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On St Andrew & John Maclean

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In first century Greece, in a small city west of Athens, a Christian was crucified on an X-shaped cross. With his last breath he told the little crowd gathered round him: “this punishment is the mystery of man's restoration”. So goes the story of the martyrdom of St Andrew, brother of Simon Peter, the first apostles of Jesus. To spread his message, Andrew had travelled up to the Black Sea, reportedly as far north as Poland and down the Adriatic Sea, until at Patras his incessant preaching resulted in his death on the X-shaped cross - which know today as the ‘saltire’. Near two-thousand years later, on St Andrew’s Day 30th November 1923, in a city very different to Patras, a similarly relentless proclaimer lay dying of pneumonia. Like St Andrew, John Maclean gave everything and to his last breath continued to spread his message - that of a Scottish socialist republic. Seven days before his death Maclean had told the crowd gathered to hear his general election address, as a can...
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Socialism offers Scots a positive post-indy vision - The National 14th Nov 2018

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24-year-old ecologist Róisín McLaren has been elected national co-spokesperson of the Scottish Socialist Party and joins Colin Fox in the role which is shared on a gender balanced basis. Róisín is one of the youngest people is such a senior position in Scottish politics and here she sets out her ideas for National readers: ‘Things can only get better’. The song echoed in my mind as the first news item I can remember. It was 1997, I’m not yet three, sitting at my Granny’s feet, watching the news at six. I liked the man, he smiled, but most of all I liked the song. I would sing it to myself: “Things can only get better”.    Growing up in our council house in Knightsridge, Livingston, on a street in the lowest 5% of Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, I began to wonder if that hopeful message might have been a deception. Better, aye, but for who? By 2007 I was 12 years old, again watching the news at six: “Queues outside Northern Rock”. I didn’t know I was ...
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Ordinary people can change the world - Speech to SSP Conference 2018

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The text of my speech, for election as National Co-Spokesperson of the Scottish Socialist Party, at party conference 10th November 2018: I first became politically active during the 2014 Independence Referendum and, like so many young people from that period, I found myself in the SNP. I can identify with those people: never politically active before, pushing for change but stuck in a conservative, restrictive party machine. It’s easy in that situation to say: “I’ll just leave it to Nicola, I’ll just leave it to Jeremy” but I could see that, the only times in history when change did occur, was not when ordinary people left it to some great leader, but instead happened when ordinary people took it upon themselves to make that change. Pulling people out of their political passivity is one of the great challenges facing us and that’s why I’m proud to be in a party which says: “don’t wait for others to make the change, join us and be the change”. Co-Spokesperson is a public and ...
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