Social Justice

Dreaming of a Different Scotland: Alt Independence and Alt Unionism Gerry Hassan Open Democracy, February 26th 2013 Social justice is everywhere north of the border. It has always been about, but now it has become more explicit, as the debate on Scotland’s independence referendum hots up, the Westminster Government’s welfare plans show their character and the Tory intent at inhumane social engineering, while the market fundamentalist project of the last three decades proposes at the moment of crisis and doubt, to go into over-drive. The last week has seen Anas Sarwar, Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour give an important

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The Mantras of Professional Scotland are Part of the Problem Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, February 23rd 2013 Social justice is in the air. This week there was Anas Sarwar’s speech on Monday; by the close of the week there was ‘Yes Scotland’s’ mini-summit and its response to the STUC’s ‘A Just Scotland’ document. In-between we have had another litany of grim statistics telling the familiar story: of the inequality, poverty and exclusion in Glasgow and parts of the West of Scotland. And the now well-trodden path of politicians and public sector professionals saying they have learned from the past and

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Does Scotland really want to do something about inequality? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 22nd 2012 Scotland thinks and acts left. The complexity of evidence on values and policies shows that Scotland isn’t that much different from the rest of the UK. But the dominant account of Scotland is centre-left, or even left, in how it sees and positions itself, and how it votes. Such a political culture not surprisingly spends a large amount of time articulating its concerns on social justice. We see ourselves as more egalitarian and less hierarchical than our Southern neighbours and maybe even more Nordic

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Searching for the ‘New Tartan Tories’ of Scottish Public Life Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 11th 2012 Scottish politics has certainly burst into life in the last two weeks if the scale of overblown rhetoric and insult is any gauge. The catalyst has been Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont’s speech challenging the consequences and cost-effectiveness of certain universal benefits in hardened financial times. The interventions from politicians and the ensuing public discussion tell us some revealing truths about our ability to have honest conversations. Firstly, lets look at some of the language used in this debate. Lamont talked about

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Lets Start the Debate over the Future of Scotland’s Social Democracy Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, September 29th 2012 A number of pantomime villains have crossed our screens of late with malicious intent on their mind, out to harm vulnerable people, make mischief and engage in duplicity. This is not the latest outing of J.R. Ewing in the return of hit TV series ‘Dallas’. Instead, I am talking about that other retro-outfit seemingly stuck in the 1970s – the Scottish Labour Party – and the dismissive response of many to Johann Lamont’s attack on the ‘something for nothing’ culture of

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