Letters Page

 

   

Dear Friend

 

Earlier this year the steering committee of Stop the War Scotland agreed to organise a demonstration in Edinburgh on Saturday 14th November while the NATO defence meetings are meeting.  This decision has since been supported by the UK Stop the War annual conference, by the British CND council and by Scottish CND.
 
Subsequently we found out that the week before the NATO events the G20 Finance Ministers and Governors of Central Banks will be meeting in St. Andrews (6th – 8th November).
 
The steering committee felt that there was an opportunity to link the two events – not least around the issue of Jobs Not Bombs which was agreed at the UK STW conference as a campaigning slogan.  However, we were also aware that the G20 raises broader issues and we were concerned to work with a much broader coalition of individuals and organisations to maximise the effectiveness of the action taken.  With this in mind Stop the War has initiated two meetings; the first in Glasgow and most recently in Edinburgh on 14th July.  Those attending the meetings have included representatives from the Stop the War steering committee, Edinburgh CND, Dundee TUC, individual members of SCND and trade unions and individuals prominent in the organisation of the G8Alternatives alternative summit in 2005.   There has also been support from Climate Change campaigners.
 
Coming out of the two meetings has been a consensus around a framework of events around which other things could be organised over the first fortnight of November, namely:
·      A demonstration in St. Andrews on 7th November
·      A demonstration in Edinburgh on 14th November
·      An alternative summit in Edinburgh on 15th November
These are not at all meant to be exclusive but were identified as key events around which other activity could be organised and which would have the potential to bring the largest number of campaigns and individuals together.  There has also been some discussion of themes for the G20 demo and the alternative summit with a consensus around ‘jobs and the economy’, ‘climate change and environment’ and ‘opposition to war (and trident)’.
 
The Stop the War steering committee and the two meetings to date have been keen to build the 7th November demonstration on similar lines to the Put People First demonstration held in London in April. 

There will be an organising meeting on Thursday 30th July 7.30pm at the STUC, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow (nearest subway station Kelvinbridge)

For more information or if you can help but can’t make the meeting on the 30th please email g20alternatives@googlemail.com

It would be great to see you there.

 please forward to your contacts/groups

Keith Boyd

I’d just like to say how glad I was to read Shirley Gibb on the question of human rights (DGS issue 7). From the outset DGS has seen the question of human rights as important and you state in your founding statement ‘that a free, socialist and environmentally stable society can only be guaranteed on the triple basis of social ownership and control of the major means of production, democracy and human rights’.

I wonder though if we might be in danger of confining our discussion to what the political establishment – ‘bourgeois society’ as traditional leftie jargon might put it – has already decided are human rights?

For instance, there are a number of rights in the European Convention on Human Rights which socialists might like to word differently. Other things that we might argue should be basic human rights which don’t appear at all.

An example of the first category would include ‘the right to marry and found a family’ – what about the right not to marry or found a family and not be discriminated against as a result? The wording also appears to have been affected – I presume – by religious bodies. Why should being married be linked to founding a family in a modern and non-discriminatory society?   And, in any case, in the wake of the Baby P case and other child murders, should there be an absolute right to have children? Do not those who criminally abuse, neglect and murder children morally forfeit that right?

The right to peaceful enjoyment of possessions is another ‘right’ who’s wording, in my view, needs to be more specific. Nobody would question anyone’s right to peaceful enjoyment of their own home or garden – but what about private shares or ownership of the multi-national corporations?  These too, are ‘possessions’ in the eyes of European law and a future socialist government in Scotland attempting to nationalise our basic industries could find itself under legal challenge, strangely enough, on ‘human rights’ grounds.

In terms of rights that don’t appear – what about the right of human beings to control their own fertility? Specifically, at the present time, that means proper access to sex education, contraception and support for a woman’s right to choose.  And what about the rights of children? As socialists should we not argue that children have the right to be educated with their peers and not segregated on the basis of their parent’s religion, as still scandalously happens in this country and elsewhere in the UK?  And what about a right to a comprehensive and non-religiously or ideologically motivated education free at the point of need. Or a right to universal healthcare free at the point of need?

I could go on. The struggle to establish human rights over the past decades has been a very welcome one, but as socialists we should not assume the fight or the debate is over. Shirley’s excellent article can be the start of an interesting debate on these issues, I hope.

 

Marie McRindle

 
 
 

Please send your letters by e-mail to democraticgreensocialist@talktalk.net

 
 
   
 
 
Dear DGS

 

can i buy a subscription for the DGS? i'd really like to be involved in the discussion about building links with the autonomous left green thing. there's a lot happening there just now in Scotland, if you want i can get situation reports on the different protests and what they're all about, a bit of history of the road-protest and anti-nuclear movement maybe.

i've just started going back to site after a long hiatus, and i'm reminded that the autonomous green movement is very strong on action and subversion but is very lacking in analysis. it's very reactive stuff, and the lack of a serious left analysis in the scene allows the centre-left/liberal agenda to kinda hijack our image in the press.

i've been coming to think recently that the autonomous greens and the organized socialists have a lot to give each other, our advantages and defects compliment each other and if a real social link could be generated between the two movements wonderful things could happen. i think it will take a lot of time.

something to think about may be organising a week-long conference/festival at some point in the next few years specifically aimed at bringing "traditional socialists" and autonomous left communities together for discussion on theory and action. i also think that bringing many different factions of the left together with anarchists in an independently organised event may help to weaken some of the schisms that traditionally ruin the western socialist movement.

it may be that there are things in anarchist forms of organisation (which allows people with greatly varying world-views and ideologies to work together on specific issues and actions) which the socialist movement could learn from. and the other way of course, i just have a much better knowledge of anarchist forms of organisation than i do of socialist but i remain very interested in building unity of action (if not thought) across the broad spectrum of left-wing activists in the coming decades. it needs to be done. it really is coming to "socialism or barbarism" in the next 50 years.

society is going to face a serious crisis when the oil starts seriously running out and we need to be ready to start putting an alternative in place when governmental and corporate authority begins to weaken, or else the power vacuum left will inevitably be filled with fascists, thugs and terrorists.

 

Andrew Keiran, Thurso

In August, a delegation of U.S. students, trade unionists and anti-war activists travelled to Colombia to meet with leaders in the struggle there. The Colombian Action Network and the Campaign for Labor Rights, two grassroots organizations here in the United States fighting against U.S. intervention in Colombia, hosted the trip.

"I knew what I heard in the U.S. media about the benefits of U.S. tax money and aid to Colombia was true only for the rich. I wanted to see for myself what the reality is for Colombians," said Jeremy Miller, a member of the Colombian Action Network when explaining his decision to go on the delegation. Members of the Colombian Action Network and the Campaign for Labor Rights arranged meetings with peasant, indigenous and student groups, as well as with political leaders, unions, political prisoners and families of Colombians killed or imprisoned by the government.

The first union the delegation met with was the National Peasant-Farmer Federation, FENSUAGRO. They unite farmers from all over Colombia to struggle for land reform and everyday rights for rural workers. It is the largest rural labor organization in Colombia and is unwavering in its principled defense of workers. Because of the work they do, this union is the most targeted for violence by the wealthy and their pro-government death squads.

During a rural community meeting, a FENSUAGRO leader told the delegation, "75 of our members are currently in jail. We fight for a public policy that favors the peasant farmer and we are always clear about our demands. Because of this the government works daily, looking for ways to finish us off. The government tries to connect us to the FARC [the largest armed rebel group in Colombia], in attempts to discredit us. The Uribe government goes after anyone who defends the working class. They claim that we are not the victims of violence, that we are the aggressors. Farmers have no support from the government. No rights even to housing or health care. The government does not care for the poor and has completely abandoned us to poverty. Human life is worth only the value of a bullet."

The stories from other groups told much of the same - of being afraid to leave the house in the morning, of being followed, of having family members killed by death squads, of being arrested for implausible charges - all of this because of the fight for the rights of workers and peasants, indigenous people and Afro-Colombians, everyday people. "I was shocked to hear the stories of the university students in Bogotá. They are doing the same kind of activism we are here in the U.S., but because of it, they are facing death threats, they are being imprisoned or assassinated," said Sarah Buchner of Students for a Democratic Society, another delegate on the trip, speaking one night after a particularly intense day of stories.

During the trip, the theme that repeatedly came up was "what is most important for us as U.S. activists to bring back?" We decided to bring back the stories and pictures but also something more: to drive home the message that the terrible violence in Colombia is directly connected to the United States government. We can do something to change that, to stop it. It is the U.S. government that foots the bill for the war and violence that happens in Colombia. The people of Colombia are very clear on this. The people the delegation met with had all sorts of ideas about ways to build a better Colombia and about ways for peace. But all of them were united in saying U.S. intervention must stop, that the seven proposed U.S. military bases in Colombia would do nothing to end violence in the country and would serve only to increase it, that peace in Colombia would only come with the end of U.S. violations of Colombian sovereignty.

From this trip, members of the delegation have returned to the U.S. with the hopes of continuing to build a movement in the United States against imperialist intervention in Colombia.

Hands off Colombia!
No to the U.S. bases!

 

Angela Denio