Football, the working class and a pursuit for truth and justice.

On a day of massive significance to Liverpool Football Club and Liverpool as a city, to the families of the 96 who unlawfully and tragically lost their lives on that fateful day back in 1989, I say thank you.

Thank you for your courage, your determination, your dignity, your tenacity. You inspire and show the world the most honourable and admirable traditions of our class, and for that we all owe you more than you will ever know.

Government, police, media. All complicit, all guilty, all defeated. All must now be held to account.

Their lies, their smears, their attemps to blame the Liverpool fans for that fateful day show clearer than ever and for all to see the reality of how the Establishment view our class. For set in the backdrop of an ever increasingly aggressive Tory Government, in the midst of all out class war against "the Enemy within" - Hillsborough becomes much more than a football fan tragedy. Today's verdict and the time it has taken the brave families to reach it is a timely reminder to all for the need to question and challenge power and authority wherever it may lie.

For those of us who love football, we must use the attitude, determination and bravery of the Hillsborough families as an inspiration moving forward in our fight to preserve and fundamentally alter one of the last remaining pillars of working class life; our beautiful game.

Our beautiful game which is being bent to unthinkable levels of corruption and laundering, a game which is increasingly pricing us all out, a game increasingly run by wealthy businessmen and a game which is delivering players earning weekly figures that those of us in the stands will never see in a lifetime. For those of us in Scotland, it gives us fresh urgency to the campaign against the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act. An unworkable and dangerous insult to us as law abiding citizens of Scotland who are discriminated against on a weekly basis for having the audacity to be nothing more than passionate about our game and our respective clubs.

However, the class victory which has been achieved today cannot be overstated. Those families, that city and that club have taken on all the British Establishment have thrown at them, and won. Defeated with principle, passion, dignity and unbelievable tenacity and bravery.

The truth is now out, let justice be sought.

They shall never walk alone.

The Independence Movement, the SNP and IndyRef2

I’m tempted to say we deserve better but for as long as we accept middle of the road managerialism then the harsh reality is we don’t. For with the close of the SNP spring conference today firing the starting gun on May’s foregone conclusion of an election Scottish Politics has defaulted to talk of a referendum that seemingly neither the government nor official opposition wants to fight in the much discussed but far out of sight  IndyRef2.

As someone who campaigned intensely for a Yes vote in 2014, I feel a great sense of sadness and dismay at how much of the energy and vibrancy that made the Yes campaign so special, unique and a joy to work in has been managed, curtailed and swallowed up by an almighty machinery at the heart of the Scottish National Party. Notwithstanding the likes of Woman for Independence and to a lesser extent the Radical Independence Campaign, much of the good, painstaking work that brought the debate to the left, enfranchised and excited the hearts and minds of people in communities and workplaces across the country has resulted in not too much real and long lasting change of note.

The 2015 General Election saw an unparalleled result in Scotland that no-one predicted, with the collapse of Labour across the entire country also coupled with a weak, business as usual offer from Labour in England and Wales opening the door for David Cameron to return to number 10 as the leader of a Conservative majority. A majority hell bent on systemically stripping away the benefits won by working people across decades with the rolling back of the role of the state and slashing public spending at a level even Mrs Thatcher would find radical coupled with a threat to remove the country from the European Union as an emboldened and strengthening right wing led by Farage and Boris attempt to hammer the rights of trade unions and workers further still.

In the face of such an assault, which will only intensify over the next few years, what does the Scottish Government do? 

The answer unfortunately is talk a good game while bending the knee and implementing their austerity further. Nicola Sturgeon commands personal and party support the envy of most Governments across Europe, yet with the scope to be bold and radical knowing full well she will return as FM after May, Nicola is instead even more cautious and managerial than her predecessor. From the reversal of longstanding SNP policy to scrap the council tax, to standardised testing in schools, centralisation of colleges, an unaccountable authoritarianism at the heart of the justice system, a systemic recruitment crisis in General Practice, the refusal to ban fracking and the slashing of council budgets the reality of SNP government falls far short of the rhetoric and this cautious approach now appears to be nesting into the demand for Independence.

For the summer of conversation to kick-start afresh the vision for Independence the First Minister speaks of is meaningless without a mandate from the people of Scotland in May to hold such a referendum, and after hearing her today insist they would handle a deficit in an Independent Scotland in much the same manner successive Labour and Tory governments have in Westminster I fear for the outlook of a second Yes campaign.

Yes climbed the polls to rest at 45% support not through a strategy of continuity and managerialism but through radicalism and bold direction that had Scots connected with the realities of our political system to a degree which was the envy of the world. In order to win any future referendum, these radical ideas and cast iron policy discussions need to be at the forefront of the argument for a cessation of the British state. Voices of the likes of the Greens, the SSP, RISE, RIC, WFI and LFI are more valuable now than they were in 2014’s referendum. Now is the time to be bold and forward thinking, for Scotland’s people and our public services cannot afford to wait for anything else in the face of an emboldened Tory majority.

An independence referendum mark 2 is our leverage, we must take full advantage and ensure it remains at the centre piece of the anti-Tory offensive that Scotland will give us all a mandate to pursue.