As winter creeps, in students and staff at Edinburgh schools and nurseries have learned
of the chilling news that their places of learning and work places may be under
threat once again. The Edinburgh Evening News reported on the thirtieth of
October that Edinburgh Council intended to reopen a consultation process that
would look into the future of schools. It also listed seventeen schools and
nurseries that it expected to be earmarked for the process.
In May 2004, we reported Scotland’s worst ever industrial disaster when the
Stockline plastics factory in Glasgow exploded leaving 9 dead and 40 injured.
It was another searing indictment of breaches in Health & Safety
legislation, now a matter of course in Britain. Ex-employees told journalists
they had been sacked after raising concerns about safety. The 2 companies jointly responsible, ICL Tech and
ICL Plastics, faced only charges relating to Health & Safety, for which they have now been
fined a measly £400,000.
While the Blairites are licking their wounds after last week's elections results, the results of the Scottish Socialist Party and Solidarity in Scotland and the Socialist Party in England should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that sectarian politics is a dead end.
On April 16th, "senior Labour sources" briefed the Financial Times that they "fear a drubbing" in Scotland. What we are witnessing is a rejection of the New Labour project which rejected class politics as outdated.
This Thursday May 3rd, Scotland goes to the polls. With capitalism red in tooth and claw and public services cut to the bone, people's needs are at odds with parliamentarians actions. Policies and programmes benefiting ordinary people and the poor, the sick, pensioners and students are difficult to find. What developments can we expect in this Thursday's elections? A grim reminder of the ultimate failure of Blairism and the policies it represents.
The mood for change in Scotland, the discontent Scottish people have for Westminster and Holyrood, is finding its expression in the rise in support for the Scottish Nationalist Party. However, the supplantation of bourgeois rule from London by a capitalist class closer to home will do nothing to change the fundamental conditions of ordinary working people.
In the light of recent developments in the Scottish
Socialist Party (SSP) we are publishing a document written by Ted Grant back in
1992 which already outlined the roots of the present crisis in the SSP. Ted
explained that the concessions the leaders of the then SML (later to become
SSP) were making to Scottish nationalism would lead to a disaster. Time has
proven him correct.
There is more news emerging from the crisis within the Scottish
Socialist Party every day. This article was received a few days ago and
appears in the new issue of Socialist Appeal.
The crisis in the
Scottish Socialist Party hit the news when judge Lady Smith jailed SSP policy
co-ordinator, Alan McCombes, for 12 days on May 26th, after he
continually refused to hand over the minutes of a meeting from November 2004.
This was the latest in a series of crises which has stretched the party almost
to breaking point.
The Scottish Socialist Party, once heralded by many on the left as the
most successful socialist experiment in recent times, is in the process
of tearing itself apart after sacking its founder and leader Tommy
Sheridan as the party’s convener. Officially he is now simply a
“backbencher”.