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While politicians condemned fascist bombing of Spanish civilians in 1937, they ignored identical RAF tactics across the colonies. Today’s aerial warfare continues this pattern of applying different moral standards based on geography and race, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
We need local action to resist universal credit
TAM KIRBY calls for reinvigorated People's Assemblies to stop attacks on our welfare state, with locally coordinated bodies in the spirit of the 1919 Scottish general strike
Despite declining to show Kneecap’s set, the BBC broadcast Bob Vylan leading a ‘death to the IDF’ chant — and the resulting outrage has only amplified the very message the Establishment wanted silenced, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Israel’s genocide in Palestine and wars against its neighbours would be impossible without constant Western support — so we must amplify the brave voices demanding a halt, argues DR RAMZY BAROUD
KATE CLARK recalls an occasion when the president of the Scottish National Union of Mineworkers might just have saved a Chilean prisoner’s life
Israel’s monopolisation of ‘aid’ to slaughter Palestinians means there is no other option: direct international intervention now, says CLAUDIA WEBBE
GEOFF BOTTOMS, who has worked in a palliative care hospice for 11 years, argues the postcode lottery for proper end-of-life care must be ended to give the terminally ill choice and agency
I HAVE been asked to speak at two different meetings this month. I have been invited by Falkirk Trades Council to speak on local campaigning and the People’s Assembly. Then at a Morning Star event whose topic is the 1919 General Strike in Scotland. Even though the subjects I will be discussing are exactly 100 years apart, the actual topics and themes, to me, are the same.
With the national People’s Assembly “Britain is Broken” demo in London on January 12 and the call to have local demonstrations all over the country on January 19, the PA in Scotland will be holding a demo in Glasgow on the 19th.
Whilst large marches and demonstrations have their place and I would encourage everyone to attend both the one in London and then their local demo, we need to have a plan of action for what we do after the march is over and the flags and banners are rolled up.
This is where the national PA conference to be held in February and our own Scottish AGM are crucially important. We need to move beyond one-off demos and get back to the principles of having local People’s Assembly groups united with the Trade Unions, Trades Councils, the wider Labour movement and local communities, taking up not just national but local community campaigns.
One hundred years ago this happened, in Glasgow and Belfast to prevent mass unemployment and the 40 hour week. But it went far beyond just that one demand and also reached out to the needs of their communities.
Between 1919 and 1920 it also worked through the creation of Councils of Action to prevent arms being shipped to Poland and to provide support for the newly formed Soviet Union. With instructions sent to trades councils, local labour movement organisations convened Councils of Action to take control of industry, transport, energy and food distribution. To come together with their communities to organise and to resist all attempts at the government using Poland as an excuse to start a war with Russia.
What the Clyde Workers Committee and the Councils of Action did was to unite the trade unions with the wider labour movement and local communities.
What I think we can learn from this period is that the trade union and the wider labour movement must engage fully with their communities. To take up not just their own narrow campaigns but to support all local campaigns that fall in line with our socialist principles and aims.
The People’s Assembly was originally set up to create local groups all over the country. This has had some moderate success with at one point over 100 groups active in various ways throughout the country.
From the founding statement, “People’s Assemblies against the cuts should be organised in towns and cities across our nations, bringing all those fighting the cuts together into a broad democratic alliance on a local basis. The national and the local Assemblies, in partnership with Trades Unions, Trades Councils, campaigning and community groups, can unite our movement and strengthen our campaigns.”
How many are really active now? We need to get the People’s Assembly movement back to the ideals stated in the founding statement. We need to reinvigorate any local groups who are floundering, create groups where we have none, but more importantly we need to support these local groups, not just financially, but with our time and energy. We need to share strategies and information.
This is happening to a degree with information produced in Fife now being amended and used by other groups across the country. We have our own “In Place of Austerity” manifesto that we amended to suit the differences in Scotland.
January 19 and then our own AGM will be the beginning of this process in Scotland. We already have a large number of trade unions, trade union branches, trades councils and local groups affiliated.
2019 must be the year that we expand on this and start real, concerted and where necessary, co-ordinated campaigns over cuts to council budgets, universal credit and more that can then be tied into larger national campaigns.
We need to learn not only from what worked in the past, as we should, but from what is working in local areas now.
More from this author
Trades councils are key to linking up the class struggle at a local level — all unions and union branches must affiliate, writes TAM KIRBY
We must memorialise more of the important events of the workers' movement with real-world events, writes TAM KIRBY, as a new miners’ gala in Fife takes shape
TAM KIRBY argues we can freeze energy bills and the price of essential goods, restore the universal credit uplift and abandon the National Insurance hike — so long as we can build a coalition to tax the rich
TAM KIRBY laments how the auld are held in contempt because we apparently ‘had it so much better’ – when in fact class struggle has been a battle for every generation
