£3500 council tax for trip to Oz - to learn about rubbish - Evening Times The trip was also criticised by the Scottish Socialist councillor for Pollok, Keith Baldasara. He said: "It should be cancelled immediately. It is a bigger waste of the council's time and money than anything they will find out about waste management in Australia. "These conferences are usually a waste of space because the topics discussed are almost always available on the internet a short time after the event and can easily be accessed from George Square."

Scotsman.com News - Latest News - Prison Watchdog Demands Reduction in Crowded Jails Scottish Socialist Party justice spokesperson Colin Fox said: “This report is a damning indictment of the Scottish prison system and of the abject failure of the Scottish Executive to take Scotland’s prisons out of the dark ages.”

VETERAN rebels Donald Gorrie and John Farquhar Munro are in trouble with their Liberal Democrat bosses again. This time their offence is to back Tommy Sheridan’s plans for a Bill to abolish the council tax.
It’s Lib Dem policy, of course, to scrap council tax and replace it with a local income tax - but the leadership is not keen on being associated with Mr Sheridan’s Socialists.

TOMMY SHERIDAN MSP
Scottish Parliament, Room 2.08, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh EH99 1SP
Tel: 0131 348 5632 Fax: 0131 348 5948
e-mail: Tommy.Sheridan.msp@scottish.parliament.uk

22 October 2003

Dear comrades,

Today the Labour Party is in the process of expelling George Galloway for his outspoken opposition to Blair’s illegal and immoral war against the people of Iraq. Last Sunday John McAllion who I worked closely with over the past four years, announced that he is breaking with Labour and may soon be joining the Scottish Socialist Party.

These two events in the space of a single week show what I’m sure you know in your hearts to be true, that the Labour Party is no longer a place where socialists can feel at home. As John McAllion puts it, “When Labour conference delegates give Blair a 7 ½ -minute standing ovation and vote for foundation hospitals, either they are in the wrong party or me, and I think it is me!”

I know that many of you like John and George have spent their lifetime in the Labour Party and there are many good socialists still in the party. However, it is clear that New Labour is not the party that you, I or many ex-Labour members who now belong to the SSP, joined. I would like to extend to you a warm welcome to join the SSP. We have ex-Labour MEPs, MPs, councillors and party officials at every level. They will all tell you that they are much happier to be in a party that they don’t have to apologise for and one which they can be proud of. It is also the fastest growing party in Scotland with over 3,000 members, 85 branches, its own weekly newspaper and with its first major union affiliation about to happen. On May 1st we got 130,000 votes for socialism and six Members of the Scottish Parliament and we expect to win a Member of the European Parliament next June. In 2007 when PR is adopted for local councils, we expect to win hundreds of Socialist councillors across Scotland plus many more MSPs at the next Scottish election.

Unlike New Labour, the SSP is an open, democratic party where every member has rights and in five years no member has been disciplined or expelled. It is a pluralistic, participatory party that will empower you, not demoralise you. I invite you to join with us in helping to build a socialist Scotland.

Yours for socialism
TOMMY SHERIDAN MSP

SSP Research, Policy & Media Unit
Press Release: 21/10/03

The Scottish Socialist Party have condemned the Greater Glasgow NHS Board’s decision to close the Queen Mother’s Maternity Hospital in Glasgow.
[BBC News story]
Carolyn Leckie MSP, the SSP’s health spokesperson said; "Everyone from the clinicians providing the service to the local communities served by the hospital knows that the decision to close the Queen Mother’s is wrong.
"But now we have to go through the farce of a consultation where the main decision has already been made and won’t be changed.
"We all know that these consultations are just a sham, a pretence that the public have been involved in decision making, when, in fact, the public are never listened to.
"In Inverclyde over 90% of responses to their consultation on maternity services opposed the end of full maternity services in Greenock and Vale of Leven. Did the Argyll and Clyde Health Board take a blind bit of notice? Did Malcolm Chisholm? No he’s just rubber stamped that decision and he’ll rubber stamp Greater Glasgow’s.
"As a midwife I know that these are not re-organisations of Maternity Services they are cuts that will lead to greater risks to pregnant women. Yet these are the last people that the bureaucrats on the Health Board’s ask about the services that are needed.
"These cuts in maternity services will end up costing the lives of women and children yet New Labour won’t lift a finger to defend the communities they affect."

The SSP's weekend event 'Socialism 2003' - "Another Scotland is Possible" was a big success. The Caledonian University venue was packed to hear speakers including RMT General Secretary Bob Crow, PCS President Mark Serwotka, Bill Spiers of the STUC, Brazilian Workers Party (PT) MP Luiziana Lins, John McAllion, SNP MSP Sandra White, Socialist Alliance councillor for Preston Mark Lavallete and of course our SSP MSP's. There were international visitors from Palestine, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, France, Belgium, Italy and elsewhere.

Bob Crow made an uncompromising speech condemning New Labour and calling on trade-unionists in Scotland to support the SSP. Mark Serwotka said that the SSP was the model that socialists in England should follow and former Labour MP and MSP John McAllion attacked New Labour in his speech. John later announced his resignation from the Labour Party.

Workshop discussions also proved popular with packed audiences for debates on Independence and Socialism, the campaign for Colombian Coca-Cola workers, the European Social Forum and many more. (The full programme can be viewed here.)

Socialism 2003 pictures

The Herald: McAllion quits Labour and eyes the SSP

JOHN McAllion, the maverick Labour MSP who lost his seat at the last election, yesterday announced that he is quitting Labour and advised all true socialists to follow his example.
The former MP for Dundee East and Tayside council leader said he was likely to join the Scottish Socialist Party. "Maybe I won't join today but it will be soon" he told an SSP rally in Glasgow.
Mr McAllion said: "I believe in a mass party to help the working class but new Labour is no longer that party. In Scotland, the SSP is the only party where socialists should be."
Speaking to The Herald later, Mr McAllion said he was increasingly pessimistic that the changes brought about in the Labour party's stance by Tony Blair and his supporters could be reversed. Labour was now as committed to capitalism and the free market as the Tories or Liberal Democrats, he claimed.
Although he was considering joining the SSP, Mr McAllion said his first choice would be to be a member of the Labour Party as it was in the post-second world war period.
"It has now dropped forever any idea of a future for the workers in a world outside capitalism," Mr McAllion said.
Denouncing the last Labour conference and its support for the prime minister, he added: "If they can give Tony Blair a seven-and-a-half-minute ovation, then either they or I are in the wrong party, and I think it is probably me," said Mr McAllion.
It was obvious the fiery left winger had become increasingly disenchanted with new Labour and often spoke out against Scottish Executive policies in the parliament where most MSPs agreed he served with distinction as the convener of the public petitions committee.
Remaining resolutely old Labour, he often collaborated with Denis Canavan, his former Westminster colleague and now an Independent MSP, and Tommy Sheridan, leader of the SSP, on issues such as abolishing poinding and warrant sales or campaigning for free school meals for all state primary pupils.
During a debate on the Iraq war before the May elections, he denounced Mr Blair and called for his downfall. He had also hinted that if he was not allowed to speak out against the war he might leave and join the Scottish socialists.
Last night an SSP spokesman said:"The party is delighted John is breaking with Labour finally and we hope he will soon be joining the SSP.
An SSP spokesman said: "He will be extremely welcome there, as he was at today's rally, and we urge all socialists left in new Labour to come and join us with him."
Mr McAllion, who was a member of the Nationalist tendency in the Labour Party, lost his Dundee East Scottish parliament seat to the SNP by just 70 votes, in last May's parliament elections.
He had first won it from the nationalists in 1987 when he replaced Gordon Wilson as the Westminster MP there.
His political profile in the city had been raised due to his position as leader of the former Tayside Regional Council. He became an MSP in 1999, but the seat remained a tight Labour/SNP marginal in the 2003 contest which he lost to Shona Robison.
Mr McAllion, who is 55, has recently become a full-time campaign worker with Oxfam and said yesterday that he was also doing some writing for left wing publications and considering his political future. The Herald