We take a look at 17-24-30′s No To Hate Crime Vigil in Trafalgar Square on 28th October 2011. Along the way we interview Brian Paddick, Peter Tatchell, Stuart Milk and PINK LIST winner Elly Barnes.
Theresa May has a laugh with former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson (Source: Home Office)
‘A cat, a cat, my kingdom for a cat!’
I may be paraphrasing Shakespeare a little bit but given the trouble this cat has caused, Theresa May must rue the day she decided to make it the centre of attention.
In her address to the Conservative Party conference back at the beginning of the month, the Home Secretary, insisting that she was not making it up, cited the example of a Bolivian shoplifter allowed to stay in the country rather than being deported because he had a pet cat in her attack on the Human Rights Act.
Unfortunately for her, May was making it up. Or at the very least, she was plagiarising UKIP Leader Nigel Farage, who had also made it up.
Ridiculous as this example may have been, the derision and attention it received in the press disguises a far more sinister force at work.
The call to scrap the Human Rights Act has been met with the usual reactionary enthusiasm from people who would probably support the return of hanging for thieves. It is galling to see people who think of themselves as rational saying that they believe that people lose their human status when they commit a crime. Apparently they somehow become lesser people than the ‘good, honest sort’ around them.
Now the so called moderates of the debate have entered the fray and are instead claiming that criminals deserve to lose only their civil rights.
Civil rights meaning principally the right to vote. The ‘moderates’ claim that there are certain rights and responsibilities that come with being a member of society, and if you break the rules you forfeit your privileges. It’s like a more extreme version of the naughty step.
This view does have its merits and this is arguably partially what prison is for. However, it is supposed to be restorative as well as punitive, and therefore once you’ve completed your punishment you are expected to go back into society and start living up to your responsibilities again. But some people would clearly have it that you do not see the return of your rights, making your role in society a one-way street.
Some people believe that if you strip criminals of their right to vote they will somehow become the perfect measure of good behaviour. But if you take away all the incentives to being part of society why exactly should people want to behave? If you take away their means of supporting themselves and slap them with a criminal record so it makes it even harder to get a job then what will stop them committing more crime? If you take away their right to vote and therefore deny them the right to have a say on what laws are created, why exactly should they obey them? Why should they pay income tax or VAT when they have no say on how it is distributed?
To hijack the clarion call of the American Revolution – ‘No Taxation without Representation’.
Some say that to give prisoners back their civil rights is a violation of their victim’s rights – but how is an ex-mugger voting Lib Dem or Labour going to undo his theft of an old lady’s handbag? They say you cannot put the rights of one person over another and they are right. Therefore it is hypocritical to say that the victims’ rights matter more than the criminals’.
To say civil rights should only be for the civilised betrays the nasty social undercurrent that has returned to politics since the 2010 general election and the start of austerity. It cannot be one rule for some and another rule for others.
A man casts his vote (source: European Parliament)
Polls opened in Tunisia on Sunday to a pretty impressive turnout. After 24 years of what was essentially a corrupt dictatorship by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, some people are estimating that 60% of the country turned out to vote in the new unbiased elections (fingers-crossed, at least!). A lot of commentators are emphasising the importance of Tunisia as a beacon for the Arab Spring – the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December 2010 is seen by many as the spark (that still sounds quite sick to me) that ignited (even sicker) the events; the modern equivalent to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Tunisia’s revolution was of course relatively bloodless in comparison to the brutal retaliation in Egypt and the outright civil warfare in Libya. Tunisia is seen as the guiding light.
One of the key issues in this presentation of Tunisia as an example for a modern Arabia is the country’s secularity. Tunisia is traditionally a rather secular country, at least by the standards of the Middle-East. Women do often wear headscarves, but it is by no means the standard, and the likes of the niqab and the burkha are rarer still. Alcohol has been plentiful in Tunisia for decades, with Tunisian wine being particularly popular – how many “Islamic” countries can boast their own speciality booze? So a lot of people, both within the country and further afield, are starting to get a bit antsy about the popularity of the Islamic party An-Nahda, which is currently seen as the front-runner in the election. Although self-proclaimed “moderates”, their presence has caused a bit of a rift, with secularist voters shouting “terrorist” at their leader Rachid Ghannouchi as he stood in line to vote, and a number of secularist parties proposing a coalition against the party.
The notion of “moderate Islam” is something that might seem difficult for some Westerners to understand and the idea of an Islamist party standing in an election probably raises horrific visions of an Iranian style theocratic revolution in which women are stoned to death and men are forced to have natty, unkempt beards. The Islamic theocracy haunts the nightmares of Americans in particular – fears of men like Gholam Shakuri chosen by their heathen Gods to unleash state-sanctioned terror on the freedoms and liberties of honest, Christian yanks. America has devoted a lot of time, money and manpower to clamping down on Islamist governments – it doesn’t want another one to spring up.
So An-Nahda will have to do a lot to live up to the “moderate” label. But it shouldn’t be so unfathomable to Western observers. As Rachid Ghannouchi said in a debate with a secular political opponent, “If the Islamic spectrum goes from Bin Laden to [Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, which of them is Islam? Why are we put in the same place as a model that is far from our thought, like the Taliban or the Saudi model, while there are other successful Islamic models that are close to us, like the Turkish, the Malaysian and the Indonesian models; models that combine Islam and modernity?” This is of course true, it’s just that extreme Islamic theocracy grabs more of the headlines.
It would be more astute to compare An-Nahda less to the Taliban or Hamas and more to Germany’s Christian Democractic Union. And I think we can all agree there’s quite a broad socio-political gap between Angela Merkel and Ayatolla Ali Khamenei. An-Nahda is generally considered quite a centrist party, but their general economic liberalism would certainly suggest even more comparisons with Merkel’s party – the shift to economic liberalism and privatisation is almost a given in the Arab Spring, by the way. After decades of authoritarian, centrally-governed “socialist” governments, the attractions of free trade are going to be hard to resist, which you can’t really blame them for, really. It is ironic, though, that in light of Tunisia’s independence from France in 1956, the social democrat-style government that was instituted by Habib Bourguiba in the new republic would probably seem damn attractive to a lot of countries currently in the grip of post-neo-liberal chaos, even if a few social liberties were curbed. This will help compound the uncertainty about the country’s future – the backlash against authoritarianism and imposed secularism in Tunisia is almost inevitable now, but in the long term many Tunisians may start to resent the bittersweet taste of liberalisation. After all, you don’t want to avoid being an Iran and end up as a Greece.
The Meteor‘s Alex MacDonald reports from outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London, where an ‘occupation’ sprang up over the weekend in protest against a range of perceived economic and political injustices.
Protestors take to Westminster Bridge over reforms to the NHS (photo by Wasi Daniju)
So I trotted over to the UK Uncut demo in Westminster last Sunday – a blockade of Westminster Bridge, over the government’s healthcare bill which entered the House of Lords on Tuesday. I’ve been a regular attendee of UK Uncut’s protests over the years (OK, months, they’ve not been around that long) mainly in a journalistic capacity (yeah, because I’m so damn impartial). There’s something refreshingly grassroots about the group – although they’re broadly left-wing, they’re not partisan and they are actually quite populist, which is why the idea works so well. They’re not scary, like some other groups I’ll come on to in bit. But you do have a lot of hangers-on who will come out in “solidarity” (for some reason that word makes me a bit uncomfortable, though I’m not sure why). But I’m starting to get a definite sense of déjà vu at these demonstrations, with a whole cast of familiar characters turning out at UK Uncut’s blockade.
You have the inevitable stalls of the Socialist Workers Party, still fighting the old fight against their ancient enemies, the Tories. The presence of the SWP has become predictable to such an extent that when they turn up a lot of people get a certain sense of “oh great, it’s one of their demonstrations…” I mean, I’m sure the SWP have the best intentions in the world (although I’m sure some of them don’t) but their presence automatically tars any campaign with the “socialist” tag which scares off a lot of mainstream support. Still, the NHS is arguably the most socialist institution we have in this country, so perhaps it’s only right that they should be stepping up to defend it.
Similarly, but more worryingly, you have the Anarchists, dressed up in “black is the new black” clothing, with skulls and other quite creepy iconography adorning their regalia in a way that’s reminiscent of Mitchell and Webb’s “are we the baddies?” sketch. Just a note to Anarchists: if you’re going to try and motivate a grassroots revolution through popular solidarity, scaring the hell out of people probably won’t help. I’ve ranted about the “anarchists” before (and I use speech marks because quite frankly I don’t believe most of the black bloc types have any genuine anarchistic ideology beyond listening to Black Flag’s Damaged on repeat) and I’ll stick to my guns about them – they really damage the authority and credibility of social protest, much more so than the SWP. I mean, has anyone noticed how much they look like Combat 18, the old neo-Nazi group that caused a bit of trouble back in the 90s?
Then you have the weirdos. These guys I think can be a bit of a boon to protests – they certainly counteract the alienating presence of the black bloc types by taking a more light-hearted approach. Two guys dress in undertakers’ gear while holding chains around the neck of a guy dressed in an apron covered in blood with a Nick Clegg mask on his face. The main theme was to dress in surgical attire and pretend to perform operations in the street; again, bring on the fake blood. I even recognised an old man, dressed as a little girl, as the Prime Minister of the Land of the Dead from previous demos; at the protest over tuition fees in Parliament Square last December, he emphatically encouraged the protesters to “eat Nick Clegg”, punctuated by guttural growls through a megaphone. What a ledge. I was a bit disappointed though not to see the cigar-chomping Papa Lazarou pastiche who had been the heart and soul of the tuition fee protests…
Students made up the majority of attendees of course, as has become standard at demos now, decked out in nurses’ uniforms and butchers’ aprons. I think there is a definite downside to the “student demo”. During the teachers’ strike in June I ran into a fellow student who tried to persuade me that students were in fact at the forefront of industrial action and had been “calling for a general strike for months”. If there’s anything that sums up the cynicism with which student protests are viewed, it’s the immense self-righteousness of people who aren’t affected in the slightest by the issue they’re so “passionate” about. The strikers are actually putting their jobs at risk by striking and they do it, not because they want to, but because they have to. It’s not some theatrical post-modern statement, it’s people defending their jobs. Groups of student “intellectuals” taking the initiative to protest just because it’s cool to do anything which annoys the powers-that-be simply devalues the message in the eyes of much of the public. The NHS protest was a different case, admittedly – after all, hardly anybody is unaffected by the privatisation of healthcare – but the presence of drama students in fancy dress, and elaborate set-pieces, does make it seem like they’re not really taking it seriously. I’m not going to go so far as to say that a protest can’t be enjoyable – but at the same time it shouldn’t really be “fun”.
Back to the house: Lord Sugar had a good task and did not take an allowance during May, unlike a lot of his peers (source: the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills)
Members of the House of Lords took £1,901,850 in optional daily allowances for just fifteen days’ attendance in May of this year, according to the latest set of monthly claims.
Lords do not receive a fixed salary but instead are allowed to claim a maximum tax-free daily allowance of £300, and travel and secretarial expenses on top, which critics might point out isn’t much different. Already quite generous, when multiplied by the number of possible claimants – which currently stands at an unwieldy 826 – the amount being dished-out balloons considerably.
And with Lords business running on average to 150 days a year, its members, drawn from the handsomely remunerated worlds of politics, business, academia, and notably not bin collection or bakery chain assistants, can expect to collectively pocket £19 million over the course of the year – if they last that long.
The revelation that the at best of times comatose peers are receiving almost £2 million of public money for three weeks’ ‘work’, presumably intravenously, is likely to lead to questions over the ability of electric blanket manufacturers to keep up with demand (or, at least, the need for such a large number of politicians in the Upper Chamber, who are said to have to compete for seats on occasion).
But one Lord defended their financial arrangements, telling us “It’s great, we’re getting paid one and a half grand a week to sit in a warm room and snooze – it’s essentially a care home, but without the abuse”.
The Defence Secretary Liam Fox attends the inaugural meeting of the National Security Council in May 2010 (photo from The Prime Minister's Office)
16.24
Fox is still taking questions. It seems increasingly clear that nothing is going to be resolved today – the Defence Secretary is doing a good job of appearing to vaguely admit to minor mistakes in allowing other people to draw the wrong conclusions about his conduct, but not admitting actual misconduct. If you want to watch an impressive Matrix-like display of dodging the many bullets coming in one’s direction, you can see the rest of the questions on BBC Parliament.
15.53
Tory MP James Arbuthnot: ‘this is really pretty small-scale stuff’.
15.52
Dennis Skinner: ‘It looks to me like Cameron’s going to get his Fox’.
15.50
Malcolm Rifkind is congratulating Fox on his leadership of the Ministry of Defence. But does that have anything whatsoever to do with the allegations against him?
15.46
Murphy: Liam Fox has ‘driven a horse and coaches through the rules’.
15.46
Jim Murphy sounds like a man confident he has Liam Fox on the run.
15.44
George Osborne and Michael Gove are on the government front bench – wonder why that could be?
15.42
Labour’s Jim Murphy says Fox has allowed himself to be ‘professionally compromised’.
15.41
Lots of cheers greet the end of Fox’s statement.
15.40
Fox: ‘my desire is to be as transparent as possible’.
15.39
Fox says the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence is making new guidelines for him, and that Werritty will not visit him in his workplace again.
15.38
Fox met Werritty 22 times in parliament over the last sixteen months.
15.37
Fox: Werritty has not received any payment from him ‘while in government’.
15.35
Fox tripping over his words, sounding quite nervous.
15.35
Fox repeats that his controversial Dubai restaurant meeting was a coincidence.
15.34
Fox: ‘I accept that it was a mistake to allow distinctions to be blurred’… ‘I am sorry for this’.
15.33
Yes – a number of members have definitely just turned up for the Defence Secretary’s statement. They could at least have pretended they were interested in the Defence budget and Libya.
15.31
It’s 3:30. Time for Liam Fox’s statement! This should be interesting. The benches look a bit more packed out now.
15.28
Also of interest is that the Atlantic Bridge has in the past counted among its advisory board members none other than top Tories George Osborne, William Hague, Chris Grayling and Michael Gove, as noted on the website Third Sector. Brilliantly, the former charity’s honorary patron was Margaret Thatcher, who recently made a very rare appearance at Liam Fox’s 50th birthday celebrations. This is the overtly party political charity, remember, which it is alleged Adam Werritty ran from Liam Fox’s parliamentary office.
15.15
Whilst we’re waiting for something interesting, here’s a screen-print from the Charity Commission’s website, showing the entry for ‘Atlantic Bridge’ – the ‘right-wing’ charity set up by Liam Fox and managed by his friend Adam Werritty, and supposedly run from Fox’s office. The image shows that the charity was wound up as recently as the end of September this year. The Guardian suggests this was because of concerns over the charity’s political nature. Click on the image to get a better look.
15.08
Peter Luff gives Shadow Defence Minister Alison Seabeck a rather patronising answer – ‘She’s new, so I’ll be gentle with her’, or to that effect.
15.05
And yet his question is on a less sensational topic than we might have expected. Do we take it that Labour are largely holding fire until Liam Fox’s statement to the House in around half an hour?
15.03
Jim Murphy is up, finally.
14.57
Fox of Labour: ‘We hear very little from them, except negative criticism’.
14.55
The government’s Peter Luff MP: ‘I don’t trust those figures’, referring to some just quoted by the SNP’s Angus Robertson. We imagine he does however trust Liam Fox.
14.50
No real laying into Fox as yet. The Shadow Defence Secretary Jim Murphy is yet to get to his feet.
14.48
Former Tory leadership candidate David Davis raises the issue of hundreds of job losses at BAE plants in his constituency, asking whether this is at odds with professed government support for British defence.
14.44
Lots of support for Liam Fox from his Tory colleagues. Are any of them independent-minded, or are they all satisfied that he has nothing to answer for?
14.42
Tory Matthew Hancock to Liam Fox: ‘Can I ask him if he has had any apology from the party opposite’ on the defence budget. Fox calls Labour ‘deficit-deniers’
14.40
Labour’s Emma Reynolds asks how many times Fox has visited Sri Lanka in the last year on official and unofficial business.
14.37
A second question from a Tory MP..
14.36
Hands says that Fox has ‘our full support’, to cheers from Tory back-benchers.
14.35
Finally, Defence questions are up and running. First question from Greg Hands MP. I wonder if it’ll be about the media storm surrounding Liam Fox?
14.05
Should Fox be sacked? Not unexpectedly, a lot of Conservatives seem to think not. But more unexpectedly, they seem to be giving as a reason that Fox is important for Cameron because he is a link to the right of the party. Many people will view such a perspective with disbelief – it is certainly evidence that many are more concerned with inner calm in the Tory Party than such things as accountability to the public. Should not the test of whether Fox can stay in his job be whether he has broken the ministerial code? It is hard to see that his position and symbolism within the Tory Party should have anything to do with it.
13.56
Boles: ‘I don’t think that you hang people for mistakes.’ He says he’d rather that the ‘last lot’ were hung for messing things up.
13.47
Following Defence questions, scheduled to begin in around 45 minutes, the Defence secretary is to make a statement to the House.
13.45
Is Cameron trying to kick the matter into the long grass? The Ministry of Defence’s permanent secretary Ursula Brennan has been given until 21 October to complete her report into Liam Fox – a tactic which could either diffuse the affair or allow time for more damaging revelations to emerge.
13.38
Cameron had already said something similar this morning, expressing a level of support for Fox and praising his supposedly apologetic statement of last night. As far as we know, the Cabinet Secretary’s report into Fox’s conduct which Cameron had asked to be on his desk by this morning, and which has now been labelled an ‘interim’ one, has not yet been delivered. Apparently it will be falling into the PM’s hands around the time that Liam Fox starts to answer Defence questions later on. We can’t help but think that’s a strategic manoeuvre designed to save Fox additional embarrassment.
13.33
At the moment the Prime Minister is trying to detract attention from the furore around Fox with a speech about immigration which is being broadcast on Sky News. But undeterred, a journalist has asked Cameron about his Defence Secretary. The PM just said “We can’t rush these things”.
13.29
If you want to find out the details of what has been alleged about Liam Fox and his self-styled ‘advisor’ friend Adam Werritty, you’ll be able to find that elsewhere. We’ll just be discussing a few aspects of the unfolding possible scandal and then covering this afternoon’s Defence questions in the House of Commons, which are due to start at 2:30. Apparently Dr Fox will be eased into the inevitably tough Labour interrogation with a question from a Tory MP on, shockingly, an entirely separate matter.
13.19
With pressure on the Defence Secretary Liam Fox mounting over recent days alongside a slew of allegations of improriety, it was only a matter of time before we followed the Guardian‘s lead and set up an unnecessary live blog on the subject. Welcome!
The Occupy protestors need to work on their brand image
Anti-capitalist protestors at Occupy London wearing masks inspired by a Hollywood film (Photo: Marc John)
The ‘disparate’ group of protestors currently occupying space outside St Paul’s Cathedral could learn a thing or two from some of the multinational corporations they’re presumably against. If Occupy was a brand, their current campaign would go down as a bit of a disaster, and likely have done long-term damage. They have managed to turn the Cathedral management, the newspapers, and now even previously ardent socialists like Nigel Farage against them, just for trying to have their democratic say on corporate greed and the inequity of the imprint it has left on us all.
What has Occupy got so wrong, that a movement which looked like it might attract a new and unusual level of public support seems to have now been consigned to the usual resting place of socialist causes? For a start, the protestors settled on too soft a target for their occupation. Christianity may be shedding subscribers and attracting atheistic critics all the time, but it is not at fault in the current crusade against financial institutions. So the Cathedral feels unfairly picked on and understandably somewhat inconvenienced by the appearance of hundreds of tents at its door. That’s not to say people don’t (or shouldn’t) have the right to assemble and demonstrate there – it just isn’t good for their image.
Next, as has been widely observed, the protestors should have thought twice about queuing up for refreshments at Starbucks. Of course buying a caramel frappuccino doesn’t render their opinions invalid or go anywhere near it, but under the spotlight of the media collectively putting such a lot of money into the hands of a corporate giant while on a protest ostensibly against exactly the kind of globalised profiteering that Starbucks represents doesn’t do their image any favours. What’s more it provides a possibility for distraction from the message of the protest. Maybe they were being ironic, who knows.
Another rather cringe-inducing sight has been of several of the protestors’ number wearing replica masks of those featured in the Hollywood blockbuster V for Vendetta. In the film, the Guy Fawkes mask is worn by an anarchist revolutionary. For one thing protestors aren’t going to attract wide public support of the sort that looked possible just a couple weeks ago by hinting at their anarchist sympathies in this way. For another, donning memorabilia from a movie with a budget of $54 million to further their cause just looks embarrassing. In fact, in the numerous photos of people wearing the masks, they look silly. And slightly intimidating – not a good characteristic for people hoping to win support for a cause. Looking silly and intimidating and counting a Hollywood film amongst your inspirations isn’t the way to make a serious political point.
All things considered the Occupy protestors are still more ideologically sound than a great many of us and should be commended for displaying the moral conviction to spend a lot of time outdoors and under the scrutiny of the media to make their point and try to effect much-needed change. They certainly aren’t helped by quality newspapers basing allegations about the amount of time they spend in their tents on the problematic science of thermal imaging. But they do need to work on their brand image.