The Seventh Deadly Seasonal Message

Once again, the season of goodwill to all men is upon us. The tree is up, the lights are on and the alcohol is about to kick in.

It is now traditional that to mark this annual event I put fingers to keyboard and deposit a Christmas blog in your mental microwaves to see if it defrosts. This is now just about the only time I write here. The real world now impinges on my time more than it once did and this coupled with different focuses for my activism has meant that blogging is no longer the priority it once was.

I'm sure this is a great disappointment to many (some? any?) of you who miss my critical insights, witty prose and well-selected images, but when reality calls, what am I to do?

Returning to the traditional message, this is usually my opportunity to reflect on the nonsense of the so-called "War on Christmas" a conflict which has allegedly raged in shopping centres, schoolyards and council offices. A cynically manufactured controversy driven by a right wing which is disprate, often incoherent but ultimately all heading in the samer direction: seeking to turn back every social advance of last century from gay rights to female equality.

This year, however, I'm short on material. The leading protagonists in this conflict seem to have been relatively quiet on the subject. One assumes they have been too busy slashing public services to worry about trivial things like the wording used on Christmas decorations. The cultural phoney war has been replaced by an all too real economic class war.

It is this assault on our communities and the effectiveness of our response which will, I suspect, define 2011 politically. This may sound like a pessimistic view, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. Already we are doing better than Ireland, where meaningful resistance to the imposition of austerity did not emerge until almost 2 years after it began. This provides some hope that we may be able to avoid following them into a spiral of cuts, bailouts and worsening cuts.

But hope is no substitute for action and we have a long battle ahead of us. So far the students have shown the way, but the struggle needs to spread to other sectors: trade unions, public sector workers, the unemployed, service users and the rest of society.

So enjoy your strangled turkey, drink until you throw up your liver and revel in the spirit of the season, for tomorrow we bring down a government.

Happy Christmas, Chrismukkah, Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, Duckmass, Festivus, Hannukah, Hogmany, Holiday, HumanLight, Koruchun, Kwanza, New Year, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Winterval, Yalda and/or Yule!

Previous years: 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004

Don't let them deport my friend!

I've known Hich for years and now the bastards want to deport him to Algeria...

If you know Hich and/or can help in any way, get int touch with the campaign.

Website: http://freehichamyezza.wordpress.com
Email: staffandstudents@googlemail.com
Phone: 07948590262

The press release does a pretty good job of summing up what's going on...

From a group of Nottingham residents, concerned student and academics at the University of Nottingham.
For immediate use, 24/05/08 SATURDAY

Notts Uni detainee innocent but still facing deportation

Hicham Yezza, a popular, respected and valued former PhD student and current employee of the University of Nottingham faces deportation to Algeria on Sunday 1st June. This follows his unjust arrest under the Terrorism Act 2000 on Wednesday 14th May alongside Rizwaan Sabir and their release without charge six days later.

It has subsequently become clear that these arrests, which the police had claimed related to so-called “radical materials” involved an Al Qaeda manual downloaded by Sabir as part of his research into political Islam and emailed to Yezza for printing because Sabir couldn’t afford to get it printed himself.

There has been a vocal response from lecturers and students. A petition is being circulated, letters have been sent by academics across the world and a demo is being planned for Wednesday. 28th May. This has clearly been deeply embarrassing to a government currently advocating an expansion of anti-terror powers.

On his release Hicham was re-arrested under immigration legislation and, due to confusion over his visa documentation, charged with offences relating to his immigration status. He sought legal advice and representation over these matters whilst in custody. On Friday 23rd May, he was suddenly served with a deportation notice and moved to an immigration detention centre. The deportation is being urgently appealed.

Hicham has been resident in the U.K. for 13 years, during which time he has studied for both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Nottingham. He is an active member of debating societies, a prominent member of an arts and theatre group, and has written for, and edited, Ceasefire, the Nottingham Student Peace Movement magazine for the last five years.

He is well known and popular on campus amongst the university community and has established himself as a voracious reader and an authority on literature and music. An application for British citizenship was underway, and he had been planning to make his yearly trip to Wales for the Hay Festival when he was suddenly arrested.

The authorities are clearly trying to circumvent the criminal justice system and force Hicham out of the country. Normally they would have to wait for criminal proceedings to finish, but here they have managed to convince the prosecution to drop the charges in an attempt to remove him a quick, covert manner. The desire for justice is clearly not the driving force behind this, as Hicham was happy to stand trial and prove his innocence.

Hicham had a large social network and many of his friends are mobilising to prevent his deportation. Matthew Butcher, 20, a student at the University of Nottingham and member of the 2008-9 Students Union Executive, said, “This is an abhorrent abuse of due process, pursued by a government currently seeking to expand anti-terror powers. Following the debacle of the initial ‘terror’ arrests they now want to brush the whole affair under the carpet by deporting Hicham.”

Supporters have been able to talk with Hicham and he said, “The Home Office operates with a Gestapo mentality. They have no respect for human dignity and human life. They treat foreign nationals as disposable goods - the recklessness and the cavalier approach they have belongs to a totalitarian state. I thank everyone for their support - it’s been extremely heartening and humbling. I’m grateful to everyone who has come to my aid and stood with me in solidarity, from students to Members of Parliament. I think this really reflects the spirit of the generous, inclusive Britain we know - and not the faceless, brutal, draconian tactics of the Home Office.”

[ENDS]

The true message of the new Olympics logo has finally been revealed and not everybody's gonna like it...

Beer Not Bombs

Ian Bone, Bash The Rich: True-Life Confessions of an Anarchist in the UK, Tangent Books, Bath, 2006, 281 pp

I've always had a soft-spot for Class War. Nobody makes political propaganda quite like them. One of their recent stickers, for instance, consists of a picture of a scalpel with the message, "Mess with out NHS and we'll mess with you." Of course, not everybody's so keen on the unrepentantly anatgonistic stylings or the group's sense of humour. They also get considerable kudos for their decision in 1997 to wind themselves up (a decision they consciously made themselves, something wwhich is virtually unheard of in political circles) which led to issue 73 of their eponymous paper, an explanation of their decision and a critique of themselves and the wider Left and anarchist movements. (Incidentally, if you haven't read this, you really should, it's quite brilliant.) Of course, the fact that they're still producing paraphernalia testifies to the fact that the organisation was promptly restarted by former members, but that's by the by. Anyone wanting an insight into the politics which guided and the context which gave rise to Class War could do a whole lot worse than pick up a copy of founding member Ian Bone's memoirs.

The book starts with a perusal of the Bone family's radical heritage heritage. While his grandfather had been a miner his dad became a butler and his mother a housekeeper. Despite this apparently servile position, both were solid Labour (not merely Labour voters, Bone stresses). Campaigning for the party in constituencies which had previously been dyed-in-the-wool Tory strongholds.

While Bone inherited this commitment to working-class politics, he became an anarchist and was heavily involved in the movement while at Swansea University. His accounts of participation in the anti-Vietnam movement are particularly interesting and he still holds a grudge against Tariq Ali for bottling a march on the US Embassy and acquiescing in its redirection to Hyde Park, where it was obviously less likely lead to a serious riot.

Remaining in Wales for some years after finishing uni, Bone became peripherally involved in the nascent Welsh Republican movement. While I don't want to question the sincerity of those involved in this movement, the sheer ridiculousness of so much of its campaigning contribute to some of the funniest moments in what is a consistently funny book. In one incident, a number of activists discuss "retaking" Hereford, apparently in some detail, noting that the local police force are unlikely to put up much resistance. These plans are only abandoned when Bone points out that Hereford is where the SAS are based.

While Bone's early political life is intriguing and amusing, often in equal measures, the book's real draw is inevitably his formative role in Class War. The movement grew out of a single paper Bone and a number of others knocked together in the hope of shaking things up in the anarchist movement which they considered to be moribund. They never thought about making this a regular publication, but it proved to be hugely popular and was soon followed up. Beginning in April 1983, the paper would grow to reach a readership of 15,000 at the height of the Miners' Strike, at least according to Bone.


Class War the group would grow out of the paper, but despite the publication's huge success, the organisation itself never grew much beyond 50 people. Bone makes no attempt to cover-up the very real differences which existed amongst this group. Debates appear to have been lengthy and often forceful, something which is unlikely to have been helped by the extensive intake of alcohol which took place in the course of most meeting. What is particularly surprising given the accusations of "macho" posturing levelled at Class War is quite how much time seems to have been spent discussing sexual politics: prostitution, porn, monogamy and even compulsory bisexuality.

In the early days, Class War focused on intervening in other campaigns, hoping to radicalise the participants. In October 1983 they turned up at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) demonstration and tried to storm the stage when Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock ("Kinnockio") was invited to speak. Later they turned up at an animal rights demo organised by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) demo against a company called Biorex where they hoped to build links with the nascent animal liberation movement. After a sit-down protest led to a riot, Class War crashed the post-march rally BUAV were holding in a nearby Town Hall to protest the organisation's failure to support the rioters. They demanded and were granted a speaker. On this basis, one of their number was sent on-stage only to ignore what he had been told to say by the rest of the group and drunkenly assert, "Hitler was a fucking vegetarian," before stumbling off-stage.

In fact, riots play a central role in the book, as they did in Class War's politics. Bone had, after all, set the organisation up with the hope of building links with those who had launched riots in inner-city areas in 1981. For this reason, I suspect it's unlikely to go down with your average pacifist, although they aren't really the target market. What is perhaps surprising is Bone's openness about his participation in various riots and disturbances. Perhaps he figures the cops know it all already? Or don't care? Whatever, it certainly makes for an engaging, action packed read.

The focus on violence (a word which, appears repeatedly throughout the book), brings to mind Dave Hann and Steve Tilzey's No Retreat, an account of militant anti-fascism in the UK in the 70s-90s and one of the few other political memoirs I've ever read. Unlike Hann and Tilzey, however, Bone doesn't underplay the more mundane aspects of political campaigning: meetings, paper sales, political discussions etc. Then again, it's possible that this simply reflects the fact that Class War meetings (often drunken affairs) were just more exciting than those held by Red Action and hence easier to fit into a book without risking losing half the readers.

This is certainly not a boring, self-aggrandising tome and it's quite the page-turner. It's also very funny (or, as Bone would no doubt have it, "fucking funny as fuck"). If I had one complaint it would be the way it seems to grind to a halt with the narrative located in late-1985, shortly before the Wapping strike. Perhaps this is indicative of a second volume, although I've seen nothing else to suggest this. If there is going to be another one, I'll definitely try and lay my hands on a copy. Which is another way of saying you should get hold of a copy of this one.

The unusual feeling of success

As I mentioned briefly last week, the Chagossians have once again been victorious in the courts. On Wednesday May 23, the Court of Appeal upheld a ruling in the islanders favour last year. The three judges also ruled that the government should pay legal costs and withheld support for an appeal to the House of Lords. (You can read the judgement in full here.)

Regular readers will be familiar with the Chagossians forty-year struggle to return to the islands from which they were exiled by the British government to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia. Last week's ruling is clearly an important development, but is the third victory the Chagossians have achieved in the British court system since 2000 and so they've yet to actually return, although a handful were allowed to visit the islands briefly last year.

Richard Gifford, the Chagossian's lawyer opined:

It has been held that the ties which bind a people to its homeland are so fundamental that no executive order can lawfully abrogate those rights.

This is now the third time that Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the Chagossian community in exile, has proved to the satisfaction of English judges that nothing can separate his compatriots from their homeland.

They now call upon the British government for a new start in this abusive relationship and to proceed with the utmost urgency to restore these loyal British subjects to their homeland.

In the course of his judgement, Lord Justice Sedley stated that

while a natural or man-made disaster could warrant the temporary, perhaps even indefinite, removal of a population for its own safety and so rank as an act of governance, the permanent exclusion of an entire population from its homeland for reasons unconnected with their collective wellbeing cannot have that character and accordingly cannot be lawfully accomplished by use of the prerogative power of governance.

Having seen victory turn to inaction on previous occasions, the Chagossians greeted the ruling in silence, but their de facto leader Olivier Bancoult, emerged from court, smiling and making the V for victory sign with his fingers (see picture, above). "I'm very happy for my people," he told supporters and journalists. "We will go back and make Chagos great."

Of course, the Foreign Office less happy saying it was "disappointed," although a spokeswoman conceded that the islanders now had the right to return home, at least "in theory." Unfortunately, there's a very good chance they'll appeal the decision although so far they have merely stated their intention to consider an appeal. The UK Chagos Support Association are encouraging supporters to lobby their MPs and anybody else you can think of to try and forestall this possibility. The Association also notes that the Chagossians don't have the means to resettle the Archipelago on their own and urges the government to support them in doing so.

Even if the Foreign Office decline to appeal, as unlikely as that seems, it should be noted that the Chagossians victory is only partial. It appears that while the islanders have the right to return to 65 of the islands in the Archipelago, this doesn't extend to Diego Garcia, the largest and most famous. Few of the reports I've read are clear on this, but such was the conclusion drawn in the 2000 High Court ruling. Furthermore, as I've noted previously, Bancoult (and perhaps other Chagossians, although this is unclear) has accepted that the Americans are there for the forseeable future.

For what it's worth, I'd be more than happy to see the US evicted from the "footprint of freedom," but the Chagossians are few in number and many of them are elderly. I fully understand why they might be able to take what they can get even if it is less than they might have wanted initially. It's taken them forty-years just to get this far.

Update: Jonathan Edelstein has some excellent analysis of the legal wranglings which got us to this point and of the judgement itself.

Victory!

The Chagossians have won the right to return in the Court of Appeal. Of course, the government are going to appeal. I'm busy at the moment, but I'll write more in due course. In the meantime, enjoy Steve Bell's awesome cartoon from yesterday's Grauniad.

Fuck the War!

The delightfully named "Fuck the War Coalition!" have claimed responsibility for spraying anti-war slogans and breaking windows at the US Consulate in Edinburgh. The incident follows similar actions at an armed forces recruitment centre in the city and the offices of the pro-war MPs Alistair Darling and Nigel Griffiths.

First they came for the animal rights activists...

Yesterday, thirty people were arrested for alleged involvement in "extremism" in dawn raids carried out across the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. Predictably the media are lapping it up, providing extensive quotations from the police, with minimal analysis. This time, however, it isn't Muslims they're after, but animal rights activists. This ought to be worrying and not just for people involved in animal rights activism.

NETCU is the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit established to facilitate the policing of "domestic extremism." Now, in an era of international terrorism and post-7/7 this might not seem so unreasonable, but pay careful attention to the definition of domestic extremism they use:

Domestic extremism is the term used to describe any unlawful or recognisably anti-social act carried out as part of an 'extreme campaign'.

It is often associated with campaigns focused around a single issue, such as animal rights.

Violence, you will note, does not figure here, mere illegality is sufficient. If you think that this is merely me being paranoid, I urge you to consider their definition of a "lock on":

A 'lock on' is when a domestic extremist fastens him/herself onto an object to cause an obstruction or disruption using a padlock in combination with arm tubes to make it difficult for the police to remove the individual, the object or both.

Lock ons usually involve several domestic extremists and can involved the use of multiple arm tubes, barrels, vehicles, clamps, D-locks in combination and at more than one location.

"Domestic extremists" appears to be the new term for what used to be known as "activists" or "campaigners," but those terms presumably lack the required shock value. It should be clear that the term has nothing whatsoever to do with violence. It is, after all, pretty difficult to be violent when you're fastened to somebody or something. (As if to underline the point, the front page of their website utilises a picture of the Clown Army.) It's certainly a definition which incorporates myself. How long then before the police are turning up at my house at 5.30 in the morning, and how long before anybody sees me again?

Going off on a slight tangent for a moment, NETCU have been particularly interested in animal rights activism (although they've been spotted on anti-GM demos). Of course, they claim to be "impartial." Tellingly, however, a perusal of their links page reveals a number of explicitly pro-vivisection organisations, but not a single animal rights group. As NETCU Watch ruefully note, not even the RSPCA merit a mention. Whatever one's opinion on vivisection (I'm sceptical about its value, but not actively involved in opposing it) this ought to raise a number of difficult questions. Personally, I find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that it is essentially a political police force set up to render activism ineffective.

NETCU, of course, is merely one element within the state's repressive arsenal, which has blossomed (if you'll excuse the confused metaphors) under New Labour: surveillance cameras are now ubiquitous; unauthorised protests in Parliament Square are illegal; solidarity with armed resistance groups is a criminal offence; Asbos can ban activists from whole areas; ID cards are on the way; and so on and so forth. Typically, the mainstream media seem happy to toe the line on all this. Stopping things getting any worse is going to be up to us. We'll just have to hope they don't arrest us all before we manage it.

Who said (about the captured British marines), "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they were in Iraqi territorial waters. Equally, the Iranians may well claim that they were in their territorial waters. The extent and definition of territorial waters in this part of the world is very complicated"?