Version imprimableecosocialist.scot will provide news and views on Scottish politics from the standpoint of ecosocialism and internationalism.
ecosocialist.scot will cover developments in the environmental, the trade union movement and the feminist and LGBTQ+ movements in Scotland and beyond. There are four themes of ecosocialist.scot
Ecosocialism
Feminism
Internationalism
Scottish Independence
and we have written brief statements setting out our views on each of these on the site.
A particular feature of ecosocialist.scot over the next few months will be to focus on the COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow this November.
The ecosocialist.scot website has been under development for some months by Socialist Resistance (SR) and Fourth International (FI) supporters in Scotland. Whereas we have previously a long history of covering developments in Scottish politics through the SR website, the situation is such that we now wish to establish a new website for a distinctive Scottish audience.
SR will also be increasingly supporting coverage of English and Welsh politics on the new Anti*Capitalist Resistance website and we hope to see collaboration between A*CR and ecosocialist.scot.
ecosocialist.scot members and supporters are active in environmental movements and political campaigning across Scotland. The environmental movement in Scotland is very diverse and strong and ecosocialist.scot will support the efforts of organisations building action on climate change, such as Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, Climate Camp Scotland, ScotE3 (Employment, Energy, Environment), XR Scotland, Fridays for the Future and the COP26 Coalition. We will mobilise for the strong Scottish protest movement against the Trident nuclear weapons based on the Clyde and will support Scottish CND.
ecosocialist.scot will strongly support Scottish independence. Within the independence movement, supporters have been involved in the recent relaunch of the Radical Independence Campaign and its local groups, and participated in the Republican Socialist Platform. Some members have been active within the Scottish Socialist Party, but we also support a dialogue with ecosocialists across the party spectrum – including those involved in the Scottish Green Party, SNP and Scottish Labour Party – and those in no party. We welcome the flurry of new campaigns and organisations recognising the need to unify and strengthen the independence movement in the light of the majority for independence elected to the Scottish Parliament in May’s historic election.
We will support workplace struggles and report on strikes and other developments in the trade union movement and social movements like Living Rent, Scotland’s tenant movement. We will support anti racist struggles across Scotland, especially those like the “No Evictions” movement to support refugees and asylum seekers that culminated in the magnificent occupation of Kenmure Street in Glasgow in May. We are opposed to Tory Brexit being imposed on Scotland.
ecosocialist.scot stands in the proud tradition of the Fourth International in supporting feminism and women’s struggles around the world. The Fourth International supported the new wave of feminist radicalisation and the need for an autonomous women’s liberation from its new rise in the 1960s and developed a deep understanding through major resolutions, a theoretical development that is still ongoing. That understanding also extends into our understanding and support of LGBTQ+ liberation. We support the recent statement of Socialist Resistance on Trans Liberation and Feminism and will support those unequivocally campaigning for trans rights in Scotland.
ecosocialist.scot will be an internationalist site. We will publish material from across the world, from Fourth International and other ecosocialist sources. We will pay particular attention to reporting struggles that have a major resonance in Scotland, such as in Catalunya/Euskadi/Galiza in their battles within the Spanish state, in Quebec, in Palestine, in Kurdistan and elsewhere. ecosocialist.scot will through its support for the Fourth Internation engage in solidarity with struggles across Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe. We will support and promote Resistance Books and the Fourth International’s education centre IIRE. We will also seek to link up with fellow ecosocialists in Wales, England, Ireland, particularly in the run up to COP26 in November, where we hope to welcome ecosocialist activists from across the British Isles, Europe and wider afield to Glasgow.
ecosocialist.scot may be a new site but it follows in a long tradition of the Fourth International organising in Scotland. A small but significant contribution of the site will be to reproduce historic and education material of our past . On our launch site we have in a section called “Our History” the first fully transcribed publication of the late Neil Williamson’s 1977 groundbreaking contribution to the Fourth International’s understanding of Scotland: “Socialists and the New Rise of Scottish Nationalism”. More material will follow.
Above all other things, ecosocialist.scot will focus its news coverage on the concerns of young people – climate, independence, anti-nuclear, defending nature, decent work and job rights, anti-capitalism, opening up education, sexual liberation and so on.
The ecosocialist.scot website can be found at the following URL: https://www.ecosocialist.scot/
In due course it should be locatable through search engines. There are several recent articles on the site at launch and these will increase over the coming months. Links to a growing social media presence will also be found on the site. We particularly hope that twitter users will give tweet us a friendly welcome!
Please visit the site, comment on the articles/pages and follow us regularly. We hope to publish a regular newsletter to keep in touch and will be organising both online and in person meetings in the near future. If you are in Scotland, please get in touch and maybe join us? We can be contacted at info@ecosocialist.scot and there is also a contact or join form on the site.
Forward to an ecosocialist independent Scotland!
ecosocialist.scot and Socialist Resistance editors
4 August 2021
Source: Socialist Resistance
