Dear Friends and Comrades,

The Scottish Socialist Party is under attack. Four SSP Members of Parliament
and their staff have been issued with a month long ban without wages for
defending the right to protest against the meeting of the G8 leaders. (see
below for details)

We are attempting to generate as much international opposition as possible
to this draconian attack. Therefore we request your solidarity in the
following ways:

- circulate this letter among your own members, affiliates and contacts.

- Sign the online petition at:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/754099600?ltl=1122382283

- Write to George Reid, Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, to
register your support for the SSP:

Presiding Officer
Queensberry House, the Scottish Parliament, Holyrood, Edinburgh EH99 1SP
Email: presiding.officer@scottish.parliament.uk

- Contribute to the SSP's fighting fund, to pay the cost of legal action to
overturn the suspension of our representatives, and to cover the wages of
our staff:

Scottish Socialist Party, 70 Stanley Street, Glasgow, G41 1JB, Scotland TEl:
+44 870 752 2505
email: scottishsocialistparty@btconnect.com

Full details:

On the 30 June 2005 four Scottish Socialist Party parliamentary
representatives were summarily suspended and stripped of their pay and
parliamentary allowances for the month of September. The financial
suspensions will also mean 28 members of staff, not involved in the protest,
will also not be paid.

Their crime? Mounting a peaceful, silent protest, lasting five minutes, at
First Minister's question time. SSP members Colin Fox, Frances Curran, Rosie
Kane, and Caroline Leckie held up placards demanding that First Minister
Jack McConnell carry out the will of the parliament by defending the right
to protest peacefully against the G8 leaders at Gleneagles on the 6 July.

Five months earlier the Scottish Parliament had passed a motion supporting
the right of people to protest at the G8 summit. Yet, just, six days prior
to the planned protest, official permission had still not been granted for
the protest to go ahead. We believe that this was deliberately done by the
authorities, in order to cause confusion and undermine the planned
demonstration.

This unprecedented and draconian penalty was imposed through a process which
makes a mockery of natural justice. The SSP MSPs were tried in their
absence, without any kind of due process, right of appeal or any of the
basic human rights that are enshrined in law.

This attack is not only targeted at the SSP representatives. By banning them
for the month of Spetember, 130,000 voters will be denied a voice in the
Scottish Parliament.

In the last six years the SSP has established itself as a tireless defender
of working class interests at home and around the world. It has a proud
record of supporting workers in struggle and has been at the forefront of
opposition to imperialist aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2003 we
received a 130,000 votes and six Scottish Socialist Party MSPs were elected
to the Scottish Parliament. The SSP, as the only party in Scotland
consistently opposing the neo-liberal agenda, has earned the enmity of the
mainstream political parties and the political establishment.

Therefore we cannot let these attacks on democracy, freedom of speech and
the right to protest succeed.

We are campaigning internationally to bring pressure on the Scottish
Parliament to overturn the ban and the financial penalties imposed on the
SSP MSPs. Already messages of support have been pouring in from all over
Europe and the world, from members of the European Parliament, from trades
unions and from individual workers.

Please add your voice to the growing campaign by helping in any or all the
above ways.

Yours in solidarity,

Colin Fox MSP, SSP convener, on behalf of the Scottish Socialist Party