“Talking CCTV”

The “Surveillance State” currently referred to as Great Britain is home to 1% of the world’s population, and 20% of its CCTV cameras, a figure that shockingly doesn’t seem to bother everyone. I can’t count the amount of times I have heard the phrase “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” being thrown around in debates on the subject.

I find this mentality to be full of ignorance and those who feel that statement is worthy of approval usually possess little knowledge on the subject…

There is little evidence that CCTV deters criminal activity; in fact, there is considerable evidence that it does not. A report by UK Police Chiefs concluded that only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV, and in London, a Metropolitan Police report indicated that only 1 crime was solved per 1000 cameras. Despite that, some municipalities have gone as far as to install “Talking CCTV” which enables them to communicate with any offenders they spot. Imagine the whole street looking at you as a voice shouts at you through a speaker system, ordering you to relocate your litter to the appropriate bin…

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SOLIDARITY WITH YARL'S WOOD HUNGER STRIKERS

DEMO AT SERCO OFFICES, 18-22 HAND COURT, HOLBORN, LONDON WC1V 6JF.
FRIDAY 19th FEBRUARY, 2.30pm

Over 50 women have been on hunger strike at Yarls Wood Immigration Prison near Bedford since Friday 5th February, demanding their immediate release from indefinite detention.

Serco, the company that runs Yarl's Wood on behalf of the UK Border Agency, has tried to brutally repress the hunger strike, most notably on Monday 8th February when Serco guards locked the hunger strikers in a corridor for 8 hours without access to water or toilet facilities.

London NoBorders calls for the immediate release of the hunger strikers and an end to immigration prisons and is calling for a demo in solidarity with the hungers strikers this Friday at 2.30pm outside Serco's offices at 18-22 Hand Court (off High Holborn), London, WC1V6JF. Please bring banners and instruments.

More information: http://london.noborders.org.uk/

Lor' luv a duck! Roselea. Know what I mean?

So much has been happing and since my last posting, and in the space of just a few day’s as well! Now what was it that Harold Wilson said about a long time in (admittedly British) politics?

Well with so much happing, much to think about before I felt like submitting or committing anything to the blog. I read something yesterday, which made me stop and think for a time, about our changing times!

Things do change, and they change it seems these days’ at an enflaming rapid rate. In a story I came across in the East London Advertiser, and will find that here,  about the old greasy spoon’s of old and in particular a traditional East End 'caff', reminding me that not long ago they were a common sight, and all over London, the word Café it’s very being was a common high street resident amongst the other shops. The old café acquainted more with the 50/60s is about to fade away into nothing more than living memory, and with little complaint in the least, and not any from the fixture and fittings that make Rossi's on Hanbury Street in Spitalfields. This is one caff which I never had the opportunity of visiting in my time. But I do have some great memories of dining or breakfasting in such establishments.

Some of the best fry-ups I’ve ever had, they made tea with such skill and perfection, the brew was Britain’s first drink long before coffee. The working man’s café soon to be a no-more; was a real institution an essential of the community; mothers stopping off having delivered the kids safely to School; they made the time, it was part of life’s ritual, the cuppa and chat, the London Black Cab drivers had their own favourites, and I always made a point of using the ones endorsed by the Black Cabs.

Oh, and that one special ingredient that above all else was the wholesome, nourishing, home cooking, egg and chips will never again taste quite the same. I remember a lovely little Italian setup in Kings Cross, it was called the A1 café and it did fantastic Spaghetti and the chips served as a side dish. At one time some of North London was referred to as little Italy because of the number of Italian’s who lived owned or were generally associated with what was next to fish and chips an institution, a custom that for a long time has been an important feature of society; and the old café fell into the middle of working class community, even today’s great British TV soups have a café or a pub sometimes centre-staging their scripted plots, what about Sid’s café in the ‘Last of the Sumer Wine’. . They became haunts for teenagers in particular; Italian-run espresso bars and their formica-topped tables were a feature of 1950s Soho that provided a backdrop as well as a title for Cliff Richard’s 1960 film Expresso Bongo.

Well I think the café has a special place in this islands cultural history that holds such diversity to which this is but only a peace of the jigsaw!

One other point about the café which we Socialists and freethinkers should remember at its demise and yes’ it’s death sadly!

The cafe evolved out of and from the old 17th century coffee houses. Café the French word for coffeehouse means an informal restaurant, offering arange of hot meals and beverages. They were community meeting points from the start, if you like the first community centers, and as such it shouldn’t be surprising to find that they played such prominence in the history and development of the Labour movement. We all have to move on with the time; that’s the way it is just like the tide, it comes in, and on its way out it takes far out to sea its debris - that something that has been destroyed and broken up!

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consequence

It is almost the end of yet another month of this present year, thousands have lost homes, jobs or both, the economic crises of capitalism has barely or scantly left a family unaffected or untouched in the length and breadth of the whole country. Banks have been handed billions if not trillions, and their discredited heads have taken astronomical and large amounts of cash in severance pay, rewarded and honoured for a job well done, pre-credit crunch of course, even though they created and led us all into it. It is with this background in mind, that I come to reflect upon the G20 summit of world leaders that was held in the Excel center not so far away from where I live in Caning Town East London, in fact I have a view of this venue from my flat windows. For me the irony of this chosen location prickle's my contempt for the whole rotten caboodle of capitalism.
Here in one of the East London Boroughs, with one of the highest rate's of almost every think imaginable that constitutes derivation and poverty, from unemployment to child poverty, our so-called world leaders gathered in what some described as an over large aircraft hanger to address the world recession under the stewardship of Gorden Brown desperate to save the world this time around and his job in the process. But this post is not about the actual summit or new giant stars like President Barack Obama appearing for the first time in the splendid assemblage of a world galaxy of leaders. No,instead this post is about dissent in a recession; and has it begun to lead to repression, are we seeing the apparatus of the state use the force at it disposal to quell, suppress and crush protest and disagreement, that is the question?

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, historians noted a marked deterioration in the conditions of workers, for example between 1800 and 1840 there was a shortage of meat in London; out of 8.5 million Irishmen, close to a million literally starved to death in the famine of 1846-1847; the average wage of hand loom weavers fell between 1805 and 1833 from 23 shillings a week to 6s 3d. Interestingly, the average height of the population - good indication of nutrition - rose between 1780 and 1830, fell in the next thirty years, then rose again. The 1840s were known, even at that time, as the 'Hungry Forties'. Riots, mostly related to food shortages, broke out in Britain. "Here I am between Earth and Sky, so help me God. I would sooner lose my life than go home as I am. Bread I will have", is quoted from a rioter in the Fens, giving an idea of sheer desperation that led in the end to riots; and all over the country. The nineteenth century riots is just one example of cause, effect and consequence. The history of world capitalism has stonewashed it's self of dissent and throughout it's existence up and to this very present time. The G20 summit and the peaceful protest of that day may lay down a marker of change for the worst.

Even before the G20 summit of world leaders began in London, five people were arrested in Plymouth under the Terrorism Act, reportedly accused of possessing “material relating to political ideology”.

All were released without charge, but the fact that political activism is considered a criminal offence in 21st century Britain was subsequently writ large on the streets of the capital.

On April 1, a massive police operation was set in place around the G20 summit. Hundreds of people, legally exercising their right to protest, were “kettled”—forcibly held behind police cordons for up to seven hours—in the side streets of central London.

It was behind one of these cordons that Ian Tomlinson—attempting to make his way home after work—was attacked from behind by a baton-wielding masked police officer. He died moments later.

Eyewitness accounts, video footage and photo stills provide conclusive proof that the police’s attack against Tomlinson was par for the course during the protests.

The police actions had nothing to do with ensuring “public safety”. If anything, they constituted a deliberate attempt to provoke disorder as the pretext for further repression. This is underscored by evidence of plain-clothes officers armed with batons striking out at demonstrators, as well as the participation of the Territorial Support Group—a special quasi-paramilitary police unit which was involved in several of the most publicised incidents, and whose identification numbers were concealed.

Police now routinely photograph and demand the identification and addresses of people taking part in lawful demonstrations.Less than one month before the protests, section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 came into force, providing for the arrest and imprisonment of anyone taking photographs of police officers.

In one instance during the G20 protests, recorded on camera, police officers instructed photographers and news crews to leave the vicinity within 30 minutes or face arrest.

This in a country whose population is now one of the most heavily surveyed in the world. The UK has the greatest concentration of closed circuit TV cameras per head of population. Moreover, without any parliamentary debate let alone public consent, recent legislation has compelled all Internet service providers to retain data from emails and website visits for up to one year. Details of phone calls and text messages can be similarly stored, and made available to the government and other official agencies.

As if such powers were not enough for police to be aware of the movements of any potentially “significant” individuals, on April 13, police in Nottingham carried out the unprecedented “pre-emptive” arrests of 114 people. No crime had been committed. The arrests were made purely on the basis that the police “suspected” a plan by environmentalists to target a power station in Nottingham. While no charges have as yet been made, the arrests were used to mount a trawling operation, raiding homes and seizing personal papers and computers.

In between the London and Nottingham operations, police in the north-west of England mounted major “anti-terror” raids, involving dozens of armed officers. Twelve men, mainly foreign students, were detained as part of what was claimed to be an operation against an imminent terrorist attack.

Once again no charges have been made. Under British anti-terror laws, suspects can be held for 28 days without charge. It is widely reported that no evidence has so far been recovered to substantiate claims of a terrorist emergency.

All the recent police operations are predicated on the more than 200 pieces of separate anti-terror legislation enacted by the Labour government over the last years, and consolidated in the Terrorism Act 2006 which criminalises the mere expression of opinion deemed unacceptable by the Home Secretary.

At the time, then Prime Minister Tony Blair defended the measures on the grounds that political exigencies meant the “rules of the game” had changed.

This established a new legal principle—guilty on the say-so of the powers-that-be. The “rules” now in operation are those where armed police swoops and the targeting of political dissent is a matter of routine. In February this year, in a move which received barely any coverage, the Association of Chief Police Officers set up the Confidential Intelligence Unit, targeted at “domestic extremists”. Assuming the “counter-subversion” functions usually conducted by MI5, the CIU is dedicated to the surveillance of radical groups, including placing informers amongst their numbers.

The assault on civil liberties is not specific to Britain. It is a tendency evidenced throughout the so-called “advanced democracies”. Indeed proclamations of “democracy” increasingly function as a thin veneer, behind which the state has abrogated to itself near autocratic powers.

That this finds no principled opposition from within the ruling establishment or its liberal “critics” must serve as a warning.

The essential driving force behind the adoption of such dictatorial methods is not the maintenance of “public order”, but the need to defend the existing order, preserving the wealth and power of a privileged few at the expense of working people under conditions of the greatest breakdown in the world capitalist economy since the 1930s.

'You Don't Say'

"I'm very much concerned when I read attacks on greed and spivs and speculation, attacks by neo-socialists on the culture of bonuses. Of course, there have been excesses and of course there has been greed . . . but this is a great British industry and the last thing we want to do now is throw the baby out with the bathwater with some form of [excessive] regulation."