SCOTTISH comedian Frankie Boyle is set to feature in the line up for a benefit concert aimed at sending a surgeon to the Gaza Strip.
The Serve Solidarity: Glasgow to Gaza concert organised by Unite Hospitality Glasgow is to be held on Monday, June 3, in the city and will feature bands such as Declan Welsh and the Decadent West, Brogeal and Tina Sandwich as well as comedians Boyle and Josie Long.
There are also set to be a range of speakers from across the pro-Palestine movement.
The concert – which will take place at St Luke’s - forms part of the union’s wider Serve Solidarity campaign which aims to empower hospitality workers to organise boycotts of companies and produce listed as complicit in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
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Workers at The Stand comedy club in Glasgow successfully enacted a boycott of PepsiCo products and Israeli fresh produce in November of last year.
It will raise money for Islamic Help – a UK-based charity which is working to send surgeons to Gaza.
Nick Troy, chair of the Unite Hospitality Glasgow branch, said: “As workers, trade unionists and, above all, human beings, we have been collectively disturbed by the horror being unleashed against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank by the State of Israel since last October.
“Our response has been to organise industrially to mitigate this in any way we can, fully in the knowledge of our own governments’ complicity.
“As workers central to the cultural scene in Glasgow, it only makes sense to utilise our natural alliance with cultural workers to raise funds to send surgeons to Gaza. Live music is integral to the working life of all parties involved and allows us to elevate our campaign to a wider audience.”
The branch has taken its inspiration for its campaign from the boycott of Pinochet’s jet engines organised by Rolls-Royce workers in East Kilbride in the 1970s.
Troy added: “We are standing on the shoulders of giants.”
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More than 34,000 Palestinians are believed to have been killed in Gaza, with warnings from the United Nations and the World Health Organisation that famine is imminent.
Headliner Welsh said: “I think just standing up and showing solidarity is important but we hope to go a step further and help support Islamic Help in sending surgeons to Gaza.
“I’ll be proud to share a stage with the acts and speakers we have on the line-up.”
Tickets for Serve Solidarity: From Glasgow to Gaza will be available from 9am on Monday. Click here to find out more.
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