PATRICK SIKORSKI
Only an international phenomenon as powerful as Covid19 could kick open the doors of the sweatshops of Leicester and throw a shaft of light on the reality of inequality and class exploitation in twenty first century Britain.
The spotlight has fallen on subcontractors to the clothes manufacturer Boohoo. Previously the darling of the on-line, wear-it today and throw-it-away tomorrow end of today's fashion business, it now stands accused of relying on a business model which has seen it's suppliers in Leicester operating in a way that would have been instantly recognisable to Engels in his book "The Condition of the Working Class in England"(1844) and to Charles Booth the chronicler of the condition of the London working class later in the nineteenth century.
So far the "charge" sheet, from the campaign group Labour Behind the Label and others, reads as follows; workers being "asked" to continue working alongside others despite outbreaks of the virus in the plant or of course in reality facing instant dismissal if they were to refuse; wholesale absence of social distancing or hand sanitiser pumps; claims of modern slavery, illegally low wages, VAT fraud and little or no basic Health and Safety - windows boarded up and fire escapes blocked.
One Human Rights researcher, who went into Leicester garment factories earlier this year stated " I've been inside garment factories in Bangladesh, China and Sri Lanka and I can honestly say that what I saw in the middle of the UK was worse than anything I've witnessed overseas."
In April, announcing year on year pretax profits of £92.2 million Boohoo's CEO, John Lyttle, noted the crisis had highlighted the company's "ability to be agile and flexible". Year on year turn over to February this year rose 44% to £1.2 billion.
Using sweatshops in the Midlands means very short supply chains and helps towards Boohoo having a turn around time, from concept and design to delivery of a new range to customers, of just two weeks - leaving other brands in the dust. It also helps that average pay in Boohoo suppliers is £3.50 per hour as against a "legal" National Minimum Wage for 25 year olds of £8.72. Boohoo cofounders are Carol Kane and Mahmud Kamani - in fact it's made him a billionaire.
Last week reports indicated that the Health and Safety Executive had contacted 17 textile businesses in Leicester, was actively investigating three, and was taking enforcement action against just one. By this week it seemed that Boohoo was only thinking of acting against one of it's Leicester suppliers. Estimates suggest that 75% - 80% of the city's total garment output goes to Boohoo.
Of course the HSE, and local Public Health departments, along with all public services has been cut to the bone. The HSE is so short staffed that it can't intervene in a factory unless they are made aware of breaches from whistle blowers. None of these plants are unionised.
The high - liberal commentariat of The Guardian of course cannot quite understand why workers in these plants won't speak to them or become "whistleblowers" - after all the worker is equal to the sweatshop boss and formally, in British law, even to Ms Kane and Mr Kamani? So, ever so gently and discreetly, the Guardian story shifts, via quotes from powerless local government service providers and an HSE with no legal powers to prosecute as individuals those who are blatantly enriching themselves from human misery, and who now force people to continue to work in life threatening conditions; the story shifts the blame to the workers themselves - after all, as the management speak says - "Happy to stay - Happy to go!"
*
Early this June officials in the Australian state of Victoria were congratulating themselves on having contained the Covid virus and hoping that, after no new cases had been registered on two days, that it might be possible to lift the lockdown.
But a week ago last Monday the story abruptly did a viscious handbrake turn. 300,000 citizens were put back into lockdown in a military assisted operation to ring fence ten postcodes in Melbourne the state capital and, it was announced that the state border with New South Wales - Australia's most populous state - was to be sealed.
That Monday Victoria had recorded 127 new infections, its highest daily figure since the pandemic began. The military, together with assistance from other neighbouring states began a test and trace blitz aimed at testing 20,000 tests per day.
Last Saturday the situation worsened with nine housing estate tower blocks in suburbs in the north of Melbourne put into what state officials dubbed a "hard lockdown" confining 3,000 residents to their flats for at least 5 days. A cluster of Covid cases had been found. The towers not only have common lifts but are joined by walkways to adjoining blocks on the estates. Comprehensive testing was scheduled to take five days.
But tower block residents were increasingly angry with what turned out to be the uniquely harsh measures they were enduring. They'd been given no notice whatsoever of the "hard lockdown" which was being enforced by police patrols at the entrances and the lifts and along all the corridors and walkways. Critics pointed out that this effectively targets a racially diverse and already marginalised community. Furthermore the enforcement measures operating in the towers is in stark contrast to the lockdown measures in 36 other hotspots in the suburbs. Unlike those in the tower blocks, they can leave home for work, exercise, care and grocery shopping.
Now at the time of writing, five million people in and around Melbourne will be put back into lockdown for the next six weeks.
Previously, most cases were coming from travellers returning from overseas. Australia's curve flattened rapidly three months ago with the enforcement of lockdowns and mandatory hotel quarantines for people entering the country.
Victoria's State Premier David Andrews has pin-pointed the origin of many infections to workers overseeing hotel quarantines allegedly "breaking the rules". Up to that point more than 20,000 people had been through the fourteen day, hotel based quarantine procedure. A separate report which had traced Covid19's mutation in Victoria found that hotel staff cases were "ancestors" of ones found later in suburban homes. Premier Andrews has levelled blame at the private security firms policing the lockdown in the quarantine hotels - neighbouring New South Wales deployed it's regular full time police force for this task. Victoria has faced accusations of system failures such as guards being improperly trained or not being adequate PPE. Mr. Andrews has also described cases of illegal socialising between staff, listing examples of workers sharing a cigarette lighter and car pooling to and from shifts. Local media also reported claims of sex between guards and quarantined travellers. The Labour controlled state government has ordered a judicial inquiry into their quarantine operation and fired the contractors.
It's also relevant to throw another cluster into the mix. In early May authorities expressed concern about a virus "hot spot" among workers at an abattoir in west Melbourne. About 111 cases were linked to the site. However lockdown restrictions were eased a month later allowing people to again visit friends and family, and enjoy other freedoms such as eating out at restaurants. Officials still exhorted social distancing, but group limits were expanded. Large family groups reconnected and some cases stemmed from people with mild symptoms attending those gatherings, authorities reported.
"Once the feeling got around that it was over - when it really wasn't - Victoria copped it" said Professor John Matthews at the University of Melbourne.
Those "hotspots" mentioned above, in Melbourne's north and west suburbs are also home to large migrant communities. A language other than English is spoken in almost 35% of households in Melbourne - a remarkably similar percentage to that of the BAME community in the city of Leicester.
*
Migrant communities the world over cling together for solidarity in the "hostile environments" openly or covertly imposed on them by officialdom; while working day to day wherever they can, for as long as they're told and for as little as they are recompensed in order to pay off the debts to traffickers or for dodgy papers and to the slum landlord for the rent. Very often they are preyed upon most severely by the business owners, capitalists and landlords in their own communities. Periodic crackdowns by state immigration agents backed up by police, at the workplaces serve to "crack the whip", weed out trouble makers and drive the community back under the control of the sweatshop owner, the landlord and the religious leaders.
When these poorer communities are singled out for the re-application of a lockdown following a period during which the whole of a country has previously been locked down, and, when other parts of the country with similar spikes - but much less diverse communities are not - then this means that a process of discrimination and ghettoisation of the pandemic is taking place. Some of the most deprived are being singled for yet more isolation and blame - especially from racists and fascists - for their own oppression.
It is all the more insupportable that it these same BAME communities who, populating, as they do, some of the poorest paid jobs in the health and social care services - and making proportionally the greatest ultimate sacrifice in the pandemic so far - are then told by the cowardly racist Johnson that the responsibility for the 30,000 excess deaths in the care sector are down to care homes "not following the right procedures".
None of all this should be allowed to stand.
Wednesday, 8 July 2020
Monday, 29 June 2020
More on the police
A blog from Patrick Sikorski
The massive international movement of revulsion against the police murder of George Floyd in the USA has rightly generated major debates about policing and whether or not it's possible to reform it without first overthrowing the economic and social system that policing exists to defend.
Immediate demands raised by the Black Lives Matter led movement are to "Defund the Police" and "Disband the Police". On the web many references were made to the example of a town called Camden in the state of New Jersey, which had apparently disbanded it's police force of around 120 officers due to many years of racist policing and widespread corruption, which, not surprisingly, had led the town to aquire one of the highest levels of homicides proportional to population, in the whole country. At the time of writing it's not clear whether the disbandment was directly caused by community pressure for urgent change or whether the town budget simply ran dry due to continual cuts to "public services". Nevertheless the initial reports indicate that a county or state wide force took over policing and proceeded to eventually re-recruit one hundred of the original Camden constabulary.
Details apart, this shows up both the issues and problems raised by policing in general and in addition who polices the police.
A very brief overview of the "policing" of the sectarian six county statelet of Northern Ireland also allows us to see how the British ruling class deals with such matters.
Prior to the Partition of Ireland policing in Ireland dates back to 1814 when Robert Peel, dubbed "Orange Peel" by the nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell because of his pronounced political sympathies, founded the "Peelers" or the Irish Constabulary controlled directly from Dublin Castle.
They were dubbed the Royal Irish Constabulary in the 1870s due to their role in suppressing a Fenian uprising.
After civil war and partition the Royal Ulster Constabulary was established on 1st June 1922 to police Carson's Protestant State for a Protestant People.
Following the Civil Rights marches and the events in Derry in 1969 the Ulster Special Constabulary (the "B Specials - a section of the RUC) were stood down in April 1970 - leaving the RUC and a new regiment of the British Army - the Ulster Defence Regiment.
The Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998 obviously had to see the development another police force potentially capable of winning the "trust" of the Nationalist population after 30 years of conflict and over 3,000 deaths.
The successor to the RUC was named the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) based initially on the body of constables of the former RUC. At its formation the PSNI was almost 92% made up by members of the Unionist community, but legislation in line with the Patten Commission's findings made it a legal obligation to achieve 50:50 parity of members from both communities - through "affirmative action" and also de facto "positive discrimination".
By February 2011, 29.7% of the 7,200 officers of the PSNI were from Nationalist community but amongst police staff (who were not subject to the 50:50 rule) the proportion was only 18%.
Despite this, in 2011 the British Government abolished the 50:50 rule and the "lateral entry" of Catholic officers from other police forces.
Stubborn institutional and structural defects in police and legal systems - racism, sectarianism etc. - are based on and reflect the structural inequalities and deformations in the society concerned and furthermore, amplify those deformations in periods when those conditions become intolerable to those suffering under them.
So it's necessary to address both the underlying economic inequalities and the social relations - including policing and the judicial system - that it throws up at one and the same time. Policing under capitalism was never founded on protecting the citizenry - it was always - and it remains - about safeguarding private property, the process of accumulation of private wealth and the safeguarding of the power of the class that owns that wealth.
The outstanding TV documentaries anchored by historian David Olusoga, on the story of Britain's slave trade and the mind boggling compensation paid out in 1834, not to the 800,000 slaves, but to the 46,000 British slave owners, totalling £17 billions in today's money - underlines the gut wrenching inhumanity on which capitalism and racism on both sides of the Atlantic is based to this very day. The compensation paid out was for the loss to the slave owner of his or her "private property". The re- investment of these blood stained millions helped create the Railway boom that lasted into the twentieth century and went into numerous investment banks and insurance companies in the City of London.
The Coronavirus pandemic, both in Britain and America, has laid bare the way that the system in both countries treats BAME people - just as it has fallen to those very same people throughout the Health and Care services to bear, not only day to day discrimination as a way life, but also the dangerous burden at work, of treating their fellow citizens who have been struck down by the virus.
As we see our "leaders" desperately trying to "turn the page" and get people back to work when the virus has only concluded chapter one of it's story; we are faced with an enormous economic recession with millions in the workplace already having taken a 20% wage cut through the furlough scheme. Many millions more will be pushed into unemployment trying to live on Universal Benefit. And then there is the matter of the "cost of the crisis" which means another howling gale of austerity - which we will be expected to pay for at the same time as Johnson and his gang desperately scramble with imposing Brexit; tying up shoddy trade deals with Japan, Trump etc; and trying to launch the "Brave New World" of Singapore - on - Thames. As the polarisation in society deepens the clashes between those fighting back and the defenders of the status quo will grow inexorably and therefore the issue of policing will continuously arise and will have to be dealt with.
The massive international movement of revulsion against the police murder of George Floyd in the USA has rightly generated major debates about policing and whether or not it's possible to reform it without first overthrowing the economic and social system that policing exists to defend.
Immediate demands raised by the Black Lives Matter led movement are to "Defund the Police" and "Disband the Police". On the web many references were made to the example of a town called Camden in the state of New Jersey, which had apparently disbanded it's police force of around 120 officers due to many years of racist policing and widespread corruption, which, not surprisingly, had led the town to aquire one of the highest levels of homicides proportional to population, in the whole country. At the time of writing it's not clear whether the disbandment was directly caused by community pressure for urgent change or whether the town budget simply ran dry due to continual cuts to "public services". Nevertheless the initial reports indicate that a county or state wide force took over policing and proceeded to eventually re-recruit one hundred of the original Camden constabulary.
Details apart, this shows up both the issues and problems raised by policing in general and in addition who polices the police.
A very brief overview of the "policing" of the sectarian six county statelet of Northern Ireland also allows us to see how the British ruling class deals with such matters.
Prior to the Partition of Ireland policing in Ireland dates back to 1814 when Robert Peel, dubbed "Orange Peel" by the nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell because of his pronounced political sympathies, founded the "Peelers" or the Irish Constabulary controlled directly from Dublin Castle.
They were dubbed the Royal Irish Constabulary in the 1870s due to their role in suppressing a Fenian uprising.
After civil war and partition the Royal Ulster Constabulary was established on 1st June 1922 to police Carson's Protestant State for a Protestant People.
Following the Civil Rights marches and the events in Derry in 1969 the Ulster Special Constabulary (the "B Specials - a section of the RUC) were stood down in April 1970 - leaving the RUC and a new regiment of the British Army - the Ulster Defence Regiment.
The Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998 obviously had to see the development another police force potentially capable of winning the "trust" of the Nationalist population after 30 years of conflict and over 3,000 deaths.
The successor to the RUC was named the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) based initially on the body of constables of the former RUC. At its formation the PSNI was almost 92% made up by members of the Unionist community, but legislation in line with the Patten Commission's findings made it a legal obligation to achieve 50:50 parity of members from both communities - through "affirmative action" and also de facto "positive discrimination".
By February 2011, 29.7% of the 7,200 officers of the PSNI were from Nationalist community but amongst police staff (who were not subject to the 50:50 rule) the proportion was only 18%.
Despite this, in 2011 the British Government abolished the 50:50 rule and the "lateral entry" of Catholic officers from other police forces.
Stubborn institutional and structural defects in police and legal systems - racism, sectarianism etc. - are based on and reflect the structural inequalities and deformations in the society concerned and furthermore, amplify those deformations in periods when those conditions become intolerable to those suffering under them.
So it's necessary to address both the underlying economic inequalities and the social relations - including policing and the judicial system - that it throws up at one and the same time. Policing under capitalism was never founded on protecting the citizenry - it was always - and it remains - about safeguarding private property, the process of accumulation of private wealth and the safeguarding of the power of the class that owns that wealth.
The outstanding TV documentaries anchored by historian David Olusoga, on the story of Britain's slave trade and the mind boggling compensation paid out in 1834, not to the 800,000 slaves, but to the 46,000 British slave owners, totalling £17 billions in today's money - underlines the gut wrenching inhumanity on which capitalism and racism on both sides of the Atlantic is based to this very day. The compensation paid out was for the loss to the slave owner of his or her "private property". The re- investment of these blood stained millions helped create the Railway boom that lasted into the twentieth century and went into numerous investment banks and insurance companies in the City of London.
The Coronavirus pandemic, both in Britain and America, has laid bare the way that the system in both countries treats BAME people - just as it has fallen to those very same people throughout the Health and Care services to bear, not only day to day discrimination as a way life, but also the dangerous burden at work, of treating their fellow citizens who have been struck down by the virus.
As we see our "leaders" desperately trying to "turn the page" and get people back to work when the virus has only concluded chapter one of it's story; we are faced with an enormous economic recession with millions in the workplace already having taken a 20% wage cut through the furlough scheme. Many millions more will be pushed into unemployment trying to live on Universal Benefit. And then there is the matter of the "cost of the crisis" which means another howling gale of austerity - which we will be expected to pay for at the same time as Johnson and his gang desperately scramble with imposing Brexit; tying up shoddy trade deals with Japan, Trump etc; and trying to launch the "Brave New World" of Singapore - on - Thames. As the polarisation in society deepens the clashes between those fighting back and the defenders of the status quo will grow inexorably and therefore the issue of policing will continuously arise and will have to be dealt with.
Patrick Sikorski
Saturday, 13 June 2020
Police Inequality
Patrick Sikorski
Policing Inequality
One of the many veteran Civil Rights leaders, speaking at the funeral service for George Floyd in Houston Texas said, to ever growing applause, that back in the 1960s those fighting for Civil Rights and against police brutality and killings were overwhelmingly black but that now they were being joined in the struggle by Hispanic people, by Asian people and indeed white people as well.
This is not only incontrovertibly true but also very importantly expresses the continuity and linkages of current events with the movement in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Our rulers are well aware of what's now at stake. But we can safely say that those of them who tried the same old standard responses to the mass mobilisations - a "violent minority" undermining the aim of the protests with "thuggery" and "criminal acts" found that their witterings sank without trace even quicker than did the statue of "Salver" Colston into the Bristol docks.
Sir Keir Starmer said it shouldn't have been torn down - but that it shouldn't have remained in place for so long! How long Sir Keir? How long? It is an an iniquity that it had to wait for yet another black person to be murdered the police for the matter to be dealt with properly.
The comments of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick and the leaders of Police Federation warrant much more attention.
Dame Cressida condemned "violent criminality" by a "minority of protestors" as "disgraceful" and said that it was "never acceptable" to "attack police" or "damage property".
John Apter, National Chair of the Police Federation - the police trade union - expressed some sympathy for the demonstrations but said they had been hijacked by "some who are intent on violence" against the police.
The head of the Metropolitan Police Federation however called on his "bosses" to apologise for failing to protect officers injured in the protests. Mr Ken Marsh called for urgent action from Dame Cressida and demanded his members were properly equipped with public order gear, including helmets and shields. He went on to say that the police should be dealing with the disorder "far more robustly" adding "we need to have the correct equipment on to deal with what is in front of us".
So far, so normal you might say? We've been warned! But these people have form.
On the day in July 2005 when Jean Charles da Silva e de Menezes was the victim of a shoot to kill operation by the Met police down the Tube at Stockwell, the then Commander Cressida Dick, was the Gold Commander. Jean Charles was completely innocent. The then plain ordinary Keir Starmer QC was working at the DPP at the time. They decided not to prosecute any officers and it was subsequently treated as a matter of Health and Safety. It should be noted that since 1969 not one police officer has been convicted for their role in the death of someone in their "care".
Twelve years earlier in April 1993 Stephen Lawrence was brutally stabbed to death in Plumstead southeast London by a gang of at least five white racist murderers. It is now universally acknowledged that the resulting police inquiry was a charade and a cover up resulting from systemic institutional racism in the Met police together with police corruption at the local level. High Court judge Sir William Macpherson's public inquiry report published in 1999, described institutional racism as a form of collective behaviour, a workplace culture supported by a structural status quo, and a consensus - often excused and ignored by the authorities. Amongst its many recommendations, the report suggested that the police force boost its black representation, and that all officers be trained in racism awareness and cultural diversity. It took until January 2012, nineteen years after Stephen's death, for two of his killers to be successfully found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The continuities of racist policing are rooted deep in the building of trading empires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and then in the directly ruled colonies from the late eighteenth century onwards until well after the Second World War. During the colonial period the British Colonial Police forces and very often the regular armed forces played complementary and sometimes interchangeable roles in order to repress national liberation movements and political protest.
For example in 1967 the Hong Kong police used wooden baton rounds to disperse demonstrations that had started as a labour dispute but quickly developed into mass demonstrations against British Colonial rule. It's use led directly to one death and many injuries, but it was regarded as a successful public order weapon by the authorities.
When the peaceful Civil Rights movement in the North of Ireland, taking its inspiration and name directly from its counterpart in the USA at the time, was battered off the streets by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the B Specials, the lid could no longer be held down on the gerrymandered sectarian six county statelet. The British Army used rubber and then plastic bullets from July 1970 killing at least 16 people and maiming many more up to 1986. Using live ammunition they also killed many unarmed civilians - notably in the Ballymurphy Massacre in Belfast during August 1971 in which 11 people died over a period of 48 hours; and the Bloody Sunday Massacre in Derry in January 1972 in which 14 people died.
Plastic bullets were deployed for the first time in Britain at Broadwater Farm in October 1985. Commenting afterwards Sir Kenneth Newman admitted to being surprised that the operational commander had considered that the riot could have been contained without their use. Sir Kenneth had been Chief Constable of the RUC from 1976 to 1980 and was appointed Commissioner of the Met Police in 1982 remaining in office until 1987.
Perhaps the development of police mass surveillance and intelligence gathering may be more recognisable to today's younger activists, but such practices are deeply based in the counter insurgency theories developed by Major General Frank Kitson, who wrote what was to become the definitive text book on the subject, entitled "Low Intensity Operations". It was based on active service against national liberation movements in Malaya, Cyprus and Kenya. Shortly after the publication of the book in 1971, he was posted to the North of Ireland, tasked with overhauling the military intelligence system.
Intel, down to the minutest detail about every adult in the "suspect" community was collected and computerised. The "suspect" community were the Nationalists. It was deliberately aimed at criminalising the whole of that community.
The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 officially brought that particular period to an end. However, it would be remiss to forget the history and to fall for the idea that racism in Britain or its policing is, or ever was, "nicer" or "more restrained" or indeed "policing by consent".
After all it was Britain that powered the Atlantic trade to provide our American cousins with their enslaved labour in what were originally our colonies. It's clear that the British Empire was the greatest engine of colonialism in the world during the nineteenth century and that the principle idealogical system that helped continue it's rule at home and enforce it abroad, was that of the claimed racial superiority of white British people.
But if Britain has lost its Empire why does racism and inequality persist and why does policing continue to uphold this rotten state of affairs? Many of us believe that it is because racism and inequality are the inevitable product of the class system and help to sustain that system. There is no hierarchy of oppressions involved here. The threads of racism and class division are woven into the basic fabric of our society and are mutually self - perpetuating.
'Policing - Reform or Abolition' - to follow.
Policing Inequality
One of the many veteran Civil Rights leaders, speaking at the funeral service for George Floyd in Houston Texas said, to ever growing applause, that back in the 1960s those fighting for Civil Rights and against police brutality and killings were overwhelmingly black but that now they were being joined in the struggle by Hispanic people, by Asian people and indeed white people as well.
This is not only incontrovertibly true but also very importantly expresses the continuity and linkages of current events with the movement in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Our rulers are well aware of what's now at stake. But we can safely say that those of them who tried the same old standard responses to the mass mobilisations - a "violent minority" undermining the aim of the protests with "thuggery" and "criminal acts" found that their witterings sank without trace even quicker than did the statue of "Salver" Colston into the Bristol docks.
Sir Keir Starmer said it shouldn't have been torn down - but that it shouldn't have remained in place for so long! How long Sir Keir? How long? It is an an iniquity that it had to wait for yet another black person to be murdered the police for the matter to be dealt with properly.
The comments of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick and the leaders of Police Federation warrant much more attention.
Dame Cressida condemned "violent criminality" by a "minority of protestors" as "disgraceful" and said that it was "never acceptable" to "attack police" or "damage property".
John Apter, National Chair of the Police Federation - the police trade union - expressed some sympathy for the demonstrations but said they had been hijacked by "some who are intent on violence" against the police.
The head of the Metropolitan Police Federation however called on his "bosses" to apologise for failing to protect officers injured in the protests. Mr Ken Marsh called for urgent action from Dame Cressida and demanded his members were properly equipped with public order gear, including helmets and shields. He went on to say that the police should be dealing with the disorder "far more robustly" adding "we need to have the correct equipment on to deal with what is in front of us".
So far, so normal you might say? We've been warned! But these people have form.
On the day in July 2005 when Jean Charles da Silva e de Menezes was the victim of a shoot to kill operation by the Met police down the Tube at Stockwell, the then Commander Cressida Dick, was the Gold Commander. Jean Charles was completely innocent. The then plain ordinary Keir Starmer QC was working at the DPP at the time. They decided not to prosecute any officers and it was subsequently treated as a matter of Health and Safety. It should be noted that since 1969 not one police officer has been convicted for their role in the death of someone in their "care".
Twelve years earlier in April 1993 Stephen Lawrence was brutally stabbed to death in Plumstead southeast London by a gang of at least five white racist murderers. It is now universally acknowledged that the resulting police inquiry was a charade and a cover up resulting from systemic institutional racism in the Met police together with police corruption at the local level. High Court judge Sir William Macpherson's public inquiry report published in 1999, described institutional racism as a form of collective behaviour, a workplace culture supported by a structural status quo, and a consensus - often excused and ignored by the authorities. Amongst its many recommendations, the report suggested that the police force boost its black representation, and that all officers be trained in racism awareness and cultural diversity. It took until January 2012, nineteen years after Stephen's death, for two of his killers to be successfully found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The continuities of racist policing are rooted deep in the building of trading empires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and then in the directly ruled colonies from the late eighteenth century onwards until well after the Second World War. During the colonial period the British Colonial Police forces and very often the regular armed forces played complementary and sometimes interchangeable roles in order to repress national liberation movements and political protest.
For example in 1967 the Hong Kong police used wooden baton rounds to disperse demonstrations that had started as a labour dispute but quickly developed into mass demonstrations against British Colonial rule. It's use led directly to one death and many injuries, but it was regarded as a successful public order weapon by the authorities.
When the peaceful Civil Rights movement in the North of Ireland, taking its inspiration and name directly from its counterpart in the USA at the time, was battered off the streets by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the B Specials, the lid could no longer be held down on the gerrymandered sectarian six county statelet. The British Army used rubber and then plastic bullets from July 1970 killing at least 16 people and maiming many more up to 1986. Using live ammunition they also killed many unarmed civilians - notably in the Ballymurphy Massacre in Belfast during August 1971 in which 11 people died over a period of 48 hours; and the Bloody Sunday Massacre in Derry in January 1972 in which 14 people died.
Plastic bullets were deployed for the first time in Britain at Broadwater Farm in October 1985. Commenting afterwards Sir Kenneth Newman admitted to being surprised that the operational commander had considered that the riot could have been contained without their use. Sir Kenneth had been Chief Constable of the RUC from 1976 to 1980 and was appointed Commissioner of the Met Police in 1982 remaining in office until 1987.
Perhaps the development of police mass surveillance and intelligence gathering may be more recognisable to today's younger activists, but such practices are deeply based in the counter insurgency theories developed by Major General Frank Kitson, who wrote what was to become the definitive text book on the subject, entitled "Low Intensity Operations". It was based on active service against national liberation movements in Malaya, Cyprus and Kenya. Shortly after the publication of the book in 1971, he was posted to the North of Ireland, tasked with overhauling the military intelligence system.
Intel, down to the minutest detail about every adult in the "suspect" community was collected and computerised. The "suspect" community were the Nationalists. It was deliberately aimed at criminalising the whole of that community.
The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 officially brought that particular period to an end. However, it would be remiss to forget the history and to fall for the idea that racism in Britain or its policing is, or ever was, "nicer" or "more restrained" or indeed "policing by consent".
After all it was Britain that powered the Atlantic trade to provide our American cousins with their enslaved labour in what were originally our colonies. It's clear that the British Empire was the greatest engine of colonialism in the world during the nineteenth century and that the principle idealogical system that helped continue it's rule at home and enforce it abroad, was that of the claimed racial superiority of white British people.
But if Britain has lost its Empire why does racism and inequality persist and why does policing continue to uphold this rotten state of affairs? Many of us believe that it is because racism and inequality are the inevitable product of the class system and help to sustain that system. There is no hierarchy of oppressions involved here. The threads of racism and class division are woven into the basic fabric of our society and are mutually self - perpetuating.
'Policing - Reform or Abolition' - to follow.
Monday, 8 June 2020
Further on Black Lives Matter
Patrick Sikorski
The Murder of George Floyd and the Anti Racist Struggle
Points
1. As Spike Lee said there is is nothing “new” about the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota USA – it’s been going on for over 400 years.
2. What is new is that someone with a smart phone recorded the obscenity (with a sound track revealing a fragment of racist taunting from the murderer) and it went global.
3. So in the context of the biggest global pandemic for over a century which has stripped bare the gross inequalities in the richest country in the world, another black person is killed while being arrested by an officer of the law, on “suspicion of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 note”.
4. Trump declares himself the President of Law and Order and threatens the protesters and the American people with first the National Guard and then the Army under the Insurrection Act. He knows the latter isn’t feasible (just yet…..) but in the meantime he’s mobilising his base – including it’s armed militia wing. And for good measure he’s mobilising God as well, after having the steps of St. John’s Church in Washington DC cleared by tear gas of peaceful protesters.
5. Apparently recent polls show that 82% of Americans believe in God. 62% of them believe that the virus is a message telling humanity to change; 55 per cent believe that God will protect them.
6. There is more to it. He (that’s Trump!) brandishes a bible in defence of the divine rights of property over and above the people’s claim to human rights – the Founding Fathers would be proud. Not for him any liberal style support for protests at an injustice whilst denouncing the rioting and looting – no, the message is very clear - just get off the streets and get back to work and back into your ghettos.
In a leaked conversation with former staff members, Obama called the US response to the Covid epidemic “an absolute chaotic disaster”. Majority Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, reinforcing the stereotype of the white Southerner telling the black man he ought know his place, said “Obama should have kept his mouth shut”.
7. But ideology and its constant reproduction can only continue to work effectively if it has a secure basis in material reality. The material reality for most working and middle class Americans is that their standards of living, job security, pensions and health care have been systematically trashed over the last 40 years – and that includes the Obama years. And then came the Crash of 2008 and the plague of 2019.
Now half of all Americans receive health insurance through their employers. If the unemployment rate, caused by the lockdowns, continues at 20% it is estimated that as many as 43 million will loose their insurance.
8. With long practised speed and precision, the mass media both in the USA and UK, frame the events as rioters versus protestors and outside agitators versus legitimate local citizens to turn attention away from how heavy law enforcement de-legitimises all policing, at the same time as taking the spotlight off the impunity with which neo-fascists wield assault rifles both inside and outside state capitols.
9. As one American civil rights activist, Cornel West, says;
“ It also obscures the role of the repressive apparatus in preserving an order so unjust and cruel. The rule of big money, class and gender hierarchies and global militarism must be highlighted in our profound concern with anti – black police murder and brutality.”
10. The explosion of solidarity across much of the USA and finding a strong echo here in the UK and elsewhere, mark a new and decisive chapter. The response was immediate and strong – no laborious build up – just anti – racist action. Home made placards and leadership on the road, on the day and collective. Tens of thousands of overwhelmingly young people in a multi- racial rejection of a barbaric killing and the system that spawned it. It takes guts to face off riot police, deal with tear gas and batons and defy curfews. It takes magnificent moral and physical courage and the clean, clear sightedness of youth, uncluttered by the heavy loads of serial defeats, to do the right thing.
Such events set a seal with the future for those who directly partake in them and many will take up those challenges. They will form a new leadership in their communities and their workplaces. They will need to reach out to form united fronts with others who will step up to the plate. At the same time the struggle of the BAME community needs no lectures from anyone on how to conduct that struggle. They have the right to use whatever means are necessary to achieve their liberation from oppression
The Murder of George Floyd and the Anti Racist Struggle
Points
1. As Spike Lee said there is is nothing “new” about the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota USA – it’s been going on for over 400 years.
2. What is new is that someone with a smart phone recorded the obscenity (with a sound track revealing a fragment of racist taunting from the murderer) and it went global.
3. So in the context of the biggest global pandemic for over a century which has stripped bare the gross inequalities in the richest country in the world, another black person is killed while being arrested by an officer of the law, on “suspicion of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 note”.
4. Trump declares himself the President of Law and Order and threatens the protesters and the American people with first the National Guard and then the Army under the Insurrection Act. He knows the latter isn’t feasible (just yet…..) but in the meantime he’s mobilising his base – including it’s armed militia wing. And for good measure he’s mobilising God as well, after having the steps of St. John’s Church in Washington DC cleared by tear gas of peaceful protesters.
5. Apparently recent polls show that 82% of Americans believe in God. 62% of them believe that the virus is a message telling humanity to change; 55 per cent believe that God will protect them.
6. There is more to it. He (that’s Trump!) brandishes a bible in defence of the divine rights of property over and above the people’s claim to human rights – the Founding Fathers would be proud. Not for him any liberal style support for protests at an injustice whilst denouncing the rioting and looting – no, the message is very clear - just get off the streets and get back to work and back into your ghettos.
In a leaked conversation with former staff members, Obama called the US response to the Covid epidemic “an absolute chaotic disaster”. Majority Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, reinforcing the stereotype of the white Southerner telling the black man he ought know his place, said “Obama should have kept his mouth shut”.
7. But ideology and its constant reproduction can only continue to work effectively if it has a secure basis in material reality. The material reality for most working and middle class Americans is that their standards of living, job security, pensions and health care have been systematically trashed over the last 40 years – and that includes the Obama years. And then came the Crash of 2008 and the plague of 2019.
Now half of all Americans receive health insurance through their employers. If the unemployment rate, caused by the lockdowns, continues at 20% it is estimated that as many as 43 million will loose their insurance.
8. With long practised speed and precision, the mass media both in the USA and UK, frame the events as rioters versus protestors and outside agitators versus legitimate local citizens to turn attention away from how heavy law enforcement de-legitimises all policing, at the same time as taking the spotlight off the impunity with which neo-fascists wield assault rifles both inside and outside state capitols.
9. As one American civil rights activist, Cornel West, says;
“ It also obscures the role of the repressive apparatus in preserving an order so unjust and cruel. The rule of big money, class and gender hierarchies and global militarism must be highlighted in our profound concern with anti – black police murder and brutality.”
10. The explosion of solidarity across much of the USA and finding a strong echo here in the UK and elsewhere, mark a new and decisive chapter. The response was immediate and strong – no laborious build up – just anti – racist action. Home made placards and leadership on the road, on the day and collective. Tens of thousands of overwhelmingly young people in a multi- racial rejection of a barbaric killing and the system that spawned it. It takes guts to face off riot police, deal with tear gas and batons and defy curfews. It takes magnificent moral and physical courage and the clean, clear sightedness of youth, uncluttered by the heavy loads of serial defeats, to do the right thing.
Such events set a seal with the future for those who directly partake in them and many will take up those challenges. They will form a new leadership in their communities and their workplaces. They will need to reach out to form united fronts with others who will step up to the plate. At the same time the struggle of the BAME community needs no lectures from anyone on how to conduct that struggle. They have the right to use whatever means are necessary to achieve their liberation from oppression
Friday, 5 June 2020
Trump thinks he needs a civil war
The murder of George Floyd is not some incredible moment of police madness. It is the result of the legitimisation of legal killing of black people in the USA. The reason why George Floyd's killer has been charged with murder is because millions of Americans, led by the black population, have revolted against this well-known fact. There will be huge results.
The black leadership in the US (and across the globe, including the UK) has rolled out (yet again) the many, socially and politically-hidden truths, of consistent, regular, organised, systemic, racism and its often deadly consequences. This blog is narrowed to Trump's reaction.
First is the the measure and strength of genuine mass movements of the people. The effect on the system and the regime of the mightiest power in the world is spectacular. The action, on the streets, by the millions, proves unstoppable. This is demonstrated by the utter failure of the Obama presidency, who mobilised an enormous movement to win his election, but who incessantly closed down action by the people when it came to challenging the power of the state and government - even for his mild reforms. His response today to Trump? 'Vote'. Obama, even in his own terms, is still failing.
But the mass movement that emerged from the murder of George Floyd is not waiting or relying on Obama's call to 'vote' in November. The movement, if it fully succeeds, will certainly change the new President but also the effective implementation of reform by changing society. Already, following days of mass action, the whole picture in the US is starting to shift. Obama could not do it in his eight years.
So how is Trump facing this? For the first time since his election in 2016 he is frightened. He was always entirely interested in his own victory. For years, in which his poisonous, self-seeking behaviour seemed to have ranged from comedy to danger, his polling numbers remained stable from the mid 30%s to the low 40s. (Even after his recommendation to use bleach to 'defeat' the Coronavirus.) For the first time since 2016 that has shifted. Can anybody believe that this is the product of Biden and the leadership of the Democrats? The defining strength of the anti-racist upsurge is indisputable. Even the Fox polls, focussed on the key states, are now showing failure for Trump in Arizona, Ohio, Wisconsin. Even Texas has come close. Trump had 306 electoral votes from the states in 2016. Now he has 270 and falling.
This has frightened Trump to the soles of his feet. Even Trump's violent efforts to clear 'the terrorists' outside the White House when he made his 'God like' photo shot, complete with a curled-up Churchilian style bottom lip, did not push up the polls. Which brings in his play with the military. Legally and technically he can do it. If the movement subsides he won't do it - for now. But if the movement continues, and the polls do not lift, Trump will put US soldiers on American streets.
Everybody knows the dangers, including Trump. At the bottom line soldiers do not calm down rioters, they are solely trained to shoot them. Many black leaders suggest that the murder of George Floyd might lead to the continuation and hopefully a positive resolution of the American Civil War - 155 years later. This is not a fantasy. Trump is not worried by a serious, albeit a mini-collision in society - so long as he succeeds. In his idiot way he imagines a battle where he has all the power. Is it necessary, after all lots of old generals don't want it? Big capital are scared, but impotent in the coming slump when the state has all the cards. Meanwhile Trump is toying with his new hot uniform.
The black leadership in the US (and across the globe, including the UK) has rolled out (yet again) the many, socially and politically-hidden truths, of consistent, regular, organised, systemic, racism and its often deadly consequences. This blog is narrowed to Trump's reaction.
First is the the measure and strength of genuine mass movements of the people. The effect on the system and the regime of the mightiest power in the world is spectacular. The action, on the streets, by the millions, proves unstoppable. This is demonstrated by the utter failure of the Obama presidency, who mobilised an enormous movement to win his election, but who incessantly closed down action by the people when it came to challenging the power of the state and government - even for his mild reforms. His response today to Trump? 'Vote'. Obama, even in his own terms, is still failing.
But the mass movement that emerged from the murder of George Floyd is not waiting or relying on Obama's call to 'vote' in November. The movement, if it fully succeeds, will certainly change the new President but also the effective implementation of reform by changing society. Already, following days of mass action, the whole picture in the US is starting to shift. Obama could not do it in his eight years.
So how is Trump facing this? For the first time since his election in 2016 he is frightened. He was always entirely interested in his own victory. For years, in which his poisonous, self-seeking behaviour seemed to have ranged from comedy to danger, his polling numbers remained stable from the mid 30%s to the low 40s. (Even after his recommendation to use bleach to 'defeat' the Coronavirus.) For the first time since 2016 that has shifted. Can anybody believe that this is the product of Biden and the leadership of the Democrats? The defining strength of the anti-racist upsurge is indisputable. Even the Fox polls, focussed on the key states, are now showing failure for Trump in Arizona, Ohio, Wisconsin. Even Texas has come close. Trump had 306 electoral votes from the states in 2016. Now he has 270 and falling.
This has frightened Trump to the soles of his feet. Even Trump's violent efforts to clear 'the terrorists' outside the White House when he made his 'God like' photo shot, complete with a curled-up Churchilian style bottom lip, did not push up the polls. Which brings in his play with the military. Legally and technically he can do it. If the movement subsides he won't do it - for now. But if the movement continues, and the polls do not lift, Trump will put US soldiers on American streets.
Everybody knows the dangers, including Trump. At the bottom line soldiers do not calm down rioters, they are solely trained to shoot them. Many black leaders suggest that the murder of George Floyd might lead to the continuation and hopefully a positive resolution of the American Civil War - 155 years later. This is not a fantasy. Trump is not worried by a serious, albeit a mini-collision in society - so long as he succeeds. In his idiot way he imagines a battle where he has all the power. Is it necessary, after all lots of old generals don't want it? Big capital are scared, but impotent in the coming slump when the state has all the cards. Meanwhile Trump is toying with his new hot uniform.
Sunday, 24 May 2020
National Recovery Council - a deadly mistake.
The (London) Guardian newspaper of May19 put out the latest scheme developed by the Trades Union Congress with the support of the leadership of a number of large unions. The TUC proposed a National Recovery Council.
This was the substance of the article.
The leader of the Trades Union Congress has declared “the state is back” as the UK’s biggest unions urged the government to form a national recovery council in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The TUC, which represents 48 unions in England and Wales, has called in a report for the establishment of the body, which it argues would bring together government, unions and employers to create a greener and fairer economy.
In an interview with the Guardian, the TUC general secretary said there could be no return to business as usual after the pandemic.
“We’ve got to get that safety net strung again, we’ve got to invest in our public services, which may have to build resilience for a long time to come,” Frances O’Grady said. “Unions are back … but the state is back too.”
Launching the report alongside the shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, on Wednesday, the TUC is calling for a return of the unity shown in the years after the second world war, arguing that the post-conflict decade of social investment created growth of 3.3%, but a decade of austerity after the banking crash resulted in growth of 1.9%.
“This can’t be about working people paying the price again,” said O’Grady. “I think there is a real sense that this has got to be a people’s effort. It can’t just be left to employers or politicians, we’ve got to step up too.”
The TUC, which represents 5.5 million members, is also calling for an overhaul of the UK’s business model – which it argues is based on low-paid, insecure jobs and the exclusion of workers from decision-making. It has called for an increase in the minimum wage to £10 an hour, a public sector pay rise, a ban on zero-hours contracts and a job guarantee scheme – particularly for young people facing a bleak future.
It praises the government’s “constructive” work with unions on the creation of the job retention scheme, adding that the ability of local authorities to take homeless people off the street, the emergence of mutual support groups and the adaptability of the workforce, as well as government interventions, “show the speed and scale of what can be done when it is necessary”. It adds that the same commitment and urgency must be applied to tackling the climate emergency.
“We’ve run out of excuses about creating a carbon-free economy,” said O’Grady.
Industry bailouts and any state investment in the next few months must come with an “Olympics-style plan” for jobs and a minimum requirement for the use of UK products and services to rebuild UK manufacturing, says the report. With unemployment levels set to increase dramatically, it argues jobless people should be given a “funded individual learning account” to learn new skills, with the promise of a job at the end of training.
“We’ve got to build back brick by brick, but it has to be fair, decent rewards, fair taxes – all of that has got to be back on the agenda,” said O’Grady. “I think the centre of gravity has shifted and people are remembering why equality matters.”
WiredGov, a well known internet magazine, followed up by responding with a lead article written by a professor from the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).
IEA Editorial and Research Fellow Professor Len Shackleton responded to the TUC’s report published yesterday, A Better Recovery, which calls for the government to form a National Recovery Council
“The TUC’s plan for ‘a better recovery’ would almost guarantee we would have no recovery at all.
“Until Covid-19 hit, the UK’s labour market was at its most successful in decades with very high levels of employment and the lowest unemployment rate for 45 years. This was due in large measure to its flexibility compared to the scelerotic continental European economies. To abandon that approach would be foolish in the extreme.
“A higher minimum wage for all workers, pay increases for the public sector, a ban on zero hours contracts, higher benefits and other goodies proposed by the TUC are fantasies in the current climate and would worsen unemployment.
“The proposal for a tripartite National Recovery Council would be a pointless talking shop. It resembles the National Economic Development Council of the 1960s, a decade of industrial strife which too many unionists look on with fondness. No government can provide a ‘job guarantee’ of the sort the TUC report calls for.
“These measures, and others such as the plan to ban outsourcing and to subsidise new ‘green’ businesses, would mean a greatly increased tax burden on the private sector which ultimately finances far too many of the UK’s public sector trade unionists. Our way out of the recovery must involve a bigger role for the market economy, not its further constriction by government.”
The writers of a letter that was published 'Big Economic Upheaval in UK,' May 19 in this blog, opened out a framework for a post Coronavirus, which was an alternative to the economy and society actually being prepared by the government in the UK. The introduction to that May 19 letter follows;
'Active socialists, trade unionists and people fighting for radical change have presented a public statement that prepares a new vision - post Coronavirus. The statement will be sent out to many. This 'Polecon blog' has also accepted to post the declaration. It provides a powerful and positive platform for the future.
Following the same understanding, Polecon fully supports the efforts being made by the Peoples Assembly to unite a broad movement aimed at resisting the new austerity being prepared by the Tory government. Polecon asks the Peoples Assembly and all those with the relevant expertise and experience, including those supporting Labour's Manifestos of 2017 and 2019, to assemble around a commission designed to prepare the new economy.'
The TUC's suggestion for a National Recovery Council in common with the Johnson-led Tory government is, potentially, a deadly mistake. In the first place the cautious and backward objectives of 'A Better Recovery' will fail - even in the completely unlikely case of an economic coalition with Johnson's government. Second, the idea that a so called 'national agreement', rising above the the years of the huge attack on millions of working class people in every aspect of their lives, is viable, or even acceptable, is ridiculous. For those who really had to defend the NHS, who had to mobilise and campaign to squeeze the state and stop a plague, the TUC proposal is denying the truth of the relentless offensive that has been the real experience for most of those people. Third, Johnson may well play with the TUC's offer in order to promote a fake social unity - another, different way to emasculate any real opposition. And finally, if some of the TUC leadership think that the Tories will be exposed when they fail to adopt the TUC's proposal - it will be Johnson that will 'expose' the 'unfriendly' TUC. A serious alternative is put as fast and clear as possible onto the table. Tricks do not work when the wealthy and the rest have to finally resolve their fundamental arguments.
The TUC leadership have walked through the Tory door.
Of course there should be critical change in the new economy and its foundations in a new society. And this must stand as a plain and fundamental opposition to the failed and dangerous future we are being offered. There is huge social support for new nationalisations, for curbing finance and for a new industrial revolution. And, with the 14 million voters in 2017 and the 10 million in 2019, under the worst offensive since the battles for mass unions, women's rights and the welfare state, there is a potentially massive social block that can start to win a whole society. But only if the Tories are minimised from the start, rather than promoted by yet another hollow version of Johnson's 'national unity.'
The writers of the May 19 letter in the blog - Big Economic Upheaval in UK - now ask the Peoples Assembly to allow an urgent response to the TUC proposal, including major discussions, leading up to 'Day X'.
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