A year after the "fair tips" law, restaurant workers are still being robbed

In December last year, I commented on how changes in the law on tips paid to service sector workers hadn't prevented abuse by employers. This remains an ongoing issue, and has recently sparked protests from members of Unite the Union a year after the ineffectual change in the law.

The Brighton Solidarity Federation offers a fuller report and analysis;

The beginning of October saw the first anniversary of a change in the law designed to give waiters 100% of their tips. It was brought in because many café and restaurant owners were routinely taking advantage of a loophole in the law which allowed them to use their workers’ tips towards the wage bill. Despite being rewarded by customers with extra money for their hard graft, waiters were being paid only the minimum wage by unscrupulous managers.

The then Labour government, prompted by campaigns by Unite the Union, passed the law on 1st October 2009. But one year on, there are still problems front of house. According to Dave Turnbull of Unite, “There are still too many employers who regard tips as a subsidy for low pay and who see the tips and service charge money left by customers as a pot of cash to which they are free to help themselves.

“Unite members working in restaurants, hotels and bars across the country have seen establishments increase the percentage of service charge they deduct from their pay packets.”

Unite’s response to this is to propose further campaigns to get the government to act to put pressure on employers. Some of their members protested outside the Business Department last week, supported by no less than John Prescott, famous ex-shop steward and waiter in the merchant navy – now Lord Prescott.

However, what this demonstrates is the fact that the law is a paper tiger. For a year now the law has demanded that waiters get all of their tips – but employers know that they can find ways to get around it. The law also says that workers must be paid in full for work done – but as the Solidarity Federation has learnt recently rogue employers in Brighton are ignoring this and using the recession as an excuse not to pay up.

No amount of pleading to the government will change this situation. The only sure way of getting what we are legally entitled to is to demand it directly from our bosses in our own workplaces. Workers facing this kind of threat to their livelihoods need to stand together to demand their full wages and tips. This should be backed up with the threat of industrial action appropriate to the situation.

Brighton SolFed offer support to workers in their area looking to enact such threats, and they are not the only group willing to give a hand to workers trying to organise for the first time. The Industrial Workers of the World are also worth contacting, offering a wealth of knowledge, and experience to fellow workers in struggle.

Now, more than ever, we need to build a culture of solidarity across the working class, so that when the ruling class mess with one of us, they’re messing with all of us.

Why unemployment is not caused by worker organisation

In a 2003 paper (PDF) for the London School of Economics, Christopher A Pissarides argued that "the decline of trade union power" is one of the reasons for falling unemployment in Britain. Seven years later, this has been dredged up with much glee by the "Libertarian" blogosphere.

The Devil's Knife sums up the basic reasoning behind this;

Unions, in this day and age, exist to do only two things: inflate wages and protect their members' jobs (regardless of ability or need).

High wages reduce the number of jobs that are created—especially as technology becomes cheaper—and making it difficult to sack people not only means that jobs can be occupied by those who are not best suited to them, but also reduces the willingness of employers to take people on in the first place (thus reducing the available jobs).

This isn't exactly rocket science, is it?

It's not rocket science, indeed. But then it's not a science at all - it's economics, which is the business of blinding people to the obvious to suit the interests of certain classes.

I have already, previously, torn down the Devil's argument that worker organisation has no place or purpose in the present day. It is, quite simply, an absurdity and I feel no need to labour the point here. Suffice to say that workers, without organisation, face only a race to the bottom.

In fact, you will find this by going back to the writings of Adam Smith. Whilst workers "are disposed to combine in order to raise" wages, bosses are equally disposed to combine "in order to lower the wages of labour." More than that, "the masters can hold out much longer" than the workers if employment ceases. They can exist "upon the stocks which they have already acquired" from the labour of others.

The difference is that, in Smith's time, there was "a certain rate below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any considerable time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest species of labour." The "wages must at least be sufficient to maintain" the workforce.

With the advent of cheap credit, that is no longer the case. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (PDF), "a couple with two children needs [to earn] £29,200" in order "to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living." But many don't earn that. And many more have to work multiple jobs and live hand-to-mouth in order to barely scrape that figure.

Add to that the casualisation and ever cheaper labour that comes from un-organised workers, and the idea of a level below which employers cannot reduce wages quickly vanishes. Compared to previous generations, we are working for less - and harder.

Returning to the argument that strong unions increase unemployment, this may be true to a certain extent. But if lower wages mean more jobs, at what cost does that come? Talk to those stuck in precisely the casual work that such a market creates, such as Chugging, and you will see that trapped is exactly the right descriptor to use.

They have no base wages. They have no statutory entitlements. Attempts to assert their rights or to combine will see a target on their back and their arses out the door. They endure appalling conditions, for pitiful return, and often can find nothing better because of the declining standards of work.

Is this really an acceptable alternative to unemployment? Is this really the alleged prosperity created by the free market and the employers enjoying an unopposed monopoly of force?

The idea that high wages and job security leave those not employd out in the cold is an argument put forward in the past by Milton Friedman. In Free to Choose, he argued that unionisation frequently produces higher wages at the expense of fewer jobs, and that, if some industries are unionised while others are not, wages will decline in non-unionised industries.

But, from the left, this is a point that the Industrial Workers of the World (amongst others) make - in favour of more universal organisation!

One of the major left-libertarian criticisms of craft or trade unionism is that by organising along the lines of specific crafts or trades rather than across entire industries it creates a two-tier workforce and improves conditions for one group of workers only at the expense of another.

The alternative to this is not to get rid of organisation and equalise everything with a race to the bottom. That only benefits the bosses and makes the problem more acute.

Rather, the answer is to organise workers as a class, to unite everyone in any given industry under the same banner, and to challenge the broader injustices of the wage labour system. Rather than defending one insider group to the detriment of everybody else.

Part of which would involve pushing for greater investment and employment, both inside the workplace and outside through the organisation of the unemployed, to challenge exactly that issue.

But none of this increases the power and privilege of the ruling and propertied class, and so you won't here the right-wing (least of all self-styled "Libertarians") arguing for it. As Adam Smith noted so long ago, the combinations of the masters go unremarked upon, viewed as entirely natural, whilst the combination of workers is derided and scorned as the physical manifestation of evil or madness.

Unemployment is the product of an economic system built on theft and artificial scarcity. Those who would have us believe that combining to challenge that system is the real fault do so only because of ideological dogma. And, to be frank, they can fuck right off.

Anarcho-blogging roundup #4

Once again, I'm out of the city and away from the computer. Not that I lead (or have the money to lead) a jet-set lifestyle of any sort, you understand. A three-day training course in Manchester isn't quite the same as swanning off to the south of France for the weekend.

But anyway, in my absence, here's a quick tour around the anarchist and left-libertarian blogosphere. With, for the pedantic amongst you, a few stops at blogs that don't neccesarily self-identify as such.

@ndy comments on his own "outing" on Stormfront. He also offers us an obituary for the Australian Defence League, some more insights into Australia's "nutzis," and an interesting 2008 documentary called Antifa: Chasseurs de Skins.

Ian Bone has had an inspiring day out in Norwich in support of justice for Ian Tomlinson.

Molly Mew reports on the second organised Wal-Mart in North America, and some airport God-Botherer bothering whilst Ann Arky comments on the Spanish General Strike and protests in France. Cactus Mouth talks about the shape of British Democracy.

Over in the world of media blogging, Angry Mob tears apart the Daily Mail's polemic on asylum seekers, and reports on a rather interesting Twitter exchange involving Duncan Bannatyn from Dragon's Den. Whilst Adam Ford reviews Jack London's The Iron Heel and Nick Cave's The Death of Bunny Munro.

Aethelred the unread comments on the difficulties of finding blogging inspiration, and what it's like to find out he's "probably" not autistic.

Julia is back and on top form at Ten Minutes Hate, telling Gillet and Hicks to do one from Liverpool FC and advises readers to accept no half measures. Her considerable rant on sweat is also worth a look-in.

Quiet Riot Girl is scribbling on Foucault's walls (two links). Seán has had a script leaked to him about Yates of the Yard.

Where's the Benefit offer an easy way to protest your MP, and a series of thoughts on Mental Health Day. Bendy Girl talks about finding work [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. And Mr Civil Libertarian tells us why Real Welfare Queens wear Armani Suits, not tracksuits.

Finally, leading people over to my other blog, I shamelessly urge a read of Children, sex, and the age of consent, Atheism and all the things it's not, and Some thoughts on fascism and loyalism.

The picture on this blog comes via Ian Bone. And I'll finish with the observation that, if all of that isn't enough to keep you occupied, then you have too much time on your hands and really, really need a hobby. Or a pet.

Putting a new spin on "bank robbery"

Via Ann Arky, who tips her own hat to Politics in the Zeros, I today came across this truly astounding story from the States;

In yet another sign that the foreclosure crisis in the US may be getting out of hand, a Florida woman has gone to the press about having her home broken into -- by an agent of her mortgage bank.

Nancy Jacobini of Orange County, Florida, says she was three months behind on her mortgage payments, but not in foreclosure, when she heard an intruder breaking into her home. 

Panicked, she called 911 and spent 10 nervous minutes on the phone with a dispatcher only to discover that the intruder was an agent of her mortgage company, JPMorganChase, who had come to change the locks on her home.

"Someone is breaking ... somebody broke into my house!" a frightened Jacobini can be heard saying on a 911 tape obtained by WTFV channel 9 in Jacksonville.

Now, I'm hardly a legal expert, but I know for a fact that this was an illegal act not only on the part of the burglar, but also the bank that hired them.

In Britain, even with a repossession order, bailiffs cannot force entry into your home. They must be invited or go through an open door or window. In America, I don't know if that same protection applies. But certainly, when a home is not in foreclosure and there is no possession order, they have no right to be there.

As Politics in the Zeros comments, "it’s getting so hard to tell the difference between organized crime and bankers now."

The solution recommended by Tickerguy is to "buy guns." He points out that in such a situation, many Americans "have every right under the law to stop him, up to and including the use of deadly force." I'm not sure I'd go that far, but there certainly is a case for greater community self-defence.

To cite a point I've made previously;

Groups such as Neighbourhood Watch are nothing more than gatherings of curtain twitchers, thinking they can make a community safer by putting stickers on lamp posts or acting as killjoys towards local kids. But there is no reason that people couldn't organise their neighbourhood along more radical lines, resisting thugs and repelling burglars without treating all kids as villains or getting embroiled in "keeping up with the Joneses" nonsense. Likewise, we need to advocate a defence of posession rather than or private property, recognising that defending your home and attacking private property are not oppositional acts but both a part of working class self-defence.

If we've reached the point where banks are willing to hire people to break into your home before they can lawfully repossess it, then this argument only becomes more urgent.

Graduate tax off, but students still about to be screwed

Back in July, business secretary Vince Cable proposed to solve the problem of tuition fees with a graduate tax. Needless to say many, including my other half, thought this another way of pricing the poor out of higher education. Now, it seems that the government has responded to this feeling.

However, as so often in politics, the good news is just sugar-coating for the bad;

Vince Cable has admitted the government will not make any move towards a graduate tax to fund universities.

Tory and Lib Dem members are to receive an e-mail explaining the decision in a move that will be seen as preparing the ground for a hike in tuition fees.

Lord Browne's review of fees in England is expected to recommend more than doubling fees to about £7,000 a year.

Yes, because lord knows that students don't come out of university in enough debt as it is. The figure is currently set to reach an average of £25,000 per student, and will only grow exponentially as fees are hiked up.

We should add to that the fact that it is especially low-paying and casual jobs, i.e. those frequented by students to make extra cash, are seeing pay freezes or below-inflation rises, both of which amount to a cut in pay. Thus, whilst the money they will owe out is rising, the money they can rake in is steadily falling, which will further mount up the debts.

All of which is compounded by the fact that after university graduates are no longer able to make up for that by entering lucrative careers. Many are among the one in five workers who are trapped in low-paying employment, even long after they leave university.

This is a slap in the face to all those students who (naively) supported the Liberal Democrats for their tuition fees pledge. But it is also another example of what is really happening in the economy - with universities dragging more money out of students whilst cutting what they can get in return. The only beneficiaries of this will be those raking in the cash, as ever.

When the graduate tax was announced, the National Union of Students urged a "critical mass" to mobilise against the fees as "the arrogance of vice chancellors and the supine response of spineless politicians in the Labour and Tory parties must not go unchallenged."

But this is not just about students, as employees of the universities are affected by the same cuts. This is, in fact, a microcosm of the wider class struggle, wherein the interests of the workers and of the broader community don't simply overlap: they are virtually identical. It could also provide a model for how workplace and community resistance could work in tandem.

University staff need to get behind the students and support their actions, especially more radical ones such as occupations. At the same time, students must refuse point blank to cross a single staff picket line. It is only with solidarity, and coordinated militancy, that any victory can be won.

Reflections on antifascism at the end of a long day

Today, or rather yesterday given that I'm writing this after midnight, has been a long day. It began with a visit to the City Centre to see if the BNP would show themselves after last week's drubbing, and ended with a few pints after two neo-Nazis shat themselves. In between, there was a fair bit of marching.

In the spirit of lazy blogging, I'm not going to repeat here what others have already covered far better than I could anyway.

You can find coverage of the James Larkin march and rally (including a couple of videos I uploaded to YouTube for their use) over at the Liverpool Solidarity Federation site. The story of a couple of fascists fleeing the Swan after antifascists went in for a pint is up on the Liverpool Antifascists website.

But what I would like to offer one thought on is what happened in Leicester today. Or, rather, Hope not Hate's interpretation of events;

One of the main positives of the day was that the overwhelming majority of locals heeded advice and stayed away. Yesterday 700 turned up at our HOPE not hate peace vigil and we are hoping for even greater numbers for our community event tomorrow. It would have been understandable for local people to take to the streets to demonstrate their anger but wisely people decided that this was precisely what the EDL wanted.

I'm sorry, but what the fuck?

In Bradford, it was pretty solidly established that physical opposition was a vital part of keeping the EDL at bay. Liverpool Antifascists members saw that first-hand, at the event. Hell, I saw it from all the way over here in Liverpool.

In Leicester, the same was true. Hope not Hate had a peace vigil, did the EDL's scaremongering for them, and pissed off. UAF had a party nearby.

Meanwhile, the EDL broke out of their pen, and fought with locals - who were luckily organised for self-defence. Had they not been, then those who "refused to get provoked into violence" (Hope not Hate) and held "an impressive display of unity" (UAF) would have been guilty of leaving the people of Leicester to a gang of violent fascists.

The level of ignorance and insular thinking on display from both groups is staggering.

Nick Lowles of HnH reports that the EDL "randomly attacked young Asian and black people." But there is no thought at any point that this the problem that needs to be confronted, rather than briefly lamented before hopping off to a "peace vigil" to "turn your back on" the war on the streets.

UAF are more honest and acknowledge that "large numbers of local people came out to defend their local areas." But the idea that antifascists should be part of that never crosses their minds.

Luckily, although they try to monopolise the movement, and succeed at hogging the media limelight, neither organisation is the be-all and end-all of antifascism.

There are people willing to get out there, physically confront the fascists, and defend their streets and communites. They are antifascists. Anybody who doesn't do that, especially if in an organisation claiming to oppose the far-right, is quite simply a coward.

Quote of the day...

...has to go to Lord Hutton. [Contrary to an earlier version of this post, not the same Lord Hutton who conducted the David Kelly whitewash.]

Despite his pensions review recommending that public sector workers work longer and pay more to get less, there is at least part of him that realises the fallaciousness of his own proposals;

[The review] also busted some of the myths about these pensions. For example, that public service pensions are "gold-plated": the average pension paid to pensioner members is about £7,800 a year and about half of all public sector pensioners receive less than £5,600 a year. Overall, these pensions provide a modest – not excessive – level of retirement income. 

There is a gap between the public and private sectors in terms of pensions provision. But my own view is that we should be celebrating the high level of participation in pension schemes in the public sector, not seeking to follow the downward drift of pension savings in the private sector. Public sector pension reform must not become a race to the bottom. There would be hidden costs to the taxpayer in taking this course. 

The question now is, if he realises the myths and rejects the race to the bottom, just what is he playing at?

As PCS point out, although the interim report "support many of PCS’s assertions" to the contrary, the review is based on the premise "that public sector pensions are overly expensive and need to be cut back."

And yet still his proposals fly in the face of this point. If "the average pension paid to pensioner members is about £7,800 a year and about half of all public sector pensioners receive less than £5,600 a year," then why should they have to "pay more, work longer and still lose final salary payouts?" If the income pensioners receive is "modest," how is it also "unsustainable?"

Whatever myths Hutton may have "busted," and whatever neo-liberal dogmas he may "reject," Hutton is still building his proposals on the back of them. As PCS say, this is just "part of the government’s wider assault on the low-paid, the public sector and the welfare state."

Hutton is simply patting us on the back and offering us consolations before he gets stuck into the class war.

On Liverpool BNP's response to last Saturday's events

The Liverpool branch of the BNP have taken their time offering a write-up of their being run out of town on Saturday. They have obviously taken their time putting just the right spin on events to serve their purposes ... and still come up with semi-coherent garbage.

The new Liverpool BNP blog is far better presented than the Merseyside BNP one now controlled by the party's dissident "reformer" faction. But it is still a mess, not least because whoever writes it often forgets how to use hyperlinks and the text becomes clunky as you try to wade through web addresses thrown, seemingly at random, into the middle of sentences and paragraphs. If their aim is readability, they're self-sabotaging.

But anyway, returning to the main point, they begin with what is now a common refrain;

My companions and I are members of a legal, democratic political party and in our opinion the only alternative to global politics and world domination. Our Leader and local MEP Mr Nick Griffin has a mandate from nearly a million to serve the people of Merseyside and the North West. In fact it has just been announced Nick is the 2nd best performing MEP. Of course this to us is common knowledge but, of course media bias avoided this!
http://www.nickgriffinmep.eu/content/nick-second-best-performing-north-west-mep

It goes almost without saying that nobody has ever claimed that the BNP are "illegal," since to qualify as such you have to be proscribed by the Home Secretary. And if they want to believe that the BNP is the only viable alternative to the status quo, that's up to them - though I and many others beg to differ.

But the idea that they are "democratic" needs to be challenged. The recent farce of their leadership challenge demonstrated just what a dictatorial stranglehold Nick Griffin has on power in the BNP. Though I'm no fan of them either, the Labour Party had an open and fair leadership election, and many of the failed contenders will now be part of Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet.

Not so the BNP. Those who supported Eddy Butler have been suspended or expelled. The other challenger, Richard Barnbrook, has been booted. High-profile critics of Griffin - such as Lee Barnes - have jumped ship. And Griffin's personality cult has been cleansed of "spies," "homosexuals," and "cranks."

As for Griffin's "mandate" to represent Liverpool - it was only that the vote was across the entire North West that he scraped in. Those million votes didn't come from this city.

I pointed this out at the time of his "victory;"

In the North West, the increase in BNP support was marginal. They barely upped their share of the vote to 7.96%, just ahead of the Greens' 7.63%. In Liverpool, meanwhile, the locale of the defining moments in their North West campaign - from the arrest of 12 activists for inciting racial hatred in distributing the Racism Cuts Both Ways leaflets to prominent Merseyside BNP members Peter Tierney and Steve Greenhalgh's vicious assault on local anti-fascists - they polled at just 6.4%.

Moreover, "an incredibly low overall turnout, contrasted with the generally high turnout the BNP pushes for amongst its supporters, suggests that 6% may be an overestimation of BNP support in the city."

The events of this Saturday, and the similar occurrence a fortnight before that, bear this point out.

But the BNP, as you might expect, tell that differently too. The fact that "the general public are in full support of this campaign and most flock to sign our petition" can be boiled down to the fact that the public - including antifascists - are overwhelmingly anti-war.

But whilst those on the left try to do something about it, from enormous marches and support of deserters to direct action such as that of the EDO decommissioners, the BNP use the issue to hide their politics.

To labour the point, the "petition" they're touting is not a petition at all. As Griffin admits on the BNP website, it is part of a recruitment campaign, and those who sign up will only succeed in lining themselves up for his begging letters and BNP postal votes. Not to mention that, per their election manifesto, they would happily still leave "our boys" to die in that war if they felt it "in the national interest."

But I often wonder whether the BNP activists involved in this are deliberately masking the truth or  if they are utterly delusional.

They consider the chants of antifascists to be "government induced." And, despite the disproportionate arrest and harassment of antifascists and youth, their post rails against "the (left-wing, common-purpose ordained) Police," "the baying ‘Sponsored Anarchist’ crowd," and "the obvious ‘State protected’ confidence, which has been bestowed on these Anarchists." [sic, ad infinitum]

Hyperbole and excessive use of randomly-aligned adverbs aside, this betrays the cultish, barnpot mentality of those deepest in the mire of the far-right.

For them, there are only two sides: themselves, and the student-liberal-hippy-ethnic-politically-correct-common-purpose-communist-Marxist-anarchist-unwashed-left. Who are, naturally, all sponsored by the state. And "middle class" - despite being "unwashed."

Liverpool BNP tried to articulate this reasoning in "Meditations on a Lefty Mob "Demo""[sic];

all the UAF and Socialist librarian gimps had concentrated at the Echo Arena to perform a demo for the public and Media against the ConDem ‘Government’ in No. 10. However, on hearing that the nefarious BNP had the audacity to hold a Day of Action in Liverpool Town Centre Comrade McFadden hastened into the town centre. Surely enough there was the BNP! How dare they confront this glorious regime! http://www.stopcp.com/index.php Comrade McFadden was on the phone immediately.

...

Now whilst most ordinary folk seem to agree with the sentiment ‘Bring Our Boys Home’ the elite had other ideas and by mid morning Comrade McFadden had arrived and was on the phone to his government rent-a-mob. ... Then lo and behold The Government cash funded UAF and Socialist Workers Party and a few of the old Hatton Militant hard-liners abandoned the [Liberal Democrat] Party Conference to perform a merry dance around the BNP table top instead!!! Thus exposing the public to a performance of what it really is-a Thespian parade for the controlled Tabloids and Media.

So, because left-wing activists had abandoned a protest against the Liberal Democrats to protest the BNP, we are all of course in the pay of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. And protesting against them as a show for the media.

In reality, the "demo" was actually a small gathering aimed at lobbying attendees of the conference, attended by 20-ish people. The main march and protest was the next day and attended by a throng of several thousand people. But the idea that somebody can oppose both the present government and a fascist party such as the BNP is apparently really far-fetched. Or something.

Likewise, it would seem that opposing the BNP makes you no longer a local to anywhere they happen to be. Unless you're a member of an ethnic minority.

According to the wisdom of the BNP;

only about 5% of them are actually from Liverpool, and that 5% are ethnics. The rest are students from outside so they can by no means speak on behalf of the people of Liverpool!

Except that I am a white, working class person who holds a full-time job, was born in Liverpool and has lived here all his life, and I was amongst the crowd opposing the BNP. Unless I and my fellow white, working class, antifascist Scousers imagined the whole thing, of course.

I'd also point out that, as an anarchist, I was no doubt in a minority amongst the antifascist crowd. But it would no doubt fall on deaf and wilfully ignorant ears.

I'm not going to Fisk the entire article, because I have better things to do with my time. But it should be pointed out that there were no "indiscriminate[?] members of the public standing in the crowd observing this situation and then fearlessly challenging this mob’s week[sic] argument."

The BNP themselves would only get in the faces of kids, whilst members of Liverpool Antifascists would engage with passers-by and could hold our own in debate easily enough. Far from "watch[ing] the agitators shrivel when confronted with common sense debate," all the BNP could do was shout "fuck off" and call us "paedophiles."

Likewise, when "one of the protesters was caught by one of our group, and by the Police, vandalising our equipment," it was actually a young lad who hooked his mp3 player up to their loud-hailer so that it played rap! Whether it should be classed as "vandalism" or music is entirely subjective, I guess.

Thus, the writer of this pathetic diatribe may "honestly believe the UAF are above the law and they know it," but I wouldn't take his word for it since I doubt his grip on reality.

He rounds of his semi-coherent rant thus;

Is this the price we pay for being a Patriot in Britain today? The true concept of ‘democracy’ has been lost. Anyone who supports an opinion different from the Government/State is demonised. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx2YLFyp43Q&feature=player_embedded The media have aided the Government in the sanctioning of attacks on Nationalists/Patriots. There is and has always been a media bias against Nationalistic endeavours. http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=1253

We are now, no-longer safe in our own land. Am I frightened? Yes, I am terrified for our Country’s future but I am awake and I cannot turn away from what is happening to my beautiful Land.

This ‘politically–correct’ Regime, is empowering alien cultures, at the expense of our’s. Are we not the Host-Nation ?

My Grandfather went to War for this Land and my Great Grandfather was in the trenches. I cannot stand by and let Traitors and fiends deliver this Land into the hands of foreigners. I will not apologise to Blacks for my Great British History. If I am to be condemned for loving my own culture, so be it! And if you want to call me names for trying to stop MY People becoming second class citizens in our own country, feel free. I don’t care.

In MY heart I am a Patriot-British till the end. The blood of the ethnic English runs through my veins. Onwards and upwards!

Well, he may be right about a couple of things. But the manifestation of the state demonising dissidents, i.e. left-wing activists being filmed, photographed, and documented as "domestic extremists," is utterly at odds with his view of us being "above the law."

If the BNP wants to think of us as "government-sponsored" and "traitors," that's their call. But the evidence doesn't bear it out.

We're not asking them to "apologise to Blacks for my Great British History," or "condemn[ing them] for loving [their] own culture." We're challenging their advancement of a fascist ideology rooted in bigotry and political violence.

"National interest" - the salad dressing for class warfare

In his speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham today, David Cameron invoked a chestnut much beloved of governments and political leaders. "The national interest." Meant to rally the people in the spirit of nationalism, it becomes the totem behin which injustices lie.

The injustice in the present, of course, being the cuts agenda and the ramping up of the class war. But as so many face increased hardship, we need to bear it with "broad shoulders."

Or as the slogan-ridden rhetoric would have it;

So come on – let's pull together. Let's come together.

Let's work, together, in the national interest.

Which is rich, coming from a smug bastard whose wife can afford to ponce around in a £750 Paul Smith dress. If "those with broader shoulders should bear a greater load," why are people on benefits affected at all? And where is Cameron's pay cut?

This is yet more inane, infuriating drivel from the man who coated concessions to private tyranny in the language of the libertarian left with his "Big Society."

On which subject, Cameron patronises us with "the spirit that will take us through" to that Society;

It's the spirit of activism, dynamism, people taking the initiative, working together to get things done.

Sometimes that spirit gets taken a little too far. I got a letter from a six-year-old girl called Niamh with a pound coin stuck to it. And there was a note from her mum, which said: "Dear Mr Cameron ... after hearing about the budget, Niamh wanted to send you her tooth fairy money to help."

There we are, George – nearly there. Niamh: thank you.

Niamh Riley is, alas, very real. And she - or rather, her parents on her behalf - really did send David Cameron £1 in a card to "make the country better and pay for jobs."

Aside from being cringeworthy to the nth degree, this demonstrates exactly the kind of misinformation the public are receiving about what's going on. Cameron had to send back the pound because of strict rules on accepting donations to Number 10. But if he hadn't, it wouldn't have been spent to save jobs.

Indeed, part of the problem we face is that - after spending billions to prop up institutions to prop up institutions which created the present crisis by gambling with a bubble non-existent money - the government are unwilling to spend any money to keep the real economy afloat. The consequences of which can be seen in the utter fiasco now faced by HM Revenue & Customs.

Our pay will freeze, our jobs will go, our benefits will be cut, and our services will crumble. Meanwhile, the amount we pay in tax will increase with the VAT rise. And the profits and bonuses for those at the top will continue to grow.

The problem isn't that there isn't enough money to invest in jobs and "make the country better." It's that, with socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor, those in power don't want that.

When David Cameron tells us that "your country needs you," the next three words (unspoken) are "to bend over." The "national interest" is nothing but short-hand for the interests of the ruling class, which are served at the expense of everyone else. It's time we came together against that.

Dissent in the age of Obama

Following on from Sunday's post on Barack Obama's appalling civil liberties record, I have come across an interesting opinion piece by Cindy Sheehan. It seems that Obama's line of dissidents carries echoes of the Watergate Scandal and even the Red Scare.

Her thoughts can be found over on Al Jazeera;

Recently, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raided the homes of at least eight anti-war/social justice activists here in the US.

I happen to be a prominent anti-war activist myself, and have joked that I am a “little hurt” that I was not raided and perhaps I should try harder. Even though, we have the urge to try and be light-hearted in this time of an increasing police state, with civil liberties on the retreat, it really isn't funny considering that the activists could face some serious charges stemming from these raids.

I have felt this harassment on a smaller scale myself and I know that defending oneself against a police state that has unlimited resources, time and cruelty, can be quite expensive, time consuming and annoying.

There is nothing noble about an agency that has reduced itself to being jackbooted enforcers of a neo-fascist police state, no matter how much the FBI has been romanticised in movies, television and books.

For example, in one instance, early in the morning of September 24, at the home of Mick Kelly of Minneapolis, the door was battered in and flung across the room when his partner audaciously asked to see the FBI’s warrant through the door’s peephole. At Jessica Sundin’s home, she walked downstairs to find seven agents ransacking her home while her partner and child looked on in shock.

These raids have terrifying implications for dissent here in the US.

First of all, these US citizens have been long-time and devoted anti-war activists who organised an anti-war rally that was violently suppressed by the US police state in Minneapolis-St. Paul, during the 2008 Republican National Convention. Because the Minneapolis activists have integrity, they had already announced that they would do the same if the Democrats hold their convention there in 2012.

I have observed that it was one thing to be anti-Bush, but to be anti-war in the age of Obama is not to be tolerated by many people. If you will also notice, the only people who seem to know about the raids are those of us already in the movement. There has been no huge outcry over this fresh outrage, either by the so-called movement or the corporate media.

I submit that if George Bush were still president, or if this happened under a McCain/Palin regime, there would be tens of thousands of people in the streets to protest. This is one of the reasons an escalation in police state oppression is so much more dangerous under Obama - even now, he gets a free pass from the very same people who should be adamantly opposed to such policies.

Secondly, I believe because the raids happened to basically ‘unsung’ and unknown, but very active workers in the movement, that the coordinated, early morning home invasions were designed to intimidate and frighten those of us who are still doing the work. The Obama regime would like nothing better than for us to shut up or go underground and to quit embarrassing it by pointing out its abject failures and highlighting its obvious crimes.

Just look at how the Democrats are demonising activists who are trying to point out the inconvenient truth that the country (under a near Democratic tyranny) is sliding further into economic collapse, environmental decay and perpetual war for enormous profit.

Barack and Joe, the commandantes of this police state, say that those who have the temerity to be critical are “asleep” and just need to “buck up". White House spokesperson, Robert Gibbs, recently stated that we on the “professional left” need to be “drug tested” if we are not addicted to the regimes’ own drug: the Hopium of the Obama propaganda response team.

It seems like, even though some of those that have been nailed to the cross of national security do activism around South America, most of the activism is anti-war and pro-Palestinian rights. Being supportive of any Arab or Muslim, no matter how benign or courageous is a very dangerous activity here in post-9/11 America.

The Supreme Court just decided (Wilner v. National Security Agency) that the National Security Agency (NSA) did not have to disclose if it was using warrantless wiretapping to spy on attorneys representing the extra-legal detention of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obtaining warrants, with cause, and attorney-client privilege were important principles of the US justice system, but even the neo-fascist Supreme Court is undermining the law - talk about “activist” judges!

Not only have activists been targeted here in the States, but Obama has ominously declared himself judge, jury and executioner of anyone that he deems a national security “threat". These are the actions of a tyrant and another assault against our rights and against the rule of law from a person who promised “complete transparency” from his administration.

We have learned that Obama’s first victim under his presidential execution programme is Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born Muslim who is now in Yemen. Without showing proof of al-Awlaki’s so-called executionable offenses and without a trial in a court of law, Obama has unloosed his hit squads on Awlaki. Is there anyone out there reading this who does not believe, or fear, that this programme could quickly descend into summary executions within the borders of the US?

Al-Awlaki’s father has filed a motion in federal court to stay the execution of his son until he gets his constitutionally guaranteed rights to due process, but Obama’s justice department has refused to cooperate stating that to do so would ‘undermine’ that fabled, exploited and ephemeral ‘national security'.

When Obama behaves like Bush, only on steroids, he amply demonstrates why other people hate our country so much. Persons in other countries are not nearly as blind as Americans. They know that even though Obama went to Cairo to blather about building understanding between the US and the Muslim world, actions speak louder than words and Obama’s actions drip with carnage and pain.

Obviously, the suppression of dissent here in the US, while outrageous and inexcusable, has not reached the level of the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950’s - yet.

The longer we Americans remain silent in the face of these injustices, the more they will continue to occur and escalate.

Make your voice heard!

I have commented previously on this point. The unwillingness of the centre-left in America to speak out against Obama comes from the same instinct that sees the British left cling onto Labour.

It is the idea - naive or wilfully ignorant depending on your viewpoint - that there exists, or even can exist, a party within the mainstream which can represent "the left." And whilst some in that ill-defined collective might be uneasy about certain elements of this, they are just being "hardline" or "awkward."

I came across a smaller-scale example of this when I attended the PCS anti-cuts rally in Manchester on Saturday. The Labour councillor given a platform there urged against "sectarianism" and "factionalism," the presumption being that these were the only two possible reasons for anybody on the left refusing to work with elected officials of the Labour party.

In power, that translated to exactly the same disdain for the "professional left" that Obama now holds. Indeed, only last month Tony Blair bemoaned the "activist left" being "happy to help" their "right-wing opponents" destroy "left-leaning leaders."

The response to which is that Obama and Blair aren't particularly "left-leaning." For that matter, they are not our leaders. The authoritarian left may demand blind loyalty to a cult of personality, regardless of the effects in the real world - but those of us who act on the basis of solid and consistent principles have other ideas. And rallying behind the (red) flag for the sake of half-baked "unity" is not one of them.

After all, what point is there to unity that isn't reciprocal? Why should those of us who oppose war, imperialism, and capitalism rally around someone who enacts those very things?

The "left-wing" of the mainstream spectrum (that is, the centre-right) are not our friends. They represent the same system as the right do, albeit in a slightly more dovish manner. Their attacks on our right to dissent, as well as on us as a class, will be just as vicious. If not more so.

If pointing this out makes me part of the "professional left" or the "awkward squad," then so be it. I will not rally around the very things I oppose just because they put on a smiley face.

Industrial action and the law

Mayor of London Boris Johnson has added his voice to that of the CBI's calling for tougher laws governing strike ballots. This comes as a second 24-hour strike grips the London Underground, and it is a perfect demonstration of everything that is wrong with class struggle in this country.

Of course, it is only natural that employers and politicians want to reduce the power of the working class to resist them. Indeed, those that didn't quite simply wouldn't last very long in their positions.

As such, it's a lost cause pointing out the hypocrisy of the proposals. Applying Boris's wish that "unless at least 50% of union members in a workplace take part in a ballot" there can be no strike to political ballots would see us without a parliament or a mayor for London. But even if there a way to do so, reaching him with this point would not see him change his mind.

Likewise, the CBI "wants a minimum of 40% of union members balloted to be in favour of a strike." Applied consistently, we could ask why no democracy whatsoever exists on the management side of industrial relations. But this would not for a second make them reconsider their position.

The fact is plain to see that the laws currently in place for strikes are unneccessarily restrictive. And that, whatever their flaws, workplace ballots offer workers a chance to make the decision for themselves rather than (as in parliament) simply choose somebody else to make that decision for them. Because being able to withdraw your labour when unhappy with working conditions is a fundamental right.

But, as far as the bosses are concerned, the rights of the employer and proprietor should match those of a monarch. If we can think, organise, and act in our own interests, then we are violating their "property rights." On the right, liberty needs property, and those without property can be denied liberty.

This is why responding to the persistent attack on hard-won rights by appealing to their sense of reason is a lost cause. Concessions are not handed down from above out of good will.

It is for this reason that, though offered with the right intentions, the Lawful Industrial Action Bill will not address the issue at hand. In the first instance, its main purpose is to prevent employers from using the courts to block strike action "on minor technicalities." This may put an end to the recent trend of strike bans, but doesn't address the bigger hurdles that Boris and the CBI want to strengthen.

Secondly, it is a bill that never even emerged in 13 years of Labour government, and is unlikely to pass under a Tory one. Cynicism suggests that its purpose isn't even to become law, but to rebuild the old myth of Labour being a party for the working class.

Not to mention that it will be the subject of intensive lobbying by exactly such groups as the CBI.

If we need to affirm how out of touch with even the basic principle behind a strike, we need only turn to CBI deputy director-general John Cridland. He believes that it should "be business as usual, even during a strike." And so "firms must be allowed to hire temps ... to provide emergency cover."

He offers the caveat that "workers have the legal right to withdraw their labour," clearly thinking that conceding that whilst returning to the early 20th century practice of bussing in scabs to break strikes is an acceptable compromise for both sides. Which in effect proves the IWW's point that "the working class and the employing class have nothing in common."

We cannot appeal to the ruling class's sense of reason. Any legal actions, even if effective in the short-term, will act only as a stop-gap in the face of the long term onslaught of the class war.

If we really want to end repressive anti-strike measures, and to stop the business lobby in their efforts to roll back every hard won right and privilege of the last 150 years, there is only one conclusion. We need to break their laws and stand together in struggle - no matter what they throw at us.

Torture, murder, and state repression under Barack Obama

The hype of Obamania has long died down and the US President has slipped into his expected role as a typical Clinton-style Democrat. In the process, many of his supposedly "radical" campaign promises have fallen by the wayside - most notably that to close Guantánamo Bay.

Of late some quite specific consequences of this broken promise have come to light, as the blog Tiresias Speaks notes;

A US federal Judge dismissed a complaint Wednesday (9/29) brought by the families of two Guantánamo prisoners that alleged that the circumstances surrounding the men’s deaths had been covered up when they were declared suicides by the Pentagon in June of 2006. 

The families of Saudi prisoner Yasser al-Zahrani and Salah al-Salami of Yemen were asking US District Judge Ellen Huvelle to reexamine the case in light of new testimony from military personnel working at Guantánamo at the time of the “suicides” that directly contradicts official accounts. 

A third prisoner, Mani al-Utaybi of Saudi Arabia also died the same night, but his family has not filed a complaint. 

At the time of their deaths, Al-Zahrani, 22, and Al-Salami, 33, had been held at Guantánamo without charges for four years at the US naval base. According to the Pentagon, on the night of June 9th, 2006, Al-Zahrani, Al-Salami, and Utaybi were found at approximately the same time hanging from makeshift nooses in their cells. They were then rushed to the camp’s infirmary where they were shortly pronounced dead. 

The following day the commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, put the base on lockdown. He ordered almost all reporters on the base to leave and told those already en route to turn back. He officially declared that the deaths were “suicides,” and he went on to say, “I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” 

But new first-hand accounts from soldiers on duty at the base on the night of June 9th suggest that Admiral Harris’ and the Pentagon’s version of events is false and that the men may have actually died as the result of torture at a site off base known as “Camp No.” According to the petition, this site was called Camp No because if soldiers were asked if it existed the were supposed to say no. 

Army officer Joe Hickman says that he was supposed to log every vehicle that exited or entered the base. Even when Senator John McCain came to visit the base Hickman ensured that he was properly logged in and out. However, there was one windowless paddy wagon that was sometimes used to transport prisoners that he was not supposed to keep any log of. He and other soldiers say that they saw this van pick up three prisoners and drive them to Camp No on the evening of June 9th. 

When the van returned to base later it did not return the prisoners to their cells, instead it backed up to the infirmary. A medical officer told Hickman they had been sent to the infirmary, “because they had rags stuffed down their throats, and that one of them was severely bruised,” the petition said. 

When Hickman heard the official cause of death was suicide by hanging the next day he talked with the other guards who would have had to of seen if any bodies had been transported from the cells to the infirmary, but no one had seen any bodies being moved. 

The families of Al-Zahrani and Al-Salami demanded an independent autopsy, but when the bodies arrived they had already had all of their vital organs surrounding their throats removed making it impossible to 100% verify the cause of death.The medical examiners they had hired made requests for the organs to be sent from Guantánamo, but their requests were ignored. 

In her ruling Wednesday, Judge Huvelle did not really address any of these issues raised in the petition. Instead, she cited a decision by a federal appeals court in Washington stating that conditions at Guantánamo should not be investigated by the courts and should remain the purview of Congress alone due to national security concerns. 

In light of this ruling, it is unlikely that all of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Al-Zahrani, Al-Salami, and al-Utaybi will ever be discovered. The Obama Administration has already made it clear that it not interested in looking backwards to investigate potential war crimes and there is no reason to think that Congress would investigate the Pentagon’s official account. 

The whole incident and yesterday’s ruling in particular serve as a stark reminder of Obama’s broken promise to close Guantánamo within one year of taking office. Even if Obama does end up closing Guantánamo down, it is difficult not to wonder how much of its true history will remain forever unknown?

On its own, this would be a troubling story. But it is not occurring in isolation - rather, it is part of a broader context of gross civil liberties violations by the Obama administration.

Just as, here in Britain, the Blair era never saw the restoration of freedoms taken by Thatcher, so Obama has failed to right the wrongs of the Bush era. The USA PATRIOT Act remains in force. The illegal war in Afghanistan drags on. And the US can now kill its citizens without due process.

Yes, you read that right. From a May article by Glen Greenwald in Salon;

The most recent liberty-abridging, Terrorism-justified controversies have focused on diluting the legal rights of American citizens (in part because the rights of non-citizens are largely gone already and there are none left to attack).  A bipartisan group from Congress sponsors legislation to strip Americans of their citizenship based on Terrorism accusations.  Barack Obama claims the right to assassinate Americans far from any battlefield and with no due process of any kind.  The Obama administration begins covertly abandoning long-standing Miranda protections for American suspects by vastly expanding what had long been a very narrow "public safety" exception, and now Eric Holder explicitly advocates legislation to codify that erosion.  John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduce legislation to bar all Terrorism suspects, including Americans arrested on U.S. soil, from being tried in civilian courts, and former Bush officials Bill Burck and Dana Perino -- while noting (correctly) that Holder's Miranda proposal constitutes a concession to the right-wing claim that Miranda is too restrictive -- today demand that U.S. citizens accused of Terrorism and arrested on U.S. soil be treated as enemy combatants and thus denied even the most basic legal protections (including the right to be charged and have access to a lawyer).

And last week Greenwald wrote of the shroud of secrecy around this process;

At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record.  In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki's father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims.  That's not surprising:  both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality.  But what's most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is "state secrets":  in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are "state secrets," and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.

Which, as the The Agitator rightly points out, "Obama is arguing the executive has the power to execute American citizens without a trial, without even so much as an airing of the charges against them, and that it can do so in complete secrecy, with no oversight from any court, and that the families of the executed have no legal recourse."

This should give us all a cause for worry. Not least because Obama's is currently the most liberal administration of western governments. And that the actions of the United States all too often set a precedent for others, not least its British "junior partner."

What we see here is nothing less than overt tyranny, being pushed through with much noise on the blogosphere but little on the ground.

The important fact to remember is that, no matter how much we bitch and moan on "teh internets," nothing will change. Righteous anger and moral outrage has to be accompanied by direct action. Tyranny can only be defeated through active resistance, and that is exactly what Obama has wrought.

From anarchism in Manchester to fighting fascism in Liverpool, reflections on an interesting day

As I mentioned in a previous post, today I went to the Anarchist Bookfair in Manchester, as well as a PCS anti-cuts demonstration nearby. Meanwhile, the BNP returned to Liverpool City Centre. Luckilly, I caught the end of that particular event - and it was little short of epic.

The Bookfair was a fairly laid-back event. Lots of groups and lots of comrades were present, the aim being to promote solidarity and the ideas of anarchism.

As well as stalls containing books, pamphlets, and merchandise from various organisations - Solidarity Federation, Anarchist Federation, Class War, The Commune, The IWW, Manchester Anti-Fascist Alliance, etc - there were a variety of interesting talks on. It also offered, as I mentioned in the week, a reprieve from activism whilst still being around people of like mind.

The only downer was that whilst there I learned of the BNP being in Liverpool. I rang around a few others to spread the word, but being so far away was frustrating to say the least.

The PCS demonstration was also something of a muted affair. There were a number of speakers including a rather interesting socialist rapper and (shamefully) a Labour councillor. But it was more about encouraging people to get involved and doing something than making a scene, which was good.

Taking a leaf from that book, I took the opportunity to hand out free copies of Catalyst, and make the argument to my fellow PCS members for a more radical, i.e. anarcho-syndicalist approach.

Though, in hindsight, referring to Mark Serwotka as a "bloated bureaucratic gasbag" may have been far too inflammatory a closing remark. I stand by the point within it, but occasionally passion (not to mention a couple of pints) numbs my sense of tact and diplomacy. Oh well.

I got off the train to Liverpool at quarter to six, and headed into town to see if the fascists were still around. What I saw was truly astounding to behold.

Two weeks ago, when the BNP tried to hold a stall in the City Centre, they were met with spontaneous resistance from over 200 people, more considering that people came and went during the day. As a result, last week they retreated to their comfort zone in Huyton, but today they tried once again to claim the streets of Liverpool for the far-right. What a mistake that was.

As two weeks before, phone calls and text messages saw local antifascists mobilise in opposition. And once again, their ranks were swelled by great swathes of the public, particularly young people.

However, today far eclipsed the events of a fortnight ago, and the police were unable to prevent the fascists from being entirely surrounded and blocked from public view.

Earlier on in the day, activists from Liverpool Antifascists gave out several thousand leaflets to largely receptive passers-by. Some people did angrily reject the leaflets - only to come back and apologise when they realised they weren't BNP!

They also received genuine thanks from people, especially those from ethnic minorities, for the work we were doing. 

There was some trouble later in the day when fireworks were thrown. One exploded on the BNP's stall table, collapsing it. Another exploded within the ranks of antifascists. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured. BNP "super-activist" Peter Tierney hurt his foot, though given that he attacked an antifascist from behind with a camera tripod, we find sympathy difficult.

The thrower of the fireworks, a silly and incendiary act which I could have gotten any number of innocent people hurt, was not identified.

 

The BNP, however, were on top form.

Their activists got in the faces of teenagers and youngsters, with Andrew Tierney at one point breaking ranks to chase a young girl, only to be physically restrained. One fascist shoved a man holding his young daughter in has arms. And Jamie Luby was seen telling the same young girl to "find him in O'Neill's" if she wanted to fight him.

Most telling of all, however, was Andrew Tierney's threat that - because an unknown individual had thrown fireworks (one at antifascists, we hasten to add) everyone who opposed the BNP was now "fair game."

Organiser Mike Whitby also promised that when they took pictures of those opposing the BNP, they would end up "on a site far worse than Redwatch."

This shows that the BNP have far from outgrown their violent roots, and that they are still more than willing to intimidate and attack opponents. As Peter Tierney, of course, showed us when he picked up that camera tripod.

But the threats didn't work on local people. Even children, some no older than eleven, stood up to the thugs. At one point, they jumped on a raised podium to block Andrew Tierney's view of the girl he had been shouting at when he tried to take a picture of her.

Eventually, the BNP gave in, packed up and loaded their propaganda into two cars, to much jeering. But this time, people did not simply watch them go. Motivated by the success of the day, and antagonism from the fascists, people surrounded the police and the cars and literally ran them out of town.

This really was one of the best things I have ever seen, and it made my day. It also demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt that militant direct action is the greatest weapon against fascism.