SCOTLAND: Socialists march against capitalism

More than 900 people took part in a march in Edinburgh on May 5 to mark the 75th anniversary of the British general strike. Veteran Labour MP Tony Benn and Scottish Socialist Party MP Tommy Sheridan addressed the protest.

"People complain about the violence of the demonstrators on May Day", Sheridan said during his speech to the crowd in Princes Street Gardens. "[But] the real violence in our society comes from the institutional violence of global capitalism: the violence of a system that starves two-thirds of the world's population, while a small percentage are obscenely rich; the violence which afflicts the world with disease, while the global drug companies deny them the medicine they need; the violence of the system that pollutes our air and water in the name of profit.

"This is the real violence in the world today. It is the result of global capitalism which Marx predicted 100 years ago."

From GLW issue 448