Students Demolish Millbank, Smash Capitalism

"Thugs." "Students Storm Tory HQ in Bloody Day of Riots." "Anarchy in the UK." "Tory HQ Ransacked as Peaceful Demo Ends in Terrifying Violence and Bloodshed." Going off the back of these headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking Central London briefly resembled downtown Sarajevo circa 1994 yesterday afternoon. Apart from one particularly idiotic incident, the "violence" at the UCU/NUS march against the Coalition's plans to dismember higher education was overwhelmingly directed towards property, and hardly different to the argy-bargy you can expect after the average footy match. And in the grand scheme of things, the scenes plastering 24 hours news and the press are but a thimbleful compared to the very real violence the ConDems are rolling out. Theirs might not come at the end of a policeman's baton (though of course, it's always backed up by it), but the misery they're about to inflict on millions of people who depend on cut services, benefits and jobs is infinitely more devastating than a few broken windows at Tory HQ. I think Goldsmiths UCU nail it on the head:

We the undersigned wish to congratulate staff and students on the magnificent anti-cuts demonstration this afternoon. At least 50,000 people took to the streets to oppose the coalition government’s devastating proposals for education.

We also wish to condemn and distance ourselves from the divisive and, in our view, counterproductive statements issued by the UCU and NUS leadership concerning the occupation of the Conservative Party HQ.

The real violence in this situation relates not to a smashed window but to the destructive impact of the cuts and privatisation that will follow if tuition fees are increased and if massive reductions in HE funding are implemented.

Today’s events demonstrate the deep hostility in the UK towards the cuts proposed in the Comprehensive Spending Review. We hope that this marks the beginning of a sustained defence of public services and welfare provision as well as higher education.

John Wadsworth, President GUCU; Des Freedman, Secretary GUCU.

Unfortunately my own experience of 'Demolition 10.11.10' was marred not by violence but an awful coach journey that saw us turn up *two hours* behind schedule. We joined the back of the demo (pictured) at the assembly point just over an hour after John McDonnell tweeted he was marching past parliament. As readers can see, the demo was still 20-wide, very loud and extremely enthusiastic. For once the official estimates of 50,000 were probably *too* conservative. Surely this makes it the largest weekday demo since Bush came to town in 2003?

The political fall out of the march? The demonstration was thrust to the top of *international* news. Far from being an embarrassment to London, as Met Police Chief Sir Paul Stephenson said, yesterday went some way to discarding Britons' reputation as the doormats of Europe. But also the automatic attraction the slightest bit of trouble has for the media means it will be all the more likely on future marches. If a small hardcore are responsible for instigating window smashing, then surely similar elements are going to do it again in the knowledge the media will be there to cover it. The unrepresentative minority and the upstanding journos are caught in a virtuous circle both are happy to escalate. This presents a stewarding challenge - it can't be left to simply happen to allow the great and the good to line up after offering their pious condemnation.

Second, yesterday represents the first major demonstration of anger against the cuts. The Vodaphone protests, the localised public meetings against cuts, none of these have really captured the depth of opposition that's out there. But now a touch paper has been lit that can fire up not just other students, but workers and service users too. It adds to the pressure on the unions to do something. It opens peoples' minds to alternatives, to the idea we don't have to roll over and accept the Tories' assault on jobs and living standards. And I strongly suspect most people away from medialand watching yesterday's events will be thinking 'about bloody time' rather than 'bloody students'.

Then there is the Coalition. As well as the police, the Tories and LibDems were caught on the hop. Typically the Tories condemned a little more and understood a little less, an advantage the labour movement will always have over them. But above all the weight of numbers will have focused not a few LibDem minds on tuition fees. With Dave away in China, all Little Dave could say - when confronted with his party's hypocrisy - was he should be more careful about signing pledges in future. Not that he will get a chance, unless he and his Orange Book cronies are absorbed into the Tories and awarded safe seats before the next election. If I was a LibDem MP I would be very worried about my seat - it will be interesting to see what is strongest when the fees are put to the vote: loyalty to the party whip or the instinct for self-preservation.

NB: The Daily Telegraph are inviting readers to write in and identify the ne'er do wells responsible for yesterday's trouble. Jolly good show. Email them on studentriots@telegraph.co.uk if you recognise the miscreants here and here.

The Mail Attacks Trans' Right to Exist

Normally known for its frothing headlines, The Daily Mail does a nice sideline in sugar-coated bigotry in its 'Femail' pages. Femail concentrates on personal stories, relationships, cosmetics, fashion, celebrity, bunny rabbits and other sexist staples you can expect from "women's" magazines. If the paper proper uses a blunderbuss to blast out its rancid agenda, Femail prefers the quiet drip of conservative arsenic. And yesterday it was trans women who were subject to its subtle poison.

This piece, called 'A Very Peculiar Engagement' is the story of how Charles Kane, a man who transitioned from male to female and back again is now getting married. Ostensibly a story of his and his fiance's complex body image issues (she's a recovering anorexic) Kane uses it as a platform for his opinions about transgenderism. He says:

People who think they are a woman trapped in a male body are, in my opinion, completely deluded. I certainly was. I needed counselling, not a sex-change operation.

And on surgery itself:

Based on my own experiences, I believe sex-change operations should not be allowed, and certainly not on the NHS ... In many ways I see myself a victim of the medical profession.

One word comes to my mind: idiot. Kane is seriously arguing that because he thought transitioning to a woman was a bad mistake therefore everyone else should be denied that opportunity. It seems the desire to change your sex is something akin to a mental illness. Forget the tens of thousands of trans men and women who've transitioned and found it a life-saver (in some cases, literally) - this self-indulgent crap is grist to the mill of bigots, some radical feminists and "anti-essentialists" for whom the idea of fluid and unfixed gender identities are anathema.

Long time readers of The Mail might recognise Kane. Two years ago he appeared in the paper bemoaning his single status. And before then too: I have a clear memory of reading his story around 2004 in the work's canteen. That The Mail have had to use one guy on at least three occasions to call for bans on trans surgery (even if it's "his opinion") just shows how representative he is of trans people at large. A useful antidote to Femail's venom can be found here.

How to do Comradely Polemic

The good old RNCPGBML might effectively spoof what remains of the Stalinoid far left in Britain, but the language employed isn't that far removed from bona fide Western Maoists. Below is a paragraph of a 1974 polemic between two American groups, Workers' Viewpoint Organization and the Communist League. As per the general rule of the tiniest of tiny revolutionary groups, the denunciatory decibels increase in proportion to the political proximity rival groups have to each other. Just witness some of the polemics between the Spartacists and its wayward progeny in the International Bolshevik Tendency and the League for the Fourth International, for example.

This comes from Leftist Trainspotters, the one mailing list no discerning sectarian can do without. In this the WVO angrily takes the CL to task:

As we have seen, the "C"L's counter-revolutionary nature comes out of every pore, on every issue. Despite its Marxist-Leninist phrasemongering, the "C"L has its feet planted firmly in the worst of two worlds – the worlds of revisionism and Trotskyism. On its right foot, the "C"L wears the notoriously stinking shoe that the social-imperialist Khrushchev once waved in the United Nations, while on its "left" foot the "C"L wears the battered and soiled shoe that Trotsky once wore while trotting around the world demanding his "permanent revolution." The "C"L today proudly wears both of these shoes, stumbling around the "USNA," trying to build its "Party."

Aren't Maoist polemics a beautiful thing to behold? Don't you just love the "C"?

I wonder if the people involved in this spat, which probably numbered less than the four-strong curry evening I had a few weeks back, ever stopped to think if this nonsense helped. It's one thing to fight for "theoretical clarity" (always the standard excuse for hyperbolic exercises of revolutionary identity politics), but quite another to rubbish your opponent to the point of self-parody. Did the thought ever occur that the working class they claim to lead might see it and *not* fall into line behind them? That it is so absurd that 36 years later an ex-Trot might seize upon it for blog filler (and a few cheap laffs) and show them up for the joke political tradition they are? Probably not - it's a job of work figuring out what groups of socialists you can denounce next as counterrevolutionary running dogs of US imperialism.

New Left Blogs

It's time for the latest crop of new and newish left blogs that have caught my eye over the last month. A number of anti-cuts blogs are starting to come through, which is a trend I expect will continue over the coming months. But once again, apart from the newcomer from the Socialist Party in Ireland, the organised far left are conspicuous by their absence. Are comrades too busy campaigning and selling papers to start blogs these days?

1. Andy Burnham MP (Labour) (Twitter)
2. Bad Reputation (Unaligned/Feminist) (Twitter)
3. Chinese for Labour (Labour)
4. Circumlimina (Irish - Unaligned) (Twitter)
5. Diary of a Benefit Scrounger (Unaligned/Disability Activism)
6. Elizannie (Labour)
7. Fermanagh Fightback! (Socialist Party Ireland)
8. Golem XIV - Thoughts (Unaligned)
9. Hackney Downs Labour (Labour) (Twitter)
10. Minority Thought (Unaligned) (Twitter)
11. Next Year Country (Canadian - Unaligned/Ecosocialist)
12. No Comment (Unaligned) (Twitter)
13. Norwich Justice for Ian Tomlinson (J4IM)
14. Paperback Rioter (Unaligned) (Twitter)
15. Political Dynamite (Unaligned) (Twitter)
16. Rage against the Coalition (Unaligned)
17. Shibley Rahman (Labour) (Twitter)
18. Step to the Left (Labour)
19. The Brain of Chris Allen (Unaligned) (Twitter)
20. The Broken of Britain (Unaligned/Disability Activism)
21. The Poll Pot (Unaligned) (Twitter)
22. UK Uncut (Unaligned) (Twitter)
23. Wine in the Morning (Unaligned) (Twitter)

That's it for October/November. If you know of any new blogs (a year or less old) that haven't been featured before, drop me a line via email, the comments or on Twitter. The new blog round up is posted on the first Sunday of every month.

Zombies and Ideology

The latest iteration of the zombie zeitgeist, The Walking Dead premiered on British TV last night. Based on the comic books of the same name, it has all the originality of a Westlife album and deals in tropes so tired they ought be interred in a nearby retirement home. But despite that, the pilot episode - 'Days Gone Bye' - works very well.

Sheriff's Deputy Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln, or Egg from This Life) is wounded in a shoot out and wakes up in a hospital bed. In scenes reminiscent of 28 Days Later and Day of the Triffids he gets his bearings and staggers through a deserted but battle scarred hospital. Rick comes across a half-eaten nurse, walls daubed with blood, and a locked door bulging with trapped undead. He gropes his way down a murky stairwell into the corpse-strewn grounds. It is a quiet desolate scene punctuated only by the buzzing of feeding flies. There are unmistakable signs of battle but vehicles, military equipment and battlefield positions are all intact. It's not long before Rick is confronted with the full gravity of what's happened. Pausing to pick up a bike on his way home he notices a badly mangled decomposing corpse ... and it notices him.

And so the scene is set for a gripping and gritty pilot episode. The production values are very high and the characters are very believable. Walking is the first zombie serial for TV, but if it maintains this standard it need be the only one.

Assuming the first season is deemed a success by notoriously fickle television executives I expect some elements of the comic book won't cross over to the small screen. Sex and violence is one thing, but torture, rape and paedophilia are quite another. But I expect the plot - which is little more than a spin on the classical 'group of survivors find a hold out, gets overrun, finds a hold out, gets overrun' template - will survive without many changes.

But what is it about shambling bags of bones bent on eating your brain that commands widespread cultural attention and popularity? Why now? Why zombies? I have a couple of sketchy ideas.

In one sense the rise of zombie culture condenses a number of ambivalences and anxieties haunting the 'bourgeois condition'. As I've argued before, Charlie Brooker's Dead Set could be read as a revenge-of-the-working-class allegory (despite his injunction that the mini-series is "not a chin-stroking exercise"). And the same is true of wider zombie culture as manufactured by various media interests. Despite burying the Soviet Union and having things their own way for 30 years (at least in Britain and the US), the end of history has proven to be a period as uncertain as any other. Far from ushering in a von Hayekian utopia, capitalism has been rocked to its foundations by a financial crisis few of its apologists saw coming. Keynes has been dug up and reanimated to get things going again, but at the same time the spectre of Marx has been disturbed and has taken to haunting their imaginations. On the one hand there's the geopolitical challenge represented by the Chinese (communists!). And on the other the declining salience of mainstream political parties, the retrenchment of irreverence, and the uncertainty around the character popular opposition to the cuts will eventually assume make the dangerous classes ... well ... dangerous again.

Zombies as a horror staple are the result of some unfathomable biological or supernatural crisis that cannot be reversed. They are mindless. They are faceless. They are ugly. And they want to invade your home and feast on your flesh. If this does not work as an allegory for bourgeois attitudes to and fears of the working class, I don't know what does.

But this in itself cannot explain why zombies are so zeitgeisty. It might go some way to help explain how effortlessly the media's creative minds churn out undead product, but does not account for how this continually finds an eager market. I would suggest this has something to do with consumer capitalism. Since Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead, the point has been repeated to banality that zombies are a satire of a society that encourages people to find their souls in consumption. This, in my opinion, is no longer the case. Neoliberalism has assiduously cultivated an individualism that is not stupefied by the aura of the commodity. Instead contemporary capitalist culture offers choices, which in turn demands an active individual subjectivity capable of making them. Hence consumption is less a matter of finding one's self in objects and more objects being a means of marking and displaying personality and identity. This is not dumb mass culture as Adorno and the Frankfurt School would have it, but massified bourgeois culture: of the penetration of the social fabric by the common sense, outlook, and individuating practices of the ruling class.

What's this got to do with zombies?

1) Neoliberalism and bourgeois culture places the individual (the self) at the centre of the universe. From this perspective the bulk of society appear as an immense collection of herd-like Others engaged in an array of apparently meaningless and mundane activities. You and your immediate circle are the individuals. The rest are a homogenous mass.

2) Sometimes so many choices can be tiring.

Zombie product can appeal to both these coordinates of neoliberal individualism. Zombiescapes of The Walking Dead, Zombieland, World War Z are very simple. It's an escapist world where choice is taken away. There is no ambiguity - all zombies want to nibble on your innards. None of them will pretend friendship or seduce you by guile. It's a black and white world of life and death. Your fellow survivors might be dodgy characters, but you won't wake up in the night to find them chewing your leg.

But at the same time zombies offer an opportunity for asserting superiority, mastery, contempt, and individuality against the mass. Zombies are slow and stupid. Humans are quick and intelligent. Zombies are limited by their reach. Humans can use all manner of weapons. Provided they are not swarming in great numbers, humans run rings around them - lopping off a limb here, beheading another there, removing their teeth, chaining them up, what fun can be had! And all without a troubled conscience too.

In other words zombie settings offer a simple fantasy where one can assert the self - sometimes heroically - against the world. You have to beat the undead hordes. Unlike the ever-popular vampires, one cannot join them. Zombies tune into ruling class anxieties and a popular longing for recognition and simplicity. And as long as capitalism blindly lurches from crisis to crisis in the mindless pursuit of profits, so the popularity of the zombie will endure.

Celebrity Strikebreakers

What do Jeremy Vine, Andrew Collins, Emma Crosby, Chris Moyles, Aled Jones, Chris Evans, Andrew Neil, Terry Wogan, Simon McCoy, Mike Bushell, Peter Dobbie, Jake Humphrey, Fearne Cotton, Huey Morgan, Ian Payne, Geoff Dyer, Greg James, Scott Mills, Colin Murray, Paul Ross, Gaby Roslin, Steve Lamacq, Louis Theroux, Peter Kay and Bruce Forsyth all have in common? They either crossed picket lines or scabbed on today's strike at the BBC.

Some readers might remember Terry Wogan wishing pickets the "best of luck" during the last BBC strike ... before crossing them to do his radio show.

And judging by Chris Moyle's inclusion on this roll of shame, he's kissed and made up with BBC management. I'm at a loss to explain his volte face. Just over a month ago Moyles was moaning on air about not being paid. Fast forward to November he's a-okay with management butchering his pension entitlement. What a twonk.

As for the rest of them, they will not be forgiven nor forgotten.

Plenty of people have had a bit of fun with celebrity scabwatch on Twitter earlier today. Comedians Robin Ince and Alan Davies have covered themselves in a bit of glory for refusing to cross picket lines. In the open surveillance world of Twitter it has been funny to see some of the ire Davies has earned, such as from this Tunbridge Wells-type and this.

Conversely, Andrew Collins, a broadcaster and someone I previously had down as a celebrity lefty has turned his Twitter stream into a tortured torrent of self-flagellation for crossing the picket line. Good. It's one thing for a Murdoch lackey like Brillo to cross picket lines, quite another for someone who sees themselves on "our side".

In a lame attempt to justify his actions (to himself as well as others) Collins has tweeted "If I don't go in, I don't get a "day's pay", as I am self-employed, freelance holiday cover with no contract". As a writer, broadcaster, and currently on a successful tour, I'd wager most striking NUJ workers had more to lose than Collins. And then there's this: "Bectu advice: "We are not taking industrial action you should work normally but not do any work normally undertaken by striking NUJ members". What he fails to mention is the advice directly beneath: "If, however, as a matter of conscience you decide not to cross a picket line and the BBC attempts to discipline you then you will have the full support of BECTU." Oh dear.

We might live in a time when the cultural norms of the labour movement aren't as widespread as they used to be. But when anyone is facing a picket line they have a choice. They can respect the democratic will of the workers involved and aid them by refusing to cross. Or you can crap all over them and stand with management by going in. If someone - especially a celebrity - does not respect the action then they can't complain when they're taken to task for their shabby behaviour.

Update In the comments below, Modernity points to a more up to date list.

Damned Lies and Election Leaflets

Practically everyone reading this will now know Phil Woolas, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth was found guilty of making false statements against his LibDem opponent during the general election. The result that saw him returned with a 103 majority is now rendered null and void by the court judgement. Woolas is now an ex-MP pending appeal. If this fails he will be turfed out of parliament, fined five grand and barred from re-standing for three years. For good measure he's been suspended from Labour. It couldn't have happened to a nicer man.

Most Labour people I've spoken to are happy to see Woolas out on his ear. There's a few shedding tears and lamentations for their ideological bedfollow on the hard right of the party, but they're very much out of step with mainstream Labour opinion.

Dan Hodges (also from the right of the party) makes one of the most interesting comments on the Woolas affair so far. He rightly argues Woolas is a product of the Labour machine, a machine that has pandered to racism and anti-immigration bigotry (aided and abetted, as always, by the tabloid press). As Dan puts it, the case highlights "the Labour Party’s shameful failure to adopt a coherent, let alone moral, stance on any of these issues". Quite right. Though I dispute his claim everyone in the party is responsible for this, New Labour created the conditions that allowed the likes of Phil Woolas to happen.

How did we get here? As well as being thoroughly authoritarian and contemptuous of civil liberties at home and abroad, Blair and Brown were pragmatic leaders. Not in the sense of ideology - they were/are neoliberal down to their bones - but in terms of responding to public opinion as filtered by medialand. The idea that political leadership is sometimes about swimming against the stream, about asserting your politics in the face of opposition from elites was alien to them both. New Labour's response to press hysteria around immigration and terrorism (a link it did nothing to challenge) was accepted as a reality to be adapted to, not fought. Instead of taking on the BNP's lies when it looked like they were getting some traction, New Labour tacked further and further to the right. Labour and the Tories were locked in a race to the gutter to see who could be most beastly to immigrants. Woolas was an obnoxious but not untypical example of this ugly Powellite trend that has colonised the "common sense" of the party's upper echelons.

It shows Ed Miliband in a very bad light. Not only has he remained silent on the issue - leaving Harriet Harman to hang him out to dry - but he appointed Woolas as a junior shadow minister with the race and immigration brief. Not only did this bode ill for his stated position that immigration is a lightning rod for concerns around housing and jobs, and that Labour should challenge it, but what does it say about his political nous when his chosen man for an important and sensitive job stood a good chance of losing his seat amid a storm of lies and racism? Not a lot.

It seems to me there are two reasons why Ed Miliband took the risk. First, internal politics. As this blog has noted before Ed peppered his team with Blairites to head off the possibility of future treachery. As a Brownite he is keenly aware of the cack-handed plots to depose Brown - so you can't blame him for trying to cover his bases. Second, and related to this is Ed's aversion to challenging consensus politics. By sticking Woolas in race and immigration he could deflect press and Tory criticism by simply pointing to the continuity in personnel. Both make some sort of sense in a craven and insipid sort of way, but they hardly speak of a "new generation" committed to new ways of doing things.

One last point, the manner of Woolas's suspension from the party has been fair. He was presumed innocent and action was only taken after the special election court found him guilty. The question has to be asked if this procedure was good enough for Phil Woolas, then why wasn't it for Lutfur Rahman?

Labour Councils and the Cuts

Last Wednesday I gave a talk to a city-wide Labour party members' meeting on alternatives to the cuts. The argument I made could be boiled down to three words: investment, investment, investment. I argued the cuts are morally objectionable, that Labour would pay a heavy political price if it did not articulate a clear alternative and put an economic case against cuts beyond efficiency savings (i.e. tightening up procurement practices, etc.) on the grounds that even slow and shallow cuts favoured by Miliband and Johnson compromise domestic markets at a time when the gloomy outlook for the global economy means British capital will be more dependent on it than in the pre-crisis period.

There were two interrelated points the subsequent discussion turned around. The first of these was leadership. The meeting heard there have been gatherings of Labour council leaders to discuss strategies in the face of the Coalition's cuts. Whatever transpired wasn't related to the rest of us in any depth but it is clear they are all operating in the dark and cobbling together plans on the hoof. There has been no steer of any kind from the national leadership on what actions Labour and Labour-led coalition councils should take.

As we have seen, Ed Miliband has shied away from challenging the Coalition and proven wobbly on the cuts, reserving the right to back some while opposing others. But in travelling this line of march Ed has sleep walked into a trap the Tories have laid for him. By accepting their terms of the debate this has allowed the Tories and the media to paint Labour as defenders of millionaires' entitlement to child benefit, and being relaxed about the state throwing tax payers' cash at fat cat landlords. Like Ed's predecessors, the leadership are overly concerned with playing the Westminster game, a game governed by received wisdom, ideological conformity and the preoccupations of the media elite. The leadership are operating in the sphere of 'non-punishment' and will not launch an adequate assault on the government's programme unless the pressure of the anti-cuts movement forces them to.

For rank-and-file Labour, labour movement and anti-cuts activists the tasks remain building a strong opposition as well as clearly and unambiguously arguing that there is a viable alternative to fast and deep or slow and shallow cuts.

The second big issue is the question of Labour councils and the cuts. The Coalition has decreed a cut in government grants to councils and as these make themselves felt Labour-affiliated unions will be organising the most of the industrial opposition on the ground. In some cases Labour councillors will have the unenviable task of passing on these Tory cuts. Stoke City Council, for example, is having to cut £83 million over the next four years. This means the loss of 713 jobs this year and deleterious knock-on effects on The Potteries' notoriously fragile economy. Councillors at the meeting expressed their anger at having to pick up the tab for bailing out the banks, and the statement prefacing the consultation budget document makes that plain.

As a couple of people from the floor pointed out, this was a politically calculated move on the Tories' part. Forcing Labour councils to cut services and jobs is designed to drive a wedge between them and the rest of the labour movement, and tar the party with some of the blame for cuts and damage them electorally. So, what is to be done?

As Darrell argues refusing to go along with the cuts is one option. In the mid-eighties Labour councillors from Lambeth and Liverpool City Councils failed to set a legal budget. This led to the surcharging and debarring of 80 councillors from public office. These councillors were backed by significant sections of the trade union movement and the Labour party (who were able to pay off the fines) and, it should be noted, without that support it's doubtful this highpoint of municipal socialism would have been reached.

Unfortunately that's not where we're at today. In the absence of a strong labour movement what are the chances of that happening now? It can't be ruled out over the coming years but it's highly unlikely similar council-led struggles will happen over the course of the next financial year. From the standpoint of Labour councillors, the thought of being surcharged in excess of £100k isn't an attractive prospect. And even before the setting of an illegal budget is a possibility measures have long been in place to prevent recalcitrant councils from doing a Liverpool or a Lambeth again. One sniff of serious defiance and an authority can be taken over by a Pickles-appointed bureaucrat and cuts rammed through. Whether that measure would succeed is a moot point as the vast majority of Labour councillors will not place themselves in the firing line of likely financial and political ruin and allow things to get that far. With the costs of defiance so high most would rather face electoral defeat.

That is the position Labour councillors see themselves in. The question is how does the anti-cuts movement relate to them? Should they be branded as opponents and excluded from anti-cuts campaigns? Should dialogue between councillors, unions and anti-cuts activists remain open for the purpose of launching a campaign to ensure proper funding for local authorities, and for future collaboration should a council go down the defiance route? Should they be ignored and left alone to wrangle with their consciences while everyone else gets on with campaigning?

Suggestions please.

(Image Source)

Education on Trial

This from Jacob of the The Third Estate. While we're on the subject Brother S and I will be on the NUS/UCU demo organised for next Wednesday - anyone game for a meet up?

Hosted by ULU President Clare Solomon and featuring speakers from School Students Against War, NUS Campaigns, and the Middlesex Occupation, academics and other special guests, Education on Trial is a carnivalesque evening of live entertainment, art and discussion exploring the issues facing our education system today and building resistance to those threatening it. The night begins with speed debating, followed by interactive sessions focusing on schools, academies and privatisation; higher education, cuts and fees; pedagogy, radical education and the future.

In a change from our usual venue, 'Education on Trial' will be held at the University of London Union, on Thursday 4th November from 6pm. The event is taking place shortly before the ‘Fund Our Future: Stop Education Cuts’ demonstration called by the National Union of Students and the University and College Union on Wednesday 10 November 2010. Mutiny will discuss the future of education in the face of the planned cuts and Browne review recommendations, helping to mobilise for the march.

For more information, please see the attached flyer and sign up to the facebook event here.

Tickets are already available here, and cost just £3 if purchased in advance.

-----The series of ‘on Trial’ events are organised by a London-based activist collective called the Mutiny, with the aim of bringing together meaningful debate, creativity and live entertainment in a safe nonpartisan space. We provide lively discussion, music, performance poetry, interactive technology and visual art in an event which encourages people to share ideas and skills. Sessions are participatory and nondidactic, and guests are invited to engage with speakers and other participants around a central discussion table.

Expose Violence Against London Firefighters

The reckless endangerment of life against striking London firefighters is utterly disgusting and should be condemned in no uncertain terms. But, as per usual, this has been passed over in silence by the BBC and the rest of the mainstream media. As with the case of Ian Tomlinson it falls to bloggers to publicise it far and wide until its ubiquity is such that the gatekeepers of modern Britain's eyes and ears can ignore it no longer. Below I reproduce the press release from the Fire Brigade's Union (original here) with details of the incidents. Don't let management and scabs get away with it. Spread the word!

A DAY OF SHOCKING VIOLENCE AGAINST LONDON’S FIREFIGHTERS

Vehicles driven at speed into three FBU pickets
Two strikebreakers arrested
Strikebreaking contractors refuse first aid equipment to the injured

Yesterday, three members of the Fire Brigades Union were hit and hurt by speeding vehicles driven by strikebreakers.

First, a Croydon firefighter was hit by a speeding car driven by a non-union manager at Croydon fire station. FBU president Mick Shaw, who was there, described what happened.

“A fire engine returned from an incident and drove into the fire station, its crew refusing to wind down their windows and talk to the pickets. But at least it drove slowly, at the brigade maximum of five mph, so that the pickets could get out of the way before they were mown down.

“It was followed by a car driven by the officers, and as the pickets tried to talk to the driver of the car, it accelerated suddenly and one of the striking firefighters was thrown up and into the windscreen, then several feet in front of the car.

“We asked the AssetCo employees who had control of our fire station for the first aid kit and some blankets, but they would not give them to us despite the obviously serious nature of the injuries.

“An ambulance was called at once, and the ambulance crew asked for an air ambulance. Our member was not able to move during the 25 minutes between being hit and being taken away in the ambulance.”

The LFB manager was arrested at the scene. Mr Shaw and general secretary Matt Wrack intend to visit the member (whose name cannot be given until his family consents) today, Tuesday. It is understood he has injuries to his spleen and spine.

Second, two hours after the strike, Dagenham firefighter Graham Beers held his hand up at the side of a road in Southwark, to signal to the crew of a fire engine being returned to Southwark Fire Station that they should stop and speak to him. “The fire engine swerved towards me and hit my hand” says Mr Beers, who suffered a sprained and badly bruised hand.

Third, a fire engine was deliberately driven into the FBU London representative Ian Leahair, at Southwark fire station. This happened more than two hours after the strike ended.

There was a huge police presence at Southwark, and FBU members who were there accepted with cheerful good humour being penned in across the road, away from the incoming fire engines. Just eight pickets were allowed.

Although the strike ended at six, the fire engines did not start coming until about 8 pm. When they did start coming, the permitted eight pickets, in the midst of dozens of police officers, stood in front and asked the drivers to stop while they spoke to them. The first two fire engines stopped, and waited for the two minutes or so the police allowed the eight pickets to try to talk to them, without winding down their windows.

But the third didn’t stop. It just kept coming. As the pickets fled before it, the great, heavy fire engine actually picked up speed, and hit Ian Leahair and then one of the police officers, before the police finally persuaded the driver to stop. By then, Ian Leahair’s legs and half his body were underneath the fire engine and he was clearly in pain. If he had been standing an inch or so further left, his legs would have been crushed under the fire engine’s wheels.

FBU pickets yelled at the driver to reverse, but he would not do so until instructed to do so by the police. The police officer, we understand, had a bruised leg. Ian Leahair has injured ribs. He was pulled out and helped to the side of the road.

The fire engine was deliberately driven at the pickets. There was no reason to do this. The driver cannot have felt in any way intimidated. He could see at least 50 police officers who would have protected him, had any violence been offered, which it was not.

After that, the police handled the arrival of the rest of the fire engines very differently. They decided, with great fairness, that they were not going to stop the picketing because a driver had endangered the pickets. So police officers themselves stopped the fire engines, gave the pickets their couple of minutes, then cleared the way for the engines.

The police, in effect, began to protect the pickets from the strikebreakers. It was the police who ensured the right to lawful picketing.

FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said today: “This has been a day of shocking violence directed at London’s firefighters.

“An incredible pattern seems to be emerging. It looks as though the private company hired to do our work has instructed its drivers to drive fast through picket lines. We ended the day in the extraordinary situation where the police had to protect striking firefighters from recklessly speeding vehicles, which were driven by those paid to break the strike.

“If our people had done a fraction of what they did, there would be inflammatory and self-righteous condemnation from the London Fire Brigade, and no doubt it would find something else from the personnel files to feed to its friends in right wing newspapers. But they have not even condemned what happened. Can it possibly be that they do not care about the danger in which their contractor has placed their LFB’s own employees? Could they, incredibly, even be a party to decisions which have led to this? They have brought hired thugs into London who have driven around at speed with their faces hidden by balaclavas in an attempt to menace and intimidate our members. Tragically three of our members have been injured as a result. I wonder whether the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and the others who have spent the past week condemning the FBU for our industrial action will now condemn this violence against us.”

FURTHER INFORMATION:
Francis Beckett 020 8349 9194 or 07813 001372
Helen Hague 07889 792360 or 020 8340 5571