Geological Disposal Facility’, which will have to be built in the 2040s as by then the Capenhurst facility will be full. The only problem with this plan is that successive [UK] governments have failed to find a permanent disposal site – partly because identifying such a site has proved to be geologically extremely elusive but also because trying to locate it almost anywhere in the UK would be as politically toxic to its proponents as its proposed contents would be radiologically.
This Rolls Royce’s vaunted techno-fix runs up against the same intractable problem that has faced the nuclear energy industry since its inception; it produces toxic waste that must be securely stored for tens of thousands years, and and so far no one has found a way to safely and permanently do it.
[Photo above: One of four UK government nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarines, HMS Victorious, departs the Faslane naval base on the Clyde. Photo from Ministry of Defence via WikiCommons Open Government Licence.]
Protestors at Faslane Peace Camp call for Nuclear Free Scotland. Photo: The Nuclear Resister nukeresister.org
[Editorial note: This article was written for a Britain wide audience but there is a specific Scottish dimension that needs raising as well. The Scottish Government of the Scottish National Party (SNP), supported by the Scottish Green Party, is currently opposed to Boris Johnson and the UK government building any further nuclear (fission) power stations in Scotland, and under UK devolution laws has control over the planning system to prevent any being built. However, the UK government currently has control over the Faslane naval base on the Clyde and the four nuclear-powered submarines armed with the Trident nuclear missiles that are permanently based there. These submarines are due to be decommissioned and replaced, and as the article above shows the UK government controlled Rosyth naval base on the Forth has been used to store submarine based nuclear reactors no-longer used in active service. With Nicola Sturgeon in Washington this week recommitting a future independent Scotland to membership of the NATO military and nuclear alliance, and thereby the continuation of the nuclear weapons and nuclear powered submarines programme, concerns should be raised at how it is not possible to achieve a nuclear free Scotland under the SNP. Mike Picken for ecosocialist.scot. See also: Faslane Peace Camp 40th Anniversary 10-12 June 2022.]
Faslane Peace Camp 40th Anniversary 10-12 June 2022
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The Faslane Peace Camp celebrates its 40th Anniversary on 12 June 2022 and is holding three days of events at the camp to commemorate and talk about getting rid of nuclear weapons, reports Mike Picken.
The camp, approximately 40 miles west of Glasgow on the Clyde estuary, was one of a number of direct action protests against nuclear weapons set up across Britain in the 1980s – of which the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common came to prominent world attention at the time when US nuclear-armed Cruise Missiles were based there.
Faslane is now the sole location for the deployment of the UK state’s huge nuclear arsenal (there are manufacturing and storage facilities elsewhere and convoys regularly cross Britain’s road).
There are four Trident submarines based permanently there, and the UK government has recently announced a unilateral increase in the number of nuclear warheads deployed to over 200. One of the reasons why the UK state and establishment so fears Scottish independence is because there is a clear commitment in the independence movement to remove Trident nuclear weapons from Scotland.
Trident means that the Camp has therefore continued for forty years to act as a focus for action against nuclear weapons across the UK state and is deserving of support from across the labour, trade union, peace and Scottish independence movements.
The programme of events is still being finalised, and ecosocialist.scot will publish and support it as soon as we have details – so keep a lookout on our Twitter account and this website. Supporters will be welcome at any time 10-12 June, whether just for a few hours or for the whole period.
The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) voted at its Annual General Meeting to support the anniversary and can also be approached; details here: https://www.banthebomb.org/
The best way of getting to the Camp for most people is to travel to the nearby town of Helensburgh first, there is a regular train service from Glasgow. For travel to the Camp itself from Helensburgh, the following advice is given:
The Peace Camp consists of a line of caravans and buses along a short stretch of the A814 approaching Faslane. Visitors, and potential new residents, are always welcome, and the Camp is child- and dog-friendly. Please be aware that alcohol and drugs are not allowed in the communal spaces to which visitors have access.
The Camp is most easily reached by bus from Helensburgh; the 316 service travels between the train station and Peace Camp twice an hour through most days, and the fare is £2.15 at the time of writing. Alternatively, it’s a 20-minute cycle or hour’s walk along the coastal road to the west of the town.
Step up opposition to nuclear weapons!
Russia’s appalling actions in invading Ukraine, a state that voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons, have put pressure across Europe on governments to increase support for the NATO nuclear alliance and nuclear weapons. We need to oppose this and say loudly and clearly that nuclear weapons are no defence against imperialist actions like Russia’s and that more than ever we need to remove nuclear weapons from Europe and the world. Supporting the Faslane peace camp anniversary 10-12 June, opposing Trident, and calling for more states to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) (which finally holds its postponed first conference of signatories and civil society in Vienna late June) are among the best ways of bringing an effective future world free from weapons of mass destruction.
CND banners at the Faslane nuclear base (Pic: Sept 2021 M Picken)
Power to the People! Scottish Socialist Energy Summit – Glasgow 21 May 2022
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POWER TO THE PEOPLE! SOCIALIST ENERGY SUMMIT: SATURDAY 21ST MAY – GET YOUR TICKETS BOOKED NOW!
It will be an opportunity to talk and most importantly, organise around how we can fight back against the huge energy prices rises that increases fuel poverty and the next stage for the COP26 demands to fight climate change. The recent ScotWind sale by the Scottish Government has provoked important debate about what sort of energy system we need in Scotland, both before and after independence, and how it can benefit the entire population especially the poorest.
We can’t go on like this. Global warming is threatening the planet and energy prices are going into the stratosphere.
We need a drastic root and branch change. To do that we have to understand how we create energy in Scotland and who owns our energy. This summit is the first step in developing an energy plan where the people in Scotland own and control energy production and consumption for the benefit of the people who live here.
The event is open to anyone who has an interest in environmental issues and is concerned about how we in Scotland can effect positive change for both people and planet.
Rising Clyde: Scottish Climate Justice new programme May edition on Scottish Councils
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The third edition of the monthly online TV News programme Rising Clyde: The Scottish Climate Justice Show, hosted by Iain Bruce in association with Independence Live, was broadcast on Monday 2nd May and is now available on YouTube (see below).
Glasgow City Council unions vote for strike action over equal pay
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Workers at Glasgow City Council have voted overwhelmingly for legal strike action over equal pay measures writes Mike Picken.
The trade union Unison’s ballot ended on 1 March and the results were announced on 2 March (see below). Nearly 9,000 Unison members employed directly by the Council voted in a postal ballot, 96% in favour of strike action on a turnout of 52.5%.
Under the reactionary anti-trade union laws of the Conservative UK Government, postal ballots for strike action have to exceed a legal threshold of a 50% turnout. Given the difficulties of postal ballots sent to home addresses having to be returned through the post in an era of electronic communication in the workplace, this is an extremely difficult challenge and the fact that this threshold was exceeded and an overwhelming vote for a strike carried shows the huge strength of feeling among rank and file workers. Unfortunately the 50% threshold was not quite exceeded in the subsidiary employer “Glasgow Life”, an ‘Arms Length Management Organisation” (ALMO) notionally a charity, used by the Council to deliver cultural, leisure and recreation services such as sports centres, arts venues, museums, libraries and community centres across the City. Nevertheless the 91% vote for strike action on a 48% turnout indicates the strength of feeling in that part of the Council’s services.
The GMB union also balloted its Glasgow City Council members affected by the dispute and achieved a 97.8% vote for strike action on a more than 50% turnout from its members in social care, cleaning and catering services.
GMB Scotland Organiser Sean Baillie told the Glasgow Times:
“Our members need equal pay justice and an end to the discriminatory pay and grading system that remains in place.
“That’s the clear message this ballot result sends to the council officials who should be negotiating properly with our claimant groups and to every councillor seeking election in May.
“The council’s liabilities are growing every working hour of every working day and the cost will likely run into the hundreds of million yet again, so the situation is critical for our members, the services they deliver, and the city’s finances.
“That’s why we need an urgent negotiation process to be conducted in good faith between the council and the claimant groups, if strike action is to be avoided.” Sean Baillie GMB Scotland Organiser
Unite, the third union involved in the equal pay dispute, is balloting members currently, with a closing date of 14 March.
The pressure is now on the SNP-led Council to come up with a resolution by introducing new proposals for compensation and equal pay grading. The SNP leadership inherited the crisis in Glasgow City Council in 2017 when it took over from a Labour Council found guilty of pay discrimination against women workers over decades but promised to settle the issue and introduce both compensation and a new pay and grading system that they have failed to do.
In the run-up to the local Council elections on 5 May, resolving this dispute is major challenge for the SNP Council leadership and also raises the question of whether the SNP-led Scottish government and their Scottish Green partners have the wherewithal to come up with financial support for the cash-strapped Council that can enable resolution. If they fail in this, then strikes will almost certainly go ahead against the backdrop of the Council elections. Solidarity and support from workers and residents across Glasgow and beyond will be vital in the event of strikes to ensure a victory in this long-running battle for equal pay. A separate Scotland-wide pay award campaign for council workers from 1 April is also ongoing by the unions.
3 March 2022
UNISON Glasgow media release:
UNISON members in Glasgow City Council have voted overwhelmingly for strike action in the dispute over equal pay compensation payments.
96% of members voted for strike action, on a turnout of 52.5%.
Just under 9,000 workers were balloted.
Lyn Marie O’Hara, UNISON Branch Depute Chair, said:
“This is a huge vote for action and a clear message to the council to resolve the dispute.
The UNISON branch will now request authorisation for strike action from our NEC and be liaising with our sister trade unions on the next steps in the industrial dispute.
The trade unions will also continue to receive regular updates from the claimants joint legal team on the current negotiations with the council lawyers. The council should now listen.”
UNISON members in Glasgow City Council have voted overwhelmingly for strike action in the dispute over equal pay compensation payments.
96% of members voted for strike action, on a turnout of 52.5%.
This is a huge vote for action and a clear message to the council to resolve the dispute. The UNISON branch will now request authorisation for strike action from our NEC and be liaising with our sister trade unions on the next steps in the industrial dispute. The trade unions will also continue to receive regular updates from the claimants joint legal team on the current negotiations with the council lawyers. The council should now listen.
The vote in Glasgow Life was also for strike action however the turnout in the ballot was just short of the 50% threshold required under the current UK anti-trade union laws. Nevertheless, this is still a very clear message from UNISON members in Glasgow Life on the need for equal pay justice. 91% of members in Glasgow Life voted for strike action, on a turnout of 48%.
Further communications will be issued in due course.
Well done to all who voted in the two strike ballots.
Against War and Climate Change – Scotland must break with ‘net zero’ and NATO
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The latest report by the world’s scientists doesn’t mince its words writes Iain Bruce. The impacts of climate change are being felt sooner, more deeply and more often irreversibly, than they had previously predicted. The threat to human wellbeing, even the ability to eat, is ever deeper, and ever closer. And for the first time, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) puts inequality and the need for social justice at the centre of its analysis. The fact that the “people and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit” is a constant theme throughout this report by the IPCC Working Group II on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. The arguments for climate justice, which includes social justice, racial justice, gender justice, made so forcefully on the streets of Glasgow barely 100 days ago, seem to be finding their echo in the scientific community.
Yet the urgent message compiled from work by scientists across the world, risks being lost in the fog of war.
As the 195 member countries of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change were meeting last week to agree on the summary to this report, the delegates from Ukraine had to drop off the Zoom call, because they heard explosions outside. It was a poignant reminder of the connections between the multiple crises and threats that human society now faces.
Some of those involved in the report have already expressed their fear that the war in Ukraine may destabilise the UN climate talks system and divert attention from the seriousness of the threat to human wellbeing and the need for urgent action. But the connections run deeper. Sections of the Tory right argue that the need for NATO’s European members to break their dependence on Russian fuel means more oil and gas will be needed from elsewhere – whether shale oil from the United States or additional gas from the North Sea. NATO becomes another justification, alongside the fiction of ‘net zero’, for fossil capital to continue business as usual while talking of a transition to clean energy.
The Scottish government has taken a principled position against the Russian attack on Ukraine and in favour of a more generous welcome for those fleeing the war. But it fails to identify NATO’s responsibility. As David Harvey has pointed out, Putin’s ’Great Russian’ chauvinism has been fed by three decades of humiliation at the hands of western imperialist powers. It cannot be understood apart from the years of neo-liberal shock therapy and the mendacious expansion of NATO. Despite its commitment to removing the British nuclear weapons arsenal situated at Faslane on the Clyde, the SNP has been committed to NATO membership since its 2012 Conference controversially reversed its previous opposition.
There is a parallel with the SNP government championing more solidarity with countries in the global south around climate change. On the one hand it tries to promote a fund to pay for the loss and damage they have already suffered from climate change, while remaining wedded to the narrative of ‘net zero’ that allows the fossil fuel industry to continue to extract oil and gas from the North Sea.
Among its other stark warnings, this latest IPCC report severely undermines the case for ‘net zero’, which invariably includes a projection of temporarily overshooting the critical limit of 1.5 degrees of global warming. It states, “Even temporarily exceeding this warming level will result in additional severe impacts, some of which will be irreversible.
The links between war, fossil fuels and climate change are not that difficult to see. As radical climate activist Daniel Tanuro explains in his summary of the IPCC report, that ecosocialist.scot publishing here,
we need to seize on the connection the scientists have made between the threat of climate change and inequality.
In Scotland that means building the movement for independence on a basis of climate justice in the fullest sense.
28 February 2021
Iain Bruce is a journalist and climate activist living in Glasgow.
Rising Clyde – new Scottish Environment Show, starts 7 March
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Following the success of the daily ‘Inside, Outside’ Climate Shows from Glasgow on YouTube during COP26 last November, Iain Bruce is presenting Rising Clyde, a new monthly Scottish Climate Show with interviews and discussion.
The first episode begins Monday 7 March at 7pm and is titled ‘After COP26: What Next for Scotland?“.
Women’s Climate Strike: Vigil and Rally March 7-8 in front of Scottish Parliament Edinburgh
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Women’s Climate Strike: Vigil and Rally
7pm on March 7th to 7pm on March 8th
In front of the Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh
International Women’s Day (IWD) is an international awareness day, celebrated annually on March 8 to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women. It is also a focal point in the women’s rights movement, bringing attention to issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women.
Women’s Climate Strike call all from around Scotland to gather with women & FINT (female, intersex, non-binary, trans) outside the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, for a ‘drop-in’ 24-hour vigil and rally for Climate & Nature.
Come and stand for the whole vigil or for couple of minutes (whatever you can manage); in solidarity with women and girls already being impacted disproportionately by climate chaos around the world.
Women are carrying the weight of the inaction and yet still we wait for meaningful action to be taken to avert the rapidly unfolding climate and environmental crisis.
We will wait no longer. We want a seat at the table and we want climate justice now!
The 24-hour ‘drop in’ vigil will take place from 7pm on 7th March to 7pm on the 8th March. We can come together, act as one, and have immense power during this International Women’s Day!!
In Edinburgh: there are these preparation activities:
Saturday, 26th and Sunday, 27th February: 11:00am to 1.00pm
Handing out flyers
Middle Meadow Walk, Edinburgh (in front of Sainsbury’s)
Saturday, 5th March: 1-5 pm
Art / banner / placard making
Out of the Blue Drill Hall, 36 Dalmeny St. (off Leith Walk) Facebook Event
If you want to be involved on March 7th or 8th, there are ways to support: as a Police Liaison, Legal Observer, or with the Wellbeing team.
If you are interested in taking part in these roles: reply to this or email selin.tekin.au@gmail.com.
All information reproduced from an appeal by XR Scotland
Oppose Russian Occupation – Solidarity with an Independent Ukraine!
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ecosocialist.scot joins the worldwide condemnation of the Russian occupation of Ukraine and declares its solidarity with the resistance and its support for an Independent Ukraine.
Below we are publishing statements by two Scottish organisations – from Colin Fox of the Scottish Socialist Party and from Lynn Jamieson of Scottish CND; both organisations support Scottish independence and are opposed to NATO and its nuclear weapons being based in Scotland. We also welcome the support given to the UK-wide Ukraine Solidarity Campaign by organisations such as Republican Socialists and call for affiliations and support from across the labour and independence movements in Scotland for this campaign. Finally in order to help our readers keep up with events in Ukraine from a radical and ecosocialist perspective we are providing a link to the English-language Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières (“Solidarity Europe”) website, which is compiling reports from the labour and radical movements across Europe and the globe on opposition to the Russian occupation. Further coverage of the situation in Ukraine and the solidarity movement will follow.
Statement on theRussian Invasion of Ukraine
Scottish CND unequivocally condemns Russia’s military actions in Ukraine and the threat to use nuclear weapons.
For the UK to apply the use of force, individually or through NATO, would escalate conflict and increase the likelihood of nuclear misadventure through weapons use or involving the15 nuclear power stations in Ukraine. We urge respect for international humanitarian and human rights law and accession, and compliance with international treaties to reduce nuclear weapons risks, including the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.The international community must stand united in ensuring that we protect and support civilians, and Scotland must strongly reject the violations of international law by Russia and the disregard for Ukraine’s sovereignty as an independent state.
Nuclear weapons do not deter conflict but make the world more dangerous, elevating the risk of a massive humanitarian catastrophe. We ask people in Scotland to help find ways of providing humanitarian support to the people of Ukraine and of enhancing dialogue with people in the Ukraine and Russia.
In response to the conflict in Ukraine, SSP National Co-Spokesperson Colin Fox has said:
“The Scottish Socialist Party felt it necessary to record our opposition to the developments that have taken place overnight in Ukraine.
“The country has been invaded.
“It’s necessary for us to put on record that we think that behaviour is reprehensible. It is utterly unacceptable for Russia to invade a sovereign country against the wishes of its people.
“It is an affront to the idea that nations like Ukraine are entitled to determine their own future.
“We call for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. We call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the fighting on all sides.
“We believe that the people of the region are entitled to peace, and we believe that a negotiated way forward has to provide for the security of everybody in the region.
“We do not support the behaviour of the Russian state. We support the rights of Ukrainian people to self-determination, as indeed we do for those in Scotland and elsewhere.
“We want to see international treaties to guarantee the right to live in peace and prosperity for everybody.
“That is the view that the Scottish Socialist Party puts forward today.”
The Scottish Socialist Party affirms its support for the right to self-determination for all nations, including Ukraine.
The Scottish Socialist Party reiterates that an independent Scotland should be free from the presence of Nuclear weapons, and that it should not be a member of NATO.
The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign https://ukrainesolidaritycampaign.org/ seeks to organise solidarity and provide information in support of the Ukrainian labour movement
Affiliate to the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign
If you would like more information about affiliating to USC contact us at: Ukraine Solidarity Campaign write to: USC c/o PO Box 2378, London, E5 9QU Email: ukrsocsolidarity@aol.com
Battle lines begin to be drawn in Scottish councils
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Over 50 trade union and community activists braved the storms to attend a protest outside the headquarters of Glasgow City Council, the Glasgow City Chambers in George Square, on 17 February writes Mike Picken for ecosocialist.scot.
The protest was against the budget setting meeting of Glasgow City Council and demanded ‘no cuts’ in council services and support for council workers pay demands in the face of a huge ‘cost of living’ crisis.
Among those attending and addressing the protests were representatives of Glasgow City council worker unions involved in pay disputes – Unite, Unison, GMB – alongside those involved in ‘Glasgow Against Closures’ community groups formed to fight the threatened cuts to the Council’s library, museums and leisure centres and other facilities.
The protest was also attended by representatives of the Universities and Colleges Union at nearby Strathclyde University, currently involved in a strike against university employers over pensions, pay, working conditions and casualisation.
The protest was both part of an ongoing campaign against current cuts and closure plans of the SNP-led Council and the first shots in a battle around council funding in the run-up to the major Scottish Council Elections on Thursday 5 May.
Scottish government has underfunded councils
The Scottish Government has underfunded Councils for a decade as priority has been given to those public services under the direct control of the Government. While it is true that under the current devolution settlement the Scottish Government has been allocated a cash-restricted budget and unlike the UK government is limited under devolution in its ability to raise taxes on the rich or increase borrowing to defend public services, the cuts imposed on Scottish council budgets by the SNP-led government are seriously damaging to Scotland’s working class and most deprived communities. Following the last council elections in 2017, for the first time ever no one party has a majority of control of any of Scotland’s 32 councils with every council having a hotch-potch of minority control or coalition governance. This makes it an easy target for cuts from a Scottish government that does not adequately challenge the UK government’s spending reductions.
Glasgow City Council faces a specific budget crisis due not only to the challenges of being Scotland’s largest city, one of the poorest localities in the UK, and the continuing impact of the Covid pandemic but also due to the ongoing costs of the settlement of the successful equal pay court action brought by unions against the previous Labour council. The SNP-led minority council took office in 2017, as Labour were unceremoniously booted out of office by voters after around 40 years of control. While the new SNP leadership promised to deal with the spiralling costs of the equal pay settlement, they have failed to either introduce an adequate new pay structures or defend council services from cuts. This has resulted in a strike ballot for those on the affected grades by three of the council’s unions – Unite, Unison, GMB – over the issue of a new pay structure. The ballot closes on 1 March and results will be expected shortly, but under the draconian UK government anti-union laws achieving the 50% turnout in a postal ballot in all three unions is a major challenge.
Glasgow community facilities face Council cuts
The SNP-led Glasgow City Council has also been strongly condemned for trying to save money by the closure of community facilities run by the Council’s subsidiary “Glasgow Life”, including local libraries and the iconic Glasgow Green and Peoples’ Palace. The Council’s budget approved at the meeting on 17 February includes as yet unclear cuts in services while “Glasgow Life” continues to try to transfer facilities to so-called community trusts, that are basically privatisation of public services. The budget for the council year from 1 April 2022 was passed by the City Council and includes cuts and a council tax rise of 3 percent. The Scottish Green Party councillors voted for the SNP budget. While Labour councillors claim to be against cuts, Labour’s legacy of 40 years running the City including underpaying women workers resulting in the biggest equal pay court victory in UK history hardly inspires confidence. Their argument that the SNP also voted for discriminatory pay structures introduced by the ruling Labour group is somewhat of an irrelevant diversion from their own leading role in discrimination against women and the mismanagement of the City’s finances. The ongoing battle to defend council facilities against budget cuts is being led by local groups who have united into the “Glasgow Against Closures” network. The battle against cuts and closures will continue.
Scottish Council Pay dispute continues
During 2021 bin workers in the GMB voted for industrial action over their national pay demands and local management of the service striking for a week during the COP26 conference in Glasgow. This resulted in some additional funding from the SNP Scottish Government, concerned at the global image of Glasgow being portrayed. In an important development those descending on Glasgow from the global climate justice movement, particularly Fridays for the Future activist Greta Thunberg, declared their solidarity with the bin workers and supported GMB picket lines. GMB members also marched on the Fridays for the Future demonstration in Glasgow during COP26 in an important display of solidarity for the struggles between climate justice and social justice. The underlying issues surrounding the bin worker strikes, however, have yet to be resolved.
While the national council workers’ pay claim for 2021 was eventually settled very late in the year, the pay claim from 1 April 2022 is still ongoing – council worker unions across Scotland are demanding a £3,000 per year pay rise and a minimum wage of £12 per hour to cope with the Tory cost of living crisis where inflation is now heading for around 7% and gas/electricity costs are heading through the roof. School teachers – members of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) union – have rejected the 2021-22 pay offer and demanded an improved offer; teachers are also drawing up demands for a 10% pay rise from 1 April 2022. While not employed by local councils, teachers in Scotland’s 26 Further Education Colleges are also balloting on strike action and the ongoing disputes over pay and pensions in Scotland’s 19 university institutions are still going on, with University and College Union (UCU) members engaging in strike action across Scotland. The opportunities for a united front by Scottish unions on public sector pay exist.
Crucial Council elections on 5 May
All this forms the backdrop for the Council elections on 5 May. While there will be national issues including the Tory UK government’s cost of living crisis and the battle for Scottish Independence, the elections will also highlight local issues over council finances and cuts. Despite being opposed to the main system for local financing, the Council Tax introduced by the Tories after mass opposition drove the Poll Tax into oblivion in 1991, the SNP have failed in their commitment to abolish the Council Tax and reform council financing despite 15 years of SNP Scottish Governments. Local council services have been increasingly centralised and controlled from Holyrood rather than locally while public finance to Councils has been cut in real terms. The SNP’s proposals for the much vaunted National Care Service is underfinanced and highly centralised. Action passed in legislation in 2019 to enable Scottish councils set up municipally-owned bus services has yet to see the light of day. While free bus travel has now been introduced for those 21 and under, the majority of the population face spiralling public transport costs including 3% fares rises and major service cuts on the ScotRail train network, due to be taken over shortly by the Scottish Government from the failing private operator Abellio. The case for free public transport across Scotland is now urgent as a response to both the climate and cost of living crises.
However there seems little chance of the major changes needed from the continuation of SNP-led governance at local and national level. Labour is ‘under new management’ from the Starmer-supporting Anas Sarwar, but in local politics seems largely to be just rhetorically opposing the SNP without any serious alternative or change from its austerity-driven past. Scottish Labour was during the 1990s the dominant party of Scottish local councils with over half the 1,200 councillors and control of two thirds of the 32 councils. Due to its opposition to Scottish self-determination, it now faces an ongoing and existential crisis among its membership and voters as it continues to languish in third place on around 20% having lost control of all its last remaining councils including Glasgow in 2017. The coalition administration of Labour in 2017 as junior partner with the despised Tories to run Aberdeen City Council was denounced by the Scottish Labour leadership at the time and the nine councillors ‘suspended’; but no further action was taken and the councillors have all been readmitted to the Party recently by its new leadership. The Daily Record has recently reported that the most senior Labour councillor in Scotland has declared her separation from the Party and will stand as an Independent.
The Scottish Greens have a foothold in both government and some local councils, but are not providing an alternative to the SNP. Those opposing the cuts and wanting to see serious change, including decent pay for council workers, need to look elsewhere – though there is little signs of any kind of major electoral alternative being posed across Scotland. The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) are expected to stand in eight of the 300+ wards across Scotland – including four wards in Glasgow and in Edinburgh, North Ayrshire and Renfrewshire – but that is half what they stood in 2017 and a long way short of the concerted national campaign needed. SSP candidates will be committed to opposing all cuts, supporting the council workers pay demands, abolishing the council tax, free public transport and other aspects of a genuine Red-Green opposition to the Tories at Westminster and the SNP at Holyrood.
It remains to be seen whether a serious electoral opposition can emerge during these elections but the battles in support of unions and community campaigns must go on.
26 February 2022
Scottish Socialist Party is standing in four Glasgow wards in the local elections, calling for defiance of cuts and support for action
Glasgow City Unison members are among those being balloted for industrial action over equal pay
Unite members join forces with UCU strikers in Glasgow
Striking UCU workers at Strathclyde University address Glasgow Council protests