Gareth Myatt and Adam Rickwood, who both died in custody in 2004
After a five year battle, campaigners in England have managed to uncover a shocking manual demonstrating that serious physical abuse of vulnerable young people is officially sanctioned in privately run detention centres for young people.
Secure Training Centres (STCs) are units designed to house young (17 and under) offenders who have been sentenced to custody or in remand. So even if they are not formally called that, they are prisons. There aren’t any in Scotland, but the ones down south are all run by private companies.
The staff manual on ‘Physical Control on Care’ has been kept classified by the Youth Justice Board, which oversees the centres. Activists have been battling for years to get it released under Freedom of Information laws, and have previously given copies with large sections blacked out. Finally, courts have ordered the document to be released, and what it shows is outrageous violence is part of the official regime in STCs.
Some of the measures the manual deems acceptable include:
-”Use an inverted knuckle into the trainee’s sternum and drive inward and upward.”
-”Continue to carry alternate elbow strikes to the young person’s ribs until a release is achieved.”
-”Drive straight fingers into the young person’s face, and then quickly drive the straightened fingers of the same hand downwards into the young person’s groin area.”
-Forcing children to “adopt a kneeling position” while steel handcuffs are put on them.
-Grab the neck and chin to “take control of the head.”
In other words, employees of private companies, with the government’s blessing are taught to deliberately hurt young people who the state has locked up. This is just what is officially legitimised – legal rulings have found other common practices in STCs to be unlawful, such as “nose distraction”: hitting someone hard on the nose.
If it’s not acceptable for a teacher to physically abuse children, why is it ok for them?
The instructions are not just for the self-defence of STC workers, but also aimed at guaranteeing compliance with “reasonable requests or direct orders.” STCs are for youth who are deemed too vulnerable to go into mainstream young offender’s institutions. In STCs, the regime is supposedly aimed at rehabilitating young offenders, providing them with intensive education “25 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.”
In reality most of the people who find themselves in STCs are likely to have come from extremely difficult backgrounds, and will have suffered abuse, personal and social problems, and are likely to have difficulty engaging with formal education. But they are unlikely to find any sympathy or support in an STC, for-profit hell holes where private companies make money from locking up children. The abuse they suffer at the hands of staff will ensure for many a life spent in and out of prison, filled with rage, misery and despair.
The Children’s Rights Alliance for England, has been fighting to get hold of the documents since the deaths in custody of two different teenagers in 2004. Gareth Myatt, 15, was held down was held down by three staff in Rainsbrook STC in Warwickshire. He choked on his own vomit and died. Adam Rickwood hanged himself at Hassockfield STC in County Durham. Last year a judge ruled that shortly before his death unlawful force had been used to restrain him.
Hassockfield STC, where Adam Rickwood died
While we shouldn’t pretend that there isn’t also a brutal regime in state young offenders’ institutions (where some techniques now banned in STCs, such as using pain as a “distraction”, are still permitted), it’s particularly disturbing that this abuse is going on in privatised, profit making prisons run by companies like SERCO and G4S. These companies are making pain and misery their business; SERCO also runs the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Detention Centre, where earlier this year detainees went on hunger strike to protest their brutal and humiliating treatment.
What this underlines is the importance of fighting privatised prisons every step of the way. In the US the prison industry is a huge business, and underpins the whole economy of many rural areas. Under these conditions, the criminal justice system becomes nothing more than a supplier of these businesses’ main natural resource: young prisoners, who can then also be used as free labour, or modern day slaves. It would be a good idea if we could find out if any major meetings or offices exist for some of these companies in Scotland, and make it our business to disrupt their profit making from abuse.
These guidelines were formulated under a Labour government, and now the ConDems are just as willing to defend them. Until this month, the government was prepared to go all the way to fight the release of the manual in court, but finally caved and released it. The Ministry of Justice has since defended its contents, saying “staff need to be able to intervene effectively, to protect the safety of all involved.”
SERCO: Scumbags
The way vulnerable youth are treated by the criminal justice system in the UK is horrifying, and will only contribute to the growth of violence, mental illness and misery throughout our society. It might be shocking to realise that this kind of abuse doesn’t take place in Guantanamo Bay, but to people we could have gone to school with or grown up alongside, right under our noses. The next time you hear some right wing politician or media wank talking about the need to crack down on youth offenders, or use tough love (surely one of the most disgusting euphemisms for abuse in this context), remember what it’s really like in one of these places. It’s time we realised that locking up young people rarely solves any of the complex social problems created by capitalism, and when those incarcerated face violence and abuse it only guarantees that the pain and humiliation will have consequences for the rest of the victims’ lives, and the lives of those around them.
If you’re reading this and you’re worried because you think someone is suffering or is at risk, the best advice is to contact local children’s services and the NSPCC.
It’s a news story that you might’ve missed, but on Friday, someone bought all the cocoa. All of it.
At least in Europe anyway: a chocotastic total of 241,000 tonnes of cocoa beans, something which sent er, ripples of chock through the galaxy, in a move that some are already dubbing the ‘credit crunchie’, honest.
There’s something very shady about all of this: someone, in the space of one day, was able to buy up the whole supply of a commodity in an entire continent. Stock-trading like this is nothing unusual in itself: it’s part and parcel of the capitalist economic system, where stock-traders and investors try to make as much money as possible by doing precisely fuck all. It’s pretty clear what the intentions of the mystery trader who bought all up the cocoa is though: to force the price high, monopolise the market, and then, yes, make lots of money. This is what we call “free trade”.
It’s already had the effect of pushing cocoa to its highest price since 1977 – which won’t take long to translate into, brace yourselves… higher chocolate prices for everyone. While a few pence extra on the price of a bar of chocolate is maybe nothing to get your snickers in a twist about, it’s scary the way the price of anything can be manipulated by nothing more than the insider machinations of a few investment bankers and stock traders who’ve never set eyes on a cocoa bean in their life. This is what we call “capitalism”.
What is unusual about this case though is that the buyers have take physical delivery of the cocoa beans – meaning that they’re now sitting in warehouses under the control of the buyers, which again can be used to force the price up by creating an artificial shortage of cocoa!
The only beneficiaries of this are, of course, the parasitical stock traders who now own the stuff. The farmers who actually grow the cocoa – largely in Uganda and the Ivory Coast, are unlikely to see any ‘trickle down’ effect, as they’ve already sold the crop at fixed prices. Prices fixed by middle-men, chocolate companies and these very same investors, you understand. It’s the curly wurly (milky) way of a (cadbury cream egg) twisted economic system.
Yesterday saw the biannual Glasgow LGBT Pride march in the city.
Held in cities all over the world every summer, Pride marches are traditionally an assertion of LGBT rights and a celebration of LGBT culture. The marches themselves have their origins as annual commemorations of the Stonewall Riots, a series of demonstrations against police oppression of the LGBT community in New York, in 1969. However, over the past two decades, the marches have, from their radical origins, been gradually become more and more commercial, with corporate sponsorship and more emphasis on cheap drinks offers and goody bags than remembering the radical history of the LGBT rights movement.
In Glasgow yesterday, SSY took our ‘Pride not Profit’ message to the Pride demonstration, as well as our witty Hate Mail spoof newspaper, which lambastes Tory homophobia and right-wing tabloid bigotry, which is sadly still all too prevalent.
Have you ever wondered what motivates people who are rampant homophobes? What lies behind the desperate attempts of some people to prove their heterosexuality by denying freedom to others based on their sexual orientation?
It’s actually supported by scientific evidence that a major cause of homophobia is the desire to repress unacknowledged or unwanted homosexual feelings. In August 1996 the American Psychological Association did a study in which they used penile plethysmography (basically the technological measurement of hard ons) to “precisely measure and record male tumescence” of men who were avowedly straight’s reactions to to erotic images. Some of the men were professed homophobes, and some were not, who acted as a control group. The homophobic group basically got a lot more aroused by gay imagery than the control group. Questioned afterwards, the homophobes consistently underrated how much they responded to homosexuality.
One group of activists even cleverly wrote to homophobic MPs who voted against equalising the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sex, and challenged them to take the same test of their knob’s reaction to gay stimuli.
Basically, the homophobes experienced severe anxiety and a sense of threat from gay images, which the non-homophobic control group did not. While this is in many ways tragic, and would lead us to the conclusion that many homophobes need help and support to come to terms with themselves and their own feelings, it doesn’t give an excuse for some of the truly awful things people do as a result of that anxiety.
There are many cases of prominent and powerful people who were driving a homophobic agenda in religion, politics or society in general who were actually gay themselves. While this self-loathing is tragic, the harm that these people do to the rights and freedoms of others is inexcusable. To celebrate today’s gay pride march, Leftfield brings you a selection of some of the world’s greatest sexual hypocrites (apologies for them all being American, if you’d like us help expand our list to the UK and around the world then give us some extras in the comments!):
Nationalist youth hate the polis more than they love their bikes
Celtic fans take to the streets after hearing that the Holy Goalie has left
If you’ve seen News 24 over the past few days, you’ve probably noticed that something strange is afoot in Belfast: everyone’s been infected with the rage virus and started fighting with da cops, employing such deadly weapons as planks, slabs and bikes (decommissioning has hit them hard). What’s going on? Are these people born with an inherent genetic love of fighting? Do they just HATE da poleez?
According to British UK news coverage… YES, all of the above, and more. Never one to take what the television tells us at first hand, Leftfield decided to investigate for itself..
Not really, but who needs to tell the truth when you can make funny videos!
Buju Banton is one of the biggest names in dancehall music. He’s been making records for over 20 years, some of his undeniably great music has made him one of the biggest stars in Jamaica, and regarded by many as a voice for the poor majority.
Unfortunately, he’s also a violent homophobe. LGBT rights groups around the world have picketed his shows and called on promoters not to book him because of his anti-gay tunes. The most significant is ‘Boom Bye Bye,’ which is basically about killing LGBT people. It advocates shooting, burning and pouring acid as methods.
Many of his defenders claim that he was still a teenager when he released this tune in 1992, and he’s since moved on and doesn’t perform it any more. The truth is that Banton knows that it’s controversial, and so he’s careful about when he performs it because it can potentially get him in trouble. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t do it though, with his mike being cut off at a 2007 show in New York when he began the song.
It would be one thing if his hatred of LGBT people was confined to records, but it’s not. Several witnesses have identified him as part of a mob that broke into a home in Kingston in 2004 shouting homophobic insults, and then beat two men severely, leaving one of them blind in one eye.
Banton denies the claims, and the police have yet to charge him in connection with the attack. But the Jamaican police are notorious for the lack of care for violence against LGBT people, as homosexuality remains completely illegal in Jamaica and punishable by prison with hard labour.
Also in 2004, the founder of the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays, (an organisation fighting for LGBT rights under very difficult circumstances and desperately in need of support), Brian Williamson, was murdered in his home by multiple stab wounds from a machete.
Buju Banton himself is currently in US prison after being charged with possession with intent to distribute cocaine last year. But in the meantime, his homophobic lyrics continue to be a rallying cry for hate, which is why the Eclectic Method have put together this little video to set the record straight:
Just what Buchanan Street needs: a massive fucking glass box
It’s well established that Glasgow City Council’s grand ambitions for the city centre amount to turning it into one massive hell hole of exclusive boutiques, vacuous, identikit shopping malls and trendy wine bars. This is generally billed as ‘regeneration’, and we’re going to see an onslaught of it in the run up to the Commonwealth Games that the city’s hosting in 2014.
And in the latest step of this war on having-nice-places-to-sit-without-paying-anything, plans are afoot to demolish the iconic steps at the Royal Concert Hall, at the top end of Buchanan Street. The steps are a popular, public, and vitally, free social space in the city centre, where people chat, have lunch and sit about. The council are now proposing to demolish the steps and build a new, branded, ‘focal point’ entrance as part of an expansion of the Buchanan Gallaries shopping centre instead. And indeed, they’re pushing for the taxpayer to foot the £80 million bill for the shopping centre expansion!
The Concert Hall steps are far from an eyesore. There’s countless places in Glasgow that desperately need investment from the local authorities – but Buchanan Street is hardly the first place that springs to mind in this respect. For the council to seriously be mooting the possibility of borrowing £80 million to fund the expansion of a shopping centre is total madness in a year when they’re freezing salaries, cutting jobs and slashing services.
A trade union rally at the Concert Hall steps, June 2010
Elsewhere, the council are continuing to aim closure, sorry ‘rebranding’, threats in the direction of the historic Barras market, one of the last working class areas left in the centre of the city. Various councillors, as well as unofficial council mouthpiece the Evening Times, have been calling on the market to “clean up” its act and lose its “seedy reputation”. It appears that their main aim in this is to push for the transformation of the Barras into an expensive yuppie market with a ‘Camden-style regeneration package’ that will bring a ‘better class of retail’ and be a ‘good pull for tourists’, as one councillor has put it. No one’s denying that the Barras couldn’t do with a makeover, but the last thing we need is an expansion of the overpriced middle class ghetto that is the Merchant City, in a blatant attempt to squeeze out a street market which offers cheap goods to an overwhelmingly working class clientele.
As for the Buchanan Gallery development, outline planning permission has already been granted, despite the zillion and one things that’re wrong with it – nevermind just saving the steps, the last thing the city needs is more retail space, let alone a massive new shopping centre that will squeeze the bus station into its basement.
If you want to find out more about the campaign to ’save the steps’, join the facebook group here.
Below we feature a guest post by Meritxell Ramírez Ollé, a student at the University of Edinburgh, co-creator of a new online local newspaper (Vacarisses Digital) in her hometown of Vacarisses, Catalonia, and a supporter of Catalan independence.
On Saturday, over a million people marched through the streets of the Catalan capital of Barcelona, led by a large banner proclaiming, “We are a nation, we decide ourselves”. The demonstration, which has been widely reported as the largest in the history of Catalonia, was a response to the sentence issued by the Spanish Constitutional Court on the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia (the charter for Catalan self-rule).
A regressive sentence amid a manipulated decision-making process
Around 2005, in the context of Spain’s system of regional devolution, some in Catalonia felt that it was necessary to revise the earlier Catalan Statute, dating from 1979, and set out a draft for a new charter. Eventually, in 2006, the Statute was passed by both the Catalan and Spanish Parliaments, and it was endorsed in 2006 by a popular referendum in Catalonia. However, the Popular Party (PP) (the main right-wing opposition party in Spain) and the Spanish ombudsman (a holdover from the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) [read: the Spanish version of the Labour Party, who are currently in government – Ed.]) appealed the renewed Statute to the Constitutional Court.
The decision-making process of the Constitutional Court (CC) during the issuing of its ruling was not free from controversy: the mandates of three of its twelve members expired nearly two years ago and have not been renewed, and another judge died during his term and has still not been replaced. Despite all the legal abnormalities, and the fact that the CC is a political body whose members are handpicked by the two major parties in Spain, the response to the PP’s and the Spanish ombudsman’s appeal was eventually published one week ago. It briefly concludes:
1) There is no legal basis to recognise Catalonia as a nation. As the Court obsessively makes sure to state twelve times in the text of the sentence, “the only nation within Spain is the Spanish one”.
2) The Catalan language should not be prioritised over Spanish in Catalan administrations, public media and in schools, despite the marginalisation it suffered for centuries and the minority use of Catalan in public spaces.
3) The Catalan people are recognised as “a people” but without any political or juridical powers. The Court aims, with this decision, to underline that the only sovereign people are the “Spanish” people.
4) Although Catalonia has a recognised deficit of investment from the Spanish Government, it cannot ask for similar levels of fiscal autonomy to the Basque tax system, comparable to that of any EU Member State.
5) The judiciary power will remain centralised in Madrid.
A Constitutional sentence above Catalans’ will
While the two main parties in the Spanish Parliament (PP- PSOE) have accepted the sentence with all its legal irregularities, all Catalan parties, except for the Popular Party (PP) in Catalonia and the small Anti-Catalan Nationalism Party (Ciudadanos), are unanimous in their analysis. They argue for respect for Catalonia’s identity and for what the Catalan people have voted for in a binding referendum, which the Spanish Constitutional Court has undermined. However, Catalan leaders differ in their suggestions as to how to come out from this political cul-de-sac. On the one hand, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and the Catalan Eco-Socialist Party (ICV) in office, and the centre-right Catalan Nationalist Party (CiU) insist on re-negotiating with the Spanish Government a new agreement regarding Catalonia’s national ambitions into the Spanish Constitution. On the other hand, the left-wing Catalan Independence Party (ERC) (also in office), and the ex-Barcelona Football Club president, Joan Laporta, who has just created a new party, Democràcia Catalana, advocate for Catalonia’s secession from Spain. In this sense, Saturday‘s demonstration was clearly dominated by pro-independence sentiments and positions, and it is probable that the upcoming Catalan elections in November this year will also be framed around the issue of independence.
The CC’s 2010 sentence: the latest (and last!) frustrated attempt for a federal Spain
However, the debate over the CC’s judgement, and of Catalonia’s relationship with the Spanish state, is not a new issue. The attempt to create a federal Spain, with Catalonia on the inside, has been at the heart of much of the country’s modern history, but it has continued to fail, often with fatal consequences for Catalonia. In the 19th century, the First Spanish Republic, established in 1873 by the Catalan federalist Estanislau Figueras I de Moragas failed as a result of anti-federalist coups and ended up with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.
Later, the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, and the first Catalan Statute in 1932, were overthrown by the fascist Francisco Franco and led to the bloody civil war in 1936. As George Orwell describes in his book Homage to Catalonia, written while he served as both a private and a corporal in Catalonia and Aragon in 1936, the effects the civil war had on Catalonia were devastating.
After 35 years of dictatorship, and after the passing of the Constitution of 1978, Spain created a unique system of regional autonomy, known as the “state of the autonomies”. The result of this system was nothing but a constitution full of ambiguities in its most fundamental aspects, and autonomous territorial structures that did not satisfy anyone, but all political parties accepted it for fear of returning to the ‘old times’ of the dictatorship.
The calculated ambiguity of the Spanish Constitution (which continually needs to be interpreted) requires that all important laws affecting legal autonomy are the result of negotiation, and should be ultimately interpreted by the CC. The latest episode of this process of negotiation was the political sentence of the CC issued last week. This time, the CC has sent one more clear messages to the Catalans: ‘the will of the citizens of Catalonia doesn’t matter, because here we are the only sovereign institution that can make use of democracy’. Therefore, with this sentence, the situation is not ambiguous anymore: Spain is expelling us; Spain has no room for the Catalan, if it not under its subjugation and national indignity. At that point, in my opinion, the only road to a decent future for Catalonia is our political independence. But, that’s a story for another post.
"Are you going to poke me the next time you're on or what?"
Hey Kids! Guess how cool and funky the ConDem government can be?! They’re going to ask YOU on Facebook about what you think should get cut from our public services! Neat, huh?
Do you often think about how your local leisure centre is a waste of money? How about all those lazy disabled people that need care at home, surely they could do a bit more for themselves, right? What about libraries, who needs boring old books when we can all go on FACEBOOK and get connected with the Tories!
This new era in justifying government policy super cool direct democracy is the result of a deal that’s been struck between the government and Facebook. They’re planning to set up a “spending challenge channel”, that’ll come up when you login, inviting you to make suggestions on where the government should make spending cuts.
The idea behind it is to con people into feeling that they’ve been given a say. But if this was really democratic, you’d have the chance to say you don’t want ANY cuts, something that won’t be an option. In fact, the whole thing is about making everyone believe the lie that the cuts are an inevitable and inavoidable part of reality, like a rainy day, instead of what they are: a calculated attempt by the rich to make themselves even wealthier at our expense.
Britain's rich
Chancellor George Osborne, writing in the home of sound economic thinking, The Sun, says: “As every family knows, when you’ve got less money you have to spend it better. That means getting your ideas.” Talking about Britain as a family goes along with the Tory slogan of “We’re all in this together,” implying that we’ll all be sharing the pain of the new age of austerity.
This of course is bollocks, as the millionaires, including most members of the government, continue to stack the cash while they make the poor majority pay more tax, get less benefits and have more of their essential needs ignored. If Britain is a family, it’s a fucking dysfunctional one where some fat cousin we barely know has turned up and started spending all our money on himself while the rest of us starve.
Not only is the option that most people want (no cuts) not going to be included, even the crappy Labour Party argument that “We need cuts but not just yet,” won’t be included either. The Facebook PR move by the government won’t open up a debate about if we need cuts, or even when they should be made or how deep they should be. It will simply be about what you think you could live without. It’s like giving a prisoner on death row the choice of which execution method they’d like.
Shortly after turning a baseball cap back to front, Prime Minister David Cameron said: “We are really excited about having Facebook involved in the spending challenge. There’s enormous civic spirit in this country where people want to take control and do things in a different way. We are giving people an opportunity with Facebook and I am sure that they will take it.” Of course, he didn’t add, “take just enough control to make the people who are really in control look good.”
26 year old billionaire Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg (one of the youngest billionaires in the world thanks to the amount of time you spend logged into his website) was also loving the government linkup.
“The government’s willingness to reach out and engage with Facebook users is going to go a long way because I’m sure that all the people using Facebook in the UK have a lot of great ideas on how they could do this,” he gushed.
“It’s really innovative to open up policy making and engage the public in this way to try and create more social change.”
His enthusiasm isn’t surprising when you realise that the people who own and operate Facebook have got a political agenda themselves, one that fits quite well with what the Tories are trying to do to the UK. Zuckerberg and friends are all members of neoconservative right wing groups that want to see a total free market, no government support for the poor and complete global capitalism. They are super rich venture capitalists themselves, who have made themselves billionaires thanks to your use of their services, such as Facebook and PayPal. Now they’ve got an ally in the UK government, and together they’re teaming up to try and make us cut our own throats.
We’re still waiting to see how exactly the finished “spending challenge channel” will look, but make sure you tell everyone you know to refuse to take part in it, and refuse to endorse the lie that we must make cuts. If you are going to post a suggestion, here’s a few that perhaps the government ought to consider, but never will:
In the world of psychic powers, few tests come bigger than predicting the fate of humanity itself.
With Paul the Psychic Octopus making headlines around the world right now for his incredible ability to correctly predict the winner in all of Germany’s World Cup games so far, SSY got in touch with Paul for what would prove to be the ultimate test of his psychic capabilities.
Writing in 1915, the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg first raised the idea that the future of our planet lay in one of two roads: either socialism, or barbarism. Decades later, another foreign exile in Germany (Rosa was actually Polish, while Paul is actually an English octopus) was faced with a similar predicament -- a question that would put all of our eight-tentacled friend’s psychic abilities to the test, as he sought to determine the very fate of the human race.
What would Paul decide? Are we to be condemned to, as Rosa put it all those years ago, “the awful proposition: the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery” or…“the victory of socialism?”
Watch with baited breathe as Paul reveals the fate of all humanity:
Oh (oh oh oh octopus), and if you’d like to see how Paul’s World Cup final predictions pan out as well, come along to SSY’s World Cup South Africa showdown spectacular on Sunday night! Wintergill’s Bar, Great Western Road, Glasgow from 7.30 on Sunday -- watch the game and then celebrate/commiserate the result with quality tunes from South Africa! £2/4 entry otd, lots of special prizes -- not to be missed!
It’s 
Have you ever wondered what motivates people who are rampant homophobes? What lies behind the desperate attempts of some people to prove their heterosexuality by denying freedom to others based on their sexual orientation?
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