News Updates

2010 Mini-manifesto – For An Independent Socialist Scotland

On May 6th voters will be offered a dismal choice of cuts, sackings and wars by politicians tainted by corruption, duck houses and other expenses fiddling.

All three Westminster parties are in a race to see who can make the deepest cuts while the SNP wring their hands and blame London.

They all recommend cuts to vital public services which will hit the most vulnerable hardest and directly threaten the jobs of 100,000 Scottish workers.

In contrast the unequivocal message from the Scottish Socialist Party is that there is an alternative which avoids cuts and insists instead that the greedy pay for the disaster they created, that also ends our involvement in the Afghan war and offers jobs and justice not misery and war.

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SSP’s 10 seat election challenge puts Labour and SNP front benchers in its sights

The 2010 General Election will see the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) contest the seats of Chancellor Alistair Darling in Edinburgh South West, Overseas Development Secretary Douglas Alexander in Paisley and Renfrewshire South, one SNP front bencher, Stewart Hosie, in Dundee East alongside the Livingston seat previously held by suspended Labour MP Jim Devine, in a campaign covering 10 constituencies across Scotland.

In contrast to the discredited expenses system which has so revolted the public all our SSP candidates will be standing on a platform of only accepting a skilled worker’s wage not the lottery winners lifestyle of current MPs.

These contests mean that the SSP will challenge two key figures involved in Labour’s cuts and war policies–Chancellor Darling in Edinburgh and Overseas Development Secretary Douglas Alexander in Paisley.

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Tartan profiteers caught red-handed!

richie96by Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organiser

The SNP government has been caught with their hands in the taxpayers’ till, dipping into public funds to bail out a multi-millioned strike-breaking company that wants to endanger the safety of its workers and the public!

During the current strikes by First Scotrail guards/conductors, against the imposition of Driver Only trains, the RMT union met with SNP Transport Secretary Stewart Stevenson. He assured the union their case was well-founded, that the £300,000 cost of putting guards on the new Airdrie/Bathgate line is negligible within the overall £30m budget.

But now it has been proven the SNP government agreed to Driver Only trains a full year ago.

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Striking for safety on the railways

richie96by Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organiser

The first 24-hour strike by Rail Maritime and Transport union members who work as guards/conductors on Scotrail was a resounding success. These guards/conductors are standing up for public safety – as well as jobs and the threatened erosion of the ‘rate for the job’ – against First Scotrail’s attempts to introduce Driver Only trains on the new Edinburgh-Glasgow via Bathgate/Airdrie line.

As we have described in detail previously, this is safety-wrecking by penny-pinching profiteers, who could afford to hand out £18million in dividends to their shareholders last year, but refuse to spend £300,000 to hire 32 guards to make these trains safe and secure for the travelling public.

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Vote ‘Yes’ in national strike ballot against Royal Mail bully-boys

by Richie Venton

Royal Mail workers are currently balloting for a national strike, after several months of local and regional stoppages, both officially balloted-for actions and ‘unofficial’ walkouts.

Anger has been boiling at a range of attacks on jobs, terms and conditions, workloads, pension rights, and the services delivered to the public. Attacks conducted by overpaid, arrogant Royal Mail top brass, but egged on by the even more overpaid and arrogant Labour Minister Lord Mandelson.

An element of petty revenge peppers the bully-boy brutality of the cuts being pushed by these people; revenge being sought for the union campaign that defeated plans by Mandelson to privatise Royal Mail earlier this year.

The multiple forms of attack that has raised workers’ anger to boiling point are undoubtedly aimed at breaking the strength of the union,

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SSP supports postal workers strike

by Richie Venton

The Scottish Socialist Party is in full support of the thousands of postal workers who are staging strike action and other protests on Friday 17th July, in anger at arbitrary cuts to staffing levels and service levels to the public.

These cuts are being imposed by Royal Mail bosses in flagrant breach of the 2007 Pay and Modernisation Agreement, signed after strike action that year.

Delivery Ofices and Mail Centres in Edinburgh and East/Central Scotland will walk out, as will Irvine posties the next day. This is part of a growing groundswell of strikes across the UK, with 400 other offices requesting ballots for strike action.

High-and-mighty Royal Mail bosses are imposing cuts to staff and services;

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Edinburgh binmen refuse to lift £70 a week less as council demands cuts

by Colin Fox

The Scottish Socialist Party received a call from David Cameron last week.

But this wasn’t the David Cameron born with a silver spoon in his mouth who went to Eton or votes Tory.

He is a bin man with Edinburgh City Council and has been for 21 years.

David contacted us to ask for help after the Council’s SNP / Liberal administration informed him and 600 of his collegaues their pay was to be ‘modernised’, by chopping £3,000 a year from it.

Bin men like David earn £16,000 including bonuses. Management aims to take £70 per week off them.

Council leaders insist the cuts are necessary if they are to implement the ‘single status’

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Thatcher’s legacy kept alive by Brown

by Ken Ferguson

Amidst all the warm words marking the 30th anniversary of Thatcher’s 1979 election victory one thing is certain—the New Labour government is her greatest admirer and direct descendant.

At the heart of the New Labour project lies its complete rejection of any Socialist politics and endorsement of the Thatcherite view worshiping the free market and the rich.

So after twelve years of majority New Labour government we still have the most repressive anti union laws in Europe, a growing gulf between rich and poor and a government wholly at the service of big business.

That’s why lifeboats loaded with billions have been dashing to the rescue of the bankers who not only steered the financial Titanic into the iceberg but actually created the iceberg itself.

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