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Kevin Williamson (politician)
Encyclopedia
Caithness
Caithness is a registration county, lieutenancy area and historic local government area of Scotland. The name was used also for the earldom of Caithness and the Caithness constituency of the Parliament of the United Kingdom . Boundaries are not identical in all contexts, but the Caithness area is...
. He is a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
socialist and republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
and was an activist for the Scottish Socialist Party
Scottish Socialist Party
The Scottish Socialist Party is a left-wing Scottish political party. Positioning itself significantly to the left of Scotland's centre-left parties, the SSP campaigns on a socialist economic platform and for Scottish independence....
(SSP), and was the architect of their radical drug policy, which includes the legalisation of cannabis and the provision by the state of free heroin to addicts. He wrote a regular weekly column, "Rebel Ink", for the Scottish Socialist Voice
Scottish Socialist Voice
The Scottish Socialist Voice is a Scottish political newspaper, published by the Scottish Socialist Party. Established in November 1996, it was previously the paper of Scottish Militant Labour, before being handed over to the SSP when it was formed in 1998.-History:It was first edited by Alan...
.
Publishing career
In 1992 Williamson launched a literary magazine called Rebel Inc and through its pages was one of the first publishers of such Scottish writers as Irvine WelshIrvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life...
, Laura Hird
Laura Hird
Laura Hird is a Scottish novelist and short story writer.Hird studied Contemporary Writing at Middlesex Polytechnic and is the author of two novels, Nail and Other Stories and Born Free . Hope and Other Urban Tales, a novella and short story collection, followed in 2006. All her novels and...
, Alan Warner
Alan Warner
Alan Warner , a Scottish novelist, grew up in Connel, near Oban.He is the author of six novels: the acclaimed Morvern Callar , winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; These Demented Lands , winner of the Encore Award; The Sopranos , winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award; The Man...
, and Toni Davidson. He has also championed such major Scottish writers as James Kelman
James Kelman
James Kelman is an influential writer of novels, short stories, plays and political essays. His novel A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989...
, Duncan McLean
Duncan McLean (writer)
Duncan McLean is a Scottish novelist, playwright, and short story writer.-Life and works:Duncan McLean was born in Fraserburgh and has lived in Orkney since 1992. While based in Edinburgh in the 1980s, he started writing songs, stand-up routines, and plays for the Merry Mac Fun Co, a street...
, Gordon Legge
Gordon Legge
Gordon E. Legge is currently the Distinguished McKnight University Professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. Legge is the director of ....
and Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years...
.
In 1996 Williamson joined forces with Edinburgh-based Canongate Books
Canongate Books
Canongate Books is a Scottish independent publishing firm based in Edinburgh; it is named for The Canongate, an area of the city. It is most recognised for publishing the Booker Prizewinner Life of Pi...
to create the Rebel Inc imprint which, in the following five years, published almost sixty titles, mixing Scottish fiction with the international counter-culture and the politics of dissent. Within the Rebel Inc imprint Williamson re-published a series of out of print titles under the heading of Rebel Inc Classics that included writers such as Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan
Richard Gary Brautigan was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. His work often employs black comedy, parody, and satire. He is best known for his 1967 novel Trout Fishing in America.- Early life :...
, Alexander Trocchi
Alexander Trocchi
Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi was a Scottish novelist.-Early career:Trocchi was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys, he attended University of Glasgow. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to...
, Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
, Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren was an American writer.-Early life:Algren was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie and Gerson Abraham. At the age of three he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois where they lived in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood on the South Side...
, John Fante
John Fante
John Fante was an American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent. He is perhaps best known for his work, Ask the Dust, a semi-autobiograpical novel about life in and around Los Angeles, California, which was the third in a series of four novels, published between 1938...
, Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul....
, Jim Dodge
Jim Dodge
Jim Dodge is an American novelist and poet whose works combine themes of folklore and fantasy, set in a timeless present. He has published three novels, Fup, Not Fade Away and Stone Junction and a collection of poetry and prose, Rain on the River.-Biography:Dodge was born in 1945 and grew up as an...
, Robert Sabbag
Robert Sabbag
Robert Sabbag is an American journalist and author of two books on drugs smuggling in the United States:Snowblind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade and the follow-up book Smokescreen: A True Adventure...
and Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
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Political Activism
He is a long-time campaigner for the legalisation of cannabisCannabis
Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants that includes three putative species, Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. These three taxa are indigenous to Central Asia, and South Asia. Cannabis has long been used for fibre , for seed and seed oils, for medicinal purposes, and as a...
, and unsuccessfully tried to open a "hash cafe" in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
. In 1997 Williamson went on a "National Change The Drug Laws" tour with former cannabis smuggler Howard Marks
Howard Marks
Dennis Howard Marks is a Welsh author and former drug smuggler who achieved notoriety as an international cannabis smuggler through high-profile court cases, supposed connections with groups such as the CIA, the IRA, MI6, and the Mafia, and his eventual conviction at the hands of the American Drug...
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In 1999 Williamson stood as an SSP candidate in the first ever elections to the Scottish Parliament in the Edinburgh Central constituency. In 2001 he stood again for the SSP in Edinburgh Central in the Westminster General Election.
In 2003 Williamson became the first person to be physically ejected by the police from the Scottish Parliament
Scottish Parliament
The Scottish Parliament is the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in the Holyrood area of the capital, Edinburgh. The Parliament, informally referred to as "Holyrood", is a democratically elected body comprising 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament...
when he made an anti-war protest wearing a George Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
mask. He is strong supporter of Scottish independence
Scottish independence
Scottish independence is a political ambition of political parties, advocacy groups and individuals for Scotland to secede from the United Kingdom and become an independent sovereign state, separate from England, Wales and Northern Ireland....
and Independence First
Independence First
Independence First or Independence 1st is a political movement in Scotland, first proposed through internet discussions in September 2004, then formally constituted on 19 February 2005...
.
In August 2006, in the aftermath of Tommy Sheridan's libel case against the News of the World, Williamson parted company with the Scottish Socialist Party. A lengthy letter of resignation was published online which contained a highly critical attack on Tommy Sheridan, as well as citing political differences with the direction the SSP was going in.
In November 2007, Williamson signalled a clear break with party politics and his previous Marxian background in an article entitled Scotland's Libertarian Left which was originally published in Bella Caledonia - a free newspaper Williamson currently co-edits (with Mike Small) aimed at stimulating discussion around left libertarian and Scottish republican ideas.
Writings
Since acrimoniously parting company with Canongate Books, Williamson has worked as a newspaper columnist and cultural commentator, regularly appearing in print and on television and radio. In 2002 he had a regular weekly column controversially axed from The HeraldThe Herald (Glasgow)
The Herald is a broadsheet newspaper published Monday to Saturday in Glasgow, and available throughout Scotland. As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 47,226, giving it a lead over Scotland's other 'quality' national daily, The Scotsman, published in Edinburgh.The 1889 to 1906 editions...
newspaper for his outspoken views on Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
His published work includes "A Visitor's Guide To Edinburgh" (co-written with Irvine Welsh in 1993), and "Drugs and the Party Line" (1997). His poetry has been published in anthologies and magazines. In 2005 he won the Robert Louis Stevenson Award for literature.
His first collection of poetry In A Room Darkened was published by Two Ravens Press in October 2007.
Williamson was also a contributor to Pax Edina: One O' Clock Gun Anthology (Edinburgh, 2010)