Help with legal challenge to kettling
News just in that the Climate Camp is trying to move forward with a legal challenge to the police kettling at Bishopsgate on April 1. As I argued in an earlier post, there is good reason to think that the kettle at Bishopsgate was illegal even if the Law Lords’ decision in the Austin case earlier this year is good law. There is a strong case that the kettle in question did not meet the tests of reasonableness and proportionality which the Law Lords laid down.
However, the Climate Camp needs money to mount the legal challenge:
‘We really, really, need to raise £40,000 quickly to challenge the kettling. It may seem a lot but we think we can do it – small amounts from lots of people will get us to this target. See the Camp Donate page to donate to the Legal fund. Please tell all your friends and rich aunties.’ Relevant links are here (Legal Team) and here (Donations). Let’s give generously!
cross-posted from Next Left
Swine flu: the threat is real
My usual response when some sickness hits the news is to roll my eyes and change the channel, telling myself it has little to do with me and will probably amount to nothing and it’s not worth worrying about. Earlier this week I decided to crawl out of my “epidemic scare stories are boring exercises in mass hysteria” hole in the ground and educate myself.
I started paying attention to what people were saying – and by ‘people’, I don’t mean the mainstream media, who as always are screaming loudly for no other reason than that announcing the new apocalypse is more fun than talking about money or whether or not we should prosecute confirmed warcrimes.
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A wake-up call for the left
With the New Labour project almost over, we can be comfortable with two assumptions: the Tories are coming to power; the left will descend into civil war over future political direction. So I want to draw the battle lines as early as possible, and this is part of that. The question could be posed in many different ways, but this may be the simplest: What has been the left’s main problem over the last decade?
For me, it is the failure to illustrate an easily identifiable vision for the future beyond tired old platitudes, and build mass movements on those ideas. It is the failure to build wide-ranging popular coalitions that aren’t hijacked by the SWP hard-left. It is the failure to build organisational capacity and, more importantly, harness the energy of the people.
What do I mean by that?
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The left and ‘rural issues’
Rowenna Davis made a very decent stab of calling the Left to address rural issues more seriously, on Libcon recently. However, the example she chose to show how these ‘rural issues’ should be natural matter for Left concern and action is reflective of much of the Left’s basic misunderstanding of rurality and rural campaigning.
Yes, the campaign against pesticides is an important one, and Rowenna is correct to say that it should be a leftist struggle because it is about the abuse of power – the power of agri-business to keep health protective legislation at bay. But the biggest issues for people living in rural areas are not classic ‘rural’ issues, in the sense that they relate to farming and landuse policy.
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Tories contradict their own economic policy
George Osborne has announced a new Tory policy which I don’t understand: they want to give every household a new entitlement to £6,500 of energy saving technologies. They provide government guarantees to enable companies to borrow the money to install this energy saving equipment in homes across the country.
This money would be repaid through savings on energy bills resulting from the improved energy efficiency. So homeowners would be given the opportunity to have energy saving equipment fitted to their homes without any upfront costs. They claim this will unleash £20 billion of private investment if half of all households take this up.
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Why isn’t the left working with rural campaigners?
This week I interviewed Georgina Downs, a campaigner from West Sussex who is almost single-handedly leading the campaign against pesticides in the UK. Suffering from ill health brought on by what she believes was inadvertent pesticide exposure from local farms as a child, she has been fighting to strengthen pesticide regulation through the courts for the last eight years.
Her story is a natural leftist battle. It’s about the exploitation of power – government officials and agro-chemical industries are blocking adequate regulatory methods despite robust research showing the damage that pesticides can do to human health.
And it’s about justice. Last November the High Court delivered a landmark victory on Georgina’s case, ruling that the government had failed to comply with a European directive designed to protect rural residents from exposure to toxins. The government has appealed that judgement, and Georgina is now fighting another round with support only from her Dad (who does the “postie runs”) and her Mum who does the photocopying. Her inbox is full of stories from other rural dwellers suffering health problems suspected to be brought on by pesticide exposure, but the court battle leaves precious little time for her to connect with them all.
Why does she not have more support from the left?
The left has always suffered from an urban bias. But we cannot let rural fights like these go unsupported. This point is about more than just anti-pesticide and environmental campaigns, important as they are – it’s about connecting with rural causes and communities more generally. Rural poverty and isolation for example, are huge issues in this country and should be natural territory for the left – but we hardly ever mention it. For their sake and ours, leftist organisations need to start connecting with communities in the countryside. It’s time to build a rural-urban alliance.
From Hillsborough to Bishopsgate – how policing has changed
In 1992, when I was at a boarding school in Africa, one of my teachers was a remarkable, quiet, and thoughtful man in his late 30s: let’s call him Mr. Albert. He’d been a career policeman in the north of England until he’d recently been driven to leave the Force, and (indeed) England entirely. That summer, a young Scouser came to join the staff at the school for some months. He was a burly, loud-laughing lad and a hell of a footballer: let’s call him Robert. They were the only two young single men teaching at the school so they were allocated a flat together within the staff housing system.
I came upon Robert sitting under a tree crying. I was young enough that it hit me very hard; adults don’t usually do that without a good reason, but he wouldn’t talk to me. I went to find his room-mate to ask what was wrong and he was crying too. They had just had a conversation in which they realised that Robert had lost a toe and two friends at Hillsborough and Albert had been part of the thin blue line.
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New footage of police brutality uncovered
Now, The Times has some incriminating footage:
The Metropolitan Police is examining new footage of alleged violence by a police officer at the G20 demonstrations earlier this month. Video material and still photographs appear to show an officer swiping at a woman with the back of his hand before drawing an extendable baton and striking her on the legs. Scotland Yard said the actions of the officer in the video raised “immediate concerns”. The Met said that it would identify the officer in the footage urgently and was “in the process of referring the incident to the IPCC”.
More at the BBC.
Update: The officer has now been suspended. (h/t Will)
And that would be the same IPCC that kept changing its story.
Mark Pack:
First the IPCC said CCTV footage relating to Ian Tomlinson being hit by police was given to them by Channel 4. Then the IPCC said actually there were no CCTV cameras covering the incident. Then the IPCC said actually, yes there were cameras but none of them were working. And today the IPCC brings us its fourth version: “The police watchdog has said its chairman [Nick Hardwick] was wrong to say there was no CCTV footage of an alleged police assault at the G20 protests”
So eventually the IPCC did turn up CCTV footage which wasn’t available for earlier some reason.
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Police ‘pre-emptive strike’ against protest
The Guardian reports:
Police have carried out what is thought to be the biggest pre-emptive raid on environmental campaigners in British history, arresting 114 people believed to be planning direct action at a coal-fired power station. The arrests – for conspiracy to commit criminal damage and aggravated trespass – come amid growing concern among protesters about increased police surveillance and infiltration by informers.
…
Last night campaigners said police were photographing and stopping people entering and leaving public meetings and the offices of the lobby group Greenpeace.
…
Last month a Guardian investigation revealed police were targeting thousands of political campaigners in surveillance operations at events including the Climate Camp, and storing their details on a database for at least seven years.
More: John Sauven on CIF / Indymedia.
“Not only have we saved the world”*… it’s green hard-hat time
The circus has left town again. Obama, Hu, Lula and Sarkozy are moving on to their next diary dates, as are the black-clad Guerrigilieri Anomali. So what to make of the G20?
We had thousands of people in green hard hats out on the massive, peaceful march last Saturday — we’ve been teaming up with the unions and NGOs and bombarding officials and leaders with campaigns for weeks, we delivered our G20 campaigns in person to Number 10 and to Dominique Strauss-Kahn (“DSK”, who heads up the now-supersized IMF)… and I still wasn’t sure how much we were getting through the noise.
But when I look at the big picture, you know what?
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The siege of Climate Camp
There is an old anarchist saying: the state creates the violence which it uses to justify its existence. Like a lot of anarchist sayings, it is an exaggeration of the truth. But it nevertheless contains a partial truth. If you needed evidence of this truth, one only had to be present at the G20 Climate Change Camp in Bishopsgate on April 1, 2009.
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Earth Hour this Saturday
Earth Hour is taking place this Saturday 28th March 2009. At 8.30pm around the world, people, businesses and iconic buildings around the world will switch off their lights for an hour, making a statement to the world’s governments for more urgent and effective action on global warming. If you want to be part of this global message, then why not take part and / or sign up to show your support.
You can also embed this nifty light switch widget (see top right), or use one of the videos or banners that are available. Every contribution, no matter how small you think it might be, is important.
Greens need to learn how to grow
Last week Sian Berry, the Green candidate for London Mayor, picked a fight with some of the Grand Old Men of the green movement over their ambivalence about nuclear power.
On her blog, she referred to the Grand Old Men as: “…chaps [who] have a few physical and biographical characteristics in common, largely a tendency to be over 45 with the haircut of a WW2 fighter pilot and the experience to know better than play so crudely into the hands of an industry on the make.”
This drew a spectacularly bitter response from George Monbiot, who announced that he was so cross at this “stupidity” that he’d have to think very carefully about whether he could bring himself to vote Green in the future.
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Climate change deniers are ‘flat earthers’ and ‘ridiculous’
I was at a DFID conference yesterday on how the government and NGOs were responding to the economic crisis, global development and climate change. I had the opportunity to ask Lord Stern, who prepared the highly influential Stern Report in 2007, some questions.
Lord Stern, quite rightly in my view, poured scorn on a New York conference this week for climate change deniers.
I wrote it up for the Guardian today:
Climate change deniers are “ridiculous” and akin to “flat-earthers”, according to Sir Nicholas Stern, who advised the government about the economic threat posed by global warming. The respected economist compared climate naysayers to those who deny the link between smoking and cancer or HIV and Aids in the face of mounting scientific evidence.
His comments came in response to news that the Czech president Václav Klaus would this week attend a New York conference of climate change naysayers from around the world. Stern said Klaus was “totally confused on this issue” and liked to “gather rather confused people around him”.
Lord Stern offered some excellent responses, and the last bit is amusing. Here’s the transcript to the short interview.
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No turning back for Britain
The leaders of all three main parties want us to turn back as soon as possible to the failed ideas of the pre-crash. We think this would be a huge mistake; with this in mind Neal Lawson and John Harris have written a major essay (for the New Statesman) to kick start a national debate about our country’s future: Polly Toynbee wrote about this over the weekend and now we want visitors of Liberal Conspiracy to join this important discussion.
New times demand new politics.
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More good news from the USA
CNN reports:
President Obama on Tuesday overturned a last-minute Bush administration regulation that many environmentalists claim weakened the Endangered Species Act. The regulation, issued a few weeks before George W. Bush left office, made it easier for federal agencies to skip consultations with government scientists before launching projects that could affect endangered wildlife.
By overturning the regulation, Obama said during an enthusiastic reception at the Interior Department, he had restored “the scientific process to its rightful place at the heart of the Endangered Species Act, a process undermined by past administrations.”
Whoop whoop!
By the way, I’m also in favour of the Afghan surge strategy, but haven’t had the time to write why.
How can we build a coalition on progressive issues?
One of the big challenges for progressives is how we connect up campaigning on different issues to build effective coalitions for change. This is central to the mission of Liberal Conspiracy, recognizing that there are too few spaces where progressives from different perspectives come together to forge strategies for change.
The recession now brings this into sharp focus. There may be an opportunity to challenge the dominance of deregulation, to question inequality at the very top, and remake the public case for the role of the state.
Another instinct will be ‘charity begins at home’: the enormous effects on the developing world of rising food and energy prices have been a very minor theme of political and media discussion given a financial crisis and economic recession. This is the crucial year for a post-Kyoto climate change deal – by Copenhagen this December. Will the deal we need be credit crunched?
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Well done John McDonnell
At least there’s a few MPs still left in Labour willing to get angry.
A Labour MP has been suspended from the House of Commons for five days after angry exchanges over the decision to approve a new Heathrow runway. John McDonnell was sanctioned after he picked up the mace, the ornamental club which represents the royal authority of Parliament, in a breach of protocol.
See the video here, and his explanation here. The economic case against Heathrow expansion was made well by Simon Jenkins recently, let alone the environmental case.
Third runway given go-ahead
The BBC is reporting that: “Ministers have approved a controversial plan to build a third runway at Heathrow, the BBC understands. Despite opposition from residents, environmental campaigners and many of its own MPs, Labour is set to confirm the decision officially on Thursday.”
Government spending: what people want to cut
One interesting question in the most recent YouGov survey (pdf) asked people to decide “If the Government did decide to cut back on its plans for spending, which two or three of these would you most like it to cut?”
The answers should give all of us some pause for thought.
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» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civil cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
» Is this the end for the socialist left?
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