Pride Scotia 2003
Thousands took to the streets of Edinburgh to celebrate Pride Scotia 2003. Before marching off the crowd heard speakers from several parties, with Rosie Kane of the SSP speaking first. The SSP banner led our contingent on the march and a fringe meeting was held by the SSP LGBT group.
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Tommy Sheridan in the
Daily MirrorTravel to almost any city anywhere in the world and you’ll see their logos screaming out at you from billboards and neon signs.
They’re the giants of global capitalism, vast corporations whose tentacles stretch into every corner of every continent.
It’s staggering fact that 51 of the biggest 100 economies in the world are not countries but businesses.
Multi-nationals like Ford, General Motors and Wal-Mart control bigger budgets than countries such as Greece, Poland or South Africa.
These global corporations control huge areas of our lives, from the air we breathe to the water we drink and the food we eat.
They control the news we consume and the medicines we use. They control our collective savings, our pensions and our insurance policies.
They bankroll governments. And sometimes they help to overthrow governments that they don’t like the look of.
The sales of the top 200 global corporations account for a quarter of all economic activity in the world. Yet they employ less than one per cent of the world’s workforce.
Between 1983 and 1999, their profits soared by an astronomical 362 per cent. Yet the numbers of workers they employed grew by just only 14 per cent.
So who controls them? Who elects them? To whom are they accountable? The answer – no-one except themselves.
The Mirror writer, John Pilger, called them the New Rulers of the World – and he is spot on.
The job of international bodies like the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund is not to improve our world - but to make it an even more lucrative goldmine for the mega-corporations.
The newly-published UN Human Development Report paints a picture that deserves to spark off revolution from one end of the globe to the other.
In last ten years, despite dazzling economic growth, 13 million children have died from poverty. In 31 countries, the child mortality rate is higher now than it was decade ago.
Every single minute of today and every other day, a woman dies needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth.
As the monsters of global capitalism gorge themselves on the biggest profits feast in human history, 800 million suffer from malnutrition.
Hunger, disease and poverty are the real weapons of mass destruction – and even Tony Blair could find them if he ever bothered to look.
Most governments in the world today are in the back pockets of the global godfathers of capitalism.
Big business wants lower corporate taxes, big business gets lower corporate taxes. Big business wants privatisation. Big business wants anti-trade union laws, big business gets anti-trade union laws.
Politics for me is not just about the odd reform here and there. Yes, we should fight for free school meals, for fairer local taxes, for a higher minimum wage, for better public services and to reverse privatisation.
But socialism is not just about redistribution of wealth, it is about redistribution of power. It is bringing the resources of our planet under the control of the people of our planet.
It is about building a more democratic and just world, where agricultural, industry, trade, finance, transport and energy are socially owned.
Another world is possible, a better world, a world where poverty, starvation and war are erased from the dictionary.
But not while the big corporations rule the roost. In Big Brother parlance, it’s time they were evicted from our world.Tommy Sheridan writes a weekly column for the Scottish edition of the Daily Mirror. The column is not otherwise available online.
