Colin Fox speaks to Allan Armstrong about the vision and mission of the Edinburgh People’s Festival What made you revive the Edinburgh Peoples Festival after almost 50 years? We didn’t start off with the intention of reviving the Edinburgh Peoples Festival (EPF). At Hamish Henderson’s funeral in 2002, a group of us, including Bill Scott,…
Half truths, mistruths and anything but the truth— a brief history of a century of wartime propaganda
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. —Voltaire The government of the United States had a major problem. It was April 1917, and on the sixth day of that month, eager to get into the First World War, they declared war on Germany. Their big problem was this. Although the…
Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People –What does it stand for?
When the RCN used the image of the bare-breasted Liberty from the iconic Delacroix painting as a front cover for our pamphlet, Republicanism, Socialism and Democracy, this provoked a debate in the SSP. Catriona Grant, leading socialist feminist, and member of SSP Edinburgh no 2 branch contributes to the debate. Why are Liberty’s breasts bared…
Clearances
From Dornoch we moved further north not as north as where she was born but north enough to understand; to understand her returning She sat there beneath the sculpture Of ‘The Emigrants’ at Helmsdale, Moved by the woman looking back To the strath that was once her home. For she too had to leave here…
Letter From A Contract Worker
I wanted to write you a letter my love, a letter that would tell of this desire to see you of this fear of losing you of this more than benevolence that I feel of this indefinable ill that pursues me of this yearning to which I live in total surrender… I wanted to write…
Latinos: The US Election And The Immigrant Rights Struggle
Dave Moore, a socialist in the US, reports on what an Obama administration means for immigrants’ rights. This is an updated version of an article Dave wrote for Red Banner. In the spring of 2006, immigrant uprisings swept across the United States, sparked by a vicious bill to criminalize undocumented workers. In city after city,…
Blame the bosses not ‘foreign workers’
The SWP gained some notoriety on the Left when it came out against Opposition to all immigration controls in the pre-split Respect. Now, no longer bound by Galloway’s Left British Unionism, Socialist Worker published the following useful contribution to the debate. Millions of working people across Britain are fearful and angry at the mounting economic…
Brown’s Appeal To British Chauvinism
Mary McGregor highlights the dangers to the working class movement of Brown’s speech to the TUC. I remember hearing the report of Gordon Brown’s speech to the TUC in 2007 and the phrase British jobs for British workers. As someone who has tried to fight the rise of nationalism, chauvinism and fascism all my adult…
Hands Off The People of Iran: Campaign Update
Hands Off the People of Iran (Hopi) is an anti-war, anti-imperialist organisation which organises in solidarity with democratic, secular and socialist working-class forces in Iran. It believes that, while regime change is desirable in Iran (as it is in the western imperialist countries), this must come from the Iranian people and working class itself and…
Isolate ‘Apartheid’ Israel
Nick Clarke analyses the latest stages of Israel’s war on the Palestinians and the role of the solidarity movement As the media spotlight on Israel’s latest re-invasion and brutal bombardment of Gaza begins to dim, the Israeli state’s punishment of the Palestinian people continues. The explicit aims of the new year invasion were to stop…