The rise of RISE
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Seems the left nationalists in Scotland are promising to grow in activity.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/new-left-wing-coalition-rise-6349609
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/gerry-hassan-partys-just-begun-6346724
RISE – Scotland’s Left Alliance, which stands for Respect, Independence, Socialism and Environmentalism (taking their cue from RESPECT, it seems in deciding their name) formally launched in Glasgow.
- Respect: We stand for a society where we end racism, sexism, discrimination on the grounds of sexuality and where people of all backgrounds, colours and creeds are treated with respect and dignity.
- Independence: We stand for Independence for Scotland. But our Independence is based on ending neoliberalism, austerity and the membership of NATO. We are for ending the monarchy and putting people in charge.
- Socialism: We are for a social alternative to capitalism where people run the affairs of our society democratically and where the vast resources of society are utilised in common, rather than for the super-rich.
- Environmentalism: We believe that environmentalism must be central to social change. Our world is being destroyed by the ruthless pursuit of profit over everything else. Sustainable ecology – where we maximise our enormous renewable energy potential to power Scotland – at the heart of a radical vision for change.
Colin Fox of the SSP said: “The independence movement does not belong to the SNP. It is not Nicola Sturgeon’s plaything. Supporting Scotland’s democratic right to self-determination does not make you a Scottish nationalist. It makes you a democrat.”
RISE’s pledges include public ownership of key services, redistribution of wealth and an independent Scotland with no monarchy.
The RISE website is http://www.rise.scot/
Whether we like it or not, or that RISE is merely a re-allignment of the usual suspects,but as been mentioned previously, the referendum in Scotland has created a new political discourse. We have failed to be part of that conversation, imho, for various and i think very understandable reasons. However, we have to challege and criticise those who fly false colours.
However, I find their new party logo quite apt for them…going around in circles
The movement for Scottish independence has not gone away and we still need to answer the nationalists. Scotland would vote for independence if a second referendum on leaving the UK was held tomorrow, according to a new poll, for all thay may be worth53 per cent of Scottish voters would vote ‘Yes’ while 44 per cent would vote ‘No’, with three per cent undecided which way they would vote, the survey suggests.
The SWP on RISEhttp://socialistworker.org/2016/01/06/the-view-from-a-rise-in-scotland
Quote:We need to work collaboratively with them inside RISE, keeping alive a Marxist analysis for a new generation on the Scottish left who are quite new to politics.Theoretical discussion during the Yes campaign was at quite a low level, partly because everyone was so concentrated on the practical question of independence and the national question. Environmentalism and issues like LGTBI have had quite a lot of discussion since then, but fundamental questions of the state, power and class formation and so on haven't been discussed as much. There are a strategic set of questions that the left has to make available to people.Partly this involves communicating the history of our movement. Those of us who have been in revolutionary organizations assume that everyone knows about the Russian Revolution and other revolutionary risings. In the past, even the reformists we debated knew something about these issues: it was part of a shared culture. That's no longer true.All those distinctions which we inherited from the Comintern–"reformist," "centrist," "revolutionary," "ultra-left"–fewer people think of themselves in these ways, and achieving any sort of clarity about strategy can only be done on the basis of prolonged discussion and joint activity. One function of revolutionaries is therefore still to be "the memory of the class" as well as to introduce people to the Marxist method and tradition.I know that this is only tangential to the main point, but this passage from the SWP is worth commenting on:
SWP wrote:Those of us who have been in revolutionary organizations assume that everyone knows about the Russian Revolution and other revolutionary risings. In the past, even the reformists we debated knew something about these issues: it was part of a shared culture. That's no longer true.This is an unusually perspicacious comment from them. It's true but is it a good thing or a bad thing? Obviously it's a good thing that the Russian Revolution has faded as a model for the socialist revolution but other parts of the "culture" shared by critics of capitalism up until the 1990s faded too, eg "working class", "capitalism", "socialism". "revolution" but these fortunately do seem to be coming back.
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