CHANTS of “free Palestine” echoed through the streets of Glasgow as the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) staged its annual St Andrew’s Day celebration on Saturday.
Trade unionists, anti-racism campaign groups and supporters from across Scotland marched through the city and rallied at Strathclyde University, where speakers appealed for support for Palestine and for the eradication of racism.
Scotland’s SNP First Minister Humza Yousaf said that equality is “in the DNA” of the trade union movement, while Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar noted that ethnic minorities in Scotland and around the world continue to suffer racism.
In response to reports of fascist and far-right groups demonstrating in Scotland, the theme of the STUC rally was “From Erskine to Elgin: the far right is not welcome.”
Mr Yousaf denounced “horrific examples of the mobilisation of the far right” across the world and said his own family had been racially abused after the September 11 terror attacks in the United States, which left almost 3,000 people dead in 2001.
“If you had a beard or, like my sisters and my mother, you wore a hijab — my sister had stones thrown at her coming off the train,” he said.
“We were called terrorists, we were asked if we were related to bin Laden, if we were part of the Taliban.
“All of that Islamophobia that we faced, I can say that post-9/11 the days and weeks, even the months after 9/11, for the first time in my life, as a teenager, I felt like Scotland, maybe, wasn’t my home.”
Mr Yousaf, whose parents-in-law were trapped in the Gaza Strip when the Israeli military onslaught on the Palestinian enclave began after the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, reiterated his support for a full ceasefire in the conflict.
Mr Sarwar told how the racism he had suffered when he was 12 years old had also been inflicted on his son, who was victimised as “the only P**i” in a local football team.
He also spoke out to demand a ceasefire, in defiance of the stance taken by British Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Both Mr Yousaf and Mr Sarwar voiced support for the family of Sheku Bayou, whose death in police custody in May 2015 is the subject of an ongoing public inquiry.
