Raphie De Santos
Raphie De Santos writes extensively for the Voice on economics – and in terrifying times like these, it’s handy to have someone on board who knows the capitalist financial system from the inside out. Raphie used to work as an expert on global economics for Goldman Sachs merchant bank.
He was never your run-of-the-mill pampered banker, though. In fact Raphie is an altogether unusual kind of guy.
“I graduated from university in 1978, between twin recessions. I then spent six years either in manual labour jobs, as a hospital worker, or on the dole. I was a young working class man with a degree, and that’s what we faced at that time. Sadly, I think it’s what working class young people leaving university face now, too.”
Raphie’s commitment to left politics has been life-long, learned from his mother – an anarcho-syndicalist who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War, then later fled an equally tyrannical regime in Portugal. At that time, outrage at Portugal’s treatment of its political prisoners was one of the inspirations for the founding of Amnesty International.
She arrived in Scotland as a refugee, and Raphie was raised in Hawick in the Borders. “My mother helped me understand a world that was very complicated,” he says of her political influence.
“I was a member of various political organisations, and I always thought it was insane that socialists were disunited when there was so much more that we agreed on than disagreed. It was the SSP’s pluralism that attracted me to join, that it brought together socialists of all backgrounds, and that it is a thoroughly democratic organisation.
“We have good international positions, building solidarity for people throwing off the yoke of imperialism all over the world, not waiting to establish whether they have a fully worked out socialist position. We stand with people in struggle against capitalism, of all persuasions.”
Raphie’s view on the current financial crisis is also internationalist.
“We have to make sure that we don’t insulate ourselves to the outside world, we have to look to build links with workers everywhere. We need to fight for a European-wide minimum wage and minimum working conditions. We need an international response, standing shoulder to shoulder with people across borders who are equally under attack.”