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Scottish Socialist Party cannabis demos - SSP youth

Here's a few assorted photies of our previous demos, 2001 in glasgow, and 2002 in glasgow and inverness

What happened was, we (SSY) organised a number of stunts to raise the issue of how many young people in Glasgow were getting 'lifted' for mickey mouse cannabis possession charges. This included setting up a "mini
barlinnie" in George Square, Glasgow, and huckling young folk into it.

We were also facing an uphill struggle against the mainstream press. The "Daily Record", Scotlands biggest tabloid rag, was running an "anti-drugs" campaign (featuring the symbol of a baby injecting heroin into its own arm), to highlight the fact that glasgow is heroin death capital of the world.

Fair enough, but their solution was to ban all drugs, lock drug users and "pushers" up and throw away the key, and support reactionary groups like "Scotland Against Drugs" (who incidentally are sponsored by Whyte & MacKay).

So they decided to have a demonstration against "druggies" in Glasgow.

We felt that this was an outragous campaign against young people, demonising youth and blaming us for society's problems. So we upped our campaign. The Daily Record ran numerous stories about us, and about Tommy, saying that we were glorifying drugs, and that we were a menace.

Then we decided to organise a protest march to involve all the hundreds of people who seemed to support us, by signing our petition etc. the first march, in 2000, attracted around 1000 people, mostly youth, and a huge amount of press coverage, because it was far bigger than the "anti drugs" march on the same week. It was a huge success. We got Nigel Buckland, who was famous then for "Vids", and Mark Steel, who wasn't famous then but is now, to speak, and also Tommy Sheridan. Loads of press coverage too.

There was also a small protest outside the Daily Record's office against the kind of crap that "Blue" Peter Cox (ex editor of the Sun, and loyal Thatcherite) had been printing about us.

So that was the start. SSY was born, as a radical youth group where young people self-organised against many other issues such as low-wages, lack of community facilities, treatment of workers etc. The following summer (2001) we decided to repeat the cannabis demo, and we got Howard Marks to speak as well as the mighty Tommy.

Then in 2002 we decided that people outside Glasgow need a chance to protest too, so we held a national day of action, with demos in Glasgow, Inverness and Dundee, and a street stall in Edinburgh. Altogether, around 5000 people participated. We had the sound system "Monkeytribe", and Tommy plus various speakers from SSY.

In 2003 we decided that we should give the demo a break, but this year (2004) we were back with a vengeance, albeit dogged by bad weather and problems with the sound system. Read the BBC news report here.

All the best

Donnie Nicolson
National Organiser
Scottish Socialist Youth