What Happens When Labour Falls from Power The Scotsman, June 9th 2009 Gerry Hassan Labour is in an historic crisis. It has been pummelled in the council and Euro elections. Gordon Brown’s Premiership hangs on a loose thread. A wider existential crisis now faces Labour about its purpose, who it represents and its future. Labour Government’s have faced huge crises before and faced into the abyss. They have experienced division and fratricide and ultimately been defeated at the polls. In post-war times three Labour Governments have fallen from power, 1951, 1970 and 1979, each of which offer lessons for today.

Continue Reading What Happens When Labour Falls from Power

Lets Start a New Country Up: The Need for a New Politics Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, May 22nd 2009 British politics are in exceptional times. So everyone says. Democracy is in crisis say some; parliamentary democracy is in crisis say others; while others more accurately say that the entire British political edifice is tottering on the point of collapse. Comparisons fill the airwaves: 1832, the Glorious Revolution, the loss of the American colonies, none of which work and just underline that these are indeed unprecedented times. Continue Reading Lets Start A New Country Up: The Need for a New Politics

The Cameron Roadshow Reaches Marginal Scotland Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, May 15th 2009 The week the British political system creaked and cracked under the strain and embarrassment of the self-serving financial actions of politicians across the political spectrum saw David Cameron take his constituency roadshow to the county town of Arbroath. ‘Cameron Direct’ http://www.conservatives.com/Get_involved/Cameron_Direct.aspx is a Blair-like initiative which sees the Conservative leader tour the country – or the marginal seats of it – offering voters the chance to see him up close if not as he puts it ‘in their living room’. Continue Reading The Cameron Roadshow Reaches Marginal Scotland

They Say That Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: Broken Britain or Not? Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, May 7th 2009 Review of Mark Perryman (ed.), Breaking Up Britain, Lawrence and Wishart 2009 The contrast [over the last 25 years] has been between a determined (if stricken) agent of history and a mere sleep-walker. In 1977 the Cold War political palsy still prevailed, a profound inertia favouring all the tropes of states, parties and intellectuals I have described. By 2000 most instinctive allegiance to ‘establishments’ had drained away, leaving hollow routines and vacant symbols behind. A combination of official servility

Continue Reading They Say That Breaking Up is Hard To Do: Broken Britain or Not?

The Legacy of Thatcherism North of the Border Thirty Years On Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, May 5th 2009 This is the woman that closed down our shipyards and steel mills, believed that unemployment is a price worth paying, and then told us that she knew best. If that wasn't bad enough, she used Scotland as a guinea pig for the poll tax. The Tories abandoned families and offered no support to people in desperate circumstances. Margaret Curran, Labour MSP for Glasgow Baillieston (1) ‘Margaret Thatcher did more good than harm in Scotland’. This was the motion for a packed

Continue Reading The Legacy of Thatcherism North of the Border Thirty Years On

What is Changin’ Scotland? Changin’ Scotland has been a regular event at The Ceilidh Place since 2002. Run twice a year – every March and November – each weekend is put together and hosted by Gerry Hassan and Jean Urquhart – and covers a range of discussions and happenings on politics, culture, music and film, with the intention of having a good time. Weekends cover the entire universe of political and cultural thought, artistic endeavour, community activism, philosophical investigations, international campaigning and imagining new possibilities. Sometimes we just like to have a bit of fun! The story continues into what

Continue Reading Changin’ Scotland Weekends

A few reflections and found memories from the weekends …. Some of the best moments …. The nervousness of the first one. Hiring a minivan to take people up from Glasgow to Ullapool for it. The experience of seeing Croft No. 5 that first weekend – on the Saturday. An intoxicating mixture of traditional, jazz and dance music in a Ceilidh Place packed with young people enjoying themselves: a harbinger for future weekends and our country! The Wendy Alexander/Fiona Hyslop discussion on Labour-SNP lack of understanding. This was originally going to be Wendy and Jim Sillars after their legendary

Continue Reading A few reflections and found memories from the weekends

Changin’ Scotland No.  14  November 6-8th 2009 Action packed and diverse as ever! James Robertson on the Scots language, A. L. Kennedy and Stuart Kelly on stories and the future, Gerry Hassan, Jim and Margaret Cuthbert and Stephen Maxwell with Iain Macwhirter on the politics of the SNP post-crash. Andy Wightman on landownership from Princes Street to Rockall, Dennis Canavan on his political life, Wiliam Walker on Scots and the nuclear question, Christopher Whatley on the meaning of 1707 and why it matters today, and Antje Bednare on her research speaking to Scottish Tories. Plus and how do we

Continue Reading Changin’ Scotland No.14: November 6th-8th 2009

Two Bullies, a Lie and War: Blair, Campbell and ‘In the Loop’ Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, April 21st 2009 It is a season of films about Britain, tapping a sense for nostalgia and who we are as the UK economy, our government and banks reel from crisis to crisis. Thus, we have ‘The Boat that Rocked’, Richard Curtis’s limp slapstick about an Austin Powers like swinging sixties where life was one long party, and ‘The Damned United’, on Brian Clough, mercurial football manager, and showing us what men and the North were like in the 1970s rebelling against the stuffiness

Continue Reading Two Bullies, a Lie and War: Blair, Campbell and ‘In the Loop’

The Cause of Liberty and the Left Gerry Hassan Chartist Journal, April 14th 2009 The health of democracy and liberty in Britain has become a growing concern in the last three decades due to the bitter experience of Thatcherism and then New Labour alongside the extension of the state, the rise of a risk-averse, safety-first culture, and anxieties and fears over terrorism and crime. Large parts of the left have always thought historically that they owned the term ‘democracy’ and either could afford to ignore it or do what they want with it. In the late 1980s this meant that

Continue Reading The Cause of Liberty and the Left