Scottish Socialist Party

Scottish Socialist Party Scottish Socialist Party
Party leader	Christine McVicar Calum Martin Party spokesman: Colin Fox Róisín McLaren
Secretary General	Hugh Cullen
founding	1998
Headquarters	93 Hope Street Glasgow G2 6LD
Youth organization	Scottish Socialist Youth
newspaper	Scottish Socialist Voice
Alignment	Democratic Socialism Anti-Capitalism Scotland Independence Scottish Republicanism
Colours)	Red , yellow
Number of members	3,500 (2014)
Website	www.scottishsocialistparty.org

The Scottish Socialist Party ( German : Scottish Socialist Party ) is a socialist party founded in 1998 in Scotland , which advocates the national independence of Scotland and had its greatest electoral success in 2003. It has a branch-based structure and publishes every two weeks Scotland's only socialist newspaper, the Scottish Socialist Voice .

Party spokesman Colin Fox is on the Advisory Board of Yes Scotland , the non-partisan campaign for Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum .

history

The SSA (Scottish Socialist Alliance) was founded in 1996 after a long discussion in socialist forums. The SSA won 18% of the vote from a standing start in the Glasgow City Council election in August 1996.

In 1998 the SSA and some smaller groups merged with the Scottish Militant Labor to form the Scottish Socialist Party. The Scottish Militant Labor was a Trotskyist organization that had already worked with the SSA, but still had its own financially strong party apparatus and a high-circulation newspaper that were now transferred to the SSP. The SML had already been successful in Glasgow in 1993 and had provided six city councilors by 1995. The best-known leader of the SML was Tommy Sheridan , who was also to play a leading role in the SSP.

The base of the SSP expanded over the next few years through the addition of other left-wing parties, such as the important Socialist Workers Party in Scotland, the entry of many members of the Labor Party and the Scottish National Party , and the significant open support of the Scottish section of the major National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers .

The Scottish Socialist Party achieved its greatest success in the elections to the Scottish regional parliament in May 2003: it received 6.7% of the regional votes and won 6 seats. In Glasgow the SSP received 15.2% of the vote and was the third strongest party after Labor with 37.7% and the Scottish Nationalists with 17.1%. The success was also based on the recent entry of Great Britain into the Iraq war , which was rejected by large parts of the population. However, quarrels soon arose within the SSP: Sheridan resigned from the parliamentary group in 2004, finally resigned from the party in 2006 and founded his own movement, Solidarity.

The SSP lost all seats in the Scottish Parliament and 90% of its voters in the 2007 election, and in May 2011 did not achieve more than 0.4% of the vote. In their stronghold of Glasgow, too, their share of the vote in these two elections fell to 1.2% and 0.7% respectively.

After the 2011 elections and the resulting SNP majority, the Scottish government announced that it would hold a referendum on independence in 2014. In May 2012 the non-partisan organization "Yes Scotland" was founded to work towards a "Yes" in the vote. National SSP spokesman Colin Fox has been invited to join Yes Scotland's Advisory Board, as the party has advocated independence for fifteen years. During the independence campaign, the party continued to address other issues such as: B. the "bedroom tax" and same-sex marriage .

The party works for a socialist Scottish republic without a monarchy or nuclear weapons, with greatly reduced military spending and a good relationship with the European Union, which protects Scotland's independence. Their views on a republic and an independent currency differ from those of the SNP, which advocates a "Union of the Crowns" and the retention of the pound sterling.

In November 2013, the party expressed its view on the publication of Scotland's Future , in which it agreed with the Scottish government's vision "that it will unquestionably be an improvement in the lives of the Scottish people", but at the same time confirmed their plans for an independent one socialist Scotland and a modern democratic republic. For this reason, she has identified some of the principles of the document as discussion points for the next elections .

Program items

The Scottish Socialist Party campaigned for the independence of Scotland, the abolition of poll tax , the abolition of the doctor's prescription fee , free school meals , free public transport, the legalization of cannabis , the introduction of heroin programs and the expansion of detoxification and therapy facilities to contain the population massive drug problems in the working-class neighborhoods of major Scottish cities. Public services are not to be further privatized, a minimum wage of £ 9 an hour is to be paid, and rich people pay higher taxes for it. The party was also very active in the anti-war demonstrations and the international Make Poverty History campaign .

A women's group of the youth organization Scottish Socialist Youth is fighting with the campaign Fuck Abstinence! against the introduction of a rigid sex education in Scottish schools that promotes sexual abstinence among young people (abstinence-only sex education).

The Scottish Socialist Party is described as left-wing populist by the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde .

Election results

Percentage results and total seats refer to Scotland. General elections were carried out consistently according to majority voting , elections to the Scottish Parliament and, from 1999, also elections to the European Parliament according to proportional representation .

year	choice	Share of votes	Seats
1999	General election in Scotland 1999	2.0%	1/129
1999	European elections 1999	4.0%	0/8
2001	General election 2001	3.1%	0/72
2003	General election in Scotland 2003	6.7%	6/129
2004	2004 European elections	5.2%	0/7
2005	General election 2005	1.9%	0/59
2007	General election in Scotland 2007	0.6%	0/129
2009	European elections 2009	0.9%	0/6
2010	General election 2010	0.1%	0/59
2011	General election in Scotland 2011	0.4%	0/129
2014	European elections 2014	not participated	0/6
2015	General election 2015	0.03%	0/59
2016	General election in Scotland 2016	0.5% (as RISE - Scotland's Left Alliance)	0/129
2017	General election 2017	not participated	0/59
2019	European elections 2019	not participated	0/6
2019	General election 2019	not participated	0/59

Web links

• Scottish Socialist Party website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} SSP Executive Committee 2018/2019 election results. In: scottishsocialistparty.org. November 11, 2018, accessed March 16, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Scottish independence: Yes campaign board announced . July 8, 2012. Retrieved April 4, 2014.
3. ↑ VOTE 2003. In: news.bbc.co.uk. 2003, accessed March 3, 2015 . 
4. ↑ Video: Scottish Socialist Party says Scotland needs equal marriage 'to be a beacon to the world' . July 18, 2013. Retrieved August 15, 2013.
5. ^ Scottish independence: Seven other visions of self-rule . BBC News . January 17, 2014. Retrieved January 17, 2014.
6. ^ Monarch surveys . August 14, 2013. Retrieved August 15, 2013.
7. ^ Examining Scotland's currency options . April 28, 2013. Retrieved May 12, 2013.
8. ↑ Colin Fox gives the SSP response to the Independence White Paper . November 27, 2013. Archived from the original on December 1, 2013. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved December 1, 2013. 
9. ↑ What the SSP stands for ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ Cas Mudde: Radical parties in Europe - bpb. In: bpb.de. November 10, 2008, accessed September 25, 2015 .