Libyan Confusion

Last weekend I attended a rally for democracy in Libya. It was, to be honest, a rather Chaotic and confused event. We were all there, I suppose, in support of the uprising against the Gaddafi dictatorship calling for democratic reforms.

There were people calling for the restoration of King Idris, whom Colonel Gaddafi deposed in a military coup in 1969, waving the Libyan flag of that time. I don't support the restoration of monarchs. I prefer democratic republics.

There were also people calling for Britain and NATO to enforce a No Fly Zone to stop Libyan Government planes attacking the rebels in the oil rich east of the country. I don't support Western Imperialist interventions either.

Thankfully there were also some people who supported the introduction of democratic rights and a secular progressive government in Libya and, indeed, throughoutNorth Africa. Admittedly these are in short supply.

Each of the revolts we have witnessed this winter has had one thing in common in that they are spontaneous uprisings of the masses against brutal, out of touch, governing regimes. But whereas in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen protestors shared at least an agreement on what they were against, even though there was not much evidence on what they were for, in Libya that is not the case. Things are somewhat different there. First of all Gaddafi has clearly retained a large measure of public support, perhaps even the majority, particularly in the west of Libya around the country's capital city Tripoli. Secondly, the armed forces have, by and large, stayed loyal to him. Thirdly the divisions in Libya are largely tribal. Benghazi, Libya's second city, has long been a centre of opposition to Gaddafi, and not without reason. But the tribal leaders have not managed to link up with Gaddafi's other opponents, like those angry at his corruption, his neo-liberal economic policies and his pro-Western stance.

The confusion I witnessed in Edinburgh is nothing, however, compared to that in Whitehall. British Foreign Secretary William Hague has raised it to an art form. He was the one who told the world in the first few days of the revolt that Gaddafi had fled to Venezuela. He initiated the call for NATO to impose a No Fly Zone, only to be informed that Britain had no planes with which to enforce it. And this weekend Hague secretly ordered the SAS into Benghazi in helicopters, only to have them shot down by the very Libyan rebels he was trying to help. The elite British unit were lucky not to have been shot. Perhaps Hague got his No Fly Zone after all, even if it wasn't the one he wanted.

Relief For Scottish Patients After 60 Years Of Pain And 7 Years Of Trying

Today I sent my congratulations to the Holyrood Parliament for finally agreeing to abolish NHS prescription charges. Seven years ago as SSP MSP for the Lothians I introduced a Bill to scrap these charges, believing them to be both an injustice and in clear breach of the promise the NHS made in 1947 to provide care, free at the point of need, to all patients.

In the spring of 2005 the Parliament's Health Committee backed my Bill.

In my letter to Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon I welcomed the fact that this 'tax on the sick' is finally history in Scotland. I am particularly delighted for those 60,000 patients who will now get the medicine they need rather than go without because they can't afford to pay. Prescription Charges were introduced in 1951 as a temporary measure, a tax on patients deemed necessary by the Government during an economic crisis and the escalating cost of the war in Korea. Today a promise to patients, broken in Scotland, for more than half a century, is finally kept.

In 2007 I received the acknowledgement from the SNP Government for the work I did in pursuing this proposal. Today I am delighted to reciprocate by passing my compliments to Nicola Sturgeon, the Health Minister, for recognising the wisdom and justice in this proposal and for her determination in implementing it in full. For me it was always more important for the measure to be implemented than to haggle over who finally achieved it. The NHS in Scotland can be proud today, and the country too.

For A Modern Democratic Republic With An Elected Head Of State

And so to Oman. The game changing 2011 revolt that began in Tunisia and spread to Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain has now reached the Gulf state of Oman.
How tremendously uplifting it is to see the downtrodden masses in all these countries rise up in courageous revolt against their unelected heads of state. Leaders who live amid stark and obscene excess whilst the people in contrast face a daily struggle to obtain the bare necessities.
Remind you of anywhere close to home?For all the 24 hour news coverage and wall to wall analysis of 'the revolution in the Middle East' not one programme editor or TV producer, far less their airhead presenters, have ever asked if we should be looking to our own constitution and its absence of democracy. No reporter or journalist has, as yet, made the $64 million connection that we here in Britain also have an unelected head of state just as far removed from the daily life of the population as Hosni Mubareak or Muamir Gaddafy.
And this is strange because our head of state's family are also seldom out of the news. Whether it is the manufactured and excruciating references to the minutiae of two royal weddings this year or to the orchestrated sympathy for the stuttering of a previous king in our cinemas, it seems that you can't move for monarchical PR these days.
Britain's royal family are perhaps the richest in the world, as far removed from the day to day realities of life as it's possible to be. Prince William and Kate Middleton need not worry about repaying their university debts. The poverty of 1 in 3 children will not impinge on their household in any way. There's no chance of any of their palaces being repossessed. The brutal economic crisis will not affect their pomp or circumstance. They will continue to reign over us as 'subjects' with apparent impunity.
Our feudal monarch is, of course, every bit as ridiculous as the Saudi Crown Prince and the barmy Bahraini royal family. And it may well be argued that since the people of Egypt (in the 1950s) and the Libyans (in the 1960s) threw out their hated monarchs to establish their own republics, they are a step ahead of us and probably feeling sorry that we do not have their courage to rise up and rectify this glaring oppression and insult.
Isn't it time we took a leaf out of the Arab people's book to establish a modern democratic republic of our own with a head of state we elected? What's the odds on this revolt reaching Britain?

Severe Child Poverty Shames Scotland

The charity Save The Children this week published a report disclosing that there are 90,000 children in Scotland living in severe poverty. That's 90,000 youngsters growing up in households where the income is less than £134 a week. So, when the fridge or cooker, washing machine, electric shower or gas fire breaks down it doesn't get fixed. These are the kids who can't afford to go on the weekend school camp to Abefoyle or Dunoon or even outings to the zoo, the museum, the sports stadium or the cinema. They are the ones who will not meet their educational or social potential. They will not be our future doctors or nurses, teachers or firefighters. One in three children in Scotland now live in poverty, 90,000 children - the equivalent of a city the size of Paisley - re punished for being poor in a country which is one of the richest countries in the world.

In Glasgow almost 20% of children live in severe poverty. What does this say about a city which is spending a small fortune on the Commonwealth Games? How bitter to see those children most in need of help from the 'common wealth' again be denied it.

To make matters worse Save The Children's research covered 2009/09. This means it does not take account of the current economic downturn. The rise in unemployment and the cuts to lifeline public services will have made matters even worse.

Save The Children is to be congratulated for bringing the matter to our attention but as a charity it's limitations as an agency of change are laid bare. 'The Scottish Government must' STC say, 'set out a clear commitment to end child poverty in Scotland'. Must they? STC admit the Government have done nothing about eradicating child poverty in 12 years. And of course it never will. Labour, the SNP, the Tories or Liberal Democrats don't give a damn about child poverty in Scotland. They all share the neo-liberal belief that rich corporations are the priority in this country. These political parties, all in the pocket of big business, argue that the rich must be allowed to pay miserable wages, exploit the poor and pay negligible taxes [as Barclays did this year - 1% tax on it's profit of £8 billion]

So STC 'milk the cow and kick over the bucket'. They highlight how terrible the situation is but plead with King Herod not to keep murdering the first born. Karl Marx observed that 'Philosphers have merely interpreted the world, the point however is to change it' - it is also thus with charities.

And so it is to those with no illusions in neo-liberal 21st Century capitalism that we must look for solutions to severe child poverty in Scotland. We owe it to all those 90,000 youngsters and the millions more who will follow to eradicate the causes of this blight in our society.

Speaking Up For An Independent Socialist Republic At My Old School In Motherwell

After speaking at Fettes College (the fee paying school in Edinburgh that Tony Blair attended) last week I now get the chance to meet pupils at my old school; Our Lady's High School in Motherwell.

This Wednesday's visit will be the third time I have been asked to address the pupils and I'm really looking forward to it.

Not only is Motherwell my home town and Our Lady's my old school but this is heartland territory for the Socialist movement. It is the birthplace of Labour's first leader - James Keir Hardie - and nearby lies the UNESCO World Heritage site of New Lanark. Here the Utopian Socialist Robert Owen established a world renowned cotton mill in the early 1800s with enlightened attitudes to work, education, health and social conditions. Motherwell also elected Britain's first Communist MP back in the 1920s, one of only four ever to win a seat at Westminster.

Those sSocialist pioneers believed in a democratic republic and, with two Royal weddings to suffer this year, it is surely time to remind people of the need for an elected Head of State to replace the feudal relic that is the British monarchy. The Socialist movement's founders firmly believed in putting the interests of the people ahead of those of rich aristocrats. Those beliefs are today carried on by the Scottish Socialist Party. The record of the modern Labour Party, on the other hand, is of course light years behind Keir Hardie, Robert Owen and other founders of the labour movement. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Ed Milliband and Iain Gray would be hard pressed to spell Keir Hardie, much less have anything in common with his views! They have long since turned their backs on such ideas in order to pursue their own privileges, high living and fat cat expenses. By contrast the SSP believes, as Keir Hardie and Robert Owen did, in the need to end exploitation and to provide full employment, decent wages and conditions, educational access for all, the redistribution of wealth and the establishment of a democratic republic.

Those values are as important today as they ever were. Lanarkshire once led the world in fighting for them. Now Labour's dismal record at local, national and UK levels would shame the county's progressive pioneers.

At Our Lady's High on Wednesday I intend to remind all the students of this past and to outline the case for an Independent Socialist Scotland today and a modern democratic republic.

Lothians SSP delivers

SSP members across the Lothians will this week deliver 50,000 of these newsletters [below] as the first salves in our Holyrood election campaign.

Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi - Bywords for miscarriage of justice

Today's announcement by Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell that the British Government did all it could to assist the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing adds further weight to the suspicion that the greatest miscarriage of justice in Scottish legal history involved the British state.
Why was Al Megrahi released?
The question brings forward many competing explanations. According to Sir Gus O'Donnell he was freed because British oil interests demanded it. He was handed back to Libya so that BP could gain access to their huge untapped oil reserves.
The SNP Government are apparently appalled at this suggestion and the inference they had any part in this grotesque affair. But there are those of us who think they doth protest too much!
Arguing, as the SNP do, that he was released because the Scottish Justice system is known for its compassion and humanity, recognised he had terminal cancer and wished to see him spend his last few days with his family, is of course utter twaddle. The Scottish justice system has no such qualms. And it is an insult to our intelligence to suggest it has. People die in Scottish prisons all the time. If the SNP believe he was responsible for the worst mass murder in modern Scottish history then why did they insist, as a condition of his release, that he abandon his legal appeal against conviction. His case was being sympathetically examined by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. The idea that such a reactionary outfit as the SNP would show him the mercy he apparently never showed his victims is offensive nonsense.
The truth is itb suited both the Scottish legal establishment - of which the SNP is part- and the British state to prevent the full facts of this case coming out. Al Megrahi's hearing was widely expected to conclude that this was, to put it mildly, an unsafe conviction. It is now a matter of public record that Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny McAskill met AL Megrahi privately in his cell in Greenock prison and told him he could have his his freedom only if he agreed to abandon that appeal.
So Alex Salmond may be absolutely right to accuse Gordon Brown of rank hypocrisy in regard to his public statements following the release of Al Megrahi. But he is equally guilty of such a charge. The First Minister Salmond is taking us for mugs if he expects us to believe he is not also complicit in covering up the worst miscarriage of justice in Scots legal history.
Officially the SNP believes Al Megrahi was responsible for the bombing of Pan AM 103.
Officially the SNP believes the Scottish Justice system reached its verdict in possession of all the facts. Officially they also believe the Scottish Justice system is based on values of compassion and humanity and that this is exercised so liberally that the man convicted of cold blooded killing 300 people deserves mercy in abundance.
This is the same SNP who opposed compensation to those denied their human right to toilets in their cells, to those denied a lawyer at police interrogations and against offenders having the vote. Are we really to believe they are so liberal and compassionate as their release of Al Megrahi suggests?
I accuse the SNP of complicity in this cover up. The worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history also denies the victims of Pan Am 103 and their families the justice they deserve and the SNP knowingly plays its part.
I sat on the Scottish Parliament's Justice 2 Committee between 2003-2007.