So successful has the prison been that, after a century and a half of ‘failures’, the prison still exists, producing the same results, and there is the greatest reluctance to dispense with it. - Michael Foucault, 1975.
Just got back from a protest outside the Danish embassy, in solidarity with the climate prisoners. This week, the first two of those charged with crimes during the COP15 protests go on trial. During the Copenhagen climate summit, over 2000 protesters were detained without reason, under a package of laws passed specifically for the summit. 7 of them will be going on trial in total.
The two activists going to court this week, Natasha Verco and Noah Weiss, were put through 3 weeks of police detention, unjustified isolation, and are now facing longer sentences, higher penalties and deportation from Denmark. Both were snatched off the streets by plain clothes police during the protests. Both are being accused on the basis of organizing demonstrations. Specifically, shouting “push.”
Last December, I spent 10 hours in a cage without water, toilet break, and without food for the first 7 hours. I was pepper sprayed through the bars while I stood on the other side, my hands tied behind my back. More importantly, I was held without cause, in a pre-emptive arrest, made entirely to terrorise civil society and deter demonstration. While we – hundreds of us – were locked up, NGO delegates and indigenous rights activists were surrounded by police on the bridge to the conference centre, and beaten.
When we were arrested, we were initially sat in so-called ‘herring bone’ lines (how Scandanavian can you get?), legs splayed out like a grotesque teddy bear, hands behind back, and then each person slotted into the next. This morning we replicated the line outside the Danish embassy. On a sunny morning in the middle of Poshville (aka Chelsea), all those red brick buildings around us, I felt the pain in my ham strings just the same as back in Copenhagen, on a pavement next to a car park, 100 police around us. Without cause.
Throwing a bottle at a fully armoured policeman deserves jail as well, it would seem, and certainly if you’re the wrong colour. Last week, I watched as a group of about ten British asian teenagers (and as young as 10) were harassed and search by police outside the British Library. A stabbing having been committed the night before, Terrorism Act legislation had been used to give the police powers for 24hrs to stop and search anyone – without cause. Naturally, the Met’s reaction was to find a group of asian kids, bring the dogs, and scare the shit out of them. At one point, one of them got down from the wall he was sitting on, and the uniformed thug with the dog shouted “Did I ask you to get down? You get down when I tell you to get down, or I’ll fucking lock you up.”
What I experienced in Copenhagen was nothing, I know, compared to what goes on everyday. But it was an insight into another life, that of those forgotten in jails, of walls both real and systemic.
And strangely, it might be these walls which build the growing movement for climate justice into something more than a single summit mobilisation. Climate activists have been hounded and locked up before. But when it was on British soil, we were rarely forgotten. I wonder whether our continued obsession with prisons as some kind of good isn’t because they allow revenge or judgement, but because they allow us to forget that a crime – or protest against a crime – even happened in the first place.
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Oh no, another grieving mother has attacked Gordon Brown. Obviously she will be lionised for her courage, even though her target, Mr Brown, is obliged at all costs not to argue back. Obviously her assertion that he died for lack of equipment will once again reverbarate, even though spending per soldier is huge compared with any other point in history – with £3.5 billion spent annually to maintain 10,000 troops. Obviously the war-mongering right-wing press will pretend that you can win wars without casualties if only you spend a few extra quid – while demanding elsewhere that the deficit GETS CUT NOW.
the whole discussion about how many helicopters we have represents a war weariness that dare not speak it’s name. It reflects a desire to reconcile support for the war with an understandable distaste for it’s bloody consequences. The leader writers in the Standard and the Sun would like to believe that enough military equipment can square this circle. Bitter experience will prove them wrong.
If we do not want young men coming back in body bags, then we know what we need to do.
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As I write this on Saturday evening, news sites are all abuzz over the…er…shocking news that the Children’s Commissioner doesn’t think we should try ten-year-olds as adults, while the government appparently thinks it’s perfectly OK, despite the fact that no other country in Western Europe does so.
So far, so predictable. But in all the furore over Maggie Atkinson’s comments (in particular her allegedly ‘insensitive’ remarks about James Bulger’s killers), no one seems to have picked up on something far more strange from the same Times interview. Atkinson seems to have some seriously odd views on both what young people’s lives are actually like and what they should be like. For starters, she’s either profoundly unobservant or has just never used Facebook:
After the murder of a young girl who met a rapist on Facebook, Dr Atkinson says that the social networking site must “get with the programme” and have an automatic button that people can press if they feel uncomfortable about somebody who contacts them.
What, like this one?
This link is on every Facebook profile page. Apparently Maggie Atkinson has never seen it.
She then goes on to claim that
Young people will network whether you want them to or not. But if all they do is close the door of their room and play Sudoku down one side of the screen and MSN texting down the other side, with their homework down the middle, and they never go out and meet other youngsters face to face, that’s very sad.
There are several things to note here, which I’ll list in ascending order of importance:
She seems to think that instant messaging and texting are the same thing – not exactly the most important thing in the world, but definitely the kind of distinction you might expect someone whose job it is to know about the lives of children and young people to be aware of.
She thinks that kids and teenagers spend their evenings on the internet doing Sudoku…
…and that this is a bad thing, bearing in mind what else they could be doing on the internet.
Most disconcertingly, she’s apparently bought into the tired myth that online social networking makes you lonely and socially isolated in the real world (because god forbid that you might ever talk to people you’ve met offline via the internet).
I’ll be nice and leave aside the bit just above the stuff I quoted about kids reading the Beano, because apparently there are some children (albeit a declining number) who still actually do that, but this total ignorance of how children and teenagers use computers isn’t a good sign in someone whose job it is to promote young people’s interests.
Thirdly, there’s this:
If…you take it for granted that when they [children] say ‘I don’t want you in my room’ that’s OK, then you need to have a very serious think about your parenting. The adult in the relationship is the adult.
And finally, on the issues of violent computer games or the sexualisation of children:
If you would feel uncomfortable about it being discussed at your family dinner table, whether it’s violence or sexual images, then you shouldn’t be letting your children look at it… You have to let children be children.
I’ve bolded that last sentence because it encapsulates everything I find unsettling about the views Atkinson is expressing. It’s not that ‘letting children be children’ is a bad in itself (it’s so vacuous it could mean pretty much anything, good or bad), but Atkinson’s opinion about what that entails seems to be incredibly narrow. In her view, children and young people (up to the age of 17, mind) don’t have a right to keep any kind of secrets from their parents, and shouldn’t ever encounter anything more disturbing than would be an appropriate topic for conversation over dinner. Seriously? I recognise that parents want to protect their kids and that they probably have their children’s best interests at heart, but is she seriously saying that young people don’t have any right to privacy, to the point that they shouldn’t be able to ask their parents to leave their bedrooms and give them some time on their own? The notion that being under 18 negates your right to a private life is disturbingly authoritarian. As to the sex and violence, Jacob’s already written about how misguided so much of the hand-wringing over ‘sexualised’ children is, and if violent imagery is a problem then banning kids from watching the news should probably be next on the agenda. alongside Asterix books and Playmobil, those other notorious corrupters of today’s youth.
This post isn’t meant to be a hatchet job. As you could probably guess from my post last week, I totally agree with her that ten-year-olds shouldn’t be tried as adults and that we need a more sensitive approach to young offenders, no matter how terrible their actions. Her defence of single parents and criticism of the Tories’ stance on marriage are both laudable as well. I also sympathise with anyone who wants to protect children from the nastier features of the adult world, but there’s a fine line between being protective and being controlling. Atkinson seems to be clamouring for parents to cross that line, and that should really worry us.
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As I was leaving a poker game at the School of African and Oriental Studies a week ago I saw some bloke removing a flyer from one of the trees outside. It was a manifesto for Clare Solomon’s election campaign for presidency of the University of London Union. Upon my questioning him he said something along the lines of “I wouldn’t want that fucking awful woman imposed on anyone.” I’ll be totally honest, I was rather too stoned to coherently convince him otherwise, but the fact that Clare inspires such hatred amongst right-wing cunts is an absolute credit to her, which is why I am writing this piece to congratulate her on her election last Thursday.
I work in the University of London, and across the board (along with the higher education sector nationally) we are facing massive cuts. In my institution, £1m of staff cuts are expected, and similar is happening elsewhere. With the policy of the current Blairites in charge of NUS to be to condemn strikes by university staff, it is only through the election of more radical student representatives that we will be able to effectively fight what is happening. We need the unity of students, support staff, and academics.
We are consistently told by management that Higher Education is “going through a tough time at the moment.” What they fail to say is that what we are seeing in the HE sector is far more permanent than the recession. For years we have been building up to the end of affordable higher education, the end of education without taking on massive debt, the end of the possibility of people from low-income backgrounds attending university. We are seeing the end of small specialised courses, an increase in the division of intellectual labour when interdisciplinary courses cannot receive proper funding, and in all likelihood the absorption of many smaller specialised centres of study into larger universities to the detriment of their academic work.
It is times like this that we need a properly radical student union movement (to compliment a hopefully radical UCU and Unison.) Clare’s election is a promising sign that students are recognising this, and let us hope that it brings us a year of campaigning, fighting, protesting, and unity. We’ll sure as hell need it. Already we are seeing the beginning of the cross-London struggle with the formation of the London Education Activist Network, which has begun to produce bulletins on ongoing struggles in the universities.
As a little extra I thought I’d just put a little shout out to counterfire, who have recently returned to the left blogosphere. They look to be a good addition to left-wing online literature regardless of the difficult and much-debated situation from which they have been reborn.
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A few weeks back the BBC’s Evan Davis presented The Day The Immigrants Left, a reality TV show in which unemployed Brits were trialled in jobs more typically done by immigrants. It is something of a commonplace amongst middle class liberals praise the work ethic of immigrants in relation to the more dissolute Brits (this is rarely true self-deprecation, when they talk of “the English” they mean the lower orders, not themselves). And this is just the line that the delightful Alibhai Brown has taken in articulating her response to the programme.
Regaling us with the “uselessness” of the young workers featured on the programme, she tells us “My English husband couldn’t bear to see what the working classes had become – his own class in fact.”
Her husband, Colin Brown, is in fact in a high position at the Financial Services Authority. Whatever background he was born into decades ago, he is not, now, working class. He was not, as she suggests, despairing at the state of his own. Rather he was engaged in the age old practice of indulgently wringing his hands at the decrepit moral state of his social inferiors.
“There are, no doubt, hardworking Brits across the land”, Yasmin tells us, “but too many who will not get out of bed for love or money or a job.” Well the question, really is what job?. I am sure that almost all of us would be happy to get out of bed to write a column for the Independent like Yasmin does. If, however, my main option was to pick asparagus for 8 hours a day for a meagre wage, then I could well imagine saying fuck this. That Yasmin should pontificate on such people for not approaching such a fate with sufficient enthusiasm makes me want to scream.
Yet it seems almost as if Yasmin has anticipated this argument, since she goes on to tell us that she, herself, as an immigrant, can hack the low life as well as the high life.
I have been helping out occasionally at the café in the crypt of Marylebone parish church run by a chef, David Rowles, with whom I am trying to set up a small cookery business. I wash up and serve customers at the table. When I get things wrong Rowles gets mad. That’s fine; I am learning. One customer recognised me and was shocked. How could someone like me be doing this? I’m an immigrant I explained. We never think we are too posh for any job.
Seriously, is she taking the piss or is she actually that naive? Rowles may indeed “get mad” but its not as though he’s going to sack her from a job she actually needs, As she herself says she is “helping out occassionally”, and doing so for a mate with whom she plans to start a business. Does she honestly believe that this demonstrates that she has a superior work ethic, and greater low-stooping-capacity, than those she pillories for being unwilling to do boring low paid mind numbing jobs all day everyday?
While Yasmin says she knows a number of lazy immigrants, she observes “most of us immigrants feel insecure and vulnerable and can never take anything for granted. The survival instinct makes us push the work ethic into our kids.”
She puts this like it is a good thing. People’s work ethic should not be shaped by vulnerability and insecurity, and it shouldn’t need to be. People should not need to be willing to do anything in return for anything. Yasmin demands gratitude for those immigrants who she says are willing to take any job. Instead we should demand an economy and a society in which people need not be quite so desperate before they can enjoy a place at the table.
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Last week I helped publicise efforts to free Nick Hogan – sentenced to jail for his failure to pay fines for breaching the smoking ban. I am pleased to report that he is now free after the blogosphere raised nearly 10k in 4 days! Anna Raccoon has more.
It hardly needs saying that on most issues my disagreements with Anna Raccoon and and Old Holborn could not be starker – and I am sure they would say the same about me. But on this really, really do deserve credit for rallying the troops to help an anti-smoking ban hero, and doing so with such success.
For a free and smoking Britain, not a smokefree britain.
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This post was written by Reuben on March 11, 2010 Comments Off
There isn’t a lot of love for illegal downloaders on this blog, and to some extent I think that’s fair. But even if we accept that the activities of Pirate Bay and their ilk are ultimately unjustifiable, the jaw-dropping stupidity of some of the comments from the anti-piracy camp shouldn’t be allowed to go through unchallenged.
Illegal downloading need not be morally equivalent to theft of material goods, as James Murdoch (and those hilariously overblown ads at the beginning of DVDs) would have you believe. If I shoplift a DVD, then the shop selling the DVD can be said to have lost out in two different ways. First, they fail to get the money that they would have got had I bought the DVD, rather than stolen it. Second, they can’t sell the DVD to anyone else because I’ve nicked it.
I realise that those two sound pretty similar, but they’re not equivalent. Imagine that I don’t really want the DVD that much – I only steal it because it’s easy and the odds of getting caught are low. Clearly the first way in which the shop loses money now no longer applies. Now imagine that I also don’t actually steal the physical DVD – instead I walk into the shop, get out my laptop (complete with DVD-cracking software), put in the DVD, copy it, burn it onto a blank disc, and walk out of the shop, leaving the original DVD behind. Now the second way in which the shop loses money from theft doesn’t hold either. So is it still stealing if the shop can’t be said to have made a loss? And if not, why is illegal downloading any different?
What I’m seeking to demonstrate is that, paradoxical though it might seem, whether or not online piracy is theft might well depend on who’s doing it. If someone illegally downloads something they would otherwise have bought, then whoever owns the rights to what’s downloaded demonstrably makes a loss (and as I’ve said, I acknowledge that in cases where this does hold, online piracy is pretty hard to excuse). If not, (and, given that the stereotypical illegal downloader is a teenager – not the richest of demographics – I suggest that a significant proportion of illegal downloading comes into this category) then we seem to have the archetypal victimless crime. How one would go about proving this either way in a court of law I have no idea, but can we please bear this in mind when people start making hyperbolic claims about what is and isn’t theft?
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I recently realised that we don’t usually give enough attention to some of the really excellent content around left blogosphere – so here are some of the things that recently caught my eye.
Jim Jepps’ obituary of Michael Foot ably critiques the popular consensus that Foot bore primary responsibility for Labour’s massive defeat in 1983.
Sunny Hundal comments on the recent conviction of Harry Taylor for offending religious sensibilities. Sadly the 59 year old, who put up pictures of the Pope with a condom on his finger and other things in Airports multifaith room, is perhaps too much of an epic twat to be an ideal cause celebre, even if his rights ought to be defended – as Sunny argues.
And finally, it’s not quite the left blogosphere but Brendan o’ Neill at Spiked has a very interesting take on the Venables case. Arguing against the myth of public hysteria, O’ Neill suggests that it is primarily the cultural and political elite – and not the masses – that have responded hysterically to the case and turned Venables and Thompson into symbols of evil.
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The Third Estate catches up with Lucy Bailey, director of the Oscar-nominated Mugabe and the White African
It may have been pipped to the post at the Oscars last night, but ‘Mugabe and the White African’ scooped Best Documentary at the British Independent Film Awards and was shortlisted for the award of Outstanding Debut Film at the Baftas. Arguably the most compelling British Documentary of the last year, The Third Estate caught up with director Lucy Bailey.
The film follows the story of Mike and Ben, two white Zimbabwean farmers who successfully took Mugabe to SADC (Southern African Democratic Community) Court in the face of horrendous obstacles.
Later this week we’ll be reviewing the film ― still on at some London cinemas ― as well taking a look at three very different films about South Africa in their momentous World Cup Year: ‘Beyond the Rainbow’, ‘Have you Heard from Johannesburg? The Bottom Line’ and Clint Eastwood’s Oscar nominated ‘Invictus’, a story about the greatest sport on earth and some politician.
But first our exclusive interview recorded in December 2009.
The Third Estate: Since the film was made what’s been happening in Zimbabwe? How are Mike and Ben?
Lucy Bailey: At the end of August, beginning of September the farm was burnt down. At moment the family are staying with friends in Harare. The thugs are still on the farm, they’ve disrupted the water supplies. In one sense they’ve lost everything, as have all the farm workers. They’re trying to get the linen factory running but it’s a real struggle for them. Ben is trying to get Outreach, to get national governments to help the SADC tribunal, that’s almost become a full time job for them. Mike is not well at all, he’s in a wheelchair now, he has some brain damage from the beating. He is definitely not the man in the film which is very sad.
In terms of the wider country there has been more in the news in the last few days. The coalition government between the MDC and Zanu PF basically isn’t working with lots of Morgan Tsvangari’s men being arrested, ministers unable to take up their positions. He’s Prime Minster on paper but in reality has no power. He has no access to the army or the police. Violence throughout the country is racking up. There are going to be more rows and political violence on the ground, it’s not looking good.
The Third Estate: Have British politicians done enough over the last few years? Is there anything you’d want to say to them?
Lucy Bailey: In our opinion it’s very difficult for the British Government. Mugabe plays the colonialist card on people, he makes out we are neo-colonialists interfering with his affairs. It’s difficult position but at the same time I don’t think they are doing enough. They’re scared of being called colonialists. Nevertheless the key remains the SADC countries.
The court was an African court, a black court. Africa needs to get its own house in order and other African countries need to say, ‘No we’re not having this. We need to take this new human rights court seriously and we’re going to sort Zimbabwe out.’ But the US and UK have a part to play. It would not be good if sanctions were lifted. Our government needs to make clear it will not work with a regime that works in a way Mugabe’s regime does.
The Third Estate: The title comes from something Ben says―that you can’t have a ‘White African’. Is this a problem that you see extending beyond Zimbabwe and across the continent? Is it intended as a warning on a larger front?
Lucy Bailey: We feel race does underlie a lot of what goes on in Africa, but the crux of the film is about human rights, the rule of law and democracy. There are other leaders in Africa who may view white Africans as Mugabe does but there are other leaders at the opposite end of that spectrum. We want to see Africa unite and put democracy and human rights ahead of anything else.
The Third Estate: There’s one particular moment in the film which is very striking, in fact quite frightening, when a Zanu PF Minister arrives to take over Ben’s farm. What’s going on at that point?
Lucy Bailey: It’s a scene where one of the Zanu PF members is at the farm. Ben had come back to find Tomado, he’s the son of Minister Chanarera, a minister in Mugabe’s government. Essentially it’s just a conversation between them. Tomada spells out the whole argument from their perspective. As if he were Mugabe’s spokesman he claims land seizure is for redistribution to the poor black majority. Ben asks why he is here, ministers aren’t the poor black majority. By the end his arguments are undermined. It’s a very telling scene.
The Third Estate: What would you say to someone who sees the film and feels moved to act?
Lucy Bailey: People need to keep pressure on their governments. Write to your MP, say that you want the situation in Zimbabwe to be taken seriously. Its very hard to do much more than this. We’re trying to attract outreach with this film. If this film can get to the right political leaders in the SADC countries, the US and the UK. The film gets a message through in the way a news story doesn’t, especially in relation to a SADC tribunal. People don’t know about it or realise how key it could be.
The Third Estate: Have you ever had to choose between a film’s story arc and a political message? Would you for example alter the chronology to build tension or do you let the facts speak for themselves?
Lucy Bailey: We let the facts speak for themselves. We came to the film with no political agenda whatsoever. With no ties to white farmers in Zimbabwe at all. We were interested in this story, one man takes on a tyrant, who happens to be a tyrant. When we began we thought the film would be done and dusted in a month. We had no idea how the court case would be wrapped up in the politics of the election. They became interwoven. It made the film far more interesting. The events were not in any way manipulated. The structure of the film follows from what happened.
The Third Estate: I spent a few months in Zimbabwe just over a decade ago and I remember there being quite a lot of― you’d probably call it casual racism―among the white community. Did you find this at all? Or is it something that’s gone now?
Lucy Bailey: Certainly when we were there filming we didn’t come across any of that kind of attitude, certainly not with our farming families. When we were there, Zimbabwe was completely gripped by this climate of fear. And that wasn’t a black or white thing; it was whites and blacks together gripped by fear about this regime. That dominated everything else.
The Third Estate: I was struck by the fact that both families seemed deeply religious. Do you think that played a part in their determination to stay?
Lucy Bailey: Without doubt it would be hard to see how they were doing what they were doing. Their faith was the power behind them and still is. It is everything to them. There’s a line in the film where Andrew says everything else has been taken away from them. There is no law and order, there is nothing else to believe in, in Zimbabwe. So faith has become really important. It underpinned everything they were able to do, their courage.
We have been trying to get a third party partner. But it has been hard to get big organisation on board and NGOs to help this film make a difference. We made a promise to Ben and Mike that we would try to get the film to make a difference, documentary films can be very powerful. Films can be a call to action. There is still a total press ban and that’s why this film is so important. That is unique, as is the moment when the Zimbabwean government walk out of an international court before the judgement. This story needs to be told, Ben and Mike aren’t simply fighting for themselves, they’re fighting for everyone in Zimbabwe.
Things are stepping up. This year there will be another election. There is already increasing violence, oppositions supporters are being attacked, child soldiers are being trained. It’s a critical time.
The all you can eat restaurant is a true joy. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to hold it up as the exemplary culinary experience post-revolution, there is certainly a gorging charm to the total binge-worthy derailment of it all. Last night the Third Estate bloggers met (as in, in person, no less) at the Indian Veg (vide vegetarian) All You Can Eat in Islington (at £3.95, an extraordinarily reasonable place – that’s not commercial advertisement, just a statement of fact. For the record, I managed four plates, Jacob only 2.)
But there’s something more to this than meets the eye. What an All You Can Eat represents is a location of excess put to good use. The opposite of this would be Starbucks. Every other evening or so I toddle up to the local outlet of capitalist muffin joy, untie the bin liners dutifully waiting for me, and get a load of sandwiches, cakes and sometimes the odd bag of coffee to boot.
The philosophy of Starbucks is not All You Can Eat, but All You Can Sell. The whole principle is built on the idea that if you over produce, you won’t run out. The ridiculous prices of the food keeps this viable, and the throwing away of the excess makes the consumers forget the absurdity of it all. My favourite things about eating freegan (apart from the financial savings) is telling rabid consumers that I eat from bins – because, I believe, the real subversion isn’t in the feeding on filth, but the recognition that it’s possible.
That’s not to say, however, that waste is the be all and end all of capitalism. Time and again, I hear cries from various sections of the green movement that we just need to stop our food and energy waste, by everyone from radicals to councils to Resurgence Magazine (a favourite of Prince Charles). But the abhorrence of waste is very much a capitalist idea, linked in with the drive for efficiency, streamlining and individualist, mechanical asceticism.
The left response to waste shouldn’t be a cry of outrage, but an understanding of where waste really lies. It’s not on the tills of Tesco that the rubbish really gathers, nor is it even outside Starbucks. It’s in the garages of the rich and the houses of the famous. It’s the grounded airplanes in the desert and the epic shiploads of water imported into desert states. Like weeds, waste is determined by it’s lack of use in the grander scheme of things, not an object with an unwavering quality in itself.
The Third Estate, the great mass of society, does not help produce waste, not even in the factories. The useful objects made only become waste when the rich hoard them, destroy them and distribute them with mal-intent. When confronted by the excess production of our age, our cry should not be ‘waste not, want not’, but ‘Let them eat poppadoms!’
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