SPGB Lectures and Special Meetings (1971)

Party News from the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Obituary: Jimmy Moir (2023)

Obituary from the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Edinburgh Branch are saddened to report the death of Comrade Jimmy Moir in September at the age of 85. He left school at 15 and became a socialist after reading the Socialist Standard and listening to outdoor meetings at the Mound in Edinburgh (where he was later to speak himself), joining the Party in 1968. His last job was as a road worker for the Edinburgh Corporation/Lothian Regional Council where he was a NUPE shop steward. He said he never hesitated to put at union conferences the socialist analysis of worker/capitalist class relations and their struggle. He stood for the Party at the first Scottish government elections in 1999. Radio Scotland broadcast one of the hustings debates and he cut through our opponents’ Blairite bullshit in his strong East Coast accent and railed against the poverty of the working class. Jimmy was a stalwart of the branch and at the time of his death was the branch secretary and treasurer. Comrades like him are difficult to replace.

Scottish Parliament Elections: Lothian (1999)

Party News from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Their Scotland or Our World?

That’s the issue in this election, says THE SOCIALIST PARTY

On 6 May, you will have your occasional ration of democracy with the opportunity to vote for the Scottish Parliament.

It’s all very well having a vote—but are you normally given any real choice? Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for the politician’s head on the front of the election leaflet, could you tell which party was which?

It’s tempting—in the absence of any real alternative—to get drawn into the phoney war that is political debate today. Whether Labour or Tory, SNP or Lib Dem, they all spout the same promises. But it all amounts to the same thing—they offer no alternative to the present way of running society.

Do you really think who wins an election makes any difference to how you live?

And do politicians (whether left-wing, nationalist or right-wing) actually have much real power anyway? OK, they get to open supermarkets and factories, but it’s capitalism and the market system which closes them down.

Reality Check

Do any of the political parties address any of the real issues:

• Why is there world hunger in a world of food surpluses?
• Why are there unemployed nurses, alongside closed-down hospitals and waiting lists?
• Why are there homeless people in the streets and empty houses with “for sale” signs?
• Why do some people get stressed working long hours while others get stressed from the boredom of unemployment?

So what’s the alternative?

This time you will have a real choice. We in THE SOCIALIST PARTY are standing at this election to put forward an alternative to capitalism and the madness of the market—a society of common ownership and democratic control. We call it socialism.

But real socialism, not the elite-run dictatorships that collapsed a few years ago in Russia and East Europe. And not the various schemes for state control put forward by the old Labour Party. For us socialism means something better than that.

We’re talking about a world community without any frontiers. About wealth being produced to meet people’s needs and not for sale on a market or for profit. About everyone having access to what they require to satisfy their needs, without the rationing system that is money. A society where people freely contribute their skills and experience to produce what is needed, without the compulsion of a wage or salary.

So what now?

If you don’t like present-day society . . . if you are fed up with the way you are forced to live . . . if you think the root cause of most social problems is the market system, then your ideas echo closely with ours.

If you want to vote for our list we’re delighted. But we don’t really want votes based on a misreading of what we are about. We are not promising to deliver socialism to you. We are not putting ourselves forward as leaders. This new society can only be achieved if you join together to strive for it. If you want it, then it is something you have to bring about yourselves.

If you agree with this, you can show it by voting for THE SOCIALIST PARTY list.

OUR CANDIDATES ARE are: Matt Culbert, Kevin Ferguson, Brian Gardner, Andy Malone, Jim Moir, Theresa Ross, Sandy Wilson.

Scotch Mist (1969)

From the July 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Scotland today it’s true that there is a struggle – as there is in England, Wales, Ireland, or rest of the world for that matter. But the struggle in Scotland is not, as the Scottish National Party would have us believe, the struggle for home rule, self-government, self-determination, or self anything. The struggle in Scotland, as in the rest of the world, is a class struggle: the struggle between the working class and the capitalist or owning class.

The SNP tell us, the workers, that independence from England and the control of our own purse strings will cure all our problems. What they do not seem to realise is that the problems they are going to try to solve are an integral part of the capitalist system, and history has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that within this system there is no satisfactory solution to these problems apart from Socialism.

The SNP talk about the Scottish culture and the Scottish way of life. But in what way is the life of a Scottish wage slave basically different from that of an English, an American, or for that matter a Russian wage slave? There is no basic difference in the way of life of the world’s working class because we all suffer from the same problems such as poverty and insecurity. Independence from England will not cure the poverty and insecurity of the Scottish workers, because they will still be the wages labour and capital relationship.

There is no truly independent country in the world, because international capitalism has made sure of this, and our own experience here in Britain, especially since 1964, should have brought it home to us. The past few years should have shown us just how independent Britain is, when foreign “bankers” tell the British government how to spend money, and how it must not spend money, in order to keep the international capitalist class happy.

Class Struggle
Independence for Scotland therefore is a myth put about by the Scottish National Party, which further confuses the Scottish section of the working class and blinds them from the real struggle – the class struggle.

The outcome of the class struggle is the abolition of capitalism and an end to poverty, insecurity and the ever-present threat of war.

Socialism is a sane society, where the means of life will be owned in common by the whole of the world socialist community. By the means of life we mean the land, mines, factories, railways, and the like – in short, the means of production and distribution. In Socialism the rule of life will be : from each according to his or her ability, to each to according to his or her need. There will be no need for buying and selling, just a free world for a free people. It could be like that now, so why not do something about it ? The world is ours for the taking. So why not take it ?

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE FOR SOCIALISM!

James Moir