Newspapers feeding the anti-politics mood
Nine formidable broadsheet pages in the Daily Telegraph yesterday morning were devoted to forensic analysis of the expenses claims of cabinet members. Only the most diehard political anoraks will read every last line; this is hardly a subject of much intrinsic fascination.
At one level, this is propaganda directed against Labour, and highly effective propaganda, too, coming as the culmination of months of revelations about spare bedrooms, bath plugs and cable television porno flicks.
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Private Eye on McBride / Guido saga
This piece was published in the latest fortnightly edition of Private Eye. I thought it was too interesting and delicious to pass up and wrote it up since it’s not available to link online. It does a great job of capturing the hypocrisy of all involved. Those bored by this saga look away now….
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Blog Standard (1 – 14 May 2009, page 5)
Congratulations to blogger Paul Staines on his spectacular scoop with the McBride/Draper emails. Congratulations too for his belated realisation of the superiority of the “dead tree press” in choosing to print not a word from them on his own “Guido Fawkes” website and hand them over instead to the Sunday Times and News of the World.
That allowed Rupert Murdoch’s lawyers to take on the legal risks and the potential costs over which the fearless Fawkes had been fretting for some time as well as allowing for the addition of a good dose of the hypocrisy and humbug against which his blog is dedicated.
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Tips for twenty-first century activists.
Last night, I came home from one of the most frustrating activist meetings I’ve ever been to, and that’s really saying something. Since then, I’ve been drawing up a list of ideas for how the left can move forwards from this position of constant kvetching, infighting and failing to get anything fucking done because of factionism. Please feel free to add your own!
1. This is not a souped-up 60s battle reenactment. Your enemy is never, not ever, the group along from you who happen to disagree with you on one small point of policy, however important you believe that policy is. And if we can’t put disagreements aside and focus on larger issues, if we can’t play nicely with all the other little activists and anarchists, then we’ll all be going to bed without our revolution.
2. On the other hand, this is not Woodstock. We do not all have to get along, hold hands in a circle and think about rainbows in order to work together. That’s not what successful politics is about – just take a look at the right wing factions dominating governments all over the world. They hate each other’s guts, but it works, because they can all agree on common goals like submerging abortion rights and keeping themselves in power. Internal debate and personal disagreements are part of life, and we need to be mature enough not to get bogged down in flame wars if we’re going to take these bastards on. Just because someone across the table from you doesn’t agree with your economic analysis/position on sex work/ does not make them your enemy. Not when you have a common enemy to contend with. continue reading… »
Our campaign to Defend Peaceful Protest launches
Guest post by Guy Aitchison and Andy May
Tomorrow morning the Metropolitan Police Authority meets for the first time since the policing of the G20 protests. We will be there along with other members of a new campaign group, Defend Peaceful Protest, to question the Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson on how he plans to ensure the kind of brutal and intimidatory police tactics used in the City on April 1st, which resulted in the death of one man, hundreds of assaults and the systematic violation of the rights of thousands to peaceful protest and assembly, aren’t repeated.
We now have had confirmation that the Chief Executive of the MPA will receive the following questions submitted by us:
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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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What can we do about sleaze?
This extract from Jackie Ashley’s column a couple of weeks ago struck me:
You might think that after the Jacqui Smith pay-movie story and multi-homed minister Geoff Hoon we must have plumbed the depths of “politicians on the take” stories. You’d be wrong. Tens or hundreds of thousands of claims by MPs are shortly to be released publicly. Most are unexceptional and within the rules. But according to plugged-in government sources, some are “awful, just worse than you can imagine” and likely to destroy careers.
Voters are going to be furious at some of the wheezes used. I am told that many of the 1997 intake of MPs have been particularly brazen. Incumbents at the next election are going to face opponents waving copies of their expense claims. The cost of DVDs, sofas, garden gnomes and nights out will crowd centre-stage, elbowing aside quantitative easing and the future of higher education. If I’m right, and some MPs are forced out this year, then we may see damaging byelections following what will surely be bad local and European elections for Labour. Even those who stay on will face a higher than usual toll of unseated MPs when the general election comes.
….my first thought was that voters should not only elect an MP at a General Election but also determine their salary and expenses.
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An open letter to the Evening Standard
Guest post by Guy Aitchison of Our Kingdom
I received an email yesterday from the Evening Standard Letters page asking me to comment on Sir Paul Stephenson’s response to the fallout from the G20 protests and the article in the Guardian by former Met commander David Gilbertson blaming a systemic crisis of leadership in the force for police violence.
I took the opportunity to point out the remarkable shift in editorial policy at the Standard in the short number of weeks since the protests. So far there has been almost no self-reflection by the media on their pernicious role in hyping up the prospect of violence in the run up to the G20 and then uncritially reporting, and, in the case of the Standard it seems, exaggerating the police’s version of events in ways that smeared protesters.
Here’s the letter anyway.
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It’s time for socialists to rejoin the Labour party
Labour’s defeat in the 2010 election is a near-certainty – and it’s also clear that the defeat will come for two main reasons:
1) the economy is shafted
2) everyone hates the leadership
All the other factors being claimed as reasons for the impending defeat are a subset of the points here (indeed, arguably 1 is a subset of 2 – it’s a lot easier to excuse the government’s other failures if you aren’t being thrown out of work and having your house repossessed at the time).
And together, they lay the foundations for the defeat of the New Labour project and the resurgence of the Labour left.
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Police, Camera, Action
David at Minority Report offers some words of warning, regarding the slow trickle of citizen generated footage of alleged brutality at the G20 protests earlier this month:
Reconstructing events by using any number of restricted viewpoints is no replacement for vital missing facts. If I present you with a black box that contains a photo I made of a scene, I’ll happily let you make as many pin holes as you like – you will still struggle to make out whats going on. Especially if I choose the image.
Different circumstances, but I felt this way after Saddam Hussein was executed. There is a real danger in allowing snippets of grainy amateur footage to act as the definitive account of an event. The result in this case has been yet another trial by media, only this time the police seem to be on the receiving end. In reality, we have no way of knowing precisely what killed Ian Tomlinson, and the account of the Nicky Fisher assault makes me uneasy (although admittedly this feeling is entirely based on her sightly spaced-out media interviews). continue reading… »
Why I’m throwing the gauntlet down to our councils
Last week I launched Mash the State, a national campaign to get government data to the people. It’s not a new idea but our method is. We’ll be setting up a series of challenges to the public sector, asking one group of public bodies at a time to release one specific set of data.
Our first challenge asks all local councils to serve up an RSS news feed by Christmas. I wouldn’t have bet good money in 2003 that by 2009 370 councils would still be without RSS, but here we are. I’ve thrown the gauntlet down and I’m pleased to see that a couple of hundred people have signed up to our website or followed us on Twitter to help make this happen.
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Westminster Gravy Train (C4 tonight)
In May 2008, freedom-of-information campaigner Heather Brooke won a court battle that should have prompted the release of all politicians’ expense claims. A year later, with those expenses still to be published and the flow of leaked information ever increasing, Heather studies the information that is available to piece together a forensic insight into how public money is being spent.
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Event: Public talk on Bill of Rights
Justice Minister Michael Wills MP gives his first public speech on Tuesday 21 April, 1-2pm, for the British Institute of Human Rights, since the publication of the Government’s Green Paper on Rights and Responsibilities.
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Tomlinson’s death not heart attack
This is breaking (and major) news.
A new post mortem says Ian Tomlinson died from an abdominal haemorrhage not a heart attack after contact with police during the G20 protests.
The statement from the City of London Coroners Court overturns the initial assessment that the newspaper seller died of natural causes.
Update: Guardian – Tomlinson officer faces manslaughter quiz
Update 2:
- NUJ considers legal action over photographers
- G20 officer quizzed after death
- G20 victim ‘died from haemorrhage’
- Disturbing parallels with Charles De Menzes
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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Rightwing response to police brutality
In a rare example of agreement on an issue – I fully agree with what Graeme Archer has said on CentreRight about the latest incident, and earlier ones. He writes a list of recommendations I’d endorse and I believe should be pushed by all fair-minded people on the matter.
Update: Graeme responds below (caught by spam filter earlier)
Police ‘action and tactics’ investigated
The IPCC have sent us this press release today.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is to independently investigate the incident connected to the G20 demonstrations involving a sergeant of the Metropolitan Police Service Territorial Support Group apparently striking a woman.
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Statebook: because knowledge is power
How much data is held about you by government? Who can get hold of it? What else do they want to know about? And what do we need to do to stop it?
There are a growing number of large government databases. You’re on them. You probably don’t know who might look at that information, how safe the data is or if the databases themselves might contravene your rights.
That’s why Open Rights Group has launched a new spoof Statebook tries to show, based on the JRRT / FIPR Database State report.
Above all though, we want you to act: the next big project, Intercept Modernisation (IMP), will be on the cards in the next few months, will further threaten your rights. IMP is about amassing even more of your communications data, and making it easier to access and analyse– possibly by placing the data in one enormous state database of your email traffic, phone calls, VIP and Facebook messages.
The tide is turning on civil liberties: across the political spectrum, people have had enough. Clause 152 showed enormous public concern, and the government backed down. Visit the site, and take a first step to stop more snooping on the internet by emailing your MP.
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.
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Last night campaigners said police were photographing and stopping people entering and leaving public meetings and the offices of the lobby group Greenpeace.
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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.
A closer examination of Daniel Hannan’s favourite think-tank
It is worth looking more closely at the work of ‘Progressive Vision‘, the “campaigning liberal think-tank” to which Daniel Hannan sources his questionable expertise on the NHS.
It has a great deal to advocate and likes to be heard. But it is very difficult to find the basis on which it is advocated.
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Who’s to blame for the accidental death?
Both Shuggy and Chris Dillow are right in pointing out that the police treatment of Ian Tomlinson was far from shocking, as some others have claimed.
If anything, the officer who violently pushed him over when there was no need whatsoever to do so was taking part in some of the less dangerous action with the protesters that day. As long as Tomlinson didn’t hit his head, and from the video it seems that he didn’t, a push like that is only likely to result in grazed or cut knees and hands, along with the temporary shock that comes from being bundled over when you’re not expecting it. The cracking of heads which other officers were engaged in all day, causes far more potential for concern.
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