RISE

Scotland needs a Parliament with more radical voices Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, March 13th 2016 Nearly everyone assumes an SNP victory in the forthcoming Scottish elections. There is a battle for second place between Labour and the Tories, while the leftovers will be fought over by the Lib Dems, Greens, UKIP and new left RISE. An SNP majority government seems likely. The odds on the Nationalists winning every one of the 73 constituency seats are decent. There is the distinct prospect that they won’t quite manage it – with the Tories and maybe even Labour holding out in one or

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One Year on from the IndyRef: Making the Scotland of the Future Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, September 2nd 2015 Scottish public life has dramatically changed in recent times – the SNP 2011 first landslide, the independence referendum, and the 2015 tartan tsunami. Yet Scotland, like everywhere, is about more than politics. In this and other areas there have been huge changes, but also continuity and conservatism, the balance of which we are still trying to make sense of, and with huge consequences for the future of Scotland and the UK. Take the indyref. It didn’t come from nowhere. It came

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Can Radical Scotland find its Voice? And if so could it be RISE? Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, August 30th 2015 This weekend a new force in the Scottish political scene emerged – RISE – standing for Respect, Independence, Socialism and Environmentalism. What do we need a new political force for, you may ask? We already have a crowded political landscape. And why do we need another pro-independence one? At last count there were already four: SNP, Scottish Greens, Scottish Socialists and Solidarity. RISE, in case anyone thinks otherwise, has no connection to George Galloway (he is another kind of Respect)

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