20,000 Scots take to streets of Edinburgh to protest against spending cuts

THIS is how you defend Scotland.

20,000 Scots take to streets of Edinburgh to protest against spending cuts Oct 24 2010
Mark Aitken, Sunday Mail

THOUSANDS of Scots marched in protest at Government spending cuts yesterday as Treasury axeman Danny Alexander battled to justify them.

More than 20,000 joined a rally in Edinburgh to oppose the spending review announced by the Con Dem coalition on Wednesday.

Union leaders warned of strike action over the slashing of public services, which will see Scotland lose around £3billion over the next four years.

Up to 50,000 of the 500,000 public service jobs under threat will be lost in Scotland and the same number could go in the private sector.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress organised the rally and general secretary Grahame Smith said: "If members decide that the best way is to take industrial action then they will do that. I'm not saying that as a threat, but as a fact.

"We want to work constructively with employers but if they are not willing to do that then members will take action to protect their rights.

"There is no coordinated campaign of action at the moment. We hope it can be avoided but it's a real possibility."

But Alexander claimed the cuts were fair, despite moderate earners being penalised by changes in child benefit. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury said: "The decision we've made on child benefit was right and fair. It's part of ensuring that people with broader shoulders bear the greater share."

STUC president Joy Dunn told the Edinburgh protest: "A line has been drawn in the sand.

"Now is the time for organised co-ordinated industrial action. The fight starts here.

"This cabinet of millionaires know the price of everything but the value of nothing."

Marcher Peter Allison, 40, a staff nurse from Dundee, said: "This protest sends the message that people are prepared to work together against the cuts.

"People are trying to push the consensus that these cuts have to be made but I think the money can be found elsewhere.

"They say they will ring fence the health service but once the cuts have been made elsewhere, I think we will be next."

Among the marchers in Edinburgh were Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray and SNP Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.

The SNP government last night said the public spending cuts made borrowing powers for Scotland "absolutely essential".

Finance Secretary John Swinney's spokesman said: "We are building economic recovery in Scotland.

"But the UK government's damaging decision to slash our capital budget by a quarter next year threatens to take a wrecking ball to recovery."

Tories back on road to economic disaster
Have the Tories learned nothing from the 1980s and early 90s? Do they not realise that longer dole queues mean higher welfare bills, let alone that the social cost that communities can take years to recover from?

Do they want to add to their tragic litany of economic vandalism over past decades - Linwood, Bathgate, Ravenscraig? Their own figures show that for every extra 100,000 people claiming jobseeker's allowance, the Government needs to spend £400million on benefits.

George Osborne's Office for Budget Responsibility has even estimated that the Government's plans will cost an extra £700million in job seeker's allowance claims.

The Tories and the Lib Dems want you to think there is no other alternative to their plans to cut so deep.

But there is an alternative.

We should deal with the deficit in a fair way. It can't be fair, as the Tory government is doing, to take more money from children - in child benefit and tax credits - than from the banks.

We need an approach based on jobs and growth otherwise it will be impossible to get the deficit down.

Tragically in Scotland we have seen this Tory prescription before. And we know the results.

Full independence will save Scotland from worst of cuts, says Alex Salmond

First minister says 'bad' cuts – expected to lead to a fall of about £4bn in Scottish budget – are attack on compassion, fairness and social justice

Severin Carrell Scotland correspondent guardian.co.uk,
Sunday 17 October 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/17/alex-salmond-scotland-independence-cuts

Alex Salmond says independence would save Scotland's public services and economy from the worst effects of the spending cuts. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA


Alex Salmond today claimed full independence would save Scotland's public services and economy from the worst effects of the "bad" spending cuts due to be unveiled this week.

The first minister said Wednesday's comprehensive spending review – expected to lead to a fall of about £4bn in the Scottish budget – was an attack on the core principles of compassion, fairness and social justice dear to Scottish voters.

He told the Scottish National party's annual conference in Perth that he would "not be a manager of Westminster-directed cuts nor part of parliament which acts as a message boy for decisions made elsewhere".

In a speech that sought to be ambitious in its vision and scope before next May's Scottish elections, Salmond said: "There is no point in being a pocket money parliament when the pocket money stops.

"We are not the helpless agents of globalisation, but free citizens of a wealthy land. We are not slaves to the banking system or vassals to the lords of high finance.

"I do not want independence for its own sake, but for the sake of the people here and now and those to come."

The Scottish secretary, Michael Moore, has predicted that the cuts would take Scotland's funding back to its level in 2005 – about £25bn, a drop of some £4bn – by 2015.

The Scottish government claims that keeping all Scotland's share of North Sea oil and gas would leave it £1bn a year better off.

Salmond's ministers have begun setting out cuts in public services, including a 25% cut in NHS managers, but the first minister's main aim today was to rally his party for the 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections.

After nearly four years in power, the SNP faces a bruising contest. Early opinion polls suggest Labour is poised to regain power at Holyrood and form its own minority government.

Labour – now the only major party at Holyrood which is not in government – will attack the nationalists for breaking a series of pledges at the last Scottish elections, presiding over higher unemployment, NHS job cuts and a collapse in school building.

During the conference, the SNP has pledged to keep the freeze in council tax for a further two years, costing £70m a year.

Salmond announced that up to 6,000 government and NHS workers would get a "living wage" of at least £7.15 an hour – costing around £3m – and Scotland's seven police forces could be merged.

He did not specify a number, but it is thought ministers believe only three forces are needed.

He also announced that Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist who has been severely critical of George Osborne's spending plans, would now advise the SNP government on the economy.

Campbell Christie, a former head of the Scottish TUC, will lead a commission inquiry into public services. But Salmond has attempted to sidestep a policy by policy confrontation over spending cuts by accusing all his main opponents of preventing Scotland from achieving its full potential – full independence within the European union.

He acknowledged that the SNP had failed to make its case on independence by assuming voters knew what it meant, and reached out to Labour and left of centre Liberal Democrat voters.

"What I mean by independence is the profound right to enjoy the same equality of opportunity, and to live in more equal communities," he said. "What I mean by independence is jobs – to protect and create them.

"Is this a grand dream? Yes. But that is the difference between us and the other parties in this election.

"We have the vision and we have the means to deliver it ... [I] fight not for flags and anthems, but fairness and compassion. I fight for a generation that is not burdened by the mistakes of this one."

The three main UK parties killed off his bill for a referendum on independence in this parliament and only about 25% of voters currently favour independence.

But the SNP believes the spending cuts will significantly bolster its arguments for autonomy, and plans to make that dispute central to its election campaign.

Iain Gray, the Scottish Labour leader, said: "Alex Salmond is the last man Scotland should listen to on jobs and cuts. [Due] to the Salmond slump, we have lost 50,000 construction jobs and the SNP have also cut 3,000 teachers and 4,000 NHS jobs – all this with a record Scottish budget.

"Now is a time for honesty, tough decisions and protecting and creating jobs. However, Alex Salmond thinks he can get by on election gimmicks, dodge all responsibility and blame someone else for his legacy of failure."

EDL wants taste of Tea Party's Islamophobia

So, the EDL claim they are opposed to foreign influence over our politics and society... and then go running off to take lessons off the yanks. - Real SDL

Friday 15 October 2010
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/96456

Tentative links are developing between supporters of the reactionary Tea Party movement in the US and right-wing fringe groups in Britain opposed to what they call the "Islamification" of Europe.

The movements are not yet formally aligned, but the racist English Defence League (EDL), which insists that Islamic fundamentalism will soon engulf Britain, is busy building bridges with US figures who take a similar anti-Islamic position.

Extreme right-wing British organisations are gravitating towards anti-Islamic groups.

One such is candidate for the California state legislature Rabbi Nachum Shifren, who plans to visit England next week in a trip partly sponsored by the EDL.

The trip was organised by EDL activist Roberta Moore, who has formed a "Jewish division" of the group.

She said that the rabbi would speak at an October 24 rally in London.

"He plans to speak about the dangers of Islamification both in this country and in America," she said.

"We have the same objectives as the groups in the US, and we want to exchange information and work with them."

Nottingham University Professor Matthew Goodwin, an expert on extremist groups in Britain, warned: "We're seeing groups across Europe trying to form a transnational challenge to Islam.

"Going to the US is particularly interesting because the far-right in Britain has never gone that way before.

"It has always gone toward Europe.

"If it does forge strong links to the Tea Party, it would be important because the Tea Party has significant resources."

Rabbi Shifren, who has given anti-Islamic talks at Tea Party events, boasted in an interview that he planned to warn Britons their country is being lost as "fundamentalist Islam" gains strength.

"I see England going down and I want to cry out and do everything I can to prevent that, to work with the EDL," he said.

Ms Moore revealed that the EDL had also reached out to high-profile Islamophobe Pamela Geller.

She is a far-right US activist who runs an organisation called Stop Islamisation of America which is linked with similar groups across the world.

Ms Geller said she supports the English group's approach but had not yet met its leaders or agreed to any joint projects.

However she added: "I share their goal of resisting Islamic supremacism and defending free societies."

English Defence League forges links with America's Tea Party

Members of the English Defence League during a march in London against Islamic fundamentalism. Photograph: Rex

As the far-right group marches in Leicester, details are emerging of growing contacts with extremist US groups in a 'war on Islamification"

Mark Townsend
The Observer,
Sunday 10 October 2010


The English Defence League, a far-right grouping aimed at combating the "Islamification" of British cities, has developed strong links with the American Tea Party movement.

An Observer investigation has established that the EDL has made contact with anti-jihad groups within the Tea Party organisation and has invited a senior US rabbi and Tea Party activist to London this month. Rabbi Nachum Shifren, a regular speaker at Tea Party conventions, will speak about Sharia law and also discuss funding issues.

The league has also developed links with Pamela Geller, who was influential in the protests against plans to build an Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero. Geller, darling of the Tea Party's growing anti-Islamic wing, is advocating an alliance with the EDL. The executive director of the Stop Islamisation of America organisation, she recently met EDL leaders in New York and has defended the group's actions, despite a recent violent march in Bradford.

Geller, who denies being anti-Muslim, said in one of her blogs: "I share the EDL's goals… We need to encourage rational, reasonable groups that oppose the Islamisation of the west."

Devin Burghart, vice-president of the Kansas-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, said: "Geller is acting as the bridge between the EDL and the Tea Party. She plays an important role in bringing Islamophobia into the Tea Party. Her stature has increased substantially inside the Tea Party ranks after the Ground Zero mosque controversy. She has gained a lot of credibility with that stuff."

Details of the EDL's broadening aspirations came as about 1,000 supporters yesterday gathered to demonstrate in Leicester, which has a significant Muslim population. Home secretary Theresa May banned marches in the city last week but the EDL said its protest would proceed, raising fears of violence. Parts of Leicester were cordoned off to separate a counter-protest from Unite Against Fascism. Officers from 13 forces were on hand to maintain order.

The Tea Party is expected to be an influential force in America's mid-term elections. Last month their candidate Christine O'Donnell romped to the Republican nomination in Delaware, following a stream of populist rightwing candidates who carry the movement's endorsement. Burghart says anti-Islamic tendencies have become far more marked in the grassroots organisation: "As we move farther and farther away from the Tea Party origins, that were ostensibly around debt and bail-outs, social issues like Islamophobia are replacing that anger, that vigour. The idea that there is a war between Islam and the west is becoming commonplace."

Another Tea Party-associated grouping, the International Civil Liberties Alliance, which campaigns against Sharia law, confirmed that EDL leaders have made "contacts with members of important organisations within the American counter-jihad movement". A statement said: "It seems now that America and Europe are acting as one, and united we can never fail."

With the Tea Party said to benefit from millions of dollars of funding from conservative foundations, experts warn an alliance between the EDL and extremist elements within the US movement could allow the English group to invest in wider recruitment and activism.

Shifren, a Californian senate candidate, said Britain's Jewish community should rally behind the EDL: "The Jewish community is paralysed with fear, exactly what most radical Muslim agitators want. The people of England are in the forefront of this war – and it is a war. One of the purposes of this visit is to put the kibosh on the notion in the Jewish community that they cannot co-operate with the EDL, which is rubbish."

The EDL's website relaunched briefly last week with new US links. Currently shut down for "maintenance", the site featured prominent links to a site called Atlas Shrugs, which is run by Geller, and another US-based site, Jihad Watch, which compiles negative news coverage of Islamic militancy.

In addition, two members of the EDL leadership, a British businessman called Alan Lake who is believed to fund the group and a man known by the alias Kinana, are regular contributors to web forum 4Freedoms. The forum claims to be "organising US activities" and has links to the anti-jihad group, American Congress for Truth, which in turn has supporters within the Tea Party.

Lake is also believed to have been in touch with a number of anti-Islamic Christian evangelical groups in the US. One posting by Lake on 4Freedoms warns that the UK of the future will start to fragment into Islamic enclaves. Lake, believed to be a principal bankroller of the EDL, which claims to be a peaceful, non-racist organisation, is understood to be keen on the possibility of setting up the UK equivalent of the Tea Party. At an event organised by the Taxpayers' Allliance last month, US Tea Party organisers outlined how the movement emerged last year, partly in protest at the US bank bail-out.

Those present included Freedom Works and the Cato Institute, one of the Tea Party's main backers. However, Simon Richards, director of the Gloucestershire-based Freedom Association, which is looking at developing a pseudo-Tea Party movement in the UK, said he was concerned the project could be hijacked by elements such as the EDL. Nick Lowles of anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said: "The EDL is an integral part of an international campaign against Islam. While some are fighting in a cultural and political arena, the EDL are taking it to the streets. The images of the EDL allegedly taking on Muslim fundamentalists on the streets of Britain is also delighting right wing religious organisations in US."

Scottish Republicanism and what it means today

(This article was origianlly published in the Arpil-May, 2010 edition of Sovereign Nation, the newspaper of the 32 Country Soverignty Movement)


For over 300 years the nation of Scotland has been shackled
to the political union of unequals that is the British
state. For centuries prior to this forced union Scotland
fought a gallant series of wars of independence against
English attempts at subjugation and annexation. That her
Sovereignty was betrayed by the parcel of rogues in a
nation which were a supine section of the Scottish landed
nobility cannot be disputed, but the British revisionist
historians who claim that this union was popular in anyway
shape or form couldn't be more wrong.

Riots broke out against the signing of the Act of
union the length and breadth of Scotland, indeed the very signatories
to the union had to meet in secret in a cellar in
Edinburgh - such was their fear of the Scottish peoples reaction.

England achieved its union by bribery and coercion
("the rough wooing" as it was called). The signing of the treaty
was conducted with an English Fleet off the Scottish coast and
an English Army massed at the border - the threat to Scotland
should the traitors not sign the Act of Union could not have
been more explicit.

Like all subjugated peoples the Scottish have had
imposed upon them an official history of the victors that has
sought to obscure any understanding of resistance and rebellion
and that has sought to give them a historical amnesia that
prevents them from challenging the myths of the British state.
Religious sectarianism and all manner of divide and rule has
been used by the Anglo/British state and its mis-educators to
weaken and avoid a united Scottish challenge to their rule.

In such a way the Jacobite Rebellions have been
portrayed as doomed romanticism on behalf of a foppish and
effete King when in fact they had as their foundation a sincere
desire on behalf of their clansmen and others for Scottish
independence. Many a Jacobite sword had inscribed on its
blade for Scotland and no union, in English and in Gaelic.

Even more denied and obscured by the Brits and
their academic mouthpieces is the later struggle of Thomas
Muir, a radical Scottish republican and contemporary of Wolfe
Tone, who led the United Scotsmen and had excellent fraternal
relations and practical solidarity with the United Irishmen.
Just as Wolfe Tone can be said to be the Father of Irish
Republicanism so too can Muir be called the Father of
Scottish Republicanism. The British and their lackeys in the
Scottish establishment worked ceaselessly through lies, force and spies to defeat the plans of the United Scotsmen for revolution
and the re-establishment of Scottish independence
and a Republic in the late 1790s. Muir himself had to flee to
France where he became the first non Frenchman given citizenship
in the French Republic.

The Scottish Radicals of 1820 attempted armed
rebellion and a detachment were captured on route to Carron
where they hoped to seize the cannons of the Brits at the
major cannon producing ironworks there. Hardie and Baird
died on the scaffold and the rest of the leaders were rounded
up and deported to Australia as convicts. In Greenock the
British militia opened fire on the crowd, killing many unarmed
civilians, who had risen in support of the rebellion.

In the Highlands and Gaeltacht resistance broke out sporadically
against the near genocide of the clearances and the latter
parts of the 19th century saw land grabs and the simmering
Crofters War. Michael Davitt was instrumental in helping
organise the Highland Land League. By the late 19th Century
following An Gorta Mor, Scotland saw an influx of Irishmen
and women as a direct result of the genocidal policies of the
Anglo/British state. Combining with the hundreds of thousands
of cleared from their land, Gaels of the Highlands who
had been forced into the urban industrial central belt, particularly
around Glasgow, fired an angry working class with rightful
grievance and a sense of injustice against the British state
and its ruling class. Thus they emerged with an innate dslike,
distrust and hatred for the Anglo/British state and a strong
desire for Irish and indeed Scottish independence. Out of this
working class came two of the greatest Republican socialists.
In Edinburgh was James Connolly and in Glasgow John
MacLean. They took the fight for independence and the
republic of the workers to a new plane of struggle.

Whilst Connolly was organising Irish workers and small farmers
for revolution in Ireland, MacLean was developing the
forces for revolution in Glasgow and on Clydeside. MacLean
broke with the British left due to their supine acceptance of the
imperialist slaughter of WW1 and came out for a Scottish
Workers Republic. In 1919 English soldiers and tanks were
placed in Glasgow in order to quell the growing rebellion that
was known as the Red Clydeside. He himself was jailed for sedition on a number of occasions and his popularity amongst the workers of Glasgow and Scotland can be
gauged by the 200,000 who came out to meet him from the train on his release from Peterhead Gaol.

Despite the best efforts of the unionist Labour quislings
in Scotland and their masters in London, the question of
independence runs throughout modern Scottish history. It
truly is the elephant in the room on all political matters in
Scotland. Recently the twin tectonic plates of independence
and unionism have collided and the attempt by the Brits to
"kill independence stone dead through devolution" has done
nothing of the sort. In fact devolution has merely whetted the
appetite for independence in Scotland and the one party state
hegemony of the unionist Labour Party, which stretches over
50 years, has been broken with the election in 2007 of the
first Scottish National Party Government. As republicans we
can confidently say that the SNP whilst being a constitutional
nationalist party, has at its base thousands of republican separatist
members and supporters and indeed even amongst its
elected representatives a good few solid republicans and
republican socialists. Salmond himself was once a member
of the expelled republican socialist 79 Group.

From our perspective and given the political terrain
and conditions the SNP is the credible democratic electoral
challenge to unionism and the British state. Whilst we maintain
a revolutionary republican perspective towards independence
we should urge all Scots and Irish Republicans living
in Scotland to support the SNP in elections and campaign
and vote in any upcoming referendum put forward by the
SNP for full Scottish independence.

The anti colonial and anti imperialism of the struggle
for Irish independence and Scottish independence and
the fact that both struggles and nations have so much commonality
against English dominion mean that the 32 CSM in
Scotland and our Vol Charles Carrigan Cumann have not
neglected to fully engage in the struggle for Scottish independence
alongside our support and solidarity for our comrades
and their struggle for Irish sovereignty, independence
and the 32 County Republic.

The 32CSM have worked alongside and supported
efforts by the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement including
attending the John MacLean March and Rally in Glasgow
and the Anti Sectarianism march and rally at Glencoe. We will
continue this work for a Scottish Republic which we believe
could be the closest ally for the 32 County Irish Republic.
Whichever nation first gains a victory against Anglo/British
imperialism and their continued denial of our national sovereignties
will have a profound effect on the struggle in the
other. Not least because of the crisis it will create in the false
identity of British unionism that exists in both Ireland and
Scotland.