The Politics of Disability

Why is disability a question for socialists and what issues does it raise for us as socialists? Well, you only need to look at the Disability Rights Section of the SSP manifesto to answer these questions: There are about 800,000 disabled people in Scotland. 68 % of households with a disabled person have an Income…

Loyalist reaction the dominant theme at the Social Democratic and Labour Party deathbed

Andrew Johnson and John McAnulty examine the Euro election results in the North of Ireland. (Reprinted from Socialist Democracy website) Anyone seeking to understand the outcome of the European elections in the North of Ireland must first of all understand the extent to which the mix of colonialism, partition and sectarianism dominate local politics and…

Welsh election results

Mike Davies gives his views on the council and Euro-elections in Wales Ten candidates for the Welsh Euro-election seats left the two left parties squeezed badly. Forward Wales, whose lead candidate Ron Davies surprisingly failed to gather much in the way of media attention, polled 17,000 votes (1.9%) fairly evenly across the country. Respect polled…

European Anti Capitalist Left Manifesto

Anti Capitalist Manifesto for a Different Europe: social and democratic, feminist and ecologist, peaceful and in solidarity. (The EACL manifesto for the June 10 Euro elections.) February 15, 2003, was a historic date: tens of millions of people, all around the world, demonstrated to stop the war. Moreover, these unprecedented mobilisations show a strong political…

Republican alternative to royal pantomime

The Scottish Socialist Party Group in the Scottish Parliament met at the end of the last session of the Parliament to consider what attitude our MSP’s should take to the official opening of the new Parliament by the Queen on October 9 this year. Our group decided unanimously to boycott the event. We believe that…

Torture, Rape, Murder….It’s the American Way

Matt Siegfried exposes the systematic abuse of Iraqi prisoners as an extension of the US penal system. This article originally appeared in Fourthwrite (see p27). The photographs of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners have become symbols of American conceit, American hypocrisy and brutality. The folly of the Iraq adventure seems to be summed up by…

The role of platforms in the Scottish Socialist Party – Why are the RCN a platform?

Platforms, tendencies, factions – call them what you will – exist in all organisations, not just in political parties. Sometimes they are suppressed (by the controlling and usually undeclared, leadership faction, of course), sometimes they are tolerated and occasionally they are welcomed. This article argues that not only are platforms inevitable, but that they are…