We’re now less than a week away from the largest co-ordinated industrial action the UK has seen for decades – perhaps since the General Strike of 1926. Around three million workers will be out on strike next Wednesday – in effect, most of the public sector, from over twenty different trade unions.
That’s over twenty different groups of workers who’ve collectively said they’ve had enough of the government’s constant attacks on wages and conditions, and have now balloted for action – with the strikes in most cases winning big majorities. A strike of this scale is virtually unprecedented: nearly every school in Scotland will be shut, as will large sections of the NHS, council services, universities and colleges, job centres and tax and benefit offices, courts and other public services.
30 November has huge potential to be a big show of strength. It will not, by itself, bring down the government, but an effective day of action can place enormous pressure on them, and hopefully lead to more. This is absolutely crucial – so far the government have offered only token concessions in the dispute over pensions, with new proposals on line to make employees work longer, pay 3 percent more in contributions AND receive a lower pension at the end of it. But the strike is about much more than just pensions – sparked by years of relentless attacks on public sector pay and conditions, compounded by a three year pay freeze.
So what can you do on the day?
Next Wednesday can be a mass day of resistance for everyone in the public sector and beyond. Walkouts, occupations, pickets, demonstrations and marches – all are useful tactics in turning the struggle into Every school, uni and college is likely to be shut on the day, giving students the opportunity to pour onto the streets in support of the strikes. Student feeder marches have been organised in both Glasgow and Edinburgh on the day, ahead of the main trade union organised rallies.
Picket! If you work somewhere going on strike that day, effective picketing can be hugely important in shutting down a workplace and ensuring the day is a success. If you’re not striking, you can still go and show your support – UK Uncut have made a national call out for people to go and show some solidaritea at their local picket lines.
Demonstrate! March, rallies and events are happening across the country. Find a local action here: http://www.n30strike.org/
Walk out! Most schools, colleges and unis will be shut due to staff striking – but in the even of your classes running, organise a walkout and head to the nearest rally or picket line.
Retweet! Share! Propagandise! The Tories and their chums in the media have already gone on the offensive, trying to create a fake division between public sector workers and those in the private sector. Speak to everyone you know and tell them the facts about the strikes.
Mass protest outside the Greek Parliament in Athens on Wednesday
On Thursday evening, the Greek Parliament voted through its latest austerity package – approved by all but one of the deputies from the ruling ’social democratic’ party, PASOK. Tens of thousands of workers will now suffer dramatic wage cuts of 40%, the slashing of pensions and the tearing up of collective bargaining agreements, on top of tax hikes and 20% unemployment (youth unemployment being nearer 50%).
In reality, the real authority in Greece is now the ‘Troika’, meaning the IMF, European Commission and European Central Bank. These three institutions are holding the Greek government hostage, demanding the complete destruction of the country’s public sector in return for the continuation of the €110bn bailout package which is keeping the country afloat, if far from stable. Greece can now keep paying its bills for a few months more, but a default on their national debt in the not too distant future is still almost certain.
Wednesday and Thursday saw the biggest days of action against austerity in Greece so far. Huge numbers were on the streets across the country, as hundreds of thousands of private sector workers joined the strikes for the first time. There were chaotic scenes in Athens, as stewards from the Stalinist trade union federation PAME clashed with other demonstrators. Amid the chaos, a PAME supporter died – although reportedly from breathing difficulties caused by police teargas.
The world economy is in crisis: Greece is the testing ground – and austerity isn’t working. By forcing ever deeper and harder cuts – this is the third drastic, emergency austerity package pushed through the parliament this year – the government is facing the growing contradictions of the system. Minus 7 percent “growth” is not going to cure the deficit. A default is probably on its way, and has actually already happened to a limited, controlled extent: Greece’s creditors have already accepted that they’ll only ever get back 79 cents for every euro lent. However controlled or uncontrolled the default turns out to be, the impact on northern European banks, and the Euro, will be profound, and there’s a risk the ‘contagion’ could spread to Spain, Italy and Portugal.
Greece has entered a situation where the vast majority of the population have lost all faith in the political system and the government, who cling on through necessity to implement the orders of the Troika. Class war is being raged by the elites, meaning the absolute destruction of welfare and living standards, plunging millions into poverty. The economist Paul Mason has described what’s happening in the country as “anomie”, meaning the gradual breakdown of social order through the effective withdrawal of the state from public life: schools without textbooks, mass unemployment, general lawlessness and, among swathes of the population, little hope that anything can get better – as summed up in this report from a few weeks ago.
Europe is watching: Greece was first, but will not be the last. Organise, counter-attack!
The pavement outside the Radisson Hotel on Argyle Street, Glasgow was the setting of a showdown last night between electricians -- currently fighting the tearing up of a national pay agreement that will see wage cuts of up to 35 percent and the wholesale de-skilling of their trade -- and industry bosses, who were arriving for a glitzy awards bash.
Around one hundred electricians and supporters gathered outside the hotel from early evening in a protest organised by Unite, as tuxedo-attired construction chiefs, visibly shaken, sipped champagne within the glass confines of the hotel. Industry bosses were heckled and booed as they entered the hotel, with chants going up of “we’re going to ruin your party” and “we’re coming to get you!”.
This was the latest in an ongoing series of protests following the decision by eight major firms to pull out of the national JIB agreement, which offers protection on pay and conditions. Already one company has been forced to enter back into the agreement -- the other seven have yet to follow.
This is a vital struggle to protect workers’ rights in the private sector, with the economic crisis being used as a pretext to smash the joint-industry agreement. Further protests are set to be staged over the few next weeks across the country, including at Govan Shipyard this Wednesday 12 October. Unite have told their members to get organised and to get ready for a ballot, as the employers prepare to impose deadlines for signing onto the new terms and conditions.
Turning out to the annual STUC march – held yesterday in Glasgow – I witnessed thousands of people marching in the pouring rain (and it really was monsoon level) for over three hours, and rallying at the end of it. Watching everyone come into the park at the end, and then watching them keep coming and keep coming and keep coming, til even I got bored and went to find somewhere handy to stand, was immense. I got a bit sentimental.
Something is happening in this country at the moment. Ever since the Sheridan debacle everyone who is casually in favour of the Scottish left has dissed us for not being united, and I think this is pish. I’d rather have honest difference than tactical, artificial unity. But at this point in time there is an honest unity, because people are uniting in the face of a common enemy. This enemy isn’t as simple as David Cameron, it’s the threat that he and his ilk represent – the immense threat to the welfare state and the end of a certain way of life, a certain kind of society: a kind of society which many had started to take for granted, and are now turning out to fight for its continued existence. People in Scotland are no longer deciding what kind of country they want to live in; now they know what kind of country they want to live in.
Independence is broadly being discussed as part of the process of achieving this country, but not the way the SNP talk about independence. For us independence is one possible means to a much more important end – not just the right to choose who runs the country without having to vote tactically against the Tories, but the right to choose what kind of a country we live in, what its priorities are, who it values.
The Scottish left have despaired of finding one party behind which to rally, and instead have banded together without one, building coalitions of resistance, new working groups, community groups, and policy-making units as they went. People have organised sporadically and multifariously, have started taking things into their own hands, have started taking responsibility for what is being imposed on their neighbourhoods (Save the Accord Centre campaign, the Save Otago Lane campaign, the Free Hetherington, earlier the Tripping Up Trump campaign). In the face of an overwhelming, despairing feeling that we cannot do anything in the face of the political power that rains down on us, we have decided we’re damn well going to do something anyway.
And I guess that this is the reason that for the first time in my life really I genuinely feel proud to be part of this entity we call Scotland. Here the nation’s history is being rewritten – people are invoking Red Clydeside, the poll tax riots, the shipbuilder work-in and are relating these things to the current uprising in Scotland, in order to construct an alternative historical narrative. This narrative which is the true story of a people who did not need a political party in order to do something. It is a minor narrative – none of these things changed the world, none of these things stopped the onset of neo-liberal capitalism, and we cannot expect the incredible efforts being expended at the moment to stop neo-liberal capitalism. But these efforts are aimed at slowing the imposition on a people of something it did not vote for, of a way of life to which it does not subscribe – a way of life where the only value is monetary, and where only those who have money are entitled to the support and protection of the state.
Something is happening in this country that hasn’t come from nowhere, and that – if this radical history is any indication – isn’t going away. Scotland, no longer proud of its part in the British Empire, of its stake in British wealth and oil, no longer necessarily proud of its industries (although still of its workers) is creating something else to be proud of: a refusal to sit back and watch while the subaltern suffer.
Unionists from the CNT during the Spanish civil war
Unions have forever been a socialists friend, often at the centre of exciting periods of revolutionary activity such as Red Clydeside or the Spanish revolution. However today’s unions seem a far cry from the revolutionary militancy of yesteryear and so it is worth asking the question, why should socialists and radicals today care about unions?
One reason to care is numbers. At 6.5 million members the trade union movement is the largest organised body of the working class in existence. What’s more the trade unions constituency incorporates nearly the entirety of our class, as being a worker is an experience, unlike going to university for example, which almost all of us will share. Now clearly size alone wont cut, after all the largest political party is the labour party and most of the socialist left is to be found (quite rightly) outside of it, but the sheer capacity of the unions must be acknowledged.
This capacity is at its greatest when trade unions mobilise their members collectively to improve their lot. Such a mass experience of collective action, and hopefully a collective victory can not only serve as the basis for further strengthening the organisation and power of our class but also carries within it the seeds of our new society.
If or future society is to be a collective, socialistic one, it should follow that bringing it about must also be a collective effort. Were socialism to be installed by coup or some other individualistic, minority-based strategy then you would expect to find any new collective structures swiftly being corrupted or abandoned as has been borne out by various historical examples. This is partly because people are creatures of habit, and are not very good at going outside their comfort zones. If people have not been socialised into collective ways of working, if they have not experienced for themselves the possible pitfalls such as corruption and how best to deal with them, then it would seem that any collective experiment is doomed to failure. Consequently it would seem that the processes of attaining socialism must in itself be collective and socialistic, building the new world in the shell of the old.
Trade unions can serve to facilitate this collectivism but they can also play an important role in the building process. A revolutionary change in society, especially one involving massive numbers of people is difficult to pull off. It needs organisation and the self-confidence of all those involved. Through building up organisational size and capacity through small victories, increasing the confidence of the members and the reputation of the union bit by bit we have the potential to create powerful fighting machines, just like the unions of yesteryear.
Sadly as we all know unions are presently ill-suited to this task. Density is in decline and the sort of union activity that builds confidence and wins victories is seemingly rare. What’s more large sections of the population, especially young casualised workers have never had any experience of trade unionism. Clearly these workers need to be organised, need to be part of our collective solution to the problems of capitalism, and so the question is then, how is this best achieved?
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn addresses striking IWW silk workers
Ultimately this is a tactical decision. Some, such as the IWW, advocate setting up new radical labour unions and this approach has met with a limited degree of success, for example organising Starbucks workers. Other socialists, noting the huge capacity of the existing movement, feel its better to intervene within those unions that exist and argue for them to extend unionisation to those whom it is presently unavailable.
There are arguments for either approach, what is clear is that one way or another collective action and organisation must be extended to the entirety of the working class. This is why as a socialist I have been drawn towards syndicalism, with its focus on the potential of labour unions as transformative agents in society. But whichever socialist creed you adhere to we should acknowledge that unions, though frequently inadequate and inaccessible, have the potential to play a huge role in changing society for the better.
Next Thursday will see up to 750,000 public sector workers walking out on strike over pension cuts, in perhaps the largest direct confrontation with the government’s austerity agenda seen yet. Nearly 300,000 civil servants who’re members of the PCS will be joined by education workers in the NUT, UCU and ATL unions. It comes at the same time as some of the larger unions, like Unison, the GMB and Unite, are beginning to talk about a serious campaign of co-ordinated strike action later in the year. However, in Scotland the PCS will be striking alone next week, with teachers here having narrowly rejected action after union leaders outrageously urged their members to accept a serious attack on pay and conditions.
So while next Thursday is not going to be a General Strike on the same scale as we’ve seen across Europe over the past year or so, it still represents a key date in building the movement against the Coalition’s attacks, and its success may be crucial in it providing a springboard to wider action later in the year.
There’s lots you can do to support the strike next week – even if you’re not in the PCS and not going on strike!
JOIN THE PICKET LINES: There will be picket lines in every city in Scotland and many towns as well – with job centres, benefits, passport, customs and excise and tax offices all out. Why not find out where your nearest picket line is and go and offer your solidarity? UK Uncut have made a national call-out for people to take along breakfast to their local pickets – and there’s a list of actions on their website. Join one or make your own! See also j30strike.org
JOIN THE NATIONAL RALLY: A Scotland-wide rally has been called for George Square, Glasgow at 12 noon.
TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS: the government and the right-wing media have already started a campaign of slander and lies against the strikes and the unions involved. Today’s Daily Mail frontpage led with a huge attack on the National Union of Teachers, while all the main parties, including the SNP and Labour, have come out and attacked the strikes. It’s all our responsibility to counter this with the real reasonsfor the strike – which is about protecting jobs, public services and the right to a decent pension.
A ‘Coalition of Resistance’ is set to get off the ground in Glasgow over the next few weeks, with a view to bringing together the various strands of the anti-cuts movement in the city. SSY has been involved in initiating the group, as one of the signatories to an open letter, an edited version of which was published in the Sunday Herald this week.
An initial organising meeting is set to be held this Thursday evening, at 7pm in the STUC offices on Woodlands Road. It is hoped that COR will develop into a regular cross-city forum, which can play an important role in organising and mobilising resistance to austerity and cuts over the coming period. If we’re to see anything like the kind of resistance which has swept parts of Europe recently, having such organisations – with a broad base in the workers and students movement – will be vital. With the student movement in the UK, we’ve already seen flashes of this – over November and early December last year, an intense period of struggle saw near weekly mass demonstrations in most cities, and student assemblies springing up across the country.
The time is now ripe for broadening the struggle to unite workers, students, claimants, pensioners and all other suffering the attacks of the ruling class. The government are already running scared: just yesterday, Business Secretary Vince Cable wheeled out threats of making the anti-trade union laws even harsher, in a speech to the GMB union’s conference. Today, the GMB responded by promising “the biggest civil disobedience campaign Cameron and Clegg’s tiny little minds have dreamt of” if any attempt is made to change the strike laws.
Nonetheless, there’s been a lot of frustration recently at the apparent unwillingness of the TUC, and the large public sector unions, to really take on the government. Yes, upwards of 500,000 may have marched on March 26th, but since then, not a great deal has been forthcoming, particularly in the context of the fighting talk at last September’s TUC Congress. Things may begin to change on June 30th, when hundreds of thousands of government workers in the PCS union are set to strike over pensions. In England, teachers from the NUT and ATL unions are expected to join, while the UCU lecturers’ union are currently deliberating on the matter too, meaning up to 700,000 workers could be on strike across the UK on the day. This is an important first step, and there’s talk of further action in the Autumn, when larger unions like Unison, the GMB and Unite may also join in. However, if stopping the austerity programme by toppling the Coalition government is the aim – which it surely must be – then a 24 hour public sector co-ordinated strike sometime in the Autumn will simply not be enough. In Greece, the trade unions confederations have now organised over ten 24 hour general strikes coupled with mass demonstrations, yet the IMF imposed austerity programme continues unabated. In France last year, a series of mass demonstrations and strikes in key sectors of the economy brought the country to a virtual standstill, nearly bringing Sarkozy’s government to its knees. Yet the movement ultimately failed, with the pension reform passing. In Britain, we can’t even get a general strike on the go, so what the hell kind of hope do we have?
The movement needs to broaden out and radicalise. It needs to be embedded in every community and workplace for a mass campaign of defiance and resistance to the cuts. The organisations of the traditional left do have a key role to play in this – the weight of the trade union movement in the UK is still considerable, representing 6.5 million members and the old adage rings true: while 1000 striking students can bring a train to a standstill, a 1000 striking railway workers can bring a whole country to a standstill. But it would be foolish to rest everything on the ability of the public sector trade unions to bring down the government. The majority of people, and particularly young people, are no longer organised in a union, and ways must be found around this. One notable aspect about the recent mass anti-austerity demonstrations that have swept Spain has been a conscious rejection of the traditional organs of the left. Spontaneous in nature and largely organised online, the mass protests and assemblies have not relied on left political parties nor trade unions, although undoubtedly both have played some role. The labour movement does appear to be increasingly coming to recognise the need for a fight that extends beyond the workplace – indeed, figures like Unite’s Len McLuskey have spoken openly on the need to extend the fight across society.
In Scotland, we’re obviously also in a unique situation when it comes to fighting the cuts, with a pro-independence majority now in Holyrood. The SNP have no real solutions though, and although blaming Westminster for reducations in their block grant, will nonetheless be forced to implement huge cuts. Post-independence, the SNP strategy of slashing corporation tax and reliance on oil revenue is not a sustainable basis on which to build a country in which “the poor won’t be made to pick up the bill for the rich” and where “the profit from the land shall go to all”, as Alex Salmond promised to the Scottish Parliament recently. These contradictions will become more and more exposed over the next couple of years.
In the meantime, we need to build the kind of organisations that people will look to as the cuts begin to bite. SSY is hopeful that a Coalition of Resistance group in Glasgow can be a useful tool in aiding this struggle, in uniting organised workers with students, the unemployed and the unorganised, and we urge people to get along to the open planning meeting this Thursday, with the aims of immediately building solidarity with those striking on June 30th, and building the resistance from there.
Academic staff at over 60 universities across the UK are set to take strike action over the next two weeks. Next Thursday 17 March will see the first day of action, with members of the UCU union at seven Scottish universities walking out. This will be followed by consecutive days of action in Wales, Northern Ireland and England, before a national strike on Thursday 24 March. The action is being taken over proposed changes to pensions, and comes after universities refused to engage in negotiations with the union.
The ballot comes at a key time for the wider trade union movement, coinciding with both the latest round of cuts in the budget on 23 March, and the national anti-cuts demonstration on Saturday 26 March, which will see hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in London, in the largest display of opposition to the government’s austerity programme so far. Just this week, it was revealed that public sector unions are looking at the possibility of co-ordinated strike action over the summer, again over pensions.
Pensions are in reality one of the few issues that co-ordinated industrial action can be taken around; political strikes are banned under the anti-trade union laws, meaning that strikes against government policy in general are effectively illegal. However, by taking co-ordinated action around specific workplace issues – in this public sector pensions – it’s basically the closest thing we can have to a general strike, without getting into the realm of illegality.
At Glasgow University, the strike has taken on added significance, with the university emerging over the past month at the forefront of the struggle over the future of education itself, pitting a dictatorial, business-minded senior management against both academics and the student body. At the beginning of February, management revealed £3 million of cuts, including proposals to scrap a number of courses entirely, including nursing, social work, several modern languages and the whole Department of Adult and Continuing Education. Under the cover of ‘budget restraint’ and an ‘unsustainable deficit’, it represents a wholesale neo-liberal restructuring of the university, spearheaded by free market zealot Principal Muscatelli and his henchmen: head of finance Bob ‘the eraser’ Fraser and master of intrigue David Newall (collectively known as the Three Muscatellis. Hohoho). All receive six figure salaries; Muscatelli earns £280k per annum.
The war against unaccountable managerialism is being waged on several fronts: The Herald runs near-daily stories detailing the ‘despair and demoralisation’ at the university, huge protest marches have been held, and staff have called an emergency meeting of the university senate – the first in over a century – in order to present their concerns to management. The occupation of the Free Hetherington is also going strong after over five weeks, and continues to be at the heart of the anti-cuts struggle on campus. Next week, the battle will enter a new phase with UCU strike action.
Is it Libya? Egypt? Tunisia? No, it’s the USA. It may have been overlooked amongst rioting and protests of a much bigger scale in the middle east, but there’s been a battle raging in Wisconsin between the State Government and its own people. Police were ordered to force demonstrators out of the State Capitol building yesterday, but instead of driving them out defected to the side of the protesters.
The occupied Wisconsin State Capitol
One of the police said “We have been ordered by the legislature to kick
you all out at 4:00 today. But we know what’s right from wrong. We will
not be kicking anyone out, in fact, we will be sleeping here with you!”. For a State to lose control of it’s police force is unprecedented in recent history, and a sign that the Wisconsin demonstrators are now winning groups to their struggle who, to put it mildy, are not generally associated with trade unions and radical struggle.
The origin of these protests lies in an attempt by the Tea Party supported right-wing Republican Governor Scott Walker to destroy the power of the unions in Wisconsin. Walker wants to remove the rights of unions to collectively bargain with the Government over all other issues apart from pay – ie, holidays. pensions, benefits etc.
Walker claims that this is necessary to deal with the state deficit, but the reality is that – just like the Tories in the UK – the Tea Party and it’s allies want to use the national debt as an excuse to do all the things they’ve wanted to do to Trade Unions but didn’t have an excuse to do. It’s the Shock Doctrine for Wisconsin – terrify people into accepting horrendous “reforms” whilst they’re scared of a financial crisis. Whilst attacking collective bargaining for Unions and attacking their members pensions and healthcare, Walker’s budget proposes tax cuts for the richest in the State.
Walker’s plan is summarised quite well here, as a three pronged attack on the unions.
“In part one, their ability to bargain benefits for their members is reduced. In part two, their ability to collect dues, and thus spend money organizing members or lobbying the legislature, is undercut. And in part three, workers have to vote the union back into existence every single year. Put it all together and it looks like this: Wisconsin’s unions can’t deliver value to their members, they’re deprived of the resources to change the rules so they can start delivering value to their members again, and because of that, their members eventually give in to employer pressure and shut the union down in one of the annual certification elections
And because the Unions provide large donations to the Democratic Party, as well as neutering class struggle in the State it also removes finances from a political opponent – OR it forces the Democrats to seek funding from non-union sources, like millionaire businessmen. This means either the Democratic Party loses funds, or has to shift more and more to the right to win the money of big business – shifting right on to a territory the Republican Party already hold. It’s a Machiavellian plan to fundamentally change the political terrain in Wisconsin in favour of the ideas of the Right and business.
Given the vast number of citizens who opposed the bill, unsurprisingly there wasn’t enough time to hear them all. Instead of leaving though, the protesters stayed overnight in the Capitol Building and have remained there for two weeks – with thousands more coming to join in their occupation and to protest outside the building.
This militant defiance of union busting by the Labour movement in the USA has even, dragged the Democratic Party in the State leftward. In both the Assembly and the Senate of Wisconsin the Democrats are a minority – having lost out to the Republican Party’s gains in the midterms. They cannot vote to defeat Walker’s proposals.
But instead the Democratic Party’s Senators have gone into a kind of political exile to Illinois. It sounds mad but is actually an inspired counter-move. The Republicans have 19 Senators in the state compared to the 14 Democratic Senators. But in order for any law to pass, there must be a quorate of at least 20 senators – so the Republicans have been unable to pass this law because the Democrats have fled the state! The Democratic Party are effectively acting in defiance of normal parliamentary practice to stop the Republican Party from crushing the Trade Union movement.
Walker has of course found allies from the Tea Party, who have organised counter-demonstrations against the Unions. But they have been massively outnumbered by the pro-Union rallies, which are the biggest demonstrations Wisconsin has seen since the Vietnam War. In a national poll over 60% of Americans opposed Walker’s plan being enacted in their own states, and even contributors from Fox News have realised that Walker’s argument is “malarkey” and that it’s all about union busting.
These protests show that while the USA isn’t normally seen as a hotbed of class struggle, when it happens they don’t mess about. The struggle in Wisconsin is reminiscent of other mass mobilisations of workers in US Labour Movement history – like the Bonus Army, who set up an illegal camp in Washington DC in protest at the President’s refusal to pay them their bonus after fighting in WW1. The US Army was eventually brought in to clear the camps, which it did at the point of bayonets and the use of chemical gas.
Of course this time round, if Walker wants to use the State’s security forces to clear the State Capitol he won’t have the support of the Police. What remains to be seen is if other parts of the State will obey his orders – he’s already declared his willingness to use the National Guard to bust Unions, a tactic that Mubarak would have been happy to use. State Troopers have even been dispatched to try and drag the Democratic Senators back to the occupied Capitol Building, to try and facilitate a “democratic” process through state sponsored kidnapping.
The struggle in Wisconsin shows that the Left in the USA are starting to fight back after being left in the shadow of the Tea Party and Obama’s failures and betrayals. Along the way, they are winning mass support and a few unusal (but not unwelcome) allies to their cause.
We’re now less than a week away from the largest co-ordinated industrial action the UK has seen for decades – perhaps since the General Strike of 1926. Around three million workers will be out on strike next Wednesday – in effect, most of the public sector, from over twenty different trade unions.
Turning out to the annual STUC march – held yesterday in Glasgow – I witnessed thousands of people marching in the pouring rain (and it really was monsoon level) for over three hours, and rallying at the end of it. Watching everyone come into the park at the end, and then watching them keep coming and keep coming and keep coming, til even I got bored and went to find somewhere handy to stand, was immense. I got a bit sentimental.
In Scotland, we’re obviously also in a unique situation when it comes to fighting the cuts, with a pro-independence majority now in Holyrood. The SNP have 
Entries (RSS)