Green Activists Arrested in Israel

It has been reported on the Socialist Unity blog that twelve British political activists have been arrested and detained at Tel Aviv airport, for the ‘crime’ of intentionally entering Israel for political purposes. Amongst those arrested are two Green party activists, Pippa Bartolotti, Deputy leader of the Welsh Green party and Anne Gray (pictured) a member of Haringey Green party.

Anne flew out of London on 8th July as part of an international protest by hundreds of people inspired by Mazyn Qumsiyeh, a Christian political activist and academic from Bethlehem, and author of two books, ‘Sharing the Land of Canaan’ and ‘A history of popular resistance in Palestine’. On his trip to the UK to launch the second book in March, he called for people to come to Tel Aviv on the same day, and demand to visit the West Bank without pretending to be ‘tourists’.

At the time of writing, it appears that the twelve British activists and six Israeli activists who had gathered at the airport to welcome the international visitors, are still being detained by Israeli security forces. Despite the best efforts of Haringey Greens to make contact and find out more information on the situation, the British and Commonwealth office, whilst admitting knowledge of the arrests, refuse to divulge anything further. These activists are now entering their fourth day of incarceration and we are now very worried about their wefare.

Before she left the UK, Anne Gray explained the purpose of the group’s mission thus: ‘We plan to be in Palestine till 16th July, listening and observing, maybe lending support to Palestinians as they do things like harvesting crops, negotiating checkpoints or taking children to school, which often gets them harassment by soldiers and settlers.’

What threat to Israeli state security does peaceful behaviour like this pose? Of course, Israel has plenty of history of paranoid over reaction to peaceful protests of this nature. Still fresh in the memory is the violent attack launched by Israeli commandos on an unarmed Turkish boat that was trying to breach the blockade of Gaza with humanitarian aid last year.

Anne is an experienced political activist, comrade and friend, and she knew the risks associated with making this trip, but all right minded people should be appalled at the way she and the other activists have been treated by the Israeli authorities. Write letters of condemnation to your MP and to the Israeli embassy, and demand their immediate release from custody.

The latest but unconfirmed news from Israel is that the British activists will be put onto a flight back to the UK due to land at Luton airport at 23.55 Monday 11 July.

UPDATE 12 July. Two of the detained activists Mick Napier from Edinburgh and John Lynes form London landed at Luton airport last night. There is no word of when the other activists will be returned to the UK, including Green party members Pippa and Anne. There is another flight from Tel Aviv tonight, so we are hoping they will be aboard it. Meanwhile The Morning Star reports that an Al Jarzeera reporter Daniel Poort arrested with the activists said this, 'immigration officials appeared to detain passengers on suspicion, including two young Dutch tourists with no connection to the protests.Those arrested were not questioned until they arrived at a prison in Bir el Saba, more than 60 miles away, he said. The bus was very crammed and 10 men were packed in about three and half square feet area. It was claustrophobic, infested with cockroaches, hot and stuffy and they kept us in the bus for six hours. We were treated like dogs.'

UPDATE 13 July. Anne Gray together with six other British activists were deported from Israel yeaterday. They landed at Luton airport around midnight last night, and appear to be all well. Pippa was not amongst them. Anne will issue media releases when she's had a rest.

Banker's Hold the Country to Ransom

So, according to last week’s economic headlines, George Osborne wants to “ring-fence” retail from so-called investment banking, does he?

Sounds to me very much like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted or – if you’ll forgive the elaboration of the metaphor – more like having the weary public slaving away to rebuild the stable which has burned down while the bankers are on the horse’s back prancing away and having a whale of a time.

These self-proclaimed “Masters of the Universe” scratch each other’s backs on remuneration committees and persist in their games of ‘Red: we win’ or ‘Black: you (the public) lose’ in the casino merry-go-round that passes for modern banking these days.

It makes you almost want to tear your hair out that no Government, whether Blue, Rose-Red or even Blue-Yellow has the guts (Vince Cable I’m looking at you) these days to take on the vast vested interests in the City of London.

It never ceases to amaze me how often right-wing commentators trot out that old chestnut about how Margaret Thatcher was needed in the 1980s to “tame the dragon” of over-mighty unionism and “unleash” the country’s spirit of free enterprise. Whatever you may believe about whether the unions were a baleful influence in the 1970s (and it is a documented fact that in the 1970s levels of inequality were much lower than at present, national well-being levels at least as high as now and the proportion of GDP that went on wages as opposed to profits the highest ever), the arguments of economic conservatives can now be turned against them with a new twist:

For are not the banks the new “dragons” that now need taming? Are they not a bunch of “financial unions” in bed with what whatever Government comes our way in Westminster? Do they not pervert the course of our democracy – if not over beer and sandwiches in smoke-filled rooms then maybe in the gleaming corporate boardrooms of glassy towers in the Square Mile? Who will be brave enough to come up with tough legislation to save the public from this latter-day breed of robber barons and oligarchic parasites?

For the truth of the matter is that we need the utility parts of modern banks – the parts from where we pay our direct debits and everyday transactions – entirely separated from the casino-habits of the investment banks not just “ring-fenced” within the same mega-institutions (clever bankers and their lawyers will just find cunning ways around that as usual).

When we have a banking sector broken up into smaller units then several things can happen:

1. No more banks “too big to fail”;
2. Many more banks on our high streets competing for our business;
3. The return of local banking: with a traditional Bank Manager who knows local businesses in her area making a comeback and being willing to provide fair loans to businesses down the local high street;
4. If you’re a rich man with money to burn you can still go to a specialist merchant bank and make a risky investment; if your pin-striped stockbroker then loses the lot by overpaying himself and gambling on US sub-prime mortgages well, it’s a tough life, but nobody except you in this scenario has to pick up the pieces.

Chances of seeing the above? Small and receding as I type. But there are things we can do. We can educate ourselves in the principles of a Green economy by reading works such as ‘Prosperity without Growth’ by Professor Tim Jackson. Above all, we can urge our friends to think seriously about changing the habits of a lifetime and voting Green for the first time. We have our first MP and our first Green Council. It doesn’t have to be the same old, same old. We don’t have to settle for Tweedledum, Tweedledee or the Tweedle-Dems. Together, armed with the facts, we can persuade, influence and grow strong. Otherwise, what are the odds that in another 10 years we’ll be glumly hosing down with our taxes the smouldering remains of another burned-down stable, a horse with a grinning banker on his back prancing nearby?

Written by Andreas Andreou, Haringey Green party

Demonstrate Against Public Service Cuts in Haringey

Unfair, unacceptable, unnecessary cuts

The people of Haringey are suffering major cuts to all our public services.
The NHS is being privatised. Tottenham has the highest unemployment in
London but further education jobs and courses are being slashed. Welfare and
housing benefits face massive cuts. There have been £41m cuts this year
alone from Haringey’s libraries, schools, youth centres, public service
jobs, elderly facilities, parks & voluntary projects.

This will hit the most vulnerable the hardest – those on low incomes, single
parents, migrant communities, women, elderly & disabled people. And all
workers face attacks on pay and conditions because of rising inflation and a
wage freeze.

This is a wealthy country, but the Government has chosen to take away
££billions of public funds from our vital public services whilst propping up
greedy and irresponsible banks with public money. It also sanctions massive
corporate tax evasion and obscene bonuses. We don't have to accept this!

Opposition is growing everywhere!

In Haringey, thousands have joined in a wide range of local protests,
rallies, public meetings and petitioning over the last year, and on March 26th
over half a million people took part in the national anti-cuts demonstration. Now many public sector Unions are planning coordinated strike action on June 30th. The Government has been shaken on a number of fronts. Together we can force them to reverse their cuts programme. Join in with us!

Haringey united against the cuts – join the march!

SAY NO TO CUTS!

Join the Haringey residents and workers march to defend our vital local public services, Saturday June 25th.

Assemble 12 noon: Haringey Civic Centre, High Road N22. March to Tottenham Town Hall,or join us as we pass Turnpike Lane or Seven Sisters tube stations.Bring your own placards and banners, and things to make a BIG noise as we pass by places under threat!

Organised and supported by the Haringey Alliance for Public Services. Supporters
include: Haringey UNISON, Haringey Federation of Residents Associations,
Haringey Trades Union Council, Haringey Friends of Parks Forum, Better Local Healthcare Campaign, Haringey Forum for Older People, CONEL University,College Union and Haringey Green party.

The Haringey Alliance for Public Services is a local network for those
living or working in Haringey. Why not sign up for updates?
www.hapsnews.net

Pinkham Way Statement

Haringey Green party took the decision this week to formally oppose the North London Waste Authority’s (NLWA) plans for a large scale waste management plant at Pinkham Way just off the A406 North Circular road at Bounds Green.

The plant aims to cater for refuge from at least seven north London boroughs although the NLWA may be scaling this back, to just three boroughs to begin with. The plan is lodged with Haringey council’s planning committee now and I’ve just heard that consultation has been extended to 8th July this year (which fulfils to some extent one of the party’s criteria for opposing the site at this stage).

Local people have formed the Pinkham Way Alliance (PWA) to oppose the plan, and if you wander around the streets closest to the proposed siting of the plant, you will be left in no doubt that opposition is strong. Although fifty years ago it was a sewage works, the site itself is a grade 1 conservation site now with rare plants and bats in residence. This piece of wild land is a buffer for residents from the pollution spewed out by heavy traffic on the North Circular and is in effect the lungs of the area. This plant will not only take away this buffer, but will also add to traffic emissions and some incineration and Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) methods will make matters even worse.

Haringey Green party, whilst welcoming some of the treatment technology and recycling facilities proposed in the NLWA plan, as being better than current landfill methods of dealing with our waste, has set out seven criteria which need to be met before any such development should receive planning permission. They are as follows:

1. The plant is on a much smaller scale, such as the MBT facility in Salford.

2. Air quality is rigorously monitored, and this is incorporated into the contract.

3. There is no incineration.

4. Workers are all paid a London Living Wage.

5. A full environmental impact assessment is carried out before the plant is approved.

6. Reduction of waste arising from households, businesses and fly-tipping, year on year, needs to be a contractual requirement (that is, they have to devise some mechanism perhaps by paying the waste collection companies or the local authorities to do intensive and successful public education work, whereby the MBT plant operator doesn't just pass the buck by sending the waste somewhere else, or meeting a pseudo-target to cut household or business waste which happens in practice to mean more of it gets fly-tipped instead).

7. There should be full and transparent public consultation before any planning permission is granted. The consultation process should be agreed with local concerned community groups and should include public meeting(s) with the opportunity to question the waste authority.

It is hard to see NWLA or the private contractor who will run the site meeting these requirements as the pressure will be on to maximise profits and claims will be made that the plant would be ‘uneconomic’, but we will see in due course. Ideally, each borough (or perhaps two neighbouring boroughs) should have their own waste management centres, to cut transportation distances and so traffic emissions. But at the end of the day, it will take a huge cultural transformation in the way we package consumer items and a return to reusing bottles, jars, bags etc to have a truly sustainable waste policy.

Lib Dem MP Suspended Over Expenses Claims

Another day and another set - back for the embattled Lib Dems. David Laws, MP and former ConDem coalition Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is likely to be suspended from Parliament after the Parliamentary Commissioner on Standards investigation found that he was ‘guilty of a series of serious breaches of the rules, over a considerable time’.

Laws has apologised to the House of Commons and paid back over £50,000, whilst continuing to insist that he was not motivated by financial gain, but wanted to keep secret that he was having a gay affair with, incredibly, a political lobbyist, James Lundie. This excuse is a bit far fetched, when these days even Tory MP’s are quite open about their sexual orientation. Who really gives a damn about what Laws does in bed?

The issue is not about secrecy anyway, it is about making fraudulent claims on the public purse, after all the bad publicity of recent years, here is another MP with his snout in the trough. John Lyon, the Standards Commissioner ruled that over seven years Laws deceived the Commons authorities by submitting claims to pay a ‘landlord’, James Lundie, with whom he had a relationship. Basically, he was claiming, and above the market rate by the way, for staying over night at his lover’s house. Laws also claimed for other costs, such as maintenance work, that would normally be included in the rent of a genuine lodger.

Despite all the expense scandals of recent times, MP’s just don’t seem to get it.
The public are quite rightly furious over this type of behaviour, but MP’s just seem to try and shrug it off, with pathetic excuses. All of this after the clear out of corrupt politicians at the General Election last year, and promises from the new government of a zero tolerance policy to breaches of integrity by MP’s.

Laws of course is desperate to get back into the Cabinet, and Nick Clegg is equally desperate to have him back, to try and shore up the Lib Dem side of the coalition, but this is just another grave error of political judgement from Clegg, who can’t seem to get anything right these days.

The very thought of Laws being allowed back into the government after his behaviour, a government that is slashing public services left right and centre, with the mantra ‘we’re all in it together’ is an insult to the British public. I suppose they could give him the job of cutting people’s benefits when they cohabit a couple of nights a week but claim single separate benefits?

Laws should not be allowed back into government, and he should get more than seven days suspension from Parliament, he should be arrested and charged with fraud, and probably sent to prison. Then justice would be seen to be done, but instead we will likely have to put up with his whinging about privacy, until he is rehabilitated back into the government in year or so. Here’s a government that is hypocritical and rotten to the core.

Lib Dems Elections Disaster

Last Thursday was a voting extravaganza for the people of Britain, with national elections in Scotland and Wales and local elections in much of England (except here in London) and the nationwide referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) voting system for General Elections.

Scotland sprang the biggest shock, electing a majority Scottish National Party (SNP) government in the Scottish Parliament, under an election with a proportional element, designed to specifically stop a majority government being elected. It was a personal triumph for Alex Salmond the SNP leader, who is far too crafty for Labour’s second division politicians in Scotland. A referendum will now be held on Scottish independence but if it were to be held tomorrow, it would undoubtedly be defeated. But Salmond is too skilful a politician to fall into that trap, and the vote will not be held for at least two years, by which the time the full horror of an English Tory government will be apparent, and with the election boundaries changed in the Tories favour, the Scots may conclude that they will be better going it alone. It will be interesting to watch how this situation develops.

In Wales, Labour did pretty well at the expense of Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems but fell just one seat short of an overall majority on the Welsh Assembly. The Green party failed unfortunately to land a first Assembly Member that was hoped for.

Local elections in England went surprisingly well for the Tories, gaining councils and seats, when they were expected to take losses because of the austerity programme introduced at national level. Their gains though were almost entirely in the south of England, and they didn’t have much to defend in the north. The Green party continued its modest progress with a net gain of 14 councillors and the Greens are now the largest party on Brighton and Hove council.

But the big story in England (and Wales and Scotland too) was the collapse of the Lib Dem vote. The scale of their losses is truly staggering. They lost almost 700 councillors which is over a third of the seats they were defending. They will take some comfort from gaining 15% of the vote in England, but it has to be remembered this was on a low turnout, so they would be highly unlikely to get this high a share in a General Election.

All of this was compounded by the decisive loss of the AV referendum (by a 2 to 1 majority) which the Lib Dem leadership had hoped would be seen as vindication of their entering of the coalition government with the Tories. The decision to go into coalition now looks to be a terrible error of political judgement and they have been well and truly stitched up by the Conservatives, useful as whipping boys for unpopular policies, but utterly without influence over the government’s direction.
Of course the Lib Dems will try to assert themselves more within the government now, but why should the Tories allow them any influence when they are so unpopular with the voters? They are destined for wipe out at the next General Election and who can say that they don’t deserve it?

The only way that I can see for them making any kind of recovery is if they ditch Nick Clegg as leader, and with a new leader (Charlie Kennedy, perhaps) bring down the coalition over differences in policy. Then they might be able to reduce their losses and even lay the groundwork for a coalition with Labour post election. The alternative will be a slow, painful death, with the reversion of thirty years of incremental gains and a return to the political wilderness.

Photo from The Guardian

The Monarchy, The Wedding and Shifting Public Attitudes

The Guardian newspaper reports a survey in which only 37% of the British public say they are interested in the royal wedding this week.

I should first state that I have been a lifelong republican and that the Green party is a republican party, but this doesn’t mean that I have any feelings of animosity towards Prince William and his future wife, Kate Middleton. I wish them a happy day on Friday, and hope they will have a happy marriage, much as I would do any couple about to embark on such a partnership. Indeed, they have taken their time to get to know each other, since they first met at university, and do seem to genuinely like each other, which has not always been the case with recent couplings.

Republicans are against the institution of hereditary monarchy, which in the twenty first century is a complete anachronism in any democratic nation. It reeks of privilege and the private enclosure of national assets and although the powers vested in the monarch are mainly theoretical and ceremonial, these powers have no place in a modern democratic state.

The Guardian/ICM survey also shows that those people surveyed are still in favour of the monarchy, with 63% saying that Britain would be worse off without the royal family, so there doesn’t seem to be any great clamour for a republic, but attitudes do seem to be shifting if not for abolition, then to a kind of ambivalence towards the royals.

As far back as the 1947 wedding of the current monarch, Queen Elizabeth to Prince Phillip, I have read that the government, in the midst still of public war time rationing, were worried about how the British people would view the opulence of a royal wedding, but it passed off generally as a celebration. I well remember the 1981 marriage between Prince Charles and the then Diana Spencer, and it was everywhere. Millions watched the wedding on TV and there were many street parties and there was a sort of shared national experience about the event. There were quite a few of us proudly sporting ‘stuff the wedding’ badges and I took part in an early morning raid on the street bunting and the strategic planting of anti-monarchy stickers on the day of the wedding. But this small act of defiance was a minority affair, and most people I knew were captivated by the whole thing.

As this survey shows, public opinion has shifted considerably over that time, and future historians may conclude that Diana, Princess of Wales, and the treatment she received at the hands of the royal family, was the greatest republican influence Britain has ever had. Now most people have little interest in the royals, and I don’t expect to see any street parties in this part of north London. The media of course will report millions lining the route of the procession (whatever the turn out) and will manage to find a few street parties amongst the 60 million population, but in reality things have changed for ever.

Most people seem to be more pleased with a having a day off work, and many more people than those celebrating the wedding, will go to the pub, the DIY store, garden centre or supermarket. I shall find a republican event, or maybe I’ll just go to the pub.

Vive la Republic, and all that. I think it’s getting closer.