By Richie Venton, SSP National Trade Union Organiser
This piece was originally published with some abridgements in The National Newspaper (10/11/2026)
For years, people often responded to my condemnation of the capitalist system and all its atrocities with the comment “you’re right, but nothing’s ever going to change. Nobody’s prepared to do anything about it”.
Such pessimism has been challenged by mass movements in recent weeks, embracing millions of people on every continent.
Young people and organised workers have risen to challenge the collapsing state of public services; governments of all stripes issuing austerity cuts; the galloping trend to national war economies, with military expenditure displacing public services and Social Security benefits. These millions have also challenged the growth of hyperscale data centres and the broader existential threat of climate catastrophe.
Millions rise across every continent
It was millions of young people and workers demonstrating on the streets and beaches of Brazil which boosted Lula’s vote by 10 million compared to the first round of the presidential election, stopping Bolsonaro junior, who was backed by Trump, Netanyahu, Big Tech billionaires and Brazilian capital.
Across Europe, it’s often students and young people who first demonstrated, but that has encouraged strikes and general strikes by millions of workers against governments of neoliberal capitalism – regardless of whether it’s parties of the so-called “centre”, far right or misnamed social democrats.
We’ve witnessed multi-million-strong movements against the collapsing state of education, housing, health services and workers’ wages as governments concentrate on national war economies.
Demonstrations in opposition to war and arms sales to Israel, including coordinated strikes by workers in 115 ports in 20 countries.
No continent has been left untouched by this new stormy period of mass upheavals against austerity, profiteering, corruption, forever wars, and the accelerating climate catastrophe, turbocharged by Big Tech billionaires and their hyperscale data centres.
That includes the thumping defeat of Trump in the mid-term elections, and simultaneous votes against hyperscale data centres, where 40 out of 41 referenda voted against them.
Will Labour or SNP adjust to these movements?
Surely in times like these, major UK and Scottish political parties which lay claim to being “progressive” can feel the winds of change and – even if only for cynically opportunist, vote-grabbing reasons – pivot towards anti-capitalist policies and measures? Not so!
We have a Burnham Labour government which spins the yarn they are “ending 40 years of neoliberalism” but re-dedicate themselves to “strict fiscal rules” which inevitably means cuts to public services.
They are gearing up for an assault on the incomes particularly of sick, disabled, or neurodivergent young people – alongside dismantling the triple lock to the state pension, as they swing from welfare to warfare.
Labour stands on the wrong side of history, as mass movements erupt world-wide against the same policies and capitalist system they preside over.
SNP turn sharp right
What about the SNP?
Surely they can read the opinion polls showing overwhelming support for measures like a wealth tax on millionaires and the grotesquely rich, and public ownership of services including health, education, transport, housing, etc?
In a spectacular display of being married to the interests of the capitalist 1% – but completely out of tune with the popular will of millions already on display a few hundred miles away – the SNP have swung decisively to the right.
Let me highlight just some features of this increasingly capitalist agenda from a party which in the past sometimes dared define itself as “social democratic”.
A coded version of “drill, baby, drill!”
Scientists almost unanimously agree no more fossil fuels can be extracted if we are to avoid climate meltdown, on a planet already on the brink of the point of no return, with Scotland’s two hottest years on record being 2024 and 2026.
Instead of a serious programme of investment in publicly owned renewable energy production and distribution – which research shows could create at least three new green jobs for every one lost in the fossil fuel industry – the SNP have pivoted to a coded version of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” philosophy.
They’ve condemned Labour’s windfall tax on the multinational Big Polluters, like BP and Shell.
They oppose Labour’s tentative moves towards a ban on new North Sea oilfields, with John Swinney stating: “there is a rational basis for considering oil and gas developments if these deliver lower carbon emissions than imported oil and gas.”
That is nonsense on several counts.
What is drilled in the North Sea isn’t sent into Scottish households or businesses; it becomes part of global market supplies. Household energy prices are fixed to global gas prices. And up to 90% of the climate-polluting emissions from fossil fuels do not occur in their extraction, but in their usage; their being burnt.
So regardless of where oil and gas is drilled, that will neither cut energy bills to Scottish households nor reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the ensuing climate chaos.
Hyperscale data centres
Another source of pollution and savage attacks to the lived environment of Scotland’s people are hyperscale data centres.
Twenty-three of these monstrosities are seeking planning permission. Experts have shown they would spew out 14 million tonnes of new climate pollution every year – 208 million tonnes by 2045. That’s over half the Scottish government’s “climate budget” for the next 20 years. All to produce AI slop, under the ownership of the Big Tech billionaires.
Communities across Scotland are rightly up in arms against hyperscale monstrosities which devour vast volumes of land, water and energy, and threaten contamination of water courses, 24/7 noise pollution, increased electricity bills for households… and don’t even offer the feeble excuse of creating noticeable numbers of permanent jobs.
The Duke of Roxborough wants to build a 225MW data centre in the Borders, spread across 151 hectares – that’s equivalent to at least 110 football pitches!
This one 24-metre-high data centre threatens to spew out as much pollution as the entire city of Dundee. The Chapelcross one in Dumfries and Galloway would consume 25% of Scotland’s entire electricity supply and produce as much climate-wrecking emissions as the entire NHS.
In a clear display of whose side they are on, the SNP government rejected a moratorium on these hyperscale data centres, with several government ministers and SNP MSPs explaining, ”we don’t want to scare off international investors”.
They want to prostate themselves at the feet of Big Tech billionaires, invite them into Scotland to steal our land, water, energy – and further pollute the environment – instead of standing up for the well-being of the Scottish people.
SNP’s Wealth Fund fantasy
The SNP have talked of a Wealth Fund from a network of data centres, which is sheer fantasy. At most, they might get a few taxes on these super-sized computer warehouses, unless the billionaire owners dodged even that, or set up shop in a Scottish government ‘freeport’!
SNP Technology Minister, Alyn Smith, has sneered with contempt at well-informed communities, accusing them of Luddite opposition to progress, “opposing the lightbulb as a dangerous anti-candle device.”
It is no mere coincidence that the SNP this week announced they will remove “the right to a healthy environment” from its proposed Scottish Human Rights Bill.
The Scottish Socialist Party have published this pamphlet to provide socialist solutions to the climate crisis – ‘Socialist Change, Not Climate Change’ arms readers with the arguments that the Swinney and the SNP don’t have the political courage to make
Adherence to capitalism incompatible with a clean, green Scotland
The SNP’s surrender to the interests of fossil capitalism and Big Tech is incompatible with building a clean, green Scotland.
For that we need democratic public ownership – with workers’ and community control of decisions and elected boards of management – of all forms of energy, public transport, construction, banking and technologies, including AI.
That’s the only basis to plan for the needs of people and our planet, as opposed to letting capitalist behemoths maraud the land for profit, regardless of the economic and ecological chaos they create.
For democratic public ownership with workers’ control
Instead of rattling the begging bowl under the noses of multinationals, seeking inward investment to the Scottish economy, a socialist government would use democratic public ownership as the means to
democratically plan and control what is produced, according to the priorities demanded by communities. But the SNP is not a socialist government; to be fair, the SNP have never claimed to be a socialist party.
By your deeds ye shall be known!
Instead, the SNP plan austerity cuts to up to 20,000 public sector jobs; wash their hands of responsibility in universities where government underfunding and grotesque mismanagement by overpaid bosses slash jobs and education; refuse to implement their 2007 election promise to scrap the Council Tax, or implement the SSP’s progressive income-based Scottish Service Tax, which in 2023/4 would have raised an additional £3 billion for jobs and services; and deploy the Tory weapon of fire-and-rehire against 24,000 Glasgow city council workers (with the collaboration of the Scottish Green Party councillors), only retreating in the face of a ferocious backlash from workers throughout the city.
In common with Labour, the SNP might reject the accusation of being devotees of neo-liberalism. But they will be judged – harshly – by their deeds and policy utterances.
And their charge to the right undermines the case for Scottish independence, as it repels many in the working class, who are key to winning self-government.
Mass socialist party urgently needed
All this underlines the urgent necessity of building a mass socialist party. One which stands up for people, not profit, reaching out in common cause with the millions already in revolt internationally, as we strive for a clean, green, independent socialist Scotland, as part of the struggle for socialist change worldwide.
Read more from the SSP in The National: