Could Spin Turn Flip to Flop?

WITH newspapers and right-wing Labourites desperately digging for something to derail the Jeremy Corbyn campaign, a figure has stepped from the shadows of the not-too-distant past to remind us they are right about outside influences, alien to Labour's traditional  values, meddling inside the Party.

Only these elements are not left-wing "infiltrators", in fact they are not left-wing at all, and if anyone should be embarassed over this intrusion it is not Jeremy Corbyn.

Think back two years to the row over Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland. Supplying much of Scotland, it had fallen along with much of BP's chemical business, into the hands of a Swiss-based private equity firm, INEOS. From his £130 million luxury yacht on the Cote d'Azur, INEOS boss Jim Radcliff declared that Grangemouth was losing money, and would have to be closed unless the workers took a wage drop and attack on pensions.

The 800 workers, mainly members of Unite, threatened to go on strike. But the pressure was on, with the threat to their jobs and a knock on effect on the whole area.  Scotland's SNP Finance Minister voiced sympathy with the workers, and said his government would seek interested buyers for the refinery. But he ruled out nationalisation. And obviously the workers could expect no help from the Tory government in London.


Unite backed down, agreeing to a three-year pay freeze, an end to final salary pensions, and some job cuts, without enhanced redundancy payments. The workers, those who kept their jobs, were not happy, but were relieved not to be going down the road just yet, or seeing their area become a ghost town. Further afield, among those who had not had to take the decision, it was a chance to condemn the union, or more especially Len McCluskey, for a "sell-out".

Labour seems to have got off with staying in the background - or at least until this year's election,

And now comes this interesting story on the Labour Uncut website:

A lobbyist from the firm that advises energy firm Ineos, which was involved in a biter industrial dispute with Unite the Union, is now working as a key member of Andy Burnham’s leadership team.

Katie Myler, a former special adviser to Burnham when he was health secretary, now works for international lobbying company, Burson-Marsteller.
They claim on their website that their staff have provided “senior counsel” to the Ineos “CEO and management team” during “the Grangemouth industrial dispute.”
Back in 2013, 800 staff at the petrochemical plant in Falkirk threatened to go on strike after management brought forward a survival plan, which included a three-year pay freeze and changes to pensions.

Unite later relented in a bid to save jobs.

 But the Grangemouth dispute was not the only row in that area in 2013. Grangemouth is part of the Falkirk constituency. The local Labour MP,an ex-army man in trouble over brawls in Commons bars, was due for replacement. Unite the union was accused of recruiting its members into the Labour Party - as though there was something wrong with that - in order to assist its preferred candidate.
Labour not only held it own inquiry but asked the police to look into the alleged goings-on. They did, and could find nothing warranting their interest.  But the Tory press was naturally delighted to keep the alleged "scandal" going.

Unite reported on November 5, 2013:

...., Unite itself verified that all of its members who it did recruit to the Labour Party under the then-extant Union Join scheme had indeed willingly consented to join the Labour Party.  In view of all this new or clarified evidence, it was evident that the allegations asserted in the original “Falkirk report” could no longer hold water.  The Party then issued the statement on September 6, which made it clear that Unite, Mr Deans and Ms  Murphy had done nothing wrong and had broken no rules.  Police Scotland had much earlier found no basis for any criminal investigation in the matter.

Stevie Deans, chair of the Falkirk Constituency Labour Party, who found himself the subject of police inquiries, had been Unite convenor at Grangemouth. INEOS forwarded e-mails he had allegedly sent in company time to the police, and also leaked private information from them to the press. It did not manage to persuade the police he had done anything wrong, but it was able to get rid of the convenor as it took on the union.
http://www.unitetheunion.org/news/unite-statement-on-stephen-deans/



Karie Murphy, whom Unite had favoured for the Falkirk seat, found herself blocked, not just in Scotland but again this year when her name was kept off an all-women shortlist at Halifax. But above all the Falkirk row became Labour's spur to loosening ties with the unions, and adopting the current rules about which the right-wing is once more complaining, saying they don't stop "infiltration". 

Getting back to the Labour Uncut report, it says:

"Myler was appointed as director of communications for Burnham’s campaign last week, after taking a sabbatical from Burson-Marsteller where she works as a managing director, according to a report in PR Week.

She joins fellow lobbyist, John Lehal, who is acting as campaign director.
His company, Insight Consulting Group, has worked for a string of private medical companies, according to reports in this morning’s Independent.
The revelations will come as a major embarrassment to Burnham, who has made much of his opposition to private sector involvement in the NHS."

Indeed, Andy Burnham impressed a lot of people last year when he joined the Darlington "Mums" march to defend the NHS, and spoke at their Trafalgar Square rally.  Before Jeremy Corbyn's campaign took off he had been expected to get most union backing. He has called for the NHS to be shielded from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP) with its drive for privatisation.
In the Labour leadership election battle he has begun making "left"-sounding statements about the NHS and railway public ownership, which critics have dismissed as mere "flip" designed to win back support that is drifting towards Jeremy Corbyn.

That his PR team is revealed to include people with very different associations may not be his fault, or even their's - it is not a matter of conviction, just what they do for a living. All the same it does not do him any favours.
 
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/grangemouth-crisis-billionaire-ineos-boss-2474762

http://www.unitetheunion.org/campaigning/unitepolitics/unitepoliticsblog/unite-ahd-falkirk-clp/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-25828321

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/03/labour-falkirk-karie-murphy-voting-investigation

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/halifax-selection-row-leaked-emails-reveal-labours-war-with-unite-over-choice-of-candidate-10112356.html

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-2777-Burnham-joins-hero-mums-from-Darlington-on-NHS-march#.VcaASfnLrjk

http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2015/06/13/burnhams-spin-doctor-is-director-at-lobbyist-firm-that-advises-union-buster-ineos/

Hame to Scotland's Hot Summer

 NO EASY BERTH for privateers


SCOTLAND'S First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was on bright and sparkling form when she visited the USA earlier this month. Appearing on the satirical news programme The Daily Show she told host John Stewart: "You billed me on your website as a comedian - so you've raised all these expectations that I'm going to be funny".

"And I'm a politician, and as you know, politicians are rarely very funny."


Then when the conversation got on to Scottish oil stocks, Stewart mockingly asked: "How much are we talking about here? May we invade you."

Sturgeon replied: "I think this is progress because you just heard there Jon, presumably on behalf of the United States ask permission to invade an oil-producing country, it doesn't usually work that way."

 But the SNP leader was coming home to face trouble in her own back yard - almost literally - and residents who say its beyond a joke.  While she was away the  'Let's Save Govanhill' campaign group was taking council officers on a tour of their estate showing them the amount of rubbish strewn around, which they blame on neglect and fly-tipping.

They are calling on Glasgow city council leader Gordon Mathieson to intervene.
The group have also met with Nicola Sturgeon as part of their campaign. She was MSP for Govan before that constituency was abolished, and still represents the area as MSP for Glasgow Southside.

The campaigners have posted photographs of rubbish-strewn streets and greens on Facebook. Demanding "serious intervention into the ghetto Govanhill has now become", Liz Armour of the Save Govanhill group said : "Yet again the images of Nicola Sturgeon's constituency have shocked many people. Others have said this is nothing new. The sad thing is children live in this filth and they see the squalor everyday surrounding them.

"Despite council officials viewing it firsthand on their tour we are not holding our breaths waiting for some serious action from them, instead we will continue holding our noses at the stink that Govanhill is now creating for Glasgow."


http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/13332113.Campaigners_call_for_action_over__filth_and_squalor__in_Govanhill/

When I first heard that protesters were going to Nicola Sturgeon my thought was that surely this was a council matter, and not up to the First Minister?  I wondered if the Labour Party was stirring things up, and deliberately diverting people's frustration so as to embarrass the SNP leader. But a friend who lives in Govan assures me people there are well aware of the Labour-led Glasgow city council's responsibilities, and were turning to their MSP because they felt the authorities were neglecting them.

Meanwhile, away from the schemes and back-streets of Glasgow, another struggle is taking place, and this is one we predicted.  In 2007, hearing that the SNP having received funds from the Souter family  had dropped its position on public ownership of transport, I wondered how this might affect Caledonian MacBrayne, whose ferries provide the vital service to the Scottish islands.
http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/but-they-can-buy-our-politics.html

Now here is Richie Venton, industrial organiser for the Scottish Socialists Party:

Caledonian Macbrayne (CalMac) ferry workers – members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers’ union (RMT) – are taking industrial action in defence of their pensions, jobs, conditions of work – and against privatisation by the Scottish government, who seem set to hand the publicly-owned CalMac ferries over to the private, profiteering Serco.

They start with an overtime ban, followed by a 24-hour strike.

The workers run lifeline services to remote communities on the Clyde and Hebrides CalMac ferries.

These RMT members deserve and need the solidarity of every worker in Scotland.

They are themselves often members of the island communities who depend on these lifeline services. They are dedicated and hardworking, going out in all weather, and have only resorted to this action because of the threat to the services they provide as well as the jobs and conditions they’ve gained through collective union efforts.

SWEEPING MAJORITIES FOR STRIKE

They decided on this course of action by sweeping majorities in a ballot of RMT members, who make up about 680 of the 1,400-strong workforce. In a decisive 60% turnout, on a two-question ballot, 98% of them voted in favour of industrial action short of strike action, and 92% in favour of strikes. Even if the Tories’ vicious hurdles against the right of workers to withdraw their labour had already been made law, there would still be a legal majority for this solidarity action.

That in itself illustrates the strength of feeling of a workforce that has tried every other option to get guarantees on their pensions and against compulsory redundancies.

Read more about the CalMac struggle at Richie Venton’s blog.

https://www.scottishsocialistparty.org/calmac-ferries-trade-unions-sold-down-the-river/

http://richieventon.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/calmac-ferries-sold-down-river.html



In another dispute, hospital porters who have been fighting for upgrading and a raise in pay have taken their protest to the Dundee offices of Scottish Health Minister Shona Robinson whom they say is blocking their award.
http://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-courier-advertiser-perth-and-perthshire-edition/20150627/281852937219721/TextView

Secrets and Spies linked with blacklisting

WITH government ministers like Ian Duncan Smith anxiously insisting the results of their policies should be hidden behind secrecy, two stories illustrate the way police are guarding their right to spy on the public. 

We are not talking about dangerous criminals or terrorists here, but about those who have been at the receiving end of violence, and tried to do something about it.

Duwayne Brooks and Stephen Lawrence were teenagers, on their way home one night in 1993 when they were chased by a racist gang, and Stephen was stabbed and bled to death, just yards from the bus stop where they had been waiting, in Eltham, south east London. 

Now 40, and a former Lib Dem councillor, Duwayne not only gave evidence but campaigned along with the Lawrence family for those who had attacked them and murdered his friend to be brought to justice. Since then he has called for the Metropolitan Police to reveal the truth about spying that it conducted, not against the murder suspects, but against him and the Lawrence campaigners.

The Yard said it would hand over any material its officers had collated on him. But Duwayne says what he received from the Met were three pages of intelligence reports, all heavily redacted, so that only four sentences were visible. Even the dates were covered up.

“The ­Commissioner promised they would be open and ­transparent and said the Met would provide copies of documents held on me. Instead they sent me this stuff which is a waste of time. It clearly shows they are still holding information about me. Are they still covering up? Yes 100%.”

Stephen Lawrence's mother Doreen entered the House of Lords as Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, a Labour life peer, on September 6, 2013. Duwayne Brooks was awarded an OBE this month.  But in 2013 a former police officer, Peter Francis, revealed that he had been employed to gather "dirt" on Duwayne Brooks and the Lawrences.  Scotland Yard promised an inquiry.  

The documents do show the police were keen to play up differences between Duwayne Brooks and the Lawrences. One sentence in the report suggests he supported the Movement for Justice, and had criticised Stephen's parents for reluctance to speak at rallies. Another sentence quotes Duwayne  saying that “the black community should not walk on by when the police are stopping blacks in the street”.

BLACKOUT  Heavily redacted document from the Met

He said: “How did they know that? I believe the redacted ­information would answer that.”

The Met said: “We made an undertaking to disclose material held on Mr Brooks to his solicitor. As explained, it was redacted to protect ­sensitive information.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/stephen-lawrences-best-friend-says-5931021

ANOTHER attempt to uncover what the Met's snoops are up to ran into the secrecy barrier this week when they refused to disclose whether undercover copper Mark Jenner was still on active service, citing "health and safety" grounds.

Jenner, who also used the name Mark Cassidy, posed as a joiner in 1996 and became active in the building union Ucatt until 1999.  He also went to the Colin Roach Centre, which was particularly concerned about police violence. Jenner/Cassidy established a relationship, lasting five years, with a woman teacher, who bore his child, while he was collecting information on her involvement in environmental campaigns.  (CORRECTION:  (see comment) I confused this with another case, Jenner did not give this woman a child and she was not involved in environmental campaign. Shows danger of not checking facts when working late at night!)

 A diary left behind by Jenner indicates that he was interested in building workers campaigning on safety issues. He even chaired some meetings. Former police officer Peter Francis has confirmed that Jenner, a member of the Yard's Special Demonstrations Squad, was an undercover agent.
 
But Metropolitan Police chiefs have turned down a freedom of information request asking if the former spy was still on duty, saying they would not “confirm or deny” any details of his activities.
The Met cited the need to protect “personal data” as well as the potential for “health and safety” breaches.

“It is deeply cynical for the police to be using personal data as an excuse to withhold information, when they had no hesitation to distribute workers’ personal details to blacklisters and ruin their lives,” said Ucatt acting general secretary Brian Rye.

A database of blacklisted construction workers, held contrary to the Data Protection Act, was discovered in 2009. It included details about workers' political views,  out of work activities and families, and some of the information looked suspiciously as though it had been gathered by undercover police officers.  Since then other information has been brought to light about meetings between senior police officers and employers.

“The police’s continued refusal to answer questions about their role in the blacklisting of ordinary construction workers is reprehensible,” said Brian Rye. "Everyone who had their lives blighted by blacklisting deserves the complete truth. That will only be achieved through a full public inquiry into this disgusting practice.”

Promising increased police surveillance to protect national security, Home Secretary Theresa May told MPs that the “snoopers’ charter” proposals blocked by the Lib Dems during the last parliament were “too wide-ranging” and would be tightened up. Former government lawyer Victoria Prentis, who was elected a Tory MP last month, said that Britain was “lucky to have” its spies.  “They have been proved repeatedly to be both efficient and decent and a great example of the values we hold so dear in this country,” she said.
 
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-f936-MET-SILENT-ON-BLACKLIST-SPY#.VY1CG0bLrjm

See also:
http://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/mark-jenner-blacklisting/
 http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/mar/01/police-spy-fictional-character
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/undercover-cop-joined-construction-union-5261174

UNDERCOVER (and under-the-covers) COP  Mark Jenner, aka Cassidy, spied on workers concerned about health and safety,  and lived with woman he had befriended under false identity before moving on.
"A great example of the values we hold so dear in this country,”?

Investigate Blacklisting, says Nicola's Mum  

ANTI-BLACKLIST campaigners seem to have claimed some success this week having set up stall at the Scottish National Party Trade Union Group meeting in Stirling.

NICOLA Sturgeon is being urged to set up a Hillsborough-style public inquiry into the scandal of blacklisting – by her mum.

Councillor Joan Sturgeon and her North Ayrshire colleagues want an official investigation into the shameful employment practice.

The Record previously told how almost 600 workers in Scotland were blocked from getting jobs by the Consulting Association.

Their blacklist was revealed after a raid by the Information Commissioner’s Office in 2009. It led to the organisation being shut down.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/blacklist-blitz-nicola-sturgeons-mum-5943578

Blacklisting was also mentioned by new Midlothian MP Owen Thompson in his maiden speech in the Commons, in which he also, ironically, praised the speech of fellow newcomer Victoria Prentis.

BUT RMT trade unionists have been less impressed with the SNP trade union group's failure to back opposition to privatisation of Caledonian-MacBrayne ferries.
http://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-responds-to-snp-trade-union-group-statement-on-calmac/ 

Ambassador's Assessment

JEREMY CORBYN meets supporters on June 20 anti-austerity march.


CRAIG Murray is a former British diplomat who fell out with the Blair government over its support to foreign dictators, became a human rights activist, and is today a member of the Scottish National Party. Well-travelled, and well-educated, he easily refutes any notion of patriotic Scots being dim or parochial.

Being acquainted with the ways of intelligence services, and newspapers, Craig Murray didn't hesitate to characterise the supposed Foreign and Commonwealth Office memo about what Nicola Spurgeon had told the man from the French embassy as having "MI5 written all over it". "This is the worst example of British security services influencing an election campaign since the Zinoviev letter", he commented.
 https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/uk-intelligence-services-attack-snp/

As it turned out, the ambassador story did not do the SNP any harm.

And now, here are some real, and interesting things, that a former British ambassador - Craig Murray - has had to say about another election, the one for leader of the Labour Party.  I recommend his arguments to any Labour supporters feeling intimidated by the so-called "realists" sighing that a left-winger just can't win, and to any honest journalists plucking up the courage to differ from their proprieter's party line.  

The media are working overtime to marginalise Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour leadership candidate on the grounds that he is left wing and therefore weird and unelectable. But they face the undeniable fact that, Scottish independence aside, there are very few political differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon. On issues including austerity, nuclear weapons, welfare and Palestine both Sturgeon and Corbyn are really very similar. ..

Nicola Sturgeon won the UK wide leaders debate in the whole of the United Kingdom, despite the disadvantage of representing a party not standing in 90% of it by population. She won not just because she is clever and genuine, but because people all across the UK liked the left wing policies she articulated.

A Daily Mirror opinion poll following a BBC televised Labour leadership candidates’ debate this week had Jeremy Corbyn as the clear winner, with twice the support of anyone else. The media ridicule level has picked up since. This policy of marginalisation works. I was saddened by readers’ comments under a Guardian report of that debate, in which Labour supporter after Labour supporter posted comment to the effect “I would like to vote for Jeremy Corbyn because he believes in the same things I do, but we need a more right wing leader to have a chance of winning.”

There are two answers to that. The first is no, you don’t need to be right wing to win. Look at the SNP. The second is what the bloody hell are you in politics for anyway? Do you just want your team to win like it was football? Is there any point at all in being elected just so you can carry out the same policies as your opponents? The problem is, of course, that for so many in the Labour Party, especially but not just the MPs, they want to win for personal career advantage not actually to promote particular policies.

The media message of the need to be right wing to be elected is based on reinforced by a mythologizing of Tony Blair and Michael Foot as the ultimate example of the Good and Bad leader. These figures are constantly used to reinforce the consensus. Let us examine their myths.

Tony Blair is mythologised as an electoral superstar, a celebrity politician who achieved unprecedented personal popularity with the public, and that he achieved this by adopting right wing policies. Let us examine the truth of this myth. First that public popularity. The best measure of public enthusiasm is the percentage of those entitled to vote, who cast their ballot for that party at the general election. This table may surprise you.

Percentage of Eligible Voters

1992 John Major 32.5%
1997 Tony Blair 30.8%
2001 Tony Blair 24.1%
2005 Tony Blair 21.6%
2010 David Cameron 23.5%
2015 David Cameron 24.4%

There was only any public enthusiasm for Blair in 97 – and to put that in perspective, it was less than the public enthusiasm for John Major in 1992.

More importantly, this public enthusiasm was not based on the policies now known as Blairite. The 1997 Labour Manifesto was not full of right wing policies and did not indicate what Blair was going to do.

The Labour Party manifesto of 1997 did not mention Academy schools, Private Finance Initiative, Tuition Fees, NHS privatisation, financial sector deregulation or any of the right wing policies Blair was to usher in. Labour actually presented quite a left wing image, and figures like Robin Cook and Clare Short were prominent in the campaign. There was certainly no mention of military invasions.

It was only once Labour were in power that Blair shaped his cabinet and his policies on an ineluctably right wing course and Mandelson started to become dominant. As people discovered that New Labour were “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, to quote Mandelson, their popular support plummeted. “The great communicator” Blair for 90% of his Prime Ministership was no more popular than David Cameron is now. 79% of the electorate did not vote for him by his third election

Michael Foot consistently led Margaret Thatcher in opinion polls – by a wide margin – until the Falklands War. He was defeated in a victory election by the most appalling and intensive wave of popular war jingoism and militarism, the nostalgia of a fast declining power for its imperial past, an emotional outburst of popular relief that Britain could still notch up a military victory over foreigners in its colonies. It was the most unedifying political climate imaginable. The tabloid demonization of Foot as the antithesis of the military and imperial theme was the first real exhibition of the power of Rupert Murdoch. Few serious commentators at the time doubted that Thatcher might have been defeated were it not for the Falklands War – which in part explains her lack of interest in a peaceful solution. Michael Foot’s position in the demonology ignores these facts.

The facts about Blair and about Foot are very different from the media mythology.

   What the bloody hell are you in politics for anyway? Do you just want your team to win like it was football? Is there any point at all in being elected just so you can carry out the same policies as your opponents?

CRAIG MURRAY

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Support the Challenger from the Left!

JEREMY CORBYN, MP (Islington Tribune)


...and a message from North of the Border we should note.

First, the good news. There is a Left-wing, anti-austerity candidate standing in the Labour Party's leadership election.  I don't know whether Jeremy Corbyn will even get the 35  nominations from fellow Labour MPs necessary for his name to appear on the ballot paper. But he should.

We saw the hurdles John McDonnell had to face when he made a challenge for the leadership.

The news tonight was that Jeremy Corbyn had obtained ten nominations within 24 hours of announcing his intentions, and I'd guess some are from the new MPs who previously issued an anti-austerity statement.  Adding my vote to an online poll run by the Daily Mirror I was heartened to find myself among 87 per cent for Jeremy Corbyn. It won't count in the official leadership stakes of course, but it should count for something.
 
With the other candidates competing to be most right-wing, complaining that poor Ed Miliband pulled the Party to the Left, and sounding like they've rooted through David Cameron's waste bin for old speeches attacking welfare claimants,  it's good to see anyone making a challenge from the Left.
Not that Jeremy Corbyn is just anyone. He opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has championed the rights of the Palestinian people, with more principled consistency than George Galloway and none of the latter's tainted links or bloated arrogance.

As a supporter of working people's rights and aspirations for a better society (not the selfish individual "aspiration" some other Labour lights have been extolling), Jeremy Corbyn  ranks close to John McDonnell,  with whom he often shares a platform, in respect from rank-and-file trade unionists.

Jeremy Corbyn is also a good MP, known and liked by people in his Islington North constituency. Many years ago when I read about rumours that right-wing, Blairite  councillors  in Islington were plotting to oust the MP, I mentioned it to a mate of mine long resident in the Holloway Road and active in the community. "They must be mad," he opined, "Everyone here likes Jeremy, even if they have no time at all for the council".  Since then those right-wingers have gone, and as local councils go, in these days of pervasive privatisation and cuts, Islington is not that bad, according to my trade union informants.

As for Jeremy, besides those union activists who'll back him, I know people in Tufnell Park who left the Labour Party in disgust at Blair's lies an war, and joined the Greens. But come election time, as they explain to friends, "We have to vote Labour for Jeremy Corbyn". That's anecdotal of course, but Jeremy Corbyn's 21,000 plus majority is real enough.
     
 Some years back, helping to host a conference of European Jews for Just Peace, I asked Jeremy Corbyn along as a guest panel speaker. Well, we were meeting near Archway, in his constituency, though there were not a lot of votes to be gathered from the delegates from Stockholm, Brussels, Paris and Rome.  Jeremy turned up hotfoot from Heathrow where he had been dealing with an immigration case, spoke and spent more time answering questions and discussion (he is a good listener as well as speaker), before getting away to hold his surgery for constituents.   
  
More recently, I was at a rally held in tribute to the late Mike Marqusee, writer and journalist, who died at the beginning of this year. It was little more than a week after the depressing result of the general election. Jeremy Corbyn was jointly chairing, or compering, the event, along with comedian Mark Steel, who had us all on our feet not for a minute's silence in memory of Mike, but a rousing cheer in recollection of his life.  Indeed, though we were all, family and friends and comrades, remembering a sad loss, we came away from that gathering with a very positive feeling, some of the unity and courageous defiance that Mike Marqusee bequeathed us.

I see Jeremy Corbyn's challenge for leadership as continuing and embodying some of that spirit.  As he says on TV tonight, the party, and the movement, should really be having a policy debate rather than a leadership contest, but he hopes his his challenge can encourage that debate.  If we can get behind it, and especially if Jeremy can get a decent vote, the Left is finding its feet again. Then we will be on the march.


When Scottish Affairs are All Our Affairs

NEIL FINDLAY, MSP  

DAVE SMITH

One of the odd aspects of the campaign against building industry blacklisting was that hearings were held in the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee. As anti-blacklisting campaigner Dave Smith explained to Brent Trades Union Council's meeting the other week this was solely because it was one committee where Labour had a majority and so the issue could be pursued.

Like others, Dave was hoping that an incoming Labour government under Ed Miliband would honour its promises to hold an inquiry into blacklisting, particularly with the evidence that has come out about undercover police activity in trade unions and campaigns. Dave, and the Blacklist Support Group, were keen that is should be a full public inquiry.


Though the return of a Tory government is obviously a setback, Dave Smith said we should not be depressed or give up. "Cameron has only got a 12-seat majority. Thatcher had 144 seats at one point, and we still defeated her!"
  
Many people are hoping that Labour and the Scottish National Party can combine to beat the Tories, and I have seen messages complaining that Left-wing Labour MPs have not come out openly for an alliance with the SNP against austerity and Trident.

These are still early days, and too early for recriminations before things have really started, but we cannot ignore the message from Neil Findlay, MSP, who was Jim Murphy's challenger for the Labour leadership in Scotland, and resigned last month from the Party's shadow cabinet over its failure to analyse its disaster north of the Border.

Neil Findlay writes (Wednesday, June ):

"Today in parliament I called for a Scottish Inquiry into the Blacklisting of construction workers. It is clear that the Tories won't do it but the Scottish Government could.

Depressingly only two SNP MSPs turned up for the debate and the only one who spoke, Mike McKenzie actually questioned whether the big construction companies had actually blacklisted people!!!!! I find this astonishing as I thought there was a general consensus given all the evidence that has been unearthed in the information commissioners raid. I will post the video later so people can see the debate."

Two Scottish building workers interviewed by the Daily Record were not amused to hear that what they had experienced might all be imaginary.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/meet-two-scots-targeted-firms-1868444


And here is that video of the Scottish parliament as promised.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNBW29K3lrY

PS   In a message on Facebook today, Neil Findlay says:

"Great meeting today with Jeremy Corbyn's campaign team - please urge Labour MPs to nominate him and your trade union to support him - let's have the widest possible debate about the future of the Labour Party".

When political tricks misfire

 DEMONSTRATORS outside Kirkwall cathedral (pic from the Orcadian) and below, marching on Carmichael's Shetlands office (BBC).

FORMER Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael, the last Lib Dem MP left in Scotland, could soon be gone as a result of a clever little piece of political mischief which has misfired.
 
Mr. Carmichael, whose Northern Isles constituency covers the Orkneys and Shetland Isles, has admitted he was behind the "leak" of a civil service memo which claimed Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon had said she would prefer to see a Tory government under David Cameron returned in the general election.

The SNP leader denied saying anything of the sort.  Describing the leak, which appeared in the Daily Telegraph before the election as a "blatant election dirty trick", she has said Carmichael should seriously consider his position as an MP.

The confidential memo,  written by a civil servant in the Scotland Office, was a third-hand account of a conversation between the Scottish first minister and the French ambassador, in March, which Ms Sturgeon was reported to have said she wanted David Cameron to remain as prime minister. Both Ms.Sturgeon and the ambassador denied any such conversation had taken place.

After the story appeared in the Daily Telegraph,  the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, ordered an inquiry into how the confidential memo got into the public domain. He discovered that an official mobile phone belonging to Euan Roddin, Carmichael’s special adviser, was used to contact one of the reporters who wrote the Telegraph story.The official cabinet office inquiry into the leaking of the memo said Mr Carmichael's former special adviser Euan Roddin gave the details to the Daily Telegraph - but he had Mr Carmichael's permission to do so.

LIB DEM CARMICHAEL. MP  wants to carry on but may have to go.

Carmichael now says he accepted the memo was wrong about Nicola Sturgeon being pro-Tory, and described the leak as “an error of judgment”, He apologised to the SNP leader. He has said he is waiving the severance pay he is entitled to after losing his cabinet job. He said that if he had still been a minister it would have been a resigning matter.

Speaking to BBC Radio Orkney, Mr Carmichael said: "I have said already that I very much regret the position I am in. I have been the member of parliament for Orkney and Shetland for the last 14 years.
I have worked hard for local people and believe that's the record on which I am entitled to rely and that's the job that I am now going to be getting on with. None of that has changed."
On Saturday, the Scottish Lib Dem's party executive agreed Mr Carmichael would not face any disciplinary action and the party's leader Willie Rennie has said the MP "deserved a second chance".

But there have been demonstrations in both Lerwick in the Shetlands and Kirkwall in the Orkneys, demanding that he stand down.  Scottish Nationalists insist they are not the only ones demanding he go.

The nationalists have repeated calls for a formal investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards into Mr Carmichael's behaviour.  SNP MP Pete Wishart said Mr Carmichael must explain if he was sent a copy of the memo. He said: "Mr Carmichael no longer has any credibility as an MP - the best course of action would be for him to stand down.

"Mr Carmichael must now explain if he was sent a copy of the memo before authorising the leak. If he was, he must then explain why he apparently failed to read his own ministerial papers. A formal investigation by the Standards Commissioner would help shed light on these matters."

Stewart Hosie, MP for Dundee East and the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday that Carmichael, who had at first denied involvement in the leak, ought to resign. He said: “This is potentially career-ending precisely because he went into an election suggesting one thing and then we find out – lo and behold, just after the election – it wasn’t true.

“Given the scale of this – a dirty tricks campaign that involved the French ambassador and the Scottish First Minister – all of which is completely false, bogus, made up, really he ought to consider very seriously whether he can be even be trusted by his constituents to remain an MP.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/23/alistair-carmichael-nicola-sturgeon-leaked-election-memo-snp


http://www.shetnews.co.uk/news/10706-lerwick-and-kirkwall-protests-demand-mp-resigns 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-32874009 

Willie comes back to haunt the Highlands (and Britain's secret state)

REMEMBERING WILLIAM McRAE and raising questions about his death. Ex-policeman Donald Morrison (in blue) and campaigner Mark MacNicol by memorial cairn.

 IT could make a strong episode of 'New Tricks',  and it featured in the background of one of Ian Rankin's 'Rebus' novels.  Last year the case was the subject of a play by Mark MacNicol, 3,000 Trees.  But the death of Scots lawyer Willie McRae, on April 6, 1985, was real, and so far as many people are concerned, remains a mystery to be investigated.
    
At a time when some newspapers and political opponents seem intent on character assassination of  Scottish National Party leaders, campaigners are suggesting that McRae, a prominent SNP activist, might literally have been assassinated.


The lawyer had left Glasgow the evening before, to drive to his holiday home in Dornie, a former fishing village on the coast of Wester Ross, in the Highlands. He was found badly injured in his  crashed car next morning. The car was straddling a burn on the moor a short distance from the A887 and A87 road junction, near Glenmoriston.

He was taken to hospital, where medical staff found a gunshot wound behind his right ear. Police later recovered a weapon near where the car had been found, and McRae's death was officially ruled to have been suicide.
  
But thirty years later, an online petition has been launched, urging Scotland's Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland to call a Fatal Accident Inquiry into Willie McRae's death.  Roughly equivalent to an Inquest in England, Fatal Accident Inquiries are normally held only if the fatality occurred at work, or if there are suspicious circumstances.

Unlike a coroner's inquest, a Fatal Accident Inquiry is not held with a jury.

WILLIAM McRAE

Many people suspect that Willie Mcrae was not only murdered, but  murdered  with the  involvement of state security services.

"There are many who claim William was killed by 'them' - the same 'them' that killed Hilda Murrell", Michael Strathan, friend of William McRae, quoted in the News on Sunday, 5th November 1987.

Hilda Murrell, whose body was found outside her home town of Shrewsbury, had been the target of surveillance by both private and state agencies, because of her opposition to nuclear power but also because it was thought her nephew, serving in the Royal Navy, might have asked her to hide material about the sinking of the Admiral Belgrano during the Falklands war.

http://hildamurrell.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_Murrell

Willie McRae was an unusual character, a wartime naval officer and aide de camp to Moutbatten, he helped draft israel's maritime law and became professor emeritus at the University of Haifa.  Yet beside his open political campaigning with the SNP. serving for a time as vice chairman of the Party, there are stories of his having links to clandestine nationalist groups preparing armed struggle. McRae's old partner insists the only contacts the lawyer had with such people was in his professional capacity.


Supplying fashionable topicality, the Scottish Sunday Express ran a story in December claiming McRae had gathered information about a paedophile ring among the judiciary.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/546839/McRae-killed-because-Scottish-judiciary-paedophile-ring-reveal-says-friend

What is known is that like Hilda Murrell, McRae upset the nuclear industry, in his case organising a campaign to stop them dumping radio-active waste from Dounreay in the Galloway hills.  And he was under secret state surveillance.  Former police officer Donald Morrison has confirmed that he was watching McRae and says the Special Branch followed the lawyer when he left home that final evening.

http://www.scottishrepublicansocialistmovement.org/Documents/willie%20news%2015-15.PDF

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/partner-welsh-breaks-10-year-silence-special-branch-watched-mcrae-1.687613

Mark MacNicol, who last year produced the play 3000 Trees about the McRae case, says the aim of the petition is to show there is serious public concern about the death of McRae, sufficient to justify a Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI).

"It is unrealistic for us to expect an FAI would actually find out who killed Willie McRae," he said: "But a satisfactory result would be that an FAI overturns the suicide verdict and replaces it with a verdict of unlawful death."

The petition, launched on campaigning website 38degrees.org.uk, states there are sufficient questions to warrant a "long overdue FAI" into McRae's death.

MacNicol said there are number of serious allegations that require thorough investigation, such as McRae being under "highly aggressive" surveillance by Special Branch, which has led to an inquiry being "avoided by multiple Lord Advocates since 1985".

The petition also outlines concerns which have been raised about other aspects of the case, such as the gun with which McRae was said to have shot himself being found a distance away from his vehicle, according to one of the first witnesses on the scene. It is also said McRae left Glasgow with briefcases which were missing from the car when he was found.

Over 6,500 signatures have been gathered for the petition so far. The campaign group will investigate other action - such as judicial review - if it is rejected by the Lord Advocate.

A Crown Office spokesman said: "Crown Counsel are satisfied with the extensive investigations into the death of William McRae and have instructed that an FAI will not be held into the circumstances of Mr McRae's death."



But whatever the authorities decide, it looks as though poor Willie Mcrae is back to haunt the Highlands  - and the British secret state.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/new-calls-for-fresh-inquiry-into-death-of-snp-activist-willie-mcrae.121832023

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/fatal-accident-inquiry-for-willie-mcrae

Dirty Tricks department turned on Sturgeon: Was Memo Leaked or Faked?

STORY TAKEN UP BY MAIL TOO.  And these Labour campaigners in East Lothian accepted it. (photo by Edddie Truman). Maybe they should remember an earlier story (see below). Or that only last week the Tory Mail called SNP leader "Most Dangerous Woman in Britain".

SCOTTISH National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon remained centre stage this weekend, offering Labour's Ed Miliband a deal to keep Tory David Cameron out of Downing Street.  Writing in the Observer, Sturgeon challenged Miliband to lead the Labour Party into an anti-austerity alliance with the SNP so they could prevent the Tories forming a government.

“If together our parties have the parliamentary numbers required after 7 May, and regardless of which is the biggest party, will he and Labour join with us in locking David Cameron out of Downing Street?”

Miliband has so far ruled out any talk of an alliance before the election. One reason might be that it would make it easier for more Labour supporters to consider switching their votes to the SNP, which is already outpolling the Labour Party in Scotland.

The SNP leader's call for an alliance came as an inquiry was being ordered into how the Tory Daily Telegraph obtained a Foreign Office memo about a conversation with the French consul general in  which Nicola Sturgeon supposedly confessed that she would prefer to see Cameron remain prime minister. The SNP leader said the story was "categorically, 100%, untrue", and called on Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood to order a probe. The French embassy also denied the report.

 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/04/sturgeon-offers-new-deal-to-miliband
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32187255
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/04/nicola-sturgeon-snp-david-cameron_n_7003408.html?utm_hp_ref=tw 

Unfortunately the Labour Party was quick to accept the Telegraph story and comment about it, without checking what Nicola Sturgeon or the SNP had to say. And if they did not take her word for denial they could have asked why the French ambassador, who is not a party to the election, should feel obliged to cover up.

BBC Scotland’s James Cook asked Nicola Sturgeon  about the Telegraph‘s "leaked memo", claiming it chimed with what he has been told by senior SNP figures – that it suited their wider purpose to have a Tory Prime Minister because that would rally support for independence. Later Cook complained of the angry way SNP supporters had rounded on him. "What an extraordinary level of vicious abuse I have received today for simply reporting the news. Is this the country we want folks? Is it?"  And reporting this the Spectator said it showed the ugly side of Scottish nationalism. 

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/04/the-hounding-of-the-bbc-scotlands-james-cook-exposes-the-uglier-side-of-nationalism/

The Spectator, whose former editors include Boris Johnson, is owned by the Telegraph group. As for James Cook, he wasn't "simply reporting the news" but repeating a dubious story in the Telegraph and adding his own commentary.  It was Nicola Sturgeon who was being hounded.

It may be just a coincidence that the Torygraf ran its story  - based on a memo supposedly written a month ago, on March 6, concerning a conversation which allegedly took place in February - on Friday, April 3, the day after it was reported that the SNP leader made such an impression in the televised party leaders' debate that viewers in England were saying they wished they could vote for her.  A debate in which Sturgeon said she agreed with Ed Miliband on many issues and would be willing to work with him.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/03/can-voters-outside-scotland-vote-snp

Craig Murray, an SNP member who also happens to be a former British ambassaddor with more than twenty years' experience in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, had no doubt about the likely provenance of the "leaked memo" story.
"The fake FCO memo has MI5 written all over it. This is the worst example of British security services influencing an election campaign since the Zinoviev letter." 

That was of course the alleged letter from the Soviet minister instructing British Communists on subversion, probably forged by Czarist emigres, and presented by an MI5 officer to the Tory Daily Mail, which turned it into a front-page story in time for the 1924 general election, claiming it showed Labour's instructions from the "masters" in the Kremlin. A report commissioned by Robin Cook when he was at the Foreign and Commonwealth confirmed that this was contrived by the security services.

Major Joseph Ball, the MI5 officer involved, went on to work at Tory central office, running media manipulation and dirty tricks, even against people in the government and Tory party when required, before resuming a security post. *

 https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/uk-intelligence-services-attack-snp/

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/frenchgate-definitely-the-security-services/

HERE'S ONE THEY RAN EARLIER.  Daily Mail in 1924


Foreign and Commonwealth Office employees are supposed to be "non-political", or so I was told when I once somehow came in sight of a job as filing clerk and tea boy. Maybe passing material to Tory papers does not count as politics; but now I see the FCO says the memo did not come from them, and the Telegraph says its came from the Scottish Office. Craig Murray seems to think it was not so much "leaked", as faked.   

 Whatever we think of the Scottish National Party -and I'm one of those who used to jeer that they were "Tartan Tories" - its leaders are neither knaves nor fools. They know that the votes for independence in the referendum were strongest in what had been solid Labour areas; and that the support they have gained is not based on romantic nationalism nor blaming "the English" but on the wish to defend what's left of the welfare state and build a better Scotland, in opposition to the austerity and privilege that David Cameron represents.

The idea that it would be better to have a Tory government make things worse so as to drive people to revolt is a schoolboyish conspiracy notion, of tactics that might work for underground groups desperate to generate resistance in occupied countries, and hoping for outside help. It is no use at all to a party dependent on grass-roots enthusiasm and public trust, and leaders able to articulate their supporters' aspirations with conviction.  It is the kind of ulterior motive which those who don't understand mass politics - spies or journalists - sometimes maliciously attribute to the Left, and we will doubtless hear it again if any of the Left groups standing against Labour make a real dent on Labour majorities in the coming election.

Maybe some Scottish Labour Party MPs and hangers on,  with redundancy staring them in the face, will have clutched gratefully at the Telegraph story, hoping it was true. And some of them might prefer a Tory government rather than have the SNP shoring up Labour, and leaving them sidelined.

The Tories - who might be prepared to share government with UKIP if needs be - are bound to want to block and divide any possible combination against them.

And that's not all.

Besides the SNP's policies on health and education, one aspect of Nicola Sturgeon's appeal beyond Scotland, to voters and many within the Labour Party and further Left, is her forthright opposition to Trident and to nuclear bases in Scotland.  And that suggests one reason why the security and intelligence services, and maybe not just in Britain, could have a hidden hand in the campaign against Nicola Sturgeon.

*  For more about the pre-war development of Tory "Dirty Tricks" and Major Joseph Ball,  see for instance: http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/features/item/cabinet-conspiracy

Scotland the Brave (well 45 per cent)

UNITED in Maryhill!  Enthusiasm for Independence vote in working class Glasgow enough to overcome even long cherished differences, such as "whit team d' ye support".

IT'S over a week since the referendum in Scotland, and though I've seen and taken part in several discussions online, I still feel reminded of what the Chinese prime minister Zhou en Lai is said to have replied when asked what he thought had been  the impact of the French Revolution on western civilisation. Zhou, who was reputed to be a keen student of history, said that it was too soon to tell.

It's a nice little story, even though an American interpreter has rather spoilt the tale of inscrutable Oriental wisdom and reserve by saying that Zhou had not realised his guests were talking about the bourgeois revolution of 1789; he was thinking about the more recent student and worker upheaval of May-June 1968, which, though it did not result in a change of power, did shake up politics a bit.

Scotland has not had a revolution, nor even a wave of occupations and strikes. Its people have not even voted for independence, unless one believes the wildest allegations that the vote was rigged. But, despite all the thunder of establishment politicians and media, - maybe even to some extent because of it - some 45 per cent of Scottish voters defied warnings about jobs and pensions, and ignored appeals for the pound,  "our boys" and the Union Jack, and said YES to independence.

There was a time when that would have seemed a wild dream. Indeed when I first spent some time in Scotland, back in 1969, we on the Left still sneered that the Scottish National Party(SNP) were "Tartan Tories". A man in a Bathgate pub who, rather oddly I thought, mistook me for a Nationalist, said "Go and tell Wullie Wolfe that if he thinks he should run Scotland he had better start by paying his workers decent wages!"

Wullie, or William Wolfe was the owner of a local factory which made shovels. He had just become national convenor of the SNP, and he also stood as candidate for West Lothian that year, coming second to Labour's Tam Dalyell. That in itself was quite an achievement, and Wolfe is credited with helping his party acquire a modern image, and "social democratic" ideas. I don't know whether his workers' wages saw commensurate improvement.

But what is obvious from this referendum, and the upsurge in support for the SNP and other pro-independence parties that followed, is that the "YES" campaign did not depend on flag-waving demagogy and sentimentality, and nor was its appeal solely or even chiefly to the middle class.

On the contrary, the areas where the majority voted "YES" were Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, West Dunbarton and Dundee.  All places hard hit by austerity, and places Labour would have normally counted on for electoral support. In Keir Hardie's North Ayrshire cradle it was close, 49% yes against 51 per cent

In contrast, the SNP was let down by many of its own voters
in places where working class consciousness is normally outweighed by patriotism, and profit.   (Though I notice also the YES vote was not high in West Lothian -that man in a Bathgate pub must have had his say!)

As for the idea - put around by some Lefties far from the scene who don't seem to have ventured north of the Border, nor much outside the M25 -that the nationalist appeal was anti-"foreigner" and akin to far Right parties scapegoating immigrants and minorities, I did not see any sign of this in the varied complexions of "Yes" campaigners or SNP representatives.  The first Scots-Asian to become a member of the Scottish parliament was Humza Yousef, the SNP MSP for the Glasgow region.

Though I'm no fan of Alec Salmond, I was interested to hear him criticise the last Labour government for decreeing that non-EU medical students who graduate here should not be allowed to work in the NHS, which was the only way many could pay for their studies. He promised to reverse this. I've not heard much said about this on the "Left", though it is obvious that in practice "non-EU" means non-white. Now which of the Parties is racialist?

A Scots friend who returned to his country after some years for the campaign was struck by the cheerful optimism he found in working class Glasgow neighborhoods, even bringing together traditional foes with allegiance to different football teams (see the photo he posted above). 

 A friend-of-a-friend whom I do not know but who, to judge from her surname was one of the YES campaign's more cosmopolitan supporters, writes: 
      " If you would have been on the ground here in Glasgow you would have seen a campaign of hope, of people actively thinking together about what type of world they want to live in believing that they can make it happen. Some of my favorite experiences were having conversations with 13 year old girls at our stall outside of Lidl, where they spoke insightfully about trident, defense policy, socialism and immigration - where they thought for themselves and refused to accept the status quo. At the polling station as people emerged so many of the yes voters were joyful, hopeful, voting for the first time, feeling a collective energy. The no voters as they came out were frequently angry, embittered, surly".


The one outburst of Far-Right hooliganism and violence (though it had been preceded by individual incidents and threats) came from "NO" supporters who flooded into Glasgow's St.George's Square on the Friday night. Though not all may have realised what was afoot, this crowd included supporters of the National Front and Britain First, as well as hardline Loyalists outraged that the previous week's Orange Order march in Edinburgh had failed to do the trick of provoking sectarian strife.  In contrast to the carnival atmosphere of the YES celebrations the evidence was not of people celebrating the NO vote but of thugs out for revenge. 

"Nazi salutes and taunting and jeering a much smaller and more peaceful group of Yes supporters,  fighting, terrorising ordinary people and spreading disorder in a city which until Friday night had been a carnival of fun and hope, not a carnival of hate. "
Two men set fire to a generator belonging to the Glasgow Herald, the only paper that had supported the YES vote.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/george-square-trouble-the-night-our-readers-became-reporters.1411314286 
   
Of course, this was not typical of the ordinary voters who rejected independence. But it did happen, and it was real, unlike the imaginary threats of fear and hatred which some of our "Lefts" opposed to independence had been dreaming up. Yet for some reason they did not notice it, or regard it as significant, and some seemed to resent me mentioning it.  


Unlike Ireland, which was England's oldest colony, Scotland has been a full, if not equal, partner in British imperialism. Although the 1707 Act of Union was described as a political "job" by critics, it gave Scottish landowners the chance to export black cattle, coal and other goods to the English market, and Glasgow merchants access to colonial trade. It was the Edinburgh bourgeois then who resented the loss of parliamentary patronage and their profitable trade in luxury imports from France, against which Britain waged economic war. Glasgow, centre of Clydeside shipbuilding and textiles industries, became the wealthy second city of Empire, for all its now notorious slums. Scottish settlers, soldiers, engineers, missionaries and bankers fanned out around the world.

For several decades now Scotland has not just seen the loss of empire, and the once strong industries of which its people were justly proud, but suffered - as have regions of England, - neglect by Westminster governments for whom the City of London's financial speculation and money-laundering activity are all that counts. Scots wondering what happened to oil wealth only had to look to Norway, not some faraway utopia, but another small country, where different policies prevailed.

Adding insult to injury, the Scottish people who contributed so much blood and sweat, as well as intellect, to Britain's greatness, have to listen to ignorant gibes from southern English airheads like Tory MP Nadine Dorries, who asked "why are we paying them to eat deep-fried mars bars"  when Britain could not get decent health care? Not that health care deficiencies are anything to do with her government, of course.

So it is not really surprising that in Scotland, social resentment of neo-liberal economics and austerity policies has taken on, at least temporarily, a national form. Besides, the opportunity to aim a kick at the Old Etonians' cabinet and coalition was too good to miss.   

Cameron's Tories, who only had one MP left in Scotland, can feel relieved that the Union has survived the vote. It is Labour, which devoted months to the 'Better Together' campaign,  drafting in members from south of the border, and even wheeling out the much-abused Gordon Brown as an authority figure, which has taken a well-deserved kick in the pants.



Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, told the party's annual conference in Manchester that the main lesson of the referendum  was that "working people matter". The working class and especially young people had shown their interest in politics and how they had been "electrified" by the engagement.

Workers had turned their backs on Labour's advice in Scotland,  McCluskey, continued: "We can't say we weren't warned. Even after the SNP started winning Scottish parliament seats in the east end of Glasgow, some in the Scottish Labour Party clung to the mantra of wooing the middle classes. It took a referendum campaign to remind us that you ignore the hopes of the working people at your political peril."
http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/referendum-news/mccluskey-indyref-should-be-reminder-to-labour-that-you-ignore-the-hopes-of.1411385916

We might add that when the boss of a Swiss-based company was threatening to close Grangemouth oil refinery and much of  Scotland with it, the Labour leadership was with the media pack attacking the union. McCluskey has taken stick for signing a climb-down agreement, but one wonders whether things might have gone differently had the workers been given strong labour movement backing, or boosted by the prospect of an independent government under pressure to back them taking the refinery over.


That might be too much to expect from an SNP funded by the likes of the Souters, of Stagecoach fame. But that's not the issue now.

 Defeated or not, pro-independence parties have received a huge wave of new members after the referendum. The SNP reports a 66 per cent increase in membership, and says those joining include not just newcomers to politics but former Labour activists who have had enough.
http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/09/24/beyond-the-45/

The Scottish Socialist Party, at a low ebb since the Tommy Sheridan scandal contrived by the Murdock press, and the Sheridan split encouraged by the English sects, has gained around 2,000 new recruits. This might tempt back some older stalwarts who had felt worn out, and be enough for the SSP to regain some Holyrood seats.

The Socialist Party in Scotland, not to be confused, nor subject of 'Life of Brian' jokes please, has emerged calling for a new "mass workers party" in Scotland. Sounds familiar? This is  the extension north of the border of the Socialist Party in England and Wales. True to previous lack of interest in the national question it interprets the YES vote in flat, economist terms, and true to previous SP involvement in Scotland it makes a call for unity specifically inviting Tommy Sheridan and his Solidarity group, and not mentioning the Scottish Socialist Party at all.

Unfortunately for this courtship, Sheridan has already called on his supporters to vote for the SNP next year, and may even be thinking of joining. Unfortunately for Sheridan, word is the SNP leadership and existing membership don't like Sheridan and would sooner do without his support. The course of true love never did run smooth.

It's not just 'Nasty Nick'

THE BBC's claims to fair and objective news coverage took a couple of knocks this week, along with the notion by supporters that it is "our" BBC, a voice for the people, and the Right's complaint of "left-wing bias".


Citing what should have been 'privileged' information which just happened to have come into the BBC's possession, a report that a UK Treasury source said Royal Bank of Scotland(RBS) would move its headquarters to London if Scots voted for independence,  the Beeb's political editor "Nasty Nick" Robinson asked the SNP's Alec Salmond how Scots taxpayers would make up for loss of revenue from this and other firms. 

Robinson said:
“Why should a Scottish voter believe you, a politician, against men who are responsible for billions of pounds of profits?”

Indeed he might have said men who lost billions from other people's money, and were recouped by the taxpayers. Why should voters listen to someone they elected, instead?
  
Robinson went on to claim in his report that the SNP leader had failed to answer his questions. In fact, Salmond had answered, and in front of international media, also raising concerns about the BBC's role in a potential breach of financial regulations. He was heckled by Robinson, the BBC's supposedly unbiased reporter.  And the part of the press conference where the SNP leader  answered was edited out so as to make it look as though he could not answer.

http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/bbc-reporter-caught-red-handed-manipulating-video-in-scottish-indy-campaign/http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/09/11/bbc-reporter-caught-red-handed-manipulating-video-in-scottish-indy-campaign/

Some reports have sided with Robinson, media people sticking together, but a less Establishment view observes:

Robinson is hard to beat when it comes to qualifications for the Westminster establishment. He was a chum of Boris Johnson at Oxford University, where he was the President of the Conservative Association. This followed his founding of Macclesfield Young Conservatives and a stint as the UK Chairman of the Young Conservatives.

http://dailywales.net/2014/09/11/alex-salmond-versus-bbcs-political-editor-nick-robinson-ouch/

Robinson does seem to have problems with opposition.

Only it is not just 'Nasty Nick' that's the problem.



Last week the Trades Union Congress met in Liverpool. Over the years, trades unions have been weakened, not just by government legislation curbing their ability to fight for their members, but by Britain's loss of jobs and industries, unemployment, privatisation and spreading casualisation and insecurity. But they still have over five million members, and some unions at least are growing. Union leaders like the late Bob Crow,  my own union's Len McCluskey, and the civil servants' union PCS's Mark Serwotka (who I'm sorry to hear is seriously ill) regularly address bigger audiences than most politicians, and are listened to with more respect.


With so many families affected by austerity and debt, no one can say that trade unionists are discussing obscure issues of no interest to the general public. Whether they represent seafarers or railway workers, airline pilots or nurses, firefighters or teachers, the delegates who speak at the TUC generally know what they are talking about, and listening to them you can get a better picture of what is happening in society than you would relying on politicians or the media.

As a trade unionist myself I have got my own criticisms of the union leaders and TUC officialdom, and I know I'm not alone. Of that more to come. Meanwhile I think the BBC should be giving the TUC more coverage, rather than less.

The TUC's general secretary is Frances O'Grady, a popular figure, very different from the old stereotypes of union leaders as boringly grey bureaucrats or grumpy old men. 


Addressing the TUC, Frances O'Grady spoke of the need to defend public services and trade union rights, and also warned that the Tories were dragging the country backward to a class-ridden "Downton Abbey-style society, in which the living standards of the vast majority are sacrificed to protect the high living of the well to do? Where the blame is heaped on the most vulnerable – migrants and claimants – while the powerful and the privileged sit pretty"

BBC viewers did not get to hear the rest of what she had to say. Whether to shut her up, or to underline her point, 'Auntie' Beeb decided that the representative of five million trade unionists should be cut off to announce that the Duchess of Cambridge was expecting another child.

Well, that's us put in our place. Let's tug our forelocks and bless the Duchess. And be thankful we can pay our license fees.

http://www.tuc.org.uk/about-tuc/congress/congress-2014/tuc-general-secretary-frances-o%E2%80%99grady%E2%80%99s-address-congress-2014

http://www.tuc.org.uk/about-tuc/frances-ogrady-speech-tuc-congress-2014


http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/08/tuc-warned-britain-heading-for-downton-abbey-society

How much independence can you have with TTIP?

LOTS of discussion as the date draws near for Scots to vote on independence. We hear Alec Salmond of the Scottish National Party trounced Labour's former Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling in debate, the latter of course heading up the 'No' campaign.

I say "of course", though Labour's founder James Keir Hardie was in favour of Home Rule, and is being claimed by 'Yes' campaigners, even those in the SNP itself. Whereas Darling in the 'Better Together' campaign is together with the Tories whom Keir Hardie despised, as he would the war and privatisation policies of New Labour in government, of which Darling was a part.

Whatever his attitude to Scottish independence might have been, what Keir Hardie stood for, whether in his Ayrshire coalfield beginnings, campaigning in West Ham South, or entering the House of Commons with his cloth cap, was the political independence of the working class, which was why his Independent Labour Party was formed.

Friends of mine are divided on which way to vote on independence. From a working class point of view I can see arguments for and against. Having been able to boast there are fewer Tory MPs in Scotland than pandas in the Edinburgh zoo (and its no question which the public loves and prefers to see, it aint Tories!) , Scottish people smart at having to remain subject to a Tory government at Westminster elected by southern English votes. They want to defend their health services and education, and wish their country's oil wealth could have been put to better use than boosting the City of London speculators.

Far from being mere nationalists, some are internationalist; enough to want to see Scotland free to pursue its own foreign policy, establishing new friendships, while ceasing to be used as a nuclear submarine base or source of regiments for imperialist ventures around the world.

On the other hand, it is hard to see Alec Salmond and his party going that far, when he has been at pains to pledge Scotland's continued contribution to NATO and stress that the Queen, and not he or any other prime minister, would remain head of "our" armed forces.

Meanwhile, Scotland's departure would leave us weakened in England and Wales, removing more than forty Labour MPs from facing the Tories at Westminster. Not all those Scottish MPs are like Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, some of them are socialists.

All the same, I can't begrudge my Scottish comrades, who have already experienced having Scottish Socialist MSPs, the chance to give this government a kick up the jaxy and break for freedom, while they wait for us to catch up.

Looking at some of those urging a 'No' vote would be enough to persuade me to vote 'Yes'.  Who wants to stay "together" with Cameron and Boris, or Darling and Gordon?  Do Scots have to listen to no longer Gorgeous Georgie paying a return to Dundee to denounce what he called "Reds in Kilts", or to the Orange Order banging its big drums in Edinburgh on September 13 demanding a 'No' vote?
(According to blogging ex-diplomat and 'Yes' supporter Craig Murray the BBC has decided not to cover this in case it gives the 'No' campaign a bad image. Too late, Beeb, we'll do our best to spread it.)

 Something that's been interesting me since the Grangemouth dispute last year is whether an independent Scottish government elected on a mood of confidence in a better future could sit back while a private company headquartered in Switzerland threatened to close Scotland's only oil refinery and much of Scottish industry?  The SNP could not stand up to this, and the Labour Party leadership preferred to bite the hand that feeds by joining the Tory attack on my trade union.

The SNP has also backed away from re-regulating public transport, let alone restoring public ownership, and this month Sir Brian Souter boss of Stagecoach  coughed up another £1 million to party funds.  On the other hand, the Better Together campaign received a £500,000 donation from businessman Ian Taylor, chief executive of the oil trading firm Vitol, to help secure a "no" vote in the referendum.

This starts to sound almost like the 1707 Act of Union, which a Scottish historian dubbed the "job" of the century, but now as then, there's more to this than private interests, the public are not as easily bought as MPs or  parties, and a vote for independence  does not necessarily mean  a vote for Alex Salmond's party. Like the referendum in 1997 which led to reopening a Scottish parliament, it could open up all sorts of new possibilities.

"But", asks a doubter, "in what sense can either Scotland or the rest of Great Britain ever be said to be independent when we are all controlled by the banks, the EU, and the IMF etc.? " Good question. To which, without going into whether it makes any difference whether we're talking about banks on Wall Street, in the City of London, or Edinburgh, I can only say these things are relative; and that we may as well find out.

One set of initials I've not seen mentioned in this debate, nor almost any other, is TTIP, standing for Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The United States and European Union have been negotiating this since July 2013, and talks could be concluded by next year.

The annual conference of trades union councils held in Cardiff on June 14-15 adopted a resolution  from Ealing trades council warning that this agreement could enable big US and multinational companies which have already penetrated the National Health Service to complete their takeover.

"If the EU and the US agree to TTIP without excluding the NHS from its provisions, the result could mean the end of the NHS as a public service. Corporations could permanently have the legal right to run health services with or without approval of the British Government. The marketisation of the NHS under the Health and Social Care Act means that the NHS will no longer be categorised as a ‘public service’ and would therefore be included in the provisions of the TTIP wich restrict or prevent national governments from determining how industries are run. TTIP can override not only health and safety, but pay arrangements, union agreements and other basic standards. The markets take legal priority".

There were assurances afterwards that the NHS would be protected ("Safe in Our Hands"?) but the negotiations have been conducted largely in secrecy, and David Cameron sacked the minister who was supposed to be safeguardung the service.

The magazine New Internationalist reported earlier this year that the TTIP and its equivalent in the Pacific would "swing the power balance away from states in favour of big business". Giving '10 Reasons to be worried about the trojan treaties',  Hazel Healy instanced US firms wanting to remove EU food-labelling laws and restrictions; US tobacco giant Philip Morris suing governments which tried to combat smoking; US investors wanting to take away workers' right to organise in unions; and moves affecting both health services and the environment. As a sign of things to come, under the North Atlantic Free Trade Area (NAFTA) agreement a US company was suing Canada for $250 million because Quebec province banned fracking.   
http://newint.org/features/2014/05/01/trojan-treaties/

The development charity War on Want has also warned that TTIP could endanger decades of campaigning  and legislation on issues from food safety and hygiene to banking laws and labour rights. War on Want executive director John Hilary has written a  book about it.

What is noticeable is that while trade unionists have raised concerns about this secret treaty  and campaigners have sought to make us aware of the dangers, we hear little on the media or from political parties, including those bold patriots in UKIP. It seems Farage's fighters want to defend our freedom from "Brussels Bureaucrats" and Polish plumbers, but would not dream of saying a word against big corporations.

Would an independent Scotland defend its independence against big business, or will whatever we vote for be ignored, and whatever is passed by parliaments in Westminster or Holyrood be torn to shreds by big companies and their lawyers,  under the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership? We might as well find out now. And demand that governments we elect should not be bound by agreements we have not seen or had a say in.