Welcome to Scottish Communists
SPRING CONFERENCE :: SCOTLAND: WHAT WAY TO ECONOMIC SELF DETERMINATION?
THE WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT IN AUSTRALIA
CPB Scotland Election Statement
The Communist election campaign (the first in nearly 40 years in Clydebank) produced 94 votes, 2.9% of the vote beating the Tory candidate. Over a two week period 6000 leaflets were delivered by a small team of communists, a public meeting was held, and a limited amount of canvassing was carried out. The aim was to re establish the branch in the area and this is now a distinct possibility with a number of expressions of interest in the Party. Election agent George Kirkpatrick and candidate Tom Morrison thanked comrades for their help in the campaign.
The Communist Party welcomed the Labour victories and the heavy defeats for the Con Dems which showed people rejected the working class paying for the capitalist crisis. However with around 60% of people not seeing any point in voting it shows the extent of the job that needs to be done to lift the political level.
Mass struggle will need to be conducted on the ground, building alliances between communities and trades unions with trades councils taking the lead. Failure to develope such struggle to compel councils to join the fight against the cuts will result in local authorities, be it Labour or SNP, merely passing on the Tory cuts the loss of jobs and services for working class communities and further disillusionment with politics. We need to make the point that the cuts are just starting, there is more, much more to come. Communists will play their part in building the fightback of the left and putting the alternative of socialism to that of a corrupt capitalist system which has nothing to offer the working class other than hardship and misery
Glasgow May Day 2012
Irvine May Day supports the People’s Charter.
Speaking at Saturday’s May Day rally in Irvine, The RMT’s Phil McGarry was applauded as he stated the aims of the People’s Charter http://www.thepeoplescharter.org/– an end to cuts in public services, investment in jobs, public ownership of the railways and other utilities, and the repeal of anti-union laws. Decent jobs and services could be funded by genuine progressive taxation, dealing with tax avoiders and bringing the troops home. His call for making the rich pay their dues was echoed by Louise McDaid of the Farepak campaign. She said that ‘the rogue Farepak’s former Directors should be made to pay. Just being banned from future Directorships was not good enough. No one had received any compensation to date while the fees for the Farepak’s administration had risen to more than £8 millions. This is much more than the thousands of victims will ever receive.”
John Jamieson of the PCS said that his members were facing pension cuts as the Government did cosy deals with tax dodging companies. “It’s rank hypocrisy for the UK government to pursue the ordinary people of Iceland for £2 billions when it has let Vodafone off a £6 billion tax bill”, he said.
Wael Shawish from Palestine Solidarity spoke of the struggle in his homeland: “East Jerusalem had become a prison with an open door, Palestinians had a choice to stay in terrible conditions or to leave and never return”. He called for the sanction campaign against Israel’s policies to be stepped up. The issue was brought home when local man Jim Henry spoke of his abusive treatment by the Israel authorities during a recent solidarity visit to Palestine.