The Party of Scotland’s Working-Class Fighters

The three pillars of the SSP are class struggle, class solidarity, and socialism.

The SSP has been the party of Scotland’s working-class fighters since 1998. We are a class-based political party – a socialist political party. That means we fight for the rights and needs of working-class people.

Working-class people have power. Without workers, simply nothing can get done. Workers programme and maintain the machines, drive the trains, and keep supply lines flowing. Workers deliver education, deliver newborns, and deliver dinner.

We can use that power to demand and win improvements for working-class people – higher pay, better conditions, a greater share of the fruits of working-class labour, and even completely transform the world around us for the better. But, working-class people have to organise first.

We are a party of activists, not just commentators; workers from the same communities and workplaces as the people we fight for and fight with, not career politicians. The SSP doesn’t have billionaire backers or big corporate donors – and we don’t want them. We only rely on maintaining the support of working-class people and the contributions of members.

The Scottish Socialist Party has a proud and proven record of standing up for the working-class in Scotland. With socialist representation, and with a party of working-class fighters, everybody benefits.

In the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Socialist Party MSPs introduced progressive legislation to ban poindings and warrant sales, to end prescription charges, and to deliver free school meals to every pupil in Scotland. We pioneered radical arguments for drug decriminalisation, free public transport, and bold solutions to fuel poverty twenty years before the SNP, Greens, and Labour realised the SSP were right all along.

Plus, we did this all while keeping our promise that MSPs would not be paid more than the average worker they represent. We rise with our class, not out of it.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the SSP were the first in Scotland to call for full sick pay for workers. We’re fighting now for real action to end fuel poverty in Scotland, and to end the cost of living crisis by ending rampant profiteering and raising the incomes of working-class people to beat inflation.

The SSP opposes all public spending cuts – and rejects the “Punch-and-Judy” show played out every year between parties, and between local, devolved, and Westminster governments, which always leave working-class communities worse off. The SSP fights for a No Cuts Budget in defiance of discredited austerity.

We don’t just go along to picket lines to support striking workers. SSP members stand shoulder-to-shoulder with workers in the fight for pay, jobs, conditions, and public services – putting forward socialist demands, helping unite the fight across trade unions and workplaces, and demanding more from trade union leaders and the STUC. We work to empower and develop working-class fighters. The SSP is proud of its role in workers’ struggles.

The need for a fighting socialist party of the working-class is greater than ever – and that’s the role of the Scottish Socialist Party.

The SSP works collaboratively with other parties and campaigners on common issues – like on fighting capitalism’s climate crisis, in defence of jobs and working conditions, and in building Scottish independence. However, we don’t have confidence in the Greens, Labour, or the SNP delivering changes that working-class people need most or that they’ll stand with workers fighting for those demands.

Labour and the SNP taking the side of capitalists and status quo when working-class people most need change. The Scottish Socialist Party is a party of working-class fighters that demands change.

The Scottish Socialist Party is here to build independent, working-class political power. Working-class people need a working-class party, and socialists belong in a socialist party – not in parties of bosses, knights, peers, and millionaires.

Every time our activists participates in our campaigning, we are investing in the future, sowing the seeds of socialism, and building the independent political power of working-class people.