On the riots

On Thursday, 4 August, police in Tottenham, north London, shot and killed a man called Mark Duggan, who they tell us was a cocaine dealer, while supposedly trying to arrest him. They stopped the cab in which he was riding, and told the media that he tried to shoot one of the arresting officers who was protected by his radio, which prompted them to return fire; the Guardian later reported that the bullet found in the radio was police-issue, and that the only other gun found on the scene - not police-issue - had been hidden in Duggan's sock throughout the incident and therefore not only had not been fired but could not even have easily been drawn, which makes the incident a gangland-style execution rather than the tragic results of an escape attempt. Duggan was simply the latest in a long tradition of police killings. In the past 13 years, the police have killed an average of around once every 2 weeks; a total of 333 victims.

This, as well as an apparent police policy of stopping and searching young black people at random with enough frequency that in some communities, getting stopped and searched for the first time is seen as a coming of age event, contribute in inner-city areas to a deep hatred of the police stretching back decades to a time when largely-black neighbourhoods were selectively subject to a permanent police state. Meanwhile, the government's austerity programme has seen Jobseekers' Allowance claimants threatened with being forced to work full-time (on top of the time and effort equivalent to full-time work which they're already expected to put in to looking for a proper job) just to recieve the dole, which works out at between £1.34 per hour and £1.52 per hour for under-25-year-olds and between £1.69 and £1.93 per hour for over-25-year-olds at a time of rapidly rising prices, many benefit claimants increasingly insecure in even the benefits they recieve, council tenants insecure in their tenancies, college students have the Education Maintainance Allowance which in many cases is essential to their family's ability to survive removed and at the same time see any possibility of a university education fly out of sight, and thousands of public sector workers made redundant and tens of thousands more in fear that they could be next, creating a mood of desperation among some layers of the working class and more-or-less universal uncertainty. These are the emotions that would have been running high at Tottenham police station on Saturday 6 August when a peaceful protest against police brutality called by Mark Duggan's family turned violent.

Eyewitness reports suggest that the violence on Saturday began when a policeman took his baton to a young woman with no provocation. This could have been an individual act of violence, which would be consistent with the police culture of aggressiveness which anyone with any significant experience of activism (or even who has watched and read the news with their eyes open over the past few years) can attest to; it could just as easily be part of a concerted police strategy to provoke riots in order to produce a public demand for ever more repressive measures on the part of the state. The latter would be consistent with my own experiences in Manchester on Tuesday; passing through the city centre between around 6 and 7pm, I was suprised (but shouldn't have been) to find an unusually large police presence in Market Street, who were systematically searching shoppers and passersby, seemingly with particular attention to black, Middle Eastern and Asian people and anyone in a hood, police standing guard at arbitrary choke points redirecting people, an unusually large volume of police vehicles patrolling the streets - with their sirens running - and while I was in Piccadilly Gardens around a hundred TAU riot police gathered in full riot gear and simply stood there looking menacing for several minutes before they started patrolling the area looking menacing; of course, none of this did anything to ease the already-high tensions. The extent to which police and/or fascist provocateurs were responsible for violence is as yet unknown, but it is known to be standard police practice for police to infiltrate protests, etc. in order to instigate violence; I suspect that much of the more seemingly-aimless violence, particularly that which was convenient for TV crews, was the work of police infiltrators. Aside from demands for the police to be given greater repressive powers, other effects of the riots which may or may not have been deliberate or desired on the part of the police include a rise in racist sentiment among the general populace (despite the fact that as many of the rioters were white as any other ethnic group), as can be demonstrated by the prevelance of racism in many of the comments on this Facebook page (in particular the responses to this post), and an attempt by elements of the English Defence League to take the next step as a fascist paramilitary force by forming organised vigilante gangs (although apparently only about a dozen people turned up in Manchester so it fell on it's arse, I've got no information about how they fared elsewhere though).

If anyone was in any doubt that the police state has benefited from the riots, this video should put those doubts to rest. This was at a small protest against David Cameron visiting the Manchester BBC to talk about the riots; the police questioned every participant and searched some, with no direct pretext at all. Before the riots, would they really have been able to do something like this without a significant public outcry?

Arrestees have been given rediculous sentences: Ursula Nevin was convicted of handling stolen goods for accepting a pair of shorts looted by someone else, and the police celebrated the five-month sentence; Nicolas Robinson got a six-month jail term for taking £3.50 worth of bottled water from a Lidl, because he "was thirsty". Since the riots dying down, councils have started evicting families of people convicted of offences related to the rioting and looting, which David Cameron has attempted to justify in Parliament by making reference to "bad parenting", whilst parents are increasingly forced to work full-time in order to provide for their families, and at the same time Cameron is cutting childcare services and closing youth clubs. If the government wanted to avoid further violence - which it doesn't - then it wouldn't take the road of punishment. Someone who's been to prison is far more likely to reoffend than someone who hasn't, statistically-speaking. And you can easily see why. A prison stay removes people from everyone they know, costs them their job or disrupts their education, and puts them in a situation where the main currency is contrabrand and you have to be "hard" to be respected (and those who aren't respected are likely to get raped, come shower time). When they come out, there's often nowhere for them to go, they've probably lost their house and their job, all but their family and closest friends might have moved on with their lives (the more likely the longer they've been in prison), a criminal record and/or the gap in their employment history created by the prison stay makes it all but impossible to get a legal job or a house. The only doors open to ex-prisoners are the skills they learnt and the contacts they made inside. And life on the street creates further desperation and also makes what was a small chance of changing your situation microscopic, as applications for jobs and benefits invariably require an address. The hopelessness of life on the street often creates a further downward spiral of dispair, and sometimes crime, as people turn to drugs in order to deal with their situation as best they can, at least in the here-and-now.

The struggle in Wisconsin

I just sent the following letter to the Manchester Evening News:


"I am disappointed in the MEN's complete lack of coverage of the historic ongoing fight over workers' rights in Wisconsin, where a bill was passed through the state senate today (Thursday) to ban unionisation in the public sector after bei...ng delayed for several weeks by a several thousand-strong occupation of the capitol building which was massively supported on the streets and even briefly joined by police officers in defiance of orders to evict them, and where the local trade union federation recently passed a motion to prepare for a general strike to force the act to be repealed. This is an example we can take inspiration from in Britain. If Manchester Town Hall had been occupied yesterday morning (Wednesday) and the Council had been forced to take the time to consider the option of refusing to pass a cuts budget, it might have started a wave of Council rebellions across the country which could have derailed the government's whole agenda, and a national and ultimately global general strike is the only option which will take us out of the quagmire of governments bought out or held hostage by financial speculators and forced to brutalise public services for private profit."

Spin, damn spin and propaganda

I visited my sister in London yesterday and had the privilege of being able to glance through a copy of the day before's Evening Standard. Here's the highlights of the first 15 pages:

• The front page is an article on the main London student demonstration. The third paragraph starts

  "Flares were set off as scuffles broke out. Several schoolgirls were knocked to the ground"

  They seem to be implying that the people responsible for the latter weren't the police but, inexplicably, the demonstrators who set off the flares. The article goes on to say that Simon Hardy of the National Campaign Against Fees & Cuts (NCAFC)

  "admitted he had lost control of the march".

  It doesn't quote him directly. I suspect this is because he actually said something about not assuming to have authority in the first place over thousands of people taking autonomous collective action... but of course, that wouldn't sound as good for the right-wing capitalist media. In the printed version of the article, the accompanying picture (the first one in the online version, with the pink smoke) appears to have been motion-blurred to make someone look like he's throwing a punch, who if you look closely is actually just scratching the back of his head. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23902553-students-tuition-fees-protest-brings-central-london-to-standstill.do

• Apparently, the protesters at Lewisham town hall the night before "had" to be attacked by the Territorial Support Group (TSG), the vicious section of the Metropolitan Police's riot squad best known for killing Ian Tomlinson at the G20 in 2009 and whose predecessors the Special Patrol Group killed anti-fascist activist Blair Peach in 1979, in tag team with horses and dogs. The article which alleges this goes on to repeat the notions that when the police attack demonstrators attempting to exert pressure on the people supposed to be representing them, it is the demonstrators that are responsible for the consequent "violent disorder"; and that people can "trespass" in their own town hall. Then, while pretending there were no injuries among the protesters (I so far haven't seen any reports to the contrary, but I personally find it hard to believe that the heavily tooled-up riot squad came off the worse), it gives details of police injuries including smoke inhalation (with no other mention in the entire article of any smoke, which in addition to apparently being otherwise non-existant also seems to have miraculously left all of the demonstrators uneffected). It then claims that

  "The trouble flared after the initial demonstration over student fees and cuts in council services was hijacked by a larger group of protesters."

  ...protesters against what, if they were a separate entity to the 'initial demonstration? Your guess is as good as mine. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23902389-riot-squad-is-called-in-as-100-protesters-storm-town-hall-over-pound-18m-cuts.do
  

• On the page opposite, about 200 words are devoted to

  "Party's not over for BNP says Barking film-maker"

  The article continues more or less in that vein. It highlights the disenfranchisement of many people from which the BNP benefit, while pointedly ignoring the roots of the issue in unemployment, low wages and housing trouble and the scapegoating of migrants for those problems by propaganda-heavy tabloids such as the Evening Standard itself. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23902380-bnp-battle-in-barking-is-not-over-warns-film-maker.do - apparently the online version has a different title.
  

• The 15th page is dominated by a thousand-plus-word piece by the diablo himself, David Cameron, attacking the student demonstrations with straw men, arguments which deliberately miss the point, and general misinformation about the distribution of wealth and the nature of state debt. Under the heading of

  "students need to get the facts right"

  and the subheading of

  "the protesters need to know the truth".

  http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23902443-before-protesting-students-need-to-get-the-facts-straight.do
  

Organise! Occupy! Fight for the right to learn!

Around 200 people - mostly new faces - demonstrated against the Browne Review (the New Labour-initiated agenda raising tuition fees to £9000 per year with a minimum of £6000) and the parts of the Comprehensive Spending Review attacking education (the ConDem coalition's trademark public service cuts regime billed at reducing the state deficit but much of which will actually cost money to implement) at Manchester Metropolitan University at midday today. With the demonstration seeming to wind up, the students' union officers and Socialist Workers' Party members monopolising the megaphones appeared to be ignoring the call to initiate an occupation which had been passed democratically by the meetings last week, and it was up to myself, anarchists and others to raise the slogan of occupying; even then, one SWP comrade attempted to divert the demonstration to a meeting to discuss the next direction of the campaign, in the students' union (incidentally, in roughly the opposite physical direction to that agreed at the meetings). Thankfully, the crowd enthusiastically took up the call to occupy, and roughly 150 people piled into the atrium of Geoffrey Manton - the main building of the humanities faculty, which is facing 80% cuts, the worst at MMU. Unfortunately, against my calls to stay and occupy the atrium where we would have had easy access to food and toilets, enough room for everyone to lie down come the night (since the plan had been to attempt to hold the occupation until Wednesday morning and then come out to join the Manchester-wide march as part of the national day of action to save education), and where we would be highly visible to everyone in the building and therefore hopefully grown our numbers significantly, a few comrades effectively dragged us into a small lecture theatre while most of the demonstrators were still coming into the building, which meant that most people couldn't see where we were going and we lost about two thirds of our numbers. In hindsight, perhaps a large lecture theatre would have been better than both the one we occupied and the atrium, since a few veterans of the 2008 occupation of the same building against the massacre in Gaza have since informed me that the atrium had been the initial site of that occupation and had been abandoned as unsuitable.

Over the next hour or so, we lost around another 20 to 30 people, in which time we discussed our demands and the contents of a press release, and made a flyer and petition (the latter basically quoting most of the text from the flyer, and mostly just intended as a talking point to help convince people to join or support the occupation). I'll reproduce the text of the flyer here (my own words), including the demands of the occupation:

In the aftermath of a protest today by 150 people, 50 people today have occupied a lecture theatre in the Geoffrey Manton building at Manchester Metropolitan University in protest against the cuts to education and the rise in tuition fees, mostly MMU students but also some members of staff, students at the University of Manchester, and members of the public in solidarity with our struggle.

We are demanding:

· The opening of all financial accounts, documents and internal memoranda relating to the functioning of the university to scrutiny by the Students’ Union and the public

· The scrapping of EQAL, management’s plan to increase profits by cutting staff and modules in the guise of ‘simplification’

· No job, department, course or module to be cut, including so-called ‘voluntary’ redundancies which are often achieved by threats

· The scrapping of the ‘Late Campaign’, which involves the disciplining of lecturers who are late for lectures usually as a result of higher workloads, and divides students from them by encouraging them to report lecturers for being late

· Free access for all to the building and facilities

· No academic, civil or legal repercussions for anyone involved in the protest and/or occupation

The fact that we have occupied a lecture theatre in the department facing the most severe cuts—80% funding cuts to the Humanities, Law and Social Sciences faculty.

But we aren’t just occupying to achieve demands. We also want to use the space as an organising and campaigning centre, and as a liberated space for discussion, debate and education.

Join us!

At 5, those of us remaining left the occupied lecture theatre to go to Q&A session with Vice Chancellor John Brooks (who took home a salary of £241k - almost 12 times the average UK income - in 2008/9* and according to Mark Harrison of the Commune £250k in 2009/10** as MMU's Vice Chancellor, not counting the perks that come with the job, the inevitable investment portfolio which usually comes with being wealthy almost by default, or his position on the North West Development Board***, no doubt among similar positions) about the cuts and how they will effect MMU, having prepared in advance a list of suggested questions (courtesy of James O'Leary from Communist Students), and initially intending to replenish the occupation force by occupying the larger basement lecture theatre afterwards with the people who were there, simply by not leaving.

Brooks began the session by re-making a speech he gave to a House of Commons committee on implementing the Browne Review, which he started by praising it for creating a 'free market environment' in education which would apparently provide students with more 'choice'; he later backtracked on this, saying "I agree with you, it's not a free market" (is there such a thing?) when I challenged him that marketised education, which would force students to 'choose' their university and course if any based not on quality, interest, level of challenge, possibilities of personal development and other personal criteria, but on what they believe they would be able to afford, doesn't provide students with more choice. His speech went on to passionately defend the importance of humanities education (history, geography and the social sciences), which seems somewhat at odds with the plans of the MMU management headed by him to implement part of the 40-60% cuts required by the Comprehensive Spending Review by slashing a whole 80% from the teaching budget in MMU's Humanities department.

Most of his 'answers' to the questions from the floor involved evading the subject, waffling and - as above - attempting to humour the asker that he 'agrees' with their concerns. One of the questions involved the presence of a Conservative Party MP on MMU's Board of Governors, and the prospects of removing him. Brooks claimed that because of the Tories having won 36% of the vote in May's General Election (and at least part of that having been solely a rejection of New Labour's having spent most of it's 13 years in government starting wars and cracking down on civil liberties), this would be somehow a denial of the 'democratic process'; others hit back that it's intensely undemocratic for a representative of a government which is cannibalising the education system to be a governor of a university, especially when his government's plans are opposed by the vast majority of the staff and students. Another question regarded his salary, which he avoided by saying that it was available online and most of us probably already knew it (which, to his credit, is true). Unfortunately, I never got a chance to come back on that saying that yes, we were aware that his salary was over £200,000, and that a 90% pay cut would still leave him with an approximately average income, and ask if he would be willing to take the 'sacrifice' of living on the sort of pay that most people do anyway if - as it would - it guaranteed the jobs of several other people who would otherwise be made redundant over 'lack of available funding'. He gave Alex Fountain, students' union Community officer, a verbal promise that the students' union's funding from the university would not be cut; the President Rob Croll, who was co-chairing the event with Education officer Liz Marsh, rightly demanded a written guarantee. Linda Holden, the Associate Secretary of the MMU branch of the public service trade union Unison, made a long speech attacking the Vice Chancellor's dishonesty, the EQAL programme, and his whitewashing of last year's job cuts, which recieved loud applause; he tried to deny that EQAL, which involves cutting the number of modules in a year from 6 at 20 credits each to 4 at 30 credits each and scrapping many of the currently-available modules (as well as cutting contact hours between students and lecturers), hurts the choices available to students, and ignored the observation that the proposals effectively render a large percentage of lecturers redundant, which was no doubt the main motive in constructing the schemes.

At 5:45, after Brooks had been complaining for about 15 minutes of 'tiredness' and with 15 minutes left of the allocated time for the session, Marsh and Croll more or less unilaterally decided to end the meeting, with several people still having unasked questions. I forcibly made the point that someone who makes decisions which effect our lives as closely as his should be accountable to his subjects and shouldn't have any choice about answering our questions, regardless of how 'tired' he is; Croll fobbed this concern off by saying we have to 'keep management on our side', as if they somehow are to begin with.

In the end, we didn't occupy the basement lecture theatre after all, deciding not to raise the issue with security in the room. Instead... we went to the bar.

One positive thing that came out of today's events was the validation of occupations as a democratic method of activism; it showed that only an occupation with the mass active participation and support of those effected by the issue in question can be sustained.

*Page 25 of http://www.finance.mmu.ac.uk/uploads/1/MMU_Fin_stats_08-09_Final.pdf

**http://thecommune.co.uk/2010/07/24/unviable-courses-thanks-to-mmu-cuts/

***Mr C Hardy commenting on http://manchestermule.com/article/mmu-campus-plans-set-to-be-delayed

Beating police repression (and internet censorship) after the student occupation

The following post led to the FITwatch blog being taken offline when the Met Police contacted their hosting company. It is re-posted here (and many other places) because:

"The Internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it" -- John Gilmore

The remarkable and brilliant student action at Millbank has produced some predictable frothing at the mouth from the establishment and right wing press. Cameron has called for the "full weight of the law" to fall on those who had caused tens of thousands of pounds of damage to the expensive decor at Tory party HQ. Responsibility is being placed on "a violent faction", after the march was 'infiltrated' by anarchists.

There are an encouraging number of initiatives to show solidarity with the arrested students - something that is vital if they are to avoid the sort of punitive 'deterrent' sentences handed out to the Gaza demonstrators. A legal support group has been established and the National Campaign against Cuts and Fees has started a support campaign. Goldsmiths lecturers union has publicly commended the students for a "magnificent demonstration".

This is all much needed, as the establishment is clearly on the march with this one. The Torygraph has published an irresponsible and frenzied 'shop-a-student' piece and the Met are clearly under pressure to produce 'results' after what they have admitted was a policing "embarrassment".

51 people have been arrested so far, and the police have claimed they took the details of a further 250 people in the kettle using powers under the Police Reform Act. There may be more arrests to come.

Students who are worried should consider taking the following actions:

If you have been arrested, or had your details taken - contact the legal support campaign. As a group you can support each other, and mount a coherent campaign.

If you fear you may be arrested as a result of identification by CCTV, FIT or press photography;

DON'T panic. Press photos are not necessarily conclusive evidence, and just because the police have a photo of you doesn't mean they know who you are.

DON'T hand yourself in. The police often use the psychological pressure of knowing they have your picture to persuade you to 'come forward'. Unless you have a very pressing reason to do otherwise, let them come and find you, if they know who you are.

DO get rid of your clothes. There is no chance of suggesting the bloke in the video is not you if the clothes he is wearing have been found in your wardrobe. Get rid of ALL clothes you were wearing at the demo, including YOUR SHOES, your bag, and any distinctive jewellery you were wearing at the time. Yes, this is difficult, especially if it is your only warm coat or decent pair of boots. But it will be harder still if finding these clothes in your flat gets you convicted of violent disorder.

DON'T assume that because you can identify yourself in a video, a judge will be able to as well. "That isn't me" has got many a person off before now.

DO keep away from other demos for a while. The police will be on the look-out at other demos, especially student ones, for people they have put on their 'wanted' list. Keep a low profile. (Re-poster's note: I recommend this one for people who have been arrested already and let off/cleared/fined as well. I stayed away from anti-fascist demos for about 6 months after my arrest recounted in a previous post. It's well-documented that police at demonstrations carry lists of the names and photos of potential 'troublemakers', and having been recently arrested at a demo on the same issue is as good a way as any to get on the list)

DO think about changing your appearance. Perhaps now is a good time for a make-over. Get a haircut and colour, grow a beard, wear glasses. It isn't a guarantee, but may help throw them off the scent.

DO keep your house clean. Get rid of spray cans, demo related stuff, and dodgy texts / photos on your phone. Don't make life easy for them by having drugs, weapons or anything illegal in the house.

DO get the name and number of a good lawyer you can call if things go badly. The support group has the names of recommended lawyers on their site. Take a bit of time to read up on your rights in custody, especially the benefits of not commenting in interview. (Re-poster's note: I assume they mean this support group (click), but I can't find a list of lawyers...)

DO be careful who you speak about this to. Admit your potential or actual involvement in criminal damage / disorder ONLY to people you really trust.

DO try and control the nerves and panic. Waiting for a knock on the door is stressful in the extreme, but you need to find a way to get on with business as normal. Otherwise you'll be serving the sentence before you are even arrested.


Credit to the FITwatch group for the article, and to policestate.co.uk for the intro and the quote

EDIT 5:12am 20/11/2010: I just noticed the FITwatch blog is back up :) Their latest post is an announcement to that effect dated 17/11, but I was definately getting the "account suspended" page when I first posted this earlier tonight... meh. Solidarity and freedom of speech - 1, censorship - 0. Last I heard the gag order was for a year minimum, so I think congratulations are in order for the FITwatch team on beating it.

"On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month..."

This Remembrance Day, join us in remembering the lives, deaths and pain of all those who have suffered as a result of war, regardless of nationality, regardless of nationality and regardless of combatant status.

This Remembrance Day, join us in condemning the pointless slaughter of countless ordinary people who had no interest in the conflict whose tragic end was marked by a bang, a diseased groan or a moan of despair, caught in the crossfire or sent into battle against politicians at the behest of businessmen and aristocrats who benefit from selling weapons, gaining access to new resources or markets, or distracting people from struggles at home.

This Remembrance Day, join us in honouring the many soldiers whose desperation led them to flee the line, or whose courage in refusing to kill their counterparts in the opposite trenches or standing up to the victimisation and dehumanising treatment to which their officers subjected them was vilified at the time and is now barely a footnote in the collective memory.

This Remembrance Day, join us in striving to put an end to the constant cycle of war and bloodshed.






Right click, View Image for the full flyer. Feel free to print it for distribution - if you want to edit it, just ask and I'll email you the publisher file

On elections within capitalism

Democracy is more than a cross by a name every few years. Democracy is government by the governed - individual self-determination and freedom of movement; workers', consumers' and community control of industry and public services; communal control of land and resources; residents' control of housing; universal access to the means of subsistence, since there is of course no more authoritarian act than to deny a person their right to choose continued life; an egalitarian distribution of wealth, which after all is power.

But even if we were to limit our definition of democracy to the free election of state officials, it would still be a farce to call elections within capitalism democratic. The odds are heavily stacked against the left by the monopoly of the corporate media, which gives the ruling class both the ability to define the acceptable limits of public discourse and an automatic monopoly on election coverage - which makes the vast majority of nominally democratic capitalist parliamentary regimes a one-party state, by no-platforming any candidate who does not conform to the narrow capitalist paradigm of acceptable discourse, leaving those who remain politically similar enough that they may as well be a single party. This disadvantage is often compounded by obstacles such as unproportional electoral systems, bureaucratic hoops to jump through such as large deposits to be paid by all candidates before they can get their names on the ballot paper, and directly fraudulent tactics on the part of the establishment such as ballot stuffing or locking people out of polling stations - and even, sometimes, explicitly banning candidates who advocate revolution.

This is not to say we should boycott capitalist elections. The 'electable' candidates may well all be effectively of one party, but there are differences within all parties; just as there are differences within the organised left, there are differences within the ruling class, all the more accentuated by the inherent competetive nature of market capitalism. It's impossible to know how many years or decades it will be before we can overthrow capitalism and establish true democracy. In the meantime one of the methods we can use to restrain the worst excesses of the ruling class - although we should focus on more direct, militant and participatory methods - is to influence through elections which members of the ruling class make the rules, to keep the hard-liners more sidelined than they might be. There are also rare occasions on which revolutionaries can make a breakthrough into the institutions the ruling class calls representative; if not to gain legislative power (we will likely have the strength to overthrow the state long before we have the strength to take it over through the ballot box, given the measures to which the ruling class resorts to keep us out) then at least we can gain a parliamentary platform from which to promote revolutionary ideas.

It must of course be up to the organised left of the time and place to judge collectively whether to seek this opportunity or to hedge bets and use our electoral voice to keep the state in the hands of the relatively moderate sections of the ruling class. Indeed there may also be circumstances in which it actually is more appropriate to boycott an election.