The other members of the Bureau are all vice-presidents: Jill Evans ( Plaid Cymru ), Gustave Alirol ( Occitan Party ), Fabrizio Comencini ( Liga Veneta Repubblica ), Ana Miranda Paz ( Galician Nationalist Bloc ), Ian Hudghton ( Scottish National Party ), Sybren Posthumus ( Frisian National Party ), Sebastian Colio ( Basque Solidarity ), Dimitrios Ioannou ( Rainbow ), Rolf Granlund ( Future of Åland ), Reinhild Campidell ( South Tyrolean Freedom ) and Lucy Collyer ( Majorca Socialist Party ).

More recently, IWW members were involved in the Liverpool dockers ' strike that took place between 1995 and 1998, and numerous other events and struggles throughout the 1990s and 2000s ( decade ), including the successful unionising of several workplaces, such as support workers for the Scottish Socialist Party.

Almost all of the larger far-left parties in Britain are led by Trotskyists, including the Socialist Workers Party ( Britain ), the Socialist Party ( England and Wales ), Respect – The Unity Coalition and the Scottish Socialist Party.

The Scottish Green Party, the Scottish Socialist Party and the Scottish Enterprise Party are most widely publicised, however all independence movements / parties are opposed by Unionists.

A nationalist and socialist, he moved from the Scottish National Party ( SNP ) to the Scottish Socialist Party, and though he cherished the Scottish republican spirit, he sought to challenge some of the popular myths surrounding the country's sense of national identity.

He became secretary of the Scottish Socialist Federation.

By 1892 he was involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation, acting as its secretary from 1895.

The Scottish Socialist Party was formed from the Scottish Socialist Alliance ( SSA ), an alliance of left-wing organisations in Scotland, Following reasonable results by the alliance in the 1997 General Election, the decision was taken to transform the SSA from an electoral alliance into a single party to contest the first elections of the new Scottish Parliament.

The period following that election saw sustained growth for the SSP, including a boost to membership when the Socialist Workers Party in Scotland joined the SSP, and the Scottish section of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers affiliated to the party.

On 29 August 2006, Tommy Sheridan announced his intention to leave the Scottish Socialist Party and found a new socialist political party called Solidarity.

The Scottish Socialist Party claims to be at the forefront of the campaign to reform local government taxation.

Fuck Abstinence is a Scottish Socialist Youth Women's Group campaign that seeks to educate young women denied adequate sex education through the distribution of information on reproductive rights and to campaign for guarantees of such education in schools.

An additional problem was competition in the Liberal heartlands in Scotland and Wales from the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru who both grew as electoral forces from the 1960s onwards.

The story got around that he had refused to join the new party because he feared he would not be able to keep his Hamilton seat at a general election ; local Scottish National Party supporters nicknamed him " Chicken George ".

* In 2005, David McLetchie, leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party is forced to resign after claiming the highest taxi expenses of any MSP.

The split with Mebyon Kernow was down to the same debate that was occurring in most of the political parties campaigning for autonomy from the United Kingdom at the time ( for example the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru ), whether to be a centre-left party appealing to the electorate on a social democratic line, or whether to appeal emotionally on a centre-right cultural line.

It was addressed by Labour MPs Jon Trickett, Emily Thornberry, John McDonnell ( politician ) | John McDonnell, Michael Meacher, Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, and Elfyn Llwyd of Plaid Cymru and Angus MacNeil of the Scottish National Party.

Donald Campbell Dewar ( 21 August 1937 – 11 October 2000 ) was a Scottish politician who served as a Labour Party Member of Parliament ( MP ) in Scotland from 1966-1970, and then again from 1978 until his death in 2000.

He led the Scottish Labour Party into the first ever Scottish parliamentary election in 1999, and was elected both as an MSP and as First Minister of Scotland at the head of a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition.

Following the return of the Labour Party to government in 1997, Dewar became the Secretary of State for Scotland and campaigned for a ' Yes-Yes ' vote in the successful referendum on Scottish devolution.

When elections were held to the newly created Scottish Parliament in 1999, as leader of the Scottish Labour Party and through a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Dewar became the inaugural holder of the First Minister of Scotland post.

He was returned at a by-election on 13 April 1978, an important victory which was seen as halting the rise of the Scottish National Party.

The first elections to the Scottish Parliament were held on 6 May 1999, with Dewar leading the Scottish Labour Party against their main opponents, the SNP under Alex Salmond.

Edinburgh is the home town of the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, who was born in the city and attended Fettes College ; Robin Harper the co-convener of the Scottish Green Party ; and John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the United States Declaration of Independence, and later president of Princeton University.

In that election five regionalist parties got seats: the Social Democratic and Labour Party ( SDLP ) of Northern Ireland, the Scottish National Party ( SNP ), the Flemish People's Union ( VU ), the Walloon Democratic Front of Francophones ( FDF ) and the South Tyrolean People's Party ( SVP ).

The growing importance of the working classes was marked by Keir Hardie's success in the Mid Lanarkshire by-election, 1888, leading to the foundation of the Scottish Labour Party, which was absorbed into the Independent Labour Party in 1895, with Hardie as its first leader.

With all the main parties committed to the Union, new nationalist and independent political groupings began to emerge, including the National Party of Scotland in 1928 and Scottish Party in 1930.

Positioning itself significantly to the left of Scotland's centre-left parties, the SSP campaigns on a socialist economic platform and for Scottish independence.

Following the 2003 elections to the Scottish Parliament, it had six Members of the Scottish Parliament ( MSPs ) and two local councillors, the SSP lost all its seats in the Scottish Parliament in the 2007 election and retained only one local councillor.

The 2003 elections to the Scottish Parliament saw the SSP gain five additional seats across Scotland, becoming the largest left-wing party in Scottish politics.

The SSP contested all eight regions in the Scottish Parliament election, 2011, with gender balanced lists of candidates.

The SSP strongly supports autonomy for Scotland and Scottish independence from the United Kingdom.

The SSP propose a Scottish Service Tax, a form of local income tax to replace the current Council Tax, brought in after the Poll Tax became non-viable.

Under pressure from the SSP and the wider campaign, the Scottish National Party ( SNP ) introduced free school meals as a pilot scheme for a small number of primary school pupils in selected local authorities and have announced that there will be free school meals for Primary 1-3 children from 2010, however have not backed the wholesale change that the SSP proposed.

The SSP was one of the founding members of the Scottish Coalition for Justice not War at its establishment in September 2001.

The February 2003 march in Glasgow was attended by some SSP members, and later that year SSP MSPs were threatened with disciplinary action after SSP's Kevin Williamson staged a protest in the Scottish Parliament.

Two of the former platforms in the SSP both emerged from British Section of the Committee for a Workers ' International, following the " Open Turn " debate of the early 1990s, which was largely led by Scottish members.

In 1998, the " Scottish Debate " led to the establishment of the SSP, however within the UK movement this was not widely welcomed.

* The Scottish Republican Socialist Movement ( 1999 – 2006 ) whose major focus is independence for a Scottish Republic, emerged from the Scottish Republican Socialist Party which was one of the founding platforms of the SSP.

* The Scottish supporters of the Socialist Workers Party ( 2003 – 2006 ) joined the SSP in 2002 becoming the Socialist Workers Platform despite strong reservations from then members.

The SSP distributes a weekly newspaper, the Scottish Socialist Voice.