The occupation of the Hetherington Research Club at Glasgow University entered its third day today, and continues to go from strength to strength.
The club is now a fully functioning social and educational space, with an ever-expanding schedule of meetings, film showings, discussion groups, workshops and more.
Yesterday, the occupation was privileged to get a visit from Iraq veteran and US anti-war activist Mike Prysner, who packed out the top floor of the building in the afternoon for his talk. Mike spoke about how he’d joined the army believing it to a force for good, but how his experiences in Iraq had rapidly led him to realise the true role of the military in the country, with his unit despatched to protect oil wells and corporate interests, much less help the Iraqi people. Now an organiser with March Forward!, Mike agitates and organises among US soldiers. We also heard from Hasan Nowarah, a Palestinian human rights activist who was on board the aid-ship convoy attacked by Israeli commandos last May.
Today the occupation really came into its own. As word spreads around campus, and across the city, that the Hetherington is re-open, more and more people, staff, students and well-wishers, are dropping by. Some are just curious, some are after the free tea and coffee we’re offering, others are keen to find a quiet place to study. The Free Hetherington has already become an important part of the uni, and long may it thrive!
A full list of events is available on a calendar here, and check out the facebook page for regular updates of what’s happening.
It’s been a hectic few days for the anti-cuts struggle in Glasgow. After
Saturday’s frantic day of charging around the city centre for the Glasgow Against Education Cuts organised ‘tour of cuts and cutters’, which saw the arrest of one student activist, early yesterday afternoon dozens of students from across Glasgow reclaimed the former post-grad social club at Glasgow Uni.
With full freedom of access now secured in the occupation, students are now preparing to hold the space, the Hetherington Research Club, as a long term hub of anti-cuts activism.
The club was forced to close almost a year ago after uni management refused to bail the club out nor accept a new finance plan after it ran into difficulties. Since then it’s been lying empty, completely untouched. With reports that the uni intend to convert the building – gifted to students over 50 years ago – into offices, yesterday over 50 students entered the building and are now in control of it.
After a full night in the space, students are digging in for the long-term. The university have said that “as long as the protest remains peaceful and does not disrupt the normal business of the university and other students, campus security will not intervene” – however, it’s clear the uni are leaving the definition of what ‘disrupting normal business’ means pretty open, especially with building work reportedly to start within the next few weeks.
A list of demands have now been drawn up, which call for the HRC to be returned to democratic student and staff control, for the reinstatement of the jobs lost when the building closed, for uni management to refuse to implement any cuts, and for an end to the government’s austerity programme. The occupiers have also demanded that Principal Anton Muscatelli either condemns cuts and fees and agrees to take the average wage of a university worker, or leaves his post.
However, the occupation of the HRC is about more than just having a series of demands met. The HRC was an important social and learning space at the university, and we want to return it to this use. Over the coming days and weeks, the HRC will hopefully be used to host a wide variety of different meetings, discussions and other events. To kick things off, later today the occupation will be getting a visit from Iraq veteran and US anti-war activist Mike Prysner, at 4pm. If you can make it, come down – it should be really good.
The occupation has huge potential, as a resource and space for the emerging movement against cuts and austerity in our city, as a rallying point and springboard for further action, and as a pattern for others to follow across the country. Viva la Hetherington libre!
Police kettles were smashed, corporate tax dodgers forced to close their doors and Wetherspoons even packed away all their tables in a riot prevention measure yesterday, as militant anti-cuts protests hit Glasgow city centre.
Hundreds of people took to the streets in the city, embracing a diversity of tactics in the latest show of opposition to cuts in local services and education. This comes ahead of Glasgow City Council’s cuts budget, to be set within the next fortnight, and following the announcement, buried just before Christmas, that all of Scotland’s colleges will face cuts this year of 10 percent, meaning direct cuts to student places and courses, and making compulsory redundancies likely.
Beginning with a static rally in George Square organised by trade union umbrella group ‘Defend Glasgow’s Services’, which heard from a number of different speakers, around 200 protesters then took the police by surprise and broke off for a march through the city centre. Billed as “guided tour of cuts and cutters”, the roving demo was organised by new group Glasgow Against Education Cuts, with a list of potential ‘targets’ drawn up in the days before the march, taking inspiration from the UKUncut style of direct action.
After leaving the square to chants of ‘Cameron lose your smile, let’s do this Egyptian style!’, the demo then headed down the city’s central shopping precinct, Buchanan Street. First stop on the tour was phone company Vodafone, where a speaker went into the details of their nefarious tax-dodging activities. Attention was also drawn to the complicit role Vodafone have played in propping up the regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, cutting off their signal in recent days in order to stifle communication between protesters.
Having initially been taken by surprise, at this point large number of police began to pile in, with riot vans attempting to follow the demo along pedestrianised streets. Heavy police presence in tow, the tour then headed down to Topshop on Argyle Street, where chants rose up of ‘Shoplift! Topshop!’, before a rapid u-turn from which the tour headed towards offices run by ATOS, the company paid millions in public money to kick people off benefits. However, the police then made an attempt to kettle the demo near Central Station, entrapping around 70 protesters within police lines.
With no one particularly wanting to spend the rest of the afternoon packed into a police kettle on the pavement of a fairly quiet street, a push and shove rapidly ensued with the police, with protesters managing to force their way through the lines. There’s several reports of injuries sustained from police violence at this point, including one young woman who was grabbed around the neck and a school student who was shoved to the ground.
The demo began to break-up at this point, with groups charging up the street away from the police, with a cop helicopter now attempting to keep track of the demo from the skies.
Managing to regroup again on Buchanan Street, most people went back to George Sq. At this stage it was decided to disperse, rather than face the risk of being stuck in a police kettle for the rest of the afternoon, as happened during the tuition fees protests on 9 December and which allowed the police to pick off certain activists for arrest.
However, just as people were beginning to leave, news reached us that, while walking home, 19 year old student Dominic O’Hara had been snatched by the police and bundled into a van, with the police refusing to tell onlookers why. Around 40 people were still present in George Sq, so a decision was made to march to the police station in which Dominic was being held. Ridiculously, the police saw fit to follow the procession with an escort of both on-foot officers and two vans all the way to the station. For over an hour a picket was held outside, with a senior officer eventually telling us that Dominic is being charged with breach of the peace and assaulting a police officer. These are the same charges he is already facing in relation to December’s fees protests; this was clearly a deliberate, targeted arrest of a member of a group who have been facing continual harassment since last summer. Dom is being held over the weekend and will be appearing in court tomorrow.
Saturday’s demonstration showed that we can and will take to the streets whenever we want, where we want and at the time we want. Over the past year, the council have made it virtually impossible for legal demonstrations to be given permission in the city centre, apparently due to its importance to ‘Glasgow’s economic prosperity’. As such, unless we want to march around a park in the west end or hold a static rally in the middle of square, there’s little option beyond taking to the streets without official permission. Strathclyde Police and Glasgow City Council – you brought this upon yourselves!
The anti-cuts movement must continue to grow, in both size and militancy, over the next year, and can’t be allowed to go down the same dead-end route of A-B marches that the anti-war movement was ultimately reduced to. We need to keep our tactics fresh and exciting, continuing to push for direct action and for outmanoeuvring the police. The demo yesterday was highly successful in this regard, bringing a significant number of trade unionists, students, unemployed people and pensioners together, and adding a radical edge to the morning’s trade union rally.
Ed Miliband is the leader of the Labour party, the official parliamentary opposition to the Coalition government. Ed was elected on the back of trade union votes to this position, and relies on the subs paid by ordinary trade union members to keep his party going.
So with the Coalition – remember, the ones that Ed’s official job is to oppose – embarking on the biggest offensive against the welfare state since its inception, surely the natural place to find him would be at the forefront of resistance to their austerity measures of cutbacks, job losses, wage freezes and VAT rises?
Alas, no. In fact, probably the only time you’ve seen Ed anywhere near the headlines since his election has been over a cabinet reshuffle last week, and his earth shattering decision last year to not attend any of the student protests. Not even the nice NUS candlelit vigils.
Last week, Ed came out and said that he opposed co-ordinated strike action to defeat the cuts. This is no great surprise, but a blunt display of how markedly to the right the Labour party are from even the mainstream union leadership, who at least are employing the rhetoric of industrial action, if not the action itself. As we reported last week, Miliband has also been pandering to the right-wing press over the mythical ‘Royal Wedding Strikes’, saying that he finds the idea “appalling” and “totally condemns it”.
On top of this, not-very-red Ed has “strongly implied” that, nevermind backing strike action, he isn’t even willing to march against the cuts. And we’re not talking about some semi-legal student kettle frenzy, the march in question is about official as demonstrations go: the one organised by the Trades Union Congress for Saturday 26 March in central London – the demo that the TUC leadership have eventually called about a year after everyone wanted them to. Instead, all Ed can say is this: “What we are not going to do under my leadership is go back to the heroic failures of the 1980s which set the party back… Industrial action is not the way you change governments. You do it through the ballot box.”
Well that’s us told. Sit tight for the next four years and then on 7 May 2015 we’ll elect a Labour government and everything will be fine. Or not, as the case may be. RMT leader Bob Crow is right when he says that we “don’t have the luxury of waiting for the next general election… Con-Dem attacks on jobs, services and standards of living are hitting us now”.
26 March will be a key date for the movement to beat the cuts and the coalition. Hundreds of thousands – maybe more – will march in London. Unions are mobilising members from across the country – a number of trains have already been booked to run from Scotland, and dozens of coaches will also be heading down.
Let’s be clear, marching in itself will not be enough to defeat the ConDem’s agenda. But it can be a springboard for the sort of action that can. The student movement which exploded off the back of November’s NUS demo is a good example of what a big demo can achieve, managing to spark action across the country and bringing the coalition to the verge of their first defeat, thinning their majority dramatically.
Regardless of the attitude that the officials and bureaucrats within the trade union movement, the NUS or, for that matter, Ed Miliband , think, a huge militant demo has the potential to give a confidence boost to millions of workers across the country, and kickstart momentum for industrial action.
Autonomous groups have already started building for mass resistance on the 26th. A mysterious website, purporting to be from the ‘armed wing of the Trades Union Congress’ have initiated a call-out for decentralised mass action in London on the day. They’ve also got a wee bit ahead of themselves and started calling for all power to the soviets, but we share the general sentiment. Last weekend’s ‘Network X’ conference, of anti-cuts activists from across the country, also supported the call-out for direct action on 26 March that goes beyond simply being herded from one park to another to listen to speeches by a few TU leaders.
The Labour party have had 10 months now in which to show which side they’re on. The party’s leadership have no interest in fighting the cuts, being careerists of the worst kind, who’d rather sit back quietly for the next few years and hope they get elected sometime in the future. The time to fightback is now, and hopefully March 26 can prove to be the beginning of the end for this government’s austerity programme.
A two hour occupation of Royal Bank of Scotland offices in central Glasgow took place earlier today, in protest at fatcat bankers taking billions in bonuses while the rest of us suffer the cuts and austerity of the economic crisis they caused.
Around twenty people – including climate change activists, students, 80 year old pensioners, anarchists and SSY members – gathered in the city centre at 11am, before walking to the building on Cadogan Street and quietly entering it. Once inside, banners and placards were unfurled, while a megaphone was passed round with most people there getting the chance to speak and explain why they’d come to occupy RBS.
The police arrived within 20 minutes of the occupation starting, but they made little attempt to remove us, saying that they were merely there to ‘facilitate’ the protests, not to take sides. While that was very nice of them to do so today, it’s a shame that the same can’t be said about previous protests which have targeted the bank, like Climate Camp and the G20 demonstrations in London.
Today’s protest was organised under the banner of ‘Citizens United’, a group who’ve organised a number of similar actions over the past few months, managing to get themselves – and the anti-cuts message – a fairamountofmediacoveragein the process. The demo this morning mostly focused on bankers’ bonuses, a particularly contentious issue at the moment, with Barclay’s chief Bob Diamond recently telling MPs that the “time for remorse” for bankers was over, ahead of next month’s bonus bonanza which will see the banks, including those under public ownership, start paying out an expected £7 billion in perks.
RBS falls among these state-owned banks – with the multibillion bail-outs it received in 2008/9 making it 84 percent owned by the government. However, rather than fully nationalising – or indeed, reigning them in at all – RBS has been allowed to continue with the kind of reckless behaviour that caused the crisis in the first place. On top of this, they’re one of the main sources of capital behind the Alberta Tar Sands, perhaps the most environmentally destructive project on the planet – and among the reasons why last year’s Climate Camp targeted the bank.
Today’s protest is an important part of keeping up the pressure on the bank, with similar action to take place in Edinburgh tomorrow. Our occupation ended under our own volition after about two hours, during which time loads of journalists, film crews and photographers had dropped by. As the bank’s workers filed out for lunch, we made it clear that we had no issue with them – and that we wanted to speak a senior manager. Indeed, while RBS will hand their top bosses multi-million bonuses, they’ve recently laid off more than 20,000 of their own staff in the UK. So it probably shouldn’t come as a great surprise that no one in the building was willing to come down and defend the obscene bonus culture, the bailouts or the forced austerity we’re now undergoing.
There’ve been a few news articles recently about new tax laws in Romania, intended as lighthearted LOLs with headlines like Romanian witches to cast anti-government spell. Much of the news coverage has consisted of chuckling at the idea of witches protesting with curses and spells, and aren’t those silly old superstitious women even stupider than we thought, if they think they shouldn’t have to pay tax.
The new laws require self-employed workers and people who work cash-in-hand to pay tax for the first time, affecting many Romanians – including those who make a living off the traditions of witchcraft and fortune telling.
Of course, the Romanians are going to continue in their tradition of dramatic protest, with a call for witches to assemble on the southern plains and the banks of the Danube River to protest – there are even claims that they will threaten the government with concoctions of mandrake, cat excrement and dead dog.
Though these reports have been treated lightheartedly in the UK media, they are taken more seriously in Romania, where superstition is treated a great deal more seriously. In 2009, it was claimed that the loser of the presidential election was sabotaged with negative energy and strategic use of the colour purple, which is believed to ward off evil and grant superiority to whoever wears it. Indeed, the winner of the election, President Basescu and his aides have been known to wear purple on certain days in an attempt to harness its power.
But regardless of who is effected – be they witches, astrologers and fortune tellers, or embalmers, valets, driving instructors or workers in any of the other professions traditionally not listed in the Romanian labour code – the new laws are totally regressive and fucked up.
Taxation in Romania is based on a flat-rate income tax of 16%, and corporate tax is between 3 and 16%, depending on the size of the company – meaning that the people earning the least amount of money are taxed in the same bracket as the super rich and the big corporations.
Flat rate taxation has been widely adopted in Eastern European post-communist states desperate to attain the free-market capitalist dream as quickly as possible. The former Soviet countries have been cut up and sold off, and most workers’ rights and welfare have been sold off with them – whereas Western European countries like ourselves, who have never been subject to a so-called socialist regime, have had strong trade union movements to fight for our rights. To date, no Western European country has introduced a flat-rate income tax, instead having higher rates of tax on higher bands of income to finance improved social welfare measures.
Bratara Buzea
Payments to witches and other self-employed, cash-in-hand workers in Romania are typically very small, at around 10 leu (less than £2) per consultation. Why should poor women, often travellers, earning a few pounds a day have to give 16% of the pittance they earn to the government – who will then use it to prop up the capitalist system that provides nothing for its citizens most in need?
As one self-identified witch, Bratara Buzea, 63, (who was imprisoned in 1977 for witchcraft under Ceausescu’s regime – despite Ceausescu and his wife Elena having their own personal witch) said:
We do harm to those who harm us. They want to take the country out of this crisis using us? They should get us out of the crisis because they brought us into it.
Romanian television engineer Adrian Sobaru today made an impressive stand against austerity measures in his country -- by leaping from a balcony into the main chamber of the Romanian parliament, where politicians were debating nearly 25ft below. His protest took place the day after the 21st anniversary of the revolution which overthrew faux-communist dictator Nicolae Ceausesc, and replaced him with a capitalist regime that wasn’t much better.
Sobaru’s tshirt said “You’ve pierced us. You’ve killed our children’s future.” and is reported to have been shouting “Freedom, Liberty, Justice!” as he fell.
It is believed that Sobaru’s actions were caused by the recent decision to cut off benefit payments to his disabled child.
Thankfully, apart from a few facial injuries, he was unharmed and survived to fight another day.
Saturday 19th marked another landmark in the now epic battle against corporate tax evasion. Dubbed “pay day” by UK uncut the day saw around 55 different actions in towns and cities across the UK targeting big business fraudsters including Vodafone, the Arcadia Group (Topshop, Dorothy Perkins, BHS etc), Boots and HSBC.
Polis blockaded the shop so we didn't have too (pic: Indymedia)
In Glasgow around 25 activists braved the snow to take part in a successfull occupation of Vodafone. On arriving at the original meeting point outside Topshop it became clear that the polis were well prepared for us and would have made it impossible for us to successfully occupy Topshop. So we quickly decided it was best to do a bit of “disper and converge” and reassemble inside Vodafone on Argyll Street 13 minutes later (I even got to synchronise my phone making me late for work today).
After drifting in to Vodafone we did our best to blend in…so much so that I saw one of the staff rubbing his hands together as he appoached (nae joy). We had a little sing-song, most notably a great little version of Jingle Bells put together by our friends at Citizens United before Strathclyde’s finest arrived to send us on our way…and then say we couldn’t go on our way. What followed was the most thinly veiled attempt at making us all give our details and be filmed I have ever witnessed. As we all know you have no compulsion to be filmed or give details without being told what specific offence you had committed. Instead we were informed that we were being asked to give details because we were “witnesses.” When asked what we may have witnessed we were told “we’ll have to check the CCTV first”…in other words nothing. It’s pretty clear the bizzies were rather pissed at being outsmarted (again) by a group of weans and old folks which is something they had better get used to. Of course myself, Donald Duck & Roger Rabbit all complied and gave them our names not wishing to get arrested/miss the SSP Christmas Party.
We continued our freezing vigil on the pavement for an hour or so where again the response was overwhelming. And when I say that I don’t mean it in the way you normally hear on the left. I mean, an overwhelming majority of people were supportive and disgusted to hear of the masssive tax dodging antics of the Governments chronies at Vodafone and we shifted 1000 leaflets in less than an hour.
HSBC: House Stealing Banker Cunts
Elsewhere this week we have saw some really creative actions, like the Sports Day outside Topshop in Oxford Circus protesting against cuts in sports funding for schools – Phillip Green’s tax dodge would be enough to fund sport in schools for 2 full years. Similarly a “sleep in” was organised inside a branch of HSBC. HSBC are doing a Vodafone by attempting to “renegotiate” a £2bn tax bill – enough to cancel out the £1.8bn cuts in housing benefit which will see families thrown out on the street.
Creative actions like these help make a direct link in people’s minds between the cuts and those responsible i.e. the tax dodging companies. The constant (and pretty positive, giving how wet folks like Guardian get about Twitter) coverage in the media is becoming an increasing headache for big business who not only lose punters but more importantly are losing the PR battle. The Arcadia Group have thus far been totally silent (because the allegations are true) and Vodafone have only issue a non-denying “denial” by saying “we do not have a £6bn tax liability.” That statement is true and is in fact the whole reason we are protesting in the first place because HMRC wrote off their tax bill meaning there is no liability.
UKUncut is fast becoming a rallying point for a wide group of disenfranchised folk who are angry about the continuos lie that we have no choice but cuts and that there is no alternative to the ConDem vision of our society. In Glasgow it has been a great example of unity in action with those who share our aims and we should look to extend the pool by linking in with myriad of anti-cuts groups and activists to promote direct action. The theiving crooks are on the back foot. This weekend sends a clear message to those currently concocting schemes to dodge paying their share…when we catch you, we’ll make you pay. Let’s make 2011 the year the Big Society Revenue and Customs takes back what we’re owed.
And yet in June, he spent £303,006 of our money on a four day trip to Canada. £303,006 on travel, food and accommodation in FOUR DAYS? Perhaps part of the massive cost was the insanely environmentally un-friendly private jet he chartered for him and his mates…
The figures also include a list of presents received by Cameron, Clegg and Co.
Just for fun, let’s see what they all got in the period May-July 2010.
Cameron was given jewellery, bowls and boxes, tennis racquets and wine, whisky, books, hampers, an iPad, a wallhanging, a pen set, leather goods, ties, more jewellery, a clock, a painting, another iPad, and two rugs.
This article is not intended as a finished piece. Rather, it intended as a contribution to the debate over the organisation, strategy, and aims of the growing movement against public spending cuts in Scotland and Britain, as well as a report from my experience talking to anti-cuts student activists in London. Any comments, formal or informal, are welcome, as it is through debating our ideas that we advance our understanding, which in turn will help us in our attempt to build movements both against cuts, and for socialism.
This article is also actually two merged into one. The first section deals with my visit to Goldsmiths College London, where I attended an anti-cuts meeting and interviewed some of the students involved. It highlights some of the themes which have wider importance for the anti-cuts movement. Aspects of the Goldsmiths experience have thus contributed to some of the arguments in the second, ’conclusions’, section of this article. However, I will not offer much commentary on the Goldsmiths interviews themselves. Rather, I will leave it to readers to make their own impressions of the views expressed.
The ’conclusions’ section brings some of the lessons together which are being drawn by more and more people involved in the anti-cuts struggle, in order to generate discussion over the strategy, organisational forms, and ultimate aims of our movement. Socialists have an important contribution to make to these debates and the direction they take. As SSY author James Nesbitt argues of the emergent student anti-cuts movement, “we are actually just at the beginning of what will be a massive and enduring fight. It feels like it has really started now, and it will end with the toppling of this Government…a new generation has entered the fray, with few illusions in mainstream parties or the parliamentary system. Volatile times are ahead and we must be ambitious.”
The occupation of the Hetherington Research Club at Glasgow University entered its third day today, and continues to go from strength to strength.
It’s been a hectic few days for the anti-cuts struggle in Glasgow. After
Ed Miliband is the leader of the Labour party, the official parliamentary opposition to the Coalition government. Ed was elected on the back of trade union votes to this position, and relies on the subs paid by ordinary trade union members to keep his party going.
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