http://scottishrepublicans.myfreeforum.org
BURNS NIGHT on Friday 25 January 2013 at Elephant and Bugle pub, Maryhill Road, Glasgow.
Soup, haggis, neeps and champit totties.
Speakers: Maggie Chetty (Scottish Socialists for Independence) and Alan Stewart (Scottish Republican Socialist Movement)
Live music from "Fiery Jack."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/reds4justice/
This group is an Independent Republican Socialist news and debate forum. We support a 32 County Irish Socialist Republic and Scottish Socialist Workers Republic. Support for national liberation struggles for small nations to include all Celts, Basques and Breton peoples to secure Independence. And Freedom for Kernow/Cornwall.
This forum is in Solidarity with the IRSM, Irish Rights Watch, while also being supported by Civil Rights Vets and the Irish Political Status Committee. We urge immediate active support for the Capt.Kelly Justice Campaign, and the urgent repatriation of Irish citizen Noel Maguire to Portlaoise Prison. We also support the campaign to Free Marian Price and an end to selective internment of the Irish by the British.
We also demand Justice for Martin Corey, Gerry McGeough and Michael Campbell for him to be extradited from Lithuania to a jail in Ireland.
We also support human rights and assistance for political prisoners and their dependents particularly those presently detained in Irish, British and US Jails.
Saoirse Go Deo!
Red Justice Board
Dear Comrades
Since 2003 the Communist Party of Scotland has been holding seminars and producing pamphlets to work towards building the left for Independence. We have worked positively with a number of organisations over this time. It was agreed by them that the time has come to form a loose organisation Scottish Socialists for Independence to campaign as one of the many groups who are building unity at the grassroots as part of the Yes Campaign.
We are holding a meeting on Sunday 4th November 2012 to set up the organisation and elect a committee to begin working for an event in the early Spring. we welcome anyone from any party who supports our aims of independence and socialism.
The meeting is from 1.30pm-3pm in the Premier Inn. It is held in the Argyle Room,first floor ,booked in the name of Alert Scotland.
You are welcome to attend and to pass this to anyone who may be interested.
With all good wishes
Yours in comradeship
Maggie Chetty
Statement by the Irish Republican Political Support Group
The IRPSG has been the chief mobiliser for Republican prisoners in the north of Ireland in London over the past few years. We can say without hesitation and we have always extended invitations to all other to participate in our mobilisations and some have responded well on occasion. We have always attempted to participate in the mobilisations of others Republicans. However cooperation has fallen off recently and it has just now come to our attention that vile and baseless rumours are being circulated in Republican circles in Britain that a leading members of our group is a police agent. At the London demonstration of 20 October 2012 an IRPSG supporter was approached by a well known Republican who told him, “Have nothing to do with the IRPSG because ** works for the security services”. He referred him to another well known Republican from a different group who he said had been inquiring about **. When our supporter approached him he then repeated the rumour.
This ‘cop baiting’ is lethal in all the movements of the oppressed and particularly in the republican movement where it has a long and ignoble history. We challenge these rumour mongers to have a meeting with us and present their proof. Who was betrayed, what information was passed on what payments in cash or kind was received? We assert without hesitation these stories are baseless and have their origins in past conflicts which were never properly investigated.
We are convinced that these attacks originate in political opposition. Those who mindlessly pass them on because they suit their current political needs may find themselves caught in a climate of such suspicion and distrust that all political mobilisations in London for the cause of Republican prisoners in the north of Ireland become impossible to organise. And who benefits from that? It is well known that the leading activists of the IRPSG are revolutionary socialists and leftists. We stand with James Connolly,
“If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.”
We are Trotskyists, Communists, Maoists, Marxist Leninists and Republicans who take our internationalist duty seriously to defend the rights of oppressed peoples to fight with whatever means they see necessary to throw off the yoke of British and every other Imperialist power. We defend the civil and democratic rights of all Republican political prisoners without favour because we recognise none of them would be in prison for the ‘crime’ of trying to liberate their land from British Imperialism if Ireland was not occupied by British Imperialism. We think that political differences after these principles are agreed are matters for debate in struggle but slanders and rumour mongering have no place in that struggle. If you have proof of wrongdoing please present it. If not apologise, withdraw and we can work together as comrades for the cause of the prisoners.
Gerry Downing Secretary Irish Republican Support Group 30 October 2012
Remembering John MacLean
By Peter Urban
It is appropriate today, with the possibility of Scottish independence within sight and the working class of Scotland again confronted by the misery with which the system of capitalism fills their lives, but it is not sufficient to pay tribute to the man; it is important to pay attention to him as well. MacLean may easily lend himself as a symbol, an icon, to the contemporary struggle, but he has wisdom to lend to it as well and the Scottish working class would do well to make use of it.
MacLean was no romantic nationalist. He was a revolutionary socialist and he articulated a compelling case for the creation of an independent Scottish workers’ republic. MacLean observed the reality of the revolutionary temperaments of the Scottish and English working classes and asserted that so long as the working class in Scotland remained bound to that of England, it would face far greater obstacles in the path towards its own liberation through the destruction of the capitalist system.
Is any more evidence needed to testify to the continuing relevance of this analysis than the reality of a Tory government for the UK, while a Plaid/Labour coalition dominates the Welsh Assembly and the SNP dominates the Scottish Assembly? Today, as in MacLean’s day, the Welsh and Scottish working people stand out as far more radicalized than their counterparts in England. Independence for Scotland and Wales represents the best opportunity for those nations to achieve a working class victory over the system of capitalism and it cannot be denied that the dismantling of the ancient regime called the “United Kingdom” would be a blow to the whole of British imperialism.
But there are even greater lessons to be learned from John MacLean and that other great Scottish-born revolutionary, James Connolly. Scottish workers must not fail to learn from these towering figures from Scotland’s history that independence alone is not enough. More, independence alone is meaningless for Scottish workers. The fight for an independent Scotland must be made but an aspect of the larger struggle to create a Scottish workers’ republic; an independent republic wherein the working class alone controls the economic and political destiny of the nation. It is impossible in this era of globalization to separate Scottish capitalists from the interests they share with those of their class in England, as well as elsewhere in the EU, in North America, and throughout the globe and those interests are irreconcilable with the interests of working people. We have born the burden of this wretched and archaic long enough; the time has come to cast it off and move forward under our own guidance and in our own collective interests; and the way forward to such a future lies in the creation of a Scottish workers’ republic and cannot be attained through anything short of that.
In closing, there is yet another lesson from the great John MacLean that I would remind working people in Scotland about. MacLean, with Big Jim Larkin of Ireland, and Sylvia Pankhurst in England were participants in a founding congress for the Communist Workers’ International, convened by the Dutch revolutionary socialist Hermann Gorter. This was a congress of what we have come to call Council Communists today, from throughout the world. I make this point, because the revolutionary socialist current represented by those who attended that congress has been too long ignored and it offers today, as it did then, a path to socialist revolution suited to the conditions of a highly developed capitalist nation; a compelling and liberating alternative to the Bolshevik tradition that workers today would do well to reexamine.It is a fine thing that we today have assembled to remember and pay tribute to the memory of John MacLean; it would be a finer thing still if when we leave here today, we reflected on the insightful analysis that he left to us and seek to apply them to the challenges we confront in this present day. It is long-past due that we should, in this sense, bring John MacLean back to the Clyde.
All Hail the Scottish Workers’ Republic! The future lies before us.
Peter Urban
Comrade, International Republican Socialist Network
Hugo Chavez democratically elected socialist President of Venezuela
An Independent Scotland has a better chance of adopting not only policies that are social democratic in values but a transformation to socialism.
A Socialist Republic need not be scary for most Scots. We are supporting socialist transformation by way of the ballot box and constitutional change. This does not mean we ditch the idea of revolutionary change but proceed one step at a time.
And why socialism? Well we need to protect vital public services and have a health service and social welfare fit for purpose. We also need to embrace change in society and improve the mindset of the Scottish people to adopt a more positive view of their country. Capitalism promotes profit, greed, hopelessness and general negativity.
However as Scottish Republican Socialists we recognise the need for change by democratic means in other words carrying the Scottish people with us.
Our goal therefore is to firstly gain independence in 2014 but secure a better society thus seeking constant improvement through power gain and socialist transformation.
A Scottish Socialist Republic where politicians do not abuse their power and serve the best intentions and aspirations of the people. We only need to read about the expenses scandal of MPs at Westminster to doubt their sincerity under British rule.
And we need to ditch the monarchy and end the obscene class division in society in an ever increasing gap between the haves and have not. Ensure programmes for jobs and a strong public service
In Venezuela despite it's problem of violence in that country today is a more mature and stable country with the socialist Government ensuring oil wealth benefits the people including poor and needy. President Hugo Chavez re-elected recently with a popular democratic mandate for another six years. And I pay tribute to their modern electronic voting system that ensures the smooth running of elections.
In Cuba the Castro Administration seeks to improve the country with ongoing reform under the gains of socialism. Their achievements are very real and why no society or government is perfect the Cubans are more listened too by the powers that be than Scottish people are by Westminster.
So anyway firstly we must walk before we can run. Our goal is to gain freedom in two years time by persuading the people before then that the choice they face is a No vote achieves no change and more austerity or vote YES for change and plentiful prosperity. Things cannot get any worse under Tory/Lib Dem London rule or even if a Labour government was elected on 7 May 2015 more austerity measures are on the way remaining part of the UK.
We have a choice therefore to break from the failed British system and elect a social democratic government in Scotland while we will campaign for a democratic socialist republic of Scotland.
In short a Scottish Workers Republic.
We have proved in Scotland that we can elect a successful administration or Scottish Government under Devolution therefore the scope for change by way of independence and greater improvement through responsible and better governance is even greater.
Larry
As posted on Poblachd na h-Alba today
http://www.scotsrepublic.com
