WORD POWER – “A veritable flea market of books and ideas” Allan Armstrong interviews Elaine Henry who set up the Word Power bookshop in Edinburgh, Scotland’s only independent Left and radical bookshop Why did you decide to set-up Word Power? I’d been a volunteer in the women’s bookshop, Womanzone, and was aware of other radical…
White Pete
To give it this obscene nickname is to make it seem attractive and much less harmful than it is like calling cocaine simply ‘ coke’ or the atom bomb ‘ Little Boy’ to render the screams of children the impotence of their parents their frantic hope for remedy without mention whatsoever and to still light…
Book review: The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party
Colm Breatnach of the Irish Socialist Network and Scottish Socialist Party, reviews, bestselling, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers Party, by Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, published by Penguin. Over a decade before the SSP, the Workers Party built up working class support which enabled it to win seven…
Notes from Copenhagen
A socialist perspective on climate change Eric Chester and Susan Dorazio, two comrades from the Socialist Party of the USA visited Scotland recently, lived in Glasgow and joined the Maryhill branch of the SSP. They became very involved in the party’s activities and debates, as well as making new friends. Here we print Eric’s thoughts…
The North must have its own inquiry into child sex abuse
Bernadette McAliskey speaks out against child abuse in the Six Counties. This article first appeared in the Irish News, 20th January 2010. As a matter of urgency — before this pretence of a democratic, secular and modern administration unravels itself in abject disgrace, it needs to exercise its responsibility for protection of children and young…
John Venables – The lynch mob and our ‘broken society’
Adam Ford of The Commune tackles the media hysteria over the Jon Venables affair In 1993, two year old James Bulger from Kirkby near Liverpool was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten year olds, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The horrific case provoked understandable revulsion from the general public. Politicians gleefully seized on it…
Campaign to fight the Blacklist and to support Brian Higgins
Brian Higgins is Secretary of the construction workers’ union, UCATT branch in Northampton, and a prominent member of the rank and file, Building Worker group. He was sent a copy of a 49 page file, which The Consulting Association had on him. It dates back to 1976 and goes on till December 2006. He is…
The Alberto Durango Campaign
David Broder of the UBS Cleaners Defence Campaign outlines the problems faced by migrant workers when they try to organise On February 12th almost a hundred people demonstrated outside Swiss bank UBS’s London headquarters in protest at the victimisation of Alberto Durango. A Colombian migrant worker, Alberto was sacked by cleaning company Lancaster almost as…
Tibet – A country suffering from Chinese imperial repression
Rod MacGregor of Dundee SSP puts the case for Tibetan self-determination. The Indian town of McLeod Ganj takes its very Scottish sounding name from a British military officer, having been a garrison town during British rule in India. Though it is now over six decades since the British state gave up its imperial ambitions in…
Business as usual for Israeli Apartheid
David Landy, chair of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign writing in a personal capacity for the Spring 2010 issue of Resistance, the bulletin of the Irish Socialist Network When Barack Obama was elected, he made many pledges about bringing peace to Israel/Palestine, and there was some hope he would end the Bush Doctrine of supporting…