Glasgow City Council are poised to bring in new legislation that could effectively ban public processions and demonstrations from the city centre, among other draconian measures which together form an unashamed attack on democratic rights in the city. As we reported earlier this year, this comes as part of their much trumpeted drive to cut down on the number of the sectarian parades in the city – which is reportedly higher than the annual total in Derry and Belfast combined.
Now the full extent of the council’s plans have been revealed in a consultation document sent this Monday to 29 ‘relevant stakeholders’, including SSY. Among the proposals are:
to ban marches which would ’cause too much disruption or congestion’
to develop ’standard procession routes which minimise disruption and congestion’
to ban marches which ’place an excessive burden on the police’
march organisers will be ‘encouraged to consider alternatives to processions’
no procession will be allowed to ‘become elongated by a formation of fewer than four abreast; a procession will not be allowed to move off until in the correct formation’
all events with more than 1000 participants will ‘be required to assemble in a public park and progress to a public park’
The target of this is, we’re meant to assume, obviously the Orange Order, as well as their Protestant supremacist pals in the Black Institute and the Apprentice Boys of Derry, who together make up well over 200 of the city’s 370 odd marches each year. Certainly, everything in the consultation document points towards this – there’s even a couple of proposals thrown in there which specifically target these organisations, including a ban on carrying swords without prior permission. However, everything we’ve seen over the past year – since GCC initially announced their plans to slash the number of parades in the city ‘by up to ninety percent’ – indicates that this is far from the reality of the planned legislation.
Since this original announcement, several marches in Glasgow have indeed be rerouted. There was the 3000 strong Unison anti-cuts demonstration, forced to take place at 9.30 in the morning and squeezed out of the city centre. There was the EIS teachers’ union demo against cuts, 10,000 strong, again forced out of the city centre and to the earlier time of 10.30am. Then there was the 9000 strong Wave march calling for immediate action on Climate Change, forced despite protestations to take a route which again completely cut out the centre of the city. You might see a pattern developing here – this demo was pushed back to 10.30am too. These three marches, two called by trade unions and one by a grouping of NGOs, were hardly the most provocative, controversial or dangerous to take place in Glasgow over the year, yet all were denied their desired route and time. The council paper does in fact allude to these marches, as examples of ‘groups which are opting for alternatives to having processions through the city centre’. This is taking serious liberties, no pun intended, with the truth. Meanwhile, the Orange Lodge’s biggest event of the year – the ‘Big Walk’ in early July – was allowed to go ahead entirely unhindered, giving drunk, sectarian bigots ownership of the city centre for the whole day and making it an effective no-go area for anyone else. Nor has it stopped permission being granted to at least two provocative Orange marches directly through the Gallowgate over the past twelve months.
It all bears disturbing similarities to current goings-on in Northern Ireland, where the devolved government is currently attempting to push through a swathing attack on the right to protest, the Public Assembles Bill. Similarly, this is being done under the cloak of cutting down on sectarian parades. But as the coalition which has come together to oppose the Bill makes clear, it’s no coincidence that this has arisen at the same time as the worst attack on the working class since the creation of the welfare state: “The two main parties in the Assembly who have already agreed to make these cuts are also the two parties who sat down together and drafted this proposed legislation. The intention could not be clearer. The purpose of the law is to smash any possible opposition to the destruction of the public sector and the sacking of thousands of workers.”
Under the Bill, all public gatherings of more than fifty people will require permission with 37 days notice. Failure to comply will potentially lead to a prison sentence or hefty fine for all participants. Obviously, Glasgow City Council do not possess nearly the same level powers as the NI Assembly – and their consultation document bluntly makes clear that they’re stretching the boundaries of current Scottish, UK and European legislation to their very limits.
However, the document doesn’t shy away from revealing the council’s main agenda in putting forward this new policy on public parades. In fact, a whole section is entitled ‘City Centre Developments: the Changing Face of Glasgow’. Cue a list of major new “improvements” to the city centre over the past few years, among them the £100m extension to the St Enoch’s shopping centre, the planned expansion of the Buchanan Galleries, the “award-winning” financial district at the Broomielaw, and “many other prestigious office developments”. It concludes that the importance of the city centre to ‘Glasgow’s economic prosperity’ rules it out as somewhere suitable for public processions. It might as well read: anyone expressing dissent to the neo-liberal restructuring and gentrification of Glasgow – can fuck off. It’s also worth noting that the paper bizarrely singles out the May Day demo in 2009 for special attention, claiming it was ‘particularly problematic’, involving a ‘day of protest in the city centre against capitalism and globalisation’. Were they on the same demo as us – all I remember is the usual tame procession from George Square to some equally boring rally at the Old Fruitmarket…
The next few years will bring a virtually unprecedented attack on the social wage of the working class. There’s already been broad speculation that cuts of 25% in state spending will bring what’s possible under a democratic system to its absolute limits. In Northern Ireland, the governing parties are doing the ConDem’s dirty work for them, severely limiting the right to express any kind of dissent. The same can now be said, perhaps, of Glasgow’s Labour council.
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..
As one inquiry into state-sponsored murder ends, another begins. The former being Tuesday’s eventual publication of the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday – when British paratroopers massacred 14 unarmed civilians at a Civil Rights demonstration in Derry in January 1972.
The intervening forty years have seen countless smear campaigns against the victims and their families, cover-ups, denials, and the MOD suspiciously managing to mislay swathes of vital evidence.
But finally, justice has been served: all 14 of those murdered were found to be wholly innocent, with the killings found to be unlawful and unjustifiable. David Cameron offered an official apology, and it could potentially open the door to criminal prosecutions of the soldiers involved in the massacre.
Fast forward 38 years, and another inquiry is being launched into a state-sponsored massacre of innocent civil rights protesters. This time in Israel, following their vicious assault on the Gaza Aid Flotilla on 31st May, when Israeli commandos opened fire on aid workers and peace activists, marking another bloody day in the history of state repression of national freedom movements.
Immediately, Israel faced international condemnation for their attacks. And much like the British government back in 1972, they’ve responded to the massacre with lies, cover-ups and propaganda that ignore even the most basic facts of what happened. Now the Israeli government, having shaken off demands for an international, independent inquiry, announced a couple of days ago that they will be launching their own investigation into the attacks.
Britain too, in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday in the early 1970s, held a tribunal to allegedly ‘clear up’ what happened. The Widgery Tribunal was completed within 10 weeks of the massacre and, you’ll be shocked to hear, absolutely reeked of an establishment cover-up: the inquiry backed entirely the army version of events on the day, and added to the speculation that ‘nail bombs’ and weapons had been found on the bodies of those killed. Even Tony Blair has been prepared to call it a ‘whitewash’, which is why a new inquiry, led by Lord Saville, was then established in 1998, taking until this week to finally announce its outcome.
As for Israel, their ‘impartial investigation’ looks set have all the hallmarks of an establishment stitch-up. For starters, the inquiry, the panel and its mandate have all been decided on by the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who happens to be the same man that ordered the flotilla attack in the first place.
But it’s the panel itself requires some extra special attention… in there we’ve got an ex-Israeli military General, as well as a judge and a lawyer. Then there’s an ‘independent foreign observer’, a man who knows all about a bit of extra-judicial killing, yep… David Trimble, the right-wing Ulster Unionist politician. Just to affirm how impartial Trimble is, on the day of the Flotilla attack itself, he was at the launch of a new ‘Friends of Israel’ group set up by a close friend of Netanyahu. The other foreign guy is some Canadian military hack, Ken Watkin, notable for the time he instructed the Canadian military to start sending Afghan detainees back to be tortured by local security forces. Nice one Ken, you’re gonna fit in juuust fine in this line-up!
David Trimble is a particularly interesting choice. Trimble opposed the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday from the outset, saying in 1998 that ‘opening old wounds like this is likely to do more harm than good’. He expressed fears to Blair at the time that any outcome that strayed from that of the Widgery inquiry, which concluded that soldiers had ’bordered on the reckless’, would see British soldiers in the dock – the unimaginable horror! With this attitude, it’s unlikely he’s gonna want to see IDF soldiers in the dock either – not that the inquiry even has this remit.
Trimble rose to prominence as the public face of the Drumcree parades in Portadown – consistently trying to lead provocative Orange marches through a predominantly nationalist area. Stirring up sectarian hatred did wonders for his political career though, and he was soon elected leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. And this sense of political opportunism never left him, and soon enough he’d jumped on the Good Friday Agreement bandwagon, bagging himself a Nobel Peace Prize in the process. Now a Tory peer in the House of Lords, it seems his Machiavellian sensibilities haven’t lost him, and an international role awaits.
Israel will now press ahead with its inquiry, and predictably enough find that their own security falses and government are not at fault, and no doubt discover that the Turkish and American civilians who died were actually violent extremists intent on funnelling guns to Hamas too. Call it another Widgery – and let’s just hope the truth comes sooner than a 38 year wait.
Every now and then a musician or band comes along which redefines how we enjoy music, how it relates to our lives and how we interpret the world around us and the people who live in it with us. The Rubberbandits are not that band.
They are two guys from Limerick who wear plastic bags on their heads and sing songs about taking glue to enhance sexual activity and historical inaccuracies about Irish Republican history. They also do prank calls.
You’ll never feel the same once you find out the truth about how Eamon de Valera rode to London on the back of a harse to box the Queen into the jaw, as a symbol.
They’re really feckin funny and since Leftfield always likes to share the love, we suggest you czech them out, sham.
First Gerry Adams reveals his father was a child abuser and calls for his brother to come out of hiding and hand himself in to the police. Now it’s been revealed a 19 year old toyboy has been firing into Iris Robinson, the Christian fundamentalist wife of Democratic Unionist Party First Minister Peter Robinson. And this is after the Robinsons were revealed to claim 30k in food costs as MP’s earning them the moniker “Swish Family Robinson”. The north is looking more and more like an episode of Hollyoaks every week, albeit with a couple of dodgy looking guys in the background with balaclavas setting off the odd bomb or two.
Its another fantastic step forward for the peace process. It’s now normalised the political set up in Northern Ireland to the extent that proper political scandals now consist of shagging and dodgy money on expenses instead of being former commanders of paramilitary organisations and trying to decapitate the British Government by blowing up hotels.
While folk on the Left enjoy the Swish Family Robinson’s comeuppance, we should take a look at the political situation in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. A lot of people have had a distinct lack of sympathy for Iris’ predicament due to her own moralising in the past. She’s denounced gays not just as an “abomination” but also that said they were worse than child abusers, commenting that “There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children”. Her husband defended her, saying she was just echoing Christian scripture. None of this is that much of a surprise though, it was Ian Paisley who led the “Save Ulster from Sodomy” campaign against the legalisation of homosexuality.
The worst folk in the modern Tory party today can’t get away with anything close to the Robinson’s comments on gays and lesbians. Far from it, now they’re speaking at Stonewall demos and apologising for Clause 28. Even Nick Griffin can only shift uncomfortably in his seat and tell folk the gays make him a bit queasy. So why is it, after the supposed success of the peace process the DUP can not just get away with it, but be popular with it?
Northern Ireland is now the most right-wing part of the UK in terms of the politicians it elects. It’s the only part of the UK where full on Christian fundamentalism, the likes of which you get in the USA, can make hay. The gay bashing is just the tip of the iceberg. The Democratic Unionist Party, who Iris represents also have also called for teaching materials on creationism to be available in schools. Another of their MP’s, not to be outdone by Pete or Iris in the nutter stakes opposed letting Catholics become the Monarch as they owe their first allegiance to the Vatican. Which is of course in the same vein as Ian Paisley denouncing the pope as the antichrist in the European Parliament. If nothing else the DUP should be thanked for reminding Catholics in Scotland how they were treated when they were immigrants.
Alongside this favourable environment for the right is an extremely unfavourable one for the Left. While the SDLP and Sinn Fein have left of centre programmes (and in Sinn Fein’s case, anti-war and anti-imperialism) they make zero headway among the Protestant half of the working class in Ireland. This is in stark contrast to the movement in the Republic, which has seen success for former Socialist TD Joe Higgins in winning a Euro seat and decent votes for other Left groups like People Before Profit and the Unemployed Workers Group. Northern Ireland is also one of the few (if not the only) statelet in Western Europe not to have a mainstream political party which has it’s roots in the trade union movement.
You can see what the lack of a trade union based party means for US politics, and the same goes for Northern Ireland. Even if every party in Western Europe which used to give genuine political representation to Trade Unions has betrayed them, they at least contributed to the development of some basic progressive, Socialist and Left ideas in their countries, which the radical Left has in some cases been able to capitalise on. The lack of a political party representing trade unions in Northern Ireland is largely due to the fact that national and religious divisions are unfortunately much more important than class divisions when people take an interest in politics. Ultimately a political party in the North has to decide whether it is for a United Ireland or for the UK, and whichever decision is made will leave it isolated from one half of working people in the province.
Irish Socialist and Republican James Connolly had it spot on when he said that dividing Ireland “would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements whilst it endured. To it labour should give the bitterest opposition, against it labour in Ulster should fight even to the death, if necessary, as our fathers fought before us.”
Creating Northern Ireland meant that one half of workers, Catholic and Republican would be pitted against the other Protestant and Loyalist half. Any attempts to foster class unity are made very difficult by an institutionalised sectarianism in Northern Ireland, which the peace process has not changed. Contrast this with the position in the Republic where the voting lines are not broken down between Catholic and Protestant, but where religion is largely irrelevant and left wing politics have an opening.
If Socialists are going to have an impact in Northern Ireland and roll back the power the DUP has it’s not just necessary to argue for a United Ireland so the political environment becomes more similar to that of the Republic. There needs to be some way of working with Protestant workers who the Left has not been able to attract because of its position on a United Ireland.
Connolly called Socialists who didn’t want to talk about the national question in Ireland were “Gas and water Socialists”, who only wanted to fight on issues surrounding the economy and poverty. But there should be some organisation uniting working people from both backgrounds in Northern Ireland even if it is just on those “gas and water” issues . Large sections of Protestants in the North will never agree with a United Ireland but many could support a campaign alongside Catholics for a decent minimum wage, defence of public services and workers rights. If even a small minority of Protestants came round to backing a United Ireland on a platform of workers rights, it would fundamentally change the political situation in the North.
As it is just now the Christian Right parties like the DUP are able to take them for granted largely on the basis that they are fighting for their communities interests against the Catholic community. One example of this was during last years Euro Elections were the DUP faced a challenge from Traditional Unionist Voice, a splinter of the DUP who split because the party went into Government with Sinn Fein. The DUP tried to maximise it’s vote by raising the danger of Sinn Fein topping the polls for the first time in Northern Ireland’s history (which they did). As the TUV pointed out, how could the DUP raise this as a nightmare when they were in Government with them?
The DUP didn’t try to defend their coalition with that argument, they fought to get more votes by raising the fear that the other community’s representatives would benefit. Now there are fears Sinn Fein could nominate a First Minister for Stormont if the DUP vote collapses due to the scandal. Expect the DUP to raise that nightmare a lot more than actually trying to defend the actions of their representatives.
The North is one of the poorest parts of the UK, with the spectacular levels of poverty, unemployment, crime and low pay. The DUP’s Christian fundamentalism do nothing to change or improve the lives of working class Protestants. All they do is keep them locked into a battle with the other half of the people, desperate to hold on to privileges they once held over Catholics – instead of demanding an increase in the quality of living for everyone in the North. As difficult as it is, the Left can improve the lives of working people if it is able to challenge the DUP on these issues without dropping a commitment to a United Ireland.
Glasgow City Council are poised to bring in new legislation that could effectively ban public processions and demonstrations from the city centre, among other draconian measures which together form an unashamed attack on democratic rights in the city. As we reported earlier this year, this comes as part of their much trumpeted drive to cut down on the number of the sectarian parades in the city – which is reportedly higher than the annual total in Derry and Belfast combined.
It all bears disturbing similarities to current goings-on in Northern Ireland, where the devolved government is currently attempting to push through a swathing attack on the right to protest, the Public Assembles Bill. Similarly, this is being done under the cloak of cutting down on sectarian parades. But as the coalition which has come together to oppose the Bill makes clear, it’s no coincidence that this has arisen at the same time as the worst attack on the working class since the creation of the welfare state: “The two main parties in the Assembly who have already agreed to make these cuts are also the two parties who sat down together and drafted this proposed legislation. The intention could not be clearer. The purpose of the law is to smash any possible opposition to the destruction of the public sector and the sacking of thousands of workers.”
As one inquiry into state-sponsored murder ends, another begins. The former being Tuesday’s eventual publication of the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday – when British paratroopers massacred 14 unarmed civilians at a Civil Rights demonstration in Derry in January 1972.
But it’s the panel itself requires some extra special attention… in there we’ve got an ex-Israeli military General, as well as a judge and a lawyer. Then there’s an ‘independent foreign observer’, a man who knows all about a bit of extra-judicial killing, yep… David Trimble, the right-wing Ulster Unionist politician. Just to affirm how impartial Trimble is, on the day of the Flotilla attack itself, he was at the launch of a new ‘Friends of Israel’ group set up by a close friend of Netanyahu. The other foreign guy is some Canadian military hack, Ken Watkin, notable for the time he instructed the Canadian military to start sending Afghan detainees back to be tortured by local security forces. Nice one Ken, you’re gonna fit in juuust fine in this line-up!
Every now and then a musician or band comes along which redefines how we enjoy music, how it relates to our lives and how we interpret the world around us and the people who live in it with us. The Rubberbandits are not that band.
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