You can shove your rubber bullets…

Wednesday of this week marked exactly a year since the glorious day in November 2010 when thousands of students charged into and smashed up the Conservative Party headquarters at Millbank. A year on – and 11 months since Parliament voted through the £9k tuition fee rise – the student movement was out to prove that [...]

Sparks fly as electricians confront bosses in Glasgow

The pavement outside the Radisson Hotel on Argyle Street, Glasgow was the setting of a showdown last night between electricians – currently fighting the tearing up of a national pay agreement that will see wage cuts of up to 35 percent and the wholesale de-skilling of their trade – and industry bosses, who were arriving [...]

The early days of a better nation? – an account of the current situation in Scotland

Turning out to the annual STUC march – held yesterday in Glasgow – I witnessed thousands of people marching in the pouring rain (and it really was monsoon level) for over three hours, and rallying at the end of it. Watching everyone come into the park at the end, and then watching them keep coming [...]

We Don't Need Bosses: Venezuela's Growing Worker Control Movement

Introduction On Sunday 22 May Spanish-language Windsor/Canada-based radio program Cayapa broadcast a program discussing the social and political changes underway in Venezuela, in the context of a recent solidarity brigade to the country by activists from the English-speaking world, and the country’s growing worker control movement. This article provides an overview of the program in English, followed [...]

Student Wars: Stirling Strikes/Fights Back

Yesterday something unusual occured in the historic City of Stirling – a large march and rally though its town centre. The purpose was to protest job cuts at the University – specifically, 17 compulsory redundancies being made in the Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Stirling: Scotland’s only Instutute of Aquaculture, which enjoys an [...]

Police defy dictatorial regime and side with protesters.

Is it Libya? Egypt? Tunisia? No, it’s the USA. It may have been overlooked amongst rioting and protests of a much bigger scale in the middle east, but there’s been a battle raging in Wisconsin between the State Government and its own people. Police were ordered to force demonstrators out of the State Capitol building [...]

Being Young Is Shite.

It has emerged that youth unemployment has risen to it’s highest levels since 1992. Officially 20.5% young people are unemployed in the UK as a whole. That’s just over 1 in 5 of us! Not only is this statistic worrying for young people it is the blunt, grotesque truth that young socialists have known for [...]

Tories continue to roll about in Money like Scrooge McDuck

Now that the Tories have got past their honeymoon period in government – if they ever actually had it – they’ve decided to get down to the important work of being totally despicable, nakedly evil bastards. Last week they announced plans to replace trade union and labour holiday Mayday with “Trafalgar Day”. SSY has heard [...]

America's gulag goes on strike.

Ye may have noticed over the New Year a prison riot in England, with prisoners staging an uprising over searches for contraband booze. What wasn’t reported as much was that in the USA a much bigger and more important protest by prisoners – a one day strike, which crossed racial lines as Black and White [...]

A festive message to folk working over Christmas.

While most folk manage to spend the festive season off work, spending times wi our friends and family playing monotonous games with our “loved ones” spare a thought for the unlucky ones – the folk who have to work on Christmas day, serving those people who still think Christmas day involves something else than getting [...]