Bedroom Tax: As the Voice went to press, the High Court in London ruled the Bedroom Tax did not unlawfully discriminate against disabled people. Here we look at the brutal reality of living in the shadow of eviction caused by the tax. • see page 5 £1 • issue 421 • 2nd - 15th August 2013 facebook.com/scottishsocialistvoice RETREAT: Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said he was “embarrassed” by revelations that his Church’s own pension fund has links to Wonga - the payday lender he had said he wanted to put out of business NEITHER WONGA NBUTO FAIRR W ATGEHS, BEENE FBITS IANSD UHNIOON RPIGHS TS • See inside - pages 2, 6 & 7 facebook.com/ScottishSocialistVoice @ssv_voice NEWS Royal baby media blitz can’t bcy Keon Fenrgusocn eal ConDem claswosrld o f mwisery foar the r many alongside opulence for the DAY after day of royal baby few. overkill with colour This however is a world supplements, mindless TV endorsed enthusiastically by coverage and sick-making all the No parties and most “experts” gushing may fill the shamefully by the misnamed media but back on planet Labour Party. Scotland the reality of the Without the participation if ConDem class war continues. Labour in Better Together, the Elsewhere in this Voice we No camp would be exposed look at the continuing impact as the pro-bosses, anti- of the war on welfare and worker bunch they are. wages which is slashing That’s why the Yes living standards and driving campaign needs to ruthlessly increasing numbers into the expose the fact that Labour arms of loan sharks. sets of rip off merchants is a year-long assault on workers’ no different than their Alongside the direct failure and it is high time that rights, started by Thatcher partners in crime and that economic assault further energy was taken into public and carried on by union voting No will not change attacks on already weak ownership and run not as a funded New Labour has that. workers’ rights with charges cash cow for profiteers but a driven down wages and, Only a Yes vote which to take lousy bosses to vital - and affordable - public since the crash, can no opens the way for a employment tribunals - service. longer be filled by cheap government which can repeal designed at the behest of the The same is true of the credit. anti-union laws, break with over hyped Lib Dem Vince Wonga vs The Bishop loans Labour-supported ConDem Cable - came into force. row. Bloated profits cuts and break with the Meanwhile few Voice Rather than scrapping over What is needed is a drive increasingly racist politics led readers will have been how much a loan should cost for decent wages and fair by the Tory/UKIP bloc and tail surprised at the “revelation” the real debate should centre benefits backed by restored ended by Labour. by Westminster MPs that the on why thousands of people union rights and paid for from A Yes vote will not only public have little trust in the have to survive each month the bloated profits and open the prospect of a more big energy firms! on pay cheques that only last dividends of the rich. progressive Scotland it will two weeks, filling the gap with Thirty years of pandering to light a beacon of hope for Fuel poverty loans. the speculators and tax those struggling for change in With about a million Scots The truth is that the 30- dodgers has now created a the rest of the former UK. in fuel poverty and an almost constant stream of To subscribe, fill in this form and send it to: Scottish Socialist Voice, announcements that the Suite 370, 4th Floor, Central Chambers, 93 Hope Street, Glasgow G2 6LD. poverty-stricken power firms Or telephone: 0781 126 5388 will need to further hike Cheques and postal orders should be made payable to ‘Scottish Socialist Voice’ prices, their lack of credibility Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/scottishsocialistvoice & Twitter: @ssv_voice may be news to handsomely- paid MPs but not to anybody Name.......................................................................................... else. Address....................................................................................... Yet faced with this rip off of .................................................................................................... the public the reaction is crocodile tears, hand- Phone......................................................................................... wringing and pointless calls Email........................................................................................... for switching accounts or I enclose: g £5 for 5 issues g £10 for 10 issues g £20 for 20 issues increasing competition. Solidarity rate: g £6 for 5 issues g £12 for 10 issues g £24 for 20 issues Choosing between different 2 • Scottish Socialist Voice • issue 421 BISSETT WHY DO MAJORITY OF SCOTLAND’S ARTISTS SUPPORT INDEPENDENCE? Alan Bissett takes a look Irvine Welsh and Janice Galloway; poets such as Liz Lochhead and RECENTLY, I found myself on Tom Leonard; and painters like Newsnight Scotland , taking part in Alexander Moffat and Ken Currie a discussion about artists and the were able to keep the Scottish independence movement. working-class imagination alive, in The item was prompted by three the face of Thatcherite oppression, events: Alex Salmond inviting and create cultural momentum some of Scotland’s top writers to which carried towards the creation help word the SNP’s flagship of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. White Paper on independence; and A third reason to trust the artists an article by the journalist Joyce is that they are not toe-ing a party Macmillan in The Scotsman , who line. While all want independence, has noticed a dearth of artists sup - none fully support the SNP. Scot - porting the Union. tish culture is left-wing in inclina - In response, the Better Together tion and a great many artists have campaign has announced its own socialist tendencies. cultural response, headed up by the After independence, we will composer, Eddie McGuire. With CULTURAL MOMENTUM: artists like poet Liz Lochhead kept the switch our attention from attacking no disrespect to Mr McGuire, I can Scottish working-class imagination alive in the face of Thatcherism Westminster to attacking the Scot - barely think of any of my fellow tish government, and Scottish cap - artists who will rush to join their not easily fooled by the false nar - artists, primarily, to think. Artists italism, whichever forms those campaign. ratives of the powerful. are in the business of exercising take, using our cultural weight to Here in Scotland they are imag - their minds, daily, and can often campaign for a stronger working- Imagination ining a better social and economic see round the corner of society to class voice in Holyrood. The first question we should future, an increased cultural confi - what’s heading our way. None of us are risking our repu - ask, then, is: why do the majority dence, awaiting us at the other side Scottish artists see only further tations, our hopes and our energies of Scotland’s artists support inde - of independence. They also don’t domination and inequality within simply to help establish a new pendence, when most creative detect a xenophobic or ethnic the Union, and greater social Scottish ruling-class. types run a mile from ‘narrow’ na - strain to Scottish nationalism, un - democracy and fairness with inde - tionalism? It’s because the possi - like British nationalism - as ex - pendence. Scotland’s 1966 bilities of independence excite the pressed by the Conservatives, Another reason to pay heed is The comparison I made on imagination. The Union is a failing UKIP and the BNP - whereby im - that Scottish artists have been Newsnight is that 2014 could be state and a stunted democracy, perialist might and suspicion of proven right before. Robert Burns Scotland’s 1966, our greatest, his - which exists primarily to wage foreigners is symbolised with himself decried the Act of Union, torical moment of cultural triumph. war, buttress capitalism and main - every flutter of the Union Jack. in his famous poem A Parcel O’ Imagine what it was like to be in tain upper-class rule. For these reasons, most in the Rogues , realising, correctly, that London at that time: the youth ris - The very existence of an un - Scottish creative community be - Scotland had been betrayed by its ing up against a decrepit social elected chamber of hereditary lieve that independence will re - ruling class for their personal gain order that still doffed the cap; peers is proof of this. The rhetoric lease a renaissance in our literature, (or, as he put it, “bought and sold music and attitudes changing; civil from the Better Together cam - theatre, film, television and music, for English gold”). rights on the march; the future paign, who want to protect this elit - as we throw off the suffocating cul - Two of our greatest 20th century seeming bright. ism, is backward-looking and tural effects of London dominance. poets Hugh MacDiarmid and On the same Newsnight , Eddie negative, predicting an apocalyptic The other question to ask, how - Edwin Morgan believed in Scot - McGuire could only offer doom- future for Scotland if we vote Yes. ever, is: does it matter what artists tish independence early on, Mac - filled warnings about Greek-style It is no surprise that they even think anyway? If you are unem - Diarmid being among the first to collapse. So much for inspiration! call themselves, privately, ‘Project ployed or a fast-food worker on equate it with the socialist struggle. If we do not have the hope of a Fear’. Furthermore, British ‘na - minimum wage or a lorry-driver or After the rigged 1979 referen - better Scotland - a socialist Scot - tional’ culture seems to consist a cleaner, why should you care dum on devolution, with Scotland land - then we do not have any - these days of manufactured excite - what a bunch of painters, actors left politically impotent, the artists thing.