As a born artist and shy person, I’ve always felt like an outsider; but this past school year, I saw a table in Penn State’s free-speech zone that changed my life. I couldn’t believe it—an actual social movement campaigning right before my eyes! Ever since, members of the Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialists have been in contact with me. As a result, I’ve experienced what Che and Marx meant by the “new man,” the revolutionary consciousness that will lift the world out of the mire. Having an artist’s disposition made me reserved, content to be outside the human scene I observed… your campaign helped me incorporate social struggle into my artistic worldview; I feel more human, more compassionate, more connected to the passers-by I see everyday.

I sincerely admire the character of leadership I’ve encountered in the SWP, here at Penn State and in New York City. Every candidate and representative of your party has been genuinely concerned not only of the interests of the working class but of the welfare of humanity. I wish you all the best in your future struggles and the assurance that I will do all I can to help.

Dan Schwabenbauer
State College, Pennsylvania  
 
Venezuela and Scotland
The news the Militant has covered about the progress by peasants in Venezuela in their struggle for land has a significance here in Scotland. The peasants have occupied part of El Charcote, the vast 36,000-acre estate owned by the Vestey family, in their fight to win control of the land for themselves.

The Vesteys are not only one of Britain’s wealthiest families but also own vast parts of Scotland too. They currently have 100,000 acres in the Scottish highlands in the county of Sutherland. This puts them in the top 10 landowners in Scotland, a part of the United Kingdom where 1,252 people own 66 percent of the land. As with the land they acquired in Venezuela this was also stolen from working people. In the first volume of Capital, Karl Marx describes how in the 19th century the Duchess of Sutherland had the county’s inhabitants “systematically, hunted and rooted out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their fields turned into pasturage. British soldiers enforced this mass of evictions, and came to blows with the inhabitants. One old woman was burnt to death in the flames of the hut she refused to leave. It was in this manner that this fine lady appropriated 794,000 acres of land that had belonged to the clan from time immemorial.” It should be added that London’s role in defending this by force was part of the deal of the Act of Union with the Scottish aristocracy to protect their property rights in return for the integration of Scotland into the development of capitalist Britain. The landless peasants from the highlands were forced into the big cities, such as Glasgow, to seek work.

The Vestey family acquired this land from the Sutherlands in the 1930s after they made millions from cattle ranching in Latin America and a butchers’ chain in the UK. But as in Venezuela, progress by working people is catching up with them. A consequence of the “devolution” of Scotland and the establishment of the parliament here is that land reform legislation is giving local people the right to buy back the land.

Pete Clifford
Edinburgh, Scotland  
 
 
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