SOCIALISTS and peace campaigners gathered this weekend for a conference to discuss a radical vision for Scotland.

Activists speaking at the Radical Independence Conference (RIC) to online crowds throughout the day on Saturday called for an internationalist campaign to reiterate Scotland’s aspiration towards “peace and sustainability.” 

The conference took place just months after a group of activists decided to continue the RIC campaign, following a controversial annual general meeting in January voting to shut down the long-established group. 

RIC organisers thanked those involved, adding: “Today saw RIC 2021 unite people from all over Scotland who all have a vision for a radical independent country that is a democratic republic, committed to equality, internationalist and opposed to war, Nato and Trident.”

Saturday’s event brought together independence supporters, climate campaigners, trade unionists and anti-nuclear activists committed to a left vision of independence distinct from that of the governing Scottish National Party. 

Janet Fenton of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said the fight for independence can be won by refusing to be “complicit in violent and unfair treatment of people and the planet.”

The campaigner added: “Scotland has a unique opportunity to accelerate nuclear abolition before it’s too late for this world, by acting to support the UN Treaty on Nuclear Weapons right now.”

Katie Gallogly-Swan, global trade and environmental policy expert, warned an independent Scotland cannot ingratiate itself with powerful countries and their “race to the bottom” on workers’ rights and taxation. 

She said: “We can’t jump on the bandwagon of using the massive industrial transformation the world needs to tackle climate change to just be a means to reassert global dominance of economies like our own — it hasn’t served the majority of people here, and it won’t in the future.”