Issue62

by Richie Venton
A UNITED campaign to win a NO vote in the forthcoming ballot of tenants on w h o l esale abolition of Glasgow's council housing was launched at a well-attended meeting last week.
Tenants and homeowners joined council union representatives and members of the SSP and SNP.
Speakers, including Craig Binns for the council workers Joint Trade Union Committee; tenants Owen Meharry and Jan Markwick; Mike Dailly of Govan Law Centre; and Tommy Sheridan MSP demolished the bogus arguments of the council and the Glasgow Housing Association (GHA).
They showed how the GHA's "rent assurances" are not worth the paper they are not written on. Differential rents, with newer tenants paying more, will lead to an end to affordable housing.
Tenants face blackmail and bullying in the run-up to an outrageously undemocratic ballot.
Despite calls for it to be postponed to allow proper consultation, the council seems hell-bent on rushing it through.
The meeting agreed to hold weekly city-centre stalls, coordinated local public meetings and a demo before the ballot.
It called for unity in action between tenants and trade unionists, whose rights and job security would be devoured by this costly, insane act of backdoor privatisation.
This is not just an issue for council tenants and council workers.
Taxpayers' money is being squandered in the government/council/GHA advertising campaign, for a project that would cost hundreds of millions extra compared to cancelling the debt and retaining council ownership.
Home-owners in tenements would face nightmare charges for any future repairs done by the GHA.
A well-aimed united campaign with co-operation from the STUC can score a victory for David over Goliath - then mount irresistible pressure on MSPs to cancel the council's £1 billion housing capital debt, as they chase for votes in 2003.

by Bill Gillespie
PROTESTING PARENTS let Dumfries and Galloway Council know what they thought of their school closure plans.
On September 4 the parents turned out for the council's Education Committee and voiced their objections to the plans to close up to 41 schools in Dumfries and Galloway - one third of the total number of schools in the area.
Demonstrators from four of the threatened schools told councillors that shutting schools in order to afford the the Scottish Executive's Public Private Partnership (PPP) scheme will meet with a hostile reception in South West Scotland.
Now parents groups and trade unionists must work together. We must keep up the pressure and reject schools being closed to benefit private profits.
The PPP schemes are financial lunacy.

by Dave Sherry
LAST WEDNESDAY 1200 workers at BAE's Scotstoun shipyard in Glasgow struck in protest at the company's redundancy plans.
The one-day unofficial strike was decided at an angry mass meeting, which lasted only twenty minutes. The vote was unanimous with no dissent and the walk-out was immediate.
Although the workforce returned to work the following day, they have imposed an indefinite overtime ban.
The anger has been simmering at the yard since July. Only days before the workforce went on holiday for the Glasgow fair, BAE Systems management dropped a bombshell by announcing 1000 redundancies at the two Glasgow yards - Scotstoun and Govan. This would cut the total workforce by over a third before the end of the year.
At that point, the shopfloor at Scotsoun met and called for an immediate strike.
They were furious that BAE should try to axe jobs when the company had just won the bulk of a multi billion pound naval defence order from the Government.
But Danny Carrigan, the official for the Confederation of Shipbuilding Unions, spiked the call for action.
He argued that the jobs could be saved by a combination of voluntary redundancy and negotiation, and promised a ballot if the company did not retreat.
New Labour's Wendy Alexander promised that a joint Clydeside Shipyard Task Force would be set up with BAE management to minimise the job losses and save the two yards.
Since then the Task Force has met twice, but the workers representatives have been kept in the dark.
Workers at Scotstoun have lost patience and now fear their yard is being set up for closure and that BAE will transfer Scotstoun's work to their Barrow in Furness yard.

AS WE go to press, Fire Brigade Union (FBU) members across Merseyside are on indefinite all out strike in defence of a colleague.
Last month industrial action by Merseyside firefighters defeated a management attack on their conditions. The return to work agreement included a promise that there would be neither reprisal nor recrimination against any union member involved in the dispute.
Merseyside Fire Brigade have broken that promise. A Merseyside FBU member has been suspended following remarks he is alleged to have made on an FBU website during the dispute.
His entire station have walked out in support and already twenty other Merseyside stations have followed. FBU members across the country are disgusted and the strike could escalate.
John McGhee, a spokesperson for Strathclyde FBU, told the Voice: "We support the action in Merseyside. If any of the strikers are sacked or suspended then we will call on our members to join what will be an all-out national strike."

500 in road speed protest
Over 500 Lanarkshire parents and school students have taken to the streets to demand traffic calming measures on a killer stretch of road.
Recently a car ploughed into two schoolgirls in Viewpark, killing Fiona McGill.
Residents are calling for the council to improve road safety.
Karen Quinn, of the Viewpark Accident Appeal Committee said: "We don't care what kind of traffic calming measures they use, just so long as they do something."

Transco puts public at risk
The Health and Safety Executive may agree to extend the time limit for Transco to replace 90,000 kilometres of dilapidated gas supply pipes.
Gas explosions killed a family of four in Larkhall in 1999 and two people in Dundee last year.
Consequently Transco were given 25 years to replace their corroded network.
Now it seems the deadline will extend to 30 years, even although HSE advisors said that the 25-year wait could put lives at risk.

Hi-tech merger threat to jobs
Following the announcement of the merger of Compaq and Hewlett Packard, workers at the Compaq plant in Ayr are concerned about their jobs.
The deal will inevitably lead to closures and job losses but it is not yet clear whether any Scottish plant is under threat. The merger has created a huge multi-national second only to IBM.

Perth parents fight back
Parents in Perth and Kinross are starting a fight back against the local council's cuts to the education budget. Twenty nine training and care assistant positions were cut at the beginning of the school term.
The concern is that after promoting the idea of special needs students entering mainstream education, councillors are now withholding the specialist support needed.
Concerned parents have started a petition and raised the idea of taking the council to court.

NEW FIGURES out this week show that New Labour is spending less of Britain's national income on public services than Thatcher or Major.
The hated Tory governments which ruled the UK from 1979 to 1997 spent, on average, 44.1 per cent of GDP on public services. New Labour will spend just 40.5 per cent.
"These figures are a damning indictment of the Prime Minister's commitment to public services" said John Edmonds, leader of the GMB trade union.
Other union leaders have warned of a hot autumn of discontent against the butchery and sell off of schools, hospitals and housing. Meanwhile, the Scottish Socialist Party has launched a united 'Scottish Campaign Against Privatisation', to coordinate opposition to the slaughter of public services north of the border.
As a first step a national conference will be held on Saturday October 13 in Glasgow, involving trade unionists, community campaigns and political parties prepared to unite against privatisation and fight for proper funding of public services.
Already the campaign has been co-sponsored by Lothians Number 2 branch of the Communication Workers Union (CWU); the Scottish RMT; the Left Unity organisation within the civil service union, the PCS; the national Vice President of the PCS, Janice Godrich (in a personal capacity); and the Scottish Housing Association branch of the TGWU.
The Scottish Campaign Against Privatisation will help marshall the facts and arguments against PPP and other disguised destruction of public assets, and help unite the efforts of workers and communities in protest events.

Readers of the Voice should immediately ask their organisation to co-sponsor the campaign.
For an introductory letter about the campaign, contact Richie Venton, SSP industrial organiser, 73 Robertson St, Glasgow G2 8QD, or phone 0141 221 7714, or email ssp.glasgow@scotsocialist.co.uk

by Eddie Truman
ON FRIDAY September 7 SSP member Donnie Fraser was subjected to a raid by 20 armed officers of Northern and Dumfries and Galloway police forces.
Acting on a warrant that had been obtained on the Wednesday, officers used a battering ram to gain entry to a house in which two children of primary school age also live.
Officers removed his computer and a number of books and newspapers. Donnie was taken to Alness police station before being moved to Inverness and then Dumfries.
Donnie has been charged in relation to a letter allegedly sent to someone in Dumfries and Galloway nine months ago.
Donnie has no connection with the area and knows no one there. He has since been released on bail but his computer has been confiscated.
Donnie has made no secret of his support for the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement, a recognised platform of the SSP.
The suspicion of many people is that Friday's events are a continuation of the campaign of harassment and smears that Scottish republicans have faced over the past 30 years.
Subsequent to Donnie's arrest the police issued a press statement and the News of the World duly followed it up with another article in its year long catalogue of smears against the SSP and Scottish republicans within it.
Last week's events come on top of the well-documented surveillance activities of Strathclyde Police during the Govanhill Pool occupation and the Daily Record's campaign of lies and hysteria over the SSP's drugs policy.
It has become clear that there is an ongoing campaign of harassment by state security forces and their ciphers in the media directed at the Scottish Socialist Party.
There will be an in depth article in the Voice on this campaign shortly.

by Mick Eyre
TRAFFIC WAS halted in George Square as protesters from Govanhill baths and campaigners against the housing stock transfer brought their demands to the City Council.
While a full meeting of the council took place, the joint demonstration spilled over on to the road where Tommy Sheridan and Councillor John Mason joined Owen Meharry from the Campaign for a No Vote group, in addressing the seventy-strong crowd. Owen was clear that the proposed transfer of council houses to a Glasgow-wide housing association would offer no benefit to council tenants, saying:
"I live in a multi-story block where it has been estimated that about £3,000 would need to be spent on each flat to bring it up to a decent modern standard. The proposed Glasgow Housing Association would only guarantee an expenditure of £1,600 per house. "The council have spent thousand of pounds sending expensive glossy brochures and leaflets to every household promising tenants the earth if they vote 'Yes' in the ballot. We say that their proposals don't stand up to scrutiny.
"The council are trying to bribe tenants into signing over their homes to an unelected quango backed by private finance and the banks."
Speakers from the Govanhill baths campaign added that their struggle was a result of the same council policies. Donald McFadden said:
"The council is desperate to save money by unloading or closing down public services whenever it can. They do not represent the wishes of most Glaswegians."
As usual the Labour councillors sneaked in by a side entrance, something they always seem to do when any of their constituents are gathered at the main door.

Civil servants strike for safety
Last Tuesday 500 PCS union members in London began an all out strike against New Labour's decision to remove the screens in benefit offices.
The union is also balloting another 5,000 workers in other "pathfinder" areas for all out action to start in early October. These include workers in Aberdeen, Greenock, Port Glasgow, Livingston and Bathgate.
The Voice will carry a full report next week.

Tenants hit out at lack of support
The proposed transfer of the Dumfries and Galloway region's 13,500 council houses to a new landlord has been dealt a blow. A public meeting of tenants in Castle Douglas passed a vote of no confidence in the Dumfries and Galloway Housing Partnership board.
Following on from this, another two local tenants groups have voted unanimously to disband the Regional Steering Group. Both groups said the regional group had badly let down tenants and withdrew their support.

Computer firm closes in EK
An East Kilbride electronics firm is to close with the loss of 100 jobs. Matsushita Industrial Equipment is to shut down its transformer manufacturing plant by November.
The company blamed competition from global manufacturers and rapidly changing economic conditions. Manufacturers of computer monitors are no longer using the firm's transformers.
The news comes hard on the heels of the announcement that 2000 hi-tech jobs are to go in Scotland's beleaguered computer industry

Fight to save hall
The residents of Armadale are starting a campaign to save their old school building from property developers. West Lothian Council does not want to pay the costs of repairing it after leaving the building to rot.
A community steering group has been set up to win more time to find ways of funding the necessary repairs so that it can be used for local groups and clubs.

workplace news

Power workers to pull the plug

by Matt Gordon
FIFTEEN THOUSAND electrical workers employed by Scottish Power and ManWeb are to be balloted for all out strike action.
Management plan to break up the company and transfer the 'wire business' to a new outfit jointly owned by Scottish Power and the notorious construction giant, McAlpine. Balloting begins on September 21.
Dougie Rooney, AEEU national officer for the power industry, had to apologise for making favourable comments about Scottish Power's plans in the union journal.
One of the stewards told the Voice about the mood of the stewards meeting:
"Each steward that spoke was angrier than the one before. It was unanimous for strike action.
"People want to fight because wages and conditions are under threat. We know that the power industry is heading the way of the railways.
"Like Railtrack we look after the infrastructure, the high voltage power cables. Like Railtrack, safety is increasingly sacrificed for speed and profit. Fatal accidents in the industry are on the increase.
"Those of us who said privatisation was not in the interests of either the consumers or workers were right."
The ballot will ask workers to vote on two questions - first are they in favour of strike action - second are they in favour of action short of strikes.
The stewards are campaigning for a massive Yes/Yes vote.
Mass meetings are being held in Glasgow on Saturday September 15 and in Chester on Sunday 16.
After these mass meetings there will be workplace meetings at every Scottish Power and ManWeb depot.
It's no co-incidence that power workers at 24/7 are also balloting for action over pay and conditions.
This power company was created when Eastern and London Electricity did what Scottish Power are now planning - the transfer of all their staff to a new company.

Medical secretaries step up strike action

by Dave Sherry
MEDICAL SECRETARIES at the North Glasgow Hospitals Trust have been fighting for over a year for pay regrading. They can be at the top of their scale yet take home less than £780 a month.
After an overwhelming vote for industrial action, the 300 secretaries have taken part in a series of successful strike days. They will escalate the action in the coming weeks.
Anne Marie Hollywood is a UNISON steward at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. She spoke to the Voice:
"I've worked as a medical secretary for over thirty years. My 24 year old unemployed daughter, who is a single parent, lives with us - so money is tight.
"I started as a medical secretary back in 1969, after college training. Things have changed and our skills have had to keep up with the changes.
"I'm in the Gynaecology Department and work with the lead gynaecologist and three other consultants. I work unsupervised and have to use my own initiative. I have a tremendous amount of responsibility and work under pressure.
"In my office a job share post has been vacant since December 1999 so every other week I am left covering two posts.
"Over the years more and more work has been put upon us with no extra pay or recognition for the skills and complex nature of the work.
"We need a wide knowledge of medical technology and good counselling skills. That's why we started our campaign - we're fed up being undervalued.
"If we worked in the private sector with the same responsibilities our wages would be increased by at least 50 per cent.
"We are not being greedy, we are asking to be graded according to our skills and expertise.
"There is a serious recruitment and retention problem with medical secretaries and there are many unfilled vacancies in the Trust. "The main reason is low pay. If this dispute is not resolved it will get worse as staff leave for better pay.
"From the start of our strike we've had nothing but intimidation from the Trust. We've had threatening letters about deducting pay and annual leave.
"But we are going to continue to escalate our action until we get parity with other parts of the country and with the admin secretaries who work for the managers.
"Management has been unable to explain why their secretaries start on grade four and can reach grades five and six, yet we start on grade three and have to stay there."
From September 17, the North Glasgow Trust secretaries who work in surgery will be on strike three days a week.
From October 3, all 300 medical secretaries will be on strike for a week.
As Anne Marie says:
"Solidarity is the key - with financial support from other workers and the backing of the public we can win. Our victory can only help other low paid workers in the NHS." Financial support is needed to sustain the action.

Send all collections and donations to: Kathy McLean, Unison North Glasgow Hospitals Branch Cuthbertson Building Royal Infirmary Castle Street Glasgow, G4 OSF

union street
Alex Brownridge

Alex Brownridge has been a full time official for the postal workers union (CWU) in Edinburgh since 1993. He is a member of the SSP. Here he speaks to the Voice's Mick Parkin.

What's it like working for the union?
I love it.

Don't you feel torn between supporting the members if they walk out and avoiding the union's funds being sequestrated?
Not at all, I don't recognise the anti-union laws so I don't let them interfere with my job, which is to support my members in what they decide to do.

And are people willing to fight privatisation?
The members are, definitely, but we're not getting the leadership at UK level from the union.

What about this left-wing leader you've got now, Bill Hayes?
Ha. If he's a left wing then I'm off the cliff. Naw, his line is, "You get more done by working within the system", but my response to that is, "Tell me one thing this union has ever gained by working within the system."

Do you reckon the government wants to privatise the Post Office... or should I say, Consignia?
That's why they appointed this regulator, Martin Stanley. He said it himself: "My job is to take the decisions that government ministers don't want to take."
The next thing they're looking at is an application by Hayes Distribution to deliver mail in the centre of Edinburgh, Manchester and London starting this October.

No interest in covering Thurso, while they're on?
Exactly. They want to cherrypick the UK's three main financial centres but we've already decided we're not going to allow it. We're calling on the union leadership to follow policy and ballot the members for industrial action if any of our work gets outsourced to private companies. Locally we've decided to picket anywhere that does that.
Our next step is to get in touch with Manchester and London to push for this UK wide response.
Legally that's not allowed because it's not a trade dispute but we can't let that hold us back. If we do they'll just keep whittling us away until there's nothing left.

What's been the response of the UK leadership?
Nothing - which is infuriating, but it's a long-standing problem in the CWU because they've always been too close to government and there's plenty of inducements for them to play ball.

You're last general secretary is a Labour MP now, eh?
Aye, says it all, and the salaries they're on are ridiculous. In Edinburgh we get the same as when we worked on the shopfloor - I was a fork lift driver in the sorting depot - which is about £13,000 a year, but they're getting about £40,000 plus expenses.

How's the latest pay deal?
Way Forward? It's been a disaster for us. Personally I voted against it and it only got 52 per cent in the UK wide ballot, but it wouldn't get half that now if the members had another vote.
It was meant to be about consolidating overtime bonuses into the basic rate of pay and getting a shorter working week. But two years on, we've had all the bad bits and none of the good.
Even the agreement they did manage to sell us, once they'd got that through, they brought in about a hundred 'pay directives' that let them cut away at what went into our wage packets.
The claim was that if we could cut overtime that would create more jobs and we were all in favour of that, but what's really happened is that those new jobs are being filled by casual workers.
Instead of being an improvement it's turned out to be a step backwards. We got three per cent last year, and this year they want us to take no pay rise at all.

Any final points?
We've got to stop using our political levy to support New Labour.

THE MAD hoose is back. King Henry has announced a legislative programme including 18 new laws.
With a performance as inspiring as watching paint dry, he explained how the Labour-led Executive were "building for the future".
I tried to intervene. I was refused the opportunity to ask questions. I was also prevented from making even a meagre four minute contribution.
This is Scotland's "inclusive" parliament but there is no time for representatives of Scotland's fifth or sixth parties.
What did I want to say? I wanted to declare how bereft of radical ambition the programme was. I wanted to accuse the Labour/Liberal Executive of breathtaking complacency over poverty and inequality.
Believe it or not I was even going to quote from the Daily Distort to strengthen my case.
As we all know the Daily Distort is New Labour's Pravda here in Scotland and slavishly supports them.
But the August 24 editorial was accurately revealed how inequality has actually grown under New Labour:
"Indeed the statistics show that the gap between rich and poor is actually widening. And it can make a difference of seven years to your life expectancy...
"The real evidence of inequality between the poor and the prosperous is the seven-and-a-half year difference between Glaswegian males who live an average of 68.4 years and men in adjoining East Renfrewshire, who can expect to reach 75.7 - a gap that has increased by three months since Labour came to power in 1997.
"One figure is as shocking as it is tragic. In 1998 fifty babies born in Glasgow died before their first birthday, compared with only five in East Dorset."
Strong stuff indeed from the Daily Distort. Why didn't they condemn inequality so powerfully during the general election campaign? And will they mention this stuff during the 2003 campaign?
I wanted to embarrass the Lab/Lib Executive with this material. I wanted to accuse them of ignoring the grinding poverty caused by low pay, inadequate benefits and unfair taxes which afflicts millions of pensioners, workers and children.
In addition, however, I wanted to highlight the legislative gaps and make concrete alternative proposals.
What about a Protection of Public Assets Bill to protect our publicly-owned hospitals, schools and other essential assets, now under attack from New Labour's Tory inspired privatisation plans?
PFI and PPP must be opposed vigorously to protect public services, public service workers and the ethos of people before profit.
What about the Abolition of Council Tax Bill to scrap the unfair tax which imposes such a heavy burden on our pensioners and low-paid workers? Replacing it with an incomebased tax would redistribute wealth and would raise more money for local jobs and services.
What about the Water Charges Bill to replace the current unfair charging system with a Water Tax related to individual ability to pay?
What about the Scottish Workers' Rights Bill to guarantee workers' involvement in all aspects of their employment to ensure no more workers are hired and fired at the drop of a multinational hat?
All workers would be protected from day one and be entitled to a living minimum wage, a shorter working week, full sickness and holiday entitlement and a guaranteed living pension with earlier retirement.
Or a National Ownership Bill to take over our oil, gas, electricity, banking, insurance, transport, and shipbuilding industries and to establish the the right of the Scottish Parliament to seize the assets of those multi-nationals who withdraw from Scotland.
Or a Debt Recovery Improvement Bill to place compassion and understanding at the heart of debt recovery measures.
Or an Environmental Health Bill to allow for the scrapping of Trident, a massive investment in wind, wave and solar power generation, a similar investment in organic farming, decommissioning of nuclear power stations, a five-year moratorium on GM crops, a complete ban on tobacco and alcohol advertising and community powers to prevent mobile phone masts being erected.
Then of course there's the Free School Meals Bill, the Single MMR Vaccination Bill, and the Renationalisation of the NHS Bill to re-incorporate all sectors of the health service into the NHS with improved wages and conditions.
One New Labour back-bench puppet challenged the SNP to present their concrete alternatives. John Swinney failed miserably. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to propose any of the above in the parliament chamber. It won't stop us taking these ideas to the working class of Scotland.
It's not an exhaustive list. Why don't you send your ideas to the Voice?

THIS WORKERS' MP on a skilled worker's wage lark can be a real drag.
From my £2,300 monthly salary I take £1,200 while the rest goes to the Scottish Socialist Party.
It works out at £300 a week after tax.
In my opinion it's a reasonably good take home pay for someone without a family.
Okay, the hours are terrible and there's no overtime or enhanced payment for weekend working or unsocial hours.
But then again, few workers get paid for something they actually enjoy and believe in.
Taking half the MSP salary keeps you in touch with the real world.
A dentist's bill and a holiday means a visit to the Pollok Credit Union office.
Arranging the loan was certainly less painful than the dentist's chair.
By the way, I believe the Credit Union principle should be adopted nationally.
Our banks should be run on a not-for-profit basis, owned and controlled by society collectively and democratically.
And -getting back to MSPs wages - if they all lived on the wage of a skilled worker instead of taking the equivalent of two wage-packets, maybe they would be more strongly motivated to campaign against the scandalously low rates of pay in this country.

" I wanted to accuse the Executive of ignoring the grinding poverty caused by low pay, inadequate benefits and unfair taxes which afflicts millions of pensioners, workers and children. "

" PFI and PPP must be opposed vigorously to protect public services, public sector workers and the ethos of people before profit. "

by John Patrick
FOR THE majority of people daily life can be very hostile. Everyday we read of "reorganisation", "rationalising" and "streamlining".
These sanitised descriptions mask the reality of unemployment and insecurity, indignity and misery. Large corporations care only for their shareholders and will sink to any depth to secure their support.
The human toll is obvious with the correlation between unemployment, crime, drug addiction and disillusionment hard to deny. But there are also negative consequences of this untethered greed on animals.
Everyday in circuses, zoos and commercial and military laboratories animals are ruthlessly exploited causing suffering on a grand scale.
Animals reared for food are kept in appalling conditions. They are torn from their mothers and crammed into filthy pens and cages which offer no opportunity to exercise their natural behavioural patterns.
Doctors of zoology have proven those conditions cause such high levels of distress and induce psychosis in the animals leading to self-mutilation and cannibalism. If they survive they are driven great distances without adequate food and water to be slaughtered. In recent years nearly half of Central America's rainforests have been destroyed to provide North America with beef.
This affects local peasants who have no wood for tools, housing or fuel. Land which has been farmed for years is rendered useless in a season and soil erosion leads to flooding.
A 1974 study for the Overseas Development Council concluded that if America reduced its meat consumption by ten percent for one year it would free 12 million tonnes of grain - enough to feed sixty million people. Both people and the planet are dying to satisfy our taste for dead animals.
Ghandi said: "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged in the way it treats its animals."
Cruelty to animals is as distasteful as racism or sexism.
Forms of animal exploitation have echoes in our surroundings. Our council schemes are cramped and dilapidated, affording little if any forms of physical or mental stimulation.
In some ways we are all in cages. Our high rises and maisonettes are like glorified battery units.
So vote Scottish Socialist Party against big business - but also vote with your pocket. Avoid intensively farmed meat, animal tested products and buy free range eggs.
Socialism must fight oppression and injustice on all fronts.

CONCERN IS mounting that the government may be moving towards allowing new nuclear power stations to be built in Scotland. There is a major review of Britain's long term energy requirements taking place.
The Advisory Group is chaired by Brian Wilson MP, the Minister for Industry and Energy who was earlier this year advocating that a new power station, Hunterston C, should be built in his constituency.
The prime candidate sites are at Chapelcross in Annan, Dumfriesshire, and Hunterston in Ayrshire. Presently, power produced at Chapelcross goes to England, so the closure of Chapelcross would have no impact on electricity requirements in Scotland. Chapelcross has throughout its life played a key role producing material for nuclear weapons.
The military have an ongoing requirement for tritium for British nuclear weapons. All of this tritium comes from Chapelcross. Currently the station is due to close between 2008 and 2010.
It is likely that there is considerable pressure from the MoD that a replacement power station is built on the same site.
A motion has been put to the SNP's conference proposing that the party change their position over membership of NATO. Earlier this year, 51 per cent of Scottish people supported a demonstration at the Faslane Trident base on the Clyde to get rid of nuclear weapons.
On Monday October 22 at 7am, there will be another major blockade of the base. You can sit in the road and close the base peacefully.
Or you can come and give essential support without doing anything arrestable. The vital thing is to be there.

Governments fail to tackle world hunger
Greenpeace has accused the world's governments of failing to fulfil their commitment to reduce world hunger while ignoring the methods of agriculture that are environmentally sound and proven.
GM Campaigner for Greenpeace Charlie Kronick said: "Governments have lost sight of genuinely sustainable farming. The real solutions are out there, but lack funding and support. It is in the interest of the GM industry to keep it that way. "If the level of investment that we see for GM today was made available to proven sustainable methods of production and researching alternatives it would go a long way to solve problems of agriculture in developing countries."

'Actorvists' target Nike
In Australia an angry mob gathered, passing out photocopied flyers, shouting protests and slapping scrappy stickers on billboards directing passers-by to a crudely designed website.
The company they were railing against? Nike. And the group running this guerrilla-style anti-advertising campaign? Nike. Creating their own subverted billboards by Fans Fighting for Fairer Football (FFFF), this group of 'actorvists' complained that Nike shoe wearers have an unfair advantage.
But real activists properly subverted the subverted billboards. Two days after the FFFF website was mentioned in the mainstream news, it was taken down.

GM giant to sue Government
GM giant Aventis is expected to take the Government to court to prevent it giving information to Friends of the Earth on the health and environmental impacts of one of the company's pesticides sprayed on GM crops, including those trials in the Highlands.
The Government has told Aventis that it has until September 7 to take legal action - which the Government will contest - or it will hand the information to Friends of the Earth.

Bush attacked for risking world's future
Greenpeace's recently appointed Executive Director, Gerd Leipold, has criticised President George W Bush for putting the world's future at risk with a "truly astonishing policy path that could undo so much progress in environmental protection and world peace".
Speaking at the launch of the organisation's Annual Report, Dr Gerd Leipold said that in pursuing the Star Wars (missile defence) programme, rejecting the Kyoto climate change agreement and threatening to open the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Reserve to oil exploitation, President Bush was failing to protect the environment to satisfy his corporate supporters.

Capital transport plan welcomed
Commenting on the release of details of Edinburgh's new transport plan, Friends of the Earth Scotland's Head of Research, Dr Richard Dixon, said:
"At last we have a comprehensive plan for transport in Edinburgh which aims to deliver real improvements to public transport, improve conditions for cyclists and pedestrians, reduce traffic danger in residential areas and tackle congestion problems.
"We heartily welcome this plan, but we would like to see even more rapid progress."

Scottish Executive let off the hook
Holyrood's Transport and Environment Committee has decided neither to pursue the Executive into conducting an inquiry into Scotland's £250 million fish farming industry nor to launch its own inquiry.
Kevin Dunion, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland said: "We are bitterly disappointed that the Executive has been let off the hook and that there will be no public scrutiny into the environmental impacts of Scotland's fish farming industry. People who have been affected by the detrimental impacts of the industry will not have their voices heard now."

MILLIONS OF people across the world were shocked last week by TV images of young girls running a gauntlet of hatred in North Belfast in their first few days at school.
For most outside observers, the scenes looked like a throwback to 1960s Alabama. Despite the peace process, parts of Northern Ireland seem to be descending deeper into sectarian tribalism.
It is clear that the UDA/UFF are heavily involved in orchestrating this protest. During last year's feud between the UDA and the UVF, many UDA activists fled from the Lower Shankill to Glenbryn.
The Red Hand Defenders - a cover name that has been used by both the UDA and the LVF - have admitted responsibility for the violence in Glenbryn , including the use of pipe bombs.
The Progressive Unionist Party, linked to the UVF, has also come under criticism for its contradictory attitude to the protest. While criticising the Holy Cross protests as "reprehensible", PUP leader, David Ervine, insists they are "a cry for help from a voiceless community".
Meanwhile, the PUP assembly member for the area, Billy Hutchinson, has particpated in the protests - though after the pipe bomb attack, he spoke out strongly against the violence and was denounced by UDA supporters as a "Fenian lover who should go and join Sinn Fein."
Although the violent feud between the UVF and the UDA has subsided, it is clear that there is still a bitter power struggle raging for political influence over Protestant working class communities.
On the one side are those who want to wage war on the Catholic population. On the other side are those who see dialogue and discussion with the Catholic community and the republican movement as the way forward.
As a newspaper which supports the break-up of the United Kingdom and the establishmentof an independent socialist Scotland, the Scottish Socialist Voice has fundamental differences with the politics of unionism - including the more working class, left wing brand of unionism promoted by the PUP.
But there is a difference between the role of the PUP and that of the UDA/UFF who have blatantly set out to incite and orchestrate sectarian violence in many neighbourhoods.
In contrast, PUP leaders like David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson have repeatedly called for dialogue across the community divide to resolve local conflicts.
Both are former sectarian paramilitaries who have attempted to use their influence positively in hardline loyalist areas to break down bigotry.
But sectarianism will not be broken by compromising with it. The protests now taking place outside Holy Cross school are indefensible, even if they are now being conducted peacefully.
At the same time, it is necessary to go further than simple condemnation. Socialists have to ask why sectarianism is rampant in some of the poorest parts of Belfast, while Catholics and Protestants are able to live amicably side by side in the city's leafier suburbs.
In the past, many people outside Northern Ireland had the mistaken impression that the Protestant working class was a privileged elite, comparable to the wealthy white population of South Africa under apartheid.
In reality, the Protestant population of North Belfast has more in common with the poor white population of Sighthill in Glasgow, the scene in recent months of racist, anti-refugee bigotry.
As in Sighthill, hatred, fear and intolerance are rooted in the dreadful social conditions of the ghettoes of north Belfast
Both communities in the socalled 'interface' areas of Belfast - where Catholic and Protestant areas converge - feel under a state of siege.
On both sides there has been sectarian violence and intimidation. Despite the ceasefire, there have been shootings on both sides, while the UDA has carried out a series of pipe bomb attacks on Catholic homes.
Less highly publicised have been the verbal taunts and stone-throwing incidents.
For the Protestant population, that sense of being under siege is reinforced by the psychology of a community in decline.
The Catholic community of Belfast is expanding rapidly, while many Protestants have moved out to the suburbs, leaving behind the poorest sections of the population.
It is a sad testimony to the sectarian entrenchment of Northern Ireland that, when the residents of Glenbryn see 150 Catholic schoolchildren make their way to the local primary, they see the writing on the wall for their own dwindling community. Unfortunately, there is at this stage no sizeable non-sectarian socialist party that can intervene and attempt to unite both working class communities against sectarianism and against poverty. Nor will such a party be easily built.
In the meantime, socialists should support any steps, however modest, that can help break down the barriers of bigotry and pave the way for a new politics in Northern Ireland based on class rather than religion.

Tory MSP Nick Johnston quit Holyrood last month on the grounds of ill health.
We don't know exactly which ailment he suffers from, but it doesn't prevent him running a Mercedes dealership in Edinburgh at a salary of £80,000 a year.
Now it's been revealed that the bold Nick will pick up £140,000 from public funds towards his pension. Because he served two years as an MSP and retired on the grounds of "ill health" he qualifies for a £12,000 a year pension for the next 12 years.
On top of that he's also been awarded a £21,000 one-off payment.
That means he's made £123,000 for just two years work as a backbench MSP - and now he's set to be paid over £1500 a week for selling upmarket cars.
The word Tory, incidentally, comes from the Gaelic word 'Toraidh' - which means robber.

An anti-Trident protester has been locked up for wearing a purple hairband.
Pamela Smith was in the public gallery of Edinburgh Sheriff Court supporting a fellow Trident Ploughshares member when she was ordered to remove her hairband.
Pamela refused, insisting that she was not breaking the law by wearing a purple hairband. The sheriff disagreed - and ordered her to be locked up for two hours.
The sheriff, incidentally, was wearing a peculiar grey wig and a sinister black gown.

Unemployment in Scotland is at its lowest level for a quarter of a century, according to official statistics. But as Oscar Wilde would have said if were around today under a New Labour government: "There's lies, damned lies and unemployment statistics." As jobcentres came under pressure to cut the figures from the mid 1980s onwards, more than 1.5 million people shifted to long term sickness benefits. Now, according to David Webster, who analyses figures for Scottish councils, real unemployment is at least twice as high as the government claims.

If you thought there was nothing left to privatise, think again.
Chancellor Gordon Brown has unveiled a radical new plan to tackle poverty - by giving tax breaks to big business.
He aims to copy the example of New York's infamous Harlem. There, companies such as Starbucks, Blockbuster and MacDonald have been lured in with bribes worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
This is indeed a fine example of lateral thinking - help the poor by giving more to the rich.
But we have an even better idea. Instead of putting rich bankers and wealthy businessmen in charge of sorting out the poor, why not put poor pensioners and low paid workers in charge of sorting out the rich?

Crisis, what crisis? That's the attitude of Scottish health minister Susan Deacon to the NHS in Scotland. She slammed "scaremongers" and claimed that their calls for extra funding are "dangerous and demoralising".
The following day, the health minister was heckled by angry nurses and other health service workers at Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride.
The Voice asked a range of NHS workers whether Susan Deacon has a point - or if the NHS really is in crisis.

Charlie McCarthy is a nurse and shop steward in the Accident and Emergency department at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow.

RATHER THAN exaggerated, I think the crisis in the health service is very much underestimated.
People who don't work in Accident and Emergency have no idea how bad it is in our department. I think even most health professionals subconsciously don't see how bad it is.
When you're working in these conditions day in day out you get used to it. If you really thought about the state of the place it would scare the living daylights out of you.
There's been a lot in the news about the state of the Viccy. But I think there's been a massive lack of investment in Glasgow hospitals in general.
There's been no new build since the early 70s and some are literally falling down. If there's heavy rain then it's touch and go whether the out of hours X-ray at the Viccy can operate. It's like a scene from a Frankenstein b-movie - water just pours through the roof onto the Xray machine. The staff are sometimes standing ankle deep in water.
The government says it can remedy that through PFI.
But PFI means that for the first time since 1948, parts of the NHS are being run for profit, rather than for the quality of health care. PFI stands for Private Finance Initiative, not Philanthropic Finance Initiative.

Tam Waterston is the branch secretary of the Lothian Acute Health UNISON Branch. He has been an NHS porter for 12 years and has seen a lot of changes recently.

The NHS is crumbling. After 18 years of the Tories and now Labour the NHS is in a state of chronic underfunding.
Our Trust's chief executives have been told by central government to make £9 million worth of savings and 200 redundancies - without compromising patient care.
This is blatantly impossible. We've suffered year upon year of cutbacks and we cannot lose more without there being a fundamental effect on the service.
Over £30 million is handed over to a private firm every year to run the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary - pure profit for them. It is a 25 year contract so they will get well over £750 million by the time it's finished. The whole ERI building would only have cost £184 million in the first place.
In Edinburgh there is the Dental Hospital, City Hospital and Princess Margaret Rose - all are on prime site land. On the City Hospital site alone there are now houses built and the cheapest is £375 thousand to buy.
To build new hospitals then the money from the selloff of land like that should be ploughed straight back to the NHS.
Throughout Scotland I think the bed crisis will get worse. In Edinburgh alone we've lost 300 beds with the building of the ERI. Henry McLeish said that the public had to be put before public sector workers. How can public sector workers cope with the present situation? We're understaffed and underfunded.
Deacon says that we're exaggerating the crisis. Maybe Deacon and McLeish should spend some time in hospitals talking to the frontline workers. They need to be told exactly what working in the NHS is like today.

Alan Manley works in the newly privatised Carseview psychiatric care unit in Tayside. Here he tells the Voice about the impact it has had.

THE UNIT has been open for just four months. In the past six weeks alone our fire orders have been changed six times. Doors don't close properly and lights don't work and the patients' toilets don't lock.
We still can't use the garden because it is too dangerous. The windows were dangerous too so now they've had bars put on them to stop them opening fully.
There is almost nowhere for our patients, who are in very vulnerable positions, to go and be quietly alone.
We had a visit from the Mental Health Care Commission and they were not impressed by the environment that is being forced on the patients.
With the opening of this new unit Tayside, Perth and Angus lost 18 psychiatric beds. The aim of the trust is to reduce the number of long term psychiatric beds to six for the whole of the region. Long term patients are to be moved into nursing homes where it is rare to find care staff who have specialist psychiatric training.
All our ancilliary staff are new - the PFI contractors did not want to maintain the old staff's NHS contracts.
Now they're all on short term contracts and lower wages and so, even in four months, there has been a huge turnover of staff. There's not really enough of them to start with so the facility is getting quite tatty already.
Some rooms don't get cleaned as often as they should and it doesn't look quite as pretty as it did when Susan Deacon came to open it.
Susan Deacon was quoted in Scotland On Sunday and told us all to stop moaning.
It wasn't that long ago that that she was encouraging us all to highlight bad management and bad practice. She even announced a 'whistle blowers' charter'.
I visited the 'Agenda for Change' roadshow recently. This is the slick advertising invented for the proposed new NHS payscales. The unions are not backing it as it does away with the incremental pay scales and brings in a form of Profit Related Pay. You'll only get a pay increase if you do studying in your own time or jump through some other hoop that management put in your way. This can only put even more people off joining the service. There has been 5,500 nurses who have left Britain to go and work overseas and this is added to a nursing shortfall of 16,000.
Nurses from abroad or agency staff keep the NHS ticking over. Often agency staff are not properly trained and sent in to do essential work.
I thought it was ironic when Blair was up visiting the new ERI. He swanned about trying to say how much New Labour had done for the NHS with the ERI when in fact it was the Tories that pushed that particular privatisation through.

SUSAN DEACON is clearly delusional. She's identified the problem with the health service and apparently it's us - the people who work in it - talking it down.
Mind when Thatcher said the same thing - that people should stop talking down the country? It was crap then and it's crap now. Speaking for the Stirling area, waiting times just now are astronomical. You can wait up to nine months for an endoscopy.
When I first started working in this area in 1984, the waiting time for a vasectomy was three months - now it's up to a year.
And I'm certain that there's been a deterioration in the service for medical outpatients in the period of this Labour government.
I'm thinking about a guy who phoned me today - he's got liver problems and I referred him a couple of months ago.
It's going to be another eight months before he even sees a consultant. That's just to be seen by someone never mind have any treatment carried out.
Waiting times for orthopaedic treatment is worse. If you've got a bad hip and need a replacement, then, from the time you see your GP, it will take two years for your treatment to be carried out.
Just now I've got a young patient with bad hips, and I referred him as an urgent case. But the orthopaedic surgeon told me that he couldn't be made an urgent case because that would mean knocking someone who's been waiting over a year off the list.
This is not just me with my socialist hat on, I'm speaking as a GP and all my colleagues in this practice have the same perception - that things are getting worse.
There isn't a day goes by without someone phoning the surgery to ask if we can bring forward a referral and that puts a lot of pressure on us.
A GP will have to carry out several more consultations with a patient while they're waiting for their hospital appointment as a kind of stop-gap therapy.
Our receptionists are under the kosh every day, not because of our service, it's about waiting times that we can't do anything about.
Patients are getting angrier as well, and rightly so. People have paid into the system all their lives, and then they find out that they have to spend two years in terrible agony waiting for a new hip.
They also spend that two years on holding treatment, and the side effects can be very dangerous.
Really it's no surprise that people get so desperate that their families end up having a whip round to send them private, but that costs £7,000.
I would say that morale in general practice is currently very low. Susan Deacon says that's our own fault and we exaggerate the problems, but it's because we bear the brunt of a health service that really is in crisis.

Robert Rae has been an NHS worker for ten years and was UNISON branch secretary for Glasgow South hospitals Trust. He now works for UNISON Scotland as the branch development officer. The Voice asked Robert what changes he has seen in the NHS

THE BIG difference has been in the morale of the workers on the ground. Alot of people thought that Labour's second term would see a transformation of the NHS but it is now obvious that is not going to happen. There's lots of talk of extra money but no sign of it affecting working conditions or standards of service.
There might be money going in and small changes here and there but all I see are demoralised staff, especially the lowest paid. The lowest paid workers are invariably under private contract and they are frustrated that they have not yet been brought back in-house.
But it is very difficult to compete with the private contractors. They pay the lowest rates, a bare minimum for overtime, leave posts unfilled and offer short term contracts. We want to bring people back in-house on full NHS contracts.
At the Victoria Infirmary we're trying to do just that. But the Trust say our offer is £500,000 over because the contractor Sodexho, who are involved in administering the refugees' voucher scheme, pay buttons.
Susan Deacon doesn't work in the service. She doesn't clean wards, doesn't wash sheets. She isn't the one who looks after the welfare of patients and their relatives. How can she know about the day to day reality of keeping the NHS on it's feet.
She relies on managers to tell her what's happening - managers whose best interests are served by not exposing the whole truth. After all at the end of the day it's their salaries on the line if they are seen to fail.
We've been through the Tories with their break up of national pay and conditions. Hard nosed local deals was the order. Now we're on New Labour and public private partnerships which is all about forcing us to accept that there is not enough money to improve our conditions. Trying to set the health of our pay packets against the health of NHS patients.
McLeish said that the public had to come before the public sector workers. But if you don't look after the workers who is going to look after the patients? Something has to give.

WHAT SUSAN Deacon said was a load of rubbish. She should try and get a bed in Stobhill and then she'd see that the problems there are very real. She'd get sent to another hospital. They're trying to shut Stobhill by the backdoor.
The Trust keep saying that they can't get the staff to keep wards open, but it's their own fault because they're creating uncertainty. If they could promise that Stobhill will still be open in ten years then they could get plenty of staff.

As well as a visit from Susan Deacon, the new Hairmyres hospital in East Kilbride was in the news recently for having sewage spills on the floors.
A UNISON member from the hospital talked to the Voice.

PFI HAS fundamentally affected our workplace. If you want to improve anything or get anything done in the hospital there are now at least two sets of management structures that you have to deal with.
The porters at Hairmyres were privatised ten years ago and so have come with contracts from their previous company.
There are the contracts from the new PFI company, the existing NHS contracts and the Trust has contracts too.
One of the main problems at Hairmyres, as it is everywhere in the NHS, is poor staffing levels.
Wages and conditions are so appalling now that no one wants to work in the health service any more.
Pay scales under PFI are much worse. There's no overtime - a flat rate for night shift and Saturday and Sunday. Where overtime is paid it is just time and a quarter.
Under NHS contracts there's a shift allowance, overtime is time and a half at least and sickpay was six months full pay and six months half pay.
Under the PFI contractors you don't get sick pay and get sick days according to how long you've worked.
Here in Hairmyres the porters don't have the equipment they need to do the job properly. They're walking eight or nine miles a day and lifting without any motorised help. There's lots of strained muscles and sore backs.
All the ancilliary staff are seen as working for another company, we've lost the team spirit that comes from everyone working for the NHS.
I think this is deliberate - an attempt to divide the workforce.
Hairmyers is a smaller hospital now. It was made smaller to ensure that the PFI worked. The smaller the hospital the less doctors, nurses, cleaners and porters are needed to keep it running.
The problems in the NHS are endless and most of it is just swept under the carpet. They can tell us they are spending millions upon millions but improvements on the ground, in terms of service and staffing, are just not appearing.

by Keith Tomkinson
IT TOOK a long time for television to be considered a respectable art and medium. In its early days its actors were considered inferior whilst culture snobs predicted its rapid demise.
The opposite happened with TV nurturing new talent and becoming a centre of innovation. At the same time theatre became less accessible whilst cinema's variety dried up. Those gains are now under threat from braindead television.
That phrase will conjure up images of Channel Five's latest attempt to merge the Holocaust with Emmanuelle or having Kelly Brook fighting demonic Chippendales.
However criticising shows like that is pointless. Their makers have an honest desire to leave all creative boundaries untouched whilst taking their remit from the opinion page of Loaded magazine.
So what is braindead TV? The answer can be found on our televisions daily. Twenty first century trash TV is programmes like the I Love... series, The Weakest Link or our soaps.
These programmes were successful and had aspects of originality and freshness about them. Now that initial 'hook' is being stretched to its breaking point.
The I Love series was running out of steam by the time it reached 1987 but soon we will be seeing 1999 reviewed. Be prepared for the I Love 3029 special.
Since its original tea-time slot, we can now see The Weakest Link's US version along with an infinite amount of specials. Anne Robinson seems to haunt the BBC's entire schedule.
Combine that with our soaps becoming daily and we have the situation where the production of original programming is the exception rather than the norm.
Why is this happening? The main answer is that within the corporate structures of TV cost and profit are deciding factors. Developing and commissioning new series is expensive.
It is easier to either increase the editions of shows, as with soaps, or to produce variants of a successful programme. This represents a very narrow short term vision from schedulers.
TV has always churned out shows around the same format. Recently crime dramas and fly on the wall documentaries have been ever present on our screens. However at least the particulars were altered to offer some variety for the viewer.
Everyone knows that the wholly commercial channels do not care about creativity but with the BBC following suit public service broadcasting is becoming a thing of the past.
Unfortunately it looks like this theme of lazy TV is here to stay. With the onset of digital should we expect channels dedicated to one programme?
That idea is not a fantasy but is clearly a nightmare becoming television reality.

A Time for Drunken Horses Directed by Bahran Ghobadi Showing at the Edinburgh Filmhouse until Thursday 13 September

by Graeme Keir
A Time for Drunken Horses is powerful, simple, well directed. It is one of the first films to be shot entirely in Kurdish and depicts the reality of Iranian Kurds smuggling goods through the dangerous Iranian/Iraqi border.
The film follows the story of Ayoub, a young orphan boy and his family. Twelve year old Ayoub has taken up the role of father in caring for his sister and his 'crippled, always sick' brother who is in urgent need of an operation.
The film works in two ways. First, its simplicity, the elegant direction, almost childlike script and the relative shortness of the film give it power which is rare in modern cinema.
Of course, it also gives it an art-house feel, but could a film of this subject be anything else?
Secondly, there's the everunderstated political aspect. If you like heartfelt political dogma this film is not for you.
It works, like the direction, because of its simplicity, by casually showing us the reality of the families' situation without overt comment.
Director Bahran Ghobadi includes issues such as arranged marriage, problems of contraception and the general oppression of women, lack of social infrastructure, poverty, child labour and land mines.
Ghobadi's debut, A Time for Drunken Horses is a must see for anyone interested in the plight of the Kurds or anyone who appreciates well made cinema.

IQ BBC2 9.00pm
Meg Ryan, Tim Robbins and Walter Mathau star in this movie about the adventures of Albert Einstein's niece, who is out to find a man as intelligent as her famous uncle.
Instead, a mechanic who forms an unlikely partnership with Uncle Albert pursues her. While she flirts with a boring academic, her uncle attempts to steer her towards the mechanic by passing him off as a genius - with mixed results.

Correspondent BBC2 11.20pm
A documentary highlighting the plight of Lebanese detainees in Khiam prison in south Lebanon during the years of Israeli occupation, and investigating the extent of Israel's responsibility for human rights abuses which occurred when thousands of Lebanese citizens - men, women and children - were held there without charge by the Israeli-trained South Lebanon Army.

The Cross of Lorraine Ch4 12.15pm
Gene Kelly stars in this powerful Second World War drama about two French soldiers who surrender to the enemy in the hope that they will be released, but instead become prisoners of war, fighting to survive the horrors of a concentration camp under the thumb of a crazed Nazi sergeant.

Unreported World: The Real Mobile Phone War Ch4 7.30pm
Documentary series exploring the price others pay for how we lead our lives. This episode investigates how the extraction of tantalum - used in mobile phones - from coltan ore in the Congo is helping fund one of the world's bloodiest conflicts, as coltan is now more profitable than gold or diamonds.

Heroes of Comedy: Kenneth Williams Ch4 9.00pm
Looking at the life and work of the late comedian, who's characters were loved by the public. However behind his extrovert comic persona was a darker side - a man riddled with guilt about his sexuality, and a loathing of much of the work he did.

Dark City Ch5 11.45pm
Thriller set in a nightmarish urban complex of the future, from the makers of The Crow.
A man wakes in a bath tub not knowing where he is or how the dead body got there. He then sees strange bald creatures who seem to be controlling and changing the city and its populous at their whim.

A Child's World Ch4 8.30pm
Documentary series charting the key developments that mark the way on every human journey to becoming a fullyfledged independent person. The first programme looks at children's concepts of life and mortality.

page 11

cultural resistance

Shopping in the mall world

by Mike Gonzalez
WELCOME TO the Shopping Mall!
It looks like a street - it even has tables with umbrellas around a fountain, and little stalls decorated to look like hot dog stands or ice cream carts. The long corridors with shops on either side have street names and signs.
But there's a difference; these streets have gates at either end that close at six in the evening, and there are cameras everywhere. Somewhere, someone's watching you in a room full of video screens.
The justification is that there's a dangerous world outside; the streets are full of homeless people and junkies and muggers.
But in here, everything is safe. There's piped music - something comforting, Phil Collins or Frank Sinatra - and no traffic. The security guards are everywhere. This is the world of trouble-free shopping.
There's a very important difference though. In cities, the street used to be a place where people sat, played music, listened, talked, walked looking at shop windows with not much intention to buy. Sometimes there would be a meeting - some agitator standing on a box and people around arguing.
There might be stalls where you get something to eat, newspaper sellers on the corners shouting out the news. It was a place where the unexpected could happen.
When shopping arcades were first built in the 19th century, they were built for a middle class that wanted to shop in safety, protected from the world outside.
In Paris, in 1871, the Commune marked the moment when the working class of the city took over.
They built barricades and created a different, democratic world under their control.
It only lasted a few months, but it gave Karl Marx an idea of what a genuine socialist society might look like.
But he wasn't the only one who saw the implications; it scared the Parisian middle class to death.
So they built arcades with shops and pavement cafes and lampposts where they could stroll safely - and lock the gates at night. Today's shopping malls are above all controlled places. The shops open directly onto the precinct - you can't look at windows and then walk on.
You're drawn in; there's always someone hovering, waiting to invite you in, and in the corner, the slowly moving camera to make sure you don't steal anything.
If there's nothing you want, you move on; but there are no seats, nowhere to just sit and watch the world.
The chairs all belong to the cafes; you can sit if you pay.
It looks like a public space, somewhere open and accessible to everyone - but in fact these socalled streets are just giant department stores.
They're never too hot or too cold - never too noisy or too quiet. Perfect conditions for consuming things, for buying.
They've learned something from Las Vegas where everywhere is lit by artificial light and there are no clocks anywhere to tell you if it's day or night. That way you keep on gambling and forget to sleep!
At the mall it's easy to be hypnotized by the lights and the music and the glittering things. But if you stop, sit, talk or just watch, someone will move you on.
Somehow the street - an open space that belonged to all the people moving through it, separate from the shops - has disappeared.
And after all, you wouldn't think of building barricades here - where would you get the bricks?!

How reality TV should be

Gas Attack Directed by Kenny Glenaan Showing on Channel 4, Tuesday 18 September

by Davie Archibald
Gas Attack, the low-budget, made for TV film, was the surprise winner of the Best New British Film Award at the recent Film Festival in Edinburgh. And deservedly so.
At a time when so much mainstream cinema is content with appealing to the lowest common denominator, Gas Attack produces a piece of gripping drama that forces audiences to think.
Films should not be simply about entertainment. The best films may entertain us, but they should also make us to think about the world in a new way.
Focusing on the conditions facing Kurdish refugees consigned to the concrete jungles of a fictional Glasgow housing scheme, the film speculates about the possibility of chemical weapons being used in an orchestrated campaign to wipe out asylum seekers.
A cast composing lesser known Scottish actors combined with complete new-comers gel comfortably together to produce a powerful indictment of the government and the City Council's refugee policy.
This should be required viewing for anyone who thinks that all refugees get when they come here are free fridges and new washing machines.

Building solidarity

A Short History of the Building Worker Group Written by Brian Higgins

by Allan Armstrong
THE HEALTH and Safety at Work Act was passed in 1974. Since that date over 3000 building workers have been killed in site injuries - a greater number than those who have lost their lives in the conflict in Northern Ireland over the same period.
The building industry is dominated by the notorious sub-contracting system.
The major construction companies resort to sub-contractors to provide them with labour on the sites.
These 'subbies' include cowboys and gangsters.
They make sure that many building workers are registered as self-employed, so they can evade paying taxes or injury, sickness and holiday pay. They can also avoid proper safety provision on the sites.
Building workers who try to organise against this are often blacklisted or denied work.
Yet despite the horrific story of deaths, injuries, gangsterism and corrupt unionism there is a real history of resistance.
This is chronicled in the booklet, A Short History of the Building Worker Group, written by Brian Higgins, its Secretary and blacklisted UCATT member.
The BWG's struggles against the employers, union officials and the state make for inspirational reading.
Recently Brian's UCATT branch organised successful picketing action, after months of official inaction.
This action led to building workers receiving back pay directly from the main employer which was owed by a renegade subbie. An industrial tribunal upheld this in a ruling which represents a major challenge to the whole sub-contracting system.
However, Brian goes further and addresses the fundamental question currently facing trade unionists.
Brian makes a political assessment of the two main strategies offered by the Left for trade union work, 'broad left' and 'rank and file'.
This booklet highlights the possibility for organising in very harsh conditions and the political challenge this can represent.

Copies are available from R&F Teachers, Box 447, SWDO, 4 Falcon Road West, Edinburgh, EH10 4AB - price £2 inc p&p

back to index

page 12

back to index

page 13

Give us your opinion
YOUR VOICE is your chance to give us your opinions on any issues we’ve covered. Letters should be kept to around 200 words. We can accommodate longer articles but, due to space, these should be discussed with the editorial staff first. You can contact us by fax, phone, letter or email. Tel: 0141 221 7714 Fax: 0141 221 7715 Email: ssv@ndirect.co.uk Address: SSV, 73 Robertson Street, Glasgow, G2 8QD Letters, columns and signed articles which appear in the Voice do not necessarily represent the editorial view of the Scottish Socialist Voice or the Scottish Socialist Party

Why socialists should defend Cuba
Oh dear, it appears Mike Gonzalez (Voice letters, issue 61) is firmly ensconced in the theoretically pure splendour of armchair criticism when it comes to Cuba.
Let's first get one red herring out the road. "Tommy presents Cuba as a model for socialists to follow."
Sorry, Mike, I've always emphasised the uniqueness of Cuba's socialism and highlighted how different an independent socialist Scotland would be. Cuba's socialism was born of a bloody guerrilla struggle which overthrew a military dictatorship backed by the most powerful capitalist nation on the planet. Before the revolution of 1959, it had a life expectancy of only 55 and an economy wholly owned by US multi-nationals.
Although Cuba was forced to rely on economic support from the the Soviet Union for survival, it did not allow the same bureaucracy and privileges to take root.
The influence of Che Guevara in this respect was vital.
Today Cuba is certainly a form of mixed economy, with many tourist ventures partly foreign owned.
But the government owns 51 per cent of these ventures and imposes Cuban rates of pay and working conditions to prevent the super-exploitation so central to the global economy elsewhere. What exactly does Mike suggest for Cuba? Cuba's wealth is commonly owned and the basic human needs of its people are prioritised.
Sure, there are elements of Cuban society which I would not wish to see in Scotland. But Mike is wrong to say Castro has never been elected. In fact he's been elected dozens of times.
He was the sole candidate of the Cuban Communist Party but despite huge US resources being deployed to support election boycotts, over 98 per cent of the population still vote for him.
Compare this to the United States of America - less than 25 per cent of the electorate actually voting for the President?
Castro's 42 years in power may "concern" Mike.
Until he explains concretely what he would have done differently and would do differently now, I think I'll stick with the leader who has actually led a revolution and maintained power on the basis of huge popular support, despite all the problems, for 42 years.
Tommy Sheridan, Glasgow

Offshore workers at risk
An article in recent issue of the Voice pointed out that the offshore drilling company KCA may benefit by £4 million through the non payment of NI contributions. You might like to know that this is only a part of the loss to the UK economy.
According to figures produced by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Sante Fe - another drilling company like KCA - have benefitted to the tune of £24 million a year since 1995. This is not only due to non payment of NI contri-butions but also to a tax dodge arranged between UK registered Sante Fe companies and Sante Fe companies registered in Panama and Switzerland.
This tax relationship also has an impact on the security and safety of individual employees offshore. It seems that the company can breach health and safety law in Scottish waters of the North Sea with impunity.
The Procurator Fiscal has informed the HSE that if a foreign registered company (Sante Fe Interntional Services Inc, which employs all offshore personnel) fails to appear in Court, then no proceedings can be taken against them. In the past nine months three Sante Fe International Services Inc employees have been killed offshore.
An offshore worker

Headline gaffe
I found it odd that Mike Gonzalez's letter in last week's Voice had the headline "Cuba needs a parliamentary road", when in fact he said nothing of the kind. Cuba's economic system is little different from those developed by Stalin and Mao. Just because it appears to be a more benevolent dictatorship is no reason why we should support or seek inspiration from it. Socialists in the West were hampered for decades by the albatross of support for 'socialist states' like the USSR. Let's not make the same mistake.
Frank Ward, Dornoch, Sutherland
_ The headline could have distorted the content of Mike's letter - Sorry

Genoa, the G8 and common solutions

George Monbiot is a campaigning journalist who writes regularly for the Guardian. His best-selling book Captive State - The Corporate Takeover of Britain is a devastating indictment of Blair's privatisation plans.
Here Matt Gordon interviews him for the Voice.

Why did you write Captive State?
Corporate power is emerging on a scale unknown in Britain since the 18th Century. I was working on various issues and it was obvious they were connected. The same forces are at work in different areas - retail, PFI and public sector, genetic engineering, the take over of schools and universities.

You write about how the Labour Government has been drawn into this process. How do you feel about the Labour Party?
The Labour Party has sold out rapidly and systematically. Blair is a very insecure person. He manages his huge parliamentary majority like he is hanging on by his fingernails. Terrified of losing power, he appeases the powerful.
Blair is riding in a hamster's wheel. He has to run and run just to stay in the same place. He curries favour with the powerful corporate constituency but it always wants more. Capital is never satisfied.

Why has Labour been able to push privatisation further than the Tories?
People refused to believe for a long time that PFI was a form of privatisation. But it's a very dangerous form - it leaves the state with the responsibilities and the corporations with the power. You end up with the worst of both worlds.
Corporate control at the domestic level is enhanced by its growth internationally.
Blair believes that however much we complain about PFI, it is going to happen.
The corporations will have their way because of the forces at a global level - unless we can muster big enough forces globally to stop them. It's more difficult because you need to galvanise huge numbers to make a difference, and you don't know who you are appealing to.
There is no accountable authority at a global level, no one you can vote out of office if they do the wrong thing.

After Genoa you wrote that, "Ours is the biggest protest movement in the history of the world." Where do you feel the anti-capitalist movement should go now?
Genoa exposed what lies behind market forces. I found it profoundly ironic that the G8 leaders were talking about freedom and liberty, all in the context of trade of course, while on the streets a proto-fascist police force was beating the crap out of people demanding freedom.
At one point protesters were tortured by the police, shown a picture of Mussolini, and forced to salute it and shout "viva il Duce". All in the name of defending free trade.
Blair and Straw didn't complain. If they had, it would have been to the Italian Foreign Minister, Renato Rigiare, previously Director General of the WTO. Now he's one of the most senior members of a borderline fascist government.
Free trade is about coercion. We are being forced to accept poisonous food additives, GM crops, asbestos, appalling health and safety and environmental standards. But Genoa brought together large numbers of people from very diverse backgrounds. It's one of the most diverse movements in the history of the world and the largest as well.
It brings together people who a few years ago would never have thought of talking to each other; anarchists, socialists, greens, Christians, liberals, third world debt campaigners, people trying to save their local swimming pool.
The forces we are up against affect all of us in different ways. What's happening is very exciting, we are seeing people recognising that what divides us is much smaller that what unites us.
There is of course a problem. The diversity is a weakness as well as a strength. It makes it very hard for us to suggest tactics and strategies that everyone can agree on.
But we are going to have to start formulating some common positions if we are to break the grip of corporate power.
I am quite optimistic about this. I believe in collective genius. I think that when people get together with very different experience and think collectively you can come up with common solutions and common perspectives. Then we can forge something quite new.

back to index

page 14

off
the air

Colin Bell is a well known journalist and broadcaster. His much praised series Scotland's Century is currently being repeated on Radio Scotland

Consignia'd to the garbage
Managers, we are told, are better trained, more efficient and better advised than ever before. And we only have to look at the amazing triumphs of Railtrack, Marks and Spencer, Marconi and Equitable Life in recent months to realise what garbage that is. But it's always possible for ambitious managements to set new records for sustained, bloodyminded incompetence.
Take the Post Office - still enjoying a degree of monopoly with outlets all over the country and a vast fleet of familiar vehicles. First they run up one of the most appalling labour-relations records of post-Thatcher times, then they waste huge sums on "rebranding" as Consignia (which sounds more like a dodgy patent medicine than an essential public service), and now they're trying to flog off their vehicle fleet to the private sector.
And, for all their ravings about pioneering the communications revolution, I gather that if you're flitting and want to arrange formail to be forwarded to your new address, you'll need to give a week's notice, so that the matter can be handled in Inverness.
Now, nothing against jobs for Inverness, you understand, but I thought the point about modern communications was that one can place orders and instructions at the touch of a keyboard. That's the way this column gets to Glasgow from Edinburgh in fractions of a second, for example. So do you suppose Consignia sends its instructions by secondclass post, using horse-drawn vehicles?

A tale of two estates
Compare and contrast the estates of the late Donald Dewar and the late Cardinal Winning.
The Labour leader somehow runs up a fortune of a couple of million in one of his typical fits of absent-mindedness, while the Prince of the Church doesn't leave enough for the deposit on either of Dewar's flats.
I think it's fair to say that that gives food for thought.

The Times, it is a-changing
One of the weirder developments of recent times has been the spread of groceries into filling stations, and banking and insurance into supermarkets.
I've been particularly puzzled by Tesco's efforts to sell me their own version of credit card, not just to be used in their stores, but anywhere I like - and the promise that they'll give me loyalty points every time I use it.
The temptation is to get one, and then steadfastly and exclusively use it at Sainsbury's, so that each purchase racks up points with both, very probably to their mutual fury.
However, this week brought new evidence that nobody any longer knows what business it is that they're supposed to be in.
We were cold called by The Times (a newspaper which I immediately guessed wasn't about to ask me to write a principled attack on Rupert Murdoch), and asked if we'd like to switch our household insurance to them. Insurance? Does the Prudential try to sign me up for some newspaper they're thinking of starting?
Well, I suppose if you bank with Tesco, buy your groceries from Esso, and insure with News International, you might as well try to open a Building Society account with Boots the Chemist.
(Please don't tell me you already can, because I'm feeling quite confused enough.)

Fife combats media lies about refugees

report by Jock Penman
FIFE COUNCIL have announced that they are to participate in the government's resettlement programme and offer homes to 100 asylum seekers.
The media have hyped up all the usual racist lies.
The Dignity for Asylum Seekers (Fife) Committee (DAS) was set up to dispel those lies and to assist people in desperate need to settle into the communities in Fife.
Fife council should be congratulated for this expression of humanitarianism. Fife has a good reputation for supporting those in struggle.
One example is when Chilean refugees who to escape the murder and torture of the Pinochet regime in the early 70s.
During the 30s many Fife miners went to fight the fascists in Spain, and some didn't come back.
Today the situation is very different.
Unscrupulous politicians desperate for votes, and unscrupulous editors desperate to increase their sales, perpetrate myths, misinformation and downright lies.
The effect has been to poison many good-hearted people against asylum seekers.
The campaign organised a public meeting and 150 people packed out the Adam Smith Centre in Kirkcaldy.
Everyone had their own ideas about asylum seekers but most were willing to listen.
Against the background that exists in Scotland it was to be expected that the meeting would, at times, be a wee bit rowdy.
But most people were quite restrained.

Housing
They especially wanted to hear from Tommy about the situation in Sighthill, but they also wanted to know what the council was going to do about the poor housing in Kirkcaldy.
The majority of the objections were on the basis that the people simply couldn't afford to help the asylum seekers.
Most people had been misinformed about their plight.
Tommy condemned the lies in the media which laid the basis for the persecution of people already fleeing persecution.
He reminded us that we all have one thing in common - we are all members of the human race.
Linda Shanahan, Secretary of DAS, condemned the voucher system, and the media lies which made integrating people in need into our communities more difficult.

back to index

page 15

international news

Hypocrisy exposed at anti-racist conference

by Nick McKerrell
THE POWERFULLY titled 'UN World Conference Against Racism' began on August 31 in the South African city of Durban. Within three days the US and its close ally Israel had walked out of the conference throwing into disarray any attempt by the UN to cobble together a statement that all the world's leaders would sign up to.
However, in the words of Jesse Jackson, "in many ways the US never walked in".
As over the Kyoto protocol on global warming the Bush-led administration were prepared to isolate themselves.
The US government refused to attend two previous conferences on racism in 1978 and 1983. This time, although they were physically present, they refused to budge on two vital issues.
Ostensibly the reason given by the US was the decision to equate the extreme Jewish nationalist philosophy of Zionism with racism. (A fuller explanation of Zionism will appear in the next issue of the Voice).
This is a central issue given the current plight of the Palestinian people and the onslaught against them by the Israeli state backed by US imperialism.
But this was not the only reason that America walked away. The issue of slavery was central to many countries in this conference. One of the reasons it was to be a 'landmark' meeting was because the issue was not going to be ignored.
However many African countries were demanding reparations for their exploitation by the West or at least a full apology.
This was rejected by the US and also by the British - whose imperialist forces played a critical role in slavery.
They refused to issue even the mildest of apologies for this shameful historical exploitation because they believe it would issue a precedent for countries to demand financial damages.
Given the International financial institutions devotion to collecting debt from the developing world this hypocrisy is breathtaking. Other issues which caused tension is the caste system in India, the treatment of Tibet by China and the position of the Roma people in Central and Eastern Europe.
Each capitalist nation argued for exceptions for their own discriminatory behaviour.
This undignified bunfight shows the incapability of capitalist states to deal with racism and indeed how much their system relies on the exploitation of minorities.
In the words of Malcolm X "You can't have capitalism without racism". The UN fiasco shows how true these words are.

Argentina hits rock bottom

byVirginia Marconi
THE SITUATION in Argentina is catastrophic. After three years of recession, and with a debt of $160 billion and growing, the IMF temporarily bailed it out of default.
The condition was that the money fron taxes, raised by the state, would go to service the debt.
The state could use whatever remained to pay for its expenses, but the budget should have no deficit.
To achieve this, the salaries of state employees and old-age pensions were reduced by 13 per cent.
Argentinean workers, employed and unemployed, have not taken to this situation kindly.
The country has been shaken from one extreme to the other by national general strikes, demonstrations and road blockades by the unemployed and their families and two National Conferences of the Unemployed.
The police have already assassinated four workers at the picket lines, and hundreds have had cases opened against them. Out of a population of 36 million, more than 30 per cent cannot afford to cover their basic needs. This includes 45 per cent of the country's children.
On entering a state school in any working class district you are hit by the smell of food and the faces of the children counting the minutes - first to their mid-morning snack and then to lunch.
This will be the only food many of them will have during the whole day.
Some of them will even keep the biscuits to share with younger brothers and sisters not yet of school age. But now even that is endangered by more budget cuts.
Official unemployment is 17 per cent, but there are districts where it is between 20 and 25 per cent.
Instead of unemployment benefit Argentina has a subsidy called 'Plan Trabajar', a mere $200 (£142) a month in exchange for doing work for the municipality.
This subsidy has also been reduced to $160 (£110).
No one can survive on that. The basic salary is $450 (£320) and you need two basic salaries to cover the basic needs of a family. At the moment, there is a struggle between the government and the 'piqueteros', as to who should have control of these subsidies. So far, the 'piqueteros' receive them and decided, in free assemblies, who should get them on the basis of a system which took into consideration militancy and the needs of the members of the pickets.
The government would rather use the money to curb the militancy of the 'piqueteros'.
Thus, they have decided to give the subsidies to the mayors for them to distribute it.
Obviously it will go to those in their political parties or those who will not take part in the pickets.
What will happen in the future is anyone's guess. The only thing the workers know is that if the government insists in complying with the orders of the IMF they will have to go on fighting.

around the world

Anti-Castro Cubans demonstrate at Grammies
Following the nomination of many Cuban musicians at the second Latin Grammies in the US, extreme right wing groups have vowed to demonstrate against the ceremony on September 11.
Gloria Estefan announced she would boycott the event set up to honour Latin music. The event has been moved from Miami, the base of the anti-Castro movement, to Los Angeles. Cuban jazz pianist Chucho Valdes who has been nominated said the protests are unjustifed because "music should be a universal language". There is still a question mark over whether the US state will allow him and other Cuban-based musicians to enter the country.

Turkish hunger striker dies
A female prisoner is the latest victim of the hunger strikes taking place in Turkish prisons. She died on the September 8. Thirty three people have died since the protest began in response to the increased repression of political prisoners in the Turkish criminal justice system.
The Turkish authorities stormed prisons in an attempt to break up the protest in December last year but this only intensified the movement. Gulay Kavak had been refusing food since October 2000.
The Turkish state is also maintaining its repression of the Kurdish people. Thousands of Kurds were arrested on September 1, ironically World Peace Day, for staging rallies. Since then Kurdish politicians have been jailed for attempting to raise the issue.

Football strike goes ahead
Bulgarian football referees have gone on strike in protest against the treatment of their members. If you thought Scotland takes football seriously, in Bulgaria two referees have been seriously attacked in the last month. One was attacked with metal bars. The referees will not attend until the authorities can guarantee their safety. Scab officials have been brought in for one match but emergency talks are being held so the league is not threatened.

Belarus vote 'neither free nor fair'
The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has claimed an overwhelming victory in the presidential elections. But a senior official from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe - which monitored the elections - was heavily critical of the vote. "It was not democratic. I would not use the words free and fair," he said.
President Lukashenko has governed Belarus since 1994 and his persecution of political opponents and independent media has provoked opposition
Mr. Lukashenko's main rival, Vladimir Goncharik, is demanding a second vote, claiming that there was concrete evidence of vote rigging, including ballot boxes being tampered with. The authorities had barred hundreds of local independent observers from monitoring the election on the grounds that their documents were "not in order".

Surprise and outrage over Swiss Nazi links
A report published in Switzerland on last Thursday revealing the close and lucrative ties between Swiss industry and Nazi Germany during World War II received a lot of attention in the Swiss papers.
Geneva's French-language daily Le Temps says it is surprised at the calm way the report by international historians has been received.
"Looted assets, foreign trade, (Swiss) companies active in Nazi Germany: all of these are hot issues over which, only three years ago, the slightest evidence of Swiss connivance would have caused a general outcry", the paper writes.
Le Temps thinks there is no shock now:
"What the historians are now essentially saying is that the Swiss (during World War II) were no better nor worse than everybody else."

back to index

page 16

Close Dungavel

by Mark Brown, Secretary, Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees
LAST WEEK'S court ruling on the incarceration of asylum seekers at the Oakington detention centre in Cambridgeshire has thrown New Labour's asylum policy into disarray.
Mr Justice Collins ruled that the government was breaching the Human Rights Act by locking up four Kurdish refugees from Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq. The men had not been committed for trial and had been charged with no crime.
The court decision supports the position which has been argued by asylum rights activists for many months, and adds weight to the campaign to close the privately-run Dungavel detention centre, which opened last week in south Lanarkshire.
Home Secretary David Blunkett maintains that detention is used only for 'persons awaiting deportation' (or PADs) and people at risk of absconding while their appeal against deportation is processed.
People abscond because they are fleeing racist attacks or intimidation, as even Strathclyde Police suggested may have been the case with a young Albanian who fled Glasgow recently.
Or they abscond because the draconian asylum system constantly treats them with suspicion and tells them they are certain to be deported.
It is also wrong to suggest that PADs are people who have been proved to be making false claims of persecution.
Saddam's Iraq continues to be described as a "rogue state" by the British government, yet the four Kurds who successfully took the Home Office to court were to have been returned there.
Blunkett claims to have been "disturbed" by the court ruling over Oakington, saying that the regime there is "humane".
What he fails to understand is that it is illegal under any meaningful human rights legislation to lock up innocent people for the convenience of the Home Office, no matter how comfortable the beds are!
New Labour's tough cop approach on refugees is making them a laughing stock. It is time to step up the campaign for the closure of all their detention centres for asylum seekers, including the monstrosity of Scotland's new camp at Dungavel.

_ Shut down Dungavel Demo, Saturday 22 September. Coaches leave George Sq, Glasgow, at 12.30pm. Assemble outside Dungavel at 1.30pm.
_ Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees Public Meeting, Tuesday 18 September, 7.30pm, Jarvis Ingram Hotel, Ingram St.

Scottish 'Asylum Minister' holds out little hope

by Mark Brown
THE SCOTTISH Executive's appointment of social justice minister Jackie Baillie to a new post overseeing devolved aspects of asylum policy is unlikely to improve the lives of refugees in Scotland.
Most areas of policy, from vouchers to detention and deportation, are 'reserved powers' held by the Blair government at Westminster.
In any case, the Labour/Liberal Democrat administration in Edinburgh hardly has a strong record on asylum issues. Deputy first minister Jim Wallace didn't even set foot on the crisis-hit Sighthill estate in Glasgow until an asylum seeker had been murdered. The Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees has compared the move to "shifting deck chairs on the Titanic", and called for a "refugee-centred" policy in Edinburgh and Westminster, rather than a reallocation of responsibilities.
Glasgow refugees' leader Mohammad Asif said:
"This will be a nominal post because Ms Baillie has no power to change things for us because it is not a devolved issue."

back to index