Too big to jail?

I attended the BBC Reith Lecture 2012 last night delivered by the provocative right wing historian Professor Niall Ferguson. More than 200 of us gathered in The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's self proclaimed 'National Academy.' The Ayrshire born and Glasgow educated Harvard Professor was delivering the fourth in a series of Reith lectures on the theme 'The rule of law and its enemies.' We listened politely as the show was taped for BBC Radio Four and our guest assailed us with a series of spurious claims long favoured by the far right that insist 'society is coming apart' . And Ferguson repeatedly quoted his hero the philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville arguing 'the state is the enemy of civil society.' Based in his Harvard ivory tower, Ferguson is nowadays happiest when evangelising for the madcap Tea Party. Like so many right wing immigrants to the US Ivy League he now despairs at the British Conservative Party, and not just its emaciated Scottish manifestation. They are just not right wing enough for him any more. Our Glasgow Academy allumni and Magdalen College Oxford graduate is an unashamed elitist snob. And his oft repeated Orwellian mantra revisited throughout the evening chimed repeatedly 'private good, public bad'. 'The best institutions in the British Isles today' insisted Ferguson are 'our private schools'. How he must love Edinburgh then the private school capital of Britain, with one quarter of all our pupils attending one of 'too few private schools'. But disappointingly for the ever attentive audience Professor Ferguson uttered not a single word on the astonishing news of the day, that our country's private banks - Barclays Bank in particular - in their roles as self appointed 'masters of the universe' had been found guilty of defying 'the rules of law' and manipulating the financial system's crucial inter-bank LIBOR rates. Our Professor of provocation gave this 'enemy of the rule of law' no mention whatsoever, far less condemnation. His hour long talk on the collapse of civil society had nothing to say about this latest manifestation of unregulated free market greed. And let's face it our disappointment was profound as it's not as if there is nothing to say. The £300m fine for example from the toothless Financial Services Agncy is chicken feed for Barclays. CEO Bob Diamond could pay that out of his own pocket. But he won't. No, his utterly predictable response was to offer to forego his bonus this year. This is, as he is about to learn, nowhere near good enough.The calls to set up an enquiry like the Levenson one into press ethics are similarly too little and too late. No, its time to send a far stronger message to these 'masters of the universe'. In order to clean out these 'stables' repeat offenders like Diamond and his counterpart at RBS Stephen Hestor must not be allowed to blame their subordinates and feign ignorance. They should be sent to jail. This industry is riddled with corruption and immorality. Honesty and integrity are clearly alien concepts for Britain's banking sector. The greed, nepotism and corruption at the heart of it all demands those at the top must be held to account and the strongest possible message is sent that the long delayed clean up begins now. Otherwise the financial elite will continue to believe, as Niall Ferguson already does, that the rules that apply to the rest of us somehow bypass the finacial sector and they believe they are 'too big to jail'.

March for Independence

I have been asked to speak at this march in Edinburgh on Saturday September 22nd.

Yes Scotland Campaign Launch

Photo by Craig Maclean

‘The toughest times in 80 years’ - An overview of the Local election results

After losing the London Mayoral election to Boris Johnson, Labour’s Ken Livingstone reflected on the sense of foreboding he feels for working people in what he described as ‘…..these, the toughest times in 80 years.’ Some may feel his comparison understates the collapse in living standards suffered in the 1970s and 1980s, nonetheless for working people there are clear similarities with ‘the hungry 30s’. The character of this economic collapse has been sudden, severe and widespread. Food banks have been set up in some places providing emergency supplies to thousands of families struggling to feed themselves and referred by social services. Youth unemployment, already at record levels, is set to rise further as hundreds of thousands of school leavers search for work. Millions of people across Britain are facing prolonged hardship and inequalities as bad as those seen in the decade before World War Two. This issue was the ‘elephant in the room’ during last week’s local elections. The mainstream parties barely mentioned it. Neither did the increasingly inadequate mass media who superficially reported Labour gaining disaffected Lib Dem supporters and winning back part of the vote they lost to the SNP last year. The SNP still emerged as the biggest party in Scotland with 425 Councillors although they did not match last years stunning advances. It’s share of the vote fell from 45% 33%. Salmond ‘spun’ the results saying they made progress on 2007 but the performance of SNP candidates in Councils where they had implemented cuts undoubtedly cost them. Many people who voted Salmond last year apparently ‘returned home to Labour’ as Ed Milliband put it. Labour, in a sign of things to some, was anxious to ‘spin’ the results as a rejection of Independence. The truth is the electorate choose to punish the Coalition for its austerity programme and for driving down living standards. They did so by voting for both Labour and the SNP. And yet both parties support 80% of the Coalition cuts and will continue to implement them at local level. Neither party offers any real alternative to the hated Coalition far less an organised fight back and we will see that reflected oh so clearly across Scotland in the months to come. Support for the Left in the elections was poor when measured in terms of 1st preferences and it is right we acknowledge that as a motivation to do better in getting our case over to people. With the honourable exception of Jim Bollan’s re-election in West Dunbartonshire there was little to cheer in 1300 contests. But that situation will change. The mood of working people is angry, not at us, but at the situation in which they find themselves. People chose what appears to them as the easiest option, but this is not always the answer. The SSP will continue to patiently explain that the neo-liberal, free market, corporatist model is behind what is eating away at their living standards and Labour and the SNP both tied their colours to that particular mast some time ago. They are part of the problem not the solution and they will dutifully do what their corporate paymasters like Rupert Murdoch demand. That picture and its full implications will become clearer and clearer in the months to come. The Scottish Socialist Party’s programme lays out how things can be turned around, how working people’s increasing pauperisation can be reversed. Our commitment to a Scottish Service tax, and a ‘Tobin tax’ on financial transactions as well as many other proposals designed to redistribute Scotland’s enormous wealth. These are the foundation stones upon which we will build the forces necessary to encourage action and protest activity in working people. The acid test for the left is to articulate the anxieties of working class people and develop further our economic and social programme for getting out of this recession. We intend to be at the forefront of every protest, strike, march, rally of dissent to ensure working people to place their faith, not in neo-liberal charlatans who will betray them, but the in the socialist ideas of the Left, where we will remind them, only a steadfast commitment to addressing the route cause of the problem will do.

Second SSP leaflet for Liberton Gilmerton Election

First Hasselt, Now Leipzig and then Scotland

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The German city of Leipzig today introduced a 4 day free public transport initiative in a bid to persuade motorists to leave their cars at home.The scheme entitled 'Down with petrol price insanity- Time to switch' has been introduced in response to record prices for fuel in Germany.A Leipzig Transport Services spokesman announced all buses, trains and trams in the city will be free for the rest of this week. Leipzig has a population the same size as Edinburgh and the scheme will be closely monitored throughout Europe to see what impact it has on passenger numbers. A new political party called 'The Pirates' advocates free public transport in all German cities.The Leipzig initiative follows one introduced by the city of Hasselt in Belgium where free public transport was established permanently in 2005. They have seen a 900% rise in passenger numbers and an equally substantial reduction in pollution levels and traffic congestion.The Scottish Socialist Party advocates free public transport for Scotland as a way of persuading people to leave their cars at home and combating the harmful emissions linked to global warming. We will be most interested in examining the evidence arising from the Leipzig experiment this week

Galloway's Bradford Victory

George Galloway's election as the new MP for Bradford West will send shivers up and down the spines of all 4 'mainstream' political parties in Scotland. It represents a highly visible demonstration of the extent of opposition to Britain's ongoing occupation of Afghanistan, which they all support. It also shows the widespread revulsion at the corrupt political practices they all employ. Money grabbing career politicians are oblivious to the anger in working class communities throughout Britain at their own growing impoverishment on the one hand and the unbridled greed of MPs on the other. Make no mistake further results like this one will not be uncommon.