The Revolution Will Be Televised

I’ve spent the last few weeks dropping in and out of Al-Jazeera’s live streaming news of the Egyptian revolution. Quite amazing footage has flashed across my computer screen of this exciting and moving event, which shows the irresistible force of people power, when the masses unite in solidarity and even the most brutally entrenched governments can be toppled. Great credit goes to the demonstrators, for their bravery, determination and largely peaceful behaviour throughout the eighteen days of passionate struggle.

One of the most interesting aspects of this revolution and the preceding one in Tunisia, has been not only the older media coverage of events, but the widespread use of new media to connect and spread the protests. Blogs, Facebook and Twitter have been used by activists to impressive effect, and the authorities were so afraid of this tactic, that they tried, unsuccessfully, to close down access to
the internet, and we now see why.

Egyptian protesters got around this government tactic, by using old dial up connections and using proxy servers, and so stayed one step ahead of the authorities. That at the forefront of the revolution, it was the young people, who never having known any other government than Mubarak’s, but were crucially encouraged by, and were savvy enough to know the possibilities of new media, helped immeasurably the eventual magnificent success of the people.

They will need to be watchful of the interim military government, and may need to bring people onto the streets again in huge numbers, just to keep the generals honest in their stated intentions to move quickly to a democratic society, but I think they are aware of this, and again new media will play its part in that mobilisation.

What lessons does all of this teach us about protest in the UK then? Well, of course it is already happening. It is doubtful whether we would have found out the truth about the police’s involvement in the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London in 2009, without the intervention of ‘citizen journalism’ footage of the events leading up to his death.

The website Indymedia, is a hub for activists who are organising direct action protests, and social networking sites, blogs and email lists are widely used in communicating information to and in between activists. I have also heard of plans to make laptops mini portable internet hubs, so information can be communicated amongst demonstrators, even when the authorities close down the regular internet and mobile phone provision in areas where protests are taking place. Tactics are changing too, with smaller ‘flash mobs’ appearing suddenly, and taking the police by surprise, like the UK Uncut protests over corporate tax evasion. And climate activists often operate in a semi- autonomous, horizontal network, that is difficult to monitor and contain.

Internationally, the Wikileaks ‘hactivists’ who closed down corporate websites for hours, and obtained secret information on the true thinking behind our politician’s actions, have changed investigative journalism forever.

The establishment in the UK has much to worry about now, and we can follow up the student demonstrations of last year about tuition fees, by staging even bigger, though more nimble at the same time, protests about the public spending cuts, beginning with the TUC march on the 26th March this year. Look at what the Egyptian people have achieved, the ConDem government should be easy to topple.

Cracks Begin to Appear in ConDem Coalition Government

Turmoil within the ConDem government has become increasingly apparent in recent days. 88 Lib Dem councillors, with some 17 council leaders, in a letter to The Times newspaper, complain that the government’s cut to local authorities’ budgets are too deep saying, "These cuts will have an undoubted impact on all frontline council services, including care services to the vulnerable." They also accuse Eric Pickles, the Local Government Secretary of State, of “letting down” users of council services and of refusing to work with local councillors.

This mini rebellion comes a day after the Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshott resigned as the Lib Dem’s treasury spokesperson, after criticising the government’s pitifully weak deal with the bankers, branding treasury negotiators as “incompetent”, for “not being able to negotiate themselves out of a paper bag”. Furthermore, Oakeshott is known to be close to Vince Cable, the Business Secretary and deputy leader of the Lib Dems, whose fate now looks to hang on the outcome of the government commission on the future of banking, under the chairmanship of Sir John Vickers, which is due to report later this year.

I also noted with interest, that Francis Maude, Cabinet office minister, was heckled on BBC television Question Time, when he was trying blame the last government for the public spending cuts that are being enforced by the coalition. He also seemed to lose it the previous night on BBC Newsnight, when he was debating the cuts.

The Labour leader Ed Miliband advised the Prime Minister, David Cameron, at PM’s questions in Parliament this week, “not to get so angry,” when responding to questions. Of course Cameron specialises in the ‘Flashman’ role of public school bully, but it does seem to me that both the coalition government’s parties are getting rattled. This should come as no great surprise, opinion polls continue to show a draining of support for the Tories and particularly the Lib Dems, and the bulk of the public spending cuts have not even been felt fully by the voters yet.

The honeymoon period for this government, which has not been in power for a year yet, is well and truly over. Contrast this to the last Labour government, which was riding high in the opinion polls for several years after it was elected, and we can, I think, see the beginning of the end for the ConDem administration.

They have had some success with the ‘blaming the previous government’ line for everything for a while, but I think this is wearing a little thin now. People are coming to realise that this government is ideologically committed to hacking back the state, and with it, the welfare state, whilst lining the pockets of the rich at the expense of lower and middle income people.

If the referendum on the Alternative Vote is lost, and either way, this is bound to cause some turmoil within the coalition, we could well see the coalition torn apart later this year. A general election can’t come quick enough for me, and I look forward to 57 ‘Portillo’ moments as the Lib Dem MP’s are kicked out, and this odious government is ejected.

Tax Justice

Tax Justice from PCS Union TV on Vimeo.

This video is from the PCS trade union. It challenges the myth put around by the government (and other establishment bodies) that ‘there is no alternative’ to draconian public spending cuts being imposed on the ‘little’ people, to tackle the budget deficit.

Government ministers are fond of referring to people who do not accept their prescription, as ‘deficit deniers’ but there is another way as this video points out. Tax avoidance and evasion costs the country billions of pounds, but there is no real attempt to stop this. Contrast this with the time and effort which goes into the relatively minor loss of revenue that is down to fraudulent benefit claims.

ConDem Government to Facilitate People Trafficking

I read in The Independent on Sunday that the government is to scrap safeguards for people who are trafficked into the UK for use in the sex industry and elsewhere, and could not believe what I was reading. This government has really sunk to the depths of callousness. Below is a letter I have sent to Lynne Featherstone, Lib Dem MP for Hornsey and Wood Green and Minister for Equalities. When she replies, I will publish it here on this blog.

To: Lynne Featherstone MP, Minister for Equalities

Dear Ms Featherstone,

I am writing to you after reading a very disturbing story in the Independent on Sunday, about the coalition government’s plans to scrap safeguards on human trafficking into the UK.

The piece reports that some 4,000 people, mostly women are brought into the UK each year to work in the sex trade, and many more, including children, are smuggled in to work as domestic servants, farm hands and drug cultivators.

It goes on to say that government plans will:

Close The Gang Masters Licensing Authority

Close The Metropolitan Police’s Human Trafficking Unit

Close the government’s Human Trafficking Centre.

Cut funding by almost a half for The ‘Poppy Project’ which provides shelter for trafficked women

The Border Agency’s ‘reflection’ time for deciding whether a person has been trafficked is to be reduced from 45 to 30 days

The EU directive against trafficking has not been adopted in the UK

The Independent does say that there is some disquiet amongst Lib Dem MP’s and ministers, but is disquiet going to be enough to put right this disgraceful state of affairs?

I am asking you, as my constituency MP and Minister for Equalities, to use all the means at your disposal to reverse these planned changes, which would be a callous dereliction of duty to the abused people who suffer this abhorrent treatment.

Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed

This video song is by UK folk band Show of Hands, and is about our old friends the bankers. The lyrics are reproduced below:

All I wanted was a home
And a roof over our heads
Somewhere we could call our own
Feel safer in our beds

There was a storm of money raining down
It only touched the ground
With a loan I took I can’t repay
And the crock of gold you found

At every trough you stopped to feed
With your Arrogance, your Ignorance and Greed.

I never was a cautious man
I spend more than I’m paid
But those with something put aside
Are the ones that you betrayed

With your bonuses and expenses
You shovelled down your throat
Now you bit the hand that fed you
Dear God I hope you choke

At every trough you stopped to feed
With your Arrogance, your Ignorance and Greed.

You're on your yacht, we’re on our knees
Through your Arrogance, your Ignorance and Greed.

Toxics springs you tapped and sold,
Poisoned every watering hole
Your probity, you exchanged for gold

Working man stands in line
The market sets his price
No feather bed, no golden egg
No one pays him twice

So where's your thrift, your caution
Your honest sound advice
You know you dealt yourself a winning hand
And loaded every dice

At every trough you stopped to feed
With your Arrogance, your Ignorance and Greed.

I pray one day we’ll soon be free
From your absolute indifference
Your avarice, incompetence
Your Arrogance, your Ignorance and your Greed.

What are Left and Right in Politics?

I noticed a post on The Daily (Maybe) the other day, where Jim writes about a Yougov survey asking whether people consider themselves to be either left or right politically, and to what extent. Perhaps the most interesting finding is that 30% of the people surveyed were ‘don’t knows’. This got me to thinking is the left/right terminology out dated, and not particularly relevant to the politics of today?

Admittedly, there are many grey areas when trying to categorise a person’s views on a number of issues, for example something like being pro freedom and civil liberties could be a right or left wing position, but equally being authoritarian and in effect anti civil liberties could be a right or left wing position (think of Hitler and Stalin).

Concern for the environment tends to be a left wing position, for example if you asked people on the climate change demonstrations, the vast majority would say they are on the left. Karl Marx had a green side to him too, take this quote from his third volume of Capital as an example:

“From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.”

On the other hand, environmentalism has a right wing strain, the Nazi’s in 1930’s Germany extolled the importance of the soil, German soil particularly and the importance of working the land. The England and Wales Green party’s precursor party (PEOPLE and then the Ecology party) was started by the Tory Teddy Goldsmith (uncle of Zac, Tory MP) and Jonathan Porritt is a close friend of the Prince of Wales.

The Green party these days is a party of the left though, and I was amused whilst watching the Daily Politics show on the BBC last week, on which Green party leader Caroline Lucas was a guest. A man from the audience said, ‘you’re just green on the outside, but red in the middle’. To which Caroline replied, ‘do you have a problem with that?’

So things are not clear cut when trying to place people and opinions into convenient categories of left and right, but I think there is still something useful in the labels in getting a feel of where people are at. For me, an absolute left position must include a commitment to equality. Equality of opportunity, not discriminating on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, age etc, but more than this equality of income and lifestyle. I’m not saying everyone should be paid the same wage, but the gap between lowest and highest is now a scandal.

The scary thing for me is, that if 30% of people don’t see it this way, then politics just becomes a meaningless managerial exercise, no passion or belief, and I might as well pack up this blog and go and find another hobby.

Tory / Lib Dem Electoral Pact on the Cards

The Independent newspaper reported on Friday 28th January here,that senior members of both coalition parties are thinking of entering into an electoral pact at the next general election.

When I first saw the Oldham East by-election result, I was struck by how well the Lib Dems had done, considering their plummeting opinion poll ratings. The Independent piece though, claims that Tory voters’ voted tactically for the Lib Dems as the best way to defeat Labour. As it happens, Labour won, with the Tory vote down sharply but the Lib Dem vote down only slightly. The reasoning for this put forward in The Independent was Tory voters switching to the Lib Dems, and thus avoiding wipe out for their coalition partners.

Figures in both governing parties are openly suggesting that they should give each other an easy ride in future by-elections and at the next general election, citing the low profile campaign in Oldham East by the Tories, as a template for the future. The thinking is that an anti-Labour electoral alliance could be constructed to keep the coalition government in power for the foreseeable future.

Furthermore, I argued here on this blog, that if the Alternative Vote referendum is passed into law, which is a big if at present, then this will help facilitate the Tory and Lib Dem strategy even more. That is, they will then be able to openly state that their voter’s second preference votes under AV, should be given to their coalition partner. Together with the government’s proposed boundary changes and the reduction of the number of constituencies (those that will disappear are all Labour held seats in inner cities) this could well keep the coalition in power for as long as Mubarak in Egypt.

So, why should the Green party be concerned about Labour being permanently out of government? Well, it is true that Labour are no ‘greener’ than the Tories or Lib Dems, perhaps even less so, and that their social policies were only slightly better than the current government’s when they were in office.

From a Green party electoral point of though, I can only see us getting any influence at Westminster in a coalition or such with a minority Labour government. Labour (members anyway) are closer to Green party social policy than either Tories or the new right wing Lib Dems, and personally I get on better with Labour people than Tories or Lib Dems in general. Despite the last couple of decades, a lot of Labour people still see themselves as on the left politically, which is perhaps more of a gut feeling these days than anything particularly demonstrable, but all the same I think it would make it easier for us Greens to connect with Labour than the other main parties.

As I explained in the previous post referred to earlier, AV would not significantly help a Labour / Green electoral pact, and the danger is that we will be stuck with the coalition in government with no realistic means of ejecting them from office. Also, it will encourage elements in the Labour party to tack even further to right, to try and win over right wing voters, which will lead to us having a permanent reactionary government, even if Labour does gain power again.