This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH
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Mick McGahey remains a giant of socialism
RICHARD LEONARD MSP looks at the life and ideals of the famous miners' leader and all-round champion of working-class politics
NUM President Arthur Scargill (left) and NUM Scottish President Mick McGahey in London, where they met with coal board chairman Ian MacGregor at the NCB's headquarters, March 6, 1984
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TODAY is the 25th anniversary of the death of Mick McGahey. The occasion will be marked by a debate in the Scottish Parliament on his legacy.
This is fitting. In his very first year as the leader of the Scottish miners, he went to the Scottish TUC Congress and called for the establishment of a Scottish Parliament in a federal United Kingdom.
In so doing he invoked the spirit of Bob Smillie and Keir Hardie, argued that the essence of socialism was the decentralisation of power, but decisively rejected “any theory of a classless Scotland,” citing the common bonds between the Scottish miners, the London dockers, the Durham miners and the Sheffield engineers.
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