SSP leaflets in Glasgow East

General Leaflet

Leaflet used on polling day

In Glasgow East the SSP used some nice leaflets. Here is the text from the first

STOP THE GRAVY TRAIN SAYS FRANCES CURRAN

No to the political fatcats who line their own pockets

THE socialist candidate in Glasgow East has vowed to launch a crusade against greedy politicians who plunder the public purse to make themselves rich.

Winning a seat in parliament these days is like winning the lottery, says Frances Curran.

MPs have a pay package worth quarter of a million pounds. On top of that, they can rake in a fortune from second homes and first class travel expenses.

Many put their relatives on the payroll to send their household income soaring into the stratosphere.

According to press reports, the last Labour MP for Glasgow East paid his wife and daughter half a million pounds to work from home.

Workers wage

As an MSP in the last Scottish Parliament, Frances spurned the lavish Holyrood lifestyle to stay in touch with ordinary people. She donated tens of thousands of pounds – half her total salary – to the socialist movement. She published every penny of her expenses.

I lived as a workers MSP on a workers wage, like my other Scottish Socialist Party colleagues, says Frances.

If elected as the MP for Glasgow East I’ll do exactly the same again. I believe in improving life for the whole of the East End – and not just for the chosen few who get themselves elected, says Frances.

After 30 years in socialist politics Frances Curran has no expensive possessions. She doesn’t own a house, but lives in a top-floor rented housing association tenement.

She has no car, no expensive furniture, no loot stashed away in a personal bank account.

You may not agree with everything Frances Curran says. But even her opponents admit she’s one of that rare breed of politicians who has never been seduced by glitz, wealth and celebrity.

IN THE HOT SEAT:

Frances Curran takes your questions

Over the last few weeks, Scottish Socialist candidate Frances Curran has been listening to people across the East End to find out what they think. She’s also been asked a whole range of questions about her background, her politics and her ability to do the job.

Here we carry a selection of questions and answers.

George, Shettleston:

Frances, what connections do you have with the East End?

Frances Curran:

My Mum and Dad were both from big extended East End families – the Burns from Barrowfield, and the Currans from the Calton.

I was brought up in Barlanark. Three generations of my family lived there. My grandparents were the first family to move into the scheme when it was first built.

I went to St Andrew’s Secondary School in the 1970s.

In 1979, while still in my teens, I joined Easterhouse Labour Party Young Socialists to fight against Thatcherism which was destroying the East End at the time.

Margaret, Parkhead:

What qualifications and experience do you have?

Frances Curran:

I don’t have a university degree. My Mum wanted me to go to university, but my Dad – a shipyard worker – died in my last year of school. That meant I had to leave school to become the family breadwinner.

But what I lack in academic qualifications, I make up for in experience of real life.

I’ve also been involved in politics at the highest levels. I used to do battle with Gordon Brown on the Scottish Executive of the Labour Party before he was even an MP.

I was then on the National Executive of the Labour Party along with the likes of Tony Benn and Denis Healey.

I worked with people like Paul Weller and Billy Bragg to mobilise the youth vote against Thatcher.

And from 2003 to 2007 I was an MSP at Holyrood.

Anne, Tollcross:

What have you done on the ground, at grassroots and community level?

Frances Curran:

I’ve been involved in grassroots campaigning since the 1980s, when I organised youth strikes against the Tories’ slave labour schemes – YTS and the like.

In the 1990s I was heavily involved in the Easterhouse Community Centre occupation, sleeping over in the centre for nights on end. We succeeded in keeping the community centre open for an extra two years, after the Labour council tried to close it down.

I was also involved in the sit-in to save St Leonard’s – though unfortunately we didn’t win that battle. And I’ve been involved in local campaigns to get heroin and crack out of the East End.

As an MSP I helped to stop a hospital closure in the area I represented. I also occupied an elderly care home until it was reprieved.

In the Scottish Parliament I brought in the Free School Meals Bill, and built a massive nationwide campaign in support of the bill.

It led to every schoolchild from Primary 1 to Primary 3 in Glasgow receiving free school meals every day.

It didn’t go far enough for me – I wanted to extend free school meals to every school student. But still, it was a partial victory.

John, Baillieston:

Why did you leave the Labour Party?

Frances Curran:

The party today is not the party I joined back in the 1970s. It’s now a big business party, a party of the wellheeled suburbs.

Even before Tony Blair and New Labour, I had become fed up with Labour. I was involved in organising the first ever anti-Poll Tax march back in 1989, when 20,000 people marched from Glasgow Green to Alexandra Park.

Labour to its shame refused to back the anti-Poll Tax campaign – and ended up on the side of Thatcher. For me,
that was the final straw.

Michelle, Garrowhill:

Do you support independence for Scotland?

Frances Curran:

Yes, I do, totally. I don’t believe Scotland is too weak, too small or too poor to go it alone. Exactly the opposite. We have oil reserves in the North Sea worth half a million pounds for every man, woman and child in Scotland.

Where I disagree with the SNP is that I believe in a socialist Scotland, where the gap between rich and poor is massively reduced. And where our oil wealth is publicly owned for the benefit of the people in Scotland.

Most oil-producing countries have nationalised their oil wealth. That means the profits are used to boost pensions, wages and benefits.

With a publicly-owned oil industry we could make all public transport free, slash fuel bills, and raise pensions, wages and benefits by a minimum of £50 a week.

Denise, Springboig:

What do you think are the big problems facing the East End?

Frances Curran:

I do resent the way the East End is often portrayed. Here we have some of the most friendly, generous people you’ll find anywhere.

Many people in the East End are involved in voluntary organisations and community groups, and are out night after night working to improve our communities.

Of course we have our share of problems – crime, ill health, drug and alcohol abuse.

The average life expectancy in parts of the East End is 63, which is shocking. Neither of my own parents even reached that age.

Anyone who says these kind of problems are not linked to poverty doesn’t live in the real world.

People in the prosperous suburbs can expect to live 20 years longer. They have access to better quality food, they are under less psychological pressure, they never have to work in dirty, dangerous conditions.

Ryan, Easterhouse:

Do you agree with the SNP government’s clampdown on alcohol abuse?

Frances Curran:

I agree we have to tackle the booze and blades culture and the binge-drinking which destroys people’s health.

I don’t believe that increasing the price of drink is the right way forward. It’s a blanket approach that clobbers everybody for the behaviour of a few.

It especially affects people on low incomes who just want to relax over a few cans of lager or a bottle of wine.

When I was in the Scottish Parliament there was free booze laid on for MSPs almost every night at various receptions and functions.

Westminster is notorious for the amount of drink consumed in the bars by politicians.

I believe the SNP are going down the wrong road by putting up the price of drink. In other countries, it’s far cheaper – but there is very little binge-drinking.

It’s a cultural problem we need to tackle – not an economic problem that can be solved by hiking up prices.

Eddie, Cranhill:

Do you think the Commonwealth Games will benefit the East End?

Frances Curran:

The danger is it becomes a road show that moves in and then out again. The construction companies and property developers will make lucrative profits and there’ll be plenty of supervisors jobs and project managers jobs.

Hundreds of millions of pounds’ profit will be piled up from advertising, sponsorship, TV rights, merchandise and the like.

But I want to make sure the people of the East End benefit. I believe there should be a special windfall tax on the profits from the Commonwealth Games – and that these should be ring-fenced to improve the East End.

I will also fight for local groups to be co-opted onto the organising committee to have a direct input and a direct say on behalf of the East End.

Davy, Barlanark:

Why is the socialist vote split?

Frances Curran:

It’s a tragedy that it is. I spent 10 years and more trying to create a single united socialist party. Unfortunately a minority walked out in the huff.

The other party, the Solidarity splinter group, is now on its last legs. Five of its leaders have been charged with perjury. Its only councillor has defected to New Labour. By this time next year, it won’t even exist.

Unfortunately, even socialists can be seduced by celebrity glitz. I was friendly with Tommy Sheridan for a long time. We fought together against the Poll Tax and in other campaigns.

The Scottish Socialist Party has stayed true to its working class roots. We’re not interested in being champagne celebrities.

We live in the housing schemes and the tenements and live on low incomes like most people in the East End.

Karen, Baillieston:

Do you have any chance of winning?

Frances Curran:

I believe, with all due respect to the other candidates, that I’m the most high profile and experienced challenger to New Labour.

In a by-election anything can happen – in a recent byelection in England, Labour came fifth.

We won’t get the same media coverage as the big two parties. But one advantage of voting for the SSP is you can protest against Labour – and at the same time pile the pressure on the SNP government in Holyrood to stand up for working people in areas like the East End of Glasgow.

If you want a small change for the East End, stick with the SNP. But if you want a big change vote SSP.

Labour legend John backs Frances Curran’s campaign

Westminster MP, and then a Holyrood MSP he was widely respected even by his political opponents.

John knows both Frances Curran of the SSP and Margaret Curran of Labour.

He has no doubt which of the two would make the best MP for Glasgow East:

Frances Curran stands in the best socialist traditions of the East End of Glasgow represented in the past by people like John Wheatley and Jimmy Maxton.

For 30 years Frances has been involved in frontline socialist politics and has never sold out her principles for a pot of gold.

Frances Curran best for East End

- Ex-Baillieston Labour councillor

Jim McVicar was a Labour councillor for Baillieston from 1984 until he was expelled from the party for refusing to hand over constituents’ housing benefit records to the Poll Tax debt collectors.

In the next election, he stood against his old party as an Independent Labour candidate – and won a resounding victory. He says:

I’ve known Frances Curran for decades. I’ve never met a more honest, dedicated, principled person in politics.

Frances would make a superb MP for the East End of Glasgow. Her campaigning skills are formidable.

And unlike so many out of touch politicians, she’s always kept her feet firmly on the ground.

COMMONWEALTH FOR THE COMMON PEOPLE!

In the next few years, we’re going to hear lots of talk about the Commonwealth Games.

But what we won’t hear from our political and our business leaders is any talk of sharing out our common wealth.

Scotland is a fabulously rich country, with oil, gas, land, forestry, fish, coal, thousands of miles of coastline, wind and tidal power.

Yet too many of our people are living on low pay and poverty benefits. Too many of our pensioners can’t afford to heat their homes. Too many of our families are struggling to pay the basic household bills.

• The rich will pay higher taxes
• Our public services, including oil, fuel and transport, will be publicly owned
• Our minimum wage will be £8 an hour
• Wages, benefits and pensions will rise by £50 a week, across the board
• All our school children will get nutritious free school meals
• Supermarket prices will be frozen
• Women will get equal pay for equal work
• Young people will get the same national minimum wage as everyone else
• Nuclear weapons will be banned from Scottish territory
• The council tax will be scrapped in favour of a local tax where the rich pay their fair share
• Free public transport will be brought in to ease congestion, pollution and global warming
• Our young troops will be brought home from the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

- Frances Curran