The Morning Star Spring conference will take place on Sunday 11 March 2012 in the STUC Building, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3 (Kelvinbridge Underground).
Click here for Conference Programme as pdf
The conference will be chaired by Pauline Bryan.
Programme
10.45 Registration
11.00 CHAIR’S OPENING REMARKS
11.15 OPENING PLENARY
ALTERNATIVES TO AUSTERITY
Lynn Henderson, Jackson Cullinane, Stephen Boyd, Andrew Murray
12.30 LUNCH
1.00 WORKSHOPS
a) Alternative economic and political strategies and the People’s Charter for Scotland
Phil McGarry, Vince Mills and Andrew Murray
b) Opposing the Cuts: local government and benefits
Stephen Smellie and Tom Morrison
c) The Role of the EU
John Foster and Eddie McGuire
2.15 CLOSING PLENARY
BEATING THE BANKERS
Lilian Macer, Drew Smith MSP, SNP representative, John Foster
Scotland is just entering its second year of austerity cuts – now extended to 2017 by the Tory-led government in Westminster. Services, pensions and real wages all face devastating reductions. A new wave of benefit cuts start this April.
These cuts are disastrous not just socially but economically. Over a third of Scottish firms say they have already been directly hit. Many more will be hit by the resulting recession. The depth of popular anger was revealed by the strikes and demonstrations on 30 November.
Our Spring conference will examine how this movement of opposition can be sustained and developed. In particular it will consider how to turn the tide of propaganda against the government – to show that there are alternatives to austerity that are not just practical but essential if our productive economy is to survive and our communities are not to disintegrate. The government’s ‘austerity’ policies, by contrast, reflect just two things: a political agenda to privatise what remains of the public sector – and the interests of City bankers desperate to maximise government funds available to act as collateral for their continued speculations.
There will be workshops on the new People’s Charter for Scotland, on how to oppose the cuts in services and benefits and on the wider crisis within the EU and its current drive to suppress all political alternatives to austerity.
Click here for Conference Programme as pdf
