Letters to the editor

Sir, – In 1979 the Scottish electorate were given the opportunity to vote for a limited raft of powers. Forty per cent of those on the electoral register had to vote yes for the proposal to be implemented. The yes camp received 51.6 per cent of the vote and the no camp received 48.4 per cent, but because of the 40 per cent rule the bill failed.

Thatcher used Scotland’s oil to bank roll the massive welfare bill she had created by putting 3 million people on the dole, as we were moved from an industrial economy to a service economy.

Today we face a similar situation. Scotland has the chance to be rid of the lunatics that have taken over the asylum in Westminster. We have been lambasted with a campaign of fear and lies about what will happen if Scotland ‘dare’ go independent. We are also informed that we would be ‘better together’, sound familiar?

Let’s just see how better that would be. Since the ConDems have been in power we have seen;

Three million pensioners now afraid to heat their homes this winter, many face death as a result.

13 million people live below the poverty line in the UK.

In 2012-13 food banks fed 346,992 people nationwide. Yet, Chancellor Osborne sits smugly and boasts that we are in recovery because of 0.8 per cent growth. What does that even mean? I’m sorry as a socialist I don’t believe that premature death, homelessness and hunger constitutes a recovery. Do you?

The better together gang always hint that Scotland could not stand on its own, we need a big brother England to look after us and that we would have to go crawling back when everything went wrong. And yet in the last 150 years over 50 countries have broke away from Britain and not one of these independent countries have ever asked to come back.

So here is the choice that faces us. We can resign ourselves to vast swathes of our economy under the control of economic heavyweights, casually deciding the fates of entire nations from multi-million pound yachts. We can accept that the stripping of rights and security from working people is just one of those things, a fact of life like the weather. We can passively sit back as wealth and power is indefinitely shovelled in the direction of those who already have too much of it. Or we can start asking fundamental questions about how society is structured in Scotland.

For the Scottish Socialist Party the choice is clear. Founded in 1998, the SSP has supported independence since our inception. We campaign for an independent socialist Scotland, a modern democratic republic, a country that puts the millions before the millionaires. I, therefore, urge people for all our sakes, our children’s and our grandchildren’s sakes to break from the evil empire and begin to build a more egalitarian society we can be proud of. – Yours etc.,

WULLIE O’NEILL

Cumbernauld & Kilsyth SSP Branch chairman