Although starting late, the event was fantastic – it was really inspiring to see a number of diverse groups pull together and put on a show, explain what it is they stand for and begin to build a support network with each other.
The night consisted of a number of musicians and performers, with poetry and comedy thrown into the mix, as well as speeches given by a representative of each group present. I spent much of the night in a state of nervous panic, awaiting my turn on the soapbox. Somehow, I managed to string together a few coherent sentences on the SSP and what we at the Aberdeen branch have achieved so far, what we hope to achieve in the future and how the people of Aberdeen can band together with us and start making a change today. I got a bit of a cheer and a clap; people signed up for our mailing list, took stickers, bought badges and copies of the Voice, and were generally up for a good discussion, a bit of banter and some home-made cake.
Highlights of the night were: Euan B giving hell to a poor bloke who disagreed with the SSP stance on Afghanistan; the Communist Party of Great Britain not even coming inside the room and just lurking at the door with their stall; making friends with the anarchists and then returning from the stage to discover the cheeky fuckers had eaten all my brownies; getting some inital signatures on the mailing list for the Aberdeen Socialist Women’s Network (never heard of it? that’s cos I’ve just started it!); getting chatted up by a drunken, middle-aged anarchist who really seemed to like the SSY “Take out the Tories” stickers; and watching Ewan and his Dad play a really great set, then joining in when the entire room started stamping feet in time. Who knew that bagpipes could be such a crowd pleaser?
It was amazing to have these different groups, different people, in the same room and for everyone to be interested in what the others had to say, to listen and to converse, without any major argument or disagreement. It can be difficult, sometimes, for those on the Left to organise as a larger, more cohesive movement. The differences between our groups are slight; we have more in common than our in-fighting would suggest. If we are to overcome struggle and achieve anything, we must work together and find points upon which we can agree. There are some major issues, both locally, nationally and internationally, that Aberdeen SSP is concerned about and could be involved in tackling. The cuts that our public services are facing; the worrying trend in our city and shire councils to ignore the wishes of the people and to only listen to those with big money; the continuing war in Afghanistan, and the conflict and unrest in the Middle East. By building links with groups like Aberdeen SPSC, Aberdeen Stop the War, Tripping Up Trump and Friends of Union Terrace Gardens (to name just a few), the Aberdeen branch can throw their weight behind these campaigns and work with as many people as possible to gain empowerment and equality, and to make our voices heard. Suffragette City helped us on our way to building these relationships, and hopefully we will see some worthwhile activism come to fruitation because of it.
Union map of where there were strikes and protests yesterday
You might not have noticed yesterday, what with the UK news much more concerned about what high paid cushy job David Miliband will be getting next, but across Europe millions of people were on strike and in the streets to protest the austerity policies of the EU governments.
Just like the ConDem government here, governments all across the European Union are making massive attacks on the working class, such cutting spending on vital services, taking away workers’ rights, throwing people out of work and generally making Europe a much more shite place to live.
Around 100,000 people took part in a Europe-wide demo in Brussels demanding an end to austerity policies. Delegations from 30 different countries are thought to have taken part. There’s some footage of it below:
There’s some great photos from the Brussels demo here, but a particular favourite of mine is these two who dressed up to take the piss out of right wing French President Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni:
Mr and Mrs Sarkozy
Meanwhile, in Spain there was a general strike, with 10 million people refusing to go to work in protest at the supposedly “Socialist” (the Spanish Socialist Party are more like New Labour) government, particularly plans to make it easier to sack workers and reduce the amount of compensation they’re entitled to. Protesters in Madrid went into any workplaces that were still open to hand out pamphlets and call on workers to join them, as well as blocking one of the main shopping streets the Gran Via. Throughout the different countries and regions that make up the Spanish state there were demonstrations taking place, and cops were used to break up picket lines, as you can see in this photo from Santiago de Compostela in Galicia.
Here’s some footage as well of the protests in Huelva, Andalusia:
In Barcelona, riot cops attacked and beat protesters, who fought back by torching one of their cars:
Update from a comrade in Barcelona: “Protesters completely occupied the headquarters of a major bank, and set up 2 huge speakers from the balcony which they used to give a running commentary of events onto the street, and somehow jammed the frequency of a local radio station so that it broadcast their speeches instead, clever stuff.
Nearby, a police car was set on fire. Riot police responded shortly afterwards by charging into the crowd and lashing out indiscriminately with batons, which I suppose was ‘revenge’ for the burnt car.”
In Ireland protesters gathered in Dublin to mark the return of the Dáil (Irish parliament) into session. The Irish government is hugely unpopular for its austerity plans, and has spent €25 billion on bailing out banks. This morning came the news that the government is saying it will have to spend €35 billion just on bailing out the Anglo Irish bank. In the photo below you can see what people think about that:
The flyer for the protests in Dublin can be seen here. As part of the action, a cement mixer with “Toxic Bank” painted on the side was driven into the gates of the Irish parliament.
In Greece, although the “mainstream” unions hadn’t called for a strike, public transport workers, doctors and dockers came out anyway. This follows on from the ongoing lorry drivers’ strike, which has seen supermarkets start to run short of supplies.
In Portugal 50,000 people marched in Lisbon and another 20,000 in Porto.
Here in Scotland the Scottish Trade Union Congress‘ “There is a Better Way” campaign did have a number of events to mark the Europe wide day of action. But what more can we do to try and catch up with our European friends? A good starting point would be getting yourself along to the street rally against the cuts organised in Glasgow this Saturday from trade union groups across the country. It probably won’t be on the scale of some of the protests seen above, but right now all across Europe it’s about kickstarting a movement that will show the governments and capitalists we aren’t going to accept paying the bill for their fuck ups. The rally meets at 12 at Buchanan Street subway.
One aim of the rally against the cuts is to try and build momentum for the all Scotland demonstration called by the STUC for October 23rd in Edinburgh (Facebook event here). It’s really important that both the Scottish and British government see there’s a real mood in Scotland to fight back against the cuts, especially from young people who already are suffering completely disproportionately from unemployment and the effects of the capitalist crisis.
Your riot cops are no match for our RHINO SIEGE ENGINE
I’ve just returned from 5 days of occupying the land of the Royal Bank of Scotland, a piece of direct action that yesterday successfully achieved its objective of shutting down RBS’ headquarters. On Monday when we looked across at the building we could see there was nobody working there apart from cops and security guards.
Context
A quick recap: for the past few days hundreds of activists affiliated with Climate Camp have targetted the Royal Bank of Scotland. Having previously taken direct action against projects like Kingsnorth coal fired power station and the (now cancelled) third runway at Heathrow, they’ve moved on to a target that’s slightly less obvious.
But for people concerned about climate change, RBS is in fact at the heart of the problem. As a financial institution, they are the biggest UK investors in fossil fuels, styling themselves “the oil and gas bank.” In an economy that is now kept firmly in the stranglehold of financial capitalism, banks and other investors must be held responsible for their leadership role in a socio-economic system that is destroying the ecological basis for civilisation.
This system is now in the early stages of falling apart at the seams, due to the interrelated crises of the environment, the economy and social collapse. In the UK, RBS is at the heart of this process.
The current economic crisis was caused by the fact that the dominant financial institutions, like RBS, had used debt and self-delusion to try and keep the economy going. This bubble lasted for a while, until the myths that underpinned it began to unravel. The UK government then gave RBS and other massive banks huge injections of our money. RBS is now 84% owned by the British state. However, they refused to take any control over the banks in return for this money, leaving RBS under the command of its previous owners.
The people that run RBS have one priority: finding ways to invest their money (which you and I gave them) that will generate them more profits and then more money to invest. That’s what they exist to do as an institution. One of the main ways they can do that is to put our money into energy projects. As the world’s supplies of fossil fuels dwindle, the ones that remain will become more profitable to extract, at least for a while.
So RBS has poured our money into projects and companies like the Alberta Tar Sands, ConocoPhilips who are destroying the Amazon rainforest, and E.ON, the energy corporation looking to cover Europe with new coal fired power stations. They do this not because they’re evil, but because they are designed as an institution to do a specific job, and they’re doing that job.
As it is currently structured, it would be impossible to make RBS act otherwise, which is why we should demand that instead of being controlled by private capitalists the wealth of RBS is used collectively and socially to solve problems in the world, instead of being used to create huge problems that will make the world a less habitable place for humanity in the coming decades.
This is all the more appalling when you remember that the working class is about to face one of the greatest austerity blitzkriegs of all time, after the government chose to facilitate RBS and its chums taking the money that should have been spent on public services, jobs and wages for the people who actually keep our society running – public sector workers. In this context, it’s clearly time for radical action against an institution which is poisoning our society.
Some of SSY’s roving reporters are back to civilisation to give YOU all the latest news from climate camp…
After an epic amount of pushing, we stormed RBS headquarters this afternoon. Delicious molasses bombs were thrown, windows were smashed and there was a lot of scuffling with the police. Bear in mind that today was Sunday, and the bank wasn’t even open…! Who knows what’s on the agenda for the rest of the working week…
Most of the SSY delegation are still pitched up in the RBS back garden and will be until the end of the camp – stay tuned for a full climate camp analysis and review in a few days…
A few of us SSYers are about to head over to head over to Edinburgh to take part in the camp for climate action. If you’re reading this and can make it, get there! The camp took their site last night, at Gogar Station Road, right next to the Royal Bank of Scotland global headquarters!
Information for those of us outside just now is limited, but we’ll be trying to bring you updates during the day as we find out more. SSY will be part of the swoop today, from 12 a group will be heading from St Andrews square (where the bus station is) to the site. Come along and join us. If you can’t make it, just get to the site whenever you can. See the map on the climate camp site for where to go.
UPDATE: Me, Liam T and Liam M are at the camp now, and it’s fantastic! There’s a couple of hundred folk, and more arriving all the time. Tonight and tomorrow we’ll just be setting up the site, as much help as possible is needed. The grounds of the RBS complex are actually really nice, and it’s a great place to hang out.
It’s taken a few days for those of us who were lucky enough to be at Camp Secret Squirrel 2010 to get ourselves together enough to write about it. SSY’s annual summer camp this year was a huge success, and hopefully those of you who couldn’t make it this year will see from our photos that you need to clear your schedule for next August NOW so you don’t miss out again.
Politics-wise, we had workshops on issues such as football and the impact of capitalism on the game; what is fascism; as well as the struggle for Scottish independence.
The opening workshop was really interesting, as we tried out a role playing exercise where those taking part were divided into two groups, representing two different companies, and then divided into workers and bosses. The bosses then had to make their workers work as hard as possible for as little as possible (their companies owned paper plane making factories). The bosses received an initial amount of capital in the form of the imaginary currency of squirrels, and then had to maximise the production of their workers in order to make enough to pay them and make a profit.
The workers meanwhile went on strike to demand better wages, in both factories. However, without needing to be told by the workshop organisers, they realised that only by uniting the two groups of workers could they win, and so I’m sure you’ll be delighted to learn that the paper plane workers led a victorious revolution, overthrew their oppressive bosses (notorious capitalists such as James N) and established socialism!
We were particularly honoured to have with us four comrades from the Basque pro-independence left. They are part of the Basque internationalist group Askapena, and are on a brigade to Scotland to learn more about our struggle for an independent socialist Scotland, and to forge stronger links between us and the Basque country.
The Basque comrades spoke to the whole camp about the tremendous repression they face at the hands of the Spanish and French states, and the politics they use to try and defeat it. We were really pleased to have about 40 folk at CSS, but were put to shame to learn that an equivalent event organised by the Basque youth movement can attract 20,000! As we’ve reported before, the youth movement in the Basque country is illegal, and the organisers of these camps are in prison.
Another important aspect of the weekend was that SSY reaffirmed its commitment to the self-organisation for liberation of young women. The SSY women’s group held a meeting to discuss feminist ideas in a women’s only space (maybe someone who was at it can comment more on how it went), whilst the men held a workshop where we discussed points from the male privilege checklist as a way of stimulating discussion about the ways patriarchal society gives men systematic advantages over women that often we don’t even realise are there. As one participant put it: “This has been really great for me, because I’ve never really had the chance to talk with guys about how these things affect us, it can be difficult to bring it up, so the workshop is really important.”
SWIMMING!
The site where we were was fantastic, and we’d like to thank the folk that run the place for all their help and letting us use their lovely space. We cooked tasty, healthy meals over an open fire, swam in a pond, enjoyed beautiful sunshine, and were privileged to be able to see the Perseids meteor shower in some of the clearest skies anywhere in Scotland. The place where were is a piece of pristine ground where life is much as it would have been throughout Scotland just after the last ice age, before humans transformed the landscape through agriculture and towns, and we met all kinds of wildlife, from rare butterflies to frogs, toads and fish, to the most immense and terrifying (but cool) wasp like thing you will ever see in your life.
Each night we also collectively provided music that managed to keep people on their feet to the small hours, and a diverse mix that was suitable for all tastes.
We’d also like to send a shout out to the cops for bowling up randomly on Sunday to “check we’re all ok”, i.e. let us know that they know about us. I suppose it means we must be doing something right if the police feel the need to regularly check our site and keep tabs on us. To the cop whose job it is to read this article: how’s it going?
We hope this has made the people who couldn’t make it this year even more green with envy, if you feel like you missed out now you know there’s only one solution: BE THERE NEXT YEAR!
Don't look now: Shortly before we discovered the SSY organiser is a murderous dwarf
Sarah and Jack prove that being SSY organiser is a surefire way TO BECOME COOL
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.
Osborne with his Lib Dem henchman, Chief Secretary of the Treasury David Laws
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.
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.
And it was, as the song goes, outta sight!
Here’s some footage as well of the protests in Huelva, Andalusia:
The flyer for the protests in Dublin can be seen 
Today (and over the next few days) working class people will be celebrating our holiday, 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.
Entries (RSS)