Among the words offered by the Thesaurus that fit with 'conjuncture' is the word 'apex.' In a political sense 'conjuncture' suggests a gathering of important political events and attitudes that summarise a moment (in time and/or place) and that creates a definition, or meaning, of the main engine of events. 'Apex' is better though, because it also suggests a pinnacle which, in turn, suggests a new slope ahead.
This short argument is going to try to identify the pinnacle and offer some comments about the slope.
In fact all over the left (and the more scary right) in Europe and the US, politicians, writers, reporters and speculators are focussing on the conjuncture. Why? Because it is obvious that globalisation is bursting. Despite Tony Blair's think-tank, etc, etc, globalisation has been bubbling up higher and higher for some years and now it is popping across the world. Blair (and many others) sincerely believed that globalisation was the ultimate story of capitalism and that it has decades, perhaps millennia, to go. This blog has often argued about the inherent weakness of globalisation. Many others thought so too. So we can leave that item aside for the moment. Whether you think that globalisation was a consequence of the weakness of western imperialism or you think it was all down to Corona, globalisation, as it stood, is over.
The main forces that are bursting the global bubble are the US and, latterly, the EU. China is still (desperately) trying to make tariffs go away. (Chinese economists are publicly hinting at the removal of their funds from the US if they do not pull back from current economic attacks.) But the massive U.S. financial system has assets of about $100 trillion as of the end of 2019, according to the International Monetary Fund. There is no doubt that the US still runs the world.
It’s not clear how large China’s financial system overall is. Chinese banking institutions had assets of 285 trillion yuan ($40.7 trillion) at the end of September 2019, according to state reports. Total Chinese investment in the U.S. economy has reached over $145 billion. And China owns about $1.1 trillion in U.S. debts. (This sounds big - and the Chinese are beginning to use it as a lever - but it is still less than Japanese loans in the US.)
The US, followed by Australia and now the UK and Germany, are pushing back against Chinese exports and their general, global, investment. This will deepen, regardless even if Trump is dumped or Boris is really back-stabbed by Gove or the EU mandarins start moaning at Merkel.
These terrifyingly facts (a massive economic war has always led to the real thing) are covered over in most of the West's population by (governments who are dealing with) Corona. It is apparently the Corona that is changing the world, shutting up the big shops in the City centres, stopping the lips-tasting Langdoc this year in the garden, destroying all those charming young peoples' cheery jobs. There are acres and acres of books, pods, blogs, programmes and conversations about how the western world will now change because of the Pandemic. Bollocks. What is happening is that the West is using their state powers to deal with the Pandemic but also (see Boris's denial of any more austerity) to create a new type of capitalist investment. Does anyone think that after Corona we will be just the same as 2019? That thought is enough to show that Corona is not the issue.
Everybody is in to it. Cummings, Boris's advisor-stroke-brain, wants the UK to build its own £2trillion version of FANG - (Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google.) There are similar dreams across the Western nations as politicians starry eyes get-going by rooting up more and more breathless names of future tech that will provide a new centre of the globe (and another decade or two of stupendous wealth.) The UK's version is to be a signal part of the 'famous five' - of the US (big daddy), UK (first son), Australia, Canada, New Zealand - that will hopefully wrap up the wealth of Asia and Africa's demand for the new, Anglo-Saxon FANG.
Sadly, this momentum has been also picked up by parts of the left (Varoufakis, Paul Mason et al) who have begun to imagine that the new state-based initiatives will create some openings for state action that could be used to distribute wealth and reduce private ownership. But we have already seen how the 'new' state action works. Test and Trace, which is a mess particularly in England, gets called by Boris 'the NHS Test and Trace' when he is denying all of his mistakes. But Test and Trace in England was sold to SERCO, one of those most useless companies that has regularly failed in all their other 'public services. The Apex has provided state action mainly to hold up companies and to re-finance some of the NHS. But we have now reached the slope; a slope that will bring the fantasy FANG mark 2, and any other new version of capitalism, smashing to the ground as the state desperately delivers...to private enterprise. (Has everyone forgotten the first dot.com economic collapse in 2000?)
Nevertheless, the new champions of the would-be 'famous five', with their scruffy West Coast clothes and their false hatred of the 'deep state' and their pretences that they are the underdog, (eg.,Cummings, Boris et al) sincerely imagine that this vast new FANG is just there, an inch away from the treasure chest. Sadly, the tech revolution, tied as it is to future of capitalism, has already run out of substantial new tech! All the main super-future tech goals are already failing. And the idea that something elementally new is just around the corner but unseen by the current FANG lot, is simply ludicrous. Yet they are ready to dole out £billions to private firms that sound good. In reality, the only thing that can and will be extended and promoted is more and more surveillance, which is a definite 'yes' as far as the use of dominant state powers are concerned. Surveillance is particularly required in the West as the upsurges after Corona begin.
(And breaking treaties? The French described the truth of the 'perfidious Albion' centuries ago. The British state is known across the whole world for its history of lies and twists. Take the Middle East in only one example. The secret agreement between Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot in May 1916 divided the Ottoman lands into British and French spheres – and came to light only when it was published by the Bolsheviks.
Boris is breaking the EU Withdrawal Agreement because, if there is no Canada style agreement over Brexit, and his power to use whatever state money to build new tech is diminished, he knows that the EU would be left alone, building new Customs at the edge of Southern Ireland. The Brits are not going to do it. Neither will the Unionists. Boris is of course hostile anyway to the Nationalists in Northern Ireland.)
Sunday, 13 September 2020
Saturday, 5 September 2020
How Scotland can win its independence.
There is a discussion in Scotland about setting up a new party. It is barely months away from the next Scottish General Election. Despite coronavirus continuing to dominate the agenda, more and more, party politics is coming out of lockdown. The idea of the new Party is that it would be organised so that the SNP (and their coalition Greens) could win all of their constituency votes, but the new party, coming from outside the constituencies and represented the list votes only, would be able to bring the single independence issue to a bigger, combined majority vote in the Holyrood Parliament. With its increased pressure (both on the SNP and Boris's Westminster government) the new party and the SNP vote would more likely force the second referendum for Scottish independence. This argument is the backdrop to the increasing hints and implications regularly surfacing against the SNP leadership and Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's first minister.
1. For some months now the polls in Scotland have supported Scottish independence. The figures roughly show the same numbers delivered by the referendum in 2014 - except it is now in reverse! The figures give a growing majority for independence. It is becoming Scottish society's new norm.
Since 2007 the Scottish Nationalist Party has been, and remains, the largest party in Scotland. The SNP is overwhelmingly dominant in Scottish government elections - despite the failed 2014 referendum result.
More dramatically, the SNP leadership are now, overwhelmingly, the most serious challenge to the UK's government. Not only has the SNP leadership out-managed and out-delivered the responses to Covid-19, it has also restored the issue of Scottish independence - front and centre - in the UK, despite PM Boris Johnson's denial of any new independence referendum.
The problem facing the SNP - and all who now support a new referendum for Scottish independence - is that Boris Johnson is the leader of a large majority of MPs in Westminster and he and they all oppose any new referendum in Scotland. The British Parliament and its government has a legal right to control Scotland's ultimate destiny.
2. Recently in Spain, the Catalonia province and its elected Catalonian leaders, decided to hold their own referendum for independence against Spanish rule. The referendum was not accepted by the Spanish government. It was declared unconstitutional on 7 September 2017 and the referendum was suspended by the Constitutional Court of Spain after the request from the Spanish government, who then declared it a breach of the Spanish Constitution. The Catalonian referendum was denied and its leadership crushed.
3. This is the crisis of the next referendum for Scottish independence. And this is what the SNP leadership said about a new referendum in September 2020.
'That’s why we’re moving forward with giving Scotland the choice over our future – and before the end of this Parliament, we will publish a draft Bill setting out the proposed terms and timing of an independence referendum, as well as the proposed question that people will be asked in that referendum.'
'The 2021 Holyrood election will then be crucial – we will make the case for Scotland to become an independent country, and seek a clear endorsement of Scotland’s right to choose our own future.'
But nothing is published by the SNP that offers a way through the Westminster government's dominant majority legal-lock.
4. Virtually all of the radical left in Scotland also demand a new referendum. At the moment the left (which does not include the decaying and dying remnants of Scottish Labour) is driving in two directions.
First is the AUOB (All Under One Banner) marches across Scotland in 2019. On 07/10/2019, the Edinburgh march - in the rain - attracted over 200,000 people - the largest demonstration in Scotland ever. The SNP leadership were effectively forced onto the platform - and their constitutional nervousness was noted. Today this unresolved question remains open under the general significance of the Corona-virus, but the SNP September 2020 statement is still moot in respect of the inevitable challenge with Westminster. The desire of the left (and some of the SNP deep-nationalists) to make independence the main, defining issue in the coming election in 2022, stems from the power of the AUOB movement.
Second, a smaller left group in Scotland insists that the referendum has to be effected only on socialist terms. The SNP and its leadership are defined as Scotland's Tories and building a socialist leadership of the referendum is the keystone to (and the only way) that Scottish independence can be won.
While the abstract and sectarian perspective of this second approach speaks loudly for itself, nevertheless the broad, mass-movement, now in suspension, cannot project Scotland's marches and its polls for a referendum as the answer to overcoming the UK government. Additionally, the problem that would ensue is that such a Scottish referendum, repudiated by the UK government, would become a different issue again across all British politics. The British state would define the left's Scottish referendum as an illegal initiative, and that would be seen as an attack on the democracy of the UK as a whole.
5. Here is an answer that opens the politics beyond Scottish 'political parties coming out of lockdown' and the dubious weight of Scottish marches and opinion polls across the UK, albeit their value in Scotland. The approach derives from the understanding that Scotland's 'right' for independence is its constant and unacceptable restraint created by the English based Parliament and governments. Scotland's Westminster laws and governments simply do not represent the laws and governments that the majority of Scot's agree with. That has been the case since the 1970s. For 50 years Scotland has not been able to implement the full requirements of its own society. This, fundamental fact, means that Scotland cannot implement its own democracy.
These are examples of what a lack of democracy means and what should happen about it - as soon as possible - to begin the fight for democracy in Scotland. First, the SNP and the majority of Scots think that Britain's Trident nuclear submarines are unacceptable. Trident is a British policy to 'defend' a nation that feels the need to prepare for devastating war across the world. Most Scots however want to be a small nation who look after their own people. This is what should happen. The SNP should remove Trident, close it down. Let Westminster move it to a nation that supports it. Mass action will certainly be needed to stop nuclear Scotland. If the SNP do not fight this issue, actively, in a mass movement, then they do not fight for Scottish democracy.
The implementation of a humane immigration policy, immediate alliances with surrounding nations, major conferences nationally and internationally to re-model the new democracy, including with other ex-UK citizens that are supportive. These are vital measures now to prove a new, progressive nation is being born. And they can be started in the face of Westminster's failing democracy - as an alternative society.
From practical steps like these (changing Westminster taxes, re-organising a new Bank of Scotland and the building of a sovereign wealth fund, etc) the argument about Westminster's rights in Scotland will become immediately defensive and then apply for a new treaty and the battle for independence has truly begun. It is the alternative to endless court battles and declining marches.
1. For some months now the polls in Scotland have supported Scottish independence. The figures roughly show the same numbers delivered by the referendum in 2014 - except it is now in reverse! The figures give a growing majority for independence. It is becoming Scottish society's new norm.
Since 2007 the Scottish Nationalist Party has been, and remains, the largest party in Scotland. The SNP is overwhelmingly dominant in Scottish government elections - despite the failed 2014 referendum result.
More dramatically, the SNP leadership are now, overwhelmingly, the most serious challenge to the UK's government. Not only has the SNP leadership out-managed and out-delivered the responses to Covid-19, it has also restored the issue of Scottish independence - front and centre - in the UK, despite PM Boris Johnson's denial of any new independence referendum.
The problem facing the SNP - and all who now support a new referendum for Scottish independence - is that Boris Johnson is the leader of a large majority of MPs in Westminster and he and they all oppose any new referendum in Scotland. The British Parliament and its government has a legal right to control Scotland's ultimate destiny.
2. Recently in Spain, the Catalonia province and its elected Catalonian leaders, decided to hold their own referendum for independence against Spanish rule. The referendum was not accepted by the Spanish government. It was declared unconstitutional on 7 September 2017 and the referendum was suspended by the Constitutional Court of Spain after the request from the Spanish government, who then declared it a breach of the Spanish Constitution. The Catalonian referendum was denied and its leadership crushed.
3. This is the crisis of the next referendum for Scottish independence. And this is what the SNP leadership said about a new referendum in September 2020.
'That’s why we’re moving forward with giving Scotland the choice over our future – and before the end of this Parliament, we will publish a draft Bill setting out the proposed terms and timing of an independence referendum, as well as the proposed question that people will be asked in that referendum.'
'The 2021 Holyrood election will then be crucial – we will make the case for Scotland to become an independent country, and seek a clear endorsement of Scotland’s right to choose our own future.'
But nothing is published by the SNP that offers a way through the Westminster government's dominant majority legal-lock.
4. Virtually all of the radical left in Scotland also demand a new referendum. At the moment the left (which does not include the decaying and dying remnants of Scottish Labour) is driving in two directions.
First is the AUOB (All Under One Banner) marches across Scotland in 2019. On 07/10/2019, the Edinburgh march - in the rain - attracted over 200,000 people - the largest demonstration in Scotland ever. The SNP leadership were effectively forced onto the platform - and their constitutional nervousness was noted. Today this unresolved question remains open under the general significance of the Corona-virus, but the SNP September 2020 statement is still moot in respect of the inevitable challenge with Westminster. The desire of the left (and some of the SNP deep-nationalists) to make independence the main, defining issue in the coming election in 2022, stems from the power of the AUOB movement.
Second, a smaller left group in Scotland insists that the referendum has to be effected only on socialist terms. The SNP and its leadership are defined as Scotland's Tories and building a socialist leadership of the referendum is the keystone to (and the only way) that Scottish independence can be won.
While the abstract and sectarian perspective of this second approach speaks loudly for itself, nevertheless the broad, mass-movement, now in suspension, cannot project Scotland's marches and its polls for a referendum as the answer to overcoming the UK government. Additionally, the problem that would ensue is that such a Scottish referendum, repudiated by the UK government, would become a different issue again across all British politics. The British state would define the left's Scottish referendum as an illegal initiative, and that would be seen as an attack on the democracy of the UK as a whole.
5. Here is an answer that opens the politics beyond Scottish 'political parties coming out of lockdown' and the dubious weight of Scottish marches and opinion polls across the UK, albeit their value in Scotland. The approach derives from the understanding that Scotland's 'right' for independence is its constant and unacceptable restraint created by the English based Parliament and governments. Scotland's Westminster laws and governments simply do not represent the laws and governments that the majority of Scot's agree with. That has been the case since the 1970s. For 50 years Scotland has not been able to implement the full requirements of its own society. This, fundamental fact, means that Scotland cannot implement its own democracy.
These are examples of what a lack of democracy means and what should happen about it - as soon as possible - to begin the fight for democracy in Scotland. First, the SNP and the majority of Scots think that Britain's Trident nuclear submarines are unacceptable. Trident is a British policy to 'defend' a nation that feels the need to prepare for devastating war across the world. Most Scots however want to be a small nation who look after their own people. This is what should happen. The SNP should remove Trident, close it down. Let Westminster move it to a nation that supports it. Mass action will certainly be needed to stop nuclear Scotland. If the SNP do not fight this issue, actively, in a mass movement, then they do not fight for Scottish democracy.
The implementation of a humane immigration policy, immediate alliances with surrounding nations, major conferences nationally and internationally to re-model the new democracy, including with other ex-UK citizens that are supportive. These are vital measures now to prove a new, progressive nation is being born. And they can be started in the face of Westminster's failing democracy - as an alternative society.
From practical steps like these (changing Westminster taxes, re-organising a new Bank of Scotland and the building of a sovereign wealth fund, etc) the argument about Westminster's rights in Scotland will become immediately defensive and then apply for a new treaty and the battle for independence has truly begun. It is the alternative to endless court battles and declining marches.
Wednesday, 5 August 2020
Has Trump opened a new stage in History?
Just at the time that ‘we’ (and it is almost a universal ‘we’) are starting to believe that Trump is not going to be with us come November, it seems that he might be creating a new stage in human history!
And this new stage, already laced with the looming possibility of climate disaster and now pandemic illness, is the most dangerous since WW2. Inevitably and positively though, it will at least coincide with a second wave of socialism in the West.
The alternative to Trump, Biden, is simply that. Nothing but an alternative. The chance that Biden will significantly turn away from Trump’s really crucial policy, if Trump falls, is slight. Biden, and his Vice President, will have the dismal decoration of being the second and third-worst Presidents for a century.
I suggest the ‘new stage’ of history and its dangers, coupled with the possibility of new, socialist advances' for a good reason. The relation of forces across the globe do not favour modern capitalism. And a new socialist wave (there really isn’t any other rounded social alternative) will, like Trump’s engagements, tangle with the pandemic, the ecological crisis, Black Lives Matter, etc, etc, and will challenge the new door opened by Trump that threatens fear and fury across the world.
What is the new stage? It’s not difficult to see. There is already a massive battle underway between the US and China. It began with Obama, who broke the Nixon connection with China building a vast, new military cordon sanitaire, but now the real battle has started. It has world-wide implications already and it will dominate the next historical phase, hopefully for decades, which at least would mean that the nuclear option has been avoided.
This is where modern, global capitalism has come to. What is hidden, like the nurse’s demonstrations for decent wages rather that the handclaps outside the Prime Minister’s house, is the tremendous social and political upsurge that will become the real engine room, fighting the new crisis, already obvious in the Black Lives Matter campaign.
What then is Trump doing (despite moaning his personal laments)? Trump has mobilised a vast range of industrial policy instruments to squeeze China’s exports across the globe. The trade war has been the main, consistent policy since 2016. It is presented by Trump as the defence of the US’s blue-collar workers. (But that really is ‘fake news.) Serious analyses show that overall Chinese imports to the US reduced US workers by 2.5 million, 20% of the manufacturing labour force. That China ‘shock’ has been elevated in the US and, critically, it pulled in key states in the 2016 election.
But is it about trade? Here is a summary of four recent US-based books, recently written by experts in the field.
(A trade war) might have been plausible a few years back , but today’s tensions go far beyond economic issues. Even in the trade arena what dominates the discussions isn’t soy beans or blue-collar industrial jobs, but microchips, cloud computing, 5G, and intelligence gathering by way of TikTok. What is at stake is technological leadership and national security.
US business have already changed their pro-China investment tune. Some have even stopped the investment flow to China. They stand back from their ‘globalist’ background, still wary of the Trump team’s extreme approaches, but supporting whatever Trump can extract from China. So far China has tried to pally. It accepted Trump’s Phase 1 deal signed in January when they committed to buy $200 billion from the US. But the cease-fire has not lasted, mainly because the computer chip companies based in the US wanted no part. Phase 1 looks like collapsing. And the US deficit over Chinese trade remains the painful sore in US economics and politics. The American government is asking a range of institutions, including universities, to treat Chinese partners with suspicion.
Hal Brands (a conservative historian) says
‘If this is a new Cold War, then America needs to rally the Home Front.’ Adam Tooze (LRB 30 July – ‘Whose Century?’) suggests today’s hawks, looking back at this period, see it as the national security counterpart of the American elite’s economic betrayal. While China rose, America slept. For them the Trump administration is a moment of long overdue awakening.
This is not just Trump’s. battle. A powerful section of the American ruling class is mobilising, Frankly, they couldn’t care less about Trump or, for that matter Biden. But they do want to win the war with China. We can already see this emerging daily in the UK’s pro-US politics. And most of the US’s followers across the world will do the same (despite their loathing of Trump.) But there is a huge, majority bloc of peoples and nations who do not want this war and that is the platform for a new common sense that also shifts the power of societies to break their link with the disastrous and lethal political and economic competition to come.
Stephen Roach, a faculty member at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, is the author of the 2014 book "Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China."
His views on Trump's initiative are, sadly, now pretty marginal.
The Gang of Four has now spoken. Over the past month or so, in a virulent polemic against communism reminiscent of the Red-baiting of the 1950s, four top officials of the Trump administration have delivered a series of well-orchestrated tirades against China.
National security adviser Robert O'Brien initially focused on China as an ideological threat. FBI Director Christopher Wray next addressed espionage. Attorney General William Barr did the economics piece. And then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo batted cleanup and pulled it all together in a full frontal attack delivered on July 23 at the Nixon Library in California -- providing an uncomfortable bookend to the opening up of US-China relations that President Richard Nixon initiated with his historic visit to China in 1972.
And the socialist wave that will have to contest the new world war?
Well, it starts with the end. Capitalism's sound and glory, its domination of all of the main continents, its impervious imperialism, is weakening. Capitalism's main state, the USA, is declining - rapidly. Globalisation has not renovated capitalist development. Instead it has already created one devastating economic crisis in 2008. It has reduced the living standards of the vast majority of the western population, because it cannot do anything else. Globalisation is not based on investment, except in terms of wealth. It is not responded to the desperate need for reform, politically and socially, in the main western capitalist nations, because it is not structured to do so.
Instead the Chinese Communist leadership have created a China economic development base and used its capitalism (which in previous days would have been completely in the hands of the West) to provide trade and investment. The Chinese regime of state capitalism has been able to use the growing weakness of the West, and the US in particular, to build its state, and, as the regime would claim, its society. When the West's weakness opened up (not just in China but also in India, in Central America and the Middle East) China opened up their controlled capitalist economy, first through lower industrial wages and today by investment, both internally and internationally. But it was never a part of the West's globalisation. Chinese capitalism WAS structured, via the Chinese state, to provoke rapid internal development, which has worked economically and in raising Chinese living standards dramatically.
However, the Chinese system cannot revive international capitalism either (which is what the US now fears the most.) It is solely related to the Chinese state and its satellites. The US could, in the end, simply steal the $3 trillion of China's 'savings' in the US Fed. Chinese billionaires, already fighting for key posts inside the Chinese Communist Party, are reorganising their regions and building new areas across China. Corruption is deepening. The Chinese Army is beginning to 'hold' key assets. Chinese capitalism is beginning to break out of its state control. And Chinese growth, previously virtually immune from Western economic crises, is faltering.
This is the background for the new wave of socialism.
In the West, most states are now almost simultaneously forced to break up or transform their traditional political parties as capitalism becomes more vicious. The classic examples are in the US, the UK, France, Italy and Spain. But this will not work and most of the traditional ruling classes in those countries know it. At the moment, especially in the context of the pandemic, the fatuous, unanchored and undirected politicians and governments are able to hide aspects of their fragile future. The reality is that as capitalism gets fiercer and more cut off from societies so will the movements demanding changes rise from those societies. Indeed, the bottom 90% of society will become the place that will end up deciding the change it needs. And the politicians will be rinsed as they are tested, failing at each more ridiculous and least democratic step, refusing to face and grapple with the fundamentals of the capitalist order.
Particularly in the western countries, we see the demands for a different sort of politics, of economics and of society, apparently thrown up as a result of the pandemic. Without exception the politicians demand a 'return to normal'. They are desperate to maintain their slippy footfall and want to stop discussions on a different tomorrow. But they are the weakest barrier, and the servants of the state, the military, the police and the secret services are also having their own confusions and convulsions. Lenin once remarked that revolution in under-developed countries would be much easier but achieving socialism much harder. And while revolution would be more difficult in the developed countries, socialism would come much easier. Perhaps the the next revolution in the West (with the exception of the US) will turn out to be the easiest advance? After all, the big majority of society is already actively beginning to shape a different sort of society than the one that is flaking to pieces.
Wednesday, 8 July 2020
The reality of Leicester
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!"
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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.
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.
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.
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