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Scottish Leftreview Scottish Left Review Issue 63 March/April 2011 £2.00 Comment In these times of change, the Scottish Left Review is changing as well. Scottish Left Review Issue 63 March/April 2011 ne way or another, this feels like Good. But it is only real when we start to It is against this background that be reaching more and more people. So we Dropout Oa period of change. Perhaps big see real action taken. Scottish Left Review has been looking at want to make them as easy to access as we Contents change. There are perceptible shifts all And of course, not all the change what it has achieved in the last 11 years possibly can. This is all a work in progress over the place. The sort of rhetoric about is good. In England we are seeing one of and thinking about what it has to do next. and we would be very happy indeed to get Comment .......................................................2 the abuse of power of big business that the most agressively radical programmes We have started with a redesign. After your thoughts as we refresh what we do. All is Not Lost ................................................4 would have been dismissed as fringe of political change ever seen in this more than a decade it was certainly time But that isn’t going to be the end. ‘class war’ a couple of years ago is now country. The Tories are simply ripping to look at the magazine and hopefully The Scottish Left Review – as envisioned Kevin Williamson the language of the Daily Mail (at least up the British social model and replacing these changes have made it feel easier by our founder Jimmy Reid – wan’t Anatomy of Division .......................................6 intermittently). The all-consuming it with the US system of survival of the to read, cleaner and hopefully more meant to be only a magazine. It was Gordon Morgan greed of the bankers is simply taken as a richest. The Big Society is a cover for contemporary. We have also undertaken meant to be a force of change. We all given. Issues like corporations avoiding allowing multinational corporations to a major redesign of our website which take that intention very seriously and Influence Now, Unite Later ...........................8 tax make it into news bulletins. There take over public services. It will change will make it much easier to use. We have we are working hard on plans to expand Robin McAlpine is widespread unease at the level of Britain forever. We are about to see been getting a very encouraging increase what we do; to try and do more than influence exerted by Murdoch. The one ideologue in ownership of half of in people reading the magazine online simply reflect change. We will let you In Whose Interest? ......................................10 impact of our economic situation is our media and commercial product and the words we print certainly seem to know more soon. Jim Monagham starting to unsettle the unshakable placement (one of the most insidious consensus of recent decades – perhaps the forms of commercial manipulation) Questions of Leadership..............................14 market doesn’t know best and perhaps simply slipped onto our screens almost Alex Salmond and Iain Gray the rich don’t really deserve it. unnoticed. The UK we thought we knew Answers for a Better Way ............................16 In Scotland there are a few signs that looks like it will soon be gone. Scotland David Moxam the approaching election might actually will be pretty well protected whatever be one in which the parties prioritise party is elected, but that in itself will Committee of Self-Justification ..................18 things that are popular with people change everything. Jim and Margaret Cuthbert and not moves which are popular with But there is one thing which this Are We Targets? ..........................................22 business and therefore with mainstream issue suggests is simply not changing fast newspapers. In this issue of Scottish Left enough – the Scottish left. Perhaps it is Mark Hirst Review, both potential First Ministers do enough that the mainstream is swinging The Emergence of One Wales ......................24 not appear to blink before ruling out any our way, but perhaps not. After all, the Leanne Wood moves to change the status of Scottish mainstream has a knack of swinging back Water. This sets them in direct conflict to where it wants to be whenever we take Reviews .......................................................26 with the CBI, the higher echelons of the our eyes off it for a second. If we can take Web Review .................................................28 civil service and the business-linked think some degree of pleasure of watching as tanks. In the face of the Settled Will of the the slogans of the anti-capitalist left of Kick Up The Tabloids ...................................30 Scottish Establishment (and its couple-of- the last decade become the conversation- hundred votes) there is to be no charging points of people bumping into each for universities. Prescription charges are to other in the supermarket, we cannot trust Cover and illustrations: Nadia Lucchesi go – and this in the period where ‘cuts are that this is enough. Scotland has just seen [email protected] unchallengeable’. something that Scotland hasn’t really seen Back Cover Cartoon: Frank Boyle You do not need to go far to hear before – the full might of the corporate the pathetic cries of the elites in Scotland lobby descend. The ruthlessness with www.boylecartoon.co.uk – ‘this is all cheap bloody populism’ which the big supermarkets sent their they spit through gnashing teeth. What arm-twisters up to Scotland when it Articles for publication: [email protected] they mean is ‘when did populism start looked for a second that the Parliament Letters and comments: [email protected] meaning popular for someone other might get uppity about cheap alcohol or Website: www.scottishleftreview.org Tel 0141 424 0042 than us?’. It is a troubling time because massive profits is educational. As is the Scottish Left Review, 741 Shields Road, Pollokshields, Glasgow G41 4PL change and populism is the order of the outcome. Nothing stands still. There are day, at least in the Middle East. How no vacuums. The old order will not go do you condemn decisions made hear down without an almighty fight. Editorial Committee which have the support of the many So who is fighting back? Can we Moira Craig Peter McColl Tommy Sheppard while lauding the decisions being made just hope ‘popular opinion’ will do the Gregor Gall Henry McCubbin Elaine Smith elsewhere which have the support of the job? Almost certainly not. We aren’t Isobel Lindsay David Miller Bob Thomson many? Well, you just do. going to get to a better place by looking John McAllion Gordon Morgan Leanne Wood This is nothing to get too carried on and waiting. For all the positioning of Robin McAlpine Tom Nairn away with yet. What we are hearing the big two parties, it will take a time for Paul Holleran (Editor) Kirsty Rimmer here is a change of tone and it is very old habits to die. We do not – and almost Scottish Organiser welcome. But what we need is to start certainly will not – have a parliament of to see change. In the upcoming election radicals. ‘Fighting the cuts’ simply hasn’t James Doherty Printed by: PrintIt Xpress Ltd, 34 High St., Linlithgow, EH49 7AE there is already a battle to claim the provided the lead. And as we can see (Chair, Scottish Executive Council) ground of ‘decreasing inequality’ as from the writers in this issue, we don’t the ownership of one party or another. have a properly-organised alternative. National Union of Journalists, 114 Union Street, Glasgow G1 3QQ 2 Tel.: 0141 2483 6648/7748 Email: [email protected] Kevin Williamson observes the wreckage of the SSP/Solidarity project and All Is Not Lost argues that while it may be an unedifying sight, it does not mean there is no hope for the Scottish left hen I was first asked to write this socialist left could get its act together, personality of George Galloway. But could behave like that. For seasoned Greens that making such grandiose claims traditional political parties. This includes Warticle I can’t say I wept with joy. why bother? SSP leader Colin Fox went scrape away the veneer of personality observers it’s depressingly familiar. to centrality isn’t in their political DNA. many thousands of trade unionists, It’s not because the subject doesn’t engage on record recently as saying there are no politics and the main underlying obstacle If any sort of Scottish left unity If the radical left is serious about community activists, co-operative my thoughts (it does) but because there’s significant policy differences between the to any such left unity project soon project is to be forged it cannot be mounting an effective struggle against the members, social businesses, human rights a bad smell wafting out from a section of two parties. If so the obvious question becomes apparent. It was the Militant driven forward by those who utilise this neoliberal consensus it would make sense lawyers, civil libertarians, peaceniks, the Scottish left. Thankfully some other arises: Colin, why are you standing Tendency – in its re-jigged guise of destructive methodology. The SSP was that any re-organisation of the Scottish and single issue campaigners, as well poor soul has been handed the poisoned against someone with the same views as Scottish Militant Labour – who were one Trotskyite balls up too many. Its time left involved the Scottish Greens from as Scotland’s formidable wealth of chalice of making sense of the complex yourself? in the driving seat when the SSP was for all on the Scottish left to raise our day one.
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