Tony Benn Dies Aged 88 – An Icon of the English Left

Very sad to hear the news that Tony Benn has died. He had been very ill for a little while and when last I saw him in the flesh, which was a couple of years ago, he looked very frail.

I once saw him make a speech at The Free Trade Hall of all places in Manchester in I think 1980, and he was very powerful, electric even and really inspiring, and I left the event feeling as though the revolution was about to begin in the next week or so.

Times change of course, and the revolution (a peaceful one, of course) looks further away than ever now, but Tony Benn was the only figure on the left from the 70’s and 80’s and before that managed to keep up with the new politics of the left, attending Left Field at the Glastonbury festival for example and he could engage easily with the younger generations.

I thought of trying to get a video clip for this blog of Tony Benn in his prime, but in end thought it more appropriate to feature a recent one, like the one above, because he really did adapt with the times, and could be just as inspirational in his later years.

He will be sadly missed by all those of a radical political persuasion, young and old. He constantly reminded us of our power to change things, and to never give up hope. A great man indeed. 

Bob Crow died this morning aged 52 - A working class hero

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I was shocked today to learn that Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT union, has died suddenly.

I saw him only two nights ago, looking hale and hearty in the Barbican Centre where he was in the audience for a Cuban Solidarity concert in aid of the Miami Five [Cubans imprisoned in USA for fighting terrorism].

Like other Greens I may not have shared the same politics all the time as Bob Crow, but that is less important than sharing his complete commitment to fight for a better society and to not only represent his trade union members and gain advances in a very hostile political environment, but also be a shining example of the need to be true to your own values against all the smears and outrages of the media and still dominant neo-liberal forces intent on running down the lives of working people.

Unlike the BBC news today I believe that many Londoners did accept the inconveniences of the recent RMT and TSSA strikes in defence of keeping staff present in Underground stations for all our safety. He led from the front in that and rightly challenged the Mayor Boris Johnson on his U-turn from being elected on a promise to keep Underground stations properly staffed.

Ken Livingstone has suggested that all the relentless pressure from the media organs of the right wing press that we endure may have contributed to undermining his health, no matter his own integrity and unashamed ability to fight back.

A reminder if we needed one that the gloves are off as far as the people who wish to continue to rule us are concerned.

Bob Crow was an unquestionably fine and honourable example of not lying down to austerity, opposing putting people out of work, and resisting the financialisation of all our lives.

He will be missed by a great many and should be remembered as a beacon for solidarity with those in struggle.

Written by Gordon Peters Haringey Green Party

The video above is from a recent appearance on BBC Question Time 

The Earth Cannot Wait

The Earth Cannot Wait : Part 3 from STRIKE! mag on Vimeo.

The Green Party's Derek Wall (@anothergreen) on direct action, seven generation thinking and Marxist ecology:

"Even an entire society and nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. The are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries and have to bequeath it in improved states to succeeding generations"

strikemag.org

thepeoplesparliament.me.uk/

Junior Murvin has died but the story of Police and Thieves lives on

The Jamaican reggae singer, who died on Monday, bequeathed us an anthem whose indictment of policing still rings true

When Superintendent Leroy Logan stepped down as the highest-ranking African-Caribbean officer in the Met this summer, he entertained his retirement party guests with his rendition of Junior Murvin's Police and Thieves. The irony was not lost on myself and others present. The tune is iconic. Even among coppers. Despite its critique of the profession.

Having said that, many reggae lovers will struggle to identify the song's singer, Junior Murvin, who died on Monday in relative obscurity compared with the global success of his reggae anthem.

The tune was the soundtrack to the Notting Hill carnival in the summer it was released, 1976. The perfect groove for a hot and sticky August bank holiday on the streets of west London. Eerily, the record had been pumping out of sound systems and shebeens in London W10 and W11 postcodes in the days and hours before the community tensions of the time erupted in an all-out battle between (predominantly) black youth and the (predominantly) white police on the streets of Ladbroke Grove. Everywhere you went for the following few weeks – parties, blues dances and even university student unions – the tune was being rinsed out like it was the pick of the pops.

Every young rebel seemed to have a copy. Joe Strummer and his bandmates included. Even though John Peel had been playing Murvin for months, it was the Clash's version on their debut album that would turn the song into a punk anthem. Strummer told me he preferred Murvin's original. It was one of his favourite records.

So too, it seemed, for anyone who had a beef with the police throughout the rest of the 70s and 80s and maybe right through to the 90s. It even charted – four years later, in 1980 – and Murvin obligingly took the militant road to Top of the Pops. The following year it was the theme to the Brixton riots and subsequently to much of the social unrest during Margaret Thatcher's premiership.

Its comparison of police with thieves and any other criminals "scaring the nation" was written for the politically manipulated war zone that was Kingston, Jamaica, at the time – where you were as frightened of the constabulary as you were of the gunmen – but was subtle enough to resonate in these shores where the Dixon of Dock Green image of the obliging copper was being eroded by the image of uniformed thugs jumping out of black mariahs. What we didn't get at the time was that the "police" and the "thieves" were the emissaries of the politicians who ran the system.

But somewhere along the way its meaning started to fade and it became a party song rather than an indictment of the forces of law and order. Somewhere along the way it became OK for an outgoing Met superintendent to spoof it.

Everybody now knows, of course, that the old bill's antagonism towards black men never went away and that institutional racism is alive and well in the police force. But a new generation wasn't interested in dancing away its anger to one of the most seductive reggae songs you'll ever hear. It's too subtle for those weaned on NWA's cut-to-the-chase Fuck Tha Police.

Today, when it comes to cops and daylight robbers, there are no passing "anthems". Only the monstrous anger of direct action as we witnessed in the 2011 riots, a response to the police killing of Mark Duggan. In the Tottenham area where I live and in the areas I pass through – Harlesden, Brixton, Peckham, Hackney, Moss Side and other "hoods" – nobody is chanting the "downfall of Babylon" any more. But it doesn't mean they're not still angry with the belief that the police can kill a black man in broad daylight without consequences, and at being stopped and searched many more times than their white mates, and that the whole racist system compels half of young black men to languish on the dole. They're not stupid. They know who the "police" are and they know who the "thieves" are. They get it. They're just not voicing their frustrations through a pop song.

Written by Dotun Adebayo and first published at The Guardian

Russell Brand Interview - We need a Revolution

There is some enjoyable sparring between Paxman, clearly channelling the sentiments of thousands of PSE teachers parrotting the vacuous suggestion that those who criticize the failings of our 'representative democracy' should stop and instead involve themselves in it, and Brand, who channels the sarcastic teenagers who know all the reasons why the teacher is wrong and are happy enough with that. But this isn't a serious political debate or any sign that revolution is on the agenda.

Brand talks generically about the way in which differences within the 'political class' are more ephemeral than they seem, and how this has made people dissillusioned with the political system. Strip out the occasional nods towards leftist terminology (like saying 'political class' instead of 'Westminster Politicians') and this is mainly the stuff of a million pub conversations about how 'they are all the bloody same'. Nigel Farage could probably agree with 80% of it.

To be scrupulously fair, he does talk about the failure of the banking system, about unequal distribution of wealth and income, and about cuts and austerity. That's a good thing, and something we don't hear discussed in these terms often on mainstream TV.

But as another famous beardie once wrote, the important thing is not to interpret the world but to change it. Here Brand was utterly helpless in the face of the Paxman steamroller. Paxman says that the only way to change the political system is to participate in it; Brand knows that this is wrong but is unable to articulate why. That would require too much engagement with detail and with structure and process. Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky can do this, but they don't get prime time with Jeremy Paxman, and not many people would watch if they did. Brand does get prime time, precisely because he can't spell out a detailed critique of how 'representative democracy' screws us all.

It's a bit unfair to blame Russell Brand for not having a detailed political program or strategy, a point that he makes rather well himself during the interview. But it is important to recognize that talking about a revolution without actually expressing any idea about what that might mean is, in some sense at least, one of the safety valves of the political system. We have seen this in other anti-politics movements led by comedians and celebrities, notably the Beppe Grillo movement in Italy, that captured the rage of an important section of the population and then led into a blind alley with a program that again, Nigel Farage would have quite liked.

Lots of people have shared the interview video, excited that someone famous was at least using the R word. That's got to be a good thing, and it would be an even better thing if our party and the movement of which it is part would be able to engage with this sentiment, which goes far beyond the usual waters in which the anti-capitalist left usually fishes. But that in turn requires a political strategy for change that goes beyond 'vote for us, we are different to the rest of them'. And a vision of a revolution that is neither a fairy tale of opting out of capitalism to create a parallel world alongside it nor a nineteenth century insurrectionist fantasy.

Written by Jeremy Green

Labour Party Conference - Welcome to Brighton

The Green party welcomes Labour to Brighton with the message. We are the real opposition to the ConDems.

Caroline Lucas Conference Speech Autumn 2013

Great speech by Caroline Lucas MP, to this year's Green Party conference in Brighton.

What is the Gagging Law?

A very illiberal law is being proposed by the ConDem government, which will limit the amount of political campaigning that organisations such as trade unions, charities and pressure groups by allowing them to only spend a small amount of money. Big business of course will be unaffected.

The Case for Land Value Tax

This video was produced by the Coalition for Economic Justice (CEJ). They stand for:-

1. We seek to influence politicians and policy makers by establishing contacts, meeting with parliamentarians, political parties and government officials, lobbying and holding events;

2. We seek to influence the wider public through work with opinion formers and the media and  by appealing to peoples’ innate sense of justice;

3. We seek to engage and collaborate with a wide range of organisations with similar or compatible aims, particularly (but not exclusively) with those seeking money reform, linking the public collection of the community-created value of economic rent with the need for a just and sustainable economy; and

4. We seek to work with academics, think-tanks and the range of educational institutions to influence both the understanding of economic rent and the development of academic courses and to encourage the involvement of students”

Check out their website here...

Ecosocialism - Joel Kovel explains the relationship between ecology and socialism

Author of the landmark book 'The Enemy of Nature' Joel Kovel speaking in 2007 about the need for a re-ordering of our economies before the current system destroys the planet.

Romayne Phoenix Speaks About Eco-socialism

"Leaving the System by the Frontdoor" Ecosocialism, the viable alternative. Front de Gauche (Londres) meeting 21/6/2013.Romayne Phoenix, Chair Coalition of Resistance & Green Left, & Lewisham Green Party member.

Green Party - Austerity Isn't Working

No local elections in London this year, but there are elections in other areas. A timely message from Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavillion, the ConDem austerity policies are not working, instead, they making the economic situation much worse. Even the IMF, well known lefties they are not, have told George Osborne the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he should change course.  

Margaret Thatcher – A Class Warrior For The Rich

A huge amount is being written in the mainstream media about the former Tory Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday morning, most of it sycophantic rubbish, but worse still, there is also a concerted attempt to rewrite history, preferring instead a story which is reminiscent of a Greek myth or Kim Jong-Il’s golfing exploits (seven holes in one out of eighteen, the first time he picked up a golf club).

I do feel that I’m entitled to have my two pence worth on her time in office, as I was seventeen when she was elected as Prime Minister in 1979, and she blighted my life as a young man in the north of England, forcing me to move south in a search for some kind of future. I was young and well enough educated and could afford to up everything and move, which wasn’t the case for everyone, despite Norman Tebbit’s exhortations to the unemployed to do just that. But all the same, I felt compelled to leave my community, just to have a chance of getting a job and making a life for myself.

The story painted in the media of the late 1970’s is of a country ‘on its knees’, in need of a strong leader to make the nation great and proud (again), ‘held ransom’ by over mighty trade union ‘barons’, with runaway inflation, rising unemployment, inefficient state owned industries draining the public purse and consequently high rates of taxation. A deeply divided once great nation crippled by the evil doctrine of socialism.

Instead, we needed a fresh approach, becoming fashionable at the time through figures such Milton Friedman and others at the Chicago Business School, where unions were tamed, public industries and services privatised, income tax cut (mostly for the wealthy), and ‘red tape’ was cut, which in turn would free up entrepreneurs to create wealth which would ‘trickle down’ to the little people in due course.

That was the rhetoric, at least, in practice we had mass unemployment in the industrial heartlands of the north of England, Scotland and Wales with the closure of most of the state owned heavy industries, (this had the added advantage of reducing the membership and the power of the unions), cuts in welfare benefits, a cut in income tax (mostly for the wealthy) but a sharp increase in indirect taxes (hitting the poorest proportionately most), which led to an equally sharp increase in inflation, and a giveaway (mostly to the wealthy) of the public utilities in privatisation and share issues. The financial services sector was deregulated, the so called ‘Big Bang’, leading to many risky and questionable practices being made legal. The employment market was made ‘flexible’.

Perhaps Thatcher’s most cunning idea was the ‘Right to Buy’ policy of encouraging tenants to buy their public housing at up 50% discount, which was extremely popular with a section of these tenants (those in the best houses, in the best areas), and effectively divided the working class between the ‘aspirational’ and the ‘losers’. People with mortgages were also less likely to go on strike too, so, so much the better. Classic divide and rule.     

Some areas of the country have still not recovered from Thatcher’s neo liberal policies, which have largely been maintained and taken further, under successive governments, most shamefully, a Labour government included. But from the viewpoint of recent history, we can see that Margaret Thatcher’s legacy is that she sowed the seeds of the present recession, from the housing crisis to the financial crisis, from the large amounts being spent on benefits rather than more productive investment, to the huge increase in wealth inequality. It all started in 1979.

The period from the end of World War 2 to 1979 saw a narrowing of the gap between the rich and the rest (fairly modest, but still), whereas post 1979 this gap has increased hugely, nationally and internationally too. And this is Thatcher’s true place in history, a warrior for the outraged establishment elite. She fought a class war on behalf of a world elite that had seen their wealth decrease in the post war years, to the advantage of the rest of us. Welfare states were demolished and income taxes for the rich reduced in the most audacious thievery from the people imaginable.

Margaret Thatcher was not a national heroine; she was a sort of Robin Hood in reverse. She was a very effective hench-woman for the ruling classes worldwide, so if she is to have some fancy funeral parade, then those whose dirty work she did, should send her off in a privatised cavalcade, rather than add insult to injury for the majority of British people by making us pay for her procession.      

The above video/song is Shipbuilding by Robert Wyatt.    

Ecology, Socialism and Capitalism

An interview between Chris Williams and David Barsamian.

Chris Williams (left) is a long-time environmental activist based in New York City. He is professor of physics and chemistry at Pace University and chair of the science department at Packer Collegiate Institute. Williams is also a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review (ISR), and The Indypendent, an online newspaper that looks at news and culture through a critical lens, exploring how systems of power—economic, political and social—affects the lives of people locally and globally.

Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis is Williams’ first book.

David Barsamian is the founder and director of Alternative Radio, an independent award-winning weekly series based in Boulder, Colorado. He has been working in radio since 1978 where he has interviewed the likes of Angela Davis, Ralph Nader, Vandana Shiva, and Carlos Fuentes. The one-hour program is broadcast on public radio stations in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries. His publications include Targeting Iran, What We Say Goes with Noam Chomsky, Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics with Howard Zinn, Imperial Ambitions with Noam Chomsky, and Speaking of Empire & Resistance with Tariq Ali. His earlier books include The Checkbook & the Cruise Missile with Arundhati Roy, Propaganda and the Public Mind with Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire, and The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting.


The Institute for Alternative Journalism named him one of its “Top Ten Media Heroes.” Barsamian lectures throughout the U.S. on foreign policy, the media, propaganda, and corporate power. In 2003 he received the ACLU’s Upton Sinclair Award for independent journalism and the Democracy Media Award, and in 2006, the Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center Award. Barsamian interviewed Andrew Bacevich for Lannan’s Readings & Conversations in 2010.

This video first published on http://www.lannan.org/

The English Civil War, Republicanism and Green Socialism

In these days of royal jubilee celebrations, my mind has turned towards thinking about republicanism in this country. We did have a de facto republic in England (and Scotland, Wales and Ireland) for ten years between 1649 and 1659, after the English Civil War(s) ended, and up until the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660. His father King Charles I was executed for high treason by Parliamentary forces in 1649 after years of dispute and then war with Parliamentary supporters.

These times must have been incredibly exciting politically with debates going on about the future governance of the country, the most famous of which were the Putney Debates at St Mary’s Church near Putney bridge in south west London. A group emerged who became known as The Levellers, with their support drawn mainly from rank and file soldiers in the Parliamentary army, although they had support amongst the people, particularly in the City of London where one of third of the population signed a petition supporting them.

They set out their demands in An Agreement of the People which espoused a republican and democratic agenda, calling for voting rights for most men and for Parliament to be elected every two years, for religious freedom, and for an end to imprisonment for debt. The heads of the army had other ideas though and wanted the King to approve of some improvements in social justice. In the end Leveller leaders were arrested and some executed by the ruling army elite.

One sub sect of the Leveller’s was the Diggers, or True Levellers, who not only called for an extension in the voting franchise and extended liberties, but who actually took pre figurative direct action in setting up collective communities on common land, ploughing the land to grow crops to share amongst the cooperative, hence the name Diggers. Like all thinking in those days, it was based upon the Bible, and a Quaker interpretation of the text.

The Diggers set up a small number of settlements on common land mainly in southern England, but probably numbered only a couple of thousand people in total. The most famous settlement was at St George’s Hill in Weybridge in Surrey. It was all pretty radical stuff at the time, but looking back their demands were typically English and conservative. At the time, over one third of the country was common land, and gave plenty of room for their experiment, of the other nearly two thirds of enclosed land, they were happy to leave with its ‘owners’. They also renounced all violence and petitioned Parliament to protect their communities.

Parliament didn’t pay much attention to the situation and local land owners, who must have feared that they wouldn’t be able to attract workers onto their land to work, used the local courts and armed thugs to evict the Diggers from their blossoming ecosocialist communities, and there the experiment ended.

The Restoration of Charles II saw the beginning of the wholesale enclosure of much of what was left of the common land, as the establishment could see the threat of allowing people to live communally like this would undermine their wealth and privilege.

And so it goes on today. I have met people in Tanzania who farm common land clearings in the forest illegally, and spoken to fishermen in Senegal, whose families have fished sustainably for centuries and are now threatened with starvation by factory fishing boats from Europe, Japan and Russia, over fishing their commons for profits at home and internationally.

So, whilst all this royalist rubbish is going on in the coming days, let’s instead reflect on our English radical tradition and how that interconnects with the political challenges we have today.

There is a republican protest by City Hall in London, where you can jeer the Queen as she sails up the Thames, if you should so wish. Details here.

The above video/song is ‘English Civil War’ by The Clash.

God Save the Queen, the Fascist Regime

With the Queen’s diamond Jubilee fast approaching, the UK media has gone into overdrive with lavish praise of our monarch’s selfless devotion to duty and public service etc etc. The BBC always goes into a somewhat comic routine, of reporting any news of the royal family in hushed tones, as though raising one’s voice to even normal levels of acoustics when describing Her Majesty and family, is the very height of vulgarity.

 The Guardian even reports on a survey where 69% of Britons say that the country would be worse off without the monarchy. Of course, depending on what the exact question is and how it is asked will often get you the answer that you are looking for, with only 22% of people thinking we would be better off. These results do surprise me little though, as when the recent royal marriage was taking place between Prince William and Kate Middleton, there was only the odd isolated union flag or bunting where I live in north London. It seemed to me that no one was really very interested in the event, though they were happy to spend the extra bank holiday in supermarkets, pubs and DIY stores.

Again we have been granted an extra day’s bank holiday, which when it is combined with the delayed late spring bank holiday and the weekend, forms a four day block of celebration from 2nd June to 5th June. No doubt people are happy to have an extra day off and will again find ways of using the time, without taking more than a cursory interest in the Jubilee itself.

I remember the Queen’s silver Jubilee in 1977, and proudly displaying my ‘Stuff the Jubilee’ badge, much to the shock of many people I came into contact with, who mostly labelled me a communist, which I suppose wasn’t too far from the truth. And who can forget the hit song ‘God Save the Queen’ by the Sex Pistols from the same year (featured above)? A brilliantly vibrant piss take of our rather dreary national anthem. The BBC banned the song from being played on Radio 1, by far the most influential radio station at the time for selling records, which of course increased its appeal, and it went straight to number 1.

I must confess, I have obtained a ‘Stuff the Jubilee’ badge again, but don’t expect wearing it will illicit anything like the opprobrium it did in 1977. People don’t just seem to identify with the monarchy in the same deep rooted way they used to. For example, virtually the whole nation would watch the Queen’s Christmas address in those days, but now what proportion of the population watches it? Probably less than half, by some way.

I think the present Queen holds some measure of respect amongst her subjects, mainly because she has been around for so long, and to be fair, hasn’t done anything majorly embarrassing to the nation, unlike other members of ‘The Firm’. But surely, this is the least we can expect, from someone who in return has led a life of luxury at the tax payer’s expense? It would be an appropriate response to the austerity agenda of the present for the Queen to have a celebration on the cheap, but oh no, millions of pounds will be wasted on this event. The authorities are even stealing the Sex Pistols idea, and sailing the monarch up and down the Thames on a boat.

So, will we have a republic anytime soon? Well, not until Queen Elizabeth’s reign is over to be sure. The same Guardian survey mentioned above though, does indicate that her likely successor Prince Charles has nothing like as much support as his mother amongst the public. Given his meddling in politics and lobbying of ministers, which we are not allowed to see the full details of, since the royal household is exempted from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, he may become even more unpopular. Unfortunately, that window may not be open for very long, as the Queen looks to have a good few years left in her yet, and the crown may pass quite quickly on to the next generation, and so conjure up the people’s ambivalence once again.

If only Cromwell hadn’t fucked it up, banning dancing and all that, we may now never be rid of them.

Fracking Given Green Light in the UK

Just when we're told drought has become endemic in the UK, the Department of Energy and Climate Change has given the go-ahead for a process that will desiccate us more than any we've tried before on these islands: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

High-volume fracking needs between 1.6m and 2.5m gallons (between seven and 11m litres) of water for a single well. All that water is smashing rock. All those millions of litres are giving the shale rock a BTEX injection; BTEX is benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.

If a political cell were to threaten to poison our drinking water by setting off depth charges near subterranean faultlines, and then further threatened to pump in radioactive isotopes, should such a cell be asked to help compile the government report into their activities? It is indeed a bizarre report that the Department of Energy and Climate Change has put out, a bit like an inquiry into Syria focusing on the effect of the pollen count on the dictatorship.

Nary a mention of volatile organic compounds contaminating aquifers, so busily are the authors consumed by counting all the holes caused by fracking in Lancashire – until they triumphantly conclude that fracking poses scant risk of earthquake.

To which I say well, not ones that will topple the Blackpool Tower, maybe. Not seismic tremors you can feel beneath your feet, but earthquakes all the same. Earthquakes by definition, in fact. For fracking works by detonating shale rock thousands of feet underground, and for all that the shale gas industry may say these are controlled explosions, there is, however, no such thing as a controlled earthquake.

The department has overturned the borehole ban while allowing a hosepipe ban to stand. This was a mistake. Never come between a vixen and her cub, nor between the British and their love of gardening and clean water.

Even in the best-case scenario in which the frackers don't, by some miracle, rupture aquifers and pollute drinking water, the process itself will drain us dry in the vain hope that it might earn us enough foreign capital to pay for the imports of Volvic and Evian that we will need to put on our crops.

And what if fracking does pollute our fragile aquifers, as it has done in Pennsylvania and Wyoming? Well, here the timing of the report happily coincides with another topical emergency apart from drought – and that is debt. The financial crisis. Our skintness.

The words of the US governments's Environmental Protection Agency should chill every British bone to the marrow when they say that ground water contaminated by fracking is "typically too expensive to remediate or restore". (And if you want a glimpse of the appalling powerlessness of fracking-afflicted communities in the United States then watch the Sundance-award documentary Gasland.)

In Europe, meanwhile, Bulgaria has became the second EU country after France to ban fracking. The Bulgarians' indefinite moratorium followed a campaign which ranged across the whole political spectrum.

In any British electoral constituency where fracking is proposed, the issue will be every bit as much of a political earth-mover as in Bulgaria. People will vote against type, and against party loyalty. No MP, MEP or councillor will dare follow the party whip in the teeth of civil ire that will ignite like methylated tap water in a Pennsylvania kitchen, an anger which even the gas firms' PR teams will not be able to extinguish. In any constituency where fracking is proposed, you can forget about psephology. Fracking will not just undermine the shale geology of Britain but may sink half the recognisable political landscape too. That's the hope, at least.

Written by Rob Newman
First published in The Guardian here
The video above is from the US in an area where fracking is being used

GLA Elections - Green Party Broadcast

Make the Difference. Vote Green on May 3rd, for a better London.

India, Ecology and Capitalism

Great video above of Arundhati Roy speaking about contemporary India, ecology and capitalism. I first visited India in 1990, and returned in 1995. In those five years I noticed a huge change in the country, much more industrialised, much more ‘western’ in their attitude to ecological matters. Seventeen years on, I imagine I would hardly recognise the place as the pace of neoliberal reform has increased exponentially.

India does have a cultural history of being ecologically aware and I remember wondering at the fact that they recycled almost everything, litter bins were complete unnecessary, as well as having the most advanced vegetarian cuisine in the world.

What is particularly interesting to me, is that India is a democracy, so surely there is a place for a Green party of India, with so much tradition to build upon.

Shell Death Rope - In Memory of Ken Saro-Wiwa

Shell Death Rope - In Memory of Ken Saro-Wiwa from You and I Films on Vimeo.

On the 9th of November 2011 at a Shell-sponsored awards ceremony in the swanky corporate offices of the CBI (Britain’s biggest business lobby group), young entrepreneurs are looking towards a bright future.
Sixteen years ago, Shell made sure that Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other young Nigerian activists had no future. On 10th November 1995, Shell was complicit in their execution at the hands of the Nigerian military government for campaigning against the devastation of their homeland the Niger Delta by oil companies, in particular Shell.

And every day, all over the world – from building dodgy pipelines in Rossport, Ireland, to mining the world’s most polluting oil from the Canadian tar sands – Shell’s oil exploration and extraction activities undermine our collective future by pushing us ever closer to the brink of climate catastrophe. At the same time, it rakes in billions in profit every month, while the rest of us struggle to get by.

Shell doesn’t want us to remember these horrific things. So it channels a miniscule fraction of its obscene profits into sponsoring events like Livewire – not to mention most of the major arts and cultural institutions in London.

That’s why we’re here tonight: to remember – and to resist.

Nigeria: Shell’s dirty secret

The hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Ogoni colleagues – whose only crime was to speak out for environmental and social justice – caused shock and outrage around the world. But whatever we might like to think, the human rights abuses perpetrated by Shell continue to this day. Shell’s routine payments to armed militants exacerbate armed conflict, and oil spills and gas flaring continue to devastate the fragile environment of the Niger Delta and the lives of the people who live there. But resistance continues as well; the UN has issued a damning report on the ecological impact of oil spills in Ogoni, and Shell was recently forced to admit liability and pay out millions of pounds in compensation for two massive oil spills after a lawsuit filed in London.

Sponsorship: buying us off

Sponsorship of events like Livewire is one of the most important ways Shell tries to protect its reputation and buy our acceptance. By sponsoring a social 'good' like an award to help young entrepreneurs, the oil giant is able to represent itself as a responsible organisation, and distract our attention from its environmental and social crimes around the world. By being here tonight, we strike a blow to Shell’s precious brand, chip away at Shell’s powerful position in our society, and move towards the day when Big Oil – like Big Tobacco – is no longer seen as a socially acceptable.

Remember climate change?

Climate change may have disappeared from the news recently, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is already claiming 300,000 lives a year. Glaciers, permafrost and sea ice are disappearing. Sea levels are rising, seasons changing and extreme weather becoming more extreme. As temperatures rise, we’ll see more flooding, more drought, more disease, more famine and more war, creating hundreds of millions of refugees and causing the destruction of entire ecosystems and species.

We can’t afford to forget about climate change – or the fact that companies like Shell are at the heart of the problem.

For more information and to get involved:

risingtide.org.uk
Twitter: @shelldeathrope and @risingtide_UK