Keep Burdiehouse primary open

Council’s case for closure full of holes
Parents in Burdiehouse feel understandably betrayed by SNP and Liberal Councillors who were elected in May 2007 to oppose cuts in services and who now plan to close 4 city schools.
After 20 years of Labour cuts people voted for change. SNP/Lib Dem councillors were not elected to close Burdiehouse Primary or any other school. Furthermore their case for closure is weak.

WRONG, WRONG and WRONG AGAIN
Marilynne McLaren, the Council’s Education Convenor, claims the city hasn’t got the money to keep Burdiehouse primary open -Wrong.
Edinburgh is the 2nd richest city in Britain. Edinburgh Council is spending £500m on trams. Go get the money Marilynne!
She claims there are not enough children in the area to make the school viable – Wrong.
If she stopped telling people that Burdiehouse was about to close parents would not send their children elsewhere. And with the birth rate growing in Edinburgh school rolls will increase soon Furthermore 25% of youngsters in the city go to private schools. Marilynne McLaren sent her own children to private school! So she is wrong to suggest there is somehow a shortage of kids!

WHICH IS THE ONLY PARTY TO HAVE CAMPAIGNED AGAINST SCHOOL CLOSURES IN EDINBURGH THESE PAST TEN YEARS?
Labour? The Tories? SNP ? Lib Dems? No, no, no and no again!
They all voted for them. Indeed Labour’s record is the worst of all. You might want to remind Nigel Griffiths of that when he hands you his ‘Stop the SNP/Lib Dem cuts’ leaflet. What he is actually saying is ‘How dare they make cuts! That’s Labours job!’

ANSWER, SCOTTISH SOCIALIST PARTY.
We are proud of that fact. The SSP joined with parents at Lismore Primary in Bingham in 2004 for example to defy the closure plans of Ewan Aitken and his Labour Council. And they won a famous victory. We can win another one in Burdiehouse.
We oppose the closure of schools like Burdiehouse because to us they are the heart of local communities. If people here want the school to stay open then that’s good enough, that’s democracy after all.The school belongs to the local community, we pay for it

Our Case for keeping Burdiehouse Primary Open:
It achieves very good educational standards
Smaller class sizes are a good thing for our children’s education
It’s what local people in Burdiehouse want
Edinburgh’s enormous wealth must be shared out much more evenly and fairly. That means investing IN Burdiehouse not taking AWAY vitally important assets like the Primary School.

BRING HOME THE TROOPS. Afghanistan belongs to the Afghans

NATO Defence Ministers meet in Edinburgh next Saturday. Stop the War Scotland, Scottish CND and the Scottish Afghan Society have organised a protest march calling for them to stop occupying Afghanistan. I will be there and I urge you to join me.
With the appalling death toll for Afghan civilians and British troops alike showing no signs of abating next Saturday's march takes on even more significance.
I am calling on all SSP branches and members to come along, to bring their party banners and to show our steadfast opposition to the military occupation of Afghanistan by Britain and America.
This 8 year occupation of one of the worlds most impoverished countries does enormous damage to Britain's international reputation. The Afghans have made it repeatedly clear they do not want us to be there.
In recent days two opinion polls - one by the Independent, the other by Channel 4 News - have shown around 2/3rds of the British population no longer support the occupation and want to see British troops withdrawn. This shows quite conclusively that the scaremongering argument put forward by Gordon Brown that withdrawal would mean the Taliban reactionaries would sweep back to power has not had the persuasive impact he thought it would. Instead people believe our military repression of 33m people to be senseless and unsupportable. We continue to occupy a country that is no threat to our security and we do so against the express wishes of the Afghan people. Thousands of innocent Afghan civilians continue to die and British troops are blown to smithereens day after day in a conflict which appears to have no end.
The re-election of the utterly corrupt and vile President Hamad Karzai represents a huge blow to Gordon Brown. The Afghan people utterly despise Karzai and see him as a stooge of their US oppressors. He is utterly corrupt and his vicious administration does not in any case govern Afghanistan at all. Instead local warlords have been left in charge by the US and their record is so dreadful that millions now support the various insurgencies like the Taliban because they are fighting back against those who occupy and destroy their country on the one hand and the vicious murderers and war criminals who govern provinces like Helamand at a local level.
Saturday's demonstration called by Stop the War Scotland, Scottish CND and the Scottish Afghan Society assembles at East Market Street at 10.30am.

Commemorating Scotland's International Brigade

Thomas Brannan, William Fox and Thomas Fleck, three men from Blantyre in Lanarkshire went to Spain in 1937 to fight on the Republican side in the civil war battle against General Franco's fascists. All three died there within months of their arrival. The statue or 'cairn' pictured was commissioned by East Kilbride and South Lanarkshire Trades Union Council to commemorate the three local men who paid the ultimate price to defend our ideals. The trades council invited me to speak today at the cairns unveiling. As a Lanarkshire boy I was delighted and honoured to say a few words both in their memory and about the ongoing battle against fascism in Britain today. I want to express my thanks to Stephen Smellie and the other members of the trades council for inviting me along. And I want to congratulate them for establishing such a wonderful monument in tribute to the three men and indeed to all those from Scotland who joined the international brigade. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and well supported event.

BBC puts fascists on prime time tv

The BBC have made every mistake in the book reporting the BNP. Earlier this week they ran an utterly spurious and bogus story, orchestrated by the right wing of the Tory party, claiming the BNP had no right to use pictures of WW2 RAF Spitfires or Churchill on their propaganda. The impact of course was to victimise the BNP, that it is right to suggest they are not allowed to use images widely available to everyone else. What utter nonsense. But having victimised them one day, they pander to them the next by putting Nick Griffin centre stage on their prime time flagship current affairs programme.
Let's be clear, this is not about freedom of speech. The BNP do not give a monkeys about freedom of speech. Indeed they want to withdraw ALL 'freedoms' from black people, Asians, Jews, homosexuals, or any other so called 'minority' groups. 'Freedoms' or rights like these have been won by progressive peoples fighting against reactionary and repressive forces like the BNP. Ask Aung San Suu Kyi about freedom of speech, ask Nelson Mandela incarcerated for 30 years about freedom of speech, ask the Palestinians about freedom of speech. The BBC have made it clear they do not understand who they are dealing with nor the nature of fascism or the BNP.
The best way to combat the BNP is not to rely on the BBC. To effectively combat the threat of fascism and the BNP we need to build an effective, united left and that remains the key objective for working people in Scotland and throughout Britain.
(picture by Craig Maclean)

Standing shoulder to shoulder with the posties

More than 140,000 postal workers across Britain were on strike Thursday and Friday to defend their jobs and conditions and to fend off both Government and Royal Mail management attempts to privatise the service. Over the past 2 years the so called 'modernisation' of Royal Mail has meant 63,000 jobs have been cut and the cancellation of both post box Sunday collections and deliveries to customers. The Communication Workers Union has made it clear they have no problem with genuine modernization of the service but they will not stand by and watch managers bully staff and tear up national agreements by implementing unilaterally changes to long accepted working conditions. The union believes the Government is planning to hive off the service to private companies like TNT and Deutsche Post who would scrap the universal delivery and the universal price of a stamp, replacing a service to the public, owned by the public and answerable to the public, with a privately owned, profit orientated private enterprise. The population of Britain has repeatedly made it clear by huge majority they stand beside the postal workers and want to see Royal Mail remain publicly owned. The Communication Workers Union Scotland NO 2 branch based in Edinburgh, Fife and the Lothians has long been one of the best organised and best led local unions in the country. They support every progressive cause that asks for their backing including the Scottish Socialist Party. Today was our chance to return the favour and we did so proudly.
(picture by Craig Maclean)

Stall in Aberdeen to build for SSP public meeting on Afghanistan

On Saturday 17 October, Karly, Johanna and I went up to Aberdeen to draw the public's attention to the situation in Afghanistan and the need to withdraw the British troops.
Two members from Aberdeen joined us on the stall, Ewen and Jamie, and Sandra gave us a hand too.
Our public meeting there next Wednesday [28th October] in Aberdeen Trades Council Social club looks like it will be a big success if the response to our leaflets is anything to go by.
Speakers are me, John McAllion and Mohammad Atif, meeting starts at 7.30pm.

A light comes on

In recent weeks eleven new members joined the Scottish Socialist Party in the Edinburgh area. At a recent branch meeting we invited them to tell us why they joined, why now and what they hope to see the SSP achieve. In the first of a series of articles Karly, Catherine, Henry, Colin, Tancred, and Steve tell us their stories.
Karly Oliver lives in Leith and she joined the SSP after moving to Scotland from Australia. 'I was a member of the Socialist Alliance in Melbourne for a year before I came here. There have been contacts between the Socialist Alliance and the SSP for some years I guess. We always speak highly of the SSP back home. People still recall Colin [Fox's] speaking tour back in 2003 with admiration. The SSP's was the only party for me when I came to Scotland and I'm looking forward to being part of a big party in the months and years to come.'
Colin Webster is a teacher and he lives in North Edinburgh. Like Karly he only moved to Edinburgh fairly recently. He is originally from Inverness but more recently lived in Galashiels. 'I vote SSP. Voting for the so called 'mainstream' parties never crossed my mind. My beliefs are held by the SSP and I now want to do more than vote. I want to help get the SSP's message over in one strong socialist voice.'
Catherine and her husband Henry live in South Edinburgh. They were both members of the Labour Party for many years until, so disgusted by Tony Blair over Iraq, they left. 'I'm an idealist. To me the SSP is the only party which cares for those who have nothing. I like the way you stand up and speak out on issues of social justice, poverty and inequality. I have a handicapped son. I know what it is like to care for the old, sick and disabled in today's society. Lenin used to say 'From each according to his ability to each according to his need'. I joined the SSP after seeing Colin [Fox] on the European Election programme[on STV] and I'm so glad I did because I have found ideas are welcomed in the SSP in a way they never were in the Labour Party.'
Her husband Henry added 'When I saw the SSP party election broadcast [during the European elections] a light came on. 'At last' I thought 'someone who speaks for the poor and disadvantaged. I don't know what I expect from the SSP really but it is so nice to be part of something like this with people who share the same values. It is fantastic to be around so many people who feel the same way I do. I really think the SSP will go from strength to strength and I'm really proud to be a member.'
Steve is a civil servant who lives in Lochend, East Edinburgh. 'What it comes down to for me is that New Labour has been just a terrible let down. The big thing was the Iraq war. I also feel the absence of a socialist voice in the Scottish Parliament keenly with no one there to speak on behalf of those who need help the most. Like Henry, I enjoy spending time with people who don't regard my views as weird and that is what is so good about the SSP.'
Tancred is also a civil servant from East Edinburgh. He has a particular interest in fair voting, issues of justice and enhanced democracy. 'I have always been left wing I suppose. None of the other parties speak for me. What pushed me towards the SSP in recent months has been the newspapers which have been forced to reflect more and more the opposition to neo-liberalism. I support vast amounts of the SSP's policies like free school meals and its green agenda like free public transport which is an amazing idea. No other party is in favour of taking finances away from the military. I like the party's approach to legalizing cannabis, gay and lesbian equality, and the way it says 'no' to public spending cuts. Privatisation is hugely unpopular and yet governments are still pushing it on us. That's why I am here, in the SSP.'