The Citizen website started out with a dual purpose. It was the website of Alex Falconer, the Member of the European Parliament for Mid Scotland and Fife; and it was the place where news about the Campaign for Socialism and articles from the Citizen were published online. Alex was instrumental in founding CfS, building on the Clause IV campaign; and in reviving the Citizen (first published to support the anti poll tax movement in Glasgow) and making it a focus for left politics within the Scottish Labour Party.
CfS now has its own website, which publishes new editions of Citizen. The archive however, will remain on this site. It will not be updated. However it will be backdated.
Alex was a forward thinking politician, and seized on the internet as a means of communication. He was one of the first politicians to have a website, where his pamphlets and the Citizen were published.
However, his output was prolific, and many articles and press releases were published in newspapers and magazines but not online. In those days, web pages, layouts and menus were written, updated and optimised the hard way. It was far more time consuming than adding a new post in wordpress – but now that it is much easier, why not add them to the site as backdated posts?
After all, many are still relevant to current political issues …
So, partly as a tribute to Alex, and partly as a resource for the future, that is what we are going to do.
