Scotland

A Rose Loupt Oot
Edited by David Betteridge
Smokestack Books 2011
£8.95, 64 pages
www.smokestack-books.co.uk

Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the work-in Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) in 1971, a campaign by Scottish workers that resulted in the reversal of the Conservative government’s decision to close down a number of shipyards on the River Clyde in Glasgow.

A Rose Loupt Oot is a collection of poems, songs and artwork marking the anniversary.

Almost a year after the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) landslide victory we have a date ― Autumn 2014 ― for the most important referendum in Scottish history.

Scotland will vote on whether it stays in a union [the “United Kingdom”] dominated by the right wing ― a state that invaded Iraq, imposed nuclear weapons on the Clyde and destroyed Scotland’s industrial base ― or become an independent nation. As such, it would have the power to fundamentally change Scotland for the better and reflect the left of centre political terrain instead of being dominated by the Tory home counties.

Downfall: The Tommy Sheridan Story
By Alan McCombes,
Birlinn 2011
326 pages, pb £9.99

In the elections to the Scottish parliament in May 2003, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) polled just under a quarter of a million votes and won six seats.

By any stretch of the imagination this was a remarkable achievement for a party well to the left of Labour. It was a beacon of hope and inspiration for socialists the world over.

By 2011, the SSP’s vote had slumped to below 9000. It failed to regain any of the six seats it had lost in 2007.

The Scottish government announced on May 20 that it was aiming to use only  renewable energy  by 2020, EarthTimes.org said on May 22 — increasing its target from 80%.

Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond, from the Scottish National Party (SNP), said: “Because the pace of development has been so rapid, with our 2011 target already exceeded, we can now commit to generating the equivalent of 100% of Scotland's own electricity demand from renewable resources by 2020.

“Offshore wind will play a key role in achieving our ambitions.”

Voting across Britain on May 5 resulted in a rejection of changes to the electoral system, but election results in Scotland may herald the end of Britain as we know it.
 
The referendum on introducing an “Alternative Vote” voting system (much like the preferential voting system in Australia) to replace the current “First Past The Post” system was decisively defeated. With a turnout of only 42%, 67.87% voted against the change.
 

If it is Your Life
By James Kelman, Penguin Books 2010
280 pages, hardback
£18.99

This is Scottish author James Kelman’s first collection of short stories since The Good Times in 1998.

Right from the very first sentence you know you are back in the distinctive world of Kelman’s fiction: “When I presented myself at the Emergency section of the Social Security Office I knew things could go wrong but I was not expecting a leg amputated.”

Britain’s biggest anti-cuts demonstration yet took place on October 23, when 20,000 people took part in a Scottish-wide protest in Edinburgh.

BBC News has also reported “several thousand” demonstrating in Belfast in a trade union-organised event.

Called by the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), the Edinburgh demo throws the failures of the British Trade Union Congress general council — which managed nothing more than a couple of thousand in Westminster Hall on the day before cuts were announced — into sharp relief.

The British people have a long and proud history of defeating repression, tyranny and injustice. They defeated Conservative Party prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax in 1991 by invoking an inspiring spirit of resistance against seemingly insurmountable forces.

And it’s just a well because they need to call on these traditions once again to defeat the unprecedented and brutal cuts proposed by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government for our public services. Chancellor George Osborne has announced planned public spending cuts of £81 billion pounds.

Did you hear the one about the election everyone lost? On May 6, Labour, the party in power, lost 100 seats and with it the chance to continue in government after 13 years. The Conservatives lost the victory all the polls had been promising them for the past 18 months.

The Liberals suffered perhaps the most devastating humiliation after Cleggmania turned out to be a complete and utter mirage. The man who apparently wowed us so much in the TV leadership debates actually lost a number of seats rather than gaining any.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was found guilty on January 31, 2001, of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in Scotland that killed 270 civilians.