Why I joined Socialist Party Scotland

By Brian McLelland

I first made contact with Socialist Party Scotland on the day of the BLM demo in Glasgow on June 7, 2020. They had stalls set up at the main gateway into Glasgow Green where the demo was to be held. 

Until this point, I did not actually know there even were any socialist political parties in the UK never mind in Scotland. I had previously picked up a fair amount of anarchist ideas from my readings on the Spanish Revolution and the punk music* I was listening to.

Before and during this phase of my life I was lifting the veil on the elements of racism that I had seen around me throughout my life. There were always fragments of racism in my community and I grew up thinking this was normal because you didn’t know any better. 

In high school it was bad enough that I was on the receiving end of racial slurs because my skin was the slightest bit more tanned than the average teen – these may have been dull little jibes from supposed friends but the misconceived hate for the outsider was tangible. 

Looking back on my experience of growing up it really points to obvious flaws in the system leading to this hate. It took me until I was 19 to fully see clear as day that we are all just human, no matter what colour our skin is; what gender we identify as; where you come from or what religion you take an interest in. 

So back to the day of the BLM demo, coming closer to the stall I saw posters of Malcolm X with the quote “you can’t have capitalism without racism” and my wholehearted agreement with that statement brought me right to the stall. I saw and heard that the party was clearly anti-racist and clearly anti-capitalist so I signed up for more info, mostly because this was the first group I’d interacted with in the flesh with these ideas akin to mine. 

A week or so later, I was called by Oisín Duncan, the youth organiser for Young Socialists – Young Workers’ Rights campaign (the youth wing of Socialist Party Scotland) and we talked about politics and what this party stood for. I enjoyed what I was hearing so decided to join in their weekly branch meetings and soon after was convinced this party was for me. 

They have roughly the same end goals as anarchists in terms of a stateless society, but the means are quite different. Those means being by uniting the working class in a mass struggle to build a revolutionary party with a transitional programme – this I’m still learning about but so far I’m struggling to fault such a plan – pitting this against the mass overthrow of the state by direct action put forward by anarchists. Trotsky was a strong advocate of fighting for socialism on an international basis which also appeals to me greatly.

Almost every day I was waking up to a new example on why capitalism is a complete fetter on human development. It may sound outrageous to say but we are ever nearing dystopia with every cycle of the capitalist machine.

We live in a world which espouses democracy, freedom and equality whilst black people are executed on the streets by racist police in the name of law, children are separated from their families detained at borders, leaders are put in unaccountable positions of power after a multi-million dollar media-driven campaign, the military is brought onto the streets of cities to fight the masses which don’t politically align with presidents, the natural environment is ravaged in the name of profit while species after species is driven to extinction, millions are losing their jobs because of greedy business owners – the same caste who are happy to callously exploit vulnerable people in sweatshops across the globe and bomb countless populations into oblivion under the banner of fear and national pride – the subversive psychological weapons of capitalist imperialism. 

I was becoming aware of all of this whilst in my last year at university studying mechanical engineering. I managed to graduate with a 2:1 bachelor’s degree and secured a 3-month job at the university on a research project. After that it was a case of getting into the privatised, big-business world that I’d grown to despise. 

I found that I would have to sell a part of my soul to get involved in the more accessible industries within engineering such as oil and ‘defence’, coinciding with the fact that it’s all run for profit. Career-wise, the honest dream for me would be to put my degree knowledge to use in a nationalised renewable energies industry that is run for the benefit of humankind rather than lining the pockets of the upper echelons of the destructive gas and oil industries that are currently funding renewables. 

This is part of the reason why we want to get the youth and students involved, to struggle for a mass workers’ party that is able to create an abundance of socially useful jobs with trade union rates of pay. To be able to implement proper training and apprenticeship schemes for young people with a guaranteed job at the end. Where do the resources come from to implement such a thing? As an organised democratic workforce, we would collectivise the wealth of big business and redistribute it to where it is needed through conscious economic planning. 

Since joining Socialist Party Scotland I’ve been involved in numerous weekly discussions on political and social matters both current and historical as well as lots of stalls around Glasgow and West Dunbartonshire, joined in solidarity with NHS workers at their demo in August (see picture) and took part in the party’s first park meeting which we’re likely to be carrying on into the future. 

I’m excited to learn more and more about socialism, to get out and speak to more people at stalls in other areas and protests and to be making more content with the other young comrades and students. 

The only way to truly end the unemployment that cycles with the booms and recessions of capitalism, to end the institutional racism that surrounds all people of BAME origins among other forms of discrimination, to end the homelessness crisis, to improve our mental health collectively, to implement a better education system and to protect our planet from its premature demise – is to fight with us for socialism across Scotland, across the UK and indeed across the World. 

*Songs that inspired/nurtured my outlook: 

• Stiff Little Fingers – White Noise (1979) 
• The Ex – White Liberals (1985) 
• The Ex – Soon All Cities (2018) 
• Bad Religion – Modern Man (1990) 
• Fifteen – Perfection (1992) 
• Capdown – Strength in Numbers (2001)