Soundings from Scotland

The latest issue of Soundings, the thoughtful and radical journal of politics and culture, carries a couple of very substantial articles particularly focussed on Scotland.

The guest editors (Dave Featherstone, Ewan Gibbs and Jenny Morrison) are all teachers at Glasgow University, and Democratic Left Scotland is very pleased to see this development – we know that Dave in particular has been looking for opportunities to foreground Scottish experience in the journal.

The editors’ introductory comments raise questions about the extent to which John Swinney’s government can be judged to be distinct from Keir-still-PM-at-the-time-of-writing-Starmer’s on a range of crucial matters: ‘support for the use of Wick airport during the US seizure of a ship re-flagged as Russian coming from the Venezuelan blockade emphasises the Scottish government’s concessions to Trumpism, despite its occasionally more critical rhetoric’. (The links in this paragraph and those below are to pages with PDFs of articles which are currently free to download).

In the body of the journal, Glasgow worker Fiona Duncan explores how the disciplines and culture of austerity continues to shape the experience of those in Scotland’s third-sector. The problems of competitive funding, administrative overload and pressure to evidence short-term outcomes are not just blocks to ‘meaningful long-term work which seeks to mitigate the socioeconomic damage caused by decades of neglect’. To be working in this sector, with good intent but under impossible expectations and with inadequate resources, generates emotions and feelings of ‘guilt, failure and burnout’.

A major interview with organiser Rosie Hampton provides considered and detailed insights into the craft and strategy of campaigning with two very different types of organisation. Hampton is a campaign manager for Friends of the Earth Scotland, and a member of Living Rent in Partick. Shifts in political culture, shaped by increasing authoritarianism, generate challenges and questions about how to move forward on progressive causes.

Although David Purdy’s piece on ‘rethinking economic growth’ is not specifically focussed on Scotland, it confirms this Stirling resident’s ongoing aspiration ‘to be an organic intellectual’: long-term friends of Democratic Left Scotland always appreciated David’s multiple contributions to our Perspectives magazine, all back copies of which are available in PDF format here.

The new issue of Soundings also includes a consideration of ‘race and nation in Wales’; an alternative history of British computing; and pieces on ‘the authoritarian tactics and strategies of the British state’, both historically in seeking to disrupt and block decolonisation when the Ghanian independence movement was building towards success, with Ibtehal Hussain then focussing on how ‘British state secrecy continues to reflect the colonial past that shaped it’.

Published 30 May 2026