16 Dec
HEALTH BOARD LOBBY
24 Nov
LINDSAY’S NEWSLETTER
October 2010
Elderslie Socialist
Printed and Published by Jimmy Kerr for Renfrewshire Scottish Socialist Party, 27 Newton Street, Paisley
Renfrewshire Scottish Socialist Party newsletter
CONFERENCE CON
Council conferences a joke say SSP activists
Renfrewshire council, led by the SNP and the Liberal Democrats have again showed their contempt for ordinary people by ramming a £75 Million “cuts charter” down people’s throats, at the last of their annual Community Planning Conferences held in Johnstone in September.
The SNP and the Liberal Democrats echo the Tories’ “we are all in this together” line with their pamphlet (left) urging people to get behind the cuts.
Council Leader, Derek Mackay of the SNP, is leading the drive for £75 Million in cuts cuts by sending out the pamphlet above to Renfrewshire residents in the hope that ordinary people will get behind the cuts and give Derek a fig leaf of legitimacy as he prepares for his bid for Holyrood.
Whilst the SNP and the Liberal Democrats are busy parroting Thatcher by claiming that “There Is No Alternative”, the Scottish Socialist Party is firmly on the side of ordinary people. We call upon Renfrewshire Council to demand the money that it
needs to provide the same levels of
local services. But the SNP and the Liberal Democrats would never do this, essentially because, when it comes down to it, they do not and cannot act in the interests of ordinary people, whilst giving tax breaks to billionaires and bailing out bankers.
Scottish Socialists Jimmy Kerr and Lindsay Brown, let the SNP and the Lib Dems know what they think of their “cuts charter”
The SSP says that the entire system must change, that we can easily pay for all public services, and pay off our deficit if we only took a tiny fraction of the massive wealth of the super rich. But the SNP, with their rich donors and the Lib Dems, with their millionaire cabinet members don’t want that. Difficult Choices for Difficult Times right enough, but if the SNP and the Lib Dems get their way, then the misery will be heaped on ordinary people
Elderslie Socialist
Potty with Potholes
The SNP/ Liberal Democrat led Council is still failing to fix the roads in Elderslie, a full ten months after they were damaged by frost, causing misery for motorists and leaving potentially dangerous potholes in the roads.
Local Scottish Socialist Party activist and community councillor Lindsay Brown said
“ We get people complaining about the state of the roads all the time but the council led by the SNP and the Lib Dems, just refuse to do anything. It’s a disgrace.”
SWIMMING POOL CLOSURE ELDERSLIE
Renfrewshire council are closing Elderslie swimming pool as part of the so called “community infrastructure programme” – a code for more SNP/Lib Dem cuts.
Local man, Gerry McCartney, a public health doctor and a Scottish Socialist Party list candidate for the Scottish Elections said
“The people of Elderslie have been
badly led down by the SNP and the
Liberal Democrats. Where was the consultation? Who voted for our swimming pool to get closed or our library before that?”
SCHOOL BUSES WITHDRAWN
The SNP/lib administration have now withdrawn school buses for secondary pupils, saving £274.000 a year – well short of the £300,000 that Renfrewshire Council spends on Christmas lights each year! (thats’ just for Paisley). However, it is roughly about the same as the cost of the 17% pay rise that the top directors awarded themselves in 2007. Of course, The Scottish Socialist Party don’t want to be churlish – we understand that we are talking about children’s safety here, which pales into insignificance, if the housing director is having a new extension built – Shame on the SNP and the Lib Dems for this awful decision. SSP Renfrewshire only hopes that it doesn’t take a child’s life to make them change their mind
Contacts
Renfrewshire Scottish Socialist Party
Secretary Jimmy Kerr
07598743033
Jk033446@yahoo.co.uk
www.renfrewshiresocialists.org
www.scottishscocialistparty.org
Printed and Published by Jimmy Kerr for Renfrewshire Scottish Socialist Party, 27 Newton Street, Paisley
20 Nov
Elderslie Socialist by Lindsay Brown
October 2010
Elderslie Socialist
Printed and Published by Jimmy Kerr for Renfrewshire Scottish Socialist Party, 27 Newton Street, Paisley
Renfrewshire Scottish Socialist Party newsletter
CONFERENCE CON
Council conferences a joke say SSP activists
Renfrewshire council, led by the SNP and the Liberal Democrats have again showed their contempt for ordinary people by ramming a £75 Million “cuts charter” down people’s throats, at the last of their annual Community Planning Conferences held in Johnstone in September.
The SNP and the Liberal Democrats echo the Tories’ “we are all in this together” line with their pamphlet (left) urging people to get behind the cuts.
Council Leader, Derek Mackay of the SNP, is leading the drive for £75 Million in cuts cuts by sending out the pamphlet above to Renfrewshire residents in the hope that ordinary people will get behind the cuts and give Derek a fig leaf of legitimacy as he prepares for his bid for Holyrood.
Whilst the SNP and the Liberal Democrats are busy parroting Thatcher by claiming that “There Is No Alternative”, the Scottish Socialist Party is firmly on the side of ordinary people. We call upon Renfrewshire Council to demand the money that it
needs to provide the same levels of
local services. But the SNP and the Liberal Democrats would never do this, essentially because, when it comes down to it, they do not and cannot act in the interests of ordinary people, whilst giving tax breaks to billionaires and bailing out bankers.
Scottish Socialists Jimmy Kerr and Lindsay Brown, let the SNP and the Lib Dems know what they think of their “cuts charter”
The SSP says that the entire system must change, that we can easily pay for all public services, and pay off our deficit if we only took a tiny fraction of the massive wealth of the super rich. But the SNP, with their rich donors and the Lib Dems, with their millionaire cabinet members don’t want that. Difficult Choices for Difficult Times right enough, but if the SNP and the Lib Dems get their way, then the misery will be heaped on ordinary people
Elderslie Socialist
Potty with Potholes
The SNP/ Liberal Democrat led Council is still failing to fix the roads in Elderslie, a full ten months after they were damaged by frost, causing misery for motorists and leaving potentially dangerous potholes in the roads.
Local Scottish Socialist Party activist and community councillor Lindsay Brown said
“ We get people complaining about the state of the roads all the time but the council led by the SNP and the Lib Dems, just refuse to do anything. It’s a disgrace.”
SWIMMING POOL CLOSURE ELDERSLIE
Renfrewshire council are closing Elderslie swimming pool as part of the so called “community infrastructure programme” – a code for more SNP/Lib Dem cuts.
Local man, Gerry McCartney, a public health doctor and a Scottish Socialist Party list candidate for the Scottish Elections said
“The people of Elderslie have been
badly led down by the SNP and the
Liberal Democrats. Where was the consultation? Who voted for our swimming pool to get closed or our library before that?”
SCHOOL BUSES WITHDRAWN
The SNP/lib administration have now withdrawn school buses for secondary pupils, saving £274.000 a year – well short of the £300,000 that Renfrewshire Council spends on Christmas lights each year! (thats’ just for Paisley). However, it is roughly about the same as the cost of the 17% pay rise that the top directors awarded themselves in 2007. Of course, The Scottish Socialist Party don’t want to be churlish – we understand that we are talking about children’s safety here, which pales into insignificance, if the housing director is having a new extension built – Shame on the SNP and the Lib Dems for this awful decision. SSP Renfrewshire only hopes that it doesn’t take a child’s life to make them change their mind
Contacts
Renfrewshire Scottish Socialist Party
Secretary Jimmy Kerr
07598743033
Jk033446@yahoo.co.uk
www.renfrewshiresocialists.org
www.scottishscocialistparty.org
Printed and Published by Jimmy Kerr for Renfrewshire Scottish Socialist Party, 27 Newton Street, Paisley
18 Aug
Free or a Desert
Paisley Radicals
Just round the corner from me, in Woodside Cemetery, here in the West end
of Paisley, there is a monument to John Baird, Andrew Hardie and James Wilson, three names, I am ashamed to admit, that up until a couple of years ago, I had never even heard. So on Saturday there, I was a little embarrassed, but excited to find myself at Paisley’s annual commemoration of these remarkable individuals.
The event, organised by The 1820 Society was a sober remembrance for the three men who were hanged and beheaded for their part in the Scottish radical insurrection of 1820, a period in March and April of that year that saw an explosion of radical direct action, strikes and preparations for a class war, a real revolution.
Sadly, its a part of Scottish history that I never learned in School and nor did anyone I know. It is important because it is a good example of ordinary people rising up and demanding justice. It was a beautiful and and some of the events, especially around Renfrewshire, were an inspiring manifestation of the natural yearning for freedom.
So what exactly was the Scottish Insurrection of 1820?
The insurrection was a fight for justice. It was an attempt by ordinary people to organise themselves and institute a free, republican Scotland, with each having the right to vote, with each having the right to decent pay. They wanted an end to social injustice and a state system that looked after ordinary workers - They may not have used the world socialism, but I think that is what they were talking about.
Throughout the 18th century, dissatisfaction and dissent was fomenting amongst sections of Scottish workers inspired by the events of the US and French revolutions and facilitated by the expansion of literacy. There was in general a taste for all kinds of rights, including rights to work, rights for decent pay and rights to vote amongst others. The state however, reacted harshly to any effective organising and late 18th century radicals leading these calls were punished severly, with several prominent leaders transported to the colonies as punishment.
In the early part of the 19th Century, a harsh economic climate, mostly the result of the Napoleonic wars, meant amongst other things that corn prices deflated and seeking to protect private profits, the British Government enacted the infamous Corn Laws, putting tariffs on imported corn and keeping prices artificially high. At the same time increasing mechanisation saw wages fro skilled workers, especially weavers, fall dramatically, leading to widespread anger, fuelling radicalism across Scotland. Protests and demonstrations were commonplace, with Paisley as a weaving town, at the heart of the struggle.
In 1819, the infamous Peterloo massacre, led to the Six Acts, making any radical assembly illegal and the perpetrators guilty of treason. Widespread rioting and protests followed all over Britain, including protests in Paisley. Government reaction was typically severe, with the cavalry frequently brought in to disperse the protestors. In an effort to quell growing unrest, the British Government instituted a wide network of militias, police and spies ready to draw out the radicals and bring down the harshest of penalties.
In Scotland, at the time, the workers movement was a mish mash of local organisations, a bit like collections of guilds, affiliated to a particular area rather than an industry, but were in effect the precursor of modern trades unions. With bitterness towards the British state at its height, United Scotland societies soon formed all over the country, putting out pamphlets, organising protests and generally agitating against the British State. The Committee of Organising for Forming a Provisional Government, was soon elected as the body responsible for co-ordinating the struggle, but there was a problem. The group had been infiltrated by numerous spies and agents provocateurs, ready to draw the radicals out into open combat, allowing the British Government to try them with treason, punishable by death, rather than have them transported as had previosuly happened.
In Mid march 1820, with militia and the police in place, the Government set about drawing the radicals into a fight. Goverment agents raided a secret meeting held in Glasgow, after being betrayed by a spy and all the leaders of the The Committee were arrested. A small group of agents provocateurs then set about drawing the rest of the radicals out into the open, speaking at a meeting in Glasgow, before issuing rousing proclamations, effectively a call to strike and to take arms.The same people then travelled around, encouraging small radical groups to start preparing for war, make weapons and drill potential combatants.
In early April strikes broke out and rumours spread of armed radical supporters arriving from France and an uprising in England. Of course there was no real uprising and no armed support, but enough people were convinced to gather small groups of armed men ready to take key strategic targets across the country. In Paisley, a group was formed and began drilling but dispersed as a curfew was imposed. In Glasgow, a group led by Andrew Hardie marched towards Carron Ironworks in Stirlingshire. The group stopped at the town of Condorrat and were met by John Baird and his band of men.
By now, there were serious signs of a trap, but despite many dropping out and urged on by infiltrators, the two leaders marched their group of around 30 men onwards only to be met by soldiers just outside Bonnybridge and engaged in what became known as the Battle of Bonnymuir. Most of the group were captured and imprisoned, with a small number wounded.
On April 5th suspected radicals were rounded up and arrested in villages Glasgow and in Paisley. A
t the same time one of the infiltrators, got a message to a radical in Strathaven to meet up with another force in Cathkin. A group of 25 men led by James Wilson and carrying a banner that read “Scotland Free or a Desert”. Wilson soon suspected a trap and left the group, but the rest carried on, almost marching into an ambush before arriving in Cathkin to find no supporting forces. Ten men were later captured and jailed.
Some minor disturbances and radical actvity continued for the next few days, but the ill fated uprising, in reality a trap by government spies, was all but over, with almost all of the radicals now in jail. In a last act of defiance, locals in Greenock attacked a militia, escorting radical prisoners from Paisley to Greenock jail, almost storming the jail and breaking the prisoners free. The Militia opened fire on the crowd, wounding ten people and killing eight, including a eight year old child.
The violence was a precursor for extremely harsh treatment of suspected radicals, with almost ninety men, facing serious charges of treason. The juries in the trial did not like the idea of killing people who just wanted a better life for themselves, so most managed to escape the death penalty, with many transportations and heavy prison sentences being handed out. Some were lucky and woth the aid of sympathetic juries were found not guilty, but there was no such luck for the so called ringleaders -Wilson, Hardie and Baird who were all sentenced to death.
On 30th August 1820, in Glasgow, James Wilson was hanged. After he was hanged, an executioner, specially brought in, was jeered by a disgusted 20,000 crowd as he took three goes with an axe to take off his head. With blood streaming from the magled neck, he shouted, “Here is the head of a traitor” as he held the severed head to the onlookers.
On 8 September 1820 in Stirling, Hardie and Baird were also executed in the same gruesome manner. On the gallows Baird made a short defiant speech
Although this day we die an ignominious death by unjust laws our blood, which in a very few minutes shall flow on this scaffold, will cry to heaven for vengeance, and may it be the means of our afflicted Countrymen’s speedy redemption.
I am no martyr, but I am sure of one thing. If there was an opportunity for me to take arms in the struggle for liberty and justice, then I would take it, in fact I would welcome it. Political campaigning is simply not enough. We must take back control of what is rightfully ours. If we are squeamish about using force then fine. It’s not for everyone and I accept that as a tactic, it can only work when you have a chance of winning. Of course, there is an ethical dilemma, of whether it’s ever right to use violence. However, there is nothing stopping us from taking matters into our own hands. There are innumerable services up for the chop. Lets just take them over. Take over libraries and schools and tell the local council to go and stuff it. Take over leisure facilities, take over museums and community centres. Who is going to stop us. These services are ours and they are under threat from faceless pen pushers, whilst all our taxes go to bankers. I am sure that if the martyrs of the Scottish Insurrection could give up their lives for a noble cause, we can give up a few days in jail for our public services.
If anyone feels like causing trouble – email me jk033446@yahoo.co.uk
Further links
Radical Glasgow Wikipedia entry Electric Scotland 1820 society
9 Aug
The 65th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
We are all survivors, we are all victims
The Japanese call the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Hibakusha – literally, “the people affected by the explosion”. Official counts put the deaths from the two explosions and subsequent radiation fall out at 410,000, but these are only the most obvious victims, the most immediate artefacts, the most compelling evidence of what must rank as the greatest crime in history. There are many more.
Not least the 235,000 Hibakusha alive today, who have been and still are to an extent, discriminated against, mostly out of ignorance and fear of radiation sickness. If this wasn’t enough, they vagueries of Japanese culture decree that the survivors must also live with a strange guilt – for surviving, for not dying in the explosion, for escaping with their lives.
August 9th, marks the 65th anniversary of the bombing at Nagasaki, the second and last time nuclear weapons were used, three days after the birth of the atomic age was announced in Hiroshima, with the largest explosion the world has ever seen, killing 
80,000 people in an instant.
I think that if we are to have a world of peace. If we are to see a world free of nuclear weapons, then we must all begin to see ourselves as Hibakusha, because it was not just the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were destroyed in those terrible blasts. It wasn’t just them that suffered. It was the whole world. Once the mushroom clouds went up, rising and rising, as the cities were laid to waste below, still high up into the atmosphere, as the black rain came back down on the people, filling their lungs and covering their burnt bodies with radiation poison, the mushroom cloud still lingered and rose still, even when it had disappeared. It went all around the world and back, it covered the sky, so that we couldn’t see beyond it, the mushroom cloud.
It still hovers over us now, even here today, in Scotland and the UK and right across the entire world. We are all menaced by by nuclear weapons, the threat of world annihilation, nations bullying nations at the point of a trident missile, or an LGM Minuteman. The global power system that sees poor nations held in place, can only be maintained under the mushroom cloud. The threat of successful defiance to US hegemony is countered and trumped by The Bomb, making the very idea of a successful socialist revolution, all but redundant, except in the minds of a few hardy fantasists (like me)
So we are all Hibakusha, victims of the explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and as such we should check out the testimony of our survivor brothers and sisters. One project, The Nagasaki Archive, a project set up at Tokyo University, has created a 3d map using Google Earth, to show eyewitness testimonies from those that witnessed the bombing at Nagasaki. Another site, Eyewitness Testimony, looks at testimony from historical eyewitnesses including Hibakusha statements. There have also been numerous films made about the bombings, which include eyewitness accounts.
Perhaps the best known eyewitness account from 
any Hibakusha is the story of little Sadako Sasaki, who was two and living in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing. She developed leukaemia as a result of radiation poisoning and died, ten years later aged 12 after a protracted public battle with the condition. During her time in hospital, Sadako, learned of an old Japanese fable, which said that whoever builds a thousand paper cranes, should have one wish. With heart wrenching innocence, she embarked on a mission to build 1000 paper cranes to cure herself. Her story touched the hearts of thousands as she combed the hospital corridors for scraps of papers to make cranes. Popular myth dictates that Sadako, never reached a thousand before she died, but that children associated with the hospital, built the remaining cranes and buried them with her. Whether the myth is true or not, the story of Sadako has touched the hearts of many across the world, inspiring books, films and other 
works of art. Two statues have been erected in Sadako’s honour statue. one sits atop the Hiroshima peace memorial. It was paid for by schoolchildren touched by Sadako’s story, who published letters, raising funds to pay for the memorial.
The other is in the US, in Seattle Peace Park and every year around August 6th, thousands of cranes from all over the world are placed at the foot of the memorial. 
This gesture is a symbol for many people working for peace and an end to nuclear weapons, that taking part in actions may look futile, but in actual fact has a huge significance on others, inspiring them to act. Each action, just like each paper crane, is an act of hope, for a better, more peaceful world
The inscription Sadako’s statue reads “This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace on Earth.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself
5 Aug
Winning the war against the poor.
We are coming for your house!
A story in The Herald caught my eye tonight, apparently the value of private housing in Scotland has grown from £104 Billion to £255 billion, over the last ten years according to Bank of Scotland data. It’s nice to see that as the war against the poor intensifies, good people, that is anyone who is not poor, are getting their just rewards.
Not so nice if you commit the heinous and dastrardly crime of being too poor to invest in bricks and mortar. For those of you who fall into this catergory are essentially scumbags, particularly if you are on housing benefit. You bastards! You are a drain on the good people, the rich people. All we want is to get richer and we can’t because our economy has collapsed. And its your fault. You Bastards!!!
But guess what? Your days are numbered. We, the Unholy Alliance are
planning a devastating asssault, a shock and awe on your home, starting with benefit cuts and caps. Furthermore, the Alliance belives that as poor people you are unfit to live in the same places as the good richer people, the Volk, with our nice bought houses and mortgages and so we are seeing to it that our benefit squeeze will effectively banish you from certain areas of the country. As poor people you may live in Ghettos.
However this is not enough. It is now clear that the namby pamby New labour pinkos have been too soft on the poor. I mean, the idea that these “people” should have homes is an affront to the ideals of the Unholy Alliance and as such our noble fuhrer – David Cameron recently announced that he plans to find ways of stripping away tenure security,
Of course, there is much more work to be done. The intolerable situation with public sector workers and their outrageous decent pension pots, must be rectified if we are to win this war. However, we must be very careful not to upset our friends in the higher echelons of teh civil service. I mean those people have bought their houses for goodness sake, we cannot allow those people to be classed the same bracket as Binmen and Janitors. We must find a way of taking away the outrageous pensions of those at the bottom, whilst protecting our oxbridge friends with platinum pensions at the top.
Evildoers sticking up for the poor have suggested that some of the £150 Billion in housing profits, earned by housing owners over the last 10 years should be used to pay for those that can’t afford to buy houses. This suggestion is scandalous, not only does it not merit serious consideration, but anyone who repeats the suggestion will be shot by firing squad.
Don’t worry, good people, our best minds are working on a Final Solution to the problem of the poor. Even our housing minister has recently provided a demonstration of future housing plans as this schnap of Gruppenfuhrer Schapps shows !!
3 Aug
It’s war
It’s war. It’s an all out assault on the poor and on public services.
Sixty Thousand jobs in the public sector is just the beginning. Of course neither the Budget Review panel nor their sops in the media can’t contemplate retaining services by making our tax system resemble sanity, despite the mass of submissions that offered this as a solution, but that is normal in our intellectual culture.
Political leaders are also lining up to make their latest assualt on our beleagured welfare state. They have identified the poor, the victims of institutionalised greed as the culprits and have them firmly in their sights. We have been told this. We are told to expect more and more cuts to benefits, with the squeeze put on the sick, the most vulnerable of all. This is also routine. Moralising the poor goes back to the earliest days of industrialisation and always intensifies once the masters have gorged themselves. The very idea that these elites should pay for their greed is deemed so outlandish that it cannot even be raised as a topic, never mind discussed, as the writers of the Independent Budget Review confirmed.
The fight to save public services, jobs, skills, communities and to protect our welfare state is all but lost already, if the state of the left is anything to go by. Meanwhile the criminals behind the last capitialist crisis that you and I are currently underwriting, a crisis by the way that the working poor will be paying for for twenty years according to the IRB are laughing at us, boasting of a return to the big bucks recently. No rest for the wicked it seems, certainly nto when it comes to obscene profits, just misery for the rest of us.
So where will the political leadership come from? God knows. The left is still hopelessly divided. The unions, at least the big boys, still sickeningly sticking with New Labour, or Next Labour as one of the hopefulls calls it now. The Greens still ploughing their lone, organic, pesticide free furrow and the people still unmobilised and unmotivated with the worst of the cuts still to be felt.
As usual, it is up to a few disparate activists to lead the way, to show the political failures of the progressive parties and to take action where it is needed. The recent demonstrations outside the Vedanta AGM, where protestors gave voice to Indian villagers, whose lives, health and home is being ruined by the mining giant and the Greenpeace action that closed dozens of BP stations in London are good examples of what can be done and what needs to be done now.
This is why the upcoming climate camp action against RBS is so important. It is a chance to make important connections, between a financial behemoth, it’s wildly destructive investments, (like the Alberta tar sands) and it’s impact on local communities. (think of all the PFI projects underwritten by RBS to name one example).
Of course elsewhere in the world, they don’t have the luxury of waiting for political leadership to help organise. We have seen reports today of violent clashes on the Lebanese border, all over the head of a tree. In Pakistan, floods, possibly linked to climate change, certainly exacerbated by the conditions that villagers are forced to live, have killed at least 1500 people.
We don’t really have an excuse for not getting organised here in Scotland and in the UK. We have all the resources at our disposal. I hope that the political parties get their act together, but in the meantime it is up to us to get our own act together and get out in the streets and protest. Take over services threatened with closure, get out on strike to save jobs in the public sector.
I have included below some links to current campaign and upcoming skullduggery here in Scotland, most of it taken from Indymedia Scotland. You’ll notice that there is no big movement or protest against the asssult on the poor or the cuts to public services. Is anyone up for making this right???
http://www.unison.org.uk/million/
