London MeltdownUKWatch.net - 2 May 2008What could go wrong did go wrong. Boris Johnson is mayor, with a convincing lead. The BNP got a seat on the Assembly. And the Left List failed to make an impact except in a few concentrated areas. The reasons for the latter are obvious enough: launching a new brand name in the space of a couple of months; set-back by a recent split in the organisation; squeezed by the Tory surge and the desire of many to ‘Stop Boris’ by backing Labour; squeezed by direct competition with those who still had the old name (who did poorly, but better than us overall, and much better in City and East); squeezed by a higher turnout. There were so many things militating against a strong Left List showing. But even I would not have expected last night’s atrophy. New Labour has collapsed decisively not on some right-wing hocus-pocus about crime or immigration (although the media hysteria obviously contributed to this), but on the ten pence tax rate and the economy and the sense that Labour doesn’t even try to represent ordinary working people any more. But the Left has not been in a position to make any inroads as a result. And, in part because of the poisonous climate generated over immigrants and Muslims, the Nazis of the BNP are on the Assembly while their estranged half-cousins from the National Front (who consider the BNP sell-outs) polled strongly in Bexley and Bromley as well as in Lewisham and Greenwich. There are some hard fights ahead. The Blairites’ advice was evidently no use to Ken, who lost it in the last few days with a series of bizarre declarations, building up to his claim that he wanted to arrest people for littering. Even Boris Johnson didn’t go that far. The Blairite strategy is to move so far to the right on certain issues that even the Tories can’t criticise you, while giving the left some friendly words. More accurately, this is the Clintonite strategy of triangulation developed by the Republican PR man Dick Morris. Livingstone listened to this kind of advice at his own immense peril, but what else did he have to offer? He tried at the last minute to cut a vaguely ‘progressive’ looking deal with the Green Party, but I suspect that most Berry voters would have given him a second-preference anyway. And the Greens didn’t do all that well in the end, despite some locally strong votes. They kept two seats on the Assembly, but gained little from the extensive media exposure. Livingstone didn’t have anything new to offer Labour voters, wasn’t really keen to distance himself too much from the government, had no chance with most right-wing voters – his niche was exhausted and depleted. The Tories have been canny in selecting Boris because, despite his obvious unfitness for the role, his burlesque comedy obscures the memory of the ‘nasty party’. I suspect that ‘nice’ centre-right voters who might previously have lumped for the Lib Dems went back to the fold. It’s been hard to detect much in the way of policy from the Tories, and certainly little distinctive. Johnson did not win on an aggressive platform of clubbing the unions, hammering immigrants and brutalizing petty criminals. This isn’t Margaret Thatcher, the next generation. It is BoJo the Bozo, the clown from hell, all slapstick and bravado. His platform consisted of some relatively unthreatening centre-right soundbites, which is one reason why the (quite legitimate) attempts to make him sound scary didn’t work. One very small contributor to Johnson’s win is highlighted by John Harris in the Guardian today: “the topsy-turvy, faux-progressive politics minted by the self-styled pro-war left”. I don’t credit Nick Cohen, Martin Bright and company with very much influence at all, but they certainly contributed to the reactionary media campaign about ‘Islamism’, providing a ‘progressive’ proscenium for the racist dramaturgy. What of Labour’s national wipe-out? First of all, we’ve just seen the complete enervation of the New Labour vision of a Whiggish coalition, a ‘progressive’ lib-lab bloc for centre-left hegemony in the 21st Century. New Labour collapsed, but the Liberals didn’t pick up very much of the slack. In Wales, as in Scotland, the nationalists are getting the benefit of the anti-New Labour vote. In England, the Liberals lost control of some councils and gained some, and they seem to have a net gain overall of just one council. It is surprising in this context to see the Lib Dem result being spoken of as if it’s a credible one for Nick Clegg. Commentators have been quick to draw comparisons with 1983, but the last time Labour’s share of the vote was this low was in 1968, shortly after Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech and at the height of Harold Wilson’s unpopularity over devaluation. Wilson’s government had also, despite some moderate reformist pledges, reneged on many commitments at the behest of the IMF. What is different this time round is the extent of Labour’s collapse in its heartlands. It didn’t just crumble in the marginals. It lost core votes across Wales, in Hartlepool, and in Wolverhampton. It lost a strong presence in Reading, by no means a marginal seat. It was kicked out of Bury in Greater Manchester after 22 years. The rapid erosion that began under Blair is now an avalanche. Blair’s 2005 election victory was more of a loss for the Tories than a thumbs-up for New Labour, with just over a third of voters backing the government and with less voters than supported Labour when it lost in 1992. It is now obvious that the Labour Party will crash to a poor second in 2010, while the Tories will pick up around 40% of the vote. The Lib Dems will not match their 22% vote in 2005. Anyone who thinks that Labour is about to turn left is kidding themselves. Far more likely is that the government will take a more aggressive stance toward the unions (as it did in 1969, with ‘In Place of Strife’) and make a demonstrative crackdown on immigration (as it did with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1968). Labour doesn’t contain the resources for a regeneration of its battered left, any more than it did when John McDonnell failed to get enough PLP support to even run a campaign against Gordon Brown. The last vaguely leftish credible alternative to Brown was the late Robin Cook, whose standing after his dignified antiwar resignation speech would have made him the obvious candidate. And even he would have struggled. Just because the left-of-Labour vote was poor, just because the Tories have made a decisive recovery, don’t think that we can place our hopes in a New Labour conversion, or that we can avoid continuing to try to build a left-of-Labour alternative. We will be lying to ourselves in quite a dangerous way if we imagine that we can claw back some space by just abandoning the electoral terrain to New Labour. The fact that it is now a more difficult task in the short-term does not mean it can be wished away. For socialists, however, elections are not our main kind of activity. Saying that, I run the risk of appearing to diminish the hard work put in and the hopes invested in the campaign, and that is not my meaning. However, while we should spare no blushes in being directly honest about what just happened, we should not allow ourselves to disappear up our own ballot-boxes. How we intervene in the coming crises over pay, the economy, and the rising threat of racism and the far right, is far more significant than how many votes we rack up. One of the first things we can do is turn out for the protest against the Nazi BNP outside City Hall, this coming Tuesday at 6pm.
The end of New LabourUKWatch.net - 2 May 2008I knew it was going to be rough last night but not even the deepest pessimist in me thought it would be on this scale. Whoever thought that in our most solid heartlands like Northumberland, Hartlepool, Blaenau Gwent, Wolverhampton and Merthyr Tydfil Labour councillor after Labour councillor would lose their seats. Simply expressing disappointment and blaming the world economy makes Gordon Brown appear to be in denial about how serious the political situation is for the government. The new PR team in Number 10 can’t spin its way out of this electoral disaster. The announcement today that in response to Labour’s worst local council results in 40 years the prime minister is to re-launch a draft Queen’s speech borders on the delusional. It’s not just the recent debacle over the 10p tax rate, the reality is that on the doorstep in increasing numbers people just don’t believe Labour is on their side any more. The 10p issue was important because it symbolised the unfairness of our taxation system which Gordon Brown as both chancellor and prime minister has failed to address. Increasing the tax burden on the poorest whilst non-doms and company directors pay less tax than their cleaners grates against our supporters’ sense of fairness. New Labour has systematically alienated section after section of the coalition we need to win and retain power. The teachers and civil servants strike was an indication of the depth of anger about the pay cut strategy being imposed by the government. When 15,000 aggrieved police officers march through London and prison officers defy the law and come out on strike, the message of public sector workers discontent was loud and clear. It is the same frustration felt by pensioners forced onto means tested benefits, students saddled with debt by loans and tuition fees, and families trapped on housing waiting lists for years because councils are not allowed to build the homes anymore. In this climate of discontent and disillusionment Labour’s core vote is crumbling and the era of New Labour is coming to an end. The question that has still to be decided is whether the party is able to jettison New Labour and its outworn ideological baggage before the electorate does at the next election. New Labour’s credibility was entirely based on its claim to electoral appeal. But now that voters are deserting us in their droves it has nothing to offer but electoral defeat. If we are unable to radically change direction and start to address our supporters’ key concerns, the party’s future is bleak. Our activist base is demoralised and disintegrating and we no longer have the foot-soldiers on the streets in many parts of the country to get our vote out. You only survive as a governing party in these circumstances as long as the opposition remains in disarray but as soon as that changes you’re in trouble. It’s no use Gordon Brown saying that he’s going to listen and then carry on as if nothing had changed. We’ve got to demonstrate that we are back on people’s side once again. People just want fairness; fair pay, rights for workers, decent pensions, a fair and progressive taxation policy, access to secure and affordable housing, free good quality education and we need the government to start attacking poverty rather than the poor. Actually, all we need is a real Labour government.
No SanctuaryUKWatch.net - 2 May 2008Despite an average of 40 violent deaths a day in recent weeks, Iraq, the British Home office insists, is a safe place. Accordingly, 1,400 Iraqi asylum seekers have received letters informing them that they must return home or face homelessness and destitution in Britain. Those who agree to go back will be required to sign a waiver accepting that the U.K. government bears no responsibility for what happens to them or their families after their return. The 1,400 will be airlifted to Baghdad and Basra. Previously, the government had deported Iraqi asylum seekers, mainly Kurds, only to the safer provinces of northern Iraq. On March 27, in the biggest operation of its kind, 60 Kurds were flown on a chartered aircraft from Stanstead airport in Essex to Erbil in northern Iraq. When they landed, guards from the Kurdish Democratic Party (one of the two Kurdish parties in the ruling coalition) boarded the plane. ?They were armed with guns, and they beat people from Mosul and Baghdad who refused to leave the plane,? said one man on the flight, ?They even hit them in the back of the head with their guns, many people were bleeding. The British security guards were also hitting people.? Another on the flight was 19-year-old Sherwen, a Christian whose father had worked for Saddam Hussein. ?I don?t have anywhere to go, and I am not safe,? he said, ?The British government said they would give us $100 when we arrived, but we haven?t been given anything. I can?t even buy myself something to eat.? The coerced return of Iraqis living in Britain ? and the continued refusal of entry to many thousands more ? exemplifies the ethical bankruptcy of British policy on asylum seekers. Many come here from places whose societies have been turned upside down by British or Western intervention. The wars, repression, economic and social turmoil from which they seek refuge are part of a global order for which the U.K., both historically and currently, bears a hefty share of responsibility. Last year, Britain received 23,430 asylum applications, the lowest for 14 years, and a quarter of the record high set in 2002. (The top five applicant nationalities were Afghanistan, Iran, China, Iraq and Eritrea, with significant numbers from Zimbabwe and Somalia.) At the same time, 12,525 asylum seekers were deported. Meanwhile, at any one moment, some 1,600 (including 50-60 children) were kept in detention, mostly in the government?s 10 Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs), seven of which are run by private contractors. Unlike most European countries, and contrary to the recommendations of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, in Britain there is no legal limit to the time a person may be held in immigration detention. Periods of up to six months detention ? for people who have not even been charged with a crime ? are not uncommon. The IRCs are overcrowded and lack medical and recreational facilities. Communication with the outside world is severely restricted. Many detainees claim to have been insulted and assaulted by immigration staff. A recent study found that excessive force was used against a number of detainees who had already suffered torture in their countries of origin. ?I came to England because my political activities in Zimbabwe meant my life was in danger,? said Yeukai, a middle-aged woman detainee, ?But when I was locked up in Dungavel, having committed no crime, I wasn?t sure whether this was Britain or Mugabe?s Zimbabwe.? Britain is the only European State that detains asylum-seeking children, a policy condemned by Amnesty and a host of other independent observers. On April 10, a group of mothers held in Yarl?s Wood IRC, in Bedfordshire, protested outside the staff office, removing their clothes to mark their disgust at the imprisonment of their children. ?I took my clothes off because they treat us like animals,? said Mercy Guobatia, 22, from Nigeria. ?We are claiming asylum, we?re not animals. They treat us as if we?ve done something terrible.? Asylum seekers are also increasingly subject to ?dawn raids? in which their homes are invaded by immigration officials looking for people liable to detention or deportation. In 2006, 8,100 ?enforcement operations? were carried out before 8 a.m. ? roughly 22 dawn raids a day. Of those, only 2,009 led to arrests of any kind, which means that three out of four raids served no purpose but to intimidate law-abiding asylum seekers. The dawn raids are one facet of a policy that aims to deter future asylum seekers by punishing those presently in the country. Those who escape detention face destitution. They are not permitted to work and must subsist on meagre hand-outs from the State, which also tells them where they must live. According to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, some accommodation provided to asylum seekers is so poor that it violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (on the right to home, family and private life). It is estimated that 20 per cent of asylum seekers and refugees in the U.K. have severe health problems. Yet, since 2004, most have been denied access to free NHS secondary (hospital) care. Now the government is considering restricting access to primary (GP) care as well. The casual cruelty of British immigration policy is illustrated by two recent cases, both tragic, both avoidable. Ama Sumani, a 39-year-old Ghanaian widow and mother of two, had come to Britain as a student in 2002. She overstayed her visa but worked and paid taxes. She was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and treated by the NHS. In January, immigration officials removed her from her hospital bed in Cardiff and deported her to Ghana, where she died several weeks later. The Lancet, Britain?s leading medical journal, denounced the government?s behaviour as an ?atrocious barbarism?. Zarine Rentia was a 15-year-old Indian girl who had been severely disabled by an extremely rare disease. On a visit to Britain in 2005, she was diagnosed and began a course of treatment at Great Ormond Street, the world famous children?s hospital. In the meantime, she attended a local London School, where she impressed children and staff alike. With the support of Zarine?s doctors, her mother applied to the Home Office for leave to remain in Britain on medical grounds, but was refused. After an immigration judge turned down their appeal in February, mother and daughter returned to Gujarat, where Zarine died weeks later. These women were two of the many victims of the British government?s approach to xenophobia, which is to appease it at all costs. Much of the British media, including at times the BBC, depicts asylum seekers as threatening and parasitical. Any crime committed by an asylum seeker is blazoned in headlines, while the more numerous crimes committed against them are scarcely reported at all. Here the politicians follow the media and the media claims to be following the public. Yet the public?s confusions on the issue owe a great deal to its continuous misrepresentation by the media and the politicians. For example, in one survey, on average people thought that the U.K. has taken in 23 per cent of the world?s refugees. The actual figure is closer to 2 per cent. Hearteningly, the atrocious treatment of asylum seekers has spawned a network of resistance. Community campaigns, aided by lawyers and activists, have stubbornly opposed deportations, detentions and the policies that lead to destitution. When asylum seeking children attending local schools have been threatened with removal, pupils, teachers and parents have rallied round them and exposed the injustice of government edicts. This on-going effort is a welcome corrective to the assumption ? all too easy to make ? that British people are universally hostile to refugees.
London Olympics terror threat used to vastly increase surveillance powersUKWatch.net - 2 May 2008The threat of terrorism at the 2012 London Olympics is being hyped up in order to justify a vast increase in the surveillance powers of the British state. According to a memo leaked to the Daily Telegraph, Home Office officials are planning to expand the police DNA database to identify suspects and use greater powers to track individuals through advanced closed circuit television (CCTV) technology and the Oyster card used by millions of people on London?s bus and rail network. The memo discusses different means the government could use to persuade the British public to accept these measures. It asks, ?To what extent should the expectation of liberty be eroded by legitimate intrusions in the interests of security of the wider public?? and concludes, ?Increasing [public] support could be possible through the piloting of certain approaches in high-profile ways such as the London Olympics.? To that end, ministers, police chiefs and officials have stepped up their demands for more security measures, utilising the Games. Last month, Lord Dear, the former Scotland Yard head of operations, made a public announcement expressing his doubts over present police capabilities to deal with the event. He said that the police force is too short of manpower to deal with the extra security needed and likened it to a ?Sixties car in the 21st century,? adding, ?If the model is flawed now, it will certainly be flawed in four years? time.? ?It?s fairly obvious to anyone that major terrorist groups will not be particularly interested in attacking the Beijing Olympics,? Dear said. ?But in four years? time they will have the London Olympics as a target and we need to be best positioned to counter that well in time.? Dear?s announcement was made despite the fact that there are a record 140,000 police officers in service and the Olympics security budget has risen sharply by 238 million in the last few months. At the end of last year, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell released figures that showed that the initial security budget of 200 million in 2005 had spiralled to more than 1 billion. Dear?s comments reflect those of the most senior officers in the police. The head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, has also expressed concern over existing security arrangements and outlined a plan for them to be beefed up in readiness for the games. He has also said that special security and training will be required for athletes and the 200 heads of state expected for the opening ceremony. These proposals will inevitably involve extending the budget still further. As well as increasing the number of police, the proposed scheme involves an elaborate and sophisticated security system spanning the whole of London. According to a BBC report last month, the Metropolitan Police Service wants to pool its 10,000 existing cameras with the thousands of traffic and congestion cameras already in operation across the city. This would give the police control over a vast network of up to half a million CCTV cameras, making it the largest of its kind in the world. The network would then be controlled by a central 100 million bomb-proof command bunker operated jointly by the military, police and intelligence services brought together under the umbrella of the Olympic Security Directorate. The Olympic security coordinator, Assistant Police Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, has made several statements over the last few weeks that indicate just how huge the increase in surveillance will be. Speaking at an international security conference in Abu Dhabi, Ghaffur outlined new ticketing technology to be used on the London transport system to track the movements of every individual, as well as ?second-generation? computer technology that can track individuals through face recognition. The computers can use identity-recognition techniques to compare video against a database of digital faces. A pilot scheme involving 750,000 mugshots has already been completed. Using the facial-mapping software connected to the CCTV cameras, an alert will flash up as soon as a known person appears on the screen. He added, ?We will have the most secure and transparent ticketing system. Tracking technology is being developed?a spectator will be tracked from the venue to his or her home with these tickets.? Other measures outlined by Ghaffur include dividing London into three security zones, three extra helicopters to carry out close surveillance, an increase in the automatic vehicle number plate recognition system, and checks using biometric fingerprints on the 50,000 workforce being used to build the venues. Currently, the police can only check fingerprints and photographs from suspects after they have been arrested. Under these new powers, the police will be able to carry out these checks instantly with hand-held devices that are connected to the security database. Peter Neyroud, the chief executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency, said, ?We are trying to get a really disciplined understanding of how to use these tools before the Olympics. That is a really important time scale for us.? As well as increasing the size of the British police force to 9,000 for the major Olympic events, there are also proposals to draft in extra manpower from private security firms and foreign armed police. Scotland Yard has called for these measures on the basis that too few British police have firearms training to cope with the events, and the costs of training them are prohibitive. The contracted armed police will be used to guard dignitaries, athletes, the main Olympic Park and other sports venues. Ian Blair told a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority, ?The principle must be that we don?t want armed foreign police, but there?s a ?but??and the ?but? is twofold. One, you may not be able to get any foreign police unless they are armed, because they won?t feel easy being unarmed in public scenarios like that. Two, do we actually have, in this case, sufficient capacity to have enough armed officers to do the job?? All of these extra resources will mean that the security budget for the games will mushroom in the next four years. Denis Oswald, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee?s London 2012 coordination commission, has admitted that it is ?impossible to predict? how much money will need to be spent when the games are still four years away. He said, ?It?s a very difficult area but if we want to have occasions like the Olympic Games, where hundreds of thousands of people meet, then you have to make sure they are safe, otherwise you just give up and the terrorists will win.? This refusal to draw up a fixed budget on the basis of a terrorist threat that is ?impossible to measure? amounts to a blank cheque that Londoners and the British people will ultimately have to pay. More importantly, the machinery is being created that is necessary to impose a highly integrated police/military apparatus in Britain?s capital city, under the pretext of keeping the country safe from terrorism.
