ScottishLeft Review Issue 125 September/October 2021 - £2.00 'best re(a)d' 'best 1 - ScottishLeftReview Issue 125 September/October 2021 Supporting Climate Change Education The EIS has extensive climate change policies and supports climate change education in schools. We are also working with other trade unionists around the world to call on governments to agree meaningful outputs at the COP26. Additionally, the EIS is working on a range of workstreams to support and develop climate change awareness and learning activity in the build up and subsequent to COP26. These workstreams include: a series of climate change webinars, an EIS climate change education online portal of teaching resources and an online exhibition of pupils’ work on climate-related issues on our website. 2More - Scottish info:LeftReview www.eis.org.uk/Meetings-And-Events/COP26 Issue 125 September/October 2021 feedback comment Eyes on the planetary prize hough our cover celebrates Climate change denial is now completely in the coming period as for two weeks reaching issue 125 (see below), untenable but that does not mean in November, the world’s eyes will be Tthis should not detract from the there is the political will to take the on Glasgow. In addition to a major major global issue continuing to be the appropriate action to stop and reverse demonstration on 6 November, the climate emergency. Since our last issue, these changes. At the same time as all COP26 coalition (www.cop26coalition. a combination of the IPCC ‘code red’ this, billionaires blasted off into space org) will convene a People’s Summit in report and the outbreaks of sustained on combinations of commercial-cum- Glasgow from 7 to 9 November. This will torrential rain leading to flooding from vanity projects. It’s not too hard to see reviewssee hundreds of meetings, discussions, Edinburgh to London and Germany how the rich will be able to take action action-planning sessions and networking to China as well as huge wild fires in to escape the worst of the effects of taking place with information being North America, Siberia and Greece climate change by using their superior shared from within the official have highlighted the pace and extent resources, meaning there are not COP26 summit with the thousands of of the crisis. Just two details graphically just environmental and humanitarian participants in the city and beyond. highlight the catastrophic nature of aspects but also a class aspect to the Another human tragedy continues to what is going on: for the first recorded climate crisis – just as there continues unfold in Afghanistan. Despite trillions time ever, rain fell on the peak of the to be over COVID19 in terms of ability of dollars spent and thousands of lives Greenland ice cap and in central China a to self-isolate (financial, spatially) and lost, what is stark is that western, US- whole year’s rain fell in just three days. widening gaps in wealth. So, all those dominated, imperialism cannot build These events are of biblical proportions. in Scotland have a special role to play stable and socially just democracies that SLR_half_page_mono_ad.qxp_Layout 1 05/08/2021 10:24 Page 1 Congratulations from UCU Scotland to the Scottish Left Review on your 125th edition www. ucu.org.uk/join 3 - ScottishLeftReview Issue 125 September/October 2021 are capable of withstanding the threat of politics. The Greens will be no right-wing. On Fair Work, the agreement from reactionary forces. We shall look at more able to pressurise the SNP from is a considerable watering down on this in more detail in the next issue. within government than they could the Green’s May election manifesto. from without. And, they will be giving Here, the language is highly conditional Closer to home, and despite allowing up some considerable freedom and without firm commitments. As one of areas for disagreement, the danger independence in the process. This would the negotiators, Maggie Chapman, puts of the Scottish Green-SNP pact is not foresee a Green German scenario where the case for the pact in this issue. In the so much facilitating the greenwashing the illusion of influence is gained but next issue, we will scrutinise the claims of SNP but, for the Scottish Greens, the reality is rather different – in the in more detail. a strategic mistake in the power play case of Germany, becoming somewhat cottish Left Review reaches a the governing party that talks left but STUC general secretary, Roz Foyer, will significant milestone with this whose words are seldom matched deliver the lecture (see advert on p**) 125th issue. In doing so, we have by its deeds. In the process, the SNP S So, what of the influence and impact outlasted any other left magazine has monopolised what is commonly of Scottish Left Review? It has provided published in Scotland in the post- understood to be left-wing. an intellectual resource for many by war period. Radical Scotland, which On top of that, Scottish Left Review critiquing, for example, the nature of emerged out of the SNP’s left-wing ‘79 has weathered the fractious implosion neo-liberal independence which holds group, lasted just 51 issues between of what was one of the few bright sway with much of the SNP leadership. 1982 and 1991. We were founded by developments for the left, namely, the It has given extensive coverage to veteran UCS work-in leader, Jimmy Reid Scottish Socialist Party. It also steered a the arguments and actions of those in 2000, as his last political project. course through the independence and in the environmental movement that He gathered around him significant Brexit debates not only by not taking believe fighting for climate change also figures on the left, of different parties sides but by allowing all the views of requires fighting for system change. and none, to draw up a left-wing the left on these matters to get a fair agenda that he hoped would influence airing within its pages. Has Scottish Left Review led to any new the newly re-established Scottish legislation in the Scottish Parliament? Parliament, in particular, but also This sense of consensus-building where No, is the answer – though that may society in Scotland more widely. possible and recognising differences be setting the bar a little high given the and facilitating honest debate between tight management of the Parliament Sustained by a loyal base of them - as well as looking outside just by the political parties. There are subscribers, support from many party politics to examine politics as a certainly instances of influence within different unions and much voluntary whole - has helped sustain Scottish Left Parliament though. In calling for the labour, on a bi-monthly basis, Scottish Review. It now has many more people resignation of then Scottish Labour Left Review has provided commentary willing to write for it than ever. All are leader, Kezia Dugdale, in September and critical analysis. Beginning by unpaid. 2017 after she made clear her training its fire on Blairism and ‘new’ opposition to Jeremy Corbyn, a senior Labour, the magazine has successfully In 2011, a year to the day of Jimmy Labour insider attributed Scottish Left navigated its way through challenging Reid’s death, Scottish Left Review Review a crucial role in ratcheting up times for the radical left. Prime established the Jimmy Reid Foundation. the pressure on her to go. amongst these have been two sides Over its life so far, the Foundation of the same coin. First, the decline has produced nearly 100 publications So, it is with some wind in its sails that of not just ‘old’ Labour but the decay (policy paper, pamphlets, briefing Scottish Left Reviewlooks forward notes) and organised dozens of of Scottish Labour itself as it both to reaching its two-hundredth issue. meetings. Its well-attended annual headed rightwards and downwards, You can help it do so by subscribing lectures have in the process vacating the territory and supporting at http://www. of social democracy to the SNP. And, featured Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola scottishleftreview.scot/ where you can second, the dominance of the SNP as Sturgeon amongst others. This year, read all 125 issues for free. Feedback: 1707 and all that Union was a deal between the ruling made clear to the Scots that they were classes of the two countries facilitated preparing for military invasion if the While Scotland was a poor country at by bribery. The Duke of Hamilton was bribery and propaganda should fail. the end of the seventeenth century, made an English duke, and awarded The Scots held out for a federal solution it is misleading for Adam Charlton to the Orders of the Thistle and the Garter but this was rejected by the English. claim in SLR (124, July/August) that and appointed as British Ambassador Someone had better tell Gordon Brown. the Darien adventure ‘left Scotland to Paris to secure his support. The Duke When the terms of the Union became bankrupt, and it was in this context of Argyll was given an English peerage known there was rioting in the streets of that a predatory England entered into for himself and a Scottish one for his Edinburgh and Glasgow and the terms union with a financially ruined Scotland’. brother. The Duke of Queensberry were publicly burned in Dumfries. Of 90 Scotland’s debt at that time was less obtained an English dukedom and petitions sent to the Scottish Parliament than £200,000 compared to an English an annual pension of £3,000 for life. not one was in support of the Treaty. debt of £14.5m, with the population William Paterson the architect of the Colin Darroch, Glasgow ratio being 1:5.