Around Scotland - Monday 27 October 2008

(Monday 27 October 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.

Ye shall be queen

BLINK and ye missed it. The film which tells the yarn of the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association students who stole the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey at Christmas 1950 was only on in Scotland and it was only on last week. That's what you call a limited release!

This turkey won't even reach Christmas. Despite some high-grade Scottish movie stars like the normally brilliant Robert Carlyle, it received a critically lukewarm reception on its premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June.

It's not exactly Braveheart, more of a harmless caper movie of the sort produced by Ealing studios in black and white. Though not so good.

At least it was filmed on location in Scotland. My 10-year-old daughter was keen to see it because our street is in it, complete with period cars and vans and our tenement.

The direction and the script were pretty shallow. The political background in the film was sketchy and cartoonish, the low point being the depiction of saltire-brandishing Glaswegians dancing in the streets when they heard the news that the Stone was back home. As if.

While the film itself is a bit fey, the political background to the stunt that it commemorates is quite interesting.

John McCormick, chief political mentor to the Stone of Destiny heist students, was an ex-Labour Party home ruler who helped set up the Scottish National Party in the 1930s, only to quit in the 1942 split, disillusioned by the narrow fundamentalist pro-independence majority in the new party.

The broad front devolutionary approach that he sought was realised in the post-war national assemblies, where churches joined trade unions and town councils, and in the Scottish Covenant Association. Taking its name from a famous tradition of Scottish Presbyterian history, the covenant was a flowery declaration of Scotland's right to rule itself.

Dougie Bain, writing in Marxism Today in August 1978 during another period of devolutionary turmoil, describes what happened next.

"The labour movement responded to the initiative. The Scottish Labour Party included the call for a Scottish parliament in its 1945 election manifesto and the movement was heavily involved in the ensuing covenant campaign which attracted two-and-a-half million signatures demanding devolution of power to a Scottish Parliament."

That phenomenal covenant petition snowballed from about 1,200 signatures at the third National Assembly on The Mound in Edinburgh on October 29 1949, with unprecedented thousands of activists going door-to-door and conducting stalls and street campaigning in the following months. Scotland went a bit devolution mad.

"But," Bain continues, "the post-war Labour government was unmoved by it all and confined its response to a white paper suggesting a minor extension of the scope of the Scottish Grand Committee."

Not for the first or last time, Labour gave birth to a mouse.

Even if, as Andrew Marr suggests in his essential 1992 book The Battle for Scotland, some of the two million covenant signatures were Donald Ducks or Mickey Mouses, the scale of popular support for devolution which had been expressed was massive.

So, the disappointment for a romantic home ruler like McCormick must have been intense. In fact, the narrow SNP nationalism which he had rejected and the broad-based mass-supported devolution initiative which he had embraced had both failed to deliver anything. That was the context in which the student plan to snatch the Stone of Destiny came about.

The squat oblong block of red sandstone with metal carrying rings was the legendary coronation seat of Scotland's kings before Edward I of England captured it in 1296, so its retrieval would symbolise the return of Scottish sovereignty. Hokum then, as now, of course.

The bizarre Stone of Destiny caper was better rendered in the songs written soon afterwards than by the present cinematic effort. The late, great Norman Buchan put one of the best of these ballads, The Wee Magic Stane by John McEvoy, in his 1962 collection 101 Scottish Songs.

The song claims that, as the "wild folk up yonder … didnae believe it wis magic at a'," numerous replica versions of the stone were made and the original was mixed up with the copies. Though a stone of destiny was returned to Westminster in 1951, it is unclear whether it was the real one.

So, the song goes, "If ever ye come on a stane wi' a ring/Jist sit yersel' doon and appoint yersel King/Fur there's nane wud be able to challenge yir claim/That ye'd croont yersel King on the Destiny Stane."

One day, when she's older, I'll take my daughter over to the Arlington Bar, a fine wee pub in Woodlands Road where the GUSNA students hatched their plot in 1950, and she can sit on the wooden seat under which one of the real stones of destiny resides and crown herself queen.


* THE incoming Tory government in the early 1950s created an unproductive standing commission on devolution.

By 1955, more than half of all Scottish votes went to one party, the only time that this has ever happened. That was the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party.

Fast forward to the dog days of the Major government in 1996 and you would see the hated Thatcherite Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth return the Stone of Destiny again to Scotland in a shameless and vain attempt to curry favour. The Scottish Tories were wiped out in 1997.

Exposing the myths

A POWERFUL poster and website campaign exposing myths about rape is currently to be seen around Scotland.

Going under the slogan "This is not an invitation to rape me," the posters are designed to challenge attitudes held by the public which blame women for their victimisation in cases of rape.

Originating in the US, its launch through Rape Crisis Scotland represents the first time that the campaign has been shared with another country.

Scottish Trades Union Congress women's committee chairwoman Cheryl Gedling welcomed the campaign.

"The STUC fully supports Rape Crisis Scotland's new campaign," she said. "It is absolutely vital that we tackle Scotland's appalling conviction rates in rape cases, along with the attitudes some people hold where they believe a woman may in some part be to blame."

Visit www.thisisnotaninvitationtorapeme.co.uk for more details.

Onwards to community rebirth

FOLLOWING last month's successful conference on trade unions and community regeneration at the STUC, Clydebank TUC is holding a public meeting on local issues of development and democracy.

While local regeneration focused on river bank private development, the infrastructure and services needed by thousands of households in the post-war housing schemes have been neglected.

"Was this regeneration expenditure a hidden subsidy for large-scale property development which had nothing to do with the needs of local people?" asks Clydebank TUC spokesman Tom Morrison.

STUC deputy general secretary Dave Moxham will join local union leaders from Unite, GMB and UNISON to discuss these issues as well as the controversial pay offer and single status deal being put forward by West Dunbartonshire Council.

The Clydebank TUC meeting will be held tomorrow at 7.30pm in Clydebank Town Hall. All welcome.

Top turn from Star columnist

BROWSING through The List website of what's on in Glasgow and Edinburgh at teatime on Thursday last week, I came across an absolute must-see act appearing at the Oran Mor venue in Glasgow's West End - none other than my colleague and Star co-columnist Chris T-T and his band supporting his friend and fellow Winchester songsmith Frank Turner.

I rushed out and managed to catch the last half of Chris and his band's set. I wasn't sure what to expect, but high-octane loud punky guitar pop was an excellent surprise.

Makes me wonder what the other Star columnists get up to with their talents on their time off. I think that we should be told!

Turner wasn't bad at all either and, judging from the enthusiastic Glasgow crowd, he could be about to become a big star.

.

 

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Around Scotland - Wednesday 22 October 2008

(Wednesday 22 October 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on in Scotland.

The first flush is gone

THE SNP conference has just finished in Perth. It was a little less euphoric than the same bash last year, when the first flush of winning the May 2007 Scottish election was still fresh.
Most Labour loyalists were then hoping that the wheels would come off the SNP bandwagon. In fact, that was the very phrase. "Just wait and see. The wheels will come off."

The wheels didn't come off the SNP wagon, though. It was Labour that went crashing off the road, as Brown floundered, general secretaries came and went, Wendy Alexander resigned and, finally, Glasgow East was snatched by the nationalists in a breathtaking by-election three months ago.

Firmly installed as favourites in the November 6 Glenrothes by-election, the SNP could perhaps have been glorying in Perth over the weekend. And it did try.

But you might have noticed that Alex Salmond's gas has been at a peep over the last couple of weeks. I don't buy into the myth of Gordon Brown as saviour of the global financial system, but it is clear that he has benefited from the jaw-dropping bail-out and the effective nationalisation of a huge swathe of Britain's banks.
Salmond, on the other hand, has suffered his first really difficult period since the heady days of May last year.

It is not so surprising. Salmond's stock is organically linked to the Scottish bankers, especially Royal Bank of Scotland, and not just because he's a former company man.

In fact, a substantial part of SNP economic policy depended exactly on the fast-growing, lightly regulated banking sector which has just gone tits up and which has just been bailed out by what the SNP sees as the auld enemy.

I will not be the first to point out that that arc of prosperity is now more like an arc of at least partial insolvency.

The small nations which the SNP has long cited don't line up as well as they once did. Ireland is in recession and Iceland is virtually bankrupt. However, Norway is in a substantially better position because of many factors, not least the oil fund. And Brown's plan bears much similarity to the Scandinavian bank rescue of the 1990s.

However, Salmond has been damaged by the perfectly true accusation by Brown that Scotland couldn't have bailed out the "Scottish" banks in the same way that the UK taxpayer has.

In one sense, that's just a simple question of scale. But it also raises the very question of what independence is or would be in a Scottish context.

The Royal Bank is Scottish-headquartered and that is an important advantage for Scotland's economy. It provides many thousands of high-quality jobs. However, its former strength was not based on Scottish investments or savings. It is indeed a global bank but mainly still a UK one.

This is even more true of HBOS. Salmond's question over whether the merger of HBOS with Lloyds TSB should go ahead in the changed circumstance of the Brown bail-out is perfectly valid, but it doesn't amount to an economic policy.

For starters, although Bank of Scotland provides plenty of Scottish jobs and we would all want to safeguard these, the headquarters and decision-making went south in the Halifax takeover in 2001. And, a couple of weeks ago, the SNP was prepared to countenance a takeover of HBOS by some unnamed Arabian oil magnates.

Even if Scotland was an independent nation, these banks, along with the rest of the Scottish finance sector, are intrinsically linked to the UK economy by ownership and market share. This would not change if Scotland became independent.

The logic which means that the banks had to be rescued would still apply at that UK level. In other words, even an "independent" Scotland would have had to rely on the UK to take action on that scale anyway.

This doesn't mean that Scotland cannot or should not be more independent as a nation. These issues remain to be argued and decided. But it does mean that significant planks of the SNP market-friendly, pro-business economic policy are literally bankrupt and are being bailed out by the UK Treasury.

Tartan and tunes

THE SNP launched a new tartan at its conference in Perth. I didn't hear that it also launched a new shortbread, but it did announce the themes for the 2009 Year of Homecoming Festival, which is meant to attract the Scottish diaspora to take a break in the old country and spend their hard currency here.

The festival kicks off on Burns night on January 25 and runs until St Andrew's Day on November 30.

The themes are Robert Burns, whisky, golf, great Scottish minds and innovations and Scotland's culture and heritage.

I love all of these things apart from golf, so I'm not complaining too much. The last theme also does include all the others, but we'll let that pass.

However, it seems that Alex Salmond has hired erstwhile pretendy punk-folk chanteuse Sandi Thom to record Dougie Maclean's maudlin folk anthem Caledonia as the theme song for the homecoming year.

Now, that I can live without. Why don't they use a Burns song and really annoy Jeremy Paxman?

Glenrothes versus Garscadden

THE exposure of right-wing weaknesses in SNP economic policy doesn't automatically mean that Labour will sweep to victory at the Glenrothes by-election.

Glenrothes is being talked of hopefully by some in new Labour as another Garscadden - a normally safe seat under extreme pressure from a rising SNP held by a Labour stalwart in a crucial by-election that could turn the nationalist tide back.

Garscadden was won by Donald Dewar in 1978. Apart from the fact that Labour's candidate Lindsay Roy is not Dewar, Labour needs to win back a whole lot of trust squandered during the Blair and Brown years in order to regain its core vote.

It's a lot harder to build trust up than to lose it, as I keep telling my teenagers. But that's another argument.


Cuba Solidarity Campaign
NOTHING cheered me up this week so much as the news that Cuba was likely to become oil rich in the next few years.

But we still have to support Cuba as it faces the US blockade. So, get along to the fundraising Comedy Night for Cuba at the Stand, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow tonight. Doors 7.30pm, tickets £7/5.

Tickets are going fast from Scottish Cuba Solidarity Campaign - email scottishcuba@yahoo.co.uk or telephone (0141) 221-2359 to reserve yours.


People's Budget for Peace
HOW would you spend £20 billion of public money in the next five years? On schools, council housing and health services or on Trident?

On Saturday October 25, I hope to be among thousands of Scots asking and answering that question at a rally in Glasgow's George Square to promote a People's Budget for Peace.

As well as speakers Bruce Kent of CND, actor David Hayman, Oxfam's Judith Robertson and UNISON Scottish secretary Matt Smith, there will be music, stalls and food
.
Organisers Scotland's for Peace have support from churches and faith groups as well as unions and other civic bodies. The rally starts at 12 noon. Hope to see you there.

.

 

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Around Scotland - Tuesday 14 October 2008

(Tuesday 14 October 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on in Scotland.

Proud day in Dundee

IT WAS moving to see 96-year-old international brigade veteran Jack Jones raise his fist in salute to fallen comrades as he rededicated Dundee's memorial to its Spanish civil war heroes on Saturday.

It was a privilege to be able to introduce my two youngest children to Jones and Jack Edwards, a brigader from Manchester who also made the journey to Dundee.

They are among only eight international brigaders still living in Britain. Our last Scottish brigader Steve Fullarton died earlier this year.

Event organiser and general force of nature on Dundee Trades Union Council Mike Arnott spoke of his own inspiration for discovering and communicating the story of the Spanish civil war. Tom Clarke, one of the Dundee contingent who survived and returned, was Arnott's predecessor as minutes secretary of the trades council.

When Arnott moved to Dundee during the 1980s and joined the Young Communist League, he heard a tale that he thought was probably invented, as well as inspiring. It described a heroic secretary writing "Long live Dundee YCL" in the soil of Spain in his own blood as he lay there dying.

Arnott later discovered that the story was not total fiction.

Harry Pollitt's biography describes meeting William McGuire, a Dundee YCL member who was obviously dying of wounds sustained in battle, in a field hospital in Spain. Asking for a pencil and paper, McGuire wrote: "Give my watch to my mother. Long live the YCL!"

PCS member and former Scottish TUC youth committee stalwart Hamish Drummond read the roll call of Dundee's 17 fallen international brigaders on behalf of the Dundee TUC. As the busy Saturday traffic faded away, you could have heard a tear drop.

The rededication event had humorous moments too. Arnott recalled the story of Clarke en route to Spain via France with a pack of cigarettes to deliver to his contact in Paris. The Dundonian had smoked one of the fags on the ferry, only to discover on arrival in Paris that it had been the one with the secret message on it.

These and many other stories of Dundee's international brigade volunteers are contained in the pamphlet produced by Dundee TUC specially for the event. At only £2 each, they are well worth buying.
 
Pamphlets available from Dundee TUC. Email dundeetuc@hotmail.com, write to 141 Yarrow Terrace, Dundee DD2 4DY or phone 07951-443-656 or (01382) 434-386 for more details.

 

Time to get tough

AT THIS rate, it looks like the Scottish winter of discontent will follow the autumn and summer seasons of conflict.

If you have been following the Scottish local government pay dispute, you will know that a below-inflation offer of 2.5 per cent each year over three years was chucked out by huge majorities in ballots by each of the three unions involved - UNISON, Unite and GMB. That was in July.

Working together in an unprecedented united front, the three unions held two hugely successful 24-hour mass strikes during days of action in August and September.

The employers first dropped the rejected three-year deal and offered the same 2.5 per cent for one year.

We were into October and heading for selective strike action by UNISON when the council bosses CoSLA repackaged the offer as 3 per cent this year and 2.5 per cent next year.

While technically an improvement for this year, striking workers would have done little better than barely recover the pay that they lost in the two days of action.

Conferences of each of the three unions considered this latest deal over the last week. They have all recommended rejection in further ballots of members.

It's hard to see the employers' offers as anything other than timewasting. The pay dispute is over an increase which should have started in April. Now, the unions are again balloting members on pretty much the same deal as they rejected in July, with further action on hold till the results.

It is looking more like a hokey-cokey than industrial action - in, out, shake it all about, but so far no further forward.

The employers appear happy enough to sustain the odd strike day over a matter of months without finding the extra resources to provide fair pay. Behind them, the governments at both Holyrood and Westminster continue to stick to the policy of squeezing workers' wages while bailing out the City fat cats.

UNISON local government group chairwoman Stephanie Herd correctly says: "We need to strengthen our industrial action strategy and members will need to be prepared to increase the level of their activity. There is no point simply voting to reject the offer - we have to intensify our industrial and political campaigning."

Council workers are still angry, but it must now be time to get tough.

 

More strange times in this era of crisis

STRANGE times indeed. Last week, Peter Mandelson reappeared in the Cabinet. This week, I find that, along with all other UK taxpayers, I am a part owner of both the Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland, not to mention Lloyds TSB.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor don't like to admit that they've partly nationalised the banks. It's called "recapitalisation," a clever formulation that suggests that capitalism hasn't really failed.

But it has. Stocks are crashing and banks collapsing everywhere amid toxic debts and imminent global recession.

Will Hutton calls the present crash "history's joke: the crisis of capitalism long predicted by communists and socialists who are no longer able to take advantage of it." But the erstwhile fans of globalisation such as Hutton and Blair, Mandelson and Brown can't offer a real solution.

More will be needed than papering the confidence cracks with money. The battle is now on for control of the commanding heights of the economy. Will it be forced towards democratic hands or will the private vested interests cling on?

That is really up to us on the pro-democratic, anti-capitalist left - the communists and socialists in Scotland, Britain and worldwide.

 

Fancy a laugh? Read Murphy's new Labour law

IF YOU want a laugh and an insight into how new Labour rhetoric works, check out the online blog of new Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy(www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/secretary-of-state-blog/.

"I will work with anyone who wants to advance our interests," the new Cabinet member writes. "In Europe, I worked with centre-right and centre-left governments, with conservative and nationalist. I even enjoyed working with the Communist president of Cyprus."

That's your laugh, by the way.

"I love Scotland," Murphy trills. "I am passionate about its past and optimistic about its future. No political party has a monopoly on patriotism and I will challenge anyone who says otherwise. We have a great diversity in Scotland but we can all be united by the Saltire."

Safely wrapped in the flag, he burbles on in this vein for bit. But the final paragraph denouement is approaching.

"I will listen, learn and act. I will passionately put the case for our current constitutional settlement."

Full marks for spin. Not just "listen" - remember the big conversation? Not just "listen and learn" - Glasgow East. Now, new Labour promises to "act" as well. But it will act to defend the status quo, the "current constitutional settlement." No mention of additional powers for the Scottish Parliament. No truck with referendums or reform.

It's Murphy's new Labour law. Whatever should happen won't, not if he has anything to do with it.

 

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Around Scotland - Tuesday 7 October 2008

(Tuesday 07 October 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on in Scotland.

Swinney faces grilling

Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney is due to be grilled on Tuesday over his 2008-9 budget proposals by the Scottish Parliament equal opportunities committee.

Chaired by Tory Margaret Mitchell, the eight-member committee includes Labour's Elaine Smith, Marlyn Glen and Malcolm Chisholm, plus SNP MSPs Bill Kidd and Sandra White.

And the members know exactly what questions they want to ask.

Last week, in a fascinating evidence session with the committee, half-a-dozen experts laid into the provision in the proposed budget of just £40 million to deal with the issue of equal pay in local government.

The issue is complex and vexed. Coming over 30 years after the 1970 Equal Pay Act, the "single-status agreement" was intended to eradicate pay inequalities in Scottish local government.

However, failure by council employers to address the issues - primarily exclusion of women in equivalent manual jobs from men's bonus schemes - provoked mass litigation.

In 2005-6, Scottish councils identified "high risk" claimant groups and sought settlement, spending up to £500 million in equal pay compensation. But discriminatory arrangements were then left in place after that and further liability of around £100m was created.

Some councils have still to implement single status. Others have imposed single-status agreements on terms which unions have opposed. In many cases, the issue of equal pay has not been resolved. So, litigation continues.

Employment solicitor Margaret Gribbon told the committee that there were 40,000 cases in the employment tribunal system at present.

"We will be litigating these cases for decades to come," she said. "Those solutions are not working. They are like putting a plaster on a bullet wound."

UNISON Scotland legal officer Peter Hunter said: "Even if we set aside the equality issues and look at the equal pay gap from an accountant's perspective, we are building up major financial problems for the future ... the five-year liability for all local authorities could be in the region of £750 million."

Half a billion, £750 million - these are budget-busting sums. But the government may well be obliged by law to plan for them in order to meet required equal pay outcomes.

Economist and committee adviser Dr Ailsa McKay noted that council umbrella group CoSLA had identified equal pay in local government as "the greatest destabilising force in local government finance."

"Given the evidence it has heard today, the committee might want to consider in its budget scrutiny that equal pay appears to be one of the greatest destabilising forces in Scottish government finance," McKay argued.

"There is no evidence in the draft budget that adequate account has been taken of the resource implications of either meeting equal pay or managing unequal pay over the next few years at least. That is a serious omission that the committee, after hearing evidence today, is now well placed to point out to the cabinet secretary."

So, can Swinney answer the $1 billion equal pay question?

Visit the equal opportunities committee web pages at www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/equal/
 

All go on the Titanic

I WENT away for a couple of days and, when I got back, the deckchairs on the Titanic had been shuffled around. The captain even made room for the iceberg.

Yes, Labour's Lucifer Peter Mandelson slithers back aboard the doomed ship of state, much to the horror of the left in the party. Whatever happened to the promises to rid the country of sleaze, I wonder.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, we were handed cold warrior Jim Murphy to replace Des Browne as Scottish Secretary. At least the Prime Minister has scrapped the bizarre arrangement of the Defence Secretary moonlighting part-time in the Scotland Office.

Those of you who can still feel sympathy for Labour ministers might wish to remember in your prayers Ann McKechin.

Hoisted into the Scotland Office a couple of weeks ago when the Reverend David Cairns - remember him? - fell on his sword of anti-Brown conscience, the MP for Glasgow North proved a safe pair of hands in effectively covering not just for Cairns but for Des "two jobs" Browne's backshift as well.

She'll now have to hide the light of her brief candle under uber-Blairite Murphy's bushel.

Dundee remembers Spain heroes

THIS weekend, Dundee Trades Union Council hosts a series of Spanish civil war events climaxing in the rededication of the city's International Brigade Memorial and the unveiling of a new plaque.

It is hoped that Jack Jones, the 95-year-old former T&G leader who fought in Spain, will be present.

Saturday night social tickets are available for £5 and commemorative T-shirts for £6 each.

Visit www.international-brigades.org.uk for more details or contact Dundee TUC secretary Mike Arnott by email at dundeetuc@hotmail.com or telephone on 07951-443-656 or (01382) 434-386.

School dinners plan finally destined for our kids' plates

LAST Thursday, the Scottish government finally announced the roll-out of free school meals for pupils in years one to three beginning in 2010.

This follows a £5 million trial in five council areas across Scotland which ran during the last school year up to June.

The pilots proved successful - uptake of school meals was increased from 53 per cent to 75 per cent overall.
So far, so good. But is the SNP government providing the cash to fund the meals?

Currently, it's a hot political potato.

The SNP says that the councils signed up for the free school meal deal in the concordat last year and there is money in that settlement which they can use to cover the £28 million cost.

Labour says that the SNP is short-changing councils which will be forced by law to provide the meals at a cost of £50 million.

Personally, I am delighted that the argument for universal free school meals appears to have been won, even if there's a fight about the cost and it is being phased in over time and age groups.

Now, how about some more attractive fare in the school canteen - sorry, fuel zone - to help my kids and their pals eat their way to a healthier life.


* FOLLOWING on from Scotland's Future, its excellent pamphlet on the increased powers the Scottish Parliament needs, the Communist Party of Britain has published Scotland's Wealth & Scotland's Poverty. The latest pamphlet explains how unregulated market forces have increased poverty and inequality in Scotland today. Both are available to order at www.scottishcommunists.org.uk

JUST a reminder - Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez, wives of two of the jailed Miami Five, will join Scottish Cuba Solidarity in a picket of the US consulate, 3 Regent Terrace, Edinburgh between 4-6pm on Thursday. Your support will be welcome.
 

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