Tescopoly goes to war with Bristol estate

Economy tanks, replete with the trademark blue stripes, have moved into the sleepy estates of Bristol. Residents last night saw a riot unfold in front of them as aggressive police tactics against a peaceful protest escalated.

Pic h/t Bristol resident Ian Bone

A two year campaign against Tesco moving into this area of Bristol culminated this week as Tesco moved in despite the desires of residents.

It appears that heavy handed policing including the use of dogs and riot police against a peaceful protest led to injuries and arrests that need never have happened.

Three eye witnesses to what then happened are really worth reading. There's the Indymedia report, an account on Our Kingdom, and at Neuro Bonkers. It's also worth checking out Ian Bone.

The press seem remarkably reluctant to report these incidents although the local paper could hardly avoid it.



There's one group of people who can really create a riot where none was before - and that's the riot police

Further reading: Adam's facts about Tesco. Sam Allen on why the council should support the community.

Mini-march round-up

A few bits and bobs on yesterday's march;

• Madame Miaow has pictures and thoughts. As does Harpy Marx, Cath Elliot and Mary Hamilton.
• Political Dynamite carry a report from the bike block.
• UKUncut explain why they targeted Fortnum and Mason. You can also watch footage from said event. Plus Alex Pinkerman on CiF.
• A few Green Party reports from Green Christian, Flesh is Grass, Stockwood Pete, Derek Wall, Adrian Windisch, Caroline Lucas, Jeff, Green Sheen (Belfast) and probably loads I've missed (comment and I'll add them, as per usual)
• The press give their views Paul Mason, Al Jazeera, Nick Cohen, Guardian.
• Groovy medic Tajasel gives her unique report of the day.

Let the Coalition government tremble - we are mustering our forces (best sign from march here).

March 26th: a political turning point?

It seems that today saw one of the five biggest demonstrations ever in British history. While most of those protests were against Labour administrations, who didn't take a blind bit of notice, this one makes a nice change in that it is against the Liberal Democrats and their coalition partners, and has the backing of the official opposition (pic tweeted by Richard Mallender).

It seems there could be up to half a million people marching through the streets of London with another substantial demo in the north of Ireland. There was a significant mobilisation on the part of the trade unions but also non-coalition political parties and protest groups.

Ed Miliband addressed the crowd from the end platform despite having written Labour's cuts Manifesto for the last election and Labour councillors up and down the country voting, en masse, for cuts budgets.

In a move designed to annoy the Daily Telegraph UKUncut occupied Fortnum and Masons and there were a number of other peaceful direct actions, mainly against banks, and Anne Summers' windows were smash in a targeted strike against, um... shops? This led some wags to comment that police were looking for "hardened protesters" and that this was the "climax of the demonstration".

However, while the smashed windows seem pointless and, frankly, unrepresentative of the feelings of most of those turning out, the continuing direct action, which led to a number of protesters being arrested despite being completely peaceful, are a real benefit. Unlike the Iraq War march where the focus was simply on size it is very good to see that this protest was not just big, but lively and edgy too, with many people reporting a carnival atmosphere.

The TUC had come in for criticism for taking so long to organise this demo, but part of me feels this turnout is a vindication of that decision. There have been very well attended protests all over the country which have helped build this march and it seems unlikely that had this been called in January, for example, we'd have had anything like this turnout.

It does call into question where we go from here. I've seen various people talking about the next monster demo (and "let's make it bigger", etc.) but this feels slightly unimaginative and disregards the fact  that these protests lend moral weight and confidence to the movement against austerity but cannot, of themselves, change government policy.

Right now, according to YouGov, the majority support the aims of the march (52% to 31%) but in order to get the government to change direct we need a viable strategy that goes beyond moral force. The next step is public sector strike action.

The prospects for industrial action that is coordinated across the public sector seem far closer now than at  any other point in my lifetime. While Thatcher took on unions one at a time this government has taken on the entire country all in one go, banking on the weakness of the trade union movement. For the trade unions this is now life or death, if they let this moment pass without real action they are in danger of being snuffed out of any meaningful existence what so ever.


Of course, if they allow their links to the Labour Party to hold them back once again they will find their members out of work and/or demoralised by the end of this government. Thankfully unions like the PCS are not linked to Labour and are far more free to act effectively. Whether other unions can take the lead with them is another matter - but this march today shows that there is an enormous public mood against the cuts, let's not piss it away.

The new Arab revolts continue

As Libya continues to, understandably, dominate the news I thought I might take a quick tour of what's happening with the inspiring revolutionary process that kick started the whole thing. Although, perhaps more accurately that's a tour of the repression that's currently taking place.

• In Yemen 35 protesters have been killed when troops opened fire on them. The government have now declared a state of emergency.
• In Iraq gunmen torched a TV station for showing protests, police allowed armed men to beat and stab protesters in Bagdhad, while journalists who reported the demo were arrested, as they were in Basra, in Anbar province security services shot five protesters dead, Al Jazeera have pictures of police shooting at protesters in Falluja.
• In Iran they are cracking down on web activists, 
• There are mass demonstrations in Jordan.
• Strikes closed 300 factories in Oman and the ports.
• Clashes in Syria have left at least three people dead in pro-democracy protests.
• In Bahrain Saudi troops have come in to restore order, and Kuwait is sending its navy (!), all to reinforce the status quo against the protests. This is while they enforce their own ban on protests. The Bahraini authorities have smashed a monument symbolic of the movement as the state rounds up the opposition.
• In Djibouti opposition leaders have been arrested and there have been widespread calls to boycott next month's elections.
• In Egypt the repression continues, with attacks on women marchers, as the wrangles over the constitution look set to leave the revolutionaries out in the cold.
• While the inspiration of these liberation movements in taking hold in Africa, a place not so seperate from the Arab world.

Check out the very useful Iraq Occupation Focus. Meanwhile in Tunisia Clinton has made a visit to encourage economic reforms. Goodie.

Japan: a couple of discomforts amidst the horror

The numbers of death and the level of destruction in Japan is hard to get your head around. Two minor pieces of news I heard today made me uncomfortable at the world we live in today.

First, Japan's stock market suffered an historic crash. This is unsurprising - those who exist in the markets do not make moral decisions, nor worry about how their actions effect millions of people. Nothing new there.

However the Bank of Japan this week has pumped $300 billion into the markets since Monday, dwarfing the generous donations given to the Red Cross and other NGOs who hope to help the hundreds of thousands of victims of this tragic situation. Our priorities do seem skewed.

Second, the UK rescue team who travelled to Japan to help with the crisis management only to be turned away because of paperwork.

The British Embassy refused to sign their documents for fear that they would then be legally responsible for their actions whilst in the country. Since when has legal responsibility outweighed moral responsibility? Probably always, but it doesn't get any better.

From the archives: The Anti-Capitalist Hustle

The following is one of my reports from July 2005 from Edinburgh during the G8 GlenEagles protests. The rather fun film Kung Foo Hustle was showing in cinemas at the time (just to explain the title's context).

The Scottish Socialist Voice front page summed it up when it said "They came in intimidating dark colours with accents that marked them out as outsiders, armed and intent on violence. The Metropolitan Police, the West Yorkshire Police, the Humberside Police." The press has been whipping up the fears of the Scottish people for over a fortnight now and, as the way it goes now, the media first makes people afraid and then interviews them about their fear.

If they were to be believed, scenes of anti-capitalist protests would be more like scenes from the film Kung Fu Hustle. Also, those naughty, naughty embedded journalists from the BBC had been telling the world that the protests had been cancelled. Tut, tut, that's not very neutral - or factual. It's interesting, if not surprising, that the BBC was happy to broadcast news that there was no evidence for, simply in order to try to do the G8 a favour and turn protesters back from the demonstrations.

Today has been a day when the anti-capitalist movement has fought a good battle on many fronts and the disruption that they've caused to the G8 summit is not one tiny fraction of the disruption and devastation that the policies of the G8 countries create. The day began with anarchists, in true Che Guevara style, taking to the hills in order to rain chaos down upon the forces of their law and order.

Early morning road blockades and skirmishes with riot police resulted in a real headache for them and only a handful of activists arrested. One set of such activists at the Dissent rural convergence centre in Stirling were confronted by police the moment they attempted to leave their encampment. But they were still able to block a key road, preventing bowler-hatted apparatchiks getting to the summit on time. Other black-clad activists were able to disrupt Dunblane train station preventing other G8 summit goers getting to their appointments.

By this time G8 Alternatives had organised numerous coaches from all over Scotland and were attempting to converge on the pretty village of Auchterarder. The police had been practising their tactics of disrupting transport yesterday at the Dungavel protest and they did their best to prevent activists even attending the demonstrations. This made a mockery of police assurances that they would comply with the Scottish Parliament decision to allow the protests to take place.

Many coaches were detained outside of Stirling at the Broxden roundabout. Protesters became more and more frustrated but as their numbers built up the police found it far more difficult to contain their potential anger. They were given an ultimatum: let us protest at Gleneagles or we protest here, cutting off western road links for the whole of Scotland.

The police had tried various tactics to explain why they thought it necessary to detain the coaches, claiming that the anarchists had blocked off the road leading into Gleneagles. This was completely untrue and a blatant attempt by the boys in blue to create divisions within our ranks. At last the coaches were allowed to set off but only with a police escort chugging along at ten miles an hour.

Meanwhile in Edinburgh, thousands of protesters had been prevented from even getting on their coaches and in frustration a vigorous blockade of Princes Street took place with 2000 angry anti-capitalists. The police moved in and arrested the stewards because there's nothing they hate more than an orderly demonstration.

At Auchterarder, the several thousand protesters who had managed to make their way through earlier in the day, despite the police preventing anyone getting off at the train station, were soon joined by the really impressive convoy of coaches released from the police blockade. There must have been around fifty coaches, including double-deckers, parading through the village. The villagers' response was heart-warming to say the least. Smiling, waving, with thumbs up, time and again the villagers showed they had not bought into the bullshit.

Thousands of protesters then assembled and marched down towards Gleneagles. One of the protest organisers, Chris Nineham of Globalise Resistance, estimated that there were 10,000 protesters at the scene and we marched down to the steel fences that surrounded the conference centre. Some protesters took themselves into a nearby field as they were watched by rows of well-armed mounted police.

The scene was that of a well fortified encampment with lines of police and watchtowers with searchlights and Chinook helicopters circling overhead. The protesters rattled the fences and some, though not many, breached the outer defenses, if only momentarily. Police then set dogs loose into the fields and the mounted police beat some demonstrators back with brutal force. Police at the back of the demonstration, unbeknownst to the rest of us, harassed and intimidated and in some cases detained protesters. Whilst we were not able to get any further, we were within spitting distance of the world leaders.

What do these demonstrations prove? That the movement's very diversity is our strength. Whether we're black-clad, red-clad or white-clad, we all have a positive contribution to make. But it also shows that, in a sane society, the rings of police surrounding the conference centre would not have been facing outwards, opposing the demonstrators for peace and social justice, but would have been facing inwards, smashing up the meeting of those responsible for the impoverishment and murder of countless thousands of people around the globe.

From the archives: The Revolt of the Nobodies

This piece from March 2004 focuses on the anti-war movement of the time. Again the illustrations are new.

"The Great Men of the Earth, Approve with smiles and bland salutes, The rage and monstrous tyranny, That they have brought to birth."

from 'Great Men' by Seigfried Sassoon

The war was right, the war was good - and if it was illegal then the law is wrong. That was the message coming from Tony Blair in his 'robust defense of the war' this week.

There may have been millions protesting on the streets of London, millions demonstrating in every major country around the globe in a world historic first. But at the end of the day who are these people? What companies do they own? What political position do they hold? Who do they donate money too? Frankly, they are a bunch of nobodies.

Each demonstration has contained a fantastic cross section of the population. Young and old, black and white, probably the first significant mobilisation of the Muslim community in this country, we know all this - we've been there on the streets to see it for ourselves.

My favourite example of this was from the day the war began and hundreds of school kids in Colchester poured onto the streets in protest. The police went frantic, and as soon as they thought they had it all under control another gang would appear from another school blockading the high street and creating havoc. Fantastic and every copper on duty had an inkling of how General Custer felt at the Little Big Horn.

One of the great things about the younger protests is they made me (at 33) feel both young and old at the same time. You feel young from the inspiring energy and fearlessness around you and then they'll start chanting "We all live in a fascist regime" to the tune of Yellow Submarine and you think "Well, strictly speaking although capitalism breeds imperialism and fosters dictatorship we're not actually living under fascism." But obviously I didn't bring it up at the time.

Apparently the rulers of ancient Rome, when returning home from a successful imperialist conquest, would have a slave stand behind them in their victory procession murmuring in their ear all the while "remember man is mortal". Blair turned this on its head and had Alistair Campbell whispering in his ear saying "Go on Tony, you've got a historic mission, people love you, it's a war against evil Tony, go on drop another bomb."

They might feel they are being written into the history books as Great Rulers - just as Nixon, Hitler, George Bush (the elder), et al have done before them, but it will not prevent their ignominious end.

Western Imperialism knows only how to destroy. Their bombs and bullets and check points have not got a snow ball's chance in hell of bringing democracy, peace and prosperity. Bush and Blair were dreaming if they ever thought that the people of the Middle East would welcome this kind of military intervention and occupation.

If they ever thought that.

Leaving rather dubious BBC polls aside the Iraqi population has not welcomed Western troops with open arms, and it is ordinary people who suffer from the anarchy, poverty and brutality endemic in Iraq today. By and large it is ordinary people who take part in demonstrations against the occupation, for water, for jobs and security. It is the nobodies of Iraq that, driven to desperation take part in the revolt.

The solutions that the West offers to poverty is carving up the reconstruction contracts among themselves, privatising utilities, its the bucks that are fast rather than the reconstruction. Rather simply, without water there can be no liberation. There is a rage in Basra that swells up out of the ground. A rage born of years of sanctions and hardship, of murdered loved ones, of poverty and indignity.

But there is a hope in the world today. The millions of nobodies both East and West that can resist, that can demonstrate, that can rise up. Unfortunately too many people still know their place in the world today - but the great signs of hope are that some of us really are beginning to reply our great leaders "Who are we? No - who the hell are you!?!"

"I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things. The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear. "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works ye mighty and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." "

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

To all those Great Men past, present and future whatever empire you build, what ever position you attain, your day will come.

Review: The Story of Stuff

I was pleased to see that an excellent little film about capitalist production has been turned into an illustrated book The Story of Stuff.

The people behind the project have a number of really interesting instructional videos at their website, like this one on the connection between profits, environmental degradation and the shape of the electronics industry.



These videos are good resource because they're easy to watch, easy to understand and, although their message is radical, it's not conveyed in a shaking fist, red in the faced algebraic dogma of hate.

When the presenter Annie Leonard says that the corporations "get the profits but everyone else pays" with their health, with their environment and economically it's a key point of anti-capitalism but we can get so used to these kinds of messages being delivered in specific language and full of sound and fury that when you have a light and smiley presenter it would be easy to miss the message.

It would also be easy to think that just because the videos (and now book) focus on specific problems and specific solutions that it's going to fall back on to ethical consumerism. But, like Annie says, "we are not going to shop our way out of the problem" and goes on to talk about political solutions to a fundamentally economic problem.

Oh, and there's one last refreshing thing about them. They may deal with big problems and look at them in a global way but they don't feel obliged to end every piece to camera force feeding us a ready packed solution. I know some people will find that a weakness, along with the lightness of tone, but to my mind sometimes less is so much more.

My last student post - honest

The press agenda around the student protests on Wednesday was pretty clear. Even the so called liberal press decided to characterise the protests as riots which is a deliberate exaggeration and one we should not go along with.

The media love to sex up a story and dry reports about the proposals that led to the protests are nowhere near as interesting as a marauding horde. For example, all the press went with the 'perfect' photo of a masked hooligan breaking a window with a well placed fire just to the side.

Of course if the picture is taken from a different angle it tells a rather different story. Namely that the window smasher is clearly on his own surrounded by a mob of photographers and behind them... a line of police who watch with a piquant sense of curiosity as this one man riot goes to town.


Likewise with the thrown/dropped fire extinguisher. This idiotic and reckless act on the part of one of the anarchists on the roof of the Tory HQ has been labeled attempted murder and turned a rooftop protest that was pretty harmless into some kind of terrifying airborne assault on our boys in blue.

Yet on the whole the press failed to report that when the fire extinguisher was thrown from the roof the entire crowd below started chanting "stop throwing shit" and the rooftop brigade did. The protest showed it was completely opposed to that sort of moronic behavior just as, I'm sure, most of those reading this will be. More importantly it shows how movements can lead themselves and can actually stop people getting out of hand.

If a policeman had been hurt of killed by this action it would have been a disaster not just for the policeman concerned and their family but also for the movement against the cuts who would have been destroyed by it. That's one of many good reasons to be in favour of non-violent direct action.

However the actions of one or two individuals have been allowed to overshadow the actions of thousands who marched on Tory Party HQ and the tens of thousands more who marched on the day. Blurring the line between violence against persons and political vandalism is something I think we should resist. Compare and contrast the way the press branded the demo with this video which shows the far more positive side of the day.

However, when you're part of a movement you don't get to dictate to everyone in that movement how they behave, you can only put arguments and promote your vision while moving forwards together. The move to say that the Millbank demo was 'tiny' or that they weren't students have been shown to be false with estimates ranging from 2 - 5,000 at Millbank and all of those arrested were students, ten of them children. These were real protesters who share our anger - that has to be our starting point.

I think Adam's piece on a diversity of tactics is spot on and we have to understand the anger - particularly at the Lib Dems - and help articulate the economic alternatives to cuts. It's understandable that there are student voices that want to target the Lib Dems. I think the national day of action scheduled for Wednesday, November 24, at 11:00am which is promoting local direct actions in schools and universities across the country is really important.

You can read more about it in the Guardian, on ITV and read the anti-cuts pdf. I hope it goes well, both confident and peaceful and makes its point felt in as clear a way as possible.

It's also worth reading the pieces in the New Internationalist and on Open Democracy who try to place this developing movement in a wider context.

The key thing, for me, is how students build the momentum from this demonstration and getting bogged down in condemning some stupid acts seems simply misplaced when the government attacks are actually upon us.

The years ahead are going see a lot of hurt, a lot of protests and occasionally we're going to see things we don't like. My concern at the panic some people felt at the Millbank protest is about what this bodes for the future when, perhaps, there really will be riots.

The Risque Joy of Students

There seems to be a move in the media and some sections of the political classes to say those who occupied the Tory HQ yesterday were not 'real' protesters. I have to say they looked pretty real to me. I think what they mean is that they don't agree with their methods, but choose to express this in such a way that delegitimises those they disagree with rather than engaging with their argument.

It's also palpably false.

I thought the Young Greens statement on the protests was spot on. We should not define a whole protest 'violent' because of one broken window and an inappropriate fire extinguisher. It is not uncomplicated to say that damage to property is violence, although when the Tories destroyed the mining industry, for instance, it did involve a fair amount of state violence to achieve that.


Some people. who can crop up in the most unexpected places, dismiss the couple of thousand protesters outside Millbank as rent-a-Trots but it's simply not so. By the way how much is it to hire a Trot and do they charge by the hour, or is it more sort of piece work?

There is a growing student movement that's becoming more confident and ready to act and we should, I think, support that without insisting that everyone goes about things our way, not that I'm sure we have a single way.

It's perfectly legitimate to have differences of opinion or doubts, or to get frightened on a demo, as this excellent post illustrates. However as Jamie outlines here the student train is leaving and we ought to wave them off with a smile not allow side issues to derail that support. The coming years are going to be tough, and evidently some of us are going to have to harden up otherwise they'll be very inconsistent friends.

Students are right to be angry. Students are right to protest. If anything we need more energy, not less, in these movements to help them show the rest of us the way. For the first time in ages I'm feeling hopeful, and for that I'd like to thank those students who took things up a notch.

Sport: tearing up the rule books

I had a very enjoyable day today half-watching the Hopi fund raising cricket match in which a team including the very cream of the Green Party's sporting elite thrashed the Labour Representation Committee in a game so friendly that rules were taken as mere guidance and the huge bribes paid to produce no balls were returned to their benefactors.

A good amount of money was raised for Workers Fund for Iran, and factory workers in Tabriz who are threatened with job losses had already passed on their thanks for our efforts - although their views on the dodgy LBW decision that saw Hopi's Ben Lewis knocked out undeservedly early are as yet unknown.

The day saw some particularly interesting bowling which seemed more inspired by modern jazz dance than Shane Warne, which got me to thinking about modern sport.

The other day I was eating my lunch next to a tennis court where two pairs were playing. The first couple were taking it all very seriously, keeping score and no doubt alert for chalk dust. The second pair didn't serve once, concentrated on knocking it back and forth and seemed to be having a much better time. Not only weren't they keeping score but they didn't seem too bothered about chatting during the game, how many times the ball bounced, where the lines were or anything else.

Now, unless the first pair were in training for a professional match (in which case I hope they have a good deal more time to practice) ruleless tennis certainly seemed to be the way to go if the objective is to run about and enjoy yourself with a friend.

The process of strictly codified rules for sport began to come into its own in the 19th century. This is the same time that prisons, work houses, schools with rows of desks and insane asylums became de rigeur. It was also the time when we became obsessed with synchronising our clocks... mind you its also when we started taking sewage systems seriously as well so let's not stretch the analogy too far.

My point being that as the industrial revolution matured all kinds of aspects of our lives became mechanised and regulated in a way they never had been before. There were often practical reasons for this. If you were going to bet on a match you don't want your pony resting on whether the players spontaneously decide to make it a best of three just as you're about to collect your winnings.

These sometimes arbitrary rules create a discipline that might not otherwise be there, which can be good, but they also transform a social activity into a regulated and reified (sorry) thing in itself, independent of the players. By reified (sorry) I mean we turn something fluid (social interaction, running about, laughing) into something solid (set time periods, scores, set numbers of players, etc.). I mean we turn the moments of our life into social objects.

It's not that modern capitalism defines us so tightly that we can't see any other way of doing things, but we do allow it to shape the way we see things. Of the tennis players I mentioned earlier we see one set as playing 'properly' and the others as being less serious.

Some people might even go so far as to say the ruleless players should have got off the court and made room for a pair who wanted to play 'real' tennis. I don't agree. People made those rules up in the first place, we're people, so maybe we can make up rules of our own - and then break those as well if we want to.

Wyclef Jean to run for President of Haiti

It looks like Wyclef Jean of the fabulous Fugees may well be running for President of Haiti - and he could even win. This seems the appropriate moment to look at his ready made manifesto.



Righteous.

Take the music back

Sick of the way the charts are dictated by those with the financial clout to shove anemic crap down our throats? Tired of how the race for Christmas Number One is just another way of advancing consumerism without content? Want to see a world where music isn't simply about 'units sold' but represents something deeper.

Well here is the grassroots campaign for you - thwart Simon Cowell's army of evil robots and give Rage Against the Machine the top spot this Winterval. I was initially unsure about this campaign but the more arguments I heard against it the more convinced I became that this was something worth backing, particularly as it led me to digging out my RATM CD's and leaping round the room in a most unladylike fashion.

This Radio Five interview with the band is interesting, not least because they cut the band off half way through the song because it contained the words "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me" - well, duh!

When asked about Cowell the band responded that "Simon is an interesting character who seems to have profited greatly from humiliating people on television. We see this [campaign] as a necessary break with his control."

After expressing how privileged they felt about being chosen as the anti-corporate anthem by the grass roots they rounded off the discussion by saying that it shows that whether it's a "small matter like who's the top of the charts, or bigger matters like war and peace and economic inequality, when people band together and make their voices heard they can completely overturn the system as it is."

Good stuff. You have until the end of Saturday 19th December (at 23:59pm) to buy your copy, which you can do for 69 pence here. Don't bulk buy - it wont count! The organisers of the campaign have also asked people to make a donation of a pound to Sony, sorry I mean Shelter, when you buy your RATM which you can do by clicking here.

Activism is good for you

Well, I'd say that political activism is good for society. An engaged and confident citizenry is able to shape society and hold their 'betters' to account in a way that a passive electorate that simply take the gruel their given without rocking the boat cannot.

Well, according to this little article, it's not just good for society its also good for the activists themselves. Researchers "recruited hundreds of college students and found that those who identified themselves as activists and who said they were planning some activism were happier and more fulfilled than non-activists."

Our intrepid researchers didn't stop there though because as yet they couldn't tell whether it was happier people who got involved in politics or the activity that perked them up. So they tried this little test "One hundred and twelve student participants were encouraged to write to the college cafeteria director calling on him to source food more locally and ethically. These students subsequently reported feeling more energised and alive than a control group of participants who wrote to the director calling for tastier food and more choice".

I suspect this is a load of nonsense, of course, and generally I would say that a lot of an activist's happiness may well come down to whether they are winning or not - but what about activists' spouses or children? Personal experience tells me that they are not always over the moon about their loved one being out all hours prioritising a residents' association over baby's first steps.

I'm definitely not in politics because it makes me personally happy but because I probably couldn't stop if I tried. A natural born busybody I guess. Maybe there is something in the idea that the more control you have in your workplace, your community, your local newspaper, whatever, must give you some feeling of satisfaction - even if your politics are definitely of the malcontent rather status quo kind.

Open Letter to the Met from Climate Camp

The Camp for Climate Action has issued this open letter to the Metropolitan Police as a helpful guide on how to ensure the camp is a healthy, safe, and community orientated place to be. Enjoy.

Not all occupations are bad

The anger that people always feel when their services are cut or their jobs threatened is combined with a sense of desperation when combined with the current economic situation. One of the fantastic new developments has been a whole range of occupations that have sprung up in response to attacks on working class people.

When Glasgow City Council proposed closing or merging 13 primary schools and 12 nurseries across the city parents were enraged. Glasgow Save Our Schools demonstrated, they lobbied the council they made their voices heard, but it wasn't enough and parents took their hearts into their mouths and occupied two of the schools under threat in an effort to save them from the axe.

This extensive video shot from within one of the Glasgow school occupations allows you to get a real flavour of how people feel about the closure of their services and why they have taken the action that they have;



But it isn't just the defence of public services - it's also the response to job losses that workers at the Visteon manufacturing plants have taken in Enfield and Belfast. Hundreds of workers, told they were to lose their jobs, took direct action to defend their livelihoods and staged sit ins. It's great to see.

Messages of support can be sent to steve.hart@unitetheunion.com or text to Kevin (Enfield) 07956 375 410, Des (Basildon) 07814 432 215 and John (Belfast) 07816 590 380.

G20 protest reports (updated)

Whilst things sound tediously status quo within the cloistered halls of the G20 summit there's been some splendid goings on among the protesters. I thought I'd try to give a quick summary (feel free to chip in with more).


My favourite way of following the action has been via this twitter feed where participants give up to the minute text reports. It's had a really exciting feel to it.

As you might expect Indymedia is following events closely with its team of embedded street journalists (which is where I stole this pic from). You might want to check out the newly revamped London Indymedia too.

Currently (midnight) the police say they have arrested 63 people and that RBS has been invaded (BBC video). Capitalism is a con claims man on Radio Four.

BREAKING NEWS: Man dies at protest... more info when I have it.

Bloggers;

• Big Green Factory on police provocation
  
• Sunny blames the cops for the violence.
• Owen says the ruckus was sponsored by Job Centre Plus.
• Vanessa Baird asks, were the protesters asking for it?
  
• Vicky asks whether the police are murderers.
  
• Ben Six tells the story in pictures.
• Anna Racoon focuses on the reporting but is unsympathetic to the protesters.
  
• Richard says make kettles illegal. Police kettles, obviously.
• James takes a look at kettling.
• Martin has some critical thoughts.
  
• Ecomonkey talks of the police imprisoning protesters.
• Leila is pissed off at the media.
• Journeyman says there was no riot.
  
• Noel Lynch is carrying a report on police tactics today.
• Lenin reports on police behaviour. Peope were "pounded with clubs and left covered in their own blood."
• Student Medic also reports on the violence
  
• One Telegraph blogger brings us the bizarre snap of one man smashing a window whilst surrounded by cameramen (including the one behind this camera I guess).
• Dave Osler on red scares around the G20.
• James at Two Doctors thinks the protesters are more important than the summit.
• Kemptown Ben is proud to have attended.
• Molly reacts to not being there.
  
• One banker is blogging at G20 London Riots - good pics, do visit!
• Harpy Marx pics and report.
• Jo Abbess on police provocation.
• Tres Lola gives a full report on her day.
• Richard calls it a police riot.
  

Reporters;

• The Telegraph says that RBS is being "looted"!
• Al Jazeera takes a look at these strange "anti-capitalists".
• Washington Post has some pretty sweet coverage.
  
• Paul Mason gives his thoughts so far (mainly of the summit itself)
• The Guardian on clashes with the police. They're also live blogging. Good pics too.
  
• The Independent on protests at the heart of the credit crunch. Setting up the camp.
  
• The BBC have some great pics and reports. Also on the camp.
  
• Billy Bragg in the NME on why he's protesting.
• The Australian on the "violent clashes".
• CiF reports on an alternative summit.
• What important to the Mirror? Which stars turned up.
  

Other sites;

• Official Green Party statement
  
• WDM banned from summit. Why?
  
• Monsters and Critics have a load of good photos.
  
• Socialist Worker outside the Bank of England.
  
• In Defence of Marxism has a report on the events overall so far.
• Climate Camp site is rather important if you're going down.
  

Youtube;

• Reporter getting hastled by cops.
• Sympathetic news report.
• Violence.
  
• Reports from Saturday. Includes Ed Miliband!
• Anarchists and leftists are cool, angry, angry and cool. With brass band music.
• Ugly scenes outside Banks of England
• Al Jazeera report where the reporter gets mobbed by police whilst talking to camera.
  

My favourite reports so far have been about the bankers taunting demonstrators by waving ten pound notes. Tenners?!? Feeling the crunch boys? Poor things...

Best quote so far on Radio Four report. Journo asks protester why he's there. Man seems surprised. "I don't believe in anything, I'm here for the violence." That's it - don't let THE MAN know your secret plans!

Pick of the tweets: Grimdotdotdot Protesters "let us on! It's a free country!" Riverboat captain "and I'm choosing not to let you on my boat. Now bugger off!"

Best photo of the day can be found here or possibly here. Weirdest is here.

All power to the people

Energy policy has never been more central to the public interest than it is today. It's always been at the heart of the economy and social equality, or lack of it, but today if we continue to use energy in the way we have been it will pose an existential threat to our glorious civilisation.

Yet, as a society, we leave almost every aspect of our energy production in the hands of private corporations, hampering our ability to direct and control this absolutely vital industry. Whilst there are snouts in the trough changing course on energy isn't just made more difficult - it's nigh on impossible.

Of course, I'm for the renationalisation of public utilities in general. Mainly it's the arguments around efficiency, democratic acountability and cutting out the middle man fat cats that I find most persuasive - but with energy there is something far more fundamental going on.

Climate change means we have to fundamentally change the way that we are using natural resources right now. Those with vested interests in the current structures cannot help but act as a conservative force on the radical reforms required. It's impossible for them, even when they agree in theory, to overcome their sectional interests, even when it might mean a loss of profitability in the long run (see Stern).

I genuinely believe that even with the most progressive board they will find it impossible to put the planet before their profits - even if it were legal for them to do so. We wouldn't leave the conduct of a war in private hands, and climate change threatens more lives than any war we've fought in to date.

The example of historic clean air acts proves that government intervention is essential to bring the self destructive tendencies of private enterprise to heel. But whilst robust government legislation would be more than welcome it seems to me that the problem is so urgent and the industries in need of such a comprehensive overhaul that we need to take things far further - to bring energy production in house through the nationalisation of the utility companies.

As we speak the first day of Green Party conference has just finished and I was pleased to see that they passed a motion recognising the need for more democratic control. The motion (on economics C01 amendment 2 for those who want to look it up in the conference guide (pdf)) states that we are for;

"Taking all energy distribution into public ownership and ensuring that energy production becomes a mixture of public and private enterprises... The distribution mains for electricity and gas will be brought into a fully accountable public sector. Energy production would be a mixture of public and private enterprises."

I think this is a very positive and pragmatic motion which, if enacted, would dramatically increase our purchase on what actually happens within the industry allowing energy to be more properly integrated into the wider strategy of saving the world.

Obviously, it talks about a mixed economy and I'd go further than that, but I accept there is a role for the social entrepreneurs (for example) who've set up renewable technology companies or micro-generation businesses and they aren't top of my list for bringing under the People's Commissariat for Power although I do think we have to recognise that they only exist because the government has refused to take the issue of renewable technologies as seriously as the situation has demanded.

PS: some of the attendees of conference are "twittering" follow them here over the next few days.

Electoral Reform

John Cruddas, the as left as you can hope for Labour MP, has been arguing for proportional representation today - which is good timing in the shadow of the European elections which were the first significant elections in this country to be conducted on a proportional basis.

Since the Euros we've seen other bodies like the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and London Assembly all created using at least partial forms of proportional representation - and in the case of the London Mayoralty a form of STV (where you can rank your first and second candidates). All of these new models have resulted in more collaborative style in politics, and have often led to the electorate being able to make powerful statements.

It's not that long ago that Ken Livingstone won an earthquake on an independent ticket against his old party (as well as the rest of them). He was undoubtedly assisted in that by voters being able to vote for him and Labour simultaneously. The Greens were able to use their own Mayoral candidate last time round to bolster both their assembly vote and advocate Ken for Mayor with some, but not enough, success. It's nurtured a more grown up form of politics that's been fairly alien to the British political system to date.

Likewise UKIP made significant gains at the last Euro elections helped by a system that attempts to represent the views of a region not just winner takes all. Whatever I think of UKIP and their shonky MEPs what is undeniable is that this result was a genuine reflection of the people's will. Compare that to the 1989 Euro elections (conducted under First Past The Post) where the Greens received 2.3 millions votes (15% nationally) but not a single MEP. Literally millions were disenfranchised.

The core to Cruddas' argument is that under our current General Election system parties are forced to concentrate their fire on the 10% of the seats that could swing either way leaving the rest of the country essentially untouched by political campaigning, and unable to effect the outcome of the election. It's a postcode lottery as to whether your vote has any impact at all.

It's certainly the case that where the BNP have made local election gains it has overwhelmingly been in areas that are "safe" Labour seats and have barely seen a local politician in years. Likewise in Cambridge the Greens won their first councillor in a Labour safe seat that had been effectively uncontested for decades.

These are the rotten fruit that should have fallen from the bough long ago. Far from being areas that impudent new comers should be avoiding massive majorities will often indicate support that has been taken for granted and can be won by any alternative that takes the area seriously over the course of a few years.

As far as it goes I'm all for what Cruddas is saying although I think we need to go far further.

I'd be for a wide ranging democratisation of the country's institutions and, crucially, the economy. In terms of other government bodies I'd be for the replacement of the House of Lords with a new second chamber elected on a PR system, preferably open lists, the abolition of our current Head of State and let's not forget the lower rungs too - PR in local elections, with full powers returned to councils, is just as important in ensuring that the citizens of this country have a say over what happens in their local area.

We should also look well beyond representative democracy and examine how citizens can participate more directly. In Cuba citizens who collect a certain number of signatures have a right to address the government directly and to have their demands debated. In Venezuela they have set up fully funded local committees in parallel with councils, who have helped to shape education and social reform in a way that the community can have a direct, unmediated control over.

We need to bring an emphasis onto the role civil society can have in empowering ordinary people. Whether that's the trade unions, community organisations, churches or campaigning bodies there are pre-existing bodies that can be a valuable mechanism for democratisation as long as we go beyond the vacuousness of consultation and contentless inclusion of a couple of community members on some powerless quango.

I could go on - but my point is that we need to look outside of our current institutions in order to bring a more real depth to the word democracy. Yes, I'm very much in favour of the democratic reforms Cruddas is suggesting - but it's pretty thin gruel when you start thinking about how far we could really go before we even begin to challenge the fundamentals of twenty first century capitalism.

Shock news: the police are liars

Just to recap on police mendacity around the camp for climate action last year;

Confiscated weapons: toilet roll, camping equipment and board games. The weapons stash (as it was described by the BBC) is pictured right. It's like a game of Where's Wally isn't it - can you spot the WMD children?

Injured cops: top cops blamed protesters for over seventy injuries. Turns out that not a single one of those injuries had been caused by protesters. Boo boos include bee stings and heat exhaustion. The one I like the best was "officer injured sitting in car"... wtf? The BBC shakes its head in a disappointed manner.

Monitoring journalists: first they said they didn't target journalists, then they said it was okay, be cool, today Bobbies say it was wrong. I'm sure they really mean it, after all if it took them this long to come clean they must have thought about it long and hard, having a real change of heart.

The police tried to say they filmed journalists by accident - in the hurly burly of a large, complex protest. But the footage shows clearly that the police camera man knows exactly who he's filming and that they work for ITV, Sky and other broadcasters, taking great interest in the showing of press identification. In fact, he makes it clear his opinions on the freedom of the press to come and go from the protest and journalists are later followed to a restaurant where they file their reports using wifi.

It also appears that the Metropolitan Police may have lied in court about the practice which isn't just naughty - it's imprisonable. Well it would be if the courts cared about policemen lying to them.

Police targeting journalists for surveillance is not cool. Lying about it takes that not coolness and adds an extra pinch of tut. Do watch the Guardian's sample footage of the films the police took, fascinating stuff.

Is it cos they are horrid? Yes. But it's also because they want to justify their actions, and if you pump up the threat in the press - making out protesters are tooled up and are nasty to good, honest coppers by stinging them with bees it allows you to rough them up, intimidate them, make protesters life a misery and generally behave like arseholes.

The police have a material interest to lie because it gives them more scope to abuse their powers - which means we need to introduce a material interest for them to tell the truth - like sacking those who tell pork pies. Apologies really are not enough when it is clearly *policy* to lie to both Parliament and the press. The police can't be trusted to uphold the law until they are subject to it.

Climate campers can be found later this year giving it some to the city whilst the G20 is in town.