Scottish Socialist Party

RMT threatened by disaffiliation, calls special conference

The RMT rail union will hold a Special General Meeting in Glasgow on February 6 to discuss the future of its political fund, the union's executive has decided. The move follows receipt of correspondence from the Labour Party stating that the union's decision to allow branches to affiliate to the Scottish Socialist Party, in line with last year's AGM decisions, is inconsistent with the union's national affiliation to the Labour Party. "Last year's annual meeting enshrined our affiliation to Labour in RMT's rules and agreed that branches should be free to support other organisations and...

Rail union affiliates to SSP

By Angela Paton The Executive of the railworkers' union RMT met on 8 December 2003, and voted in favour of RMT Scottish region affiliating to the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP). Done and dusted - they told the SSP earlier tonight. The SSP structures however aren't really ready for a trade union affiliation. No-one is quite sure how it will work, certainly not on a block vote like it used to be in the Labour Party. They will have representation on the national committee and on regional committees, but I'm sure there will be much discussion inside the SSP over this.

Writing on the wall

Sex and the Socialists On 11 November Tommy Sheridan resigned from his post as convenor of the Scottish Socialist Party. Days later the Scottish News of the World published an expose of Sheridan’s affair with a party activist. The report was the usual moronic purient nonsense: the woman with whom Sheridan was having an affair was a former sex worker, they had had sex with another couple. Yeah, and who cares exactly? We utterly condemn this media harassment of Tommy Sheridan. It was also, of course, a way of making a vicious right wing attack on the Scottish Socialist Party. The fall-out from...

Big Scottish vote against war

by Angela Paton First Minister Jack McConnell got a lucky escape on the Iraq vote on 13 March when the Scottish Parliament voted down John McAllion's amendment that "no case for military action against Iraq has been proven" by 62 votes to 57. The Tories voted with New Labour. The SNP and the Lib-Dems voted for McAllion's amendment. Labour got its motion through by 69 votes to 52, which called Saddam Hussein a "danger to the international community". The SNP would have favoured a war if there were a UN resolution. Still the only party that is firmly anti-war is the Scottish Socialist Party...

The SSP: lessons and prospects

Solidarity Tendency bulletin for SSP conference 2004 IN THE 2003 elections to the Scottish Parliament, the SSP's lists got 7.7% of the vote across Scotland, and six members elected. We had 15% of the vote in Glasgow. The SSP's vote has increased fairly steadily over the years, and SSP membership has risen from 400 when it was launched in 1998 to about three thousand today. The SSP has acquired sufficient profile in the working class that the Scottish committee and several Scottish branches of the rail union RMT have affiliated to the SSP, with at least passive consent from the RMT membership...

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