Council Services - Glasgow City Council

SSP beats SNP and takes second place in Glasgow Drumry council by-election.

Drumry (Glasgow)

Labour 667 (62.6%) ( 7.6%)
SSP 191 (17.9%) ( 2.0%)
SNP 143 (13.4%) (-1.6%)
Con 31 (2.9%) ( 0.4%)
Lib 15 (1.4%) (-1.4%)
Green 12 (1.1%) ( 1.1%)
SLP 7 (0.7%) ( 0.7%)

A warm haven after chill of Dungavel The Herald

Bishop calls McConnell to account over his silence about Dungavel

: "The Scottish Socialists, meanwhile, were taking more direct action, with Ms Kane welcoming into her home Mercy Ikolo, 32, and her daughter Bessie, who had been held at Dungavel since August 17.

They were granted bail at a hearing in Glasgow when the Home Office offered no objection to the applicant staying with the MSP pending the outcome of her asylum application.

The Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees had a whip-round to raise the £100 bail, with Ms Kane contributing £40.

Ms Ikolo will live with Ms Kane at her two-bedroom flat in Govanhill, which she shares with her two teenage girls.

Tommy Sheridan, the SSP leader, said he was proud of his colleague. "Powerful ministers on huge salaries could apparently do nothing but Rosie Kane, armed only with compassion and courage, secured the release of a mother and her daughter from prison."

In a survey more than 20 MSPs backed outright closure of Dungavel. Positive Action Housing, a campaign group, asked 129 MSPs for their views on Dungavel, but received just 34 responses. Two-thirds of these supported closure: the SSP, Greens, Denis Canavan, the Independent MSP, eight of the nine SNP members, John Farquhar Munro, LibDem, and Elaine Smith, Labour." The Herald

Freed Mercy to join fight to close Dungavel

Pressure is building on the Scottish Executive to take action to close Dungavel after Scottish Socialist MSP Rosie Kane acted to secure the release of a mother and her 14 month old child.
Mercy Ikolo, from Cameroon, and her Irish-born daughter, Percie had been locked up in the detention centre after being arrested
The mother and child were released on bail after Rosie - who lives in a two bedroom flat in Glasgow’s Govanhill – offered to put them up in her home.
Rosie said: “We have a tired wee baby here who’s sound asleep right now.
Our immediate priority is to get Mercy and her baby back to some kind of normality.
“I’ve sorted out a bit of space for them at home. The family are obviously traumatised after being detained in this house of horrors.
“But at least now they’re at liberty. Percie can eat when she’s hungry and can play when she wants and sleep when she wants.”
Rosie says she is just offering a bit of Scottish hospitality – in contrast to the cold cruelty of David Blunkett and the Home Office.
Mercy Ikolo said:
“Although I’m delighted to be free, I’ll now be getting involved in the campaign to set free the other children locked up in Dungavel. In Dungavel, we all became friends.
“Locking children up is physically and psychologically damaging. I’ll be visiting them tomorrow and my message will be: ‘keep up their spirits – you’ll all soon be free.”
Mercy will be speaking tomorrow night (Friday) at 7.30 pm at a public meeting in the Moir Hall, Glasgow called by Positive Action on Housing – ‘Time to close Dungavel’.
She will then attend the demo on Saturday called by the STUC outside Dungavel on Saturday.
The Scottish Socialist Party backed Rosie’s action and contrasted it with the cowardly subservience of the Scottish Executive.
A spokesperson said: “At the very moment Jack McConnell was publicly claiming that his government was powerless to do anything about the incarceration of children in a detention centre on his own doorstep, Rosie was taking action to liberate one family.
“Dungavel could be closed within a week if the Lib Lab coalition was prepared to show a fraction of the humanity of Rosie Kane.”

Moves to launch convention The Herald

dailyrecord - KIDS GO HUNGRY IN REFUGEE HOUSE

Researcher in SNP row to testify The Herald

Greens snub Sheridan's plan for united front on independence The Scotsman

Letters to the Herald

IN reply to Archie Flockhart's query (Letters, September 2), Angus Calder stood in for me at the launch of our cultural manifesto last April, where we amassed a wide array of the cream of Scottish cultural talent at the GFT, who supported the aims of the SSP. Unfortunately, as I am working-class, I could not attend as I was working.
Not only does the SSP have a cultural spokesperson, me, but we have also actively promoted cultural events. For two years, Colin Fox, now an MSP, has been heavily involved in the People's Festival in Edinburgh. In Glasgow, the SSP is setting up our second People's Party to be held on the first weekend in November. One of aims of both these cultural events is to try to remove some of the perceived elitism which surrounds culture.

Part of the SSP's policies are to open up access to the theatres, etc, by making them more affordable to ordinary people. The truth of the matter is that Britain/Scotland spends less on culture than most of our European neighbours, thus most events are either city-centric or too expensive. Our aim, therefore, is not to keep our "core middle-class" voters happy - even a brief examination of where our core vote comes from would dispel this myth - but to encourage much wider participation in cultural events.

In answer to Mr Flockhart's cheap gibe that we shouldn't bother with manifesto promises as we will never be in the position to realise them: it was also stated that we would never get Tommy Sheridan elected and were never going to get six MSPs elected, until, of course, we did.

Kenneth McEwan, SSP cultural spokesperson, 66 Melrose Road, Greenfaulds, Cumbernauld.

IT is apt that someone with a "first-past-the-post" mentality like Archie Flockhart should shoot so wide of goal when he compares the SSP to Cowdenbeath FC. Our policy of full support for Scottish Opera, he states, is as wildly suppositious as a Cowdenbeath offer of free tickets to supporters when they get into the Champions' League.

But the SSP is already in the Premier Division of Scottish politics - the Holyrood Parliament - and may just qualify for Europe in the coming EC elections. Mr Flockhart chooses not to understand how Scottish politics now works. Because of proportional representation, no party has, or is likely to get, an overall majority. But any item in any manifesto might succeed with cross-party support, as when Tommy Sheridan got through the abolition of warrant sales. In the relevant committee, an SSP representative can realistically hope to win consent to a reasonable proposal. SSP support for the arts in Scotland thus has real weight.

Mr Flockhart does not consider our policy on its merits, but chooses to view it as opportunistic angling for middle-class votes, thus endorsing the pernicious lie that "culture" is a posh preserve. Our fine classical musicians, struggling for low remuneration in an insecure profession, are surely as working-class as anyone else these days. I am very happy indeed if they judge that the SSP is on their side.

I was "acting temporary" SSP cultural spokesperson in the last election - a fact which incites Flockhart to flippancy - because one MSP could not be everywhere at once. Now we have six, I am pleased to be redundant. And more are on the way. Unlike Christopher Robin, though we are "clever as clever", we do not wish to "be six for ever and ever".

Angus Calder, 15 Spittal Street, Edinburgh.

Letters to The Herald

Specifically aimed against smaller parties

ROBERT Brown attacks the SSP and the Green Party for protesting at Labour's kite-flying over changing the voting system to elect the Scottish Parliament (Letters, September 1). I think he is deliberately misrepresenting our concern. The Labour kite mentions an STV system based on a three- or four-member constituency. This is the same model being proposed for local government in Scotland by his Labour-LibDem coalition. This is specifically designed to minimise the impact of the smaller parties and retain the cosy coalition of the four main parties. The SSP is in favour of STV for local government; for two years I have represented the SSP on Fairshare, the lobby for STV in local government which the LibDems are also on.

But we are committed to getting wards large enough to reflect minority opinion on local government and we will be putting forward amendments to this effect at committee level. Can we expect Robert Brown's support?

We would have had STV for local government by now if only the LibDems had not let Labour off the hook in their first coalition deal. Let's hope they don't sell the pass again for "party advantage". Finally, could I remind Robert Brown that he was elected by the list system that he complains about and, by my calculations, he would be unlikely to be elected in Glasgow with a three- or four-member constituency, whereas Tommy Sheridan certainly would be.

Hugh Kerr, SSP press officer, The Scottish Parliament.


ROBERT Brown, MSP, is wrong to claim that the media have exaggerated the support of the SSP. The number of SSP MSPs in the Scottish Parliament is fewer than the SSP would have got in an exactly proportional system, based on their percentage of the vote. He is also wrong to say that the SSP (or, indeed, the Greens) have reneged on their commitment to STV voting. What both Mr Harper and the SSP spokesperson actually said was that they feared that a new system of voting would be introduced in such a way as to make it more difficult for smaller parties by effectively reducing the constituency size from seven representatives, under the current regional lists, to three or four.

Mr Brown also seems confused over the purpose of the second vote, which he believes is a "second-choice vote". Although many of the electorate in Scotland used their two votes to vote for different parties, the majority did not. They understood, even if Mr Brown does not, that the vote in the regional list section does not have to be different from the constituency preference. What the second vote does give the voter is the opportunity in every region to vote for the party of their choice (at least among six) and stand a realistic chance of that party benefiting from the vote. If anything, the second vote is arguably a truer representation of party support than the constituency vote, as it is less influenced by local, personal, and "wasted vote" considerations.

Frank Hotchkiss, 27/2 Freelands Crescent, Old Kilpatrick.

SSP backs independence move BBC

Letters to the Herald

Welcome for an Independence Convention

THE SSP's proposed Independence Convention is a welcome development in the continuing evolution of post-devolution Scottish politics. The sovereigntist parties would do well to come together under such an umbrella. Why not even field joint candidates for Westminster elections under the Scottish Sovereigntist banner?

This is the formula that took the Bloc Québécois so far in the 1990s.

The SNP needs to accept that it is no longer the sole party of the Scottish national movement. Other options for those who believe in Scottish sovereignty now exist. This is a welcome, if unintended, consequence of Holyrood's electoral system. Two parallel sets of political parties are evolving, one Unionist and the other Sovereigntist. Labour/Liberals/Tories versus the SSP/Greens/SNP, currently a 60-40 split.

When I emigrated 15 years ago, I would not have thought this degree of progress possible. The political establishment obviously never thought so, too. I wager this is the real reason why changes to Holyrood's electoral system are now being discussed.

David Young, 4285 St Rte 681N, Albany, OH 45710, USA.


AS a member of the SNP I welcome the idea of a convention for independence, just as I welcomed the commitment of the SSP and the Green Party to independence several years ago. The more people across the political spectrum espouse the cause of freedom for Scotland, the better.

John Swinney is entitled to be canny about the convention idea, at present, because his party has not committed itself to take part. I hope that it makes such a commitment at its conference in four weeks' time. To seek the widest possible support for independence has always been the attitude of the SNP, in my experience (I joined in 1959). A convention will allow each party or participating organisation to contribute to the discussions without compromising its own policies.

Agreement among the participants on the route to independence and on the constitution of a free and independent Scotland would surely be a major step towards that honourable and democratic aim. Another aspect of the convention which I would welcome is the participation of citizens who are not at present members of any party. None of us has a monopoly when it comes to the aspirations and interests of the people of Scotland.

William Wolfe, 17 Limekilnburn Road, Quarter, Hamilton.

Letter to the Scotsman

Scottish Opera must be funded properly

I know from several spontaneous remarks to me that many people are grateful for Michael Tumelty's timely piece on Richard Armstrong and Scottish Opera (August 30).

You chuck money at British athletics and get the current pathetic results in Paris. (OK, of course they'll do better next time . . . but . . . ) The public money spent over the years on bailing out Scottish Opera during intermittent crises has produced something world-class for all of us to take pride in. As people do - the atmosphere of mutual self-congratulation at the final Götterdämmerung was as thick and comfortable as clootie dumpling. As Tumelty suggested, good though imported soloists were, it was our very own orchestra which sealed the triumph.

Why don't our parliamentarians get the point? As acting temporary cultural spokesperson for the Scottish Socialist Party in the spring election, I was proud to declare that we are the only party to demand that Scottish Opera is fully and adequately funded, so that it can confidently go on producing world-class musical drama at prices all can afford. (I am not in the least against sport, but cannot forebear to point out that the entire Ring could be had for no more than the price of watching our rugby team getting walloped, once, at Murrayfield.)

The SSP is also in favour of doubling the parliament's overall budget for the arts. People don't live by free school meals alone . . . Pride in our country can also help us get by. We are damned good at music, theatre, and film. And little Belle Elliott in Castlemilk, like her English counterpart Ballet Billy, deserves a world-class opera company worthy of her wonderful voice.

Angus Calder, 15 Spittal Street, Edinburgh.

Letter to the Scotsman

Problem of drugs use is spiralling out of control

So the deputy justice minister, Hugh Henry, thinks the record level of drug deaths in Scotland are "troubling." They are not "troubling"; they are a national disgrace.

Heroin floods our communities at record levels, addiction rates continue to rise worse than anywhere else in western Europe, law enforcement agencies concede they are incapable of intercepting even 5 per cent of the illegal drug market, red tape hampers agencies trying to deliver treatment services, and drug workers don’t have the re-sources or adequate staff levels to deal with a problem that has spiralled out of control.

And as your report implies, it is no use blaming previous administrations either, as drug-related deaths are up 70 per cent since 1997. There has been plenty of time to turn this around but complacency, lack of resources and fear of radical initiatives have stymied any noticeable progress.

Three weeks ago, I met a group of mothers of young heroin addicts in Irvine who told a heart-breaking story of how their youngsters had gone through the required counselling services necessary for a place on a methadone maintenance programme only to be told at the end of that course that it was no longer available - it had been stopped for financial reasons.

This was confirmed to me and Rosemary Byrne, MSP, when we met the director of the Ayrshire Health Board.

Incredibly, one young addict was even offered valium as a stop-gap alternative to the methadone maintenance programme she had put herself forward for. She is now back on heroin and feels betrayed by what happened when she came forward for help.

So what does "Mr Henry have to say about this except, presumably, "we can’t comment on individual cases". If so, could I suggest that he and the health minister, Malcolm Chisholm, who is ultimately responsible for delivering or cutting back such services, meets the likes of the Irvine-based mothers, and the addicts who were duped and abandon-ed by the system. They will all confirm this is what is happening on the ground. It is no surprise that drug deaths are in-creasing when this is the reality of the problem.

Also, only last year, the Scottish Executive blocked implementing a trial of a heroin maintenance programme in Scotland after the Home Office gave it the all clear. Such a programme, if extended nationally to all registered addicts who seek help, could have helped stabilise the lives of addicts while they got their acts together and brought some much-needed respite to communities ravaged by addiction-related crime. No more excuses are acceptable from the Scottish Executive. It is a problem as much of its own making as anyone else’s.

Instead of presenting failure as some sort of phoney success story, let us see a real change in the national drug strategy, with radical, realistic initiatives tried out here that have worked in other countries.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON, Drugs spokesperson, SSP, Robertson Street, Glasgow


'Socialist throat' silences Scotland's voice of protest The Scotsman

Sound of Socialist silenceThe Scotsman

At a meeting 100 strong with representatives from 80 branches, the National Council of the Scottish Socialist Party voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to back the idea of an Independence Convention of all organisations and individuals working towards an independent Scotland.

SSP National Policy co-ordinator Alan McCombes said;

“We will be asking all those interested in an Independence Convention to begin discussions on how this initiative can be brought to life, an initiative which has come from the grassroots of the independence movement.
“We will certainly be seeking meetings, formal and informal, with all those looking at the possibility of establishing an Independence Convention.
“We know that there are many in the SNP who are in favour of this bold initiative and we would appeal to the SNP leadership to reconsider it’s initial rejection of an Independence Convention.
“The events of this year alone have shown that Scotland has no control over critical aspects of our lives.
“We were dragged into a war with Iraq that the Scottish people were overwhelmingly opposed to but could do nothing about it, the Ay children were held in a deportation camp and forcibly removed to Germany and we were powerless to prevent it, MSP’s are jailed for protesting against nuclear weapons that the people of Scotland are completely opposed to.
"An Independence Convention can begin to chart the road ahead for all those who seek an independent Scotland.”
[ends]

SSP Research, Policy & Media Unit
Press Release
31/08/03 16:30

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SNP support plunges below Tories Sunday Herald