On Wednesday 9th July, from 6.30pm to 8.30pm, there will be a launch event for Keep Left: Red Paper on Scotland 2025 in the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Committee Room 8 (entry through Cromwell Green).

In the introduction to the 1975 Red Paper on Scotland, Gordon Brown made a powerful case that unless there was a challenge to the dominance of global market forces, Scotland’s economy would be akin to that of a colony – high levels of external control, absentee decision makers and subsidiary technology. Who knew that, as UK Chancellor, Brown would hasten that problem across the whole UK.

As the book’s editor Pauline Bryan says: “Tragically many of the severe problems that were written about in the original Red Paper of 1975 continue to impact on Scotland today in particular – a lack of genuine democracy, the centralisation of power and the dominance of overseas capital, contributing to a politics and economy that serves an ever wealthier elite. We are being failed by the UK and Scottish Parliaments.”

Speakers:
Chair: Lynn Henderson, Chief of Staff (operational) at PCS, Chair of the Electoral Reform Society and the Jimmy Reid Foundation
Costas Lapavitsas, Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He served as a member of the Greek Parliament.
John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, Shadow Chancellor 2015 – 2020.
Pauline Bryan, Scottish Labour Peer, Convener of the Red Paper Collective. Pauline campaigns for the abolition of the House of Lords and for a Senate of the Nations and Regions.

You can register here.

Image: c/o Lynn Henderson.