Kingsnorth Debated
6 Oct 2008
On 2 August, as the Camp for Climate Action began to get under way, Radio 4?s flagship news programme, Today, held a debate on the proposed new Kingsnorth power station. Dr David Brown, of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, supported building the new coal-fired station, on the basis that it would eventually be a ?clean coal? project, using carbon capture and storage technology to bury CO2 emissions safely rather than releasing them to contribute to global warming. He was challenged by the Radio 4 presenter, and by Dr Simon Lewis, of Leeds University. Presenter: And to be clear, you would be in favour of saying to E.ON: ?If you want to build this station, you have got to provide carbon capture and storage for it, for the emissions.? Brown: There?s work to be done, to scale up carbon capture to the level you would be able to use it on a power generation plant. We don?t want to stop building the Kingsnorth station until everything is ready. We build Kingsnorth, and then, at the earliest possible date, we?d retrofit it with carbon capture and storage. Presenter: Simon Lewis, would you be in favour of building this coal-fired power station if we could capture the carbon we were emitting? Lewis: If we could, but the proposal for Kingsnorth is just for an unabated coal-fired power station, which is why it?s causing all the fuss. I?m personally not against experiments to reduce emissions. They?re essential. But if we want to test a carbon capture and storage unit at 300 megawatts, which is what the proposal from the government is, then we should build one at 300 megawatts, and not a plant that?s five times the size. To emit six million tons of carbon dioxide every year – the amount a country like Costa Rica or Cameroon emits in a whole year – that?s really unacceptable at this time. Presenter: So is the issue really just one about sequencing? One of you is saying ?We need to get the carbon capture first, before we licence the station?, and the other saying ?Look, let?s start building the station and then sort out the carbon capture later?. Simon, is that what it?s all about? Lewis: If one of the richest countries in the world can?t stop using the most polluting fuel to produce electricity, which is what the Kingsnorth proposal is to do, then how are we going to get an international agreement on climate change that?s due to be signed in Copenhagen next year? Presenter: David Brown, do you want to answer that point? Brown: Agreements are all very well, but we need to keep the lights on, we need the technology rolled out quickly, and above all we need the people – the chemical engineers ? who will implement this technology. We need more of them, and fast. Presenter: Your colleagues. Well Simon Lewis, we?ve heard the phrase ?Keep the lights on? quite a bit this week. What?s your proposal for keeping the lights on if we don?t build Kingsnorth and the other stations like it. Lewis: It?s fairly straightforward. If we meet the energy efficiency commitments of the government, and if we meet the renewable energy commitments of the government, then the third stage is to use the cleanest fossil fuels in the most efficient way, which is gas, where we capture both the heat and the power it produces, then we don?t need these new plants to fill the energy gap. Presenter: I heard some ?ifs? there. I mean, if we hit the government renewable target, how much will power, how much will electricity cost? It?ll be quite expensive, won?t it? They are quite challenging targets. Quite a few people think there?s no hope of meeting them. Lewis: They certainly are challenging, but we need to meet them. We have to remember this is about energy security, but climate change is also a serious security issue, a threat greater than global terrorism, according to David King. We really have to get our priorities straight here. We need social policies to keep fuel prices low for those who can?t afford them, but we need to keep a stable climate. As Jim Hansen says, who is chief scientist at NASA on climate change: ?You know, this decision on Kingsnorth is at a political tipping point? because if we don?t say no to unabated coal here, then how can we say anything to China, India or anyone else. No one will respect the UK?s opinion, and it?s essential we get a global agreement on climate change. Presenter: David Brown, finally, your comment on the idea that we should not be building coal-fired stations, but we should look to renewable energy to fill the gap. Brown: It?s not either/or. We need all the energy components we can get. We?ve pushed in the chemical engineering community, for a wide mix of renewables, of new nuclear, of clean coal, of carbon capture and storage, we need the lot? Presenter: If we meet the targets, we don?t need to build Kingsnorth, if we meet the renewable target? Brown: It is incredibly risky to rest all our hopes on renewables. Renewables are intermittent, they are not going to provide the energy capacity we need to replace a third of the UK?s generation within the next decade. So we need all the sources we can get. It?s not an either/or choice. The full debate can be heard at http://tinyurl.com/peacenews002

Arms trade plus comedy on the BBC??
6 Oct 2008
CAAT media volunteer Todd Higgs spoke to ‘Safety Catch’ writer Laurence Howarth, whose arms trade-based sitcom was first broadcast on Radio 4 in 2007. What prompted you to write a sitcom set around the arms trade? I got to thinking about how people relate to their jobs, and of people generally having a job but disowning it. I thought, is it possible to have somebody who thinks he?s a nice person ? which the main character does ? and yet have a job like this. Would this create a comic tension? Every day he has to find ways of justifying it to himself: having to use all those excuses, because I think when people within the industry talk about it I think what they?re offering is not reasons but justifications and the sort of excuses that are along the lines of things that we all do. It has this stark dramatic backdrop, but also it stands for a lot of things about ourselves we don?t like. There are also some aspects of his character that I hope people do sympathise with. Are any of the arms industry stories in the show based on real events? One of the things I wanted to do with the arms trade side of it was to try and make it as close to how I would imagine it would be. So there is a character called Boris who is sort of more a cartoon character who thinks that everyone should have a gun. I wanted him to be like an arms dealer. There are often little satirical references to some of the more famous deals through Boris, things like ?Saudi Arabian Princes don?t bribe themselves you know?. But even if the attitudes are caricatures in some ways, I think the industry itself is portrayed fairly accurately. I thought it was my responsibility to do that. What was your individual take on the BAE/Saudi Arabia/SFO saga? I was writing something dramatic, so in a way I didn?t want my view to be in there. This is about how a person with weak beliefs accounts for himself. My own view about the trade, the more I look at it, is that it?s one of the great human scandals. I?d like to think that in 200 years time we?ll look back on the arms trade as we look back now on slavery. And so, in retrospect, I think organisations like Amnesty and CAAT are absolutely right, for the sake of humanity, to do what they do. I felt that I wanted people to know about this world. To perhaps lead them to the door but let them open it? Yeah. I think perhaps one of the things that struck me when I was researching was what a huge industry it is and how when you say ?the arms industry? to a lot of people they think of something that happens somewhere else. It?s huge, such a big thing. Are there any plans for another series of ‘Safety Catch’? We?re doing another series of six episodes for the radio in February next year, and I?m writing a TV pilot script at the moment. The reviews were very good. There were some people who really didn?t like it, who felt that you shouldn?t do comedy about this. I think there?s no reason why comedy shouldn?t tackle big questions. I?d really like to do it on TV; on radio you can?t quite jolt people with the reality of it in the same way but visually it?s a lot easier to do that. People choose not to imagine. Whether that will happen is a long way off but it?s a very intriguing challenge.

EU leaders fail to agree finance strategy
6 Oct 2008
Following the most turbulent week in European financial markets since the 1930s, a group of European leaders met in Paris on Saturday to discuss measures to prevent a collapse of the European banking system. The heads of state of France, Germany, Italy and Britain, along with European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet, European Union (EU) Commission President Jos Manuel Barroso and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker (also head of the Euro group of finance ministers), met in emergency session. In the course of the Paris summit much criticism was made of the US as the source of the banking and finance crisis, but the assembled European leaders were unable to present any viable coordinated strategy to abate the growing financial storm engulfing European banks. The only concrete proposal to emerge from the meeting was the establishment of a 15 billion euros fund to help small businessmen. Vague resolutions were adopted for a relaxation of European financial targets and new regulations to rein in the excesses of speculators, and an appeal was issued for a global summit to discuss the crisis. Plans proposed last week for a European bailout fund failed to appear on the summit?s agenda. French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the meeting on Saturday, at short notice, following the collapse of a series of large European banks. Just over a week ago, European governments and private banks bailed out no less than five major banks?Germany?s Hypo Real Estate, Britain?s Bradford & Bingley, the Dutch-Belgian Fortis group, the Belgian Dexia bank and one of Iceland?s biggest banks. Despite the various government bailout packages, the plight of most of the troubled banks has worsened. Last Friday, the Dutch government intervened once again to buy up all of the Dutch assets of Fortis, whose share price has plummeted. In Germany, the bailout package for the country?s second biggest mortgage loan company, Hypo Real Estate (HRE), has collapsed. According to the latest estimates, a new rescue package for HRE could cost German taxpayers up to 50 billion euros. In Switzerland, UBS, having already cut 4,100 jobs as a result of losses from the US subprime crisis, announced last week that it planned to slash a further 2,000 investment banking jobs. Italy?s banking sector was also hit last week, with the country?s largest bank, Unicredit, loosing nearly one quarter of its share value. All of the major European stock markets suffered heavy losses last week, with bank share prices suffering the biggest declines. Also last week, economic institutes in France confirmed that the country?s economy was entering recession, with anticipated negative growth in the third and fourth quarters of this year. Britain and Spain are already acknowledged to be in recession, and the same fate threatens the German economy in the near future. This would set in motion a chain reaction plunging the entire Eurozone into recession. It was against this background that a group of leading US and European economists warned that European nations had to take emergency, coordinated action ?to address this crisis head-on before it spirals out of control.? Underlining their dire prognosis, the economists, in a statement published by the German Economic Institute (DIW), drew parallels with the 1930s: ?Europe is in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime crisis. Every European knows what happened when financial markets seized up in the dark years of the 1930s. It is not an exaggeration to say that it could happen again if governments fail to act.? The statement issued by the DIW amounted to an appeal for the establishment of a central fund by European nations to bail out banks along the lines of the $700 billion plan drawn up by US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and passed by Congress at the end of last week. Concrete proposals for a pan-European bailout fund were first put forward last week by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, who played an active role in the bailout of Fortis, the biggest European banking concern to be toppled by the international financial crisis. Balkenende called upon all EU countries to contribute three percent of their gross national product towards a ?300 billion ($415 billion) fund to assist ailing banks. The French Finance Ministry supported his proposal. The plan received the enthusiastic backing of leading bankers and economists, including the managing director of Germany?s biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackerman, and the president of the German Banking Association, Klaus-Peter Mller. Additional pressure for the establishment of an EU bailout fund came from the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn. An argument advanced in support of the proposal was that it was needed to avert a situation in which individual countries and their banking systems sought to gain an advantage from the crisis at the expense of their European rivals. On Thursday last week, the Irish government announced a blanket guarantee of all deposits in the country?s six biggest banks. British bankers immediately criticised the measure, declaring that it gave Irish banks an unfair advantage and would allow them to steal customers from their counterparts in the UK. On the same day, the Greek government made a similar move, when Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis declared Greece?s banking system ?totally safe and reliable.? In the midst of this debate, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for the mini-summit of EU countries that are members of the G-8 group of industrialized nations that was held on Saturday. Despite the backing of the finance ministries of France and Luxemburg as well as leading European bankers, the EU bailout plan failed to make it onto the agenda of the meeting held Saturday in Paris. Prior to the summit, both the finance and economic ministers of Germany expressed their opposition to the bailout plan and were supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. German qualms about such an EU fund are not based on any principled opposition to bailing out banks. The leaders of Germany, as well as their counterparts in Britain, Italy and France, have expressed support for the Paulson plan in the US. They have all pursued economic and social policies aimed at maximising the profits of the banks. In recent days, Merkel, Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have all been instrumental in diverting huge sums from their countries? public purses to cover the bad debts of leading banks and financial houses. However, a series of comments by German ministers made clear that while they were quite willing to milk the German taxpayer to prop up German banks, as in the case of HRE, they were not prepared to participate in a scheme that would benefit the banks of rival European states. Under pressure mainly from Germany, Luxemburg and France were forced to remove their proposal for a bailout fund from the summit?s agenda. President Sarkozy went so far as to deny that he had ever supported the plan. At the same time, sources inside the British government made clear that Britain was opposed to any far-reaching measures regarding the regulation and control of its own financial sector, which is Europe?s biggest. Underlining the disunity of European countries, a number of EU members, in particular Spain, criticised the summit for failing to invite the 23 other states of the European Union. Even before the Paris summit was held, it was clear that that the assembled leaders would achieve very little. The German chancellor used the opportunity provided by the summit press conference to stress that shareholders and those responsible for the bad debts should pay their share of costs of any rescue operations, while Sarkozy called for a form of capitalism which rewarded ?entrepreneurs? rather than ?speculators.? Such statements were purely for public consumption. The notion that any of the leaders assembled in Paris will take serious action to penalise the architects of the financial crisis is illusory. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is also the country?s richest individual, having made his fortune largely through dubious real estate dealings. A multi-billionaire, he is personally a key figure in Italy?s financial elite. Sarkozy has in the past flaunted his friendship with some of France? richest media and business magnates. He has taken holidays paid for by billionaire bankers of the Lazard finance group. As for German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrck, Der Spiegel magazine reports that his ?27 billion bailout deal for HRE was struck shortly after midnight in a personal telephone call with Germany?s highest paid banker, Josef Ackermann. The failure of the Paris summit to achieve any concrete results is an expression of growing national tensions between the main European states and, in the final analysis, the inability of the European ruling elites to resolve the current crisis. As a new week begins, there is renewed speculation about which European bank will be next to topple.

Goodbye to Grosvenor Square
6 Oct 2008
The US embassy is withdrawing from its central London fortress. If only America would quit other parts of the world it occupies. Grosvenor Square is about to be liberated. Tidings that the US embassy is moving to an unspecified five-acre location in south London may be good news for local residents (some of whom were renting rooms for a proper view of the rioting in 1968), but bad news for the unhealthier sections of the north London left. Till now, we could all meet happily in central London. A long march to south London is far less enticing, unless the San Francisco model of demonstrating on bikes becomes fashionable here as well. Of course, we could be spared all this if the United States simply decided to stop bombing and occupying different parts of the world. Apart from anything else, they can’t afford it any more, which also appears to be the reason for the move from Grosvenor Square. The city is owed 4m in rates ? which might be the sale price of the building in these troubled times. When it finally happens, Grosvenor Square veterans, particularly of the great demonstrations of 1968 calling for Victory to the NLF, should make sure there is a properly organized wake with proper music, etc. They should be sent off in style. Old memories must not be obliterated. This could happen if the fortress in the Square is sold off as apartments. Much better if the Imperial War Museum borrowed a few million from one of the Gulf states and purchased it as an adjunct devoted exclusively to US wars. The loan could be written off as a bad debt and Peter Mandelson, back in the cabinet, might help out here. A worry remains. Why south London? Surely, it would make much more sense to ask the British to dissolve the Foreign Office, abolish the post of foreign secretary (each new incumbent worse than the one before) and offer the King Charles Street building to the United States as their Embassy. The advantages to both sides are obvious. It could be on a 50-year basis since, by that time, a party might have emerged in England that needed a Foreign Office. It would certainly make it easier for some of us to have both the US ambassador and the prime minister within striking distance of protesting crowds that assemble in Trafalgar Square. Tariq Ali has given many fiery speeches down the years in front of the soon-to-be abandoned US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. His latest book is The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power.

Tories in queer hypocrisy shocker!
5 Oct 2008
So now the Tories are courting the pink vote. Big surprise. But the notion, promoted even by the BBC, that gays might have a ‘duty’ to vote Conservative is baffling. They’ve wheeled out Margot James, PPC for Stourbridge and noted deep-blue dyke, to tell us all why we need to vote Tory. This is the same Margot James who did not stand as a gay candidate at the last election, and who has been heard saying that she hoped her partner’s name, Jay, would be mistaken for that of a man by reporters. Ms James’ parroting of the party-line at the Stonewall event yesterday goes something like this: “Gay people are net contributors to public services through their taxes, because very few of them have children. “I think gay people have got more angst on this issue than anybody else because gay people are paying in, through their taxes and actually using far less of the NHS because they tend not to have families, less of the education system for the same reason and all the more reason to be angry with this government for the waste of their taxes.” Translation: “Everyone knows you faggots hate kids! So vote for us – we hate kids, too!’ The suggestion that homosexuals do not have ‘families’ is both degrading and manifestly false. I happen to live in a massive multi-sexual household of six. None of us are related by blood, but we consider ourselves family. All of us, furthermore, have mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters and all of us feel that – despite our sexuality – we are just as invested in other humans as anybody else. Me and my big queer family are appalled by this throwaway rhetoric, at a Stonewall event, no less. The logic of the tory tax argument also falls down when the ageing society is brought into play. Sure, homosexuals may, on average, raise fewer sproglets than their het friends, but this makes it all the more important for us that we live in a society that invests properly in healthcare, elderly care and the pensions system. Without the dubious surity of grown-up kids to wipe our octogenarian posteriors, we are going to need a government that invests in our care – a government that values the contribution we make as members of society enough to make public spending a priority. The main tory line, however, remains that you and I should vote Conservative because, well, there are quite a lot of gay conservatives. Newsflash: there have always been gay tories; there have been gay tories before the word was even invented. What there have never been are tories promoting a gay agenda. In recent years, tory MPs have, for the most part, had an appalling voting record on queer issues in parliament – vital issues like civil partnerships and the age of consent. The tories are quite happy for us to carry on shuffling in the dark. If they’re gay, too, they certainly haven’t traditionally wanted the world to know about it. The tory closet door remains firmly shut. And no wonder, this being the party that introduced and tried desperately to save Section 28 of the Local Government Act, 1988. Just a reminder: the amendment stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. Ian Duncan Smith and a great deal of the tory party faithful spent 2003 trying to save this disgustingly homophobic piece of legislation. Nobody has apologised for that, and the silence of top conservatives over their shocking record at the Stonewall event stunk of hypocrisy. I am not suggesting that just because you like a bit of same-sex action you absolutely must be a political radical. Not at all. Not one jot. In fact, I’m grudgingly of the opinion that one thing the 1990s were good for was freeing gay men and women of the grinding obligation not to also be bigoted fuckwits if they so chose. But bigotry and a forward-thinking queer agenda have never gone hand in hand, and if one is queer – not just gay, which is a statement of fact, but politically queer – you do have a duty to vote for anyone else apart from the tory party and far right. Queer politics involve more than a private penchant for cock and a public rhetoric of tax breaks for straight, married couples. Queer politics are politics which make it easier for the millions of men and women who choose to live and love outside of the heteronormative box to do so without cultural, practical or financial discrimination. Queer politics are inherently radical, and not everyone working towards them is gay, and not everyone gay has queer politics. Let’s not mistake gay – which is what the Conservative party has always secretly been – for queer, which it never will be.

Bankrolling Coal
5 Oct 2008
Not just the Oil & Gas Bank As national controversy grows over proposals for a set of seven coal-fired power stations, UK banks are fuelling the global coal boom ? the ?roll to coal?. PLATFORM?s recent report, Cashing in on Coal, finds Barclays and HSBC trailing behind the UK leader in fossil fuel investments, RBS-Natwest. The report estimates that in the last two years, RBS was responsible for $15.93 billion of financing of companies involved in extracting or burning coal – compared to Barclays? $5.79 billion and HSBC?s $10.10 billion – from Germany to India, from Portugal to Australia. Financing coal mines and power plants in today’s carbon-constrained world can never be sustainable practice. However, RBS is involved in financing many of the most controversial companies involved in rapid coal expansion, some of which are engaged in practices with particularly harmful social and environmental consequences. The bank participated in two mega loans totalling $70 billion to German power-giant E.ON ? either side of the company?s announcement of plans to build 17 new coal and gas power plants across Europe. E.ON has generated a great deal of controversy over its plans to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent ? the first in 30 years in Britain. Its critics have included NASA scientist Dr James Hansen, a large cross section of NGOs ranging from the RSPB to the Women?s Institute and more than 2,000 direct action campaigners who took part in August’s Camp for Climate Action. Elsewhere, RBS took part in providing $800 million of credit to Arch Coal, the US? second largest coal producer. Arch Coal has been heavily involved in mountain-top removal mining (MTR) ? a practice of blasting off the tops of mountains with powerful explosives, then dumping the mountain-tops into nearby valleys. Rather than remove the coal from the mountain, MTR involves removing the mountain from the coal. More than one million acres of biologically diverse hardwood forests in Appalachia, eastern USA, have already been decimated. For local communities, MTR means the loss of thousands of jobs, growing poverty and increased health risks from toxic coal sludge. While providing billions to companies like E.ON and Arch Coal, RBS claims to be addressing the environmental and climate impacts of its operations. It is particularly proud of two recent events it hosted: its 2008 Annual Economic Lecture titled ?Towards a low carbon economy? and the UK Low Carbon Economy Summit co-organised with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform that took place at the Tate Modern in London. In the event?s opening speech, RBS Chairman Sir Tom McKillop laid out his company?s position: ?As a leading banking partner of the energy sector for many decades, RBS recognises its responsibility in addressing these challenges.? The statement would be commendable, were it true. While proudly advertising RBS? $3.5 billion of support to renewables over two years, McKillop did not deem it relevant to mention the total volume of support for fossil fuel companies – and RBS has consistently refused to take any responsibility for that lending. Financing of coal companies alone was around five times that of renewables. As this double-speak becomes harder to sustain, McKillop is rapidly undermining RBS? credibility in addressing climate change. The government, alongside coal-burners like E.ON and RBS, argue that a supposed ?energy gap? in 12 years time justifies the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure and deflect propositions for co-ordinated action on climate change. However, the recent Poyry Report by twelve of Europe?s top scientists lays out paths to a stable UK energy future that combines targets for reduced usage and increased efficiency of power, alongside stepped-up renewable energy programs. There is a clear need to find a path forward that ends our dependency on fossil fuels, as there is little point in keeping the lights on if the house is flooded. RBS has positioned itself to take the credit for organising green conferences and lending to renewables. At the same time it is planning to keep providing the financial fuel that drives the global coal boom, locking us into decades of carbon emissions and pushing us perilously closer to the two degree tipping point of runaway climate change. Read “Cashing in on Coal“

Climate prisoner
5 Oct 2008
On 4 August, the first day of Climate Camp, Paul Morozzo, 41, was one of five environmental activists to publicly defy bail conditions banning him from attending the camp, knowing this could lead to days, perhaps weeks of imprisonment. Paul was arrested at an entrance to the Camp (the others were able to enter, apparently because of police incompetence) and served a week in prison. He was released by Selby magistrates on 11 August. He is believed to be the first person in Britain to be imprisoned for climate-related activism. The bail conditions forbidding the 29 from going onto the Hoo peninsula in Kent (containing both the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station and the third annual Camp for Climate Action) were imposed on Paul and 28 others while they await trial for occupying and partially emptying a coal train headed for the Drax coal-fired power station on 13 June (see last PN). When PN talked to Paul five days after his release, he was insistent that we place his short imprisonment in context: ?There was another guy, James Thorne, who went to the Camp who broke bail conditions and who was in prison for six days. There are other people in the UK who?ve gone to prison for environmental actions, and there are currently lots of animal rights activists in prison. Globally, there are a lot of people involved in environmental activism who are in prison. Just before the first Climate Camp at Drax [in 2006], there was also a camp of peasant farmers who were blockading the building of a coal-fired power station. Their camp was forcibly evicted and seven of them were killed. In my case, my prison sentence was only seven days; I don?t want to make it more of a big deal than it was.? We asked about the period leading up to his arrest. ?To be completely honest, there was very little preparation for the consequences of breaking bail, because we were too busy discussing the whys and why nots of doing it. We took books, that was about it for preparation.? Having announced their intentions publicly through a letter in the Guardian, the group arrived at Climate Camp on Monday 4 August just after 3.30pm. The police failed to recognise most of the bail-breakers, but they surrounded Paul. ?What was I thinking at that point? I was thinking: ?Oh bollocks. I really wanted to go to the camp. I don?t want to be arrested by myself because it doesn?t really have that much impact.? It felt a bit pointless?. But then I perked up.? ?Chatham police station was fine overnight. If I?m being completely honest, a night in a police cell is quite relaxing. You just sleep, and, if you?ve got a book, you read. You?re nearly always in a cell by yourself.? ?The next afternoon, I was taken to court and remanded. I was put in a van with other prisoners and taken to Wandsworth. If I?m being honest, I was a little bit nervous about it at first. You have this fear of the unknown. But it?s not that unknown. It?s just normal people in these slightly weird circumstances, and yet you get used to it pretty quickly.? Despite the fact that this was his first time in prison, Paul said: ?I?ve had friends who?ve been in prison, and I sort of guessed what it was going to be like. People watch films that tell them they?re going to be raped and beaten up, but it?s not like that. You arrive and then you kind of go: ?I don?t know why I was so nervous. This is fine?.? Perhaps the biggest fear people have is of how other prisoners might react to them. ?I think that?s what I was nervous of, but I kind of think that?s a bourgeois fear of the mob. My experience is very limited, it?s only seven days, but my experience was that most people just want to do their time. They?re not going out of their way to cause trouble.? ?So long as you really respect where you are ? you don?t just go up to people and ask them what they?re in for, for example ? it?s fine.? As for the prison guards: ?They pretty much treated everyone with the same level of contempt ? with the odd exception.? ?The only thing I found difficult was the endless, endless daytime TV [there are TV sets in every cell]. I love telly, but I?m fairly choosy. The worst moment was the fourth day of Goldenballs, with the avatar of the living dead, Mr Jasper Carrott. It?s all about lying and getting money and doing people over. I started thinking: ?I don?t know if I can handle this much longer. I?m going to have to destroy the telly.? ? The decision Why did he choose to openly break his bail? ?There?s 30, 40, maybe 50 people working on Climate Camp, and I was one of those people who put in quite a lot of time each week for nine months. The five of us who broke bail had worked on the Camp, and we really, really wanted to go to Climate Camp. It was an important political event where people discuss solutions to climate change and other crises we?re facing. We felt: ?The bail conditions are politically-motivated and invalid and so we?re going to go.? ? ?Secondly, the Camp was pretty much under attack from the police and the state, and the only thing we could think of to challenge that was to challenge the bail conditions. Both because of this camp and because, if we do a blockade of Kingsnorth, if they try to build it, then they may use bail conditions as a way to undermine that blockade, so we really need to get into the habit of being quite strong about challenging those kind of bail conditions.? ?We worried about getting the balance right. We didn?t want to be martyrs or macho. We just wanted to go to the Camp. We worried about whether it would inspire people, or whether people would be put off by the fact that getting involved in the climate change movement might at some level involve the risk of arrest and imprisonment. We were quite tortured about that question. In the end, we just had to do what felt right for us, and take a gamble on how the rest of it would play out.? Paul expressed some concern about the way that peace activists treat prison: ?We?ve got to not think it?s too much of a big deal, not fetishize the whole thing, but also make sure if people do end up inside, they?re really supported. I feel vaguely wary of the peace movement, a little bit of a martyrdom thing going on which it?s really important to avoid. The whole ?bearing witness? thing, which can be a bit individualistic.? Something else that the group agonised over was breaking with the deliberately ?anonymous? ethic of the Climate Camp. ?We all understood and really like that anonymous thing. Climate Camp is a self-organised, autonomous space which challenges not just climate change, but also the ideas of hierarchy and domination that got us into this mess in the first place. It challenges personality and leadership. It creates a more flattened environment in terms of hierarchy, and avoids this whole bollocks celebrity thing. But with the bail-breaking, it was impossible to do anonymously. That?s one of the things we found difficult to think about. We wanted to remain anonymous and yet we wanted to make this point.? The 29 coal-train activists have either pleaded ?not guilty? or declined to plead, and are awaiting trial. Their committal hearing is on 7 October in York magistrates? court. The bail condition banning them from the Hoo peninsula was lifted on 18 August, along with the extra conditions imposed on Paul when he was released from prison on 11 August. You can watch the Peace News film about the bailbreaking on YouTube

Mandelson’s Return – calculated to outrage
5 Oct 2008
IT is difficult to imagine a Cabinet appointment more calculated to dismay or outrage Labour supporters than that of Peter Mandelson. The mere fact that serial embarrassment David Blunkett describes it as a “masterstroke” says all that’s necessary of this third time unlucky triumph of hope over experience. Mr Blunkett’s bases his assessment of the rehabilitation of the architect of spin and rumour on the joyous reality that “it is embracing someone who, in the past, had been seen as being very close to Tony Blair, so it’s an inclusive measure.” Well, three cheers for that. The tiny, unrepresentative and increasingly loathed group that is new Labour is papering over the cracks in its unity. At the same time, trade unionists, pensioners, peace campaigners, the homeless, low-paid workers and people facing unpayable energy bills will conclude that new Labour has even less to offer them. Those denied the chance of buying a home or facing negative equity and repossession will remember Mr Mandelson’s own alternative mortgage arrangements – his secret large loan, interest free, from a Cabinet colleague. That should have been that for his political career, but the patronage of Tony Blair meant his speedy return to Cabinet and, after another embarrassment, reincarnation as EU trade commissioner. What does Gordon Brown expect Mr Mandelson to bring to his government? Is he unaware of the overwhelming negative image that Mr Mandelson projects? He is seen as vain, duplicitous, divisive, self-seeking and unscrupulous and that’s by those willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. His return will recall the days when he briefed journalists on a regular basis against fellow ministers, including Mr Brown, while Mr Brown’s adviser Charlie Whelan responded in kind. Is that the model of government that the PM would like to see return or does he believe that the crab has changed his spots? When Mr Brown took over from Mr Blair last year, he briefly flattered to deceive, promising the catch-all quality of “change” and, more positively, an end to spin. Change has been consigned to the dustbin and no-one could take seriously any pledge by a government that contains Mr Mandelson to finish with spin. Indeed, the proof is there in his interview in this weekend’s New Statesman when he claims not to have given “a second’s thought” to a return to front-line politics after he discussed it with Mr Brown at Labour Party conference. Tony Blair once said that his project of remaking the Labour Party would only be complete when the party had learned to love Peter Mandelson. If he meant the 700,000 members that Labour boasted in 1997, that never happened and even today’s flimsy, abandoned shell of a party is deeply divided. Despite that, Mr Mandelson is as bullish as ever, telling trade union leaders and those on the left of the party who want an end to the new Labour nightmare that they “prefer the comfort of opposition to the hard tasks of government.” This appointment confirms new Labour’s determination to continue to reject the demands of working people and to rule in the interests of big business and the rich.

Can?t buck the market? The market can certainly buck us
5 Oct 2008
IN THE course of just one day, the most right wing American administration in living memory calls on the United States Congress for billions of dollars to bail out the country?s financial system, the Portuguese launch the world?s first wave power plant and British Energy is subject to a French takeover. So we no longer have any ownership of our energy infrastructure. There are a lot of clichs we hear from politicians these days. Three of my favourites are: ?We will learn the lessons?, ?The family have been informed? and ?Ownership does not matter?. The last one is a catchphrase of Business Secretary John Hutton. We never hear it when politicians are talking about housing, of course. Forcing people to buy houses they could not afford is the main cause of the current economic mess. And ?Ownership does not matter? is not a phrase you hear from people who actually own things, such as Warren Buffet and Lakshi Mittel ? or the French, for that matter. They will now have a constant stream of profits from their British energy business. Every time we turn on the lights, cash will stream across the channel. The Business Secretary says this is good for Britain. He has persuaded a foreign firm with some intellectual property to take over and run yet another faltering British industry. So now we will get four new French nuclear power stations. The modern British economy is a bit like the tennis at Wimbledon. Although Britain never wins the big prizes, we put on a good show. Most of the prize money goes overseas, but if we are lucky we get to stand on a hill and watch the action on a big screen. In this Alice in Wonderland world, the British are the winners. The French have cheaper energy than us because they foolishly failed to embrace the market and instead invested in their energy industry for the long term. Now they have a product they can export across the world and reap the rewards. Just how silly is that? Meanwhile, the global energy giants we put our faith in are refusing to invest in British renewables. As private firms, they see more lucrative investments in existing energy sources elsewhere. To most observers, this country is facing a looming energy gap. Because of our obsession with not bucking the market, we stand a good chance of being bucked by it. Portugal has no indigenous carbon energy sources and yet it has managed to obtain more half its energy from renewables. Locked into free-market dogma, progress in Britain has been pitiful. We can begin to turn this around when the Energy Bill comes back to the House of Commons. MPs can give renewables the support they need with some preferential help as regards tariffs in order to encourage investment, But we need to go much further. The current global crisis in the banking sector shows the limits of regulation. When oil was discovered in the North Sea, it was soon realised that it was going to be a long-term and risky business bringing it to shore. A public sector business, the British National Oil Corporation, was established to undertake this challenge. If we are now to take on the challenge of developing a serious renewable energy industry, particularly in the capital-intensive wave and tide power arena, we will need a similar public sector champion: a British national renewables corporation. Unlike the wind, you can set your watch by the tides around Britain?s coast. If the Portuguese can harness wave power, so can we. With a global shortage of credit, we cannot wait for the private sector to come to the rescue. Banks are being saved by ?nationalisation? in the United States and now our nuclear industry is being ?nationalised? by the French. If we want a significant renewables sector, its early stage of development will require a large-scale public sector solution. It will be a better long-term investment than Northern Rock. And this time we will have to do it ourselves. Nick Matthews teaches at Coventry University

Forty percent of children live in poverty
4 Oct 2008
More than 40 percent of children in the United Kingdom are living in poverty, according to the latest research. That is some 5.5 million children. Whilst official measures of child poverty are based on a national survey of family income, the new research published by the Campaign to End Child Poverty was compiled using tax credit data. This gives the percentage of children on low incomes in local authorities and constituencies across the UK, as well as at the more local ward level in England and Wales and in local zones in Scotland. There are two groups of children whose families receive the maximum Child Tax Credit because they have low incomes. Some 2,895,000 children are in families claiming Child Tax Credit, plus a Working Tax Credit entitlement related to their earnings. Another 2,664,000 children live in families claiming tax credits that also depend on benefits, because no one in the family is employed. In 174 of the 646 parliamentary constituencies across the UK, more than 50 percent of children fall into these categories. Naturally there is a wide discrepancy between affluent and poorer constituencies. Whilst the constituencies with the lowest levels of families in poverty are Buckingham and the prosperous constituency of Sheffield Hallam, both with 17 percent, the parliamentary constituency with the highest number is in Birmingham Ladywood, with 81 percent or 28,420 children living in poverty. Other areas with high child poverty are Bethnal Green and Bow in London, with 79 percent (23,450), Bradford West with 75 percent (24,900) and Nottingham East with 68 percent (12,360). At more localised levels, the poverty rate is even higher. For example, in the London electoral wards of Tower Hamlets, Bethnal Green South and St. Dunstan?s and Stepney Green there are very high levels of child poverty, with 87 percent. When broken down still further, the concentration is even greater. For example, in the two zones selected by the Campaign to End Child Poverty in parts of Glasgow Baillieston?Central Easterhouse and North Barlarnark and Easterhouse South?98 percent of children are living in poverty. The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion has compiled the research figures by using data from August 2006. Economic developments since then will have already further increased child poverty. Rising food and energy prices and the slump of the housing market are pushing ever more people to the brink. The Campaign to End Child Poverty, which is made up of more than 120 organisations including children?s charities, child welfare organisations, social justice groups, faith groups, trade unions and others, will stage a rally in Trafalgar Square as part of its Keep The Promise campaign on Saturday, October 4. The ?promise? refers to the pledge to end child poverty made by Tony Blair when the Labour Party came to power in 1997. At last week?s Labour Party Conference, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced plans described as ?ground-breaking legislation? to enshrine in law Labour?s pledge to halve child poverty by 2010 and to end it fully by 2020. However, Brown gave no concrete details on this legislation or the policies that would be employed by Labour to this end. And there has been no further information forthcoming. Not only is the target of halving child poverty out of reach, but figures show that it has in fact increased over the last two years by 200,000. In reality, Brown?s pledge was made in recognition of the fact that Labour?s original promise is nowhere near being met. Nor could it be, given that the Labour government is entirely beholden to big business and the super-rich and that all its policies to this end have only increased social inequalities. While Labour continues to make empty promises, it is fully aware that these cannot be squared with its using billions of taxpayers? money to bail out billionaire and multimillionaire shareholders and bankers. Brown?s never-ending guarantees to do whatever is necessary to save the system will mean further handouts for failing banks and rising taxes, rising prices and deeper attacks on social benefits for workers, driving even more children into poverty.

Debts the way to do it
4 Oct 2008
AS SCHNEWS RASHLY TAKES ON THE CREDIT CRUNCH AND THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM ?Whoever is to blame for this week?s scenes on world stockmarkets, only the most churlish anarchist would welcome them.? – the Guardian, 1st October 2008 . Blimey… you spend 15 years struggling against global capitalism and then the bloody thing collapses of its own accord. Building societies, banks and all manner of financial institutions are going to the wall.. City wide-boys, hands bloody from their ruthless assault on the world?s poor, are flinging themselves in front of trains ? and nobody?s had to lift a finger ? let alone throw a Molotov. Since our report on the welfare state for business (SchNEWS 647) western governments have continued throwing infeasibly large amounts of money at the free-falling financial markets. ?Meltdown Monday? was only the start (Traumatic Tuesday, Woeful Wednesday etc) as here in the UK, Bradford and Bungly went belly up and had to be nationalised ? well it?s massive debts did anyway with Spanish bank Santender, already owners of Abbey, encouraged to pick up the best bits of B&B for a song. Halifax nearly collapsed and had to be sold to Lloyd?s bank ? forget the monopoly issues just keep the sinking ships afloat! Over in the States, Bush and his cronies are desperately trying to get through a whopping $700 billion bail out bill to shore up confidence in a financial system teetering on the edge. They failed initially, leading to further market plummets before persuading Congress to approve a revised deal this week (being voted on by the House of Representatives today). The nattily named credit crunch appears to be getting more and more bite, so what?s it really all about? The explanation tossed around by most mainstream media tells us that it?s due a rash ?sub-prime? mortgage lending ? OK, but if you want to understood why it?s knock on effects are so threatening to the system it?s actually a little more complicated. The comparative economic boom (ridden with such self-congratulation by the ?golden? chancellor at the time…er, a Mr G. Brown) since the last recession in the early 90?s has been based on massively increasing levels of debt. Not just individual consumers spending their way to prosperity on credit cards, but banks, all the other types of financial institutions, corporations and governments. Household debt has increased from 50% of GDP in 1980 to 100% in 2007. Financial sector borrowing has gone from 21% to 116% of assets in the same period. In fact, a chief cheerleader of the brave new financial world was the former boss of now bust Goldman Sachs ? one Henry Paulson. He took them from $20 billion in debts in 1999 to $100 billion when he left. Having helped cause the crisis, and getting rich off it, he?s now the man putting forward the bail out plan as US Treasury Secretary. Despite self-imposed limits, Governments have also ramped up their debt levels ? achieved by privatising everything in sight and putting all the deals ?off balance sheet? (thanks, Gordon!) So lenders now routinely now lend out more than the total assets of the company. It was all made possible by massive deregulation, the completion of the project started in the Thatcher / Reagan free market era, as big business and their lobbies finally succeeding in getting politicians completely in their pocket, and indeed direct pay. Light touch regulation gave way to feather light. The confidence of banks to throw ever more cash around was underpinned by the invention of the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market. This allows organisations exposing themselves by loaning out money to buy a kind of insurance against a default on that loan. In return for paying small regular premiums, priced depending on the perceived risk of default, that organisation could think of itself as no longer exposed to any risk, able to reduce any provisions put aside in case of default (so called ?bad debt?) ? and therefore free to lend out even more cash. A culture of risky, unsound lending was thus created. To make things worse, all these debt contracts are traded, and indeed speculated on. They change hands multiple times as different people estimate their current value and risk differently. A tasty profit opportunity for canny get-rich-quick investors, but difficult for buyers removed from the original business to assess what they?d really bought. In effect this all meant that many billions of debt could be considered assumed by people only having to put up in hard cash a tiny percentage of that figure. No problem as long as house prices, shares, bond prices etc all kept rising and more debt could be given out cheaply and easily to anyone who might otherwise be close to default. A debt mountain was gradually accumulated. In 2008, the amount of debt in the CDS market is estimated to be more than $50 trillion. That?s over twice the value of the entire US stock market. Confidence started to collapse as the risks of sub-prime default got reassessed and foreclosure and bankruptcy rates started to climb. Banks panicked and realised they were caught in a kind of pyramid scheme. If people started defaulting in numbers nobody would have enough cash to pay out. The availability of cheap CDS contracts dried up and banks refused to lend to each other, wary that anyone of them could go under at any time. The cost of servicing the CDS exposures lept up, to the point where banks like Goldman Sachs and Bradford & Bingly couldn?t afford them and, unable to just borrow more to cover it, went swiftly bust. As credit availability goes down, the levels of debt exposure now threaten to bring down all types of companies, wrecking the economy from all sides at once. Facing meltdown, governments have been forced to step in to avert complete collapse of the system. But it won?t work in the long term as they?re effectively giving a blood transfusion to a badly haemorrhaging patient. The bail outs may buy some more time – gambling taxpayers money for years to come on a high risk strategy financed through yet more debt (China and India have been helping by buying up US govt bonds, leading some to wonder whether this will see a further shift in the balance of economic power, but it?s all interconnected baby!) – but the fundamental flaws of capitalism will remain and bleed everyone dry in the end. In fact, the hand outs will just ensure that it?s the same old elite who will get richer as the system creaks on to it?s inevitable demise ? it?s just a question of how long (end of the world in 2012 anyone?). BACK IN THE REAL WORLD In the meantime, what will it all mean for the average SchNEWS reader in the street? What?s gonna happen next?! If you’re poor, lacking large debts, a mortgage, share portfolio and high paying job, you might even enjoy the ride. If the credit crunch triggers a full-blown recession we?re going to see a surge in repossessions of houses. Squatters paradise! The number of endless yuppie flat developments and ego-driven showpiece towers will plummet. Less 4×4s, less sports cars. The consumer slowdown will be good for the environment ? economic collapse is the only realistic way of reaching those carbon emission targets! On the down side there?ll be less food available for looting from skips as bargain hunting shoppers clear out the aisles, but local food production will have to increase. As the job queues swell, access to social services will become less punitive. When you?re one of three million as opposed to one of 300,000, there?s only so much hassle at the dole office to go round. The wave of depression should throw up new political opportunities. For a long time in the developed west, the majority of the opposition to capitalism was essentially moral. Fair trade and charity was thought good enough to stave off the guilt of being disproportionately wealthy. But as the spoils of globalisation become increasingly only available to a smaller and smaller elite, interest in alternative ways of doing things should also increase. Recent events have shown capitalism is a hothouse flower ? it has to exist swaddled in a life-support system of regulations and laws protecting private property, allowing corporations to exist . Most importantly it requires the state to be a lender of last resort. Despite the endless free market rhetoric we?ve been forced to swallow since the Thatcher era ? the government has always functioned as a welfare state for the rich. This life support system has been filtering the real wealth upwards in society for years but now it?s all out on the open as the bankers stretch out their begging bowls. It’s now been demonstrated to all and sundry (who?d previously not been reading SchNEWS) that the ?free? market is no such thing. Pundits might spew about ?irresponsible? lending and try to pin the blame on a few bad apples but in fact all the markets were doing is what markets are supposed to do ? chase after the largest amount of profit in a single-minded ruthless way – and human beings are just a minor obstacle in that pursuit. Perhaps as times get tougher, people might finally get it together to demand more fundamental changes ? and not leave the super rich in charge of it.

Intellectual Cleansing: Part 1
4 Oct 2008
Keeping The Media Safe For Big Business Martin Tierney is one of a tiny number of mainstream journalists willing to review our book, ‘Guardians of Power’. In June 2006, he published an accurate outline of our argument in the Herald, commenting: "It stands up to scrutiny." He added that we "do not see conscious conspiracy but a ‘filter system maintained by free market forces.’ After all it wouldn’t be appropriate to show the limbs of third world children during Thanksgiving as it would only remind consumers who was really being stuffed." (http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/review_herald.php) Exactly so. But if no conspiracy is involved, how on earth does the market manage to filter dissident views with such consistency? As baffled Channel 4 news reader, Jon Snow, told us: "Well, I’m sorry to say, it either happens or it doesn’t happen. If it does happen, it’s a conspiracy; if it doesn’t happen, it’s not a conspiracy." (Interview with David Edwards, January 9, 2001; http://www.medialens.org/ articles/interviews/jon_snow.php) In 1996, Noam Chomsky attempted to explain to an equally bemused Andrew Marr (then of the Independent): Marr: "This is what I don’t get, because it suggests – I mean, I’m a journalist – people like me are ‘self-censoring’..." Chomsky: "No – not self-censoring. There’s a filtering system that starts in kindergarten and goes all the way through and – it doesn’t work a hundred percent, but it’s pretty effective – it selects for obedience and subordination, and especially…" Marr: "So, stroppy people won’t make it to positions of influence…" Chomsky: "There’ll be ‘behaviour problems’ or… if you read applications to a graduate school, you see that people will tell you ‘he doesn’t get along too well with his colleagues’ – you know how to interpret those things." Chomsky’s key point: "I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is, if you believed something different you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting." (The Big Idea, BBC2, February 14, 1996; http://www.aithne.net/index. php?e=news&id=4&lang=0) So what happens when a professional journalist does express "something different"? Is their office seat just yanked away from them and rolled under a more reliable rear end? Consider the case of our reviewer, Martin Tierney, who wrote for the Saturday Herald for seven years. In August, Tierney reviewed Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Going To Extremes (Granta, 2008). With his usual uncompromising vim, he wrote: "It is essentially a tirade against every method used against US citizens to ensure that their wealth is systematically transferred to government and corporate elites. "This is done, she claims, via abuse of the tax system, scapegoating immigrants; denial of Unions and Gestapo tactics used by the likes of… [a large US supermarket] to ensure this and a perennial ‘Warfare State’ where taxpayers money merely is used to enrich arms dealers while bludgeoning them into a unnecessary paranoia." Notice that Tierney merely reported claims made by Ehrenreich in her book regarding the use of "Gestapo tactics". It seems the Herald’s initial response to the review was positive – the piece was excellent, he was told. (Email to Media Lens, September 25, 2008) But someone else on the Herald’s editorial staff informed Tierney that the reference to the supermarket’s "Gestapo tactics" had caused great upset and anger in the office. One senior editor in particular was deeply unamused. This last reaction appears to have been decisive. Indeed, as a result, Tierney was told, he was being asked to relinquish his column. The reasoning? His editor felt she could not feel confident that he would not make similarly extreme comments in future – comments that might slip undetected into the paper. (Email from Tierney to Media Lens, October 1, 2008) The reference to a lack of confidence immediately recalls the work of journalist and physicist Jeff Schmidt who has studied the filtering of career professionals in some depth. The professional, Schmidt explains, "is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorise, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology. The political and intellectual timidity of today’s most highly educated employees is no accident." (Schmidt, Disciplined Minds, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000, p.16) The question of trust is crucial – employers must be able to rely on their human property to play by the rules. This is why Tierney was fired. The employer’s reference to Tierney’s extreme comment was ironic indeed given the extreme nature of the horrors exposed in Ehrenreich’s book – titled, after all, Going To Extremes – and outlined in Tierney’s review. Tierney tells us the review was published – with the unamusing mention of the US supermarket, and all references to it, removed – on August 16. (Email from Tierney to Media Lens September 30, 2008) If you’ve ever wondered why the press finds it so hard to find ‘space’ for the multitude of excellent, radical analyses, this incident gives an idea of the true reasons. The unwritten corporate media rule is that you can say what you like about the powerless – they can be treated with contempt, smeared and slandered without limit. But when the powerless attempt to challenge the powerful, a different rule applies. By contrast, in May, the mighty Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute, had no problems attacking the BBC in a Times article titled, ‘Watch out, the Gestapo are about.’ (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3933535.ece) Butler was not merely reporting an accusation of "Gestapo tactics", as Tierney did; he was himself protesting a BBC advert that sought to scare viewers into paying their licence fees. Butler commented: "Nor are these Gestapo tactics new. Years ago, similar advertisements showed a family laughing at some comedy programme on TV. Comes the voice-over: ‘If you have a TV licence, you’re laughing.’ In the dimly-lit street, a van draws up. Black leather boots crunch up the path, the family still oblivious. The voice continues: ‘If not…’ A gloved hand presses the bell. Suddenly, the family stops laughing, their faces gripped by sheer dread." You can bet there was no great upset in the Times’ offices. In July 2007, Ned Temko and Nicholas Watt of the Observer reported that the wife of Downing Street’s former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, had "lifted the lid on the private fury felt by Tony Blair’s inner circle over the cash-for- peerages inquiry, accusing the police of ‘Gestapo tactics’." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/ politics/2007/jul/22/uk.partyfunding) Imagine the shock if Temko and Watt had been sacked for reporting the accusation. In September 2006, Dominic Lawson wrote an article titled, ‘Gestapo tactics in freedom’s name.’ Protesting the US-UK use of torture in fighting "the war on terror", Lawson wrote: "America is inevitably tainted – and Britain by association – with the unanswerable charge that it has used the tactics of the Gestapo in the name of freedom." (http://www.independent.co.uk/ opinion/commentators/dominic- lawson/dominic-lawson-gestapo- tactics-in-freedoms-name-415613.html) Samantha’s Christmas Cards – And Other Scandals All around us, unseen, our media are being continuously cleansed, pore-deep, of important rational comments for the simple, crude reason that they threaten profits. Last month, Nick Clayton, a columnist at the Scotsman for 12 years and formerly its technology editor, reported that advertisers were leaving the paper in favour of online media. He wrote: "Whether you’re looking for work or a home, the web’s the place to go." Clayton was fired for writing this. He commented on his sacking: "I really don’t understand why I’ve been fired… I was merely reporting what estate agents had said to me about advertising in newspapers." (http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/ story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=42095) Freelancers aren’t fired, just waved away. Last month, Greg Philo of the prestigious Glasgow University Media Group submitted a powerful article, ‘More News Less Views’, to the Guardian’s Comment is Free (CiF) website. Philo wrote: "News is a procession of the powerful. Watch it on TV, listen to the Today programme and marvel at the orthodoxy of views and the lack of critical voices. When the credit crunch hit, we were given a succession of bankers, stockbrokers and even hedge-fund managers to explain and say what should be done. But these were the people who had caused the problem, thinking nothing of taking £20 billion a year in city bonuses. The solution these free market wizards agreed to, was that tax payers should stump up £50 billion (and rising) to fill up the black holes in the banking system. Where were the critical voices to say it would be a better idea to take the bonuses back? "Mainstream news has sometimes a social-democratic edge. There are complaints aired about fuel poverty and the state of inner cities. But there are precious few voices making the point that the reason why there are so many poor people is because the rich have taken the bulk of the disposable wealth. The notion that the people should own the nation’s resources is close to derided on orthodox news." (http://www.medialens.org/ forum/viewtopic.php?p=9838#9838) He added: "At the start of the Iraq war we had the normal parade of generals and military experts, but in fact, a consistent body of opinion then and since has been completely opposed to it. We asked our sample [of TV viewers] whether people such as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Naomi Klein and Michael Moore should be featured routinely on the news as part of a normal range of opinion. Seventy three per cent opted for this rather than wanting them on just occasionally, as at present." Matt Seaton, the CiF editor, rejected the article on the grounds that "it would be read as a piece of old lefty whingeing about bias". (Email from Greg Philo, September 30, 2008) This from the same website that has just published Anne Perkins’s analysis of the merits of different leaders’ wives. Sarah Brown, wife of prime minister Gordon, and Samantha Cameron, wife of Tory leader David, are doing so much better than "that awful Cherie" Blair, it seems: "Brown is unflashy and sincere. Cameron is cool and elegant. The joke is they could be sisters, with pretty but unacademic Samantha and the older, not quite as pretty but dead brainy Sarah." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/ commentisfree/2008/oct/01/cherieblair.women) Samantha "keeps her mouth shut and looks cool and stylish", although there have been gaffes: "no one mentions those packs of Smythson’s Christmas cards (£5.70 each, £57 for 10)". And so on… We found this within seconds of visiting the site – there are limitless comparable examples. At time of writing, Perkins’s article has garnered 15 uninspired comments, including: "It is a very silly Daily Mail sort of article as others say, but this is the way the Guardian is going, alas." As we ourselves know, where dissidents can’t be sacked, patronised or ignored, legal action is always an option. CanWest, one of Canada’s largest media companies, is the owner of newspapers, radio and television stations, and online properties. CanWest founder, Israel (Izzy) Asper, a strong supporter of Israel’s right-wing Likud party, reportedly told the Jerusalem Post: "In all our newspapers, including the National Post, we have a very pro-Israel position… we are the strongest supporter of Israel in Canada." (http://www.zcommunications.org/ znet/viewArticle/18899) The Guardian noted that Asper "was highly critical of any perceived anti-Israeli position in the media, particularly the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s coverage of the Middle East, which he suggested had anti-Semitic overtones". (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news /2003/oct/16/guardianobituaries) Responding to this consistent pro-Israeli stance, the Palestine Media Collective produced a satirised version of CanWest’s Vancouver Sun newspaper on the theme of the 40th anniversary of the Israeli Occupation in 2007. This included stories such as: "Study Shows Truth Biased against Israel, By CYN SORSHEEP." (http://redstaterebels.org/2008/09/ profits-and-free-speech-in-Canada/) In response, CanWest hit the media collective with a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) claiming a violation of trademark law. Because the writers were initially anonymous, CanWest sued the printer and another activist, Mordecai Briemberg, who had passed out copies. Robert Jensen, professor of journalism at the University of Texas, takes up the story: "Such a suit is legitimate only when the plaintiff can show there’s a reasonable likelihood that people will confuse the fake with the real and that some harm will result. In this case, there clearly is no confusion and no harm, and hence no serious claim. But CanWest presses on. "Calling the [Palestine Media] Collective’s paper ‘a counterfeit version’ that amounts to ‘identity theft,’ CanWest seems to want to frame this as a kind of intellectual-property terrorism: ‘This piece was not satirical. It was not a clever spoof. It was a deliberate act to mislead and misinform thousands of people by using the actual Vancouver Sun masthead, logo and layout," reads a company statement on the case." (Jensen, (http://www.zcommunications.org/ znet/viewArticle/18899) Briemberg initially sought coverage of his plight from the Canadian press without success. He then approached the international press, including the Guardian, with an opinion piece. The Guardian directed him to their Comment is Free website, which has ignored him. The Index Censorship has run an edited version of his op-ed here: http://www.indexoncensorship.org/?p=560 A Seriously Free Speech Committee has also been formed to help with honorary members such as Naomi Klein, John Pilger, Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman, and many others: http://seriouslyfreespeech.wordpress.com/ There has so far been no mention of this story in any UK newspaper. Part 2 will follow shortly… Please do NOT reply to the email address from which this media alert originated. Please instead email us: Email: editor@medialens.org This media alert will shortly be archived here: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/08/081002_intellectual_cleansing_part1.php The Media Lens book ‘Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media’ by David Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London) was published in 2006. For details, including reviews, interviews and extracts, please click here: http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/guardians_of_power.php Please consider donating to Media Lens: http://www.medialens.org/donate Please visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org We have a lively and informative message board: http://www.medialens.org/board

Democratising the UK economy
4 Oct 2008
Exclusively to ukwatch.net Corinna Lotz of A World to Win talks to Alex Doherty about the financial crisis and the prospects for a democratic self-managed economy in the UK. Can you tell our readers what A World to Win is – what are the organisation?s aims and how did the organisation come into existence? A World to Win exists to work for a society in which human beings can live in a not-for-profit relationship with themselves and the planet. We believe that the globalisation of the world economy over the last 30 years has led to a greater division between the rich and the poor, in Britain and throughout the world, as well as global warming and ecological devastation. Our aim is to help facilitate a transition to a not-for-profit, co-operatively owned, non-wasteful economy based on using existing resources and technology in new ways. Such a transition requires a far more advanced type of democracy than the present hollowed-out form in which people have been politically disenfranchised. Our book, A World to Win, a rough guide to a future without global capitalism, advanced these ideas and became the stimulus for launching the organisation in 2005. How is A World to win structured internally? Is it a cooperative or hierarchically managed or…? A World to Win functions with a steering group, a secretariat and special groups which are set up as and when required for specific projects and aims, such as our Stand Up for Your Rights festival on October 18, which we invite your readers to come along to. We have a constitution which is published on our website. What is your view of the current financial crisis? What does it reveal about contemporary capitalism? Does it spell the beginning of the end for global capitalism as some have suggested? The current financial crisis is due to capitalism?s inherent need constantly to expand, which leads to systemic crises. As we explain in our book A House of Cards ? from fantasy finance to global crash, the debt contagion that began with the US sub prime crisis last summer, was the unravelling of the vast amount of fictitious (fantasy) finance that became the biggest bubble in the history of capitalist financial markets. Over the last two decades, new financial instruments, credit arrangements and market speculation caused debt to balloon out of all proportion to real production and trade. The market in credit default swaps, for example, exploded over the past decade to more than $45 trillion by mid-2007. The present crisis reveals that global capitalism cannot function only with a free market and requires the state to bail it out. Without public money as its present life-support system, the banking system would literally seize up. The crisis also shows that all those who said the system was fundamentally sound were wrong. It is fundamentally flawed in its very heart. As we speak, capitalist governments in the US, UK, Ireland and elsewhere are using taxpayers? money to shore up banks, without so much as a by-your-leave from any voter. By itself the crisis does not spell the end of global capitalism because governments will seek to resolve the crisis at the expense of working people and the most vulnerable sections of society, and, eventually by going to war, as happened in the 1930s. But events will now demonstrate to millions of people the highly toxic and destructive nature of the system and that it cannot guarantee the most essential rights. The alternative to going beyond the capitalist form of globalisation to a socially-owned, non-capitalist form will be a catastrophic drop in living standards for the majority of people. In our view, the resources that are now being squandered on rescuing the banks should be used instead in a democratically-controlled way to create a not-for-profit, cooperatively-owned banking system and economy. In this way we view the crisis as an opportunity for human beings to go forward to more advanced social system. If it is not replaced, disasters of the kind that resulted from the Wall Street crash of 1929, compounded by the ecological crisis, are inevitable. How is this transformation to a cooperative society to be achieved? Proposals for this are outlined in A World to Win and in the final chapter of A House of Cards, from fantasy finance to global crash called Composting Capitalism. Is there a role for parliamentary politics? Again, in A World to Win, the chapter Reconstructing the State outlines the principles on which a transitional state would be based. Our forthcoming book Unmasking the State ? rough guide to a real democracy deconstructs existing parliamentary democracy, by showing how it came into being, how workers fought for representation and how the welfare state has become a capitalist, market state. What about trade unions? what should their role be? How are we to get to this imagined future? Trade unions must continue to exist in any future society to safeguard workers rights. Their role would change as the rights they campaign for become enshrined in a new constitution and when the ruling capitalist class is disempowered. Can you describe what self-management would mean at the concrete level. What would a self-managed factory or hospital or school be like as compared with those existing within a capitalist economy? The chapter, News from the Future ? when health comes first in A World to Win does exactly this. The experiences of socialism in Russia, China and Cuba is used to show that capitalism is the best that we can hope for. What do you say to that? The revolutions in these countries took place under different historic conditions than today and they were isolated from technological and cultural developments in the West. The rise of Stalinist and Maoist cliques in the former two states undermined the positive sides of the revolutions. Cuba suffers from the after-effects of Stalinism on one side and the US boycott on the other. The cultural and economic level of the masses, and the globalisation of the system as a whole today provides more favourable conditions to prevent the monstrous distortions that arose in the Soviet Union and China. What are the intellectual roots of a world to win? Who do you consider to be your most valuable intellectual predecessors? We have a variety of intellectual roots. Philosophically we work with a non-dogmatic, materialist outlook which draws on contemporary science, and dialectical philosophies. We are inspired by the ancient Chinese and Greek dialecticians such as Heraclitus, philosophers, political theorists and leaders including Hegel, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Ilyenkov, Gerry Healy, as well as poets, musicians, artists and writers past and present. We aspire to an active, open, searching view of things in which discussion can stimulate new ideas and solutions. To encourage debate on the burning issues of the day we have published five books in four years and operate a dynamic 1,800-page website with a daily blog, and many other resources. There is a rich vein of ideas regarding self-management within the anarchist tradition too – is there any reason you do not draw on that heritage as well? Our concept of human nature and human social development foregrounds the self-determination of human creativity and ingenuity. In my discussion of Antony Beevor?s book on the Spanish Civil War , for example, I referred to the important role of the largely anarchist collective farms and industries in Spain. At the same time, the Spanish experience demonstrated in a bitter way that a transformation of the state is a pre-condition for the successful and democratic self-management of land, factories and society in general. _The publications mentioned in this interview are available for free download at A World to Win _ Alex Doherty is a member of the ukwatch.net collective

Life in the Landscape of Hydrocarbons
3 Oct 2008
Exit Strategy III How was it that the marshes of Hoo St Werburgh ? so good for grazing cattle and sheep, so rich in birdlife ? were turned into a site for Kingsnorth Power Station ? with its chimneys and access roads, its spoil fields and loading jetties? How were the oil companies involved in this process? And how might it be turned in a different direction? Arguably the most important meetings in the development of Kingsnorth took place between 1948 and 1951, between Sir William Fraser and Hugh Gaitskell MP, Minister for Fuel & Power. Fraser was Chairman of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), soon to be renamed British Petroleum. In 1947, the AIOC had purchased a fuel depot site on the southern edge of the Isle of Grain, aiming to develop it as a new refinery. While initial discussions were around a medium sized refinery, events soon transformed the plans into something much larger. For in those early years of the Cold War, the Labour Government was keen to ensure a secure energy supply. This appeared to be in jeopardy when Iran nationalised its oil and threw out AIOC in October 1951. The AIOC had dominated the Iranian economy for 40 years, and in turn had become utterly dependent on Iran. The loss of these assets was devastating for the company ? the refinery at Abadan alone contributed 80% of the company?s refining capacity. The AIOC weathered this dramatic storm by laying off thousands of staff, by increasing production in Iraq and Kuwait, by rebranding itself as British Petroleum, and by building Britain?s largest oil refinery on the Isle of Grain ? with the enthusiastic support of the government. The geopolitics of energy, refracted through a British corporation and the British Government, began to alter the landscape of the Hoo Peninsula. BP?s Kent Refinery on the Isle of Grain began processing crude in February 1953. For the next 30 years it put out petrol, aviation fuel, diesel, fuel oil, bitumen and a wide range of products from crude oil imported from Kuwait, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela and elsewhere. The first oil from the Niger Delta was refined there after 1958, and the first oil from the North Sea was celebrated in 1975 with a special trip by hydrofoil down the Thames by the then Minister for Energy, Tony Benn MP. By the time the refinery processed its last load of crude in 1982, its presence had utterly altered the Hoo Peninsula. The refinery expanded to obliterate the settlement of Wallend, while BP constructed workers? homes across the peninsula. Middle management were housed in High Halstow, at a respectable distance from the refinery. Down the hill in Hoo they built an extensive new housing estate for the manual workers. The BP social club between the two later became the BAE Club ? and then police headquarters during the Climate Camp. Out of the heart of this new landscape rose two new power stations ? Kingsnorth and Grain. Kingsnorth was planned in the early 1960s, and began generating in 1973. The plant was designed as a duel-fuel power station, burning coal and oil sourced from the refinery next door. The Kent Refinery had effectively given birth – and then it died. In August 1982, the BP Kent Refinery began to close. Yet the legacy of the refinery?s operation remains long after. Wilfred Human of Strood?s widow is still trying to get compensation for her husband?s death. Mr Human worked for 22 years at the BP refinery and died of exposure to asbestos. The impact of the refinery remains in the water, soil, air and flesh of the Hoo Peninsula. * In 2003 BP announced its return to the Hoo Peninsula ? the construction of a liquid natural gas terminal on the Isle of Grain, together with Sonatrach, the Algerian State Oil Company. Gas extracted from deep beneath the Sahara Desert is piped 750 miles to the Mediterranean coast where it is pressured until, at -160 degrees, it turns to liquid ? liquid natural gas (LNG). From the terminal at Skikda two dedicated LNG ships journey to Grain and back, taking 14 days for the round trip. Once at Grain the LNG is regasified and passes into the pipelines bound for the National Grid. As the terminal capacity iexpands new pipelines are constructed to cross the peninsula. Gas from the Algerian desert passing silently by. * ?There were up to 100 men who came into our village from three directions ? they were here for at least three hours. We hid in the house, but they threw bombs through the windows and broke down the door with axes. My baby son Mohammed was five and they cut his throat and threw him out of the upper window. Then they cut the throat of my eldest son Rabeh and then my brother?s throat because he saw them kidnapping his wife and tried to stop them. They took some of the girls.” This testimony is by one of the survivors of the slaughter of 349 villagers in Rais in Algeria on 29th August 1997. These killings were part of the civil war that raged in Algeria after the army-backed regime cancelled democratic elections in February 1992. Between 75,000 and 120,000 people were killed. The massacre at the village of Rais continued for three hours, only 500 yards from an army barracks. At precisely the same time, 350 miles south of Rais, BP employees worked at an oil company camp in Hasi Messaoud, Algeria?s main oil installation. They operated behind three sets of electrified fences, patrolled by Doberman dogs and screened by cameras to supplement the army unit stationed outside the camp. BP began operating at Hasi Messaoud in early 1996, after signing a 2.3 billion deal with Sonatrach at the height of the Algerian civil war. This decision could not have been taken without the agreement of the then Conservative Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind MP, probably following a meeting with BP CEO John Browne. Although by the mid-1990s the British government had sold all its shares in BP, the company still held a pivotal position in the British economy. On 24th October 2003, seven years later, Ralph Alexander, BP Head of Gas & Power, announced a 20 year contract between BP/Sonatrach and National Grid to import LNG from Algeria to Grain ? tying a connection between that distant desert and the Hoo Peninsula until 2025. And the arrival of Algerian gas had an impact on E.ON too ? the following year it announced plans to build a new gas-fired power station at Grain. * The 40 generations that have farmed the Hoo Peninsula from the first Saxon settlements until the present day left a profound impact on the landscape, mostly noticeably in the reclaiming of the salt marshes. In the past three decades these marshes have become emblematic of the Peninsula. The spirit of the area is changing, from a place dominated by the hydrocarbon industry to a place of wildlife reserves ? the RSPB own five on the Peninsula. The struggle over Kingsnorth is, in part, a struggle over the future spirit of this place. We live in the shadow of decisions made between energy companies and government ministers ? Sir William Fraser and Hugh Gaitskell between 1948 and 1951, the CEGB in the early 1960s and 1970s, John Browne and Malcolm Rifkind in the mid 1990s. We know that there have been repeated meetings between Paul Golby, Chief Executive of E.ON, and Malcolm Wicks MP, Energy Minister. Once again the justification for a new coal plant at Kingsnorth is ?energy security? and worries over Russia and the dependability of the Middle East ? just as it was 60 years ago. Will we follow the same tracks again, or can a new course be charted for the Hoo Peninsula and our energy infrastructure? This essay originally took the form of a workshop given at the Camp for Climate Action in a field near Kingsnorth Power Station in August.

The death of the ?dream? of global free-market capitalism
3 Oct 2008
New Labour and the Tories are muttering that the left musn?t be allowed to exploit the current economic crisis in order to make a comeback. They have nothing to worry about: the systematic, publicly funded government intervention we?ve seen the world over that has been necessary to rescue global capitalism from collapse demolishes once and for all the myth that private control of capital has anything to do with the ?free market?. What capital really fears isn?t state intervention per se, but economic democracy: nationalisation without economic democracy suits capital just fine. A worthwhile, pro-working class left would be demanding that in return for being rescued at public expense, the public should be given an increased say in the running of the economy. The middle-class left isn?t doing this, and has no interest in doing this, and so will remain an irrelevance. Earthquakes on a fault zone Back in March, the chief economics correspondent of the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, wrote: ?Remember Friday March 14 2008: it was the day the dream of global free-market capitalism died. For three decades we have moved towards market-driven financial systems. By its decision to rescue Bear Sterns, the Federal Reserve, the institution responsible for monetary policy in the US, chief protagonist of free-market capitalism, declared this era over. It showed in deeds its agreement with the remark by Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, that ?I no longer believe in the market?s self-healing power?. Deregulation has reached its limits?. The events of the last two weeks, which have the seen the disappearance of two of the four remaining major independent Wall Street investment banks, with the two left voluntarily giving up investment bank status and scurrying toward the Federal Reserve for protection ; the biggest bank failure in US history, and large scale state intervention the world over to prevent the total collapse of the global financial system (the bailout of AIG following the de-facto nationalisation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae; the injection of billions upon billions of pounds of taxpayers funds into the money markets by the world?s major central banks to prevent those markets from grinding to a halt, because ?nobody trusted any credit other than the government?s? ; the temporary banning of short-selling on both sides of the Atlantic; the state co-ordinated takeovers of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America and of HBOS by Lloyds, which was waved through by the British state on public interest grounds in order to ?ensure the stability of the UK financial system?, and now the nationalisations of Bradford & Bingley here and Fortis on the continent) represent the final nail in that dream?s coffin. This has all culminated in the extraordinary bail-out plan, devised by the most right-wing administration in US history in collaboration with Wall Street, to spend $700bn of taxpayers money on the systematic nationalisation of risk in the US financial system, a plan described by the Financial Times as ?the most extensive peacetime expansion of the role of government in the financial system since the Great Depression?. Indeed, there is only one possible criticism that can be made of Wolf?s coroners report: rather than a ?dream?, the concept of ?free-market capitalism? is perhaps better thought of as a hallucination, or an oxymoron. There is no such thing as a large-scale industrial free-market economy, and there never has been, something the economist William Lazonick refers to, quite correctly, as ?the myth of the market economy?. It has been rhetorically useful for the right, from Hayek onwards, to equate the private control of capital with free markets, and free markets with individual liberty, but in reality capitalist development has always depended upon state assistance and the abrogation of free-market principles1, as current events are amply demonstrating. The neo-liberal experiment with deregulation of the financial sector of the economy that we have seen over the last thirty years has been taken as far as possible, and will now be reined back in: as Wolf has put it, ?In deregulated financial systems crises are inevitable, like earthquakes on a fault zone. Only timing is uncertain? But what does this mean for the rest of us? Will the crisis of finance capital cross over to the real economy and result in recession, large scale unemployment and a drop in living standards for the mass of the population? Are we going to see some repeat of the depression that followed the great crash of 1929, the last time Anglo-Saxon capitalism suffered a comparable financial shock? It should be pointed out that even during the so-called ?boom? of recent years, the benefits were largely confined to the upper income brackets. The real story of the last 30 years of neo-liberalism is not rising prosperity for all, but rather the utter destruction of the wealth and savings of the bottom half of the population. Outside of property, 50 per cent of the population now own just 1 per cent of the wealth whereas in 1976 it was 12 per cent. Back in July, Ernst and Young reported that average household disposable income after tax and bills had fallen by 15% since 2003 ; a report by the Campaign to End Child Poverty in late August declared that ?Poverty is now one of the greatest dangers faced by our children. If poverty were an infection then we would be in the midst of a full-scale epidemic with all the attendant public health measures, including vaccination? ; meanwhile, Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee has written several times since June that in the five years between 2001/2 and 2006/7 those on median incomes of around 23,700 had seen their incomes grow by less than 1% a year, while between 2004/5 and 2006/7 those in the bottom third of the income distribution saw their incomes fall . For much of the population the downturn has long since begun (or never ended), but this has apparently not been considered as newsworthy as the travails suffered by the masters of the universe currently sucking on the taxpayers teat on Wall Street, Canary Wharf and the Square Mile. But from even this inauspicious starting point, a downturn in the real economy is already in evidence. The last monthly unemployment figures showed a rise of over 80,000 to 1.7m, with both the Confederation of British Industry and the Trades Union Congress predicting the figure will hit 2m before the end of the year, and incomes growth excluding bonuses has fallen to zero (link and link). Manufacturing is experiencing its ?worst operating conditions? in 17 years (link and link), economic growth has ground to a halt and the European Commission is predicting a recession , and yet inflation continues to rise toward 5% (significantly higher over the past year in the case of fuel and food: those who were so quick to pass on the rise in oil prices to the consumer have being a good deal less willing to pass on the subsequent falls). The turn toward neo-liberalism was supposed to eliminate such ?stagflation? but, now faced with it, the Bank of England has thus far refused to cut interest rates because containing inflation is more important than containing unemployment (inflation is bad for business, unemployment is not). Somewhat surprisingly, consumer spending appears to be holding up, at least according to governmental statistics (although these figures have been greeted with some skepticism by retailers, link and link). This, surely, cannot last: as we have seen, bubbles always burst and economic gravity cannot be defied forever. The Bank of England?s chief economist Spencer Dale has warned of an ?adverse feedback loop?, or negative multiplier effect, wherein the downturn in property and banking will impact on banks? ability to create credit and to lend, resulting in lower spending and ?bringing painful adjustments for many households and businesses?. Likewise the Bank?s deputy governor, Sir John Gieve, has warned that ?damage to bank balance sheets would lead to tighter credit conditions, lower asset prices, lower consumption and investment and to a severe feedback loop into more losses for banks and so on down a spiral?. Financialisation Herein lies the rub: the boom, and subsequent bust, was driven not by growth in the productive sector of the economy, but by speculation in property and finance which was largely fuelled by the easy availability of cheap credit, which of course is not and will not be so easily available from now on: as the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has said, the economy will have to adjust to ?a more realistic pricing of credit?. With a contraction in the supply of credit, what else is there to sustain current levels of effective demand and fuel economic growth? At the time of writing, the British FTSE 100 index had dropped 23% over the previous year . The most optimistic predictions are that, after a short, sharp period of painful readjustment, there will be a return to business as usual. But what else is there to replace financial and property speculation as engines of growth? There is no significant manufacturing or industrial sector left to fall back on: on the continent and in Scandinavia, the industrial working class has been accommodated to a certain extent, whereas here and in the US it had to be smashed, with the result that finance has come to dominate the economy, something New Labour has been perfectly content to live with. The unusually high level of ?financialisation? in the UK economy (which has the additional attraction to capital of tending to concentrate wealth at the top, as outlined above, whereas manufacturing disperses it more widely) means that, contrary to Brown?s protestations, we are more vulnerable to any major financial downturn than comparable economies. Brown, the great Alan Greenspan devotee, bears personal responsibility for allowing what he has the nerve to call the ?age of irresponsibility? to happen on his watch, by enthusiastically embracing the deregulated, pro-capital model that has brought us to this pass. Thanks to prompt and large-sale government intervention funded out of the public purse, we are unlikely to see a repeat of the Great Depression when capitalism went to the brink of annihilation. The lessons that were hard learnt in the 1930s have not been forgotten: regardless of the idiotic blatherings of free-market ?libertarians?, the wiser heads at the top from John Maynard Keynes and Franklin D. Roosevelt up to Hank Paulson today have always understood that capitalism cannot survive without state support and systematic regulation and intervention what the historian Michael Hogan calls ?corporative neo-capitalism? to ensure the socialisation of costs and risks whilst still guaranteeing the privatisation of profits and control (which is why the bail-out plan will be forced through, over-riding formal democracy if need be). But with nothing obvious on the horizon to make up for the credit shortfall, it is entirely possible that rather than booming again after readjustment, the economy will flatline in the longer term and we will have to get used to lower rates of accumulation, resulting in even less wealth trickling down the economy than now, with the increased distributional struggle that will come with it. Similarly, the downturn will see a decrease in the government?s tax take, resulting in either tax rises (which will fall disproportionately on those on low to median incomes) or cuts in public services, particularly if further large amounts of taxpayers money are required to bail-out the financial sector. So rather than 1929, perhaps a more useful comparison to make would be the last time we saw economic turbulence on this scale, during the 1970s. Just as the Great Depression ushered in the era of Keynesianism and the Bretton Woods system, so the 1970s ended it and ushered in the era of neo-liberalism. There are a number of similarities between the ?70s and now: stagflation, a spike in oil prices, imperial overreach on the part of the US threatening the credibility of the dollar as the world?s reserve currency. With the impending economic turbulence, we could well be entering a period of similar political turbulence. A leaked memo has revealed that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith fears the downturn may produce ?upward pressure on acquisitive crime?, an increase in support for ?far right extremism and racism? and widen ?the pool of those susceptible to radicalisation? (link). Meanwhile, Tory leader David Cameron has said that ?We must not let the left use this as an excuse to wreck an important part of the British and world economy?. State control or economic democracy If there actually were a left of any significance, as there was in the 1930s and the 1970s, then Cameron may have reason to be fearful. However, Cameron seems wilfully ignorant of the scale of the victory his side won last time round. The shift toward financialisation and speculation and away from industry and production not only concentrates wealth at the top, it also leaves no place or role for an organised working class: workers become atomized and have no option other than to become selfish in outlook and take care of number one. In this context, organising a working class challenge to capital becomes all the more difficult. So Cameron can rest easy: his side has successfully vanquished the left and quieted the working class, at least for now. While there will be increased regulation of the economy, it will carry none of the unpleasant baggage of the past, because this time it will be solely on capital?s terms. In 1929 a weakened capitalist class had to contend with a strong working class that had a knife to capital?s throat. Compromise had to be reached if capitalism was to survive, but there is no such imperative now. As soon as the post-war settlement between capital and labour had been reached, capital (again, from Hayek onwards) looked to break it. The economic crises of the 1970s provided that opportunity, and since then capital has been systematically rolling back the gains won by the working class as part of that settlement. The current crisis offers capital the chance to reorganise, regroup and come up with a new regulatory framework, but this time without working class interference, something Keynes (who was perfectly honest about his loathing of the working class) would regard as an ideal. Cameron?s side has nothing to fear from nationalisation without economic democracy. Old Labour sees the crisis, and New Labour?s seemingly terminal decline, as a chance to re-assert itself, to ?take back? the Labour party. This is a dead-end for a number of reasons. Leave aside the fact that the party is near bankrupt; that membership has halved since 1997; that ?Many CLP?s [constituency Labour parties] are now husks – hollowed out shells. There may still be lots of members, but active membership has completely collapsed? ; that even liberal cheerleaders like the Guardian?s Jackie Ashley fear ?the party?s destruction as a major force in British politics?, or that Old Labour couldn?t even get a candidate on the ballot paper in last years leadership contest: the New Labour initiative has ended worthwhile democracy within the party, so there is no way of ?taking back? the party even if the will existed. And New Labour is fully aware of the danger and has no intention of allowing the party to being taken to the left, as Ruth Kelly made clear after her resignation from the Cabinet. But more than that, for all the talk of ?reclaiming? the Labour party, when has it ever truly been a labour party, led by and for the working class? As Robert Dahl has pointed out, there are two potentially contradictory schools of left wing economic thought: state control of the economy and workers? control of the economy, and by the time Labour came to power in 1945 under Attlee (a public school educated social worker) it had come out decisively in favour of the middle class Fabian tradition of state control and against workers? control2. Beatrice Webb, who along with her husband Sidney co-founded the Fabian Society and was one of the leading lights of the early Labour party, wrote on the second day of the 1926 General Strike that it would be ?the death gasp of that pernicious doctrine of ?workers? control? of public affairs?, which she considered ?a proletarian distemper which had to run its course – and like other distempers, it is well to have it over and done with at the cost of a lengthy convalescence?. Of the strikers she wrote that ?There will be, not only an excuse but a justification of victimisation on a considerable scale? and praised scabs as ?patriotic blacklegs!? [the exclamation mark is Webb’s][3]. Fabianism is neither pro-working class, nor is it a winner in economic or political terms: it is a busted flush. And for what it?s worth, there is nothing particularly new about New Labour: as far back as 1959 the (CIA-backed) right wing of the party wanted to dump Clause IV and change the party?s name4, a victory it ultimately took another 35 years for the right to win under Blair and Brown. Starting from these kind of positions, it?s small wonder the middle class left has managed to completely alienate the working class. As things stand, the only likely beneficiaries of any upsurge in radicalisation will be the far-right, not the left (as evinced by recent events in Austria and Italy). A worthwhile, pro-working class, democratically inclined left would currently be demanding that in return for being rescued with public money, finance would have to be made subject to popular, democratic control. The left is not doing this, nor has any interest in, or awareness of the possibility of, doing so. The left had its chance to sever capital?s jugular vein in the twentieth century. It didn?t take it. Until the left takes a resolutely democratic, pro-working class approach, it won?t get the chance again. Neither will it deserve to. Notes: [1] See previous IWCA Cutting Edge documents ?Friedman and Pinochet: an appreciation?, currently available at http://www.ukwatch.net/article/a_planned_economy; and part 4 of ?Kicking away the ladder at home and abroad: immigration, globalisation and neo-liberalism?, http://www.iwca.info/?p=10129. [2] Robert A. Dahl, ?Workers? control of industry and the British Labor Party?, American Political Science Review, vol. 41(5), October 1947. See also Dahl?s A Preface to Economic Democracy, Polity Press, 1985. [3] The Diary of Beatrice Webb, vol. 4: 1924-1943 (1985), Norman and Jeanne MacKenzie (eds.) (London: Virago), p76, 77. [4] Richard Fletcher (1978), ?How CIA money took the teeth out of British socialism? in Philip Agee and Louis Wolf (eds.), Dirty Work: the CIA in Western Europe (London: Zed Press), also available at http://www.wcml.org.uk/internat/wattw.htm. See also Hugh Wilford (2003), The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War (London: Frank Cass).

Social Centres ? a working class history
3 Oct 2008
The reclamation of ?social space?, whether in terms of common ground for a community or for one?s own household, has been a clarion call of the oppressed throughout history. Squatting, expropriation, reclamation (whatever the appropriate term) dates to the imposition of private property rights itself and the struggle for free access to basic resources. Indeed, most industrialised cultures still harbour a traditional belief in ?squatter?s rights?, whether it is recognised in law or not. In England such sentiments stretch as far back as the injustice felt by landless peasants towards massive land relocations following the Norman Conquest. Industrialisation, however, meant fundamental changes in the nature and purpose of this struggle. Throughout the 1800?s major cities in Britain were subject to campaigns to preserve public space. This time the demands were no longer based on peasant claims to fuel or hunting rights. Rather, there was a desire to save free land as a space to socialise and for fun and games. Working class people were anxious to preserve a social sphere away from the miserable conditions of work in the factories and the oppressive environment of the city. In the 1820?s hundreds rioted in Loughton to prevent a landowner felling trees in Epping Forest; On Wanstead Flats in 1871, thousands of working people pulled down enclosure fences after the Earl of Cowley enclosed 20 acres of wasteland; And on Leyton Marches, on the 1st August 1892, three thousand people organised through the Leyton Lammas Lands Defence Committee to pull down railings unpopularly erected around common land. Dwellings However, in response to the increasing alienation of heavily urbanised and industrialised city?s the working class began to gradually move further afield. The early 1900?s saw a wave of rural squatting with families from the city constructing makeshift communities and self-made resorts on previously unoccupied land in the countryside and on the coast. Tents, old buses, sheds, broken railway carriages were converted into weekend holiday dwellings for the urban poor. Such communities were renowned for their libertarian atmosphere and attracted their own ?Bohemian? clientele. Actors and actresses, artists and writers, stars of music halls and early films all spent time at the DIY holiday resorts. Unfortunately, the advent of WWII brought an end to such practices. Most of the coastal dwellings were devastated by the fighting. The war also gave the state the opportunity to heavily legislate against any further violation of landowner property rights. As a result of war time restrictions on building, large cities in early post-War Britain faced a severe housing crisis. In the face of the threat of homelessness thousands of empty properties were taken over by squatters, organised by working-class and socialist organisations and with the support of anarchists. The squatters took over churches, hotels, mansion houses and hospitals. Tenement apartments that had been lying vacant for up to ten years were taken over and converted into households. These were very much self-managed affairs with squatters organising their own communities and Defence Committees in reaction to state oppression. The response from property owners and local government was predictable. Many families were forcibly evicted from their homes and key activists were arrested. However, despite heavy legal oppression the movement did not completely fade away. Many activists continued to play a key role in the fight for better housing and against cuts in public services. Local authorities were still trying to evict squatters as late as 1959. Squatters? movement The 1960?s saw the birth of the modern squatters? movement. In 1968 a group of housing activists formed the London Squatters Campaign and in December of that year they occupied a luxury block of flats which had stood empty for four years. Throughout the 1970?s and 1980?s thousands of working people in major cities moved themselves into empty dwellings. By now, however, the nature and purposes of the social spaces within these reclaimed buildings had become much more ambitious. Large squats were able to facilitate community gardens, gig spaces, radical film collectives, bars, coffee shops, libraries and the provision of cheap food. There was also an incorporation of newer political movements with the setting up of free women?s, LGBT centres and unemployment unions. It is in the solidifying of all these trends that has led to the modern ?social centre? and social centre movement. The idea of ?social centre? relates to two fundamental impulses inherent in the struggle of the working class against the conditions of capital. The first is the desire for self-organization, especially in the provision for the very basic needs for shelter. In a society where it is more acceptable for an empty building or abandoned land to waste than satisfy basic human needs it becomes necessary to take direct action. This has led to land being reclaimed by the oppressed and converted into self-managed communities. The second impulse is for leisure, the need for a social space away from the drudgery and boredom of work. Again in a society where our mental health is sacrificed for our productive capacity it becomes necessary to take direct action. Common ground Whether it is rural or urban, the creation and self-management of social space has always been fiercely confronted by the state. The challenge such acts represent not only to sacrosanct liberal notions of private property rights but also in terms of self-organisation of the class, results in an open defiance of oppressive, capitalist relations. It confronts the central purpose of the state – the control and maintenance of inequalities in property. Such confrontation should not be evaded. Social centres need to be combative; they need to be on the frontline of struggle. The encroachment on common ground by the landowner and the state did not end when industrialisation began. Today, in our advanced capitalist societies social space is still shrinking. Working class space is still shrinking. While the city executives may have their spas and their private clubs, community centres, public baths and libraries are disappearing across the country (or falling into private hands). The free public house and the union clubs of generations before are becoming a rarity. Localities are becoming more and more commercialised as local shop is replaced by the chain store, high street by the shopping mall. Leisure is no longer ?free? time, it is a commodity. Social space is not social at all but bought at the expense of others labour and provides further opportunity to buy and sell. The idea of voluntary association, of communal enjoyment, of free social time is disappearing. It is imperative therefore that the modern social centre movement clings to its class heritage. Social Centres Social Centres have the potential to be the face of class struggle, to present an easy point of access to others in the community, to encourage communication, education and confidence within the class. Workingmen?s clubs, union clubs and public houses have in the past typically represented a forum for agitation and organisation amongst workers. Commercialisation of these social spheres represents yet another barrier to the self-emancipation and unity of the working class. Social centres have the potential to reclaim this legacy, to act as a focal hub of organisation and struggle. This also represents an important step in taking class struggle out of the confines of the workplace and into every aspect of community life. It has the potential to act as a source of class power outside of the industrial relationship, to unify struggles under a broader banner and fight for the extension of self-managed space into every community and workplace. Social centres must seek to destroy as much as they hope to create. If they are to do this then efforts must be made to reach out to the community, to be involved intimately in the concerns of working people and to win their support. Insularity must be avoided at all costs; centres must be welcoming places and efforts must be made to steer clear of the activist ghetto. Most importantly, if they are to be successful they must satisfy a need. ?Social? is after all the key term in social centre. They must allow for the reproduction of unconstrained social life for all. Social centres should reflect the need to fulfil a desire to be a human being, rather than simply a consumer. To give workers a safe place to relax, to kick back and to have fun.

Bradford and Bingley nationalised
2 Oct 2008
The chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling, announced minutes before the London Stock Market opened on Monday that the government would take over the Bradford and Bingley (B&B). The second such nationalisation after Northern Rock, the B&B is Britain?s largest buy to let (BTL) mortgage lender and faced bankruptcy. The Labour government organised the bailout on behalf of powerful financial interests without any public discussion, after private talks over the weekend with banking chiefs and regulators. Darling said that nationalisation was necessary after B&B?s share price had fallen to 20p, down from a high of 5.20 only two years ago, raising the spectre of a run on the bank that might spread throughout the banking system. ?We had to stabilise the situation in order to protect the banking system as a whole, he said, insisting that Britain would do ?whatever it takes.? Prime Minister Gordon Brown also made it clear that he would intervene to protect the City. He said, ?The governor of the Bank of England, the chancellor and I will take whatever action necessary to ensure continued stability.? This is a pledge to use the money of hard-pressed working people, whose wages have for years been held down at the behest of big business and the City, to protect the wealth of the financial oligarchy?not just in this instance but in future bankruptcies. The chancellor used his powers acquired under the emergency banking legislation to enable the nationalisation of Northern Rock, Britain?s fifth largest mortgage lender, last February. The legislation permits him to circumvent normal bankruptcy law and transfer a bank to another bank or take it over, with as much or as little compensation as he thinks fit. The government will take over B&B?s 51 billion mortgages and loans. B&B?s 20 billion savings arm and its 197 branches are to be sold to the Spanish bank, Santander, which also owns the Abbey and the Alliance & Leicester mortgage lenders, for 600 million, making it the fifth largest bank in the UK. To ensure that Abbey has the funds to pay back the depositors, it will receive 20 billion from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). Since the FSCS, essentially a depositors? insurance fund provided by mortgage lenders should a lender collapse, has no funds of its own, the Treasury will loan the FSCS 4.5 billion and the Bank of England 14.6 billion, all of it taxpayers? money. In the meantime, members of the FSCS, the 700 financial companies that take deposits, must pay interest on the loan estimated at 450 million for the first seven months due in 2009, and nearly double that the following year. This they will no doubt pass on to their depositors in the form of higher charges or lower interest rates on savings accounts. The FSCS and thus the government, as the chief creditor, hope to recoup the 20 billion loan from when?or if?B&B?s mortgages are repaid or sold on. But it is far from certain that the 51 billion mortgages?85 percent of which are in the risky BTL and self-certification market?will realise 20 billion in the foreseeable future. The government will seek to run down B&B?s mortgage book as it has with Northern Rock, by encouraging those who can to take out new mortgages with other lenders. This will leave those homeowners with the worst credit ratings with the B&B, offering the prospect of the government issuing repossession orders and turning families out on the streets. The move came as: The fourth largest US bank, Wachovia, had to be bought out in a rescue deal brokered by the US authorities. The six largest US bank and savings and loan company, Washington Mutual, was taken over by the US government and JP Morgan Chase. The Fortis bank had to be nationalised by the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg governments. Glitnir, Iceland?s third largest bank, was taken over by the Icelandic government. Since then Dexia has become the second Belgian bank in a week to be bailed out by governments in Belgium, France and Luxembourg to the tune of ?6.4 billion. The B&B bailout comes just one week after the government brokered a takeover of another failed bank and mortgage lender, HBOS, by Lloyds TSB by relaxing competition rules and providing other unspecified ?support.? B&B, with a history going back 150 years, demutualised just eight years ago under legislation announced by the Labour government in 1997, in order to gain access to the wholesale markets for funds to expand and thus avoid reliance on deposits. It expanded recklessly in the riskier markets of BTL and self-certification mortgages and bought the loan book from GMAC-RFC, General Motors? lending arm, further increasing its exposure to risky lending. As the downturn in the housing market and the credit crunch took its toll, lenders struggled to keep up with repayments and the bank found it difficult to finance its activities. It was forced to launch a rights issue in May. But the situation was so grave that even after twice restructuring its rights issue, only 20 percent of its shareholders responded to its call for the 400 million necessary to bolster its capital reserves. This left the bulk of the shares with the six high street banks and two investment banks that had underwritten the issue. This month, as fears rose about the financial crisis and mounting mortgage arrears, the ratings agencies cut B&B?s credit rating to just a notch above junk bond status. It renegotiated its contracts with GMAC-RFC, whose mortgage arrears have turned out to be even greater than B&B?s own arrears, slashed jobs, mounted an aggressive TV advertising campaign, and sold or wrote down its more exotic and toxic financial instruments to increase its capital ratios. But this was not enough. Its share price plummeted and its credit default swaps, a measure of risk, doubled in a week. With its shares virtually worthless, tens of millions of pounds were being withdrawn by savers from B&B?s branches and Internet site on Friday and Saturday. This raises new doubts over the BTL market that collectively owes 132 billion or 11 percent of all mortgages. As soon as the nationalisation of B&B was announced, some BTL lenders increased their rates, while others have closed their doors to new customers. B&B?s collapse means that all the six building societies that demutualised to become banks since 1986 have been taken over or been declared bankrupt: Woolwich was bought after just three years as a bank by Barclays in 2000. Halifax was bought by the Bank of Scotland in 2001 after four years as a bank. The Abbey demutualised in 1989 and was taken over by Santander in 2004. Northern Rock collapsed in 2007 after 10 years as a bank. Alliance and Leicester was bought by Santander in 2008 after 11 years as a bank when it found itself unable to obtain funding. A 2005 study by a group of MPs of the demutualised societies found that consumers had benefited very little and in most cases were paying more for a mortgage from a bank than from a building society. The claims of the new owners added 35 percent to a bank?s costs. The real winners were the top managers, who saw their paychecks increase almost threefold compared with the 65 percent rise in pay for their counterparts in the building societies. The cost of converting to banks cost more than 1 billion. The reason for the collapse in the US sub-prime market that has now spread to other mortgage lenders is the inability of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society to keep up their repayments alongside rising food, energy and transport costs and on wages that have failed to keep up with inflation. The restructuring of the mortgage lenders and banks will further concentrate financial resources and power in the hands of a few giants. This will in turn increase pressure on small and medium size banks, undermine their competitive position, and force them to close or sell out to their larger rivals. It will lead to high charges for loans and more aggressive threats of repossessions, should homeowners fall behind with their payments. It will also result in the loss of thousands of jobs as branches close and services are ?rationalised,? adding to the thousands of jobs that have already been cut in the financial, property and construction sectors since the onset of the credit crisis in August 2007. The government bailout of Northern Rock and B&B adds at least 127 billion onto the public sector?s liabilities, a sum equal to 8.6 percent of GDP in 2007-08, and increases total net debt to GDP to about 48 percent?assuming the government does not fiddle the books yet again. To get some sense of the scale of what is involved, these two bailouts alone?without including the billions pumped into the money markets by the Bank of England?is more than the 110 billion scheduled for healthcare, by far the largest spending area, for 2009-10. It is double the 60 billion worth of capital investment in hospitals, schools, transport, etc., by the private sector over the entire lifetime of the Labour government since 1997. Yet the turn to private finance for public infrastructure was in part at least justified in terms of accessing the finance that the government could not provide. Far from the rescue of B&B calming the financial markets, there are widespread fears that it could have a domino effect throughout the banking sector. Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, said, ?We are not necessarily right at the end of this process. We believe our other high street banks are well capitalised, and in a reasonable condition, but we will have to keep this situation under review.? As he said this, shares of Britain?s banks were in free-fall. Mark Deans, dealing manager at Moneycorp, said, ?Confidence in UK banking has fallen to a new low with the nationalisation of B&B.? With interbank lending virtually at a standstill, despite an interbank lending rate of 6.26 percent, well above the Bank?s official rate of 5 percent, the Bank of England was forced to inject 40 billion of credit into the money markets and provide 10 billion in overnight credit.

Bradford and Bingley nationalised
2 Oct 2008
The chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling, announced minutes before the London Stock Market opened on Monday that the government would take over the Bradford and Bingley (B&B). The second such nationalisation after Northern Rock, the B&B is Britain?s largest buy to let (BTL) mortgage lender and faced bankruptcy. The Labour government organised the bailout on behalf of powerful financial interests without any public discussion, after private talks over the weekend with banking chiefs and regulators. Darling said that nationalisation was necessary after B&B?s share price had fallen to 20p, down from a high of 5.20 only two years ago, raising the spectre of a run on the bank that might spread throughout the banking system. ?We had to stabilise the situation in order to protect the banking system as a whole, he said, insisting that Britain would do ?whatever it takes.? Prime Minister Gordon Brown also made it clear that he would intervene to protect the City. He said, ?The governor of the Bank of England, the chancellor and I will take whatever action necessary to ensure continued stability.? This is a pledge to use the money of hard-pressed working people, whose wages have for years been held down at the behest of big business and the City, to protect the wealth of the financial oligarchy?not just in this instance but in future bankruptcies. The chancellor used his powers acquired under the emergency banking legislation to enable the nationalisation of Northern Rock, Britain?s fifth largest mortgage lender, last February. The legislation permits him to circumvent normal bankruptcy law and transfer a bank to another bank or take it over, with as much or as little compensation as he thinks fit. The government will take over B&B?s 51 billion mortgages and loans. B&B?s 20 billion savings arm and its 197 branches are to be sold to the Spanish bank, Santander, which also owns the Abbey and the Alliance & Leicester mortgage lenders, for 600 million, making it the fifth largest bank in the UK. To ensure that Abbey has the funds to pay back the depositors, it will receive 20 billion from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). Since the FSCS, essentially a depositors? insurance fund provided by mortgage lenders should a lender collapse, has no funds of its own, the Treasury will loan the FSCS 4.5 billion and the Bank of England 14.6 billion, all of it taxpayers? money. In the meantime, members of the FSCS, the 700 financial companies that take deposits, must pay interest on the loan estimated at 450 million for the first seven months due in 2009, and nearly double that the following year. This they will no doubt pass on to their depositors in the form of higher charges or lower interest rates on savings accounts. The FSCS and thus the government, as the chief creditor, hope to recoup the 20 billion loan from when?or if?B&B?s mortgages are repaid or sold on. But it is far from certain that the 51 billion mortgages?85 percent of which are in the risky BTL and self-certification market?will realise 20 billion in the foreseeable future. The government will seek to run down B&B?s mortgage book as it has with Northern Rock, by encouraging those who can to take out new mortgages with other lenders. This will leave those homeowners with the worst credit ratings with the B&B, offering the prospect of the government issuing repossession orders and turning families out on the streets. The move came as: The fourth largest US bank, Wachovia, had to be bought out in a rescue deal brokered by the US authorities. The six largest US bank and savings and loan company, Washington Mutual, was taken over by the US government and JP Morgan Chase. The Fortis bank had to be nationalised by the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg governments. Glitnir, Iceland?s third largest bank, was taken over by the Icelandic government. Since then Dexia has become the second Belgian bank in a week to be bailed out by governments in Belgium, France and Luxembourg to the tune of ?6.4 billion. The B&B bailout comes just one week after the government brokered a takeover of another failed bank and mortgage lender, HBOS, by Lloyds TSB by relaxing competition rules and providing other unspecified ?support.? B&B, with a history going back 150 years, demutualised just eight years ago under legislation announced by the Labour government in 1997, in order to gain access to the wholesale markets for funds to expand and thus avoid reliance on deposits. It expanded recklessly in the riskier markets of BTL and self-certification mortgages and bought the loan book from GMAC-RFC, General Motors? lending arm, further increasing its exposure to risky lending. As the downturn in the housing market and the credit crunch took its toll, lenders struggled to keep up with repayments and the bank found it difficult to finance its activities. It was forced to launch a rights issue in May. But the situation was so grave that even after twice restructuring its rights issue, only 20 percent of its shareholders responded to its call for the 400 million necessary to bolster its capital reserves. This left the bulk of the shares with the six high street banks and two investment banks that had underwritten the issue. This month, as fears rose about the financial crisis and mounting mortgage arrears, the ratings agencies cut B&B?s credit rating to just a notch above junk bond status. It renegotiated its contracts with GMAC-RFC, whose mortgage arrears have turned out to be even greater than B&B?s own arrears, slashed jobs, mounted an aggressive TV advertising campaign, and sold or wrote down its more exotic and toxic financial instruments to increase its capital ratios. But this was not enough. Its share price plummeted and its credit default swaps, a measure of risk, doubled in a week. With its shares virtually worthless, tens of millions of pounds were being withdrawn by savers from B&B?s branches and Internet site on Friday and Saturday. This raises new doubts over the BTL market that collectively owes 132 billion or 11 percent of all mortgages. As soon as the nationalisation of B&B was announced, some BTL lenders increased their rates, while others have closed their doors to new customers. B&B?s collapse means that all the six building societies that demutualised to become banks since 1986 have been taken over or been declared bankrupt: Woolwich was bought after just three years as a bank by Barclays in 2000. Halifax was bought by the Bank of Scotland in 2001 after four years as a bank. The Abbey demutualised in 1989 and was taken over by Santander in 2004. Northern Rock collapsed in 2007 after 10 years as a bank. Alliance and Leicester was bought by Santander in 2008 after 11 years as a bank when it found itself unable to obtain funding. A 2005 study by a group of MPs of the demutualised societies found that consumers had benefited very little and in most cases were paying more for a mortgage from a bank than from a building society. The claims of the new owners added 35 percent to a bank?s costs. The real winners were the top managers, who saw their paychecks increase almost threefold compared with the 65 percent rise in pay for their counterparts in the building societies. The cost of converting to banks cost more than 1 billion. The reason for the collapse in the US sub-prime market that has now spread to other mortgage lenders is the inability of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society to keep up their repayments alongside rising food, energy and transport costs and on wages that have failed to keep up with inflation. The restructuring of the mortgage lenders and banks will further concentrate financial resources and power in the hands of a few giants. This will in turn increase pressure on small and medium size banks, undermine their competitive position, and force them to close or sell out to their larger rivals. It will lead to high charges for loans and more aggressive threats of repossessions, should homeowners fall behind with their payments. It will also result in the loss of thousands of jobs as branches close and services are ?rationalised,? adding to the thousands of jobs that have already been cut in the financial, property and construction sectors since the onset of the credit crisis in August 2007. The government bailout of Northern Rock and B&B adds at least 127 billion onto the public sector?s liabilities, a sum equal to 8.6 percent of GDP in 2007-08, and increases total net debt to GDP to about 48 percent?assuming the government does not fiddle the books yet again. To get some sense of the scale of what is involved, these two bailouts alone?without including the billions pumped into the money markets by the Bank of England?is more than the 110 billion scheduled for healthcare, by far the largest spending area, for 2009-10. It is double the 60 billion worth of capital investment in hospitals, schools, transport, etc., by the private sector over the entire lifetime of the Labour government since 1997. Yet the turn to private finance for public infrastructure was in part at least justified in terms of accessing the finance that the government could not provide. Far from the rescue of B&B calming the financial markets, there are widespread fears that it could have a domino effect throughout the banking sector. Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, said, ?We are not necessarily right at the end of this process. We believe our other high street banks are well capitalised, and in a reasonable condition, but we will have to keep this situation under review.? As he said this, shares of Britain?s banks were in free-fall. Mark Deans, dealing manager at Moneycorp, said, ?Confidence in UK banking has fallen to a new low with the nationalisation of B&B.? With interbank lending virtually at a standstill, despite an interbank lending rate of 6.26 percent, well above the Bank?s official rate of 5 percent, the Bank of England was forced to inject 40 billion of credit into the money markets and provide 10 billion in overnight credit.

Quick! These bankers need rescuing
2 Oct 2008
The next move, presumably, will be to nationalise the country’s gambling debts. To revive confidence amongst blokes in betting offices, the Government will hand over 300bn to cover the money they’ve lost. Then a leading gambler will be quoted as saying: “This package goes some way towards restoring calm. The last week has been horrendous. One of my friends lost a ton on an 8-1 shot he’d been assured was a banker by a minicab driver.” Another method might be to let the world’s share-dealers go bankrupt, and see if we manage to carry on without them. One advantage of this strategy would be the entertainment of seeing them fight the job losses. City traders would carry placards saying, “Stop the axe on Goldman Sachs!” Support groups would be set up that could hold collections in which people would be asked to donate riverside apartments to a fighting fund, as some of the bankers were undergoing such hardship they hadn’t bought one for over three months. But organisers of the fighting fund would have to be careful to keep some donations back until handed out as the Christmas bonus. They’d certainly deserve our backing, as you get an idea of the nature of share traders from yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, which told us that after the rejection of the US recovery plan “there was disbelief among US traders who accused politicians of putting their own interests ahead of the American people”. You see ? even in this crisis, all they’re thinking about is the American people. They’ve never wanted the burden of accepting unimaginable salaries for buying and selling the same stuff, but they’ve soldiered on out of love for the American people. Well it’s time they understood there’s such a thing as being TOO selfless, and took a moment to consider themselves for once. Their complaint was the failure to approve a $700bn bailout of failing finances, but it’s even worse than they fear. Because according to one commentator, one reason why politicians rejected the deal was that “they were receiving letters from the public running at 40 to one disapproving it”. So it’s not just politicians, but the American people who are against the American people. Some of them, for example, might consider that $130bn to provide a National Health plan for all Americans for two years would be a better use of funds. Those poor traders must hold their heads in their hands and sigh: “It’s just ‘me me me’ with some people, isn’t it?” So maybe there’s another solution. It seems that world governments will do anything at all, no matter how desperate, to revive “confidence” in the markets, as these markets, which are run by the dealers, control the economy. This means the dealers are far more powerful than governments. In which case, in the interests of democracy, instead of wasting time electing governments why don’t we elect the dealers? They could make speeches such as: “Let me assure the British people that, if elected, less of the wealth created by hard-working families will be taken by the state, and far more will stay where it belongs, with me.” And: “I apologise to my constituents for the embarrassing revelation that I’ve not been seen in an exclusive lap-dancing club for over a week.” And one day we’ll all look back and wonder why we’d never thought of it before.

Quick! These bankers need rescuing
2 Oct 2008
The next move, presumably, will be to nationalise the country’s gambling debts. To revive confidence amongst blokes in betting offices, the Government will hand over 300bn to cover the money they’ve lost. Then a leading gambler will be quoted as saying: “This package goes some way towards restoring calm. The last week has been horrendous. One of my friends lost a ton on an 8-1 shot he’d been assured was a banker by a minicab driver.” Another method might be to let the world’s share-dealers go bankrupt, and see if we manage to carry on without them. One advantage of this strategy would be the entertainment of seeing them fight the job losses. City traders would carry placards saying, “Stop the axe on Goldman Sachs!” Support groups would be set up that could hold collections in which people would be asked to donate riverside apartments to a fighting fund, as some of the bankers were undergoing such hardship they hadn’t bought one for over three months. But organisers of the fighting fund would have to be careful to keep some donations back until handed out as the Christmas bonus. They’d certainly deserve our backing, as you get an idea of the nature of share traders from yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, which told us that after the rejection of the US recovery plan “there was disbelief among US traders who accused politicians of putting their own interests ahead of the American people”. You see ? even in this crisis, all they’re thinking about is the American people. They’ve never wanted the burden of accepting unimaginable salaries for buying and selling the same stuff, but they’ve soldiered on out of love for the American people. Well it’s time they understood there’s such a thing as being TOO selfless, and took a moment to consider themselves for once. Their complaint was the failure to approve a $700bn bailout of failing finances, but it’s even worse than they fear. Because according to one commentator, one reason why politicians rejected the deal was that “they were receiving letters from the public running at 40 to one disapproving it”. So it’s not just politicians, but the American people who are against the American people. Some of them, for example, might consider that $130bn to provide a National Health plan for all Americans for two years would be a better use of funds. Those poor traders must hold their heads in their hands and sigh: “It’s just ‘me me me’ with some people, isn’t it?” So maybe there’s another solution. It seems that world governments will do anything at all, no matter how desperate, to revive “confidence” in the markets, as these markets, which are run by the dealers, control the economy. This means the dealers are far more powerful than governments. In which case, in the interests of democracy, instead of wasting time electing governments why don’t we elect the dealers? They could make speeches such as: “Let me assure the British people that, if elected, less of the wealth created by hard-working families will be taken by the state, and far more will stay where it belongs, with me.” And: “I apologise to my constituents for the embarrassing revelation that I’ve not been seen in an exclusive lap-dancing club for over a week.” And one day we’ll all look back and wonder why we’d never thought of it before.

Northern Ireland – a sexist’s paradise
1 Oct 2008
It’s normal to feel embarrassed when you come from Northern Ireland. Barely a week goes by without some new instance of our abject ignorance, our awful compulsion to behave like noisy, immature yokels, whether it’s rampant homophobia, crazed bible-bashing or sheer dumb political intransigence. But a new Amnesty International poll, which found that almost half (46%) of Northern Ireland students believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she flirts, is especially shaming, even by our usual standards. What’s more, it’s OK to hit your girlfriend if she nags, flirts with other men or refuses to have sex ? according to one in 10 local students. The fact that these are young people makes it even worse. They are supposed to be the ones skipping open-mindedly into the glad new post-conflict future, not shoring up benighted old rubbish like this. So it’s shaming, yes ? but not particularly surprising. Northern Ireland remains a sexist’s paradise. It is the land of the macho swagger, a defiantly unreconstructed outpost of bullish masculinity and aggressive heterosexualism, fuelled by a trenchantly politicised culture and ? of course ? the long years of violence. (It’s not a coincidence that there is a significantly higher proportion of adult women raped at gunpoint in Northern Ireland than in the Republic of Ireland or the UK, and rape crisis counsellors are familiar with the tactic where perpetrators claim that they belong to a paramilitary organisation, in an attempt to ensure their victim keeps quiet.) Add a dash of the local brand of thin-lipped social conservatism, and you have a recipe for the “blame culture” attitudes seen in the Amnesty survey ? whose respondents presumably included young women as well as young men. Women’s rights have long languished near the bottom of the political agenda in the North, constantly displaced by the constitutional tug-of-war. The situation is really dire. Earlier this year, government figures showed a 50% rise in reported rapes over the previous six years, yet Northern Ireland has the worst support services for the victims of sexual violence in the UK. Our one heroic rape crisis centre is woefully under-funded, constantly teetering on the verge of closure. Women here have no access to specialist domestic violence courts, and there are no support services for women seeking to escape prostitution, trafficking and sexual exploitation. As a society, we can’t even bring ourselves to have a proper debate about abortion ? which remains effectively banned in Northern Ireland ? and our (overwhelmingly) male representatives continue to piously kick the issue under the carpet. The strangest thing is the deafening silence on these issues from Northern Ireland women themselves. Why do we seemingly accept the brutish attitudes, the lack of support services, the absence of basic rights? Perhaps it’s because we have no place to find a collective voice. Tribalism has successfully divided us from one another, thrown rigid barriers across potential areas of common ground. It’s as if women have internalised the old hush-hush, lie-low maxim of the Troubles – “whatever you say, say nothing”- and applied it to our whole lives. But saying nothing changes nothing. If shouting is what gets you heard in this place, maybe it’s time to find our voices.

More News, Less Views
1 Oct 2008
News is a procession of the powerful. Watch it on TV, listen to the Today programme and marvel at the orthodoxy of views and the lack of critical voices. When the credit crunch hit, we were given a succession of bankers, stockbrokers and even hedge-fund managers to explain and say what should be done. But these were the people who had caused the problem, thinking nothing of taking 20 billion a year in city bonuses. The solution these free market wizards agreed to, was that tax payers should stump up 50 billion (and rising) to fill up the black holes in the banking system. Where were the critical voices to say it would be a better idea to take the bonuses back? Mainstream news has sometimes a social-democratic edge. There are complaints aired about fuel poverty and the state of inner cities. But there are precious few voices making the point that the reason why there are so many poor people is because the rich have taken the bulk of the disposable wealth. The notion that the people should own the nation?s resources is close to derided on orthodox news. When Northern Rock was nationalised, TV news showed us pictures of British Leyland and the old problem ridden car industry. Never mind that it was actually privately owned when most of the problems occurred and that company policy had been to distribute 95% of profits as dividends to shareholders, rather than to invest in new plant and machinery. This is all lost in the mists of history and what is conveyed is the vague sense that nationalisation is a ?bad thing?. We showed how this affects public understanding by asking a sample of 244 young people in higher education (aged 18 ?23) about the great spate of privatizations which had taken place in the 1980s. We asked whether the industries involved had in general been profitable or unprofitable. Actually, the major ones of gas, electricity, oil and telecommunications were both profitable and major sources of revenue to the state, but nearly 60% of the sample thought that the industries had been losing money. This is especially poignant now that energy prices are being jacked up and the foreign owners of many of these companies are not interested in passing on their windfall profits to the British people. Countries such as China, Venezuela and even Russia keep key industries very firmly in state hands, but where are the critical voices in broadcasting here, who are given space to raise these arguments? They can be heard in the outer reaches, occasionally on Question Time, Channel 4 News or Newsnight. But is this what the population want? At the start of the Iraq war we had the normal parade of generals and military experts, but in fact, a consistent body of opinion then and since has been completely opposed to it. We asked our sample whether people such as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Naomi Klein and Michael Moore should be featured routinely on the news as part of a normal range of opinion. Seventy three per cent opted for this rather than wanting them on just occasionally, as at present. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is another area of great imbalance in the views that are heard. Our study of the main TV news output showed that pro-Israeli speakers were featured about twice as much as Palestinians. This year BBC News covered Israel?s ?birthday? of 60 years since the setting up of the state. This was of course also the anniversary of what, from the Palestinian perspective, was the great disaster when they were forced from their homes and land. Israel?s superior public relations machine meant that they set the agenda on broadcast news. The Palestinians were featured, but rather less and as a sort of afterthought. As a presenter on BBC?s Today programme put it, ?Today Israel is 60 years old, and all this week we have been hearing from Israelis about what it means to them?. Quite so. We commissioned YouGov to ask a sample of 2086 UK adults whether they thought that more coverage should be given to the Israeli point of view, or more to the Palestinians, or equal for both. Nearly twice as many people thought that the Palestinians should have the most as compared with the Israelis, but the bulk of the replies (72%) were that both should have the same. Only 5% of the population supported what the broadcasters have actually been doing in the main news output. Politicians and broadcasters say they are worried about a growing lack of interest in politics especially amongst the young. Our work shows there is no lack of interest in lively critical debate. The problem is that a news which largely features the views of two political parties with very similar free market policies at home, and an international agenda which follows America, does not provide this.

Let the Quartet Die
1 Oct 2008
One of the great hopes and subsequent disappointments in modern Middle Eastern diplomacy has been the “Quartet” of four major international players that was supposed to monitor, shepherd and promote Palestinian-Israeli peace-making during the past five years. The group – comprised of Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations – has not only failed to advance the peace process since its establishment in 2002; astoundingly, it has also whittled away the political credibility and impact of two of those parties – the EU and UN. Now, not surprisingly, a coalition of 21 respected international aid agencies working on the ground in Palestine has openly criticized the shortcomings of the Quartet for failing in its mission and leaving the diplomatic arena dangerously leaderless. The agencies – including Oxfam, Save the Children, Care, Christian Aid and World Vision – said that in five of the ten main areas the Quartet had identified to improve Palestinians’ daily life conditions, the situation has actually deteriorated. The situation also has worsened, rather than improved, for most Palestinians since the Annapolis peace process was launched last November. It added that the Quartet has not held Israel accountable for continuing to build settlements on occupied land, and that travel restrictions on Palestinians has also increased. Christian Aid director Daleep Mukarji noted that nearly a year after the Annapolis process was launched, “we are seeing exponential settlement growth, additional check-points and – because of this – further economic stagnation. The Quartet is losing its grip on the Middle East peace process.” Things could have been very different had the Quartet been a truly impartial and decisive instrument of peace-making. In retrospect, the Quartet was another fig leaf designed to hide American dominance of a diplomatic process that was driven primarily by Israeli interests. This was initially visible in the Quartet’s habit of merely issuing verbal statements criticizing Israeli settlement expansion but doing nothing about it, while acting with more force against the Palestinians. The epitome of that double standard was the Quartet’s position supporting the Israeli response to the Hamas parliamentary elections victory in early 2006. It refused to deal with Hamas until the latter accepted the conditions Israel and the United States laid down. It did nothing of equal magnitude to demand that Israel, for its part, also respect international law and UN resolutions and stop using excessive violence against Palestinians. In recent years, I raised the issue of the Quartet’s ineffectiveness and pro-Israeli tilt several times with EU and UN officials, asking them why they did not simply withdraw from an institution that had proved ineffective. Their response was uniformly limp and unimpressive: They argued it was better to be inside the Quartet trying to influence and temper the ideological pro-Israel tilt of the United States. That goal has proven to be an illusion. Not surprisingly, a dishonest institution like the Quartet named as its special envoy former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Diplomatic Olympics Gold Medal Winner for Political Fraudulence. The Quartet keeps on meeting, and doing nothing, while conditions deteriorate for most Palestinians, and Israel continues to expand its theft and colonization of Palestinian land. The EU and the UN were once trusted mediators and impartial actors who truly worked for the best interests of Israelis and Arabs alike. Today, they have lost that aura of fairness and confidence, leaving the Middle East dangerously lacking in powerful international actors who enjoy both credibility and impact. The damning report by the 21 aid agencies should be taken seriously by the EU and the UN, who should consider the consequences of their continuing to provide cover for Israeli colonialism and its American guardian. The EU and the UN should quickly announce that the Quartet was a valiant attempt that failed, and they should withdraw immediately, to prevent any more damage to their own reputations and ability to play constructive roles in the region. Their withdrawal would send powerful signals to all concerned that American-Israeli charades will not be allowed to define the diplomacy of all other potential actors in the region. The Quartet was a good idea in principle – a powerful body of leading global powers that would push Israelis and Palestinians alike to adhere to their commitments and move to a negotiated peace agreement. In practice, it failed because it was not sincere, serious or impartial. International aid agencies at least have the self-respect and courage to say this out loud. The EU and the UN would do well to follow suit, and regain a modicum of their own dignity in the process. Truth and honesty still carry weight, and should be exercised now and then to counter the prevailing agents of dishonesty that try to bludgeon us with their brute force.

Another Education is Possible
1 Oct 2008
The testing regime in schools is breaking down. Before the summer break SATs papers were lost or badly marked; pupils were absenting themselves from the tests and head teachers were demanding an end to these wasteful and useless exams. One parent from Sunderland, truck driver Stuart McAnaney, has two sons: James, 11, and nine year old Matthew, at St Anne’s RC Primary School. He said, “I think it is absolutely disgraceful that this has happened. When James was sitting his SATs he was in a terrible state because he was so stressed. I think they should be scrapped altogether.” From this month a new secondary curriculum has been introduced which encourages schools to put the creativity and fun back into learning. Some in government seem to have recognised that the teaching by numbers approach to learning doesn’t work for all children. However, the pressure of league tables will force many school management teams to play only lip service to the new rhetoric. Teachers will be forced to continue teaching for the tests as accountability mechanisms such as performance management and lesson observations are used to enforce compliance. This tension between creativity and the current testing regime can be exploited. Staff at Filton High School, South Gloucestershire, have begun to offer a glimpse of another type of school where learning is more engaging and relevant. We have started to develop a collective approach to curriculum design that engages pupils by dealing with relevant social justice issues and offers them a real audience for their ideas. Since 2005 both teaching and non-teaching staff have formed a curriculum group called Alternative Futures. We wanted pupils to begin to act in a more critical way. Meeting after school, between 15 and 35 staff regularly attend and plan two-week themed cross-curricular learning projects around current issues. All departments have been represented. Laura Storey, an English teacher and South Gloucestershire NUT equal opportunities officer, says, “The cross-curricular nature of the fortnight enables our students to see the links between their lessons in a way that makes their learning both fun and relevant. Perhaps as important, it also enables teachers to work collectively. Many staff feel that we are beginning finally to control the content of the curriculum.” Radical thinking Notwithstanding the new changes in the secondary curriculum, as it stands the school curriculum is geared towards preparing young people for career paths and to promote “an efficient and flexible labour market”. What radical teachers have to ask themselves is, how can we promote radical thinking in our pupils? With the rise in anti-immigrant racism and the success of the British National Party (BNP), this year staff decided to tackle the issue of cultural diversity, identity and racism. The school has increasing numbers of parents from Portugal and Eastern Europe. Bristol itself is a major centre of Polish migration. The council has estimated that between 15,000 and possibly 25,000 Polish workers have found employment in the city in the last two years. In last year’s council elections the BNP stood in a neighbouring ward to the school on an anti-migrant ticket and, with little canvassing, got 400 votes. Therefore in the maths department they created a resource called “The Human Race – the Migrant Species”. This allowed pupils to examine the history of migration not just of peoples throughout time but of how mathematical concepts travel from one culture to another and become assimilated into our thinking. They then went on to ask the pupils to examine two statements: “Too many immigrants are coming into this country” and “Our country cannot afford to help immigrants”. Pupils were then able to use data to help them critically examine contentious issues based upon facts and not preconceived notions. As Year 9 pupil Louis said, “I always thought that there were lots of immigrants coming to this country, but I see that was wrong.” Pupils were able to calculate that the difference immigrants make to our population is 0.03 percent. But unless we are able to develop critical faculties within our young people they will always be at the mercy of the misinformation deliberately fed to them by the political right who own the media. This work was complemented by the science department who worked on deconstructing the concept of “race” as a non-scientific term by exploring the idea of genetic variation. The English department took an empathetic approach to migration. Using photographs taken by photographer Guy Smallman, pupils explored the journey of a Polish migrant who is shown to be living in appalling conditions in a wood outside a small English town. Information about how immigration benefits society and the reasons why people change country was fed into groups who then began to try to create the “story” of the man in the photographs. The next stage was to give the groups information about shortages of workers in key areas in Bristol such as hospitals and schools. The pupils began to come up with solutions to staff shortages, as well as identifying any barriers that a migrant might have to taking up employment. Finally they had to write an autobiography as if they were the man in the photograph. As with the other examples from last year’s project, an attempt has been made to embed learning in real, often controversial, issues. However, as this is a type of “offline” simulated reproduction of reality, a bridge is being built between everyday issues and more abstract concepts such as justice or equality. This process allows pupils an opportunity to reflect and offers them the option of repositioning themselves to work out their own values and beliefs. During this year’s project on racism one Year 9 pupil, Tasha, commented, “I liked learning about other people. I didn’t like Polish people before – they’re foreign. But now I know they’re not trying to take over. I like the work we’ve done in English because writing about someone’s life makes you realise how hard life is for immigrants. They don’t just get everything they want, like benefits and a house, like we think they do.” To make projects more real we move out of the four walls of the classroom and bring in people involved in the struggles we are exploring, to talk and work with students. Last year the school looked at climate change and had an expert witnesses’ day. One of these was Elaine Graham Leigh who represented the Campaign Against Climate Change. Learning also takes place offsite. During the Climate Change project in 2007 Year 9 pupils were offered a choice of trips: to learn how to measure a community’s carbon footprint; to work with community artists to make fashion items out of “rubbish”; to cook in Bristol’s top organic restaurant. This year pupils went out and asked questions of the public about living in a multicultural society, and some of the responses shocked the students. We also decided to work with Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR). Martin Smith and Weyman Bennett led workshops on music and migration. On the last day LMHR put on a concert for all the school’s pupils with Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. and Bashy. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) has been very supportive. This year acting general secretary Christine Blower attended the last day of the project. She told staff that she was working with LMHR to see how a website could be developed so that anti-racist teaching resources such as our own could be shared across schools. Since the late 1970s education unions have been squeezed out of education policy development and shoe-horned in to concerning themselves with pay and conditions issues. Nevertheless, the successful ballot over the NUT’s political fund earlier in the year showed that many teachers believe that the union has to engage with broader political issues such as racism and fascism. This concern with broader political issues is reflected during the themed learning projects. There is a real buzz among a wider layer of staff about social justice issues. Twenty five staff turned up to an after school meeting of the Alternative Futures group to hear Martin Smith talk about racism and migration. The discussion focused on how to expose the BNP and the relationship between multiculturalism and anti-racism. During the Climate Change project in 2007 discussion took place about individual and social responses to increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Anna Brooman, who is in her second year of teaching, was a key organiser of this year’s event: “As a new teacher, working on these projects has opened my eyes to the wider political agenda behind education and has also led me to get involved in my union. Earlier this year I represented the school NUT group at the lobby of parliament. I also spoke about our work at the Education for Liberation conference in London in June. It has been a fast and very enjoyable learning curve.” Outside of the school we have begun to tap into new networks such as the Global Education Network which is exploring ways of introducing “global” issues into the curriculum. We were able to explain how our model of curriculum change offers a coherent method to enable this. We have been invited to lead a session at the Climate Change and Development conference for educators in October. Not surprisingly, other schools are signing up to the Alternative Futures vision of education. The “common sense” of government approaches to teaching and learning then is in contradiction with what many teachers feel they should be doing. One London teacher put this well. “In my school I have to train staff in how to prepare a lesson for Ofsted. After I have done this I then suggest what they could do on a daily basis. Needless to say, the two are not the same.” Alternative Futures is situated within this political contradiction. There are also plans for a radical education conference on Alternative Futures next year sponsored by several university education departments. Educators are beginning to want concrete solutions to the present ideological and political crisis in education. The practical initiatives we have outlined begin to pose questions about the struggle for control within the system and offer a glimpse of a different kind of education based on the needs and interests of teachers and students.

Housing Crisis
30 Sep 2008
Why has this Labour Government found it so difficult to come up with a comprehensive housing strategy since it came to power in 1997? Is it because ministers regard the issue as an embarrassment? Shortly after taking up residence in Number 10 Downing Street, Tony Blair visited to the Holly Street Estate in Hackney. He was there to launch his Government?s New Deal for Communities Initiative. The wall in front of which he was photographed was demolished just hours later by the same builders with whom he posed. As former Tory housing minister David Curry subsequently pointed out, the regeneration of the Holly Street Estate had actually begun under John Major?s Government. Again, soon after he became Prime Minister, Blair went to the Aylesbury Estate in Peckham to tell its residents they had not been forgotten. The truth is that, during the ?97 election campaign, his strategists told him to forget about London?s council estates and concentrate on wooing middle-class voters in the south of England if he wanted to take power. Voters in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire were more important than Aylesbury, Peckham. That?s a view to which some in the Labour leadership still cling, even as their hopes of securing a fourth term in office evaporate. Just before the 2005 general election, housing magazine Roof reviewed the Government?s housing record after seven years. The 2002 Homeless Act and the reduction in the numbers of people sleeping rough was welcomed. But there were also notable failures. The number of households in temporary accommodation had doubled, the amount of new social housing being built had fallen to its lowest level since the Second World War and a property price boom had wrecked the hopes of many young people in search of their first home. The Government asked architect Lord Rogers to set up a taskforce to come up with a strategy for the renaissance of Britain?s cities. Lord Rogers? report was published in July 1999 and contained 100 recommendations. By November the following year, Lord Rogers was accusing ministers of being ?disappointingly negative? about its key proposals. They were, he believed, not prepared to come up with the money necessary to put his proposals into practice. It was worse than that. In February 2003, the central government housing grant to local authorities was withdrawn. This meant councils no longer had a key role as the provider of new homes. At the same time, the Government was encouraging local authorities to dispose of their existing housing stock. However, in July 2003, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee concluded that stock transfers constituted a more expensive way of bringing council housing up to the decent homes standard than allowing the work to be done by the local authorities themselves. The withdrawal of local government grants and the inability of housing associations to fill the gap had a dramatic effect on the housing market. The Greater London Authority?s economics unit commissioned a report on the situation. Market Failure and the Housing Market was published in May 2003. The most significant sentence in it was: ?Those in need of housing are much less likely to have a strong voice in the political process compared to those who are already housed.? After Tony Blair stepped down as Prime Minister, Shelter commented that his legacy would be a deepening of the housing crisis. Blair presided over a widening gap between housing supply and demand, meaning some enjoyed a great boost to their personal wealth as property prices spiralled, while many others have been left behind with no hope of a decent home of their own. The charity added that, unless Gordon Brown tackled the housing crisis by funding more social housing, his legacy could be just as lamentable. Sadly, Brown?s ?rescue package? for the housing market, announced earlier this month, was described by one commentator as sending a canoe to aid the Titanic. In addition, Brown?s proposal to spend 200 million to buy unsold homes, unveiled in May this year, was criticised as no more than a political gesture, since it would only help around 1,000 families. Brown has a habit of trying to pass off half-hearted responses to pressing social and economic problems as dramatic policy shifts. So the perception people have of him is that he has failed to grasp the opportunities and meet the challenges that being Prime Minister presents, even though he was desperate to get the job. However, because of the housing crisis, he still has a chance to act in such a way that could end doubts about his future while going a long way to address the housing situation in a positive, practical and fair way. After months of dithering, the Government finally decided to take Northern Rock it into public ownership. At least 50 billion of public money guaranteed its survival. In the United States, George Bush?s administration nationalised mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to save them from collapse. It is going to take proper public investment and not a hotchpotch of half-measures to build the homes we need in Britain. John Ruskin, the Victorian socialist, once declared that it was ?the first duty of the state to see that every child born therein shall be well housed?. The current Prime Minister and his predecessor in Number 10 Downing Street have failed in that duty. It will be ironic if the sub-prime housing crisis in America and the drive to own your home encouraged by successive Tory and Labour governments over the past 30 years has initiated the train of events that brings the house down on Gordon Brown?s Government. Terry McGrenera is editor of The Green Paper ? politics for the planet and its peopleWHY has this Labour Government found it so difficult to come up with a comprehensive housing strategy since it came to power in 1997? Is it because ministers regard the issue as an embarrassment? Shortly after taking up residence in Number 10 Downing Street, Tony Blair visited to the Holly Street Estate in Hackney. He was there to launch his Government?s New Deal for Communities Initiative. The wall in front of which he was photographed was demolished just hours later by the same builders with whom he posed. As former Tory housing minister David Curry subsequently pointed out, the regeneration of the Holly Street Estate had actually begun under John Major?s Government. Again, soon after he became Prime Minister, Blair went to the Aylesbury Estate in Peckham to tell its residents they had not been forgotten. The truth is that, during the ?97 election campaign, his strategists told him to forget about London?s council estates and concentrate on wooing middle-class voters in the south of England if he wanted to take power. Voters in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire were more important than Aylesbury, Peckham. That?s a view to which some in the Labour leadership still cling, even as their hopes of securing a fourth term in office evaporate. Just before the 2005 general election, housing magazine Roof reviewed the Government?s housing record after seven years. The 2002 Homeless Act and the reduction in the numbers of people sleeping rough was welcomed. But there were also notable failures. The number of households in temporary accommodation had doubled, the amount of new social housing being built had fallen to its lowest level since the Second World War and a property price boom had wrecked the hopes of many young people in search of their first home. The Government asked architect Lord Rogers to set up a taskforce to come up with a strategy for the renaissance of Britain?s cities. Lord Rogers? report was published in July 1999 and contained 100 recommendations. By November the following year, Lord Rogers was accusing ministers of being ?disappointingly negative? about its key proposals. They were, he believed, not prepared to come up with the money necessary to put his proposals into practice. It was worse than that. In February 2003, the central government housing grant to local authorities was withdrawn. This meant councils no longer had a key role as the provider of new homes. At the same time, the Government was encouraging local authorities to dispose of their existing housing stock. However, in July 2003, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee concluded that stock transfers constituted a more expensive way of bringing council housing up to the decent homes standard than allowing the work to be done by the local authorities themselves. The withdrawal of local government grants and the inability of housing associations to fill the gap had a dramatic effect on the housing market. The Greater London Authority?s economics unit commissioned a report on the situation. Market Failure and the Housing Market was published in May 2003. The most significant sentence in it was: ?Those in need of housing are much less likely to have a strong voice in the political process compared to those who are already housed.? After Tony Blair stepped down as Prime Minister, Shelter commented that his legacy would be a deepening of the housing crisis. Blair presided over a widening gap between housing supply and demand, meaning some enjoyed a great boost to their personal wealth as property prices spiralled, while many others have been left behind with no hope of a decent home of their own. The charity added that, unless Gordon Brown tackled the housing crisis by funding more social housing, his legacy could be just as lamentable. Sadly, Brown?s ?rescue package? for the housing market, announced earlier this month, was described by one commentator as sending a canoe to aid the Titanic. In addition, Brown?s proposal to spend 200 million to buy unsold homes, unveiled in May this year, was criticised as no more than a political gesture, since it would only help around 1,000 families. Brown has a habit of trying to pass off half-hearted responses to pressing social and economic problems as dramatic policy shifts. So the perception people have of him is that he has failed to grasp the opportunities and meet the challenges that being Prime Minister presents, even though he was desperate to get the job. However, because of the housing crisis, he still has a chance to act in such a way that could end doubts about his future while going a long way to address the housing situation in a positive, practical and fair way. After months of dithering, the Government finally decided to take Northern Rock it into public ownership. At least 50 billion of public money guaranteed its survival. In the United States, George Bush?s administration nationalised mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to save them from collapse. It is going to take proper public investment and not a hotchpotch of half-measures to build the homes we need in Britain. John Ruskin, the Victorian socialist, once declared that it was ?the first duty of the state to see that every child born therein shall be well housed?. The current Prime Minister and his predecessor in Number 10 Downing Street have failed in that duty. It will be ironic if the sub-prime housing crisis in America and the drive to own your home encouraged by successive Tory and Labour governments over the past 30 years has initiated the train of events that brings the house down on Gordon Brown?s Government. Terry McGrenera is editor of The Green Paper ? politics for the planet and its people