The Russian revolutionary Lenin said there were “decades where nothing happens; and there were weeks when decades happen”. If there was a time that saw decades of political conservatism, stagnancy, and immobility swept away in mere weeks, it was 2011. Last year began with the resignation of the Tunisian despot Zine El Abedine Ben Ali in January, in response to protests by Tunisian youth SSY covered here. Few people could have imagined the tidal wave of the protest that would follow as Egyptian youth inspired by the overthrow of Ben Ali organised a Day of Rage for the 25th of January in Egypt (which coincided with the “police day” public holiday).
What might have been small and manageable in the past decade proved to be very different in the first major recession of the 21st century. After decades of police brutality, corruption, dictatorship and political repression the call to action struck with popular consciousness not just in Egypt but all around the world. Millions watched glued to their screens, the first major revolution of the 21st century. After decades of rule and with no previously obvious signs of collapse the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was forced from office in the space of two weeks and now faces the death penalty for his crimes against the Egyptian people.
Egypt’s revolution took the rulers of that region completely unaware – Israel today is absolutely terrified they will no longer have a partner to keep Gaza under siege and whose new Parliament may put it’s peace treaty with Israel to a popular referendum, and the US tried hopelessly to maintain Mubarak’s rule in Egypt even as it looked impossible to most observers.
This wave of popular protest wasn’t limited to Egypt either – it has now spread to every Arab country, both pro and anti-US but with the common goal of overthrowing dictatorship and corruption.
This meant the West took very different attitudes to different parts of the Arab Spring. In Bahrain, the USA turned a blind eye as one of it’s most important allies, Saudi Arabia sent hundreds of troops to crush a popular uprising in Bahrain and to preserve the sectarian monarchy that hosts a large US military base on the Island. However when it came to Libya, a bizarre dictatorship which shared many characteristics with other Arab regimes – with the exception that it wasn’t completely in the pockets of the West – a different attitude was taken, with military action conducted by NATO to overthrow the regime.
Not a good year for these guys
This made Libya the third Muslim country in 10 years bombed by the West, after Afghanistan and Iraq. While the campaign in Libya was, from the viewpoint of London, Paris and Washington, a quite easy affair there was one war that finally seems to have drawn to a close – at least for Washington. The 8 year nightmare of Iraq for the USA ended with a formal troop withdrawal from Iraq earlier last year, as Obama redeployed US soldiers from Iraq to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Iraq war, so critical in radicalizing millions of people across the world ended not with a bang but a whimper as the USA has been forced to leave with many of it’s desires – permanent military bases, proxy for strikes on Iran and Syria, dirt cheap oil – unfulfilled. If Iraq has been a disaster, Afghanistan hasn’t turned out much better as it’s Taliban guerillas continue to make the ISAF occupation of the country as pointless, ineffective and bloody as all the previous occupations of Afghanistan have been. The Vice President of the USA, Joe Biden even went as far as to say “The Taliban are not our enemy” – an admission that the USA will negotiate and involve the Taliban in Afghan politics at some point.
The solid decade of occupation and war in Afghanistan and Iraq has proved so costly for the USA that US President Barack Obama has carried out the biggest reform of the US military “since WW2″. Moving it’s forces away from Europe and the Middle East to Asia and the Pacific (hello China) it’s a massive climbdown from the previously almost invincible US military power in the 90’s. But what other choice does Obama have, particularly when in 2011 the US faced a historic first time downgrading of it’s credit rating. When the most powerful nation in human history hasn’t got the best possible record at debt management, it’s a damning indictment of the cost of occupation and war – and may fortunately dissuade the USA from any attack on Iran, at least for the time being.
Many of the historic events we saw in 2011 – such as the resignation of Mubarak – weren’t from our sofas or bedrooms, but with other activists in comrades in the longest running student occupation in UK history. From February to September, Hetherington House a former postgraduate club, was occupied by anti-cuts students at Glasgow University. For 6 months we were able to hold a non-commercial space on Glasgow Uni campus, open to a variety of campaigns – from the protests to stop cuts to nursing, modern languages and adult education at Glasgow University, to the campaign to save the Accord Centre in the East End of Glasgow. This occupation succeeded in acting as a focal point for the anti-cuts movement across the whole of the city, as well as attracting a variety of speakers like Ken O’Keefe and Owen Jones.
Good year for student protests though!
2011 – the year this man couldn’t stop laughing
While the occupation of the Hetherington House ended, the networks and connections built up between different activists and groups hasn’t disappeared. There’s now a vibrant anti-cuts group for the whole of Glasgow that many of the former occupiers are involved in – the Coalition of Resistance. COR’s been in existence since May and has already become the largest and most active anti-cuts group in Glasgow, organising strike buses for J3O and N30, building the October 1st demonstration, the march to save the accord and providing a space for anyone from any political background who wants to fight the cuts to come to. COR will be an important part of anti-cuts activism in the next year, and a vital space for Socialists to operate in.
Another front that will be opening in the next few years is the Independence campaign in Scotland. After 4 years of SNP minority rule, alongside a Tory Government in Westminster many Labour Party members must have thought they were a shoe in for the Holyrood elections held in May of last year. What they actually faced was the biggest defeat for Labour and Unionism imaginable – central belt seats where the Labour party had majorities you’d normally find in one party states were seized by the SNP for the first time in it’s history, producing a revolutionary result in Scottish politics – a pro-independence majority in Holyrood for the first time ever.
This means after 300 years of unionist misrule, the Scottish population will finally have a choice over our constitutional future. And for Unionism, it couldn’t come at a worse time, where a Tory party that has less MP’s in Scotland than Pandas is trying to force through a brutal package of austerity. This is Scotland’s gain from the revolutionary year that was 2011 – the chance to take our nation out of the world’s oldest empire, and a possibility for the Radical Left to shape that debate and the Scotland that emerges. 2011 will be remembered as the year that saw arrogant, embedded and reactionary power crumble fall – from Cairo to Tunis to Pollok – lets organise to make sure 2012 continues in the same vein.
This week, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) fired the latest salvo in the Government’s increasingly farcical response to the manufactured panic around ‘designer drugs’- in other words substances that are created and marketed specifically to get around existing drug laws.
The ‘designer drugs’ story has all the ingredients of the best tabloid moral panics- an external threat to demonise (count how many of the sensationalist news items mentioned ‘South-East Asian laboratories’), an ’insidious’ technology that has changed society (They bought this filth ONLINE?!?!) and, of course, us feckless, wayward young people, simultaneously victim and villain, falling prey to evil Chinese megachemists cos we’d rather get mwi than get a haircut. Or something like that.
It’s a pretty neat package for establishment figures, both in the media and the state- it sells papers, provides an easy way for the government to look TOUGH ON CRIME, and provides a nice ideological smokescreen for increasing police powers. When the establishment stumbles on a win-win situation like that, the truth often gets lost (or callously exploited, depends on your point of view) somewhere in between hyperbolic headlines and self-serving ‘get tough’ schemes. As we’ve reported here before, the whole mephedrone scare was triggered by um, police getting the name of a drug wrong.
However, government have come to realise that, by their very nature, trying to legislate against designer drugs is basically a fuckin nightmare. Take the near-inconceivable chemical complexity of the human brain, throw in millions of people determined to take drugs and willing to pay for it, then add the internet, and you’ll see that it’s just too cheap, easy and profitable to create and sell new drugs for legislators to keep up.
Which brings me to the ACMD’s proposed solution. The chair of the ACMD, Les Iversen, has recommended that we adopt American-style ‘analogue’ laws, which would make any substance ‘substantially similar’ to a banned drug automatically subject to the same penalties. Sound like a neat catch-all solution to a thorny legal problem? Well, not quite.
For one thing, the American analogue law is horribly vague, with literally no grounding in medicine or chemistry. The wording is so ambiguous that some critics
What our artist thinks designer drugs might do.
have suggested that it technically renders naturally occurring neurochemicals illegal- for example dopamine, which plays a crucial function in every human brain and is synthesised as a medicine, is arguably ‘substantially similar’ to speed or meth. In the absence of any actual science, the decision on what counts as an ‘analogue’ falls to subjective and socially-determined factors like the class and status of users, how the drug is marketed, and the ‘perceived’ effects (as both scientists and drug users will tell you, how drug effects are experienced is largely dependent on ‘set and setting’- factors like where and with whom you take the drugs and what you expect from them. In other words, perceived effects are largely determined by the previously mentioned social factors.)
What this means in practice is that police and courts make these decisions based on profiles of users and the reasons they take drugs, leading to increased criminalisation and persecution of already-marginalised groups like young people and the very poor. When examined closely, analogue laws present a picture that pretty much gives the lie to the idea that drug laws exist to reduce harm to society, rather suggesting that they’re drug laws for drug law’s sake, seeking to criminalise certain forms of drug use as part of a moral crusade against the social norms of ‘deviant’ sections of society. One Colorado judge ruled that the Analogue Act was ‘unconstitutionally vague’ and that it ‘provides neither fair warning nor effective safeguards against arbitrary enforcement’. A cynical person might suggest that that’s kind of the point.
Now, I personally think it’s unlikely (though not impossible) that the UK will adopt analogue laws. For one thing, they run contrary to the common law principle that you have the right to know beforehand what is illegal and what isn’t. For another, the vague wording makes them notoriously hard to get a conviction under. However the interesting point is that this profoundly unscientific suggestion came from the ACMD, supposedly the body that advises the government on drug science. So how did the independent academic body that once pressured the Thatcher government into setting up needle exchanges, despite the powerfully anti-drug message of coked-up 80s Tories, become an unscientific front for legitimising the War on Drugs?
Just sayin like...
The process arguably began in 2004 under the Blair government. New Labour, as we know all too well, kind of has a thing for manufacturing evidence to support their policies, and the ACMD’s role as, well, people who’re supposed to tell the truth, represented a bit of an obstacle to that. In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the massively unpopular Labour Government was searching for a nice headline-grabbing distraction that would cast them in a good light, and they landed on the scourge of people giggling and seeing pretty patterns in wallpaper. At that time, although the active ingredient of magic mushrooms was illegal, the law did not prohibit the sale or possession of mushrooms themselves. Labour decided, bastards that they are, that it would be a good idea to launch a crackdown on mushroom use and unilaterally made them a Class A drug without consulting the ACMD. This decision was, in fact, illegal, as the Misuse of Drugs Act that established the ACMD states that they must be consulted on any changes in drug policy.
Heartened by the positive headlines this gathered them, they next decided to contradict ACMD recommendations again, and whipped up a ridiculous media frenzy about so-called ‘super-skunk’, mad dangerous weed that makes you go mental and die. Having manufactured this public health scare, they then stepped in to appear responsible and public-minded and reversed the earlier decision to downgrade cannabis to a Class-C drug. Again without consulting the ACMD, again illegally. This was accompanied by a police crackdown, sniffer dogs on the London underground, and a massively disproportionate rate of conviction for young black men.
By this time it was becoming clear that there had been a cultural shift in government, and that the independent drugs advisory body was basically considered a bit too independent. When the former chairman of the ACMD, David Nutt, presented extensive scientific evidence to the government that Ecstasy and MDMA don’t do sufficient social or medical harm to warrant Class-A status they went one step further than simply ignoring his recommendations and sacked him for causing them embarrassment. This was followed by mass resignations of most of the experienced scientists on the ACMD, outraged at the way their professional integrity had been compromised.
Those who did not resign were promoted, and the rest replaced with more compliant figures. The process of eroding the ACMD was now complete. First illegally stripped of its role in forming drug policy, it gradually morphed into a useful propaganda tool for shifting debate rightwards, by making unscientific, reactionary, crackpot suggestions such as those of the last week. This means a further step away from real science forming our society’s attitude to drugs, which in turn means more needless drug deaths, more addiction and ruined lives, more costly and pointless imprisonment, more police repression and racial profiling.
But, just as we saw with mephedrone, you shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Ok maybe David Cameron wasn’t as blunt as the headline above, but he wasn’t far off it. When SNP MP Angus MacNeil asked the Prime Minister whether he agreed with 68% of Scots that the North Sea oil wealth should be devolved -- i.e. put under the ownership and control of the Scottish Parliament, it’s unlikely David Cameron would have supported the right of Scotland to have exclusive access to such massive wealth. North Sea oil has already been used by the Tories to pay the British States’ million strong giro bill during the Thatcher years, and with massive government cuts approaching it’s a source of wealth the British State can ill afford to lose.
However Cameron’s response was childish and pathetic even by the worst British Unionist standards -- he said “if you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer” -- inferring that what Scotland does with it’s own natural resources is “stupid” and that we are also “stupid” for thinking we should have control over it. As Cameron gave his rebuttal the Tory front bench were positively pissing themselves with laughter at the very concept the sweaty jocks from the North could control anything more complex than a deep fat fryer let alone Europe’s largest oil reserves.
It’s this naked arrogance and patronising contempt for Scots that means the Tories are so despised here their frontrunner for leader is talking about disbanding the party itself, and pretending they’re not Tories anymore. Good luck with that one.
It’s not the only piece in the news today about the North Sea’s oil reserves -- the BBC revealed that Old Labour Energy minister Tony Benn tried to buy North Sea oil off British Petroleum for the state owned British energy company. Benn was denied the opportunity, as the Labour Government at that time believed nationalisation of oil went too far -- despite the vast majority of oil producing countries having state owned oil companies, that are to varying levels used to build the infrastructures of their respective states.
No such luck for Scotland though -- we have the dubious honor of being one of only two countries in the world to find oil and get poorer, the other being Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Declassified civil service documents revealed that the British state deliberately covered up the scale of oil wealth in the North Sea to stop the massive swing towards Scottish nationalism in the 70’s.
Today the movement for Independence is even stronger than then -- opinion polls show a majority of Scots backing Independence, and this is before the Government’s massive cuts are enacted. These cuts would be at the very least reduced if Scotland had access to this oil wealth, instead of having it frittered away by Westminster on Trident and the unwinnable war in Afghanistan. It’s not “stupid” for Scots to ask why we have the poorest cities in Western Europe sitting right next to the greatest source of wealth in Western Europe -- the only thing that’s stupid is allowing an unaccountable clique -- whether it’s Westminster Tories or private oil multinationals laughing all the way to the bank with our money.
As Britain recovers from the riots, it’s facing the second blow of having to cope with lots of people’s “explanations” for the mass looting. Some of it’s ridiculous – blaming Blackberry Messenger for the chaos – and some of it’s a bit more sinister, like David Starkey blaming black culture for the riots. Unfortunately Starkey isn’t the only one whose using the riots to engage in a bit of casual racism – the admin of the pro-Met police page on facebook was exposed as a racist from his tweeter feed.
Don't know if trolling or just stupid
Now a Tory councillor, Bob Frost has fallen victim to the dangers of social networking, with his racist views exposed in another case of the over 40s not understanding how the internet works. Frost – a 56 year old who is a “right wing libertarian” made reference to the looters being “jungle bunnies” on his facebook. Oh dear. In most cases of public exposure of racist views the individuals concerned put their hands up and apologize, refuse to comment and hope it blows over, or resign in disgrace. There are exceptions to these rules however and Bob Frost’s response has to attract attention for sheer, out and out olympic class fantastical bullshit.
As Bob explains, he was “referring to the urban jungle”, and was originally going to call the rioters animals but picked bunny instead as people might be offended by him “calling fellow humans this so I chose something I thought was innocent and also cuddly.” Later on he received a phone call accusing him of racism, at which point he promptly checked his dictionary which gave him the shocking news that ”it would appear that the term jungle bunnies is pejorative and is a racist slur relating to African-Americans”.
So you see Bob is just a man who has tried to be too politically correct, but in his efforts to placate the EUSSR Harriet Harperson feminazis has gone through the anti-racist time space continuum and ended up as a bigot due to no fault of his own.
Seriously though Bob, this must rank as the biggest pile of bullshit since Baptist Minister George Rekers claimed he took a male prostitute with him on holiday to carry his bags for him. We would be very interested in hearing Bob’s other crazy excuses in life – “Where have all the biscuits gone Bob? Had to eat them all for a Charity Special of Ant and Dec, you just missed them”, “Bob it’s your round mate? No, you bought a pint for my identical twin Bob Tsorf” or “Bob have you got that fiver I leant you last week? Well I would, but with today’s currency fluctuations I’d need to check what it’d be worth the now”.
We are sure with such a fantastic flair for combining casual racism with an ability to engage in extravagant lying and bullshitting Bob will be back in his old job soon enough, with a Tory cabinet post waiting in the wings for him.
After last weeks multiple days of consecutive rioting, there’s a chance now for some calm, measured discussion on the upheaval that saw the capital and several English cities burn, high streets looted and alleged gangster Mark Duggan shot dead -- with three others killed defending their property. The key word being “chance”, the same way there’s a chance you’ll win the lottery or Michael Bay will decide to stop making movies -- what’s predictably actually happened is talking heads, politicians and newspaper editors have demanded martial law/the death penalty/the return of Maggie Thatcher/Saddam Hussein to crush the thousands of young people who live in the shadows among us waiting to strike again like a Tottenham based Vietcong.
One Newspaper has demanded the return of national service, safe in the knowledge that teaching thousands of young rioters basic firearms skills would have no possible down sides. Other newspaper polls have asked if Blackberry messager should be banned -- following in the footsteps of other strongmen leaders who thought cracking down on people communicating would solve all their problems. If the responses on how to stop the riots again have been a bit daft it’s nothing compared to what some folk have blamed the riots on. David Cameron predictably said the riots were down to “sheer criminality” -- but why didn’t all these criminals strike earlier if their only motive was theft? Looters obviously took advantage of clashes with the police to go out and get a new telly, but what was it they took advantage of? More on that later. Historian David Starkey has blamed the riots on rap music and black culture in general, saying white folk have become black, like Michael Jackson in reverse with less moonwalking and more firebombing. The BBC have obviously went straight for the insider voices into why urban black youth in London might riot, by asking the 66 year old Royal Family historian from Kendal his views. Continuing this new line of reporting, BBC Four have asked Tinchy Strider to front a 4 part series on the Tudors.
But the BBC didn’t just ask old bigots like Starkey why the riots started -- they did ask a black man as well, fulfilling their broadcasting guidelines. Except when they interviewed Darcus Howe about why the riots started, and he gave a response that didn’t blame BBM/Jeremy Kyle/Welfare State/Ali G In Da House, but said people might be angry cos a man was shot dead and the police lied about the circumstances the interviewer didn’t like it too much and accused him of being a rioter. It’s all part of a concerted effort by the press and politicians to make people stop thinking, and instead accept that people rioted because they’re animals -- literally “feral youth” as the BBC described them.
So how did the riots start? On the 5th of August Mark Duggan was followed in a taxi cab by armed members of the Metropolitan Police. After what was claimed to be a shoot out, Duggan was shot dead by the Met. After his death his family and friends started a protest demanding answers about his killing. When a 16 year old girl approached police lines, in accordance with the Met’s community engagement agenda, she was beaten with batons. The combination of Duggan’s killing and police thuggery at the demo sparked an uprising from young people in different parts of London against the police. Outnumbered and caught by surprise, the police were forced to retreat and leave parts of the city in the hands of rioters. Like any spontaneous riot, unlike a planned insurrection once you force the police out people take advantage of having no authority at all. That can range from drinking in the street, to stealing new pairs of trainers, to mugging folk. And if you’ve grown up on the broo with no hope of employment -- 54 people chase every job going in Hackney -- getting all the consumer kicks you’re supposed to have is much easier to do when there’s no polis around.
More information then came out about Duggan’s death -- that the bullet in a police radio was in fact “police issue”, and that the IPCC “may have misled” the public about how he was killed, stating there was no evidence he fired a weapon the police claimed they found at the scene. By the time this information came out the riots were in full swing and it probably would not have made much more of a difference -- but it did confirm the unaired suspicions of thousands of black and asian youth in London, that the police had lied about the circumstances of Duggan’s death. The bullet in the police radio is especially fishy -- while Met police have an itchy trigger finger, they’re just about clever enough to avoid shooting each other. Could the Met have killed Duggan illegally, and then put a bullet into a radio to make it look like he had responded? It’s a very cynical thought, almost like believing they’d be in cahoots with a major newspaper to cover up massive phone hacking scandals.
After three days of consecutive rioting -- which had spread from London to Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Manchester, Salford -- the combined weight of thousands of extra polis/nothing good left to loot brought the riots to an end. After a rather unpleasant shock, the legal system has responded with draconian sentences against rioters -- one guy was sent to jail for 6 months, for stealing bottled water. Another woman was sentenced to 5 months for accepting goods that were stolen, not actually stealing them herself (better avoid that guy round the Barras with the new Planet of the Apes DVD eh?). Under any other circumstances these people would be let off with a caution for shoplifting, or at worst a fine. Now they stand to face jail time and a criminal record for petty crimes which did far less damage to society than what the legal system is doing to them and their families. Alongside these sentences for theft others have even got jail time for just for swearing at the police -- and one guy’s even been sent down for four years just for a facebook event.
The reason there’s been such a massive crackdown is that the establishment is desperate to ensure a riot on the scale of last week never happens again. But they’re at a permanent disadvantage in that they don’t know why the riots started, and they don’t want to know why -- that’s why the media has asked everyone from aging home counties historians to Tory cabinet ministers about why they think people are rioting -- people they have about as much knowledge of or link to as they do with martians. Nowhere has the media tried the most simple and obvious way of determining why people rioted -- actually asking the young folk in these cities. Where the BBC have done it, it’s been at best a soundbite -- but it’s a soundbite that’s worth more than the endless hours of droning from talking heads. Two young girls from London spelled things out pretty clearly -- folk rioted because they wanted to show the police and the rich they could do what they want. No one in the media or the political establishment is prepared to engage with that argument because they live in a bubble where they can’t fathom why people would be angry at the rich or the police -- so they create lots of alternative explanations like blaming rap or BBM for rioting.
actual reason folk rioted above
There’s plenty of poor areas in the UK that didn’t riot though -- Alex Salmond has been at pains to remind the BBC these riots aren’t UK wide, there was no looting anywhere in Scotland despite the Scottish Polis’ efforts to invent some. And some of the poorest constituencies in the whole UK are in Scotland. So are riots just down to poverty? The answer is no, riots don’t just happen when communities are poor -- they happen when they’re poor and are under attack, or have suffered an injustice. In Britain and the USA this injustice is generally police brutality motivated by racism -- like the Rodney King case, the murder of a grandmother that sparked the 1981 riots and now the police killing of Mark Duggan. This -- and not black or “gangster” culture -- is why riots have taken off.
These riots are also happening at the biggest pillars of authority in British society are collapsing -- the banks have stolen from everyone and are now getting paid off, with the wages of nurses, teachers, carers and the benefit claims of the disabled. Instead of being prosecuted bankers still receive bonuses larger than most young people will earn in their entire lifetime. The MP’s who are calling for strict prosecution of the rioters are thieves that make last weeks looters look like angels in comparison -- Tory Minister Michael Gove, who lost his temper when Harriet Harman argued cuts were behind the riots, has stolen £7k from the public purse to do up his house. When he was caught out, he simply repaid the money. Will folk who say they want to riot on facebook get let off if they delete the page? No, they’ll get four years. The forces trying to crush the riots -- the Met -- have also been exposed as massively corrupt, with backhanders taken from News International in exchange for covering up phone hacking. This is as well as being able to kill with impunity -- there’s been over 300 police deaths in custody, but not one single conviction.
That’s the problem with saying all that’s necessary to stop the riots is law and order -- there’s virtually no law or order when it comes to regulating the abuses and crimes of those at the top of society. The corrupt political establishment don’t care about the communities that rioted, either because they think they’ll always vote for them no matter what (Labour) or because they’ll never vote for them (Tories). During the boom years of British capitalism, these poor areas of London were left to rot because the rich demanded cheap labour. Now that the same rich have destroyed the economy these areas which have nothing are being asked to pay up with money they don’t have -- weeks before the riots, massive cuts to Haringey’s youth budget was announced. People who say the riots are mindless have got it massively wrong -- people are now at least talking about why these areas have been abandoned. A few weeks ago they’d never make the headlines. Riots are the one desperate way to grab attention from people who have access to no other means of political power. If you want to avoid riots in the future you can’t keep demanding “order” but have no order in the economy, society, or politics which allows 50% of young people in many parts of London to be unemployed -- otherwise people will find their own ways of striking back whether you think it’s healthy or not.
It’s all gone spectacularly Pete Tong. The Murdoch’s have pulled the plug on the News of the World, the biggest selling English language paper. The Notw staff want to “lynch Rebekah Brooks”, 200 NotW journalists face the sack and Sun subeditors have gone on strike to support them. Oh, and Andy Coulson is getting arrested tomorrow. Fortunately David Cameron has got his finger on the pulse of the whole thing – he’s at a police bravery awards ceremony tonight, hosted by the Sun.
Tomorrow’s super-soar away Guardian. WOULD THE LAST NEWS OF THE WORLD HACK TURN THE LIGHTS OUT?
Everyone knows tabloid newspapers are not angels – to a large extent it’s why people buy them, an acceptance that their underhand tactics expose the affairs, drug habits and scandals of the rich and famous. Despite this grudging acceptance of tasteless methods to satisfy a desire for gossip, there’s always been a trend of opinion in British society that has been hostile to the tabloids – in particular those of Rupert Murdoch, The Sun and the News of the World. Whether it’s the ongoing boycott of the Sun in Liverpool for their disgusting coverage of the Hillsborough Disaster, the defiance of printworkers at Wapping or the refusal of those printers to produce copies of the newspaper comparing Arthur Scargill to Hitler during the Miners Strike, there has always been a radical but substantial minority of people in the UK who despise the Sun and NotW for their journalism and politics.
What’s happened in the past two days has gone above and beyond that politicized section of British society. Now even Daily Mail readers are on the same side as The Guardian; appalled by the tactics and (lack of) ethics on the part of NotW. A scandal which has been quietly bubbling away – that of phone hacking – has exploded in News International’s offices with the force of Krakatoa. A Guardian investigation has revealed that NotW hacked into the mobile phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, and that in order to listen to all the messages, some were deleted – giving the Dowler family false hope that their daughter was still alive. It’s appalling stuff beyond even the notorious “The Truth” headline of the Sun. And it’s getting even worse – the police have approached the families of the 7/7 victims, Madeline McCann, and the Soham murder victims to tell them that they may also have been the victims of phone hacking.
Gone is the previous depiction of phone hacking commonly circulated in the press – that of an overzealous NotW hack (no pun intended) listening to phone messages in an attempt to discover if premiership footballers or royal family members are shagging their secretaries. The people who have been hacked are those who have never sought fame or fortune, but are the victims of horrific tragedies that NotW – particularly child murder – supposedly rails against. The NotW even interviewed the Dowler family on their daughters murder, while they had simultaneously been hacking their murdered daughters phone. Most devastating of all for NotW is the new allegation that they even hacked the phones of dead soldiers families. This is the same newspaper that regularly condemns any anti-war sentiment as being in league with the Taliban or Saddam Hussein.
Kelvin listens in, sick bastard that he is
Already these revelations have sparked an emergency debate in Westminster with David Cameron backing calls for a public inquiry into the hacking scandal. This is alongside an ongoing Metropolitan police investigation into hacking which has been widely condemned as toothless. Chris Bryant MP – one of those most vociferously camapaigning against phone hacking – detailed how senior figures in the Met were wined and dined by Notw while the enquiry was ongoing in his speech in the House of Commons.
The most shocking example of all is that of Andy Hayman the officer responsible for conducting the inquiry into phone hacking; he later went on to work as a columnist for News International! With that level of “scrutiny” it’s no surprise the original inquiry into phone hacking was dropped earlier this year. It was only a matter of weeks before a new investigation of hacking was opened however, based on the emergence of new evidence. It remains to be seen if this inquiry will be any more thorough than the previous cosy arrangement with the Met.
David Cameron has already pointed to this new investigation, as a way to dilute calls for a public inquiry. While in public he supports one, he has qualified his support saying it must not “prejudice the Metropolitan police’s investigation”. For the Tories this hacking scandal is very close to the knuckle indeed – David Cameron is a close friend of the CEO of News International, Rebekah Brooks. Cameron enjoyed a christmas family lunch with her, a connection that is highly embarrassing to the prime minister given Brooks is alleged to have personally known the private investigator who hacked Milly’s phone. There is also Andy Coulson, former editor of News of the World who resigned after phone hacking was exposed in Notw (even though he knew nothing about it), to immediately move on to work as a considerably less competent Malcolm Tucker (aka Director of Communications) for Number 10, before he resigned again over phone hacking (even though he knew nothing about it). There are many politicians and journalists who do not resign when they have committed the most appalling acts – whereas if we are to believe Andy Coulson he resigns for things he barely even knows about, let alone has responsibility for.
Such is the tide of popular revulsion against NotW that for the first time in decades a serious impediment to Rupert Murdoch’s slow but steady take over of the UK media may have arisen. 50,000 people have in the past 24 hours alone already signed a petition to oppose the takeover of BskyB by Murdoch. Advertisers Ford, Aldi, Cadbury, Halifax, Vauxhall, and Debenhams have all withdrawn their ads from this Sunday’s Notw, and the share price of News International’s stock has also fallen. The tipping point may come this Sunday, where there will be all eyes on the News of the World’s circulation figures to see if the most damaging blow of all may yet come – the desertion of tens of thousands of the newspapers predominantly working class readers in disgust at it’s tactics.
Eck pure greetin wi laffter at SSY's election liveblog
Batten down the hatches, the Tories and the BBC are officially aware of SSY’s website!
That’s right, it’s not just the police who read our blog! In a BBC documentary following Scotland’s dear leader Alex Salmond, Michael Portillo – the former Thatcherite Tory MP who famously lost his seat in the 1997 NewLabourThingsCanOnlyGetShiter landslide and went on to become a tv politics pundit with a boak inducing penchant for flirting with Dianne Abbott - can clearly be seen not only viewing the SSY blog but even VISIBLY CHUCKLING! You can view the documentary here (we’re at 40 mins 39 seconds, but it’ll only be available for a week!)
We’re sure Michael enjoyed his wee tour of the website, presumably stopping to read Leftfield, marvel at our street fighting skillz, and purchase a copy of our pamphlet Afghanistan: Three Centuries of Imperialism. Hi Michael!
In case you were wondering, the article he was reading was about the SNP’s backwards, unscientific & unhelpful view on the formerly-legal high Mephedrone and their call for it to be banned. Fancy doing a documentary on that Michael?
The polls are closed, and we’ll know the results of the Scottish parliament elections, and whether or not Westminister has a different shitey voting system (SO EXCITING!) by Friday morning. SSY teams will be bringing you amazing liveblogging from the Glasgow and North East counts, with extra reporting from SSY’s secret underground complex. But this won’t be your normal boring Guardian liveblog - have a look at last years to get an idea of what to expect. This year, expect us to call for the deaths of EVEN MORE bastards! If we haven’t all gone crazy by the end of the counting, enjoy the liveblog!
The big day is closing up on us, with all the inevitability of a death sentence/England World Cup attempt and all the dread and misery that surrounds the two. David Cameron’s already been using the Royal Wedding as a stick to beat “politically correct” health and safety mad councils, declaring that people should be free to have street parties to celebrate the special day.
Needless to say the same principle does not apply to those want to demonstrate in the City Centre of Glasgow (unless you’re the orange order) or defend much more basic rights to protest at all – as we saw with the wave of political policing a few weeks ago, and now the shocking decision to prosecute Alfie Meadows for “violent disorder”.
Cameron’s argument is also pretty spurious given the total lack of enthusiasm for the Royal Wedding, particularly in Scotland where the only street parties in Glasgow were cancelled due to “lack of interest”. Pro-royalists will point towards a Guardian poll saying that the majority of the UK still thinks the monarchy are “relevant”. Unfortunately there is no regional breakdown of this poll – as it’s almost certain the support for the Royal Family in Scotland will be much lower than in England.
Despite this poll, even the most ardent Royalists must accept there’s a distinct lack of interest around this Royal Wedding compared to previous equivalents – Prince Charles and Lady Diana being the most obvious example. More and more people have had the scales removed from their eyes in how they examine society across the UK – millions of people no longer believe in the political or economic system, and are fundamentally pissed off with Britain full stop. This means there’s a constituency of people – even if it is a minority – who are able to see how unfair and bonkers it is to spend millions on the monarchy whilst politicians demand massive cuts to public services.
But the facts are the monarchy plays a useful role to the class of politicians, bankers, millionaires, media tycoons, industrials and spivs who run the UK. The monarchy are useful in three ways – socially, diplomatically, and politically – to the wealthiest in British society.
To take the first item, the monarchy are useful socially because they instill the idea amongst the population that not only is it ok to be filthy rich, but it’s ok to be filthy rich for no other reason than you were born into it. Given the massive amount of inherited wealth in the UK, that’s an idea a lot of powerful people in the UK would quite like to see made normal and not challenged. In fact, not only is it not challenged but the idea that folk can be millionaires out of our expense is put forward as something good and worth celebrating – somehow we “all benefit” from the monarchy, because of tourists, national unity etc. It’s at this point I would like to remind readers that Mickey Mouse is not made head of state in the USA because of folk going to Orlando, Florida for their holidays.
The monarchy are also useful as diplomats – they can engage in the grubbiest work with dodgy bastards and despots free from criticism. Take Prince Andrew – he’s been a close associate of Colonel Gaddafi, a corrupt Kazakh billionaire, a paedophile businessman and a Libyan arms dealer. Just being linked to one of those is generally enough to force a politician into an insincere, stage-managed, Thick of It damage-limitation style resignation. But not for the Royals – you can’t make them resign, nor can you attack them, lest you damage an “institution”. This makes them very handy for doing the dirty dealings of the British state all around the world. It’s also why the attendees at the Royal Wedding include the people who have been firing upon unarmed demonstrators for democracy all across the Arab world. If just one of these gange of murderers turned up at Labour or Tory party conference there would be an outcry – but because it’s the apolitical Royal Family, we can’t criticise that or be called “unpatriotic”.
The final reason the monarchy are important is the big one – politics. It may seem strange, given that we are repeatedly told that the Queen’s powers are only token – sure she has the ability to dissolve Parliament, but she’d never actually do it etc. The reality is the Crown Power’s of the Monarch have not only been used, they have been used multiple times within living memory.
The Crown Powers have also been used to deny justice for the people of the Chagos Islands – an Order in Council under Royal Prerogative was used to stop islanders who were evicted from their homes to make room for a US military base returning, despite Court rulings that would have allowed them to return.
The powers of the Monarch have gone even further, they have been used to dissolve a democratically elected Government against that Goverment’s will in Australia. Here the Labor Government had won a majority in the House of Representatives but not in the Senate, allowing their political opponents to block the passage of legislation. The Labor Prime Minister went to the Governor General to seek new elections for the Senate – but was instead dismissed by the Queen’s representative in Australia, an unelected Governor General. It’s use of these undemocratic powers which means that just under half of Australians backed Republicanism in 1999.
The campaign group Republic in the UK lists various other abuses of Crown Powers here – including but not limited to the banning of trade unions at GCHQ, the power to go to war and dissolution of Parliament for partisan reasons.
The bottom line is that while the Queen herself may not decide to go rogue and implement a dictatorship, her powers are used by supposedly democratic politicians throughout the rebranded British Empire to bypass parliament and civil rights. Crown Powers are a useful box of tools for these politicians, it’s for those reasons – and not tourism – that the powers of the monarchy still exist.
The Scottish Socialist Party is proud to be the only political party in the mainland UK to organise against the Royal Wedding and for Republicanism. We want an Independent Socialist Republic – different from the SNP’s view of Scotland, which would still have the Queen as head of state, and Crown Powers still able to be used on a supposedly independent Scotland just as they were used on Australia and Canada. We will be supporting two Republican events over the next couple of days,
The first is an SSP Republican Social at 7.30 in Maryhill Central Halls this Thursday. We will be having political speakers, music and song agitating and arguing for a Democratic, Socialist, and Republican Scotland that controls it’s own destiny and where the rights of all it’s citizens are determined by a Constitution – and not a feudal relic.
Secondly – on the big day itself – we are supporting a demonstration on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, to turn it into a Republican Mile. It’ll be on this Friday from 11.30 onwards and we hope it will provide a useful social for those of Her Majesty’s Subjects who were unfortunate enough not to receive an invitation.
The Russian revolutionary Lenin said there were “decades where nothing happens; and there were weeks when decades happen”. If there was a time that saw decades of political conservatism, stagnancy, and immobility swept away in mere weeks, it was 2011. Last year began with the resignation of the Tunisian despot Zine El Abedine Ben Ali in January, in response to protests by Tunisian youth SSY covered here. Few people could have imagined the tidal wave of the protest that would follow as Egyptian youth inspired by the overthrow of Ben Ali organised a Day of Rage for the 25th of January in Egypt (which coincided with the “police day” public holiday).
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