Get the stories that matter to you sent straight to your inbox with our daily newsletter. Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

RISE – Scotland’s Left Alliance are a new coalition comprised of socialists and pro-independence campaigners.

The alliance emerged out of the referendum and RISE stands for Respect, Independence, Socialism and Environmentalism.

They support raising taxes on the rich, controlling runaway rent costs and paying a £10-an-hour minimum wage.

RISE’s Scottish Parliament election candidates, who are drawn from all walks of life, will pledge to serve a maximum of two terms, so they won’t be career politicians, and will only take a working wage if elected.

Here we talk to two regional list candidates about how working on the frontline of Scotland’s services has encouraged them to stand for change.

COLIN TURBETT - WEST OF SCOTLAND

FATHER-of-two Colin, 61, was a social worker in child protection for 40 years, starting his career at the sharp end on the Drumchapel estate in Glasgow .

He said: “It was bad then – it was rough – but there was nothing like the unemployment and the social problems that we have seen since the Thatcher years.

“It absolutely exploded after that because people weren’t working. There was a huge rise in drug abuse and domestic violence. All the things we associate with growing inequality, the hopelessness and despair came with it.”

With the steep rise in unemployment and drug use came a growing child protection list, and Colin believes that amid a lack of hope future generations “gave up”.

He said: “You get kids growing up in families who don’t see any future, who think normal life is scraping around for survival.”

Colin felt a large part of his job was to bring hope but, although he claims he never found that impossible, it did get harder.

He said: “When you know things are getting worse, it is difficult. Social workers can’t provide jobs for people.

“When I started in Drumchapel in the 70s, we would never have dreamed that there would be food banks and we would be sending people to them as a matter of course.”

Fuel poverty also wasn’t the issue then that it is today, and Colin and his colleagues could negotiate far more effectively with power companies when they were in public hands.

The nationalisation of the public utilities is a key tenet of RISE’s agenda.

The Department of Social Security were also more flexible and social workers could still negotiate to get enough money for people to get by.

Colin said: “That has become impossible – we no longer have a relationship with people in the Department for Work and Pensions.

“You don’t phone a local office, where you have contacts, you are talking to an impersonal call centre dealing with stats, not people. The Government don’t care any more.”

Sanctions have been around for years but Colin now sees them applied punitively and indiscriminately.

He said: “In my social work practice, I was adamant that I wouldn’t blame the victim – but that is the Government’s attitude and that trickles down to the frontline. They see the people as responsible for their own poverty, and that is not the case.”

Five years ago, he transferred to the three towns of Ardrossan, Saltcoats and Stevenston in Ayrshire, working mainly in child protection.

These areas once thrived, with big companies such as ICI employing thousands, but they are now blighted by poverty.

During his career, recently-retired Colin witnessed homes of a “third-world standard”.

He said: “I’ve been in houses that were full of filth and squalor, empty of furniture or where everything is broken. No carpets or floor coverings were common.

“People who are not respected in any way are not respectful of themselves, and their children grow up with no respect for their environment. A lot of the issue was poverty and a lack of hope for tomorrow. ”

Colin watched families disintegrate under the pressure of poverty and young boys growing up and becoming perpetrators of the same domestic violence they had witnessed.

He said children were often going to school hungry, tired and stressed.

It pains him to witness the hurt suffered through austerity and the worshipping of the market as God – and he hopes RISE can gather momentum for change.

Colin said: “We need a new type of politics with people who are not prepared to tolerate the horrendous inequality in our country, who are angry and are prepared to confront it.

“The SNP are not challenging inequality, even if they say they are.”

JULIE SILAPASITH - CENTRAL SCOTLAND

Julie, 34, has worked in the health service for more than 12 years and is an A&E nurse

in Lanarkshire.

Like many others in Scotland, she became politically engaged during the wave of activism created by the referendum.

Julie witnesses daily the effect that poverty and austerity politics are having on the health of those in her community.

She said: “We have seen a real increase in people coming in with mental health problems and drug and alcohol addictions.

“We see much younger people coming in with a number of things wrong with them, so illnesses are often accompanied by mental illness or addiction.

“There are a lot of deprived areas in our catchment. Poverty impacts on them badly.”

During her career, Julie has watched the health service become increasingly overstretched.

She said: “There are a lot of good things happening but in general the whole NHS need more funding.

“Staff are trying their best but they have more and more to do.”

Julie has seen for herself how poverty and social exclusion are inextricably linked with ill health.

She said: “The problems are multi-generational, particularly addiction, and that cycle is not being broken.

“The problem is only being compounded – getting worse, not better. I see it every day.

“I have had people tell me that they haven’t been able to buy food because their benefits have been sanctioned.”

Julie worries too that council cuts will see more people lingering in hospital because the care is not available in the community.

She chose to stand for RISE because she felt they offered an alternative voice from

the left.

Julie said: “I feel RISE are very democratic and that my views will be valued and that I can represent the most marginalised in society.

“I am confident that the party can be the voice of the poor and the working class.

“Scotland is a rich country and, for me, widespread multi-generational poverty is a scandal. The Tories want to take us back to Victorian times and we have to start reversing that trend and give people a sense of worth in their communities again.”

Julie lives in a housing scheme that is a pocket of deprivation and so she bears witness to poverty not only professionally but personally.

She said: “I didn’t want to be in a party because I felt that I couldn’t toe a party line – but in RISE, the line is where we choose to put it.

“In my area, people can see that I am one of them and that I could be their voice in Parliament.

“That is new, that people like me are standing. That isn’t happening in other parties.”

Read more politics news here