Scotland

On 14 November, a small but perfectly formed march against NATO and for withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan took place in Edinburgh. The demo was called by Stop the War Scotland.

In keeping with the tradition of most Edinburgh protests, only five men and their dog were present at the official start time of the march. However, after going to fetch myself a coffee, about 300 had appeared.

Numbers were diminished due to an anti-fascist counter-protest against the…

SY What do you do?
CS I meet up with prisoners who have literacies issues and discuss how improving their literacy levels can open up opportunities for them.

SY But what is the importance of literacies education for offenders?
CS It can help prisoners understand why they are where they are. Generally a lot of it is not their own fault. A lot of them have suffered an educational system that has probably failed them and they have internalised that failure. They have blamed…

Between 3-10 August the first Camp for Climate Action was successfully held in Scotland. Climate Camp Scotland occupied Mainshill Wood, the site of a proposed new opencast coal mine. The location was chosen in solidarity with local residents who are outraged at the proposed development, and to support a tree-sit already set up in the area to resist the mine.

Why were we there?

Scottish Coal, the UK’s largest opencast producer, has been given permission to mine 1.7 million…

Peace News asked participants in the Trident Ploughshares Summer Camp in Coulport to reflect on the Second World War, and to give their suggestions for what they would have done in 1939. Here is a collection of answers that they gave (over the phone) after a long discussion of the topic:

After the First World War, we would have started campaigning against future wars and concentrated on arms companies. We would have lobbied churches, other groups and individuals to disinvest from…

On 17 August, five citizen inspectors from Trident Ploughshares entered Britain’s most important military site, the nuclear submarine base at Faslane, north of Glasgow, by walking in through the main gate.

Sylvia Boyes, Mary Millington, Brian Larkin, Penny Stone, and Angie Zelter reminded the Faslane workers of the commitment by the UK government, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, to nuclear disarmament. They warned that the failure of the Scottish government…

From 11 -14 June, Glasgow was host to an energised and growing movement for climate action. Around the country, people are talking about how climate change affects us and how the system we live in is doing nothing to slow the tide of climate chaos.

Despite government rhetoric, little has been done to address the problem and the time has come to take matters into our own hands.

“Boiling Over – Scotland’s Gathering for Climate Action” provided a space for thought, analysis,…

Whilst supporters of the Trident nuclear weapons system continue to claim that 10,000 jobs will go if Trident submarines are not replaced, a different picture is painted by a report which was re-launched at a joint STUC/CND conference held on 6 June in Glasgow.

The report, sponsored by the Scottish Trade Union Congress (TUC) and CND, shows that less than 1,600 civilian jobs are directly or indirectly dependent on Trident and that spending the money on any other area of the Scottish…

On 14 June, Ayrshire Friends of Refugees held a gathering outside the Dungavel Detention Centre. Isolated in the rolling green Lanarkshire countryside, near to the picturesque market town of Strathaven, Dungavel houses people whilst they await deportation. The small crowd had travelled some miles, coming together to demonstrate ongoing solidarity with the inmates.

Several informal contributions were made, touching on the importance of maintaining support for refugee communities,…

PN last interviewed Tilly Giffin following her arrest at Aberdeen Airport during a Plane Stupid action (PN 2508). On 22 March, she was arrested again, outside a derelict building in Glasgow, which her group were considering for use as an exhibition venue. She was charged with “intention to commit theft” and her personal possessions were confiscated.

It was a few days later, when she went to pick up her belongings from Partick police station, that she was persuaded to enter a…

On 1 May, former Prisme workers re-launched themselves as Discovery Packaging and Design (DPD) after the “long hard slog” of a seven-week occupation (see PN 2508). A week later, David Taylor from DPD told me how business was looking promising for the new company, which employs half of the original workforce of 12. There are potential customers in the pipeline and an open day was planned, aiming at small- to medium-sized clients from the engineering, confectionery and whisky industries.…

When Fred Goodwin’s house was vandalised on 25 March, the media portrayed this action against the former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland as political opposition to the financial crisis. The Telegraph claimed that anti-G20 activists had responded “gleefully” to the news of windows being broken at Sir Fred’s £3 million home.

What failed to get onto the news channels was the authentic and coordinated activity of an Edinburgh campaign that has adopted an assertive approach to…

Palestinian online shopping
Sarah Young

Edinburgh has just launched the UK’s only online store specialising in handicrafts produced by Palestinian community groups and cooperatives. www.hadeel.org.
Many of the fair-trade producers provide health, education and emergency services to their communities in the West Bank, Gaza, Galilee and Negev. Any profits go back to the producers via small development grants, through the Scottish charity…

When the owners of Prisme Packaging in Dundee decided to shut up shop, they were hoping that their employees would go quietly. They certainly weren’t expecting them to refuse to leave and to occupy their former place of work!

But that’s exactly what 12 workers did in response to management’s shock announcement on 4 March that the firm was closing down with immediate effect and without redundancy pay.

The fact that this was a non-unionised workplace may have something to do with…

Following the inaugaral gathering last November , a second, smaller, Anti-Militarist gathering was hosted in Edinburgh on 1 March. By and large, we wanted to make sure that anti-militarist activists in Scotland were doing all they could to build up to NATO Parliamentary Assembly taking place in Edinburgh in November and the Brighton Anti-Militarist Gathering in May.

The main decision was that the network would issue a call-out for a UK “Day of Action” against the NATO summit in…

More news on the disruption of the Israeli Jerusalem Quartet’s concert at the 2008 Edinburgh Festival (see PN 2502).

Campaigners from Scottish Palestine Solidarity (SPS) stopped the string quartet from playing several times during a concert in August 2008. They were protesting against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and in support of a cultural boycott of Israel. Four were arrested and charged with “breach of the peace”. This charge was dropped, in favour of the more serious…