FIGHTING for real change was the rallying cry, as workers from across Scotland gathered in person and online for Morning Star Scotland’s autumn conference today.
Held at the STUC’s Glasgow base, it was opened by Lynn-Marie O’Hara of Unison, who welcomed numerous comrades with whom she had “stood side by side and shoulder to shoulder with in Erskine.”
But she reminded conference that the eight deaths in the Channel on Saturday night, for the want of safe passage, was a call to arms for all socialists.
The opening session heard anti-war activist Coll McCail tell conference that arguments for peace must be not only be moral, “but also in the social economy that surrounds us.”
Trade unionist Kate Ramsden spoke of the paper’s “vital role in the anti-war movement” and — fresh from launching the Morning Star Women’s Readers and Supporters Group earlier this month — underlined the need to “get more women involved in the debate about building peace in the world.”
Scottish Labour MSP Pauline McNeill focused on the Palestinian struggle, telling comrades that peace would come when Israel was “serious about how it treats its prisoners, serious about peace, and serious about withdrawing from occupied land.”
A Unite hospitality-led session then looked at building an industrial strategy for Palestine.
Branch member Yana told comrades of their actions so far in driving employers to boycott Israeli goods, and their successful gig in June, raising £13,500 to send two surgeons to aid the injured in the Gazan war zone.
Yana added: “If we cannot organise individuals when we’re seeing a live-streamed genocide, what chance have we got?”
The final session asked the question: “Will Labour deliver?”
Middlesbrough and Thornaby East MP Andy McDonald spoke of the new Employment Rights Bill and restoring sectoral bargaining as key, but warned “all of us on the left and trade union movement to be watchful.”
The point was emphasised by Falkirk MP Euan Stainbank who warned business was already planning to stymie the Bill.
He told comrades “making work pay” was essential not only to improve living conditions, but to fend-off a far right that “Scotland isn’t immune to.”
“It’s there, bubbling away, even if it isn’t boiling over,” he said.
