Race History Made 36 Years Ago
16 Apr 2008
On a balmy evening thirty-six years ago, a motley crew of suited businessmen, Black power activists, academics, journalists, community activists, members of the Lords and Commons and tellers from the Electoral Reform Services made their way down the narrow steps into the basement room of Wren’s church, St James’ on Piccadilly. An hour and a half later as the businessmen, Lords and MPs slunk defeated into the night, the staff of the IRR and the membership, who had defeated the board of management by 94 votes to 8, made merry in the IRR’s annexe offices above the Chelsea Cobbler (the kind with one pair of hand-made boots in the window) on Sackville Street. The vote of IRR’s members on 18 April 1972 to support the IRR staff’s execution of IRR’s aims and commend the coverage of its magazine, Race Today, was one of the most significant steps in British race relations. Till then the study of race relations had been firmly in the grasp of the establishment, under the political sway of government and the economic control of big business. The number of writers on the subject could be counted on the fingers of one hand. There were no departments in universities, no equality programmes in local authorities, no Black people to be seen in the media, politics, church or civil society. In a sense the battle at the IRR – over how it was funded and what knowledge it produced – could be seen as part and parcel of the battles that had raged through the universities during the sixties. But in another sense the IRR’s struggle was unique in that Black people’s experience of racism was so obviously at odds with the focus of the IRR, it had to bring about the collision. Black people were being criminalised by the police (the Mangrove trial had just taken place), Black children were being systematically failed by schooling (Bernard Coard’s How the West Indian child is made educationally subnormal in the British school system had just been published), racial violence, especially ‘Paki-bashing’ was rife, stories about brutality were being smuggled out of prisons, the patriality clause of the 1971 Immigration Act was overtly racist. But the Institute of Race Relations, aloof in its Jermyn Street headquarters, was still speaking the language of the gentleman’s club. It was incumbent upon the IRR to be impartial, said the Board of Management, to give both sides of any argument. When, after much discussion, we managed to get a representative of Frelimo (fighting for independence in Mozambique) to speak at a lunchtime meeting, we were forced the next week to invite the Portuguese Ambassador. Similarly when we carried stories about police excesses in the monthly magazine, Race Today, we had to offer space to a senior policeman to put his point of view. The staff were neither seen nor heard by the Board. Only the director, his assistant and Company Secretary were present at Council meetings. After strong representations by the staff, heads of departments were admitted to meetings, though still without speaking and certainly without voting rights. Though there were one or two staff members, particularly in the international research unit, who fought the IRR’s battle on a high ideological level – we must not take money from the capitalists, especially when they were committed to things like the Cabora Bassa damn project on the Zambezi. Eventually the terrain on which the staff united to fight were the liberal values of free speech and freedom of expression. At a meeting of the Race and Neo-imperialism Section of the British Sociological Association, an IRR researcher read a paper in which he critiqued the basis of Colour and Citizenship, the book from the IRR’s ten-year Survey on the basis that it served to make the power elite more powerful and the ‘subject (immigrant) population relatively more impotent and ignorant’. In future he suggested that immigrants being ‘surveyed’ should simply tell IRR researchers to ‘fuck off’. The book had been a best-seller, it contained all the recommendations for lobbying the government, and, its principal author, who was also the owner of Westminister Press, sat on IRR’s board. The board closed ranks and decided the researcher had to be sacked. When the staff persuaded Hugh Tinker, the director, not to sack him on the grounds of freedom of expression, the Board turned on the director as incompetent himself. Meanwhile, Race Today had published an issue whose cover, according to the board, had cost its fund-raising programme thousands of pounds. The offending cover had on the back an advert for an anti-apartheid demonstration and on the front a picture of Lord Goodman (then negotiating for the British government with Rhodesia) and the caption ‘five million Africans say no’. The editor of the magazine should, the Board said, be sacked, the staff said no way. And now the staff took the issue to the general public by cultivating support in the press on the grounds of press freedom. (It has to be remembered, that, in the tradition of its forebears the Indian Civil Service and the Royal Institute for International Affairs, the IRR was run by and for its Board of Management. The staff were seen and treated as minions, without voice or volition, carrying out the bidding of their masters, who, though technically answerable to a membership, were in effect, their absolute rulers.) On 20 March 1972 the board summoned all its members to a meeting which was to sort out all the recalcitrant staff once and for all: the director was to be sent on study leave and Race Today shut down. The staff members present asked for a discussion and were refused, whereupon they summoned the whole body of the staff, who, conscious that the future of IRR was at stake, had stayed on in another part of the building after hours. Imagine the horror of Lord Boyle (former Tory minister), Michael Caine (head of Booker Brothers), David Sieff (of Marks and Spencer), Sir Frederic Seebohm (of Barclays Bank), and other luminaries of the business world as ‘their space’ was literally invaded by a horde of some forty angry staff (mainly women) who perched themselves along the side of the polished boardroom tables as they leant over to make their points. The ‘Lords of Human Kind’ had no experience of this kind of dogfight, they were never face to face with the hoipolloi like this. But their struggle to control the gaggle was to founder completely when the phone rang. It was the Financial Times, they were going to press and needed the story that they had been promised. The staff realised that they had been stitched up, the Board realised that their pre-emptive decision looked undemocratic, the Chairman decided to take the matters away from the board and present them instead to a meeting of all the Institute’s members at an Extraordinary General Meeting. So that is what happened on 18 April 1972. The changes to the internal workings of the IRR have been fundamental and enduring. And the impact of those changes will be celebrated later this year when IRR has its 50th birthday event on 1 November 2008. But what is important to recognise is the way in which that struggle so many years ago was to change the parameters of debate, policy, research and representation around race throughout the country. It is hard to convey now, in a context where the race scene is so diverse, how the IRR’s struggle influenced every quarter – trades unions, academic departments, newspapers, churches, the burgeoning race relations industry, social workers and other NGOs. In internal meeting after meeting, groups voted to support the IRR’s staff and held special meetings to discuss the issues thrown up. Essentially the struggle at IRR challenged a multitude of race relations shibboleths: the ‘problem’ was not Black immigrants but White society; the government was not part of the solution but part of the problem; it was not a question of educating Black and Whites about integration, but of fighting institutional racism; it was not race relations that was the field of study, but racism; racism was a moral and political issue which necessitated taking sides; it was those who experienced racism who should be in command of the fight against it. The reason that the battle at the IRR caught the public imagination is because it showed, too, that it was not necessary in the words of A. Sivanandan, who became director in 1973, to be ‘paralysed by our histories’. ‘We do not have to be at the barricades to be revolutionaries’, he wrote in the preface to Race and Resistance: the IRR story, ‘we do not have to be grassroots to be radical. To apprehend the social consequences of what we ourselves are doing and to set out to change them – is in itself a revolutionary act.’

Questions for Ken
16 Apr 2008
London mayor Ken Livingstone can justifiably boast that he has done much over the last 30 years to support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Londoners. As leader of the Greater London council in the 1980s, he was the first major politician to speak out publicly in support of gay human rights. His funding of previously unsupported LGBT welfare and advice agencies was trailblazing and immensely positive. In his first term as mayor of London, Livingstone set up the UK’s first same-sex partnership register, which paved the way for the subsequent legislation of civil partnerships. But during his second term as mayor, he caused widespread dismay in the LGBT community when he welcomed to City Hall as his “honoured guest” Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The mayor subsequently repeatedly excused and defended the viciously homophobic and murder-inciting cleric. Qaradawi supports the execution of gay people in Islamic states, the killing of Muslims who abandon their faith, wife-beating, female genital mutilation, forcing women to wear the hijab, terrorist attacks on innocent civilians in Israel and the flogging of women who have sex outside of marriage. He also said the 2004 Asian tsunami was punishment by God because the people who died had allowed their countries to become centres of “sexual perversion”. Together with many other people, I criticised Livingstone over his embrace of Qaradawi. He responded with the wholly untrue claim that I am an “Islamophobe” and a person with “a long history of Islamophobia”. Since then, despite an occasional pro-gay initiative, like opposing Westminster council’s attempt to ban rainbow flags in Soho, Livingstone’s record of supporting the LGBT community has been somewhat patchy. LGBT Londoners are, of course, not only interested in LGBT policies. Like the rest of London, they are also concerned about transport, crime, housing and the environment, as well as the candidates’ stance on matters that specifically affect lesbian and gay people. On four issues Livingstone needs to explain why he has let down the LGBT community. The other mayoral candidates also need to state where they stand. What are the Conservative, Lib Dem and Green policies on these questions? Refusal to fund the gay football world championships in London Livingstone has refused to contribute to the funding of the 2008 international gay and lesbian football association world championship, which is being held in London in August. London has won the honour of being the host city, and the UK’s Stonewall FC team is a strong contender for the world title, but the mayor is withholding financial backing. Livingstone also refused to sign a letter of support for the associations’s grant application to the lottery fund. Having the high-profile support of the mayor would increase the likelihood of the grant succeeding. It costs nothing to sign a letter of support. The unexpected lack of financial assistance from the mayor has contributed to the association being left with a funding shortfall. How does the mayor justify this denial of a few thousand pounds to the gay football world championships when he has showered billions on the 2012 Olympics? Where do the other mayoral candidates stand on funding the gay football world cup and similar gay sporting events? And will they offer financial support to increase youth, women’s, disabled and ethnic minority participation in sport? Lesbian and gay museum During the 2004 Mayoral election campaign, Livingstone promised to fund a lesbian and gay museum, which is now called Proud Heritage. The idea is to add to the diversity of London’s museums by creating a new institution dedicated to documenting and celebrating the lives and contributions of LGBT people, in a similar way to the existing specialist Jewish, children’s and slavery museums. It took until 2007 for Livingstone to grant a rather modest start-up grant of 5,000. Further money was pledged. Proud Heritage made a bid for an additional 10,000, so it could launch the first stage online version of the museum this week. The mayor eventually agreed a further 5,000. This money has been contracted by Livingstone but not delivered as of 15 April. Why not? On the basis of Livingstone’s contracted 5,000 grant, Proud Heritage organised development work. This work on the website, which opens on April 18, has not been completed because Livingstone’s money has not materialised. This has created needless last-minute stress for the Proud Heritage organisers. Why has Livingstone delayed his election pledge on the lesbian and gay museum? Why, four years after his promise, has the Proud Heritage project been underfunded by the mayor? What will other candidates pledge towards this project? Proud Heritage is, so far, only an online museum. Will the mayoral candidates support and help finance a physical LGBT museum as well? Mayor’s LGBT forum The mayor’s LGBT forum was set up to liaise with the LGBT community. But from the outset it has been structured in a wholly undemocratic way. Why isn’t the forum allowed to elect its own chair? Why did Livingstone impose as chair one of his own people, a straight woman, Anni Marjoram? Why is the LGBT forum banned from proposing resolutions or holding votes on policy recommendations to the mayor? Attempts to propose and vote on policy issues are ruled out of order by the chair. This has disillusioned many of us who proposed and backed the forum as an open, democratic space for dialogue and consultation. The forum is now widely dismissed as a PR exercise, with no real power or influence. Many grassroots activists no longer bother to attend. What is the point? Anything that questions mayoral policy doesn’t get on the agenda and uncomfortable debates are curtailed by the chair. How does the mayor explain the fact that many grassroots LGBT campaigners in London no longer participate in the forum? What does he say to allegations that it has become an unrepresentative forum attended mostly by pro-Livingstone factions and LGBT groups hoping to get money out of the Greater London authority? What would other mayoral candidates do to rectify this democratic deficit? Underfunding of LGBT groups and events The mayor has given millions to black projects, which is a very good thing. The empowerment of ethnic communities is vital to redress social exclusion and discrimination. But Livingstone has granted comparatively little to LGBT projects. The mayor keeps promising LGBT funding but he seems rarely to deliver. He is quite good at verbal support, but little more. How does Livingstone justify the millions of pounds he and the London development agency have given to black community groups and the largesse provided for the St Patrick’s Day events, compared to the much smaller grants that he has given to Pride London and LGBT community organisations? In 2006, the mayor gave 175,000 to the St Patrick’s Day festival and 288,000 to the Rise festival – but only 100,000 for the LGBT Pride London festival. I don’t begrudge support for Irish, Black, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim and women’s groups and events. The mayor has duty to support all of London’s wonderful diverse communities. He is right to do so. It helps create a more liberal, tolerant and cohesive city. But shouldn’t there be a more equitable distribution of mayoral funding, with all community events receiving roughly similar levels of financial backing? Or at least there should not be such huge disparities in the mayor’s financial support. Where do the other candidates stand on this question? Livingstone’s mishandling of these four issues has implications way beyond the LGBT community. It is symptomatic of a style of governance that adversely impacts on many Londoners. As well as Livingstone, all the mayoral candidates need to address this issue, so Londoners know what they will do if they are elected mayor on May 1.

Science cuts threaten Jodrell Bank radio telescope
16 Apr 2008
The Labour government of Prime Mister Gordon Brown is pushing ahead with unprecedented cuts in the UK science budget, with many critical programmes and facilities now threatened. In March, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) outlined a Programmatic Review listing all the science projects it funds in order of priority. The review followed the STFC?s December 11 budget announcement proposing severe cuts to the budgets of critical physics research and astronomy projects in the UK. The council cited an 80 million shortfall in its 670 million triannual budget as the reason for the cuts. The report divides scientific projects into High, Medium-High, Medium-Lower and Lower categories. Scientists fear that funding may be withdrawn from those facilities deemed to be ?Lower Priority? and some of those listed as ?Medium-Lower Priority.? Some 18 projects are listed as ?Medium-Lower Priority? and a further 25 as ?Lower Priority.? Among the many projects described as being of ?Lower Priority? are the following: MERLIN, e-MERLIN and ?Jive??The Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) is an array of radio telescopes centred on the world-famous Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire and is operated by the nearby University of Manchester. The array is distributed around Britain, with separations of up to 217 km. The project is preparing to complete a full 8 million upgrade to fibre-optic cables, enabling the full use of each dish to be made. The latter is known as e-MERLIN. Astrogrid: An open-source project leading worldwide efforts in partnership with established astronomical archives and facilities to establish a Virtual Observatory. The project has already designed much of the infrastructure to enable simultaneous access to most astronomical catalogues, images, spectra and other datasets in a standardised way from anywhere in the world. BiSON: The Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network consists of a network of six remote solar observatories monitoring low-degree solar oscillation modes. CASU/WFAU: The Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) is part of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University, and is mainly involved in survey astronomy. Gemini: The Gemini Observatory consists of two of the largest telescopes in the world, one in Hawaii and one in Chile. Gemini North is both a very advanced and the largest telescope UK astronomers have access to in the northern hemisphere. EISCAT: The EISCAT Scientific Association project operates three incoherent scatter radar systems, at 931 MHz, 224 MHz and 500 MHz, in northern Scandinavia. EISCAT monitors and studies the interaction between the Sun and the Earth as revealed by disturbances in the magnetosphere and the ionised parts of the atmosphere. It is these interactions that produce the spectacular aurora known as the Northern Lights. UKIRT: The United Kingdom InfraRed telescope is located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It is currently carrying out the most extensive survey of the infrared sky ever attempted. UKATC: Based at the historic and world-renowned Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre is the national centre for astronomical technology. UKATC designs and builds instruments for many of the world?s major telescopes. ING: The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes has been listed as a ?Medium-Lower? priority. The ING consists of three important telescopes on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain. Also listed as ?Medium-Lower? is the UK Solar System Data Centre (UKSSDC). This is a central archive and data centre facility for Solar System science in the UK, supporting the archives for all the researchers in the UK?s solar system scientific community. Jodrell Bank Immediately following the publication of the STFC review, there were protests throughout the astronomy and physics communities and among scientists in general. Sir Bernard Lovell, who founded and oversaw the construction of Jodrell Bank and who still works there at the age of 96, said, ?We are all astonished. I?m sure some solution will be found. It is the wrong time to close it. The work is of such fundamental importance. It would just not be sensible for them to pull the plug now.? Prominent astronomer Patrick Moore condemned the STFC plans. He said, ?If we lose Jodrell Bank, it will be a devastating blow not only to British radio astronomy, but to astronomy all over the world. The amount involved is not very much in the bigger scheme of things. It?s about the same amount claimed by Cabinet ministers last year for their expenses.? Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society said, ?We are very concerned about these plans?they are a real threat to Jodrell Bank. Jodrell Bank is a world-class facility and to save 2.7 million a year by axing something the UK is so good at is terribly disappointing. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.? Since it was constructed in 1957, the huge 76.2 metre (250 ft)wide Jodrell Bank radio telescope dish located in the Cheshire countryside, 20 miles south of Manchester, has become known and loved by millions of people. One letter published in the local newspaper, the Manchester Evening News, said, ?I can?t believe that this is happening. I was inspired to study science myself by visits to Jodrell Bank as a child and I know that a lot of other people had the same experience.? Such is the public affinity with Jodrell Bank that in 2006, it was named the winner in a BBC News online competition to find the UK?s greatest ?Unsung Landmarks.? For more than 50 years, the Jodrell Bank Observatory, originally known as the Jodrell Bank Experimental Station, has been at the forefront of worldwide radio astronomy. Sir Bernard Lovell had worked on radar in the Second World War and wanted to investigate the phenomena of cosmic rays. He had originally used a 218-ft wire mesh Transit aerial on the same site. Unlike the aerial, the dish could be pointed to any part of the sky to detect radio waves emanating from space. It was built at an estimated cost of 260,000?at least 3 million at today?s costs. Despite the great advances in radio astronomy since 1957, and the building of many other dishes worldwide, the Lovell remains the third-largest steerable radio telescope in the world today. Today, there are four radio telescopes of varying sizes on the site, with the main one being the Lovell. Over the past five decades, Jodrell Bank has made an astounding contribution to science and our understanding of the universe. Stars, galaxies and other objects in the universe emit different types of radiation?from visible light to invisible X-rays, gamma rays and infrared. Prior to the advent of Jodrell Bank and the radio telescope age, astronomers were only able to view the visible light emitted by stars. Overnight, it revolutionised astronomy, as it was able to detect radio waves from objects at the far reaches of the universe. The Lovell telescope allows these radio waves to bounce off its dish onto an aerial and radio receiver at its centre. Among its many achievements, it has developed our understanding of the age of the universe and what it is made of. It has led the way in the understanding of quasars, pulsars and supernovae and played a critical part in a number of space missions. Today, it researches various fields in physics and astronomy including gravitational lenses, cosmic microwave background, active galaxies, stellar Physics, solar plasmas, starburst galaxies and supernovae. On becoming operational in the summer of 1957, it was the only telescope able to track Sputnik 1, the world?s first artificial satellite launched into space by the Soviet Union. On October 12, 1957, Jodrell Bank located the satellite. In 1959, Jodrell Bank received the very first pictures transmitted from the far side of the Moon by the Soviet probe Luna 3. Jodrell Bank also tracked the NASA probe Pioneer 5 between March 11 and June 12, 1960. It was also used to send commands to the probe, including the one to separate the probe from its carrier rocket and the ones to turn on the more powerful transmitter when the probe was 8 million miles away. It was the only telescope in the world capable of receiving data from Pioneer 5. Recalling the tumultuous era that marked the beginning of humanity?s exploration beyond Earth, Lovell commented in 2003, ?Both the Soviets and Americans had the ability to launch payloads into space, but no means of tracking them!? Another milestone in the history of Jodrell Bank was in February 1966. The telescope tracked the Soviet Union?s first unmanned moon lander, Luna 9. It was able to detect the facsimile transmission of photographs from the moon?s surface being relayed back to the Soviet Union. Perhaps the most outstanding moment in the history of Jodrell Bank was when it assisted in tracking the Apollo mission that put man on the moon on July 20, 1969. During the descent of the Eagle lander to the surface of the moon, Jodrell Bank mapped out a plot chart of it based on Doppler Shift measures. This plot showed a very discernable movement that marked the exact moment when the crew assumed manual control of the craft and momentarily changed course in the last seconds before landing. This was because they had seen a potentially hazardous crater that may have jeopardised the mission. Today, that plot chart can be seen by visitors on the wall of the cafe in the Jodrell Bank Visitor Centre. Even as recently as 1993, the Lovell Telescope was asked by NASA to help in the search for the lost Mars Observer spacecraft. Although the craft was not detected, the Lovell was the only instrument on Earth with the capability to do so. Scientific observations carried out by the telescope included using radar to measure the distance to the Moon and to Venus. It has also observed pulsars and discovered various types of pulsars including millisecond pulsars and the first pulsar in a globular cluster. In 1979, it inaugurated the field of the study of ?gravitational lenses? as its radio observation led to the discovery of the first such lenses. Gravitational lenses had first been predicted by Albert Einstein in his theory of General Relativity at the turn of the last century. Einstein conjectured that instead of light from a source travelling in a straight line (in three dimensions), it is actually bent by the presence of a massive body. This allows the observer to see the object that is further away and would not actually be detected without the presence of the large object. Further discoveries in this field were made in 1998 with the joint Jodrell Bank/NASA detection of a special type of gravitational lensing known as Einstein Rings. In September 2006, Jodrell Bank announced that following three years of observing a double pulsar with three of its telescopes, the attending results showed that the general theory of relativity is accurate to 99.5 percent. Last but not least, the telescope also plays an important role in the search for extraterrestrial life. Jodrell Bank?s latest groundbreaking research Jodrell Bank/MERLIN has recently been instrumental once again in another monumental scientific breakthrough. On April 2, the team at MERLIN in collaboration with a network of scientists in the US announced the discovery of the youngest planet ever detected. The planet is still in the process of formation and is known as a ?protoplanet.? The gas planet and its surrounding mix of rocky particles and dust is thought to be just a few hundred years old and orbits around the star HL Tau. The parent star itself is very young and is estimated to be less than 100,000 years old. It lies in the direction of the constellation of Taurus at a distance of 520 light years. Our own Sun, in comparison, is 4,600 million years old. The discovery reveals a new planetary system in the process of formation. The evolving planet is a gas giant, some 14 times the size of our Jupiter. Prior to its discovery, the previous youngest planet was confirmed to be 10 million years old. The HL Tau star region was initially imaged by the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes in the US at emission wavelengths. These were specifically chosen to detect rocky particles about the size of pebbles. Scientists hoped that the presence of such tiny rocky material would reveal that they were beginning to clump together to form planets. MERLIN, including Jodrell Bank, was able to study the same system at longer wavelengths. These observations confirmed the emissions were from rocks and not from other sources such as hot gas. Dr. Anita Richards, one of two scientists at Jodrell Bank who analysed the data, said, ?The new object, designated HL Tau b, is the youngest planetary object ever seen and is just one percent as old as the young planet found in orbit around the star TW Hydrae that made the news last year. HL Tau b gives a unique view of how planets take shape, because the VLA image also shows the parent disk material from which it formed.? Jodrell Bank?s future is bound up with the eMERLIN project, which is currently being finalised. It is due to be operational in late 2008 or early 2009 at a total cost of 8 million. It has also been selected as the headquarters of a larger international project?the Square Kilometre Array. This proposes to connect dozens of radio dishes at a remote facility to be built either in South Africa or Australia at a cost of about 1 billion. This project is not intended to be fully operational until 2020, meaning that Jodrell Bank is reliant on the continuation of the e-MERLIN project. The upgrade of Jodrell Bank associated with e-MERLIN will increase the resolution and sensitivity of the system by 30 times. This would result in the telescope being able to observe a much wider range of objects in the universe. The scrapping of e-MERLIN would result in no new science being achieved from the 8 million investment and the possible closure of Jodrell Bank altogether. Phil Diamond, the director of the observatory, said, ?It means there is a threat to the whole facility. We are coming to the end of the 8 million MERLIN upgrade, which when it comes on stream, will make us one of the most powerful telescopes on the planet, so it is unbelievable.? The cuts being proposed by the STFC have been aptly described as ?scientific vandalism.? For several generations, Jodrell Bank has been a powerful symbol representing scientific achievement and progress. For many school children, including this writer, seeing the giant telescope up close as a child left an indelible memory. Tens of thousands of people still visit Jodrell Bank each year and marvel at the structure and what it represents historically. Lectures are regularly held there that continue to play an important role in the dissemination of the latest developments in the fields of radio astronomy and physics. Precisely due to the great advances in scientific understanding and discoveries, in which it played a major role, today Jodrell Bank and the other projects threatened in the STFC review are ever more critical in both enhancing and promoting scientific enquiry. The slashing of the science budget is bound up with a general onslaught being carried out by a government whose policies are based on facilitating the requirements of big business. The pursuit of science and knowledge is being sacrificed to the narrower and more immediate demands of corporations for returns on their investments. A web site www.savejodrellbank.org.uk has been set up by students at the University of Manchester in response to the threat.

Brown may rue leaving Northern Ireland out of Britain
16 Apr 2008
After 28 years as deputy, Peter Robinson is poised to take over the leadership of the Democratic Unionist Party and assume the First Ministership of Northern Ireland. He will emerge fully from the shadow of Ian Paisley to lead Unionism, and the fourth part of the Union, in June. The Paisley- Robinson relationship has been central to the DUP. Paisley with his oratorical skills and emotional intelligence of Ulster?s Unionist community was the standard bearer, but it was Robinson that honed the DUP machine. Robinson?s importance came into sharp focus as the DUP overhauled the Ulster Unionist Party and negotiated the St Andrews Agreement. Post devolution, he used his powerful position as Finance minister to full effect, driving forward an agreed budget and programme for government. However, the relationship between Paisley and McGuinness, nicknamed the ?Chuckle Brothers,? caused unease among Unionists and finally accelerated Robinson?s accession. The expectation is now that the bonhomie will decline – it?s not Robinson?s style anyway. But the devolution will continue. Its path may be bumpier than in the past year, but this is because of genuine disputes rather than personalities. Robinson has already met with the leader-in-waiting of the Republic of Ireland, Brian Cowen, in a co-announcement of an investment package that could bring 5,000 jobs to Northern Ireland. The clear message was that when business can be done it will be done. In terms of Unionism locally, a post-Paisley DUP creates new dynamics which can only be guessed at – but a scenario that gives the UUP much comfort is hard to find. Nationally, the relationship with Gordon Brown is probably the coolest of all, mostly at his own behest. Brown was indifferent to Blair?s peace project, gave short shrift to proposals for a better financial package and the DUP has been angered by the in-out (usually out) attitude to Northern Ireland in Brown?s Britishness project. Beyond devolution, Unionism is eyeing the possibility of a hung parliament. If it does occur, Robinson will do business – but for a much higher price than the UUP in the Callaghan and Major eras. In that scenario Brown may rue his present approach.

A Sign of the Times
15 Apr 2008
While the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was being set up, another organization had been making plans for action. The Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War (DAC), which had sent Harold Steele to Tokyo, bound for the Pacific, met in November 1957 to discuss its next move. Hugh Brock, the editor of Peace News who had organized the first demonstration at Aldermaston back in 1952, suggested the DAC arrange a four-day march to the atomic weapons factory for Easter 1958. The members of the DAC were mostly from an anarchist-pacifist background and, like Brock, were influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s pacifist fight for Indian independence. They were determined to use his nonviolent principles in their own campaign to rid Britain and the world of nuclear weapons. Their intention was to tackle the problem head-on: to bypass the politicians and engage the attention of workers at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) directly, to try to convince them to stop working on weapons of mass destruction. However, unlike the 1952 demonstration, this one would be preceded by a march that they hoped would focus attention on the issue so that people at Aldermaston would be ready for the debate when the DAC marchers arrived. An ad hoc Aldermaston march committee was set up, comprising Member of Parliament Frank Allaun, Hugh Brock from Peace News, Walter Wolfgang, organizer of the Labour Party’s H-Bomb Campaign Committee, and Michael Randle, in charge of promoting Peace News. Meetings were held every week or so in the House of Commons, in a committee room that Frank Allaun would book for them. There, surrounded by heraldic wallpaper and Victorian paneling, they debated how to change policies made in similar rooms in the same building. The CND had only existed a few days and had not yet held its first public meeting, so DAC was cautious when asked if they wanted to be involved with the march. The members agreed to give their blessing to the march . . . “but should make it clear at this stage of the Campaign that they could not be very closely involved.” The DAC march committee had originally envisioned about 50 or 60 people walking all 53 miles from London to Aldermaston, but with the launch of CND and all the attendant publicity, it now seemed that many more people would be coming. Many members of the Labour Party were sympathetic and intended to march, including members of parliament; a number of labor unions intended to march, bringing with them their magnificent banners. The Universities and Left Review club, people involved with the forerunner of the New Left Review, formed a contingent, as did the Victory for Socialism group. The Quakers were the largest religious group planning to march from the beginning, but many other Christian organizations soon became involved. The march committee realized that things had changed, and several hundred people could be expected to attend. Banners Against the Bomb This changed the nature of the demonstration, making a change of policy necessary: The original idea of calling upon the staff at Aldermaston to stop working there was now overshadowed by the potential size of the march. The committee was divided, with Hugh Brock and Michael Randle remaining in favor of addressing the workers, and Frank Allaun and Walter Wolfgang now opposed to the idea. In a compromise the march was followed by a nine-week picket of the Aldermaston bomb factory, during which the workers were asked to withdraw their labor. Given the enlarged size of the march, the issue of banners became of prime importance. The whole point, after all, was to express their views with leaflets and conversations; banners and slogans were a key part of the mix if they wanted people to know all the players as they marched through the streets. Gerald Holtom A member of the Direct Action Committee’s Twickenham branch, textile designer Gerald Holtom was involved in the planning of the march from the beginning. Because he ran his own graphic design studio, he was given the role of designing the banners and placards to be carried to Aldermaston. Holtom was a committed Christian and pacifist: he was tall and soft-spoken. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1935. His deeply felt pacifism led him to spend World War II working on a farm in Norfolk as a conscientious objector. Holtom took his responsibility for getting the peace message across seriously. He wanted to create a design style that was not only informative but also one that summed up the message ? something that these days might be called a “brand.” Holtom was best known for appliqu work rather than graphic art. He made the striking covering for the east wall of Sir Basil Spence’s 1957 St. Oswald’s Church in Tile Hill, Coventry, but his most famous work was the appliqu altar cloths and sequence of acoustic panels on the west end of St. Paul’s Church, Lorrimore Square in south London, built in 1959-1960 to replace a Victorian church bombed during the war. The U.S. religious right later tried to suggest that whoever designed the peace symbol must have been a devil-worshipping communist, but Gerald Holtom was as far from this stereotype as humanly possible. He was part of a quiet, pacifist element in the Church of England active after the war, helping rebuild the churches they saw as a focal point for communities, destroyed by the bombs. Many of those seeking to discredit the symbol thought that Bertrand Russell, noted for his left-leaning atheism, had designed it. Which was also fiction. Prototype Toward the end of February 1958, Gerald Holtom arrived at the offices of Peace News, where the actual planning of the march was taking place. The practical organizing was done by Hugh Brock and Michael Randle, from the March Committee, who were both on the staff of Peace News; Gene Sharp, a Peace News staff member, largely responsible for the Briefing Leaflet for the march; and Pat Arrowsmith. It was Randle, Brock, and Arrowsmith who met Gerald Holtom to review his sketches. Under his arms Holtom carried two large rolls of heavy brown paper. One roll contained drawings of designs for banners for the march: checkered flags, semaphore code flags, and Christian flags with crosses as well as a curious symbol that no one had seen before that he was proposing to represent the antinuclear campaign. He had drawn a line of marchers carrying these flags to show how the designs would look in use. On the other roll of paper, he had made more detailed sketches of this new insignia he thought might be useful as a symbol for the march and the nuclear disarmament campaign. He had recognized early on that the biggest design difficulty was finding a shorthand way of expressing the lengthy slogan “Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament.” His solution was a circle, and within it the now familiar symbol, a cross whose horizontal arms had slipped 45 degrees downward. He explained to his small audience that the symbol was made up of the British navy semaphore letters for N and D. This semaphore system used two handheld flags to spell out messages from one ship to another, provided the signalmen were within telescope range. One flag held vertically and the other pointing directly down signified D, while two flags at 45 degrees from horizontal was N. The symbol embodied an encoded message calling for Nuclear Disarmament. He showed them versions in brown ink, with the circle superimposed on a brown square, and a version in purple ink. According to one report, the committee was initially dubious, but his arguments quickly won them over, and with only slight hesitation they decided to formally adopt the symbol and asked him to work on some preliminary designs. Michael Randle, however, remembers their support for the symbol as being immediately positive. “I recall particularly the day when a Twickenham artist, Gerald Holtom, arranged to see Hugh Brock, Pat Arrowsmith, and myself in the small Peace News offices in Blackstock Road, and showed us the enigmatic symbol he had designed and which he urged us to adopt,” Randle wrote in Campaigns for Peace. “He also brought sketches of how he envisaged the march, with long banners stretching across the road with his symbol at either end of it, and such was his enthusiasm and persuasiveness that we immediately agreed to his proposal. This was how the now famous nuclear disarmament symbol came to be adopted: Holtom himself remembered them being totally encouraging. In a letter to Hugh Brock in September 29, 1973, he said, “Without you, Michael Randle and Pat, there would have been no symbol.” Doubts However, Holtom still had his own doubts about it. In the same letter to Brock, he wrote: “The day after your unequivocal approval of the symbol. I made a badge the size of a sixpence in paper, black ink on white, pinned it on my lapel with some trepidation in fear of ridicule and forgot it.” Later that day, while visiting the local post office, a young woman behind the counter asked him about the badge he was wearing. He explained it was new and it called for nuclear disarmament. He later wrote that as he returned home, he was “filled with embarrassment and doubts.” Michael Randle wrote, “I think what enthused us was not so much the explanation of the genesis of the symbol, as the vision in his sketches of how the march might look if we adopted it.” A week later Holtom arrived at the first meeting of what was to become the London Region CND, held in the small hall of St. Pancras Town Hall. He brought with him some of the long banners he had devised for the upcoming march. At the back of the hall, he unrolled a bolt of black cloth about 6 yards (5 m) long, designed to be carried sideways on the march so people could read them as they walked past, like an advert on the side of a bus. This provided another solution to conveying a lengthy slogan to the public. He fixed bamboo poles to each end and asked two people to hold them up. Written on the black cloth were the words “Nuclear Disarmament” in white paint, and at each end was his curious new symbol, also in white. The results were striking. He explained to the meeting that it was the semaphore for the initials ND, Nuclear Disarmament, but that the broken cross could also mean the death of man, whereas the circle symbolized the unborn child. In combination it represented the terrible threat nuclear weapons posed to humanity, including the unborn. This explanation of the symbolism comes from Rudoph Koch’s The Book of Signs, which is almost certainly where Holtom got his inspiration. Koch’s book, which contains almost 500 symbols from medieval Europe, was first published in Britain in 1930, but it was issued as a cheap paperback by Dover Publications in 1955 and became popular among art students at that time. As the director of a design studio, it is unlikely that Holtom did not have a copy. His explanation of the symbol for a dead man and the symbol for an unborn child match those of Koch precisely. The London Region CND was enthusiastic about his designs; they liked the stark black and white, which was easy to reproduce, and said they would like to use these designs on the march. They could not speak for CND itself. Other Symbols The symbol was more than just a design problem to Holtom; he believed passionately in the campaign and had thought long and deeply about a symbol to represent it. Years later, in 1973, Holtom wrote to Hugh Brock, telling him of his state of mind at the time and explaining in greater detail the personal symbolism involved in his creation of the logo. For him it was not simply another design job — in fact, the intensity of his feelings on the subject may be what inspired him to the rarest of creations: a new symbol that would resonate across nations and generations, gathering meaning, until it became part of the human visual vocabulary. At first he had thought of using the Christian cross as the dominant motif, but he told Brock that he realized “in Eastern eyes the Christian Cross was synonymous with crusading tyranny culminating in Belsen and Hiroshima and the manufacture and testing of the H-bomb.” At the time, he had spoken with various priests about the idea, and they were not happy with using the cross on a protest march. He also rejected the image of the dove, then used extensively by the peace movement — in particular the one drawn for them by Picasso — as it had been appropriated by “the Stalin regime . . . to bless and legitimize their H-bomb manufacture.” Holtom told Brock that on February 21, 1958, the day he designed the symbol, he was in despair. Deep despair. “I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outward and downward in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad in his painting, The Third of May 1808. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle around it . . . It was ridiculous at first and such a puny thing . . . “ In fact, Holtom may have been thinking of a different Goya. In The Third of May 1808 the man before the firing squad has his hands raised high in the air, albeit in the same V position. However, one of the most famous images from Goya’s Disasters of War series of 80 etchings is one of a peasant on his knees, slumped in depression, with his hands in exactly the position Holtom describes. Dissatisfaction Holtom was not happy with his design: In many ways he was asking too much of himself. Everybody believed nuclear disarmament was desirable. He felt that it was not enough just to call for nuclear disarmament. He wanted a symbol that conveyed the need for individuals to take responsibility for the direct creative action that was necessary in order to combat the nuclear threat. As he saw it, the key to nuclear disarmament was unilateral action. Holtom returned to his studio in Twickenham, fresh from meeting with Brock and the others at Peace News, and put his staff to work, silkscreening lollipop signs and banners, all bearing his new design. Five hundred cardboard lollipop signs on sticks were made: half of them were black on white and half white on green. Holtom was a committed Christian, and as the Church’s liturgical colors change over Easter “from Winter to Spring, from Death to Life” he used the same symbolism for the banners. The black-and-white lollipops were to be carried on Good Friday and Saturday, whereas on Easter Sunday and Monday the green-and-white ones were distributed. His design called for thin arms on the cross culminating in a serif where they met the enclosing circle. Many variations on this theme have been tried over the years, but this design remains the most elegant. Holtom still felt his design didn’t say enough. A “Revolution of Thought” Nonetheless, he turned his energies to making the banners and lollipop signs for the march. A few days later, in his workshop, he experienced a “revolution of thought.” He told Brock in his letter that he had been holding the symbol in his hand, turning it around, staring at it “in the struggle to find a way beyond despair:” It was then that it suddenly occurred to him that if the symbol was inverted, then it could be seen as representing the tree of life, the tree on which Jesus Christ had been crucified, and that, for Christians like Gerald Holtom, was a symbol of hope and resurrection. Even better, the inverted image of a figure with arms stretched upward and outward was the semaphore signal for U: unilateral. And so for Holtom the symbol took on an even more symbolic meaning. Just as the American religious right later claimed the design to be an inverted cross, Holtom inverted the design to become a symbol of hope. Holtom also made the lead banners for the march, the biggest of which read: “March from London to Aldermaston” in the striking white letters on a black background, flanked by the peace symbol. The banner was used every year, though the lettering was changed to read “March to London from Aldermaston” after the first year. Each year it was brought out, cleaned up, and a fresh bunch of daffodils attached to it as a symbol of spring and life. Its stark black-and-white design was modern-looking at the time and provided a template for antinuclear posters and banners in Britain for years to come. The Ban-the-Bomb Button The march also needed button badges, both for the marchers and to distribute and sell. Using Gerald Holtom’s design, Eric Austin of Kensington CND stamped them from clay and fired them in a kiln. They were white, with the circle and cross in black, and were distributed with a note pointing out that these ceramic badges would be one of the few human artifacts likely to withstand a nuclear attack unless they received a direct nuclear hit — the only evidence that a living person had once stood where it was found, Austin echoed Haltom’s reference to Rudolph Koch’s The Book of Signs by stating that the symbol had several layers of meaning embodied in it: both the semaphore for N and D and also the traditional symbols of life and death. “The gesture of despair had long been associated with the death of man and the circle with the unborn child,” he said. After the original ceramic badges, which have now become collectors’ items, the Campaign made a large batch in plastic before settling on a cheap mass-produced tin button, with the symbol in white on black, which became the standard design. The design was distinctive, easy to draw and graffiti. But there were still doubters, as Michael Randle later wrote, recalling when the first pamphlet was printed bearing the symbol. A veteran peace activist complained to Randle that he and the others on the committee must have been out of their minds in adopting it. Randle reports his friend saying, “What on Earth were you, Hugh, and Pat thinking about when you adopted that symbol? It doesn’t mean a thing and it will never catch on.” As Randle points out, had the march not been a success, his friend would probably have been proved right. Barry Miles, a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), was the chairman of the Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the early 1960s. Based in London, he has written numerous articles and books about the Beat Generation, including the New York Times bestseller Hippie.

How do we end the bloodshed?
15 Apr 2008
With five young men already murdered in Edmonton, north London, this year, questions are being asked at the highest levels about how to stop the bloodshed on the streets. Edmonton has been dubbed the new ?murder mile?, and many young residents are as anxious as politicians and parents to end the violence. Mark Thomas lives near to where fifth victim Bakari Bernard-Davis resided. Known as ?preacher?, the 18-year-old student told The Voice: ?More policing, better CCTV coverage on the local estates, and harsher punishments for those caught with a weapon needs to be put into place straight away in solving the growing epidemic of knife crime in Edmonton.? He added: ?Trust me when I say I hate feds [police], but right now the community needs to work with them to make our streets safe again. ?These so-called ?street thugs? are literally getting away with murder, and innocent people are dying.? The murder follows those of 18-year-old Henry Bolombi on New Year?s Day, Louis Boduka, on January 21, 16-year-old Iyke Nmezu, on February 29 and 18-year-old Michael Jones, on March 13. Bernard-Davis, a 24-year-old father of one, was murdered outside his home hours after Boris Johnson, the Conservative candidate for London Mayor, visited Edmonton?s Bounces Road Community Hall. Johnson had been on a walkabout with Conservative leader David Cameron to discuss violence and anti-social behaviour among youths. Bernard-Davis was found lying in Bedevere Road, Edmonton, just before 9pm on March 31. Suffering from stab wounds, he died at the scene half an hour later, making him the 16th victim under 25 to be killed in London. The figure so far has already passed the half mark of total deaths last year. In 2007, 26 were killed ? 16 were attacked with knives, nine died in gun incidents, and in one case the cause of death is yet to be confirmed. Known to his family and friends as ?Judah?, Bernard-Davis came from a well-respected Rastafarian family. His parents had recently returned to the UK after spending some time in Kenya. He also leaves behind a younger brother and three sisters. Within an hour of the murder, The Voice spoke to several residents that live near Bedevere Road. Cries of ?not another yout? were heard from many onlookers. ?I can?t believe dreadie is dead,? said a neighbour. ?He was a good yout who always walked alone. Why?why him? He did not even have the chance to cry for help.? The huge rise in the number of teenagers being killed on the streets of London is the biggest threat facing the capital, after terrorism. Two more teenagers were stabbed to death within hours of each other in separate incidents this week. A boy aged 14 was stabbed in the throat after an argument with a friend, and a 17-year-old youth was stabbed in the chest. Both attacks happened in daylight. A close-knit community, Edmonton was once known as the ?towers of Enfield?, due to the four high-rise flats that dominated the north London skyline. However, the flats were demolished in 2001 and replaced by modern redbrick houses, in an attempt to create a pleasant and safer environment for the community. Edmonton MP Andy Love said: ?We need to break this trend. I am profoundly shocked?this is totally and completely unprecedented in living memory. ?There is nothing on the scale of what we have seen in the last three months for the whole population.? Devastated that her son?s life was cut short, Bernard-Davis? mother told The Voice: ?I still can?t believe that my son is gone? Judah was a great son and brother to his siblings, not forgetting a dad. He was intelligent, with a good heart.? Police are appealing for anyone who witnessed Bakari Bernard-Davis? murder, or has any information, to call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Blow for British Coal Company?s Controversial Mining Plans
15 Apr 2008
Press Release The UK company, Global Coal Management (GCM) has suffered a severe blow following the Asian Development Bank?s (ADB) decision to drop its financial backing for the controversial proposal to build an open cast coal mine in Phulbari, North West Bangladesh. Tim Jones, policy officer at the World Development Movement, which spearheaded the UK campaign to stop the Phulbari mine project going ahead said: ?It is absolutely right that the ADB have pulled out of this project. The consequences of the scheme on the environment and the people living in the area would have been disastrous. The people of Bangladesh should not suffer at the hands of a British company. This is a blow for GCM but a victory for some of the poorest people of Bangladesh.? The ADB was planning to grant a US$100 million loan to the project, as well as a US$200 million political risk guarantee. But the Bank came under fire from a range of NGOs, activists and individuals who claimed that the mine would lead to political unrest, reduced access to food and water for more than 100,000 people and the displacement of at least 50,000 people with minimal compensation. Professor Anu Mohammed from Bangladesh said: ?The area around Phulbari is extremely fertile and densely populated. It is also one of the few regions in Bangladesh that are safe from flooding and other natural catastrophes and therefore plays a key role for the food security of the entire country. The proposed ?development? project is merely a scheme to loot natural resources from a poor country for the rich. We will not allow Global Coal Management to turn a land of food for the people into a black hole for corporate profit.? Forty-two community leaders from Phulbari wrote to the Asian Development Bank in December 2007 asking them to pull out of the mining project, saying: ?The ADB offers loans in the name of reducing poverty, but if realised, we believe that this project will increase the poverty of the local population as well as cause environmental disaster.? Over 60 international NGOs, such as Oxfam Australia, ActionAid Pakistan, Greenpeace India, also wrote to the Asian Development Bank setting out the social, environmental and political risks of going forward with the loan. Notes to editors More than 50,000 people, including the local indigenous community, will be displaced in a country increasingly short of land. GCM claim they will compensate the legal holders of the land, but the majority of people living in the region are landless farmers, who will receive minimal compensation and for only two years. GCM have not said how they expect people to earn a living once the land they work on has gone. Bangladesh is one of the most populated countries in the world. Campaigners fear that food and water security will be compromised by the mine, due to an increase in the levels of toxins, including arsenic, in the water supply, which could also affect agricultural land. The mine will also reduce access to water in the area which is likely to affect a further 100,000 people. Three people were killed during protests in August 2006, when over 20,000 people demonstrated against the mine. Campaigners are concerned that if GCM does not pull out of Bangladesh there will be further unrest. Financing the mine would have contradicted the ADB?s own energy policy, which states that coal mines should only be supported if the coal is for use in the local area, but most of the coal would have been exported from Bangladesh. To find out more about the World Development Movement?s action for Phulbari, please see www.wdm.org.uk/bangaldeshmine

A Failing Relationship
15 Apr 2008
IF Justice Secretary Jack Straw really thinks that, as a part of doing a chummy little deal with the other parliamentary parties over funding rules, he can haul every penny of trade union cash given to the Labour Party straight into its central funds, to be dispensed as party HQ sees fit, then he has got another think coming. One can only wonder what view of the relationship between the Labour Party and the trade unions Mr Straw holds. While Labour loyalists are struggling to hold the Labour-union link together, pleading that things will get better in the face of serial betrayals by new Labour that have left an enormous majority of the trade union membership in this country disillusioned and bitter, Mr Straw seems only to see an endless source of funding that new Labour’s upper echelons can commandeer. Well, it simply isn’t so. The days of blanket support for Labour are long gone and trade unionists are becoming ever more distrustful of the party’s leadership, and with good cause. The recruitment of CBI bigwigs into the government, the dismal treachery of the non-delivery of most of the elements of the Warwick agreement, the abolition of the 10p basic tax rate for the low-paid, the lack of movement on pensions justice and, most visibly of all, the government’s grovelling self-abasement to big business and its refusal to do anything about bringing the City fat-cat profiteers into line have all but destroyed the credibility of Labour in the eyes of most trade unionists. Union after union has severed ties with the party and many more are now demanding the more discriminating use of their funds. Support is being increasingly directed only at constituencies and members of Parliament who have earned the trust and the respect of the unions and that trend will inevitably continue and intensify. And it is in this atmosphere that Mr Straw thinks that he can manipulate away even more of the unions’ input into policy. Labour Party conference has already been effectively neutralised and this dirty little deal could, if Mr Straw got away with it, almost entirely sever the trade union link with Labour, while keeping the money conduit open and running – in one direction only, of course. There is, it is said, no such thing as a free lunch and that holds as true for the Labour-union link as for anything else. Mr Straw and his Downing Street master need to remember that the unions do not support Labour and keep it financially afloat merely because of Mr Brown’s nice smile or because the MPs are such jolly good chaps. They support it when it serves, as it was formed to do, working-class interests. And when it opposes them, as it is increasingly doing, that support will be more and more difficult to win. It is almost unbelievable that, as John McDonnell MP points out: “When the Labour Party is at its lowest ebb in the polls for years and we are facing local elections in a fortnight, the Labour leadership is picking a fight with its most loyal supporters.” Take note, Mr Straw. New Labour and its luminaries have abused the trade union movement for long enough. It is time to mend your ways, not to try and wriggle out of your commitments. If new Labour thinks that it can stand alone without the unions, it will fail and no amount of subterfuge will keep this failing marriage from the divorce courts.

Public in the Dark about Biofuels in their Petrol
14 Apr 2008
Almost nine out of ten Britons have no idea that biofuels will be added to their petrol from tomorrow, according to the first ever public attitudes survey on the controversial alternative fuels. The research also revealed that, of those who knew what biofuels are, three quarters would prefer the Government to curb emissions by improving public transport or making cars greener. The YouGov survey, commissioned by Friends of the Earth, also revealed that 78 per cent of the public agree that European governments should make vehicle manufacturers double the fuel efficiency of new cars by 2020 in order to tackle climate change. And that more than two thirds of people think the Government is not doing enough to improve public transport. The Government’s Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, brought in to meet EU regulations, means all petrol sold in the UK will have to include at least 2.5 per cent biofuels – made from crops- from 15 April 2008. But although the move aims to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and cut carbon emissions, new scientific evidence shows that the growth in biofuels could actually increase greenhouse gas emissions through land conversion and greater use of chemical fertilisers. Worryingly, two thirds of those surveyed by Friends of the Earth were unaware that the growth in biofuels is contributing to the destruction of rainforest. Friends of the Earth believes the UK Government and the EU should scrap their biofuels targets and tackle transport pollution by investing in better public transport and strengthening proposals for mandatory emissions limits on all new cars. Friends of the Earth biofuels campaigner, Kenneth Richter, said: “Most people will be horrified to know the Government is putting biofuels in our petrol when the damage they do to forests could make climate change worse. “People want to see real green transport solutions that make a difference to their lives instead – like better public transport and smarter cars that burn less fuel. It’s now up to the Government to put transport policy on the right track.” Notes: All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2,183 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 3 – 7 April 2008. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+). [1] The survey results are: When asked whether they thought European Governments should make vehicle manufacturers double the fuel efficiency on new cars by 2020, 78 per cent of all respondents either agreed or strongly agreed. Overall more than two thirds (70 per cent) think the Government is not doing enough to improve public transport. When asked, “are you aware that the growth in biofuels is contributing to deforestation in countries like Indonesia?” only 33 per cent of respondents answered yes. 89 per cent of people in Great Britain do not know that biofuels are going to be added to their petrol from 15 April when the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation comes into force. Of the 1,209 respondents who knew what biofuels were (55 per cent), fewer than one in seven people (14 per cent) thought they were the best way to reduce emissions from road transport. 44 per cent singled out improving public transport as the best option. [2] Recent research has suggested that the carbon dioxide emissions released when land is converted to grow biofuels could take centuries to pay back. Globally the push for biofuels is resulting in increased pressure on the worlds remaining rainforests which hold huge stores of carbon. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/February/07020802.asp Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has calculated that using chemical fertilisers to grow biofuel crops can release twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) than previously thought. http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/September/21090701.asp [3] There are increasing calls for Government caution on biofuels, The King Review of Low Carbon Cars, commissioned by the UK Government and published on 12 March 2008, urged the EU to shift the focus of its policy from biofuels to cleaner automotive technology. It also recommended adopting a target of 100 grammes of carbon dioxide emissions for each kilometre a car travels. Friends of the Earth is calling for European governments to go even further and make vehicle manufacturers double the average fuel efficiency on new cars by 2020 – something supported by the vast majority of people in our survey released today. New cars sold in the UK in 2007 emitted 164.9 grammes of carbon dioxide per kilometre (g/km CO2). The latest figures for the EU as a whole showed that average emissions of new cars sold in 2006 were 160g.km CO2. Doubling average fuel efficiency would reduce average emissions to 80g/km CO2. The EU is currently deciding on emissions targets for the next decade or more. And has recently weakened its plans to reduce average emissions from new cars sold in the EU to no more than 120g per kilometre by 2012 in the wake of lobbying from car companies like Porsche.? As well as relaxing the limit to 130 g/km it has not proposed any firm longer term targets for 2020. Car manufacturers are calling for the 2012 target to be weakened still further and, according to reports, Porsche is considering legal action against the EU if it sticks to its original 120g/km CO2 target – see http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/09/14/afx4117266.html for further information. For further information about low carbon cars and the current EU negaotaitions, see http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/delivering_greener_cars.pdf For further information about Friends of the Earth, visit www.foe.co.uk.

To Fly or Not to Fly
14 Apr 2008
The plane is over the English Channel when the pilot?s voice crackles over the loudspeakers. ?Just to warn you that there?s been a bit of trouble at Heathrow with people protesting about the impact of air travel on climate change. Nothing to worry about, but when we land you may see a bigger police presence at the airport than you would normally expect.? The tone is jocular and clearly intended to draw us all together into a kind of community of ?sensible? travellers who might have to suffer the disruption of ?extremist? campaigners. So what exactly am I doing here, in August 2007, given that I feel a much greater sense of kinship with the Climate Camp protesters down below than with the pilot?s cosy set of assumptions? It?s a good question. I?m on my way back with my family from a holiday in Italy. Last time we went, a few years ago, we drove there and back, via Luxembourg and Switzerland, taking our time and making many stop-offs on the way to break the journey. This time when we booked, almost a year in advance, we knew our time would be squeezed between work commitments and being back for our daughter?s exam results. So, not without qualms, we took advantage of ludicrously cheap flights that would get us there within a couple of hours rather than a couple of days. I tell you this to indicate my starting-point when I began to research this magazine ? for all that I bike to work, compost like crazy and am vegetarian, I am far from being in the environmental vanguard, and certainly don?t feel able to lecture people about what they should or should not do. Given this, I was not exactly burning to pick up the topic of Ethical Travel. I had no problem considering the effects of tourism on the Majority World. But since most tourism depends on air travel I knew I was likely to find myself in the unenviable position of having to offer readers some guidance as to when flying is acceptable and when it isn?t. And the more I sounded people out, the more my suspicions were confirmed. People are concerned and looking for guidance on an issue which has leapt to public attention in recent years ? at least in Britain, where the debate about flying rages much hotter than it does in Australasia or North America. Mind-boggling statistics My earliest research left me shocked by the statistics on aviation emissions. Put simply, jet aircraft not only emit carbon from vast quantities of kerosene fuel, they also do it at high altitudes, where it has a much greater warming effect than it would in the lower atmosphere. In addition, jets emit other greenhouse gases, including nitrous oxide and water vapour (?contrails?). The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates the net effect of all these emissions from jet aircraft at 2.7 times the carbon consumed in the fuel. The chart below shows that an individual?s share of carbon emitted on a return flight from London to New York exceeds the carbon used up by a full year?s modest driving of an average car. How such statistics are calculated is always a contentious issue. But the exact numbers are less interesting than the broad-brushstroke comparisons: you can easily dump more carbon into the atmosphere from one return flight than from the gas and electricity you use in your house for an entire year. This was, to be frank, a quite mind-boggling discovery for me, which couldn?t help but challenge my attitude to flying. Travel has played an enormous part in my life. I cannot easily conceive what kind of person I would be had I not been able to board an airplane. But I do recognize that the profound implications of climate change (and the fight to prevent it) are going to force us all to take stock of our lives, to challenge all our assumptions. Just how far, I wonder, are we prepared to go in challenging the flying culture? My tentative proposal to the NI editorial team was that we should oppose the expansion of aviation ? especially the development of new airports or runways ? and encourage readers to reduce the amount they flew. But we should stop well short of calling for an end to all holiday flights. A great deal of heat was generated in the discussion that ensued, but not a lot of light. It soon became plain that the issue of flying is a particularly thorny one, in which emotions are perhaps too readily engaged. And this was despite the fact that, perhaps surprisingly, there was no-one in the room arguing that the magazine should rule out flying for leisure or experience altogether. One or two people argued that it would be so impossible to pin down reliable estimates of the emissions of various forms of transport that we would be treading on dodgy ground even to enter the flying debate. Adam Ma?anit I DEFINITELY AGREE with the need to deal with aviation?s impact on climate change. My worry is about the focus on individual consumption, on individuals taking flights. I think the emphasis needs to go back towards political, economic and environmental policies. Too much of the flying debate is about individual one-upmanship and not about real substantive change. It?s natural for the environmental movement to go down that path because it?s easier to appeal to their base ? environmentally minded folk who will accept the wisdom of flying less and peer-pressure each other ? but the movement shouldn?t shy away from the difficult questions. Lifestyle politics may be a hit with the hairshirt crowd, but it?s small fry compared to the huge socio-political changes needed to avert the worst excesses of climate change. Just as telling people to eat better won?t solve the obesity crisis, so too will the ?you fly, we die? message fall on deaf ears. And let?s not forget the importance of building up the alternatives. Telling people to fly less and travel by train instead when the rail system in many countries is so mind-boggingly expensive, over-crowded and unreliable is hardly a convincing argument. Rather than solely appealing to people?s better consciences, let?s focus our energies on the big wins that can be made with modest political will. Aviation?s growth is very worrying and that does need to be curtailed. The big target is short-haul flights to destinations that could easily and comfortably be serviced by rail, bus or ferry. But those services need to run well, they need to be just as heavily scrutinized for their environmental impacts and they should be reasonably affordable and safe. At the moment, they?re often not, so it?s no wonder people take to the skies. But not flying has become an iconic badge of environmental commitment and I think that?s misguided. If there were the political will to do something about climate change so much could be done in so little time and aviation would play a relatively small role in reducing the global footprint. For example, if government said tomorrow we?re going to ban all electronic devices with standby mode it would reduce electricity consumption by a huge amount at a stroke. How many people factor the standby mode into their purchasing decisions? Not many. But if you deal with it at a macro level you actually take it out of the equation. Same with government-sponsored housing insulation, combined heat and power units for residential blocks, support for micro-renewables. Stopping the war would deliver massive carbon savings and free up resources that could be used to steer us away from climate disaster. There are lots of things that simply can?t be done at an individual level and have to be done by society as a whole ? reining in corporate power and wasteful energy transmission, decentralizing energy grids and promoting renewables, stopping subsidies of fossil fuels, ending aviation?s tax-free fuel ride. And that?s just for starters… There is so much we can do now. So let?s stop the incessant navel-gazing and agonizing over our personal carbon ?footprints? and build the momentum for real change. Mark Lynas It?s worth looking at work travel as well as holidays because that?s probably the largest component of most people?s carbon footprint. When people fly for their work, are the ethical considerations their own responsibility or their employer?s? None of these things are completely black and white and it?s finding a way through the greys that has become an ethical minefield. There?s a cultural value shift going on and things haven?t quite settled yet when it comes to what?s moral and what isn?t. But in the mean time there are a lot of accusations and counter-accusations. Is there a danger that focusing individuals on their own carbon footprint is a distraction? You need to know where you stand in terms of what your contribution is to the collective problem. Of course, simply doing things at an individual level is not going to be enough ? it?s got to be a collective approach to a collective problem and that comes down to politics, to building a movement. That?s more important than what you do at home but you?ve got to do both ? they?re complementary. When a right-wing group in the US got hold of Al Gore?s [massive] electricity bill it played well for them because it sowed cynicism and that in turn has an effect in paralyzing social action. I wrote defending Gore because it does strike me that this ?green hypocrisy? argument about individual behaviour has gone too far. Some people?s aggregated impact on the climate should be seen as positive despite their air miles. I make the calculation ? we all do. And it?s not just flying, though that has become symbolic because of the big numbers attached to it; it?s everything ? every time you turn on the heating in your house it?s worth a certain amount of CO2. But flying consumes much more carbon even than heating… It does, but only when you look at it from an individual point of view. When you look at it from an aggregate point of view, the flight component of a national carbon budget is still very small because most people don?t take trips to New York. The biggest source of carbon is still space heating, which is a lot less interesting but is much more important than flying. On the other hand, flying is a relatively easy thing not to do. Here in Wolvercote [his village] we?re going low carbon and we?ve found that most behaviour hasn?t really changed except that people have been taking fewer holiday flights. Don?t you find it problematic, saying people shouldn?t fly when you?ve travelled so much yourself? I can?t imagine how I would have been had I not spent a lot of my life in the South. I?m happy to rule out future holiday travel for myself ? I?d felt yucky about being in places as a tourist for a long time, so that?s easily done. But it?s such a big sacrifice for other people to make and that?s why I think aviation is the one thing for which we need a ?technofix?. We?ve got a totally globalized world with families all over the place and you just can?t unpick all the threads. The low-hanging fruit is insulating your loft [attic]; stopping aviation is the highest-hanging fruit there is in terms of the bang people get for their carbon buck. Say to the industry: ?Look, you?ve got 15 years to do this or you go out of business? and I think they?d come up with something. There has to be a role for technological innovation and Manhattan Project-type approaches to this. George Monbiot It?s possible to have a technological effect on almost every other area of climate change apart from aviation. You could run almost the entire energy system on renewable power if you did it in the right way. Aviation is the one area for which there is no available technological solution in the foreseeable future. We?re not likely to see battery-powered jetliners. It?s not just a question of blocking future airport expansion; we have to reduce what?s already there. We have to cut aviation emissions by 95 per cent if we?re going to keep overall emissions to the level we need to. That means people can fly only 5 per cent of the amount they are now ? and that?s a maximum. People shouldn?t be flying for leisure or tourism purposes at all. They also shouldn?t be flying for business. If you?ve got a pressing family obligation, a relative who?s sick or dying, then fair enough. And if you?re doing something important with human rights or raising awareness of the environmental threat and there?s no other way of getting there, you might be able to justify it. But even then you have to think very carefully because it?s going to be rare that the importance of the work will outweigh the damage done by the flight. What about damage done to communities in the Majority World that are currently dependent on tourism? I do accept that some communities are going to be hit hard by this. But you have to set that against the enormous and much greater damage that will be done to other communities all over the world by climate change. We have to make it a priority to help those communities and countries to develop better ways of surviving and thriving that do not depend upon transporting 150 pounds of human halfway across the planet and back. What would the world be like without the intercultural exchanges that derive from air travel? Cross-cultural international connections don?t depend entirely on flying. You can travel by boat or by train almost anywhere ? it just takes a lot more time. So travelling without flying is still possible. And in terms of bringing about change, it isn?t really necessary to travel to become an internationalist. At the time of the Make Poverty History campaign most of the people in the West who became deeply concerned about Africa had never visited there but had been moved by what they had seen on television. You don?t become an internationalist by travelling ? just as travelling in itself doesn?t make you an internationalist. You started as a travel writer, though ? you?ve benefited in all kinds of ways from international travel that have helped make you the person you are. How can you deny those benefits to young people now? I do feel bad that I?m having to say to young people now that they cannot have the opportunities I had for guilt-free experience of other lands and cultures. But there?s no alternative. That experience of travel is simply not available to people now. It?s another example of how the sins of one generation have been handed to the next generation who have to pay the price. There was also an argument that for the New Internationalist to concentrate its attention on individual behaviour ? when and whether people should be travelling by plane ? would be a mistake. There are much more important battles to be fought than this in the war on climate change, ran this strand of thought, than encouraging people to think about their ?carbon footprint?. I invited one of my editorial colleagues, Adam Ma?anit, to lay out this position (see box, above). There is no doubt that the primary need is for governments, rather than individuals, to take action. Climate change is the greatest issue of our time, yet politicians the world over continue to funk it, fearing that if they derail the globalized consumer bandwagon it will cost them their jobs. Given how huge is the task in front of us, the primary requirement has to be to campaign, to do all we can to change the political landscape so that it reflects the real (planet-)burning issues rather than the pre-eminent concern with the dollar in our pocket. But I still felt it was important to include in the magazine some recognition of the dilemma faced by individual readers concerned about the ethics of flying in an overheating world. Those of us who try to reduce or constrain our carbon footprint are not likely to be distracted from campaigning for the big-picture political changes. One can reinforce the other. Don?t we all feel much more comfortable campaigning for a cause if we are doing our bit? That way at least we can?t be charged with hypocrisy. And our own individual actions may have a ripple effect, whether by inspiring others or by contributing to a statistical trend. Changing our lifestyle could reinforce pressure on politicians to pull us out of this tailspin. After all, we know more clearly than ever that every kilogram of carbon we propel into the atmosphere is doing some very dirty work. Consulting the oracles One of the main proponents of the ?carbon footprint? way of looking at this problem is Mark Lynas, author of High Tide, Six Degrees and Carbon Calculator: Easy ways to reduce your carbon footprint. When I met Mark, he was just back from a mammoth journey by boat to Norway. ?It took 10 days ? it was a disaster,? he said ruefully. ?If I?d done it in a plane trip in a day it would have been a hell of a lot easier than dragging the whole family out there for 10 days. You can go a bit too far in terms of being puritan on this. Mind you, it always plays well because people always ask how you got there. And it?s nice to be able to say: ?Well, train and boat!? It even makes headlines in the papers because people don?t expect it.? While he has ruled out holiday flights for himself, he readily acknowledges the moral complexity of the issue ? as well as stressing that he too sees individual effort as secondary to the vital job of building a movement that will shift governments. And he hankers after a technofix (see box, below), even though, he added: ?George will kill me for saying so.? The George in question is Monbiot, the Guardian columnist and author of Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning. The chapter of Heat on aviation (?Love Miles?) lays out very starkly the damage done by air travel ? and the impossibility of meeting any meaningful emissions targets if we continue our love affair with it. ?A 90-per-cent cut in carbon emissions means the end of distant foreign holidays, unless you are prepared to take a long time getting there? It means that journeys around the world must be reserved for visiting the people you love, and that they will require both slow travel and the saving up of carbon rations? If you fly, you destroy other people?s lives.? Ulp. You can?t get much more categorical than that. Reading my interview with George (see box, overleaf), you might wonder why I didn?t ask him the most obvious follow-up question: how many times have you yourself flown somewhere in the last year? Actually I didn?t need to ask him ? he was so primed for that question that he misheard one of my others and answered that he has taken two flights in the last 18 months, both to climate-change events where he judged that he could make more of a difference by attending in person than by not flying. I was more concerned to probe how he, who began as a travel writer and has benefited in all kinds of ways from experiencing other countries and cultures, feels able to say that young people now should not avail themselves of the same opportunities. His answer is pretty much that, however bad he feels about it, the problem is so huge and so all-trumping that there is simply no alternative. I cannot bring myself to say the same. As I write, my daughter is experiencing her first day of teaching in a village in Malawi, having just spent a week of ?orientation? in the capital, Lilongwe. I am proud that she has chosen to spend her gap year before university working in Africa. What she learns about the world and its injustices and inequalities will reverberate through her entire life and will give her a connection with Malawi, and with Africa as a whole, that no amount of book reading or film watching could have achieved. Should I really have said to her, at a time when the rest of the world seems to be leaping on a plane at the drop of a hat to sun themselves on a beach or to go shopping, that she should forego the whole experience because we have just begun to understand the climate-changing contribution of aviation? I don?t think so. What would happen in a no-fly world? What would happen at New Internationalist if we introduced a no-flying policy? The issue has already caused some soul-searching within the co-operative. People travelling to the Frankfurt Book Fair, for example, have had to weigh the environmental impact against the cost (since the advent of budget airlines, ridiculously enough, it is actually cheaper to fly from Britain to Germany than to go by train) and the significant extra time involved. Even if a company has a policy that supports (and is prepared to pay for) an employee wishing to go overland, there are often family or work reasons why that person is loath to be away longer than need be. Given that we have editors in Canada, Australia and Holland, and that we focus on the concerns of the Majority World, eschewing flying altogether would not look to be an option for us as an organization. Certainly the need for editors to be in touch with the realities of everyday life in Africa, Asia and Latin America ? on which the magazine?s reputation stands ? depends upon their being able to hear ordinary people?s testimonies first hand rather than just relying on printed reports or local journalists. And New Internationalist is, after all, only the tip of the ?One World community? iceberg, which has been founded upon international travel in both directions ? on people visiting and migrating to our own countries from far-flung locations, and on our learning from and adjusting to other peoples and cultures. What would happen to a world in which the only people who travelled by plane were those most committed to its rapacious exploitation? Would airways become the de facto province of the most unscrupulous corporations? Besides, where is the sense in rejecting one aspect of international aviation (tourism) while accepting other aspects (air-freighted goods and foodstuffs, air mail and so on)? No more new runways But in the context of an ever-warming world, if we continue to fly for our pleasure and education, we need to ensure that such tourism is not itself damaging, and that it genuinely benefits the host communities at the other end. In the articles that follow I?ll look at what is wrong with most tourism now and whether more sustainable forms of travel that benefit local communities are actually possible. It also means we have to increase pressure on policy-makers to contain and reduce air travel. Governments all too readily point the finger at individuals rather than demonstrating leadership on the issue. I encountered an example of this recently when, at a Christmas party, I got talking to a civil servant working on transport issues. I was explaining why I thought the British Government?s intention to build a third runway at Heathrow to meet anticipated demand was the purest folly. ?It?s not up to the Government to take a lead on this issue,? he said, ?it?s up to individuals to stop taking advantage of cheap flights.? As an evasion of responsibility, this takes some beating. Yet it mirrors the approach of most Western governments, which simply put a blind eye to the telescope and continue to chase economic growth whatever the environmental cost. Pointing to booming demand, they plan for new runways and new airports that will soon fill to capacity just like the extra lane for cars on an expressway. As a result, air travel is growing at a rate of some five per cent a year, meaning that air passenger kilometres are set to triple by 2030.1 Air travel urgently needs to be contained ? and physical limits (not enough runways to meet demand) are actually a very practical, sensible method of containment. It also doesn?t take an expert to see that the current convenient practice of excluding international air travel from all national emissions targets is absurdly ostrich-like. Besides, the boom in air travel cannot be accounted for by ?ordinary hard-working people taking their one holiday a year?, which is the routine claim of the media and the travel industry. British Government statistics show that 62 per cent of adults did not make even one return flight in 2006. Among the richest 20 per cent of the population, 61 per cent took one or more return flights. Only four per cent of people took four or more flights.2 So even in the rich world we are talking about a tiny minority of people who may be flying an insane amount. The spread that follows this article suggests ?Ten steps to reduce flying? ? and some of these will affect only that tiny minority. But others will apply to you and me as well, because even if the primary focus has to be on forcing governments into action, we still need to do our individual bit. In a way, putting this issue together has been a gesture in this direction since, three trips to London by train and bus aside, I have made a point of avoiding travelling (always, depressingly, the most ethical course of action of all). On the home front, my family has already decided to holiday this year in Cornwall, on the English coast, rather than further afield. But, on the other hand, the following year we have long planned to revisit friends and familiar places in Canada ? we lived in Toronto for a year in the mid-1990s. And now my brother?s family is on the verge of emigrating to Australia ? without one or other of us flying we would never see each other again. It?s a tangled web, as this article ? if it has done nothing else ? has made plain. Good luck to all of you as you try to sort out what you think about it.

The Pleasures of the Flesh
14 Apr 2008
Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession which is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters in the past year, that of wheat by 130%(1). There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices(2). But I bet you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn tonnes, last year?s global grain harvest broke all records(3). It beat the previous year?s by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline? There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to the UN?s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), will feed people(4). I am sorely tempted to write another column about biofuels. From this morning all sellers of transport fuel in the United Kingdom will be obliged to mix it with ethanol or biodiesel made from crops. The World Bank points out that ?the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol ? could feed one person for a year?(5). Last year global stockpiles of cereals declined by around 53m tonnes(6); this gives you a rough idea of the size of the hunger gap. The production of biofuels this year will consume almost 100m tonnes(7), which suggests that they are directly responsible for the current crisis. In the Guardian yesterday the transport secretary Ruth Kelly promised that ?if we need to adjust policy in the light of new evidence, we will.?(8) What new evidence does she require? In the midst of a global humanitarian crisis, we have just become legally obliged to use food as fuel. It is a crime against humanity in which every driver in this country has been forced to participate. But I have been saying this for four years and I am boring myself. Of course we must demand that our governments scrap the rules which turn grain into the fastest food of all. But there is a bigger reason for global hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there for longer. While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals(9). This could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat. While meat consumption is booming in Asia and Latin America, in the United Kingdom it has scarcely changed since the government started gathering data in 1974. At just over 1kg per person per week(10), it?s still about 40% above the global average(11), though less than half the amount consumed in the United States(12). We eat less beef and more chicken than we did 30 years ago, which means a smaller total impact. Beef cattle eat about 8kg of grain or meal for every kilogramme of flesh they produce; a kilogramme of chicken needs just 2kg of feed. Even so, our consumption rate is plainly unsustainable. In his magazine The Land, Simon Fairlie has updated the figures produced 30 years ago in Kenneth Mellanby?s book Can Britain Feed Itself? Fairlie found that a vegan diet grown by means of conventional agriculture would require only 3m hectares of arable land (around half the current total)(13). Even if we reduced our consumption of meat by half, a mixed farming system would need 4.4m hectares of arable fields and 6.4 million hectares of pasture. A vegan Britain could make a massive contribution to global food stocks. But I cannot advocate a diet I am incapable of following. I tried it for about 18 months, lost two stone, went as white as bone and felt that I was losing my mind. I know a few healthy-looking vegans and I admire them immensely. But after almost every talk I give, I am pestered by swarms of vegans demanding that I adopt their lifestyle. I cannot help noticing that in most cases their skin has turned a fascinating pearl grey. What level of meat-eating would be sustainable? One approach is to work out how great a cut would be needed to accommodate the growth in human numbers. The UN expects the population to rise to 9bn by 2050. These extra people will require another 325m tonnes of grain(14). Let us assume, perhaps generously, that politicians like Ms Kelly are able to ?adjust policy in the light of new evidence? and stop turning food into fuel. Let us pretend that improvements in plant breeding can keep pace with the deficits caused by climate change. We would need to find an extra 225m tonnes of grain. This leaves 531m tonnes for livestock production, which suggests a sustainable consumption level for meat and milk some 30% below the current world rate. This means 420g of meat per person per week, or about 40% of the UK?s average consumption. This estimate is complicated by several factors. If we eat less meat we must eat more plant protein, which means taking more land away from animals. On the other hand, some livestock is raised on pasture, so it doesn?t contribute to the grain deficit. Simon Fairlie estimates that if animals were kept only on land that?s unsuitable for arable farming, and given scraps and waste from food processing, the world could produce between a third and two thirds of its current milk and meat supply(15). But this system then runs into a different problem. The FAO calculates that animal keeping is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impacts are especially grave in places where livestock graze freely(16). The only reasonable answer to the question of how much meat we should eat is as little as possible. Let?s reserve it – as most societies have done until recently – for special occasions. For both environmental and humanitarian reasons, beef is out. Pigs and chickens feed more efficiently, but unless they are free range you encounter another ethical issue: the monstrous conditions in which they are kept. I would like to encourage people to start eating tilapia instead of meat. It?s a freshwater fish which can be raised entirely on vegetable matter and has the best conversion efficiency – about 1.6kg of feed for 1kg of meat – of any farmed animal(17). Until meat can be grown in flasks, this is about as close as we are likely to come to sustainable flesh-eating. Re-reading this article, I see that there is something surreal about it. While half the world wonders whether it will eat at all, I am pondering which of our endless choices we should take. Here the price of food barely registers. Our shops are better stocked than ever before. We perceive the global food crisis dimly, if at all. It is hard to understand how two such different food economies could occupy the same planet, until you realise that they feed off each other. References: 1. Eg http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7284196.stm 2. World Bank, 14th April 2008. Food Price Crisis Imperils 100 Million in Poor Countries, Zoellick Says. Press release. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21729143~men… 3. Food and Agriculture Organisation, April 2008. Crop Prospects and Food Situation. http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ai465e/ai465e01.htm 4. ibid. 5. World Bank, 2008. Biofuels: The Promise and the Risks. http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/EXT... 6. Gerrit Buntrock, 6th December 2007. Cheap no more. The Economist. 7. Food and Agriculture Organisation, April 2008, ibid. 8. Ruth Kelly, 14th April 2008. Biofuels: a blueprint for the future? The Guardian. 9. Food and Agriculture Organisation, April 2008, ibid. 10. The British government gives a total meat purchase figure of 1042g/person/week for 2006. http://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/publications/efs/datasets/UKHHcons.xl… 11. There?s a discussion of global average figures here: http://envirostats.info/2007/09/18/0406/ 12. See Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2006. Livestock?s Long Shadow. Figure 1.4, p9. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e.pdf 13. Simon Fairlie, Winter 2007-8. Can Britain Feed Itself? The Land. 14. Based on the current population of 6.8bn consuming 1006mt of grain. 15. Simon Fairlie, forthcoming. Default livestock farming. The Land, Summer 2008. 16. Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2006. Livestock?s Long Shadow. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e.pdf 17. The FAO (ibid) gives 1.6-1.8. On April 12th, I spoke to Francis Murray of the Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, who suggested 1.5.

Amid mounting food crisis, governments fear revolution of the hungry
14 Apr 2008
Last week?s meetings in Washington of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Group of Seven were convened in the shadow of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. While Wall Street?s turmoil and the deepening credit crunch dominated discussions, leaders of the global financial institutions were forced to take note of the growing global food emergency, warning of the threat of widespread hunger and already emerging political instability. The seven major capitalist powers in the G-7?the US, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada?made virtually no mention of the global food crisis, referring in only one brief reference to the risk of ?high oil and commodity prices.? Instead, they focused on the stability of the financial markets, promising measures to shore up investor confidence. The IMF and World Bank, however, felt compelled to acknowledge the emerging worldwide catastrophe, in part because while these agencies are instruments of the main imperialist powers, they must posture as responsive to the needs of all countries. It would be too revealing for them to focus exclusively on the fate of major finance houses, while ignoring the fact that hundreds of millions across the planet are being threatened with starvation. More decisive, however, is the realization that this crisis confronting the most impoverished countries and poorest sections of the world?s population is threatening to unleash a revolution of the hungry that could topple governments across large parts of the world. Even as the IMF and World Bank were meeting, the government of Haiti was forced out in a no-confidence vote passed in response to several days of demonstrations and protests against rising food prices and hunger that swept all the country?s major cities. Clashes between protesters and United Nations occupation troops left at least five people dead and scores wounded and saw crowds attempt to storm the presidential palace. Food prices in Haiti had risen on average by 40 percent in less than a year, with the cost of staples such as rice doubling. The same essential story has been repeated in country after country, from Africa to the Middle East, south Asia and Latin America. In Bangladesh, on Saturday, some 20,000 textile workers took to the streets to denounce soaring food prices and demand higher wages. The price of rice in the country has doubled over the past year, threatening the workers, who earn a monthly salary of just $25, with hunger. Scores were injured in clashes with police, who used gunfire in an attempt to disperse the crowds. In Egypt, protests by workers over food prices rocked the textile center of Mahalla al-Kobra, north of Cairo, for two days last week, with two people shot dead by security forces. Hundreds were arrested, and the government sent plainclothes police into the factories to force workers to work. Food prices in Egypt have risen by 40 percent in the past year. Unions and shopkeepers staged a two-day general strike in the West African nation of Burkina Faso last week to protest high prices. The strikers demanded a ?significant and effective? cut in the price of rice and other stables. Several hundred demonstrators marched on parliament in Phnom Penh, Cambodia April 6 to protest food price hikes. The cost of a kilogram of rice has risen to $1 in a country where the average income is barely 50 cents a day. Police armed with cattle prods broke up the protest. Earlier this month, in the Ivory Coast, thousands marched on the home of President Laurent Gbagbo, chanting ?we are hungry? and ?life is too expensive, you are going to kill us.? The country has seen food prices soar by between 30 percent and 60 percent from one week to the next. Police broke up the protest with tear gas and batons, injuring over a dozen people. Similar demonstrations, strikes and clashes have taken place in Bolivia, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Thailand, Yemen, Ethiopia, and throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa. With terrifying rapidity, hundreds of millions of people all over the planet have been confronted with the inability to obtain the basic necessities of life. The global capitalist market is dictating intolerable conditions for masses of people on every continent, provoking a worldwide eruption of class struggle. It is the concern that this struggle will spin out of control that found expression in the statements of concern issued by the IMF and World Bank leaders together with finance ministers and central bank chiefs gathered in Washington. ?If food prices go on as they are today, then the consequences on the population in a large set of countries, including Africa, but not only Africa, will be terrible. Hundreds of thousands of people will be starving. Children will suffer from malnutrition, with consequences all of their lives,? Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the International Monetary Fund managing director, told an April 12 press conference in Washington. He warned that governments ?will see what they have done totally destroyed and their legitimacy facing the population destroyed also.? Strauss-Kahn added: ?So it?s not only a humanitarian question. It is not only an economic question. It is also a democratic question. Those kind of questions sometimes end into war.? ?In just two months,? World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in an opening speech to the meeting of finance ministers, ?rice prices have skyrocketed to near historical levels, rising by around 75 percent globally and more in some markets, with more likely to come. ?In Bangladesh, a 2-kilogram bag of rice,? he said, holding up such a bag, ?now consumes about half of the daily income of a poor family.? He added that wheat prices had increased by 120 percent, more than doubling the cost of a loaf of bread. ?If food prices go on as they are today, then the consequences on the population in a large set of countries … will be terrible,? said Zoellick. The ?international community will also need to take urgent and concerted action in order to avoid the larger political and security implications of this growing crisis,? United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told international finance and trade officials at a UN meeting following the weekend talks in Washington. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Jean Ziegler offered among the bleakest prognoses for the continuing crisis. ?We are heading for a very long period of rioting, conflicts (and) waves of uncontrollable regional instability marked by the despair of the most vulnerable populations,? he told the French daily Liberation Monday. He pointed out that, even before the present crisis, hunger claimed the life of a child under the age of 10 every 5 seconds, and 854 million people in the world were seriously undernourished. What was now posed, Ziegler warned, is ?an imminent massacre.? While finance ministers from the US and Europe indicated agreement that the crisis was severe, there was no indication that the major capitalist powers have any plan to mount the kind of effort needed to stave off a humanitarian catastrophe. The White House announced Monday that it is releasing $200 million in emergency food aid in response to a World Bank appeal for funding to make up for the shortfall in food assistance caused by soaring prices. The amount?roughly what the US spends in half a day on its war to conquer Iraq?is less than a drop in the bucket in the face of the looming global catastrophe. In the end, the crisis is a product of the capitalist market itself. It is not a matter of too many mouths to feed or too little food to supply human needs. Food is available, but the market has driven prices to a level out of reach for a growing portion of humanity in the most oppressed countries, and at the same effectively slashing the living standards of workers in the more advanced capitalist world. This process is driven by a number of factors, including climatic ones, such as the impact of a draught in Australia on wheat production and a flood in Bangladesh on rice. There is also the rise in demand, particularly from growing middle class layers in India and China. But more fundamental is the effect of speculation in food as a commodity?like oil and precious metals. It has become a haven for financial investors fleeing from paper assets tainted by subprime mortgages and other toxic credit products. The influx of buyers drives prices and makes food unaffordable for the world?s poor. ?Fund money flowing into agriculture has boosted prices,? Standard Chartered Bank food commodities analyst Abah Ofon told the media. ?It?s fashionable. This is the year of agricultural commodities.? Speculation in food as a commodity has been sharply accelerated by the decline in the value of the dollar, soaring oil prices and the promotion of biofuel production in the US and elsewhere. This attempt to generate a new investment ?bubble,? based on the fraud that somehow turning corn into ethanol represents a ?green? alternative to fossil fuels, has driven up the price not only of corn, but other grains, while diverting a major share of food production into a more profitable venture. Subsidized by the US government, American farmers have diverted fully 30 percent of corn production into the ethanol scheme, driving up the cost of other, more expensive, grains that are being bought as substitutes for animal feed. ?When a biofuel policy is launched in the United States, thanks to subsidies of $6 billion, of bio-fuels that drains 138 million tons of corn from the market, the foundation is laid for a crime against humanity to satisfy one?s own thirst for fuel,? the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told Liberation. This assessment was repeated by India?s finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, who declared, ?When millions of people are going hungry, it?s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels.? US officials dismissed the charges, insisting that biofuel production was only one factor among many and indicating that there is no plan to change Washington?s policy. Country after country has been left vulnerable to the global commodity price surge by ?free market? policies implemented at the demands of Washington and the international financial agencies such as the IMF and World Bank over the past quarter century. The closer integration of the economies of the oppressed countries into the world market has been accompanied by their increasing concentration on specialized export crops, while tariff barriers have been demolished, opening the way to subsidized agricultural staples from the more advanced countries capturing local markets. Now, attempts by individual national governments to remedy the problem within their own borders?often taking the form of commodity producers erecting barriers on exports?have served to exacerbate the crisis internationally, driving food prices even higher, while triggering protests by farmers in countries stretching from India to Argentina. According to a recent World Bank survey, at least 58 countries have implemented at least some form of food-trade protectionism. What is emerging in the crisis over food prices is a tumultuous manifestation of a breakdown of the global capitalist order. The catastrophe facing billions of people around the globe cannot be resolved within the confines of a system based on private profit and the nation state. The revolutionary implications of this crisis are beginning to dawn on elements within the ruling establishment itself. In an article published Monday, the influential US magazine Time noted: ?The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War… And yet, the headlines of the past month suggest that skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world.?

Simon Jones’ Story Repeated
13 Apr 2008
A decade since the death of Simon, we look back on the campaign to bring Euromin to justice. Simon was well known in the Brighton community ? as well as a writer for SchNEWS – and it was this community who combined with his family to mobilise and form the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign… In 1998 Simon Jones was sent to one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, one he had no training for. Simon had been killed by a profiteering gangster, James Martell, whose company, Euromin, ran the dock where he died. Complicit to the crime were the employment agency Personnel Selection which sent him to his death without any checks or references. On 1st September 1998, which would have been Simon?s 25th birthday, the Simon Jones Memorial Campaign went into action. Thirty protesters shut down the dock where Simon was killed, climbing two 80-foot towers with banners reading ?Simon Jones RIP? and ?Casualisation Kills?. That evening, a packed meeting in a Brighton pub decided it couldn?t stop there. ?A lot of the people at the meeting had casual jobs,? said Emma, Simon?s girlfriend at the time of his death. ?People were furious that employment agencies could get away with taking half your wages without even making sure the job they sent you to was safe.? Two days later Personnel Selection was occupied and a ?Murderers? banner hung from its window. In March 1999 the MP George Galloway gave a speech in parliament calling for the prosecution of Euromin over Simon?s death. Afterwards campaign supporters occupied the Department of Trade and Industry?s offices – those supposed to regulate employment agencies. The campaign kept up the pressure by targeting the Health and Safety Executive a few weeks later. But this time security guards were waiting for an attempted occupation ? and looked on while thirty members of the campaign turned round, walked onto Southwark Bridge and blockaded it for three hours. The result of the campaign was a complete climb down by the state. The Crown Prosecution Service had refused to prosecute anyone over Simon?s death all along. In March 2000 two High Court Judges ordered the CPS to reconsider this decision – the first successful judicial review of a decision not to prosecute for manslaughter over a workplace death in British legal history. The judges described the CPS as behaving ?irrationally?, ?failing to address the relevant law? and adopting an approach that ?beggared belief?. They told the CPS to review its decision ?with dispatch?. Nine months later, after a spirited picket of the CPS where a campaign supporter was arrested and locked up for demanding someone who had killed his mate got arrested and locked up, the CPS finally agreed to prosecute. The trial of Simon?s killers took place in November 2001 and resulted in conviction on health and safety charges but aquittal on the charge of manslaughter. Following the verdict the campaign issued a statement saying: ?We are painfully aware that in 21st century Britain the fight for the most basic of workers? rights ? the right not to be killed or injured at work ? is still being fought. Without direct action James Martell and Euromin would never have faced prosecution in the High Court for Simon?s death. As long as this government and its agencies refuse to take action against companies that profit from casualisation at the expense of their workers? lives we will continue, where necessary, to break the law so that justice will prevail.? Simon Jones Memorial Campaign www.simonjones.org.uk

Left Behind, and Unhappier
13 Apr 2008
Britain is in a social recession. Three decades of market-driven capitalism have damaged the social fabric of this country. While Labour evades the problem, Cameron’s rebranded Conservatives are making it a central plank of their politics. They’re staking out ground that once belonged to the left, taking the ideological offensive that will cost this government the next election. The symptoms and pain of the social recession are often concealed inside our homes. We experience them as our own shameful and personal failings. One in six adults suffer from anxiety or a depressive condition. A quarter of men and a third of women suffer sleep problems. The charity, Mind describes stress in the workplace at almost “epidemic proportions”. Mental ill health accounts for a third of all working days lost. To make the problem worse, over 1.1 million people in Britain are dependent upon alcohol. The social recession has contributed to an alcohol culture of broken relationships, domestic violence against women, chronic illness, and street brawling. Children have been particularly affected. The 2004 Nuffield study identified a sharp decline in adolescent mental health. In 2006, Unicef published a report that painted a bleak picture of British childhood. Its summary of six dimensions of child well-being places the UK at the bottom of the league. Since then the Children’s Society‘s Good Childhood Inquiry and Cambridge University’s review of Primary School education have confirmed many of the stresses in children’s lives. Both Labour and Conservatives claim that our class-based society is giving way to a more individualistic, meritocratic culture. But, though there have clearly been changes, class remains a central part of our society. One in six leaves school unable to read, write or add up properly. One in four 16-17 year olds are not in education, employment or training. There is less social mobility. Health inequalities are entrenched. Success in education, and life chances in general, remain dependent on family background. We have become a society of a small number of winners and many losers. Half the population share just 6 per cent of wealth, earning the median annual income of around 18,876 or less. In contrast the top 1 per cent – 470,000 people – earn an average annual income of 220,000 and between them own approximately 25% of marketable wealth. The shame of failing in education, of being a loser in the race to success, of being invisible to those above, cuts a deep psychological wound. This kind of ongoing humiliation creates chronic anxiety which dramatically increases the risk of disease and premature death. Inequality not only damages the life chances of people living in poverty, it adversely effects the quality of life of everyone. Alongside affluence, market-driven capitalism has created uncertainty and a decline in a sense of belonging. Cultural difference is the prism through which large sections of the population experience and react to their insecurity. Political conflict around race and religion attempt to construct boundaries of identity which will define a sense of belonging and entitlement. Cultural difference becomes a focus for people’s resentment, fear and hatred. The liberal economic policies of successive British governments have not only failed to end the social recession, they have contributed to it. A politics up to the task must recognise that alongside greater equality and fairness, individuals have four basic needs: for safety, a sense of belonging, a feeling that we are worth being loved, and the experience of esteem and respect. It’s a politics still to be made.

Challenging the Whitewash
13 Apr 2008
The white working class is an embittered minority: racist, bigoted, broken and fragmented. That was the view of several programmes in the recent BBC television series The White Season. The problem, according to the programme makers, is that the white working class has lost its identity due to the impact of de-industrialisation and immigration. Richard Klein, the commissioning editor of the White Season, went further, saying “I feel that the white working class has been ignored by the political classes because they feel the pressure of political correctness.” The advert for The White Season showed a white face gradually being obliterated by different languages being written over it. The message is clear: multiculturalism and anti-racism are bad for whit