SSY events often end with burnt effigies of David Cameron

Tomorrow SSY will be hosting our annual conference in Glasgow, where we vote on motions, elect internal positions, and take part in a variety of workshops. It takes place in the Kinning Park Complex, 40 Cornwall Street, right beside Kinning Park underground station on the Southside of Glasgow, from 12 noon to 6pm. It’s a great way to get involved in SSY and meet new, like-minded fellow socialists in Scotland.

If you’re travelling from outside Glasgow and are unsure about travelling there alone or aren’t sure how to get there, SSY members will be meeting new members outside the main glass entrance to Buchanan Street underground station, on Buchanan Street (a 5 minute walk from Buchanan bus station and Central station, and 1 minute from Queens Street station) at 11.30am to get the underground together. Try not to be late as we have a packed agenda with some really interesting things going on, but if you can’t be there from the start or all day don’t feel shy to come along as there will be plenty to get involved with once you get there.

The finalised agenda for the day’s activities is as follows:

12 – 12.30 – Introductions
12.30 – 1.10 – ‘Current issues for socialists’ introductory workshop
1.10 – 2.10 – Choice of 2 workshops – ‘Public transport, why we need it, and why it should be free’ or ‘Independence and socialism: what we can learn from the Basque Country’
2.10 – 2.55 – Lunch break
3 – 4 – Banner making session
4 – 5 – ‘Blogging for beginners:  Contributing to SSY’s blog and learning to write politically’
5 – 6 – Motions to conference, elections for internal posts such as National Executive Committee of SSY
6 – all night – Hard partying.

There will also be a short women’s group meeting following the conference.

The conference is open to all young socialists/anti-capitalists/anti-racists/interested general lefties aged 26 and under. You can join SSY for just £1 for a year’s membership at the conference, and learn about what we’ll be up to in the coming months like our drugs demo and Camp Secret Squirrel

If you’re travelling from outside Glasgow and need a place to stay or instructions on how to get there you can email us at scottishsocialistyouth@hotmail.co.uk or contact Liam M on 07923589493.

Tory Chancellor George Osbourne is coming to get you

It’s started: finally secure in their position of power, the Tories, with the support of the sell out Lib Dems, have declared war on the working class.

Today, the government announced it will hold an emergency budget on June 22nd. But, in an attempt to pre-empt the fightback, the ConDems are to announce £6 billion of public spending cuts next Monday.

We’re about to face cuts unlike anything  Britain has seen in modern history. Services that working class people depend on are going to be decimated.

-As a conservative estimate, 750, 000 public sector workers are likely to lose their jobs. Those still in work will face wage freezes and cuts.

-The government wants to make us all work longer, with the retirement age increased to 66 by 2016 for men and 2020 for women. This will hit poorer people far harder than the more well off, because studies have shown again and again that the working class have shorter life expectancies due to their living conditions under capitalism. Pensions for people who work in the public sector are also going to be shifted from a guaranteed amount to instead being gambled on the stock market, and what you get depends on how the bet goes.

-The most regressive taxes, which hit the working class hardest and leave the rich unscathed, are also to go up. Many predict that VAT will go up to 20%, making the essentials of life much more expensive in the shops. If you remember the Tories harping on about the “jobs tax” in the election, here’s what they’ve actually done in power: your boss won’t have to pay any extra contribution to your National Insurance, but you still will have it taken out of your pay!

They’ve also announced the establishment of an ‘Office of Budget Responsibility.’ In the past, the government has made forecasts of how much the economy will grow, and written the budget on that basis. Now, this new unelected committee of businessmen and “experts” will make the forecasts. The Chancellor will then have to write the budget based on their recommendations or account for why they haven’t done.

One of the first acts of Gordon Brown when he became Chancellor under Tony Blair in 1997 was to give the Bank of England the power to set interest rates, removing economic control from the elected government and putting it in the hands of unelected bankers. Thirteen years later, one of the first acts of the ConDem government has been to give another undemocratic committee huge power over the economic policy of the UK, and if we don’t like what we say we can’t vote them out. There’s also no guarantee that these “experts” will get their forecasts right: few capitalists saw that an economy based on debt and fictional accounting was about to collapse (unlike quite a few socialist economists.)

On June 22nd this battered old case will contain an economic SNUKE aimed at you

This is nothing short of a declaration of war by the ConDems. We always expected it of the Tories, but sadly the Lib Dems are also the ones making it possible. If you voted Lib Dem in the last election in the hope of getting a leftish alternative, then we’re sorry, but you got conned. They’ve abandoned the policies that made them popular in the campaign to get a slice of power.

The real question as we come under attack is this: what are we going to do about it? Do we sit back and take it, or do we stand up and fight? Many people aren’t happy about the cuts, but think there isn’t any choice but to make them to save the economy. This is a lie that has been peddled to us by the capitalists who want to take our money.

Immediate measures the government could take as an alternative to cuts include cancelling the illegal Trident nuclear weapons programme, which alone would save an amazing £130 billion. We should also immediately pull all British troops out of Afghanistan, saving both billions of pounds and thousands of lives.

Beyond this, we could stop the rich from being able to avoid paying their fair share of tax by increasing fairer taxes like corporation tax and cracking down on the loopholes that let them move their cash abroad. But more importantly, we’ve all given our money through taxes towards the billions that were used to bail out the banks. It’s time we had a government that took control of the hugely wealthy banks and financial institutions. Instead of that money sitting in accounts of the super rich, it could be used to transform our economy, moving us away from a carbon based economy that destroys the climate, building homes for the thousands that need them, and providing world class public services, for starters.

What should we do to put this people’s agenda on the table? We need anti-cuts committees in every city in Scotland. We need to have mass actions against the emergency budget on June 22nd, and next Monday as well if possible. And, crucially, we need to be spreading the message to everyone that there is an alternative to the ConDem war on the working class.

Tomorrow night if you’re in Glasgow the Scottish Socialist Party is holding a meeting to discuss how we begin our counter attack. Come along and help by giving your views. It’s at 7.30, in the Piper Bar on the corner of George Square.

Today (and over the next few days) working class people will be celebrating our holiday, May Day.

Throughout the world May Day is recognised by the labour and trade union movement as the day on which we celebrate workers and their struggles for justice. But the story of how socialists fought to make May 1st in to a holiday is one that isn’t well known by most people, because it’s part of the hidden history that you don’t get taught in school

May Day is an ancient festival, known by the Celts as Beltane and by Germanic peoples as Walpurgis. It marked the end of Winter, and the return to life and fertility for crops and for people. People were celebrating the end of the cold, hard months, and they did it by getting spectacularly pissed, dressing up in funny costumes, dancing about and shagging. Unsurprisingly, when Christianity came along, the Church took a dim view of all this, but May Day was the one festival they found it virtually impossible to ban or take over.

During May Day parades there was often a Jack in the Green, a man who would be covered in a costume made of plants and foliage. Jack in the Green was a symbol of nature, of the power of life to overcome death, and the fertility of agriculture that came back after the long winter.

For ancient peoples the fertility of the land and the fertility of people were inseparable. May Day was a time for couples to get together. May sex led to June weddings, and June was historically the most common month for weddings. They often did it while off in the woods to find a tree for the Maypole. The symbolism of dancing round the Maypole itself isn’t hard to work out.

Jack in the Green

Life in a feudal peasant village was hard. Ordinary people had to work hard throughout the year to produce their crops, and the lords and church mercilessly exploited them, taking the products of their labour. Winter was a tough time to live through every year, and there was always the threat of crops failing, which spelled disaster. The success of crops in spring, and new life in the form of babies to carry on the work, really was a miracle for people.

What May Day represented for them was a day where the world got turned upside down. Another figure in May Day parades was the fool, the king for a day. The fool mocked authority, and May Day was one day when people were free from the strict control of the lords and the church, and could laugh at their oppressors, get pissed and enjoy themselves. It was a common festival, where the common people celebrated their use of the common land together.

From the 17th century onwards this traditional order in Europe began to change, as capitalism started to develop. The lords began to enclose the land, building fences and taking common lands that had belonged to the common people and using them for profitable farming. The people, forced from the land, began to move to the cities to work in the new factories.

In the new capitalist workplaces in the city the traditional cycle of life was broken. People worked 12 hour days or more. factory owners regarded their workers as just parts of the machines that produced the profits they lived from. Child labour was common, and conditions of work could often be deadly. If you were injured at your dangerous workplace there was no kind of welfare state to protect you, and you depended on your family and friends or starved.

In the 19th century, when working people came together to form the first trade unions, their key early demand was for shorter working hours, so that they could have more time to themselves. People forget today just how hard our ancestors had to fight to get Saturdays off, or for an 8 hour working day. It was the long, hard battle to win an 8 hour day that led to the modern celebration of May Day.

It might surprise some people to learn that this battle started in the USA, where today socialists and trade unionists are so weak. But it wasn’t always that way. At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions proclaimed that “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.” Of course, there was no way that the bosses were going to recognise this proclamation, and so they vowed to back up the demand with strikes and protests.

The International Working Men’s Association, which today we know as the First International, was an international alliance of socialists, communists and trade unionists which counted Karl Marx among its leading members. The International drew the attention of European workers to the demand for an 8 hour day, and vowed to take the fight from the US to a worldwide level.

At this time Socialism and Anarchism were extremely attractive ideas for workers who could see the oppression they faced first hand. The defeats and difficulties for socialism in the 20th century had not started yet, and the bosses were yet to develop the kind of mass media and propaganda control they use today to control the ideas of working people. Socialists were at the forefront of leading the fight for an 8 hour day.

On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. In Chicago, the center of the 8-hour day agitators, 40,000 went out on strike. Over the next few days this number swelled to 100,000. On May 3rd, strikers and their supporters at the McCormick steel works were attacked by cops, and at least two were killed as they were beaten with clubs. Enraged, the strikers called for a mass protest meeting in Haymarket Square the next day.

Unfortunately, the next day bad weather and short notice conspired to make sure there weren’t as many demonstrators as there could be, and again the police mounted a brutal attack on the strikers. The cops fired their guns indiscriminately into the crowd, which included many families with children. At least seven people were killed, as well as several cops who died from the wild shooting of their fellow officers.

Eight organisers were arrested on trumped up charges of having provoked the police violence and murder. Only three of them

The Haymarket Martyrs

had even been in Haymarket Square, and they had been clearly visible to the crowd as not having taken part in violence. But they were subjected to a show trial, where the jury were businessmen who were greatly threatened by the rise of radicalism. On November 11th Albert Parsons, August Spies, George Engel and Adolph Fischer were hung. Another of those convicted, Louis Lingg, took his own life in a final protest. The others, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe and Michael Schwab, were imprisoned.

The murder of working people conducted by the cops and the justice system, at the behest of the bosses, gave new power and fury to the fight, and year on year the strikes and protests gathered strength. May 1st came to be the day every year when workers came out out on to the streets on strike, both to remember the Haymarket martyrs and to demand the fulfillment of their demands. Gradually workers around the world won the right to an 8 hour day, and as socialist parties grew stronger and more powerful, the governments of country after country was forced to recognise May Day as a holiday for the celebration of workers and their movement.

Although today many don’t know this history of how May Day came to be a holiday celebrated around the with marches and parties, it’s important that socialists remember that this is our day, dedicated to revolution and a better future. For centuries, May Day was the one day of the year where working people got freedom to party and celebrate, to change the world if only for day. When those same people became industrial workers, they began to fight again for time for ourselves, free from the burdens of work.

What May Day represents is a toehold, a beachhead, in the fight for full freedom. What we celebrate on May Day is the fight to make every day of the year a day of freedom for everyone, once we are free from exploitation by bosses, and we work for ourselves rather than to make someone else rich.

As soon as I’ve posted this I’m heading to Argyle Street in Glasgow for the celebration of May Day. Tomorrow the STUC and trade unions are organising a march at 11 from George Square. It’s ending up in the Old Fruitmarket for stalls and entertainment from 12.

In Edinburgh the SSP has played a key role in keeping May Day celebrations going. Socialists, anti war activists and trade unionists are marching from 11.30 from East Market to a rally at the Ross Bandstand under the slogan Stop the War Stop the Cuts.

If you’re in Newtongrange in Midlothian there’s a May Day social in the Dean Tavern 7.30 til late.

In Irvine marchers are heading to the Woodlands Centre for a rally.

If I’ve missed anything out, say so in the comments and I’ll add it in. For the benefit of anyone reading from outside Scotland, I’ll finish with a clip of a documentary about what May Day is actually like here every year, honest.

The cabins, canvas and main space

Today several of us went down to get a proper look at the secret location where this year’s SSY summer camp will be taking place.

The site is somewhere in South West Scotland, amongst some really beautiful woodland. There’s two cabins, and a canvas will be stretched between them, providing us with a large workshop/eating/dancing space. There’s a really nice little hut for the compost toilet, and of course plenty of room for camping and exploring.

I just thought I’d share some of the images we took of the place, so that people can get excited as I am about the great site we’ve found. The people that run the place had their own event on, so that’s who the folk you can see are.

Remember to start getting organised now so that you don’t miss it-book time off work, tell your parents you’re not going away with them that weekend and just generally clear your diary!

Under the canvas

We’ll be getting a coach from Glasgow to the site on the evening of Friday 6th August, and getting it back on the morning of Monday the 9th. It’s fine if you only want to come for 1 day or can’t make the bus at those times, but get in touch so we can help you find the place and get there.

The CSS chefs are already on the case devising a great menu of three meals each day. In the evening there’ll be music, hopefully featuring some special guests (more details to come on that), as well as a big campfire.

During the day we’re going to have a range of key issues up for discussion in some exciting participatory workshops. We’re still finalising the programme, so if there’s something you think is important and needs to be talked about, or if you’re knowledgeable about something and reckon you could run a workshop, please let us know! Below are a list of workshop ideas that have been suggested so far, not all of these have a facilitator yet, so volunteers welcome. Let us know in the comments what you like/don’t like/want to see added.

Some of the kids today had built rafts to sail on the pond. Could we do this? FUCK YEAH!

-What is socialism?
-How to win an argument on climate change
-Racism and the fake idea of race
-What is patriarchy?
-Taking back football for the fans
-Drugs prohibition: How it came about and why it should end
-The food industry and why there’s an obesity epidemic
-The police state: rise of the big brother society
-Scotland and independence after the general election
-The internet, filesharing and the politics of piracy
-Troops out now: How we can help end the war in Afghanistan

This is far from an exhaustive or final list, so we’re still very much open to suggestions. Other ideas that don’t have snappy titles or fully fleshed plans yet include something about LGBT rights/sexuality, plus some international stuff about the situation in Latin America and Europe. That last one will depend on how successful we are in getting international socialist pals to come join us, an effort that is ongoing just now.

Coolest outdoor toilet ever!

In any case, this is just a reminder, hopefully you’re now as excited as we are about what will be the absolute highlight of summer 2010.

Camp Secret Squirrel: 6th-9th August. Miss it and you’re a chump!

All young (26 or under) socialists, feminists, environmentalists, anti-racists and other radicals welcome!

More images on the Camp Secret Squirrel facebook event, here.

Anti-abortion nutjobs SPUC are holding their “International Youth Pro-Life Conference” this 19-21 March in Clydebank.

We’ve fought the racists and fascists on the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh -- now it’s time to fight the woman-haters.

SPUC not only want to stop women getting abortions -- they’re also against condoms, the pill, and sex education. WTF?!

A woman’s right to control her body is a fundamental human right. Women should have total control over their reproductive system, being able to make free and informed decisions about how they live. Every undermining of a woman’s right to choose whether, when and how to have children is an attack on all women.

Every day, 200 women die because they couldn’t access a legal abortion.

After the general election in May there’s the very real prospect that abortion rights will come under heavy attack. Tory MPs want to make it more and more difficult for women to access abortion. If enough of them are elected there could be a majority in the Westminster parliament for gradually taking women’s rights to control their own bodies away piece by piece. That means we need to get organised now, and start undermining the ability of anti-abortionists to meet and organise against women. Just as we do with racists, we also need to do with misogynists.

Women’s abortion rights need to be defended.

FUCK SPUC!

Protest! Saturday 20 March, outside Beardmore Hotel, Clydebank. 8.30am.

Regular readers of this site will know of two attempts by the so-called “Scottish Defence League” to march in Glasgow in Edinburgh to demonstrate against Muslims in this country. On both occasions the SDL have been kettled, unable to march – and in Edinburgh unable to make even a token static protest. On both occasions democratic, grassroots and broad anti-fascist organisations have been formed, with SSY members working with different anti-fascist campaigners to physically stop the SDL from marching. These organisations have been responsive in nature, and have only formed in the cities where the SDL have planned to march – but it has left us with a network of anti-fascists, in Glasgow Anti-Fascist Alliance and Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Alliance.

This Saturday both groups will be coming together to have a national anti-fascist meeting to discuss the way forward for anti-fascists in Scotland. The SDL have been convincingly thrashed both times they have attempted to march or demonstrate but it is now clear the SDL are changing tactics and the anti-fascist alliances must respond to this. They have shut down their facebook, bebo groups etc and now are reliant on a hardcore of their members to come out and demonstrate. They have given up trying to publicly advertise their demonstrations and are now reliant on contacting those who have already been on previous demonstrations.

This in itself is a victory, as it severely stunts the possible growth of the SDL as an organisation but it also makes it harder for anti-fascists to combat them. After the Edinburgh disaster for the SDL, they announced they would be having a memorial event in Lockerbie on the 27th of March. Again this shows they have been thrown out of the cities in Scotland and marks a retreat for them. However instead of demonstrating on the 27th the SDL organised a demo last Saturday – this was entirely in secret, with no press coverage of any kind. Again, a blow considering the media coverage they obtained in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.

What it does raise though is the possibility of “lightning demos” – where the SDL contact a few dozen of their trusted members to organise a brief, static demo in major cities in Scotland – possibly outside key targets for them, such as Mosques or the Parliament. The anti-fascist movement needs to be able to respond to this effectively, particularly as the conditions will be very different from in the past in terms of policing etc.

We also need to discuss how we deal with other fascist organisations, such as the National Front. Long dormant across the UK – and in particular Scotland, where they never had anything like the base they had in England – they are now planning a “Kriss Donald memorial” later this month. The NF is trying to stoke up racial tension and exploit the tragic murder of a young boy for their own fantasies of racial war.

The biggest threat we need to face is not forces on the street however – its the established party of the far-right across the UK, the BNP. The BNP took 2 MEP’s last year, alongside their dozens of councillors and GLA seat. They are trying to make the break into political respectability, and with Griffins infamous appearance on Question Time are making some inroads. While the BNP have no councillors in Scotland, and have never picked much support north of the border its clear they are now trying to break on to the Scottish political scene. In the Glasgow North East by-election they came 4th, not far off beating the Tories and holding on to their deposit.

The BNP are now talking about standing in up to 12 seats across Scotland, which would be their largest set of candidates in any General Election in Scotland. While the BNP do not have any chance of winning the seats – and are very unlikely to hold their deposit in any of these seats either – these elections will be used to boost their profile for the 2011 Holyrood Elections. The BNP will be trying to get a PR seat by winning 5-6% across a region, most likely Glasgow.

At the moment this appears unlikely, particularly as Scottish Elections don’t give the BNP media coverage on the basis of their successes down south. What their strategy most likely will be is to boost their profile in national elections across Scotland in preparation for the 2012 council elections. All the BNP need here is 16 – 20% in one council ward to take a councillor. The BNP built their base in council halls in England, its logical they would use the same tactics up here – where they do not need to win a FPTP election.

The anti-fascist movement not only needs to deal with the far-right in their political organisations but with a wider acceptance of racist views in society in general. It’s now commonplace to hear migrants being blamed for taking jobs, and attacks on Muslims as being disloyal, terrorists etc. Most of the people who make these kind of comments would never vote BNP, but they can influence the major parties through voting for them to accept these ideas.

If the organisations, and more importantly the ideas of the far-right are going to be beaten anti-fascists have to evolve a strategy beyond “Don’t vote Nazi”. We need to flesh out, and campaign as for a strategy that undercuts why people are attracted to racist parties and ideas. That means uniting working people for positive demands around housing, education, employment and wages. SSY hopes that the national anti-fascist meeting this Saturday begins that process, and helps to build a national Scottish Anti-Fascist Alliance.

Saturday, March 13, 2010
6:30pm – 9:00pm
upstairs in the Forest Cafe, 3 Bristo Place, Edinburgh

On 8 March, International Women’s Day comes around once more.

As the Scottish Socialist Voice explained in a previous IWD special (scroll down to centre pages):

For over 150 years, women and men across the world have demonstrated on International Women’s Day. On that day in 1857 in New York, hundreds of women workers in the textile industry went on strike, protesting casual labour, low wages and poor working conditions. The women were attacked and beaten by the police – their stand was one of the reasons 8 March was officially recognised as International Women’s Day in 1910. So why do we still mark the day now in the 21st century?

The multinational bank HSBC is a major sponsor of the ‘official’, or at least biggest, International Women’s Day celebrations in Britain now. Their website explains:
“Many companies have actively supported International Women’s Day… This is essential if they are to recruit and retain the best female talent, sell their products/services to them, and see more women investing in them.”
But for others, including the Scottish Socialist Women’s Network, the reasons we march on International Women’s Day are the same as why the New York textile workers marched – because we are still fighting low pay, exploitation and oppression.

Photo by Eva Merz

Socialists in Scotland will be marking the occasion with our annual International Women’s Day protest outside HMP Cornton Vale.

Cornton Vale is the only women’s prison in Scotland, and it is notoriously overcrowded – despite the fact that most of the inmates shouldn’t be there in the first place. Just one per cent of women in Cornton Vale are there because they have committed a violent offence. Previous reports have found that 90 per cent of women imprisoned in Scotland have committed crimes related to poverty  – through drug and alcohol abuse, non-payment of fines, or just struggling to cope with living below the breadline.

In 2006, it was found that 98% of the inmates were struggling with addiction; 80% had mental health problems and 75% were survivors of abuse.

Former Scottish Socialist Party MSP Rosie Kane was held in Cornton Vale in 2006 for non-payment of a fine. One of her fellow inmates was there for nothing more than throwing some candles and a James Blunt CD out of a window during an argument. You can read about Rosie’s experience in Cornton Vale here.

It costs £37,000 a year to keep one woman in Cornton Vale – that’s money that could be investing in helping women with drink and drug problems, helping poverty stricken women from having to turn to prostitution or theft to feed themselves, their families or their habits. That is money that could help women rebuilt their lives after abuse and trauma. Instead women are being locked up and mistreated over and over again.

Socialists and feminists protesting outside womens’ prisons is often misunderstood or deliberately misconstrued. We DON’T think women are inherently good and gentle and should therefore don’t belong in jail. The fact is that women receive disproportionately high sentences when compared to men who have committed similar crimes. As previously reported in Leftfield, shoplifters (mainly women) are more likely to be imprisoned than sex offenders (mainly men). Women taking a tiny bit of profit-making opportunity from private companies are considered more dangerous criminals than men who pose a serious risk to the safety of women and children. That’s FUCKED UP.

Stop the war on women!

Join us this Sunday, 7 March at 12 noon at Stirling Train Station, to march on Cornton Vale and PROTEST.

Please bring ribbons and flowers to decorate the fence.

If you are a driver, your help ferrying protesters from the train station to the prison would be much appreciated.

Despite choosing the slightly more family friendly title of “Why must our children pay? Invest in their education” SSY members, particularly those still in high schools support the EIS teaching union’s campaign against cuts. Whilst many other unions have either decided to accommodate to cuts, or fight them solely through industrial action the EIS are opening another front and trying to win over public support. The logic of their argument is clear – cuts in education are due to a financial crisis not of teachers or students making, and will result in poorer education for a generation of young Scots.

These cuts are being made at the same time that almost a billion pounds, £900 million is being cut from university funding across the UK, with SSY members being involved in anti-cuts campaigns like ACAN at Glasgow University.

The EIS site outlines the cuts below,

Already cuts are taking place in local council education budgets.

* 2,500 fewer teachers in classrooms than 2 years ago
* Teacher support numbers reduced
* Books, paper and photocopying materials etc. reduced
* The decision to cut the number of students to train to become teachers.

In the future this will mean

* Teacher shortages
* Increased class sizes
* Impact on teaching and learning, including the new Curriculum for Excellence
* A cut in equipment (including computers) and materials in schools
* A reduction in specialist provision, e.g. classroom assistants, learning support and music instructors
* Fewer opportunities to access further and higher education

They are also being proposed is the same time that its been revealed that inequality has increased under the Labour government – David Cameron and his Eton pals might have a chance to escape public sector cuts for his kids, but ordinary working people will see less teachers and therefore less attention for their children. In both high schools and further education, there is an attack on funding which will attack jobs and young peoples right to a decent education.

The SSP supports a “20’s plenty” campaign, for a maximum of 20 children to each teacher in class. Following this programme would have kept enough teachers employed to stop any of Labour’s previous cuts of Glasgow’s schools. The SSP was recently involved with the Save Our Schools campaign, which fought hard against these cuts.

Support the campaign against cuts in education, turn up to the rally,

THIS SATURDAY – MARCH THE 6TH

ASSEMBLE KELVINGROVE WAY, KELVINGROVE PARK 10.30AM

MARCH AT 11, RALLY AT 12 AT THE SECC

Last weekend thousands of anti-fascists took to the streets of Edinburgh to confront and defeat the Scottish Defence League. We won an overwhelming victory, and everyone who was part of it should be proud.

This Thursday (25th), SSY has called a national meeting to discuss what we can learn from the weekend’s success, and what role socialists can play in taking the anti-fascist movement in Scotland. It’s at 6pm in the Forest Cafe, which is on 3 Bristo Place.

There’s a lot to talk about. LydiaTeapot below has given a great report of the day, so I don’t want to repeat to much of what she’s said. I’ll just add a few points about my impressions.

Saturday was great for two main reasons: number one, our actions helped make sure that the fascists had absolutely no ability to march. The previous anti-SDL mobilisation in Glasgow last year was great, but we weren’t able to surround the Cambridge Bar, where the SDL were, throughout the day. As a result they were able to come out for a (pretty pathetic) static demo on the street.  On Saturday we very quickly found out they were in Jenny Ha’s pub, surrounded it, and as a result were able to make sure that there was absolutely no kind of street protest.

Number two, we won the argument about how to deal with the fascist presence. In both Edinburgh and Glasgow, when it was announced the SDL were coming to march, SSY members were among those who moved quickly to set up broad, grassroots and militant anti-fascist alliances, involving everyone who was committed to directly preventing them from marching on our streets by occupying them ourselves. Glasgow Anti Fascist Alliance (GAFA) and then Edinburgh Anti Fascist Alliance (EAFA) were both crucial organisations that have made sure that the SDL have now been defeated and humiliated twice.

Assembling at Princes Mall, one of the many times we were Standing Around Against Fascism

Meanwhile, the Scotland United and Unite Against Fascism (UAF) groups have organised big rallies, which are supported by all the mainstream political parties and trade unions etc. These rallies have been about getting people into a park and listening to speakers, many of whom are politicians in power that help create the conditions for the rise of far right politics, i.e. poverty, unemployment, other stuff we don’t like. They have NOT been about physically preventing the SDL from marching.

Potentially, these events could be complimentary, the rally providing a safe space for anti-fascists who for whatever reason aren’t able to confront the SDL directly. The SSP on paper has supported the rallies, while most of our work has gone into organising and participating in direct action. The problem has been that these rallies, and the people promoting them, have tried to make out that they are the only people organising against the SDL, and that their rally is the only game in town. This is after the alliances have spent months putting together a plan based on a more radical strategy. In the run up to the weekend rally organisers had tried to sabotage the EAFA events, claiming that there was no 9.30 assembly point, and telling people to only do as they were told by official stewards for their march and rally.

On Saturday, the outcome of all this is that EAFA had called for people to assemble from 9.30 at Princes Mall. Meanwhile, UAF and groups of students were meeting just down Princes Street from us at 10. Early on in the day there wasn’t much going on, so we headed along to join up with this group. Very soon afterwards we got good information on where the SDL were and headed off up towards the Royal Mile. Most people came with us.

On the way up the mound, Aamer Anwar, who’s a left wing lawyer, and one of the main figures behind the Scotland United group, was desperately shouting into a megaphone to try and get us to go back to where we’d just came from, in order to wait around for the march and rally he’d helped organise to start. At this point though he was like a man shouting at the sea as everyone just kept on marching past him.

The point when debate raged on the streets about the best way forward

When we reached the junction of the Royal Mile and North Bridge there was a serious debate about the best way forward. EAFA activists, including SSY folk, shouted to the crowd that we should keep on down the hill to confront the SDL. Some people from UAF, mainly Weyman Bennett (one of the main leaders of UAF who’d come up from England) said all kinds of things in an attempt to get us to head away, and back towards their rally. Wild claims were made, such as that the people in the pub weren’t in the SDL, they were “hibs casuals” (this wasn’t true, as everyone now realises.) Another one was that there were 150 SDL poised to attack the Scotland United/UAF rally (there weren’t even 150 SDL in the whole of Edinburgh!) This was all shown to be nonsense as the day went on.

A similar situation had developed before on the Glasgow march, when conflicting ideas about what to do had sowed a great deal of confusion, mistakes were made, and ultimately the SDL got their 20 seconds on the street. But what was crucially different this time is that those of us who wanted to take a radical approach were ready, and made our arguments on the street. Huge numbers of anti-fascists, most of them young people and at least some of whom didn’t come with any group but had just seen posters or leaflets, were the ones to judge who was right. They voted with their feet and moved down the Royal Mile.

SSY and SSP people were among those speaking out for heading down the hill, and the SSP’s bright and eye catching banner also helped prove a rallying point in pulling people in the right direction. This then gave us the numbers to effectively confront the SDL and win a key victory. There were people from all different kinds of political groups and none, including (credit where credit is due) many of the younger supporters of UAF. Many of these people expressed a lot of frustration with the actions of their own leadership, and it’s to be hoped that in the future they will continue to take part in and plan for direct action.

We rapidly took up positions on both side of Jenny Ha’s pub, separated from the SDL by police lines. The SDL were unable to leave the pub, and after many hours of singing and chanting, we got the satisfaction of giving them the finger as they were bussed out of Edinburgh past thousands of anti-fascists. The approach and arguments of EAFA were completely vindicated-we had the right strategy for the day and it worked, despite real attempts to undermine it from people who are supposed to be on the same side.

Smaller groups of anti-fascists encountered the SDL out and about the city and helped drive them out. For example, a group of 50 found about 10 SDL and escorted them to the train station, seen in the video at the top, with only about 2 police present.

Let’s be clear-it was never the EAFA strategy to go and pick a fight with a bunch of thugs who were hoping for just that. What we set out to do was mobilise as many as people as possible to outnumber and surround the fascists. Although it was the police that eventually removed the SDL from Edinburgh, it was the presence of thousands of anti-fascists surrounding their location that prevented them from being able to have a march. Some people have tried to claim that EAFA were just a bunch of people who like to imagine they are hard when they are safe behind police lines. But the truth is we didn’t aim for violence, we aimed for peacefully occupying the streets with mass numbers so the fascists couldn’t take to them. The same approach defeated fascists in Dresden last week as well, and it worked in Edinburgh.

The development of GAFA and EAFA is a key factor that makes the difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow, where the SDL has been completely routed, and some English towns, where the EDL have run riot with little opposition. Broad groups of people, including socialists, anarchists and people who just want to take radical action to stop the far right, have managed to pull big numbers into actively confronting the SDL. We’ve done it in a way that wasn’t top-down, and we didn’t need Tory politicians’ endorsement. What’s important now is that crucial advantage isn’t lost.

That’s why SSY wants to bring together young socialists from across Scotland on Thursday to talk about what we do next. My own personal opinion is that we must try and keep the groups together, keep them meeting and active. We shouldn’t let the momentum we’ve gained drift.

Another idea is to get a joint meeting between GAFA and EAFA. This could even take the form of a weekend event to allow us to have a day talking, educating each other and developing a strategy for the way forward. We’ve already heard about anti-fascists from other parts of Europe who’ve been watching what’s been going on in Scotland who might be interested in traveling to take part in such an event and share their experience as well.

Anti-fascists surrounding the SDL's location, by the Scottish Parliament

Ultimately, the long term plan has to be try and find a way to build up more groups like GAFA and EAFA, groups that are radical, open and committed to confronting fascists when they try to march. The next couple of events to consider are the National Front’s proposed “Kriss Donald memorial event” and the news that the SDL plan a “Lockerbie bombing memorial” in Lockerbie on 27th March. But ultimately, we also have the thorny issue of the BNP’s participation in the general election and the Scottish election next year. The BNP are the respectable face of the far right, and generally don’t want to be caught out street fighting (which doesn’t mean that many of their members aren’t crazy thugs.) How we respond to them is a little more complex than stopping the SDL from being able to come out of the pub.

With regards to the UAF and Scotland United, it’s to be hoped that after Edinburgh they might behave a little more respectfully to their fellow anti-fascists, instead of trying to undo a lot of our hard work. Ultimately in many cases there might be a good argument for having a “safe” rally for people who for whatever reason aren’t able to confront the SDL, but still want to show opposition. The problem is when the organisers of this rally try and actively prevent people from taking direct action. In future anti-fascists as a whole need to be more united and collective, and that means that the UAF needs to start talking with us and acting a bit more openly. If they don’t they may well find themselves undercut by the groups who are committed to direct action. But the actions of some UAF supporters on the day do give me hope.

Of course, all these ideas at the moment are just my own, developed while chatting to folk in the many hours of standing around in Edinburgh. Everything needs to be discussed to get our collective wisdom, and hopefully the meeting on Thursday can start that process. And of course, SSY members are far from the only people in the alliances, and we wouldn’t want to impose our ideas on the broader groups without the agreement of others taking part.

Although it’s an SSY meeeting, it’s open to all young people interested in stopping fascism. We just want a chance to share ideas and chat about what we do next. Hopefully soon afterwards GAFA and EAFA can meet as well to formulate a plan. But until then, hopefully as many people reading this can make it along as possible and we can begin to consolidate our victory and drive the far right out of Scotland.

SSY National Meeting on the way forward for anti-fascism in Scotland

Thursday 25th February, 6pm

Forest Cafe, 3 Bristo Place, Edinburgh