Emancipation & Liberation, Issue 15, Autumn 2007 Setback or disaster: Can the SSP survive?, Mary McGregor The SNP’s ‘National Conversation’ prepares the ground for reform of the Union, Allan Armstrong Consensus politics or an unprincipled lash-up?, Bob Davies Past mustn’t stand in way of future Irish election: Downturn in workers struggle means Teflon Bertie rides…
Lyrical Delicacy and Political Toughness
Allan Armstrong interviews socialist activist and poet, Jim Aitken, about his life, politics and works. Could you please give us some background information about your life? I was born and raised in Edinburgh. My mother was from Wick, one of a family of six. She left Wick to work in service in London. She never…
What Socialists Stand For
Scottish Socialist Youth Review by Andrew Weir Available from: scottishsocialistyouth@hotmail.co.uk for The Scottish Socialist Youth (SSY) have put together the pamphlet What Socialists Stand For, adapted from a similar pamphlet published by the Democratic Socialist Perspective in Australia, to serve as an introduction to socialist politics. The idea is a very good one; a pamphlet-length…
To Tame the City
Grzegorz (Greg) Rybak is Polish worker currently living in Edinburgh. He stood as the SSP candidate for the Leith Ward in the City of Edinburgh Council elections this year. To tame the city Sitting on a bicycle With the speed of the wind I wend my way through the city Trying to tame the new…
Internationalist Spirit
Allan Armstrong reviews two albums, which address the world of migrant workers – dispossession and discrimination, longing and hope, oppression and resistance. The Road of Tears Battlefield Band, £9.50 Battlefield Band released their 26th album, The Road of Tears, last year. The theme is emigration and immigration. The album makes the link between the experience…
It’s a Free World
Channel 4 showed Ken Loach’s latest film, It’s A Free World on September 24th 2007. We are reprinting this review by Corinna Lotz from ‘A World to Win’ website. It’s a Free World follows the director’s earlier feature about the Irish war of independence, The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Producer Rebecca O’Brian and writer…
May Day: Marching in the footsteps of immigrant workers
From an article in the US radical newsletter Dissident Voice (1.5.07) by Sharat G Lin Over 1.5 million people took part in May Day demonstrations in 2006 in what amounted to one of the single largest days of protest in US history. Many also participated in a general strike by refusing to conduct business, go…
No One Is Illegal
Affiliation to the No One is Illegal Campaign is to be debated at the SSP Conference on October. The attitude an organisation takes towards the rights of migrant workers throughout the world defines whether it is international socialist or merely national labourist. We are publishing the first chapter of NOII’s pamphlet, Workers Control Not Immigration…
Beggar
They all have their stories. This one, young and ageing, says that his stepfather was ‘a brutal bastard.’ And in those greying eyes that have seen far too much I can still sense the child whose world went upside down. But this lad has moved on, now dreams of survival on the harsh, concrete street…
Homelessness- Who Really Cares?
The experiences of a worker with the homeless in the voluntary sector The city of origin and writer’s name have been withheld because of the likelihood that the writer will lose their job if identified. For the last 2 years I have been a support worker in a Homeless Hostel, and I have observed first…