Scottish Socialist Party

SNP launches National Monologue

In the Scottish Parliamentary elections held in May this year the Scottish National Party emerged, albeit by the narrowest of margins, as the biggest single faction within the Scottish Parliament. Stan Crooke looks at what has happened since. The SNP now runs a minority administration, albeit with semi-formal support from the two Green MSPs. SNP leader Alex Salmond and his party wants to build popular support and big business support for independence, in preparation for a referendum to be held in 2010. Only a minority of the Scottish population currently supports independence for Scotland...

SNP: neither Washington nor Moscow, but – Reykjavic, Havana and Helsinki?

By Stan Crooke The Scottish National Party (SNP) is a bourgeois political party committed to the achievement of an independent capitalist Scotland. And it does not pretend to be anything other than that. In the Holyrood elections held in May of this year the SNP emerged, albeit by the narrowest of margins, as the biggest single faction within the Scottish Parliament. It won 3% more of the list vote than did the Labour Party, 1% more of the constituency vote than did the Labour Party, and one more seat in the Parliament than did the Labour Party. An SNP-Labour coalition government was never on...

Is Cuba Socialist?

This book is a pseudo-debate between Peter Taaffe of the Socialist Party and CWI (formerly Militant) in Britain and Doug Lorimer of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). It is also, I guess, an attempt to check the recent rash of Castro-worship in the Scottish Socialist Party, with whom Taaffe maintains a strained relationship. The DSP, following the lead of the American SWP, rejects Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, preferring Lenin’s blurred and outmoded formula of a “democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants” as the programme for revolutions in countries of less...

Will SSP see through Galloway?

by Stan Crooke “Over the past three years, the SSP has been supportive of George Galloway in his battles with Blair and the New Labour hierarchy over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq… Despite our disagreements, the SSP supported George’s moves to form a broad, leftwing, anti-war party in England after his expulsion from New Labour in 2003,” explained an article in Scottish Socialist Voice (paper of the SSP – Scottish Socialist Party) in December 2004. When Galloway was elected to Parliament in 2005 the Voice hailed his victory: “George Galloway’s stunning victory in Bethnal Green and Bow… was...

“As sure as the sun rises”?

The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), within which Scottish supporters of Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty are active, did very badly on 3 May. Its vote went down from 128,000 in 2003 to 12,731 this year, and it lost all its seats in the Scottish Parliament. The SSP Executive’s statement on this debacle is inadequate. It amounts to 64 paragraphs. 27 of those paragraphs concern Tommy Sheridan, the former SSP leader who split from the SSP last year to form his own personal vehicle, Solidarity-Scotland. Much, if not everything, that the statement has to say about Sheridan is true. But trying to pin...

Pointers for rebuilding the SSP

AGAINST AN SNP GOVERNMENT The SSP must be clear that the likely Scottish National Party (SNP) government, pro-capitalist and pro-independence, is no advance on a pro-capitalist and pro-Union Labour (or Labour/Lib-Dem) government. As the SSP has pointed out, "the SNPÅfs increasingly pro-business vision of an independent Scotland... promises hundreds of millions of pounds in corporate tax cuts to big business. This could only be achieved by plundering our public services". TURN TO THE WORKPLACES and TRADE UNIONS The SSP needs to make a turn to systematic workplace and trade union activity, and...

Rebuilding the SSP: a submission for the SSP National Council on 13 May 2007

From Workers' Liberty supporters in Scotland. OPEN UP DEBATE AMONGST THE MEMBERSHIP If the SSP is to rebuild after the elections, then it needs more than an open discussion throughout the membership about the causes of its electoral collapse. Just as much, it needs a proper discussion about what political initiatives and projects the SSP should be focussing on in the immediate future. And let’s be clear: engaging in a full discussion about the causes of the SSP’s electoral debacle and about ideas for future political campaigning is not the same as what this week’s “Scottish Socialist Voice”...

"Massive step forward" just round the corner "as sure as the sun rises"? SSP must stop deluding itself!

“Bad result in those elections a week ago? Nothing to do with us, guv. It’s all the fault of that bloke over there. You know the one I mean - the one with the dodgy sun tan. Real chancer, that geezer. Gets people like us a bad name.” That pretty much sums up the statement from the Executive Committee of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), now posted on the SSP website, which purports to be an explanation of the party’s disastrous performance in the Scottish Parliament elections. The statement amounts to 64 paragraphs. 27 of those paragraphs concern Tommy Sheridan. And despite running to some 2...

Scottish Socialists fight back

The Scottish Socialist Party has been using its campaign for the 3 May Scottish Parliament and local elections to win back some of the ground lost when Tommy Sheridan split to form his personality-oriented “Solidarity” group last year. The SSP has used the campaign, through leafleting, stalls and public meetings, to attract a fair number of new members. It has distributed 60,000 freesheets in its main target areas. It has worked hard to build solidarity with the 1 May civil servants’ dispute, gaining support in the PCS as a result, and responded to the SNP’s list of one hundred prominent...

If you can’t vote socialist on 3 May — vote Labour

On 3 May, when voters in Scotland, Wales and some parts of England go to the polls to elect local councillors and regional assembly members, most will face a very limited choice. In many council seats, the only choice will be between Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems; in only a handful will there be independent working-class or socialist candidates standing. Wherever there is a broadly working-class alternative, like the Scottish Socialist Party or in the small number of English council seats which will be contested by the Socialist Party, Solidarity advocates support for it. We stress the...

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