Ed Miliband accuses the Tories of playing politics with the tanker drivers’ strike. The Mail accuses Miliband of playing politics with the Olympics, because of the party’s funding by the unions (IIIE has already covered the ham-fisted idiocy that is the Tories’ attempts to paint the unions as undemocratic). Guardian commenters (again, let’s not go there) accuse Fiachra Gibbons of playing politics by not respecting the sheer tragedy of the Toulouse shootings; the same week, Nick Cohen in the Observer tells us to ‘not play politics with murder’. This is nothing new, really, but it seems to have become a lot more common lately.

What’s the trouble with this? Surely it’s reasonable to suggest that we shouldn’t derive political capital from tragedy? Why can’t we deal with a crisis without making it about gains for our poll ratings? These arguments appear commonsensical, but it doesn’t exactly work like that. There are two sides to the claim that someone is playing politics: One is to do with the landscape of institutional politics in this country, while the other has wider ideological implications.

It’s in the nature of our short news cycle, and our confrontational parliament with its thick, unimaginative front benches, that point-scoring and soundbites become the main form of political ‘debate’. Mostly when people are accused of playing politics, point-scoring is what they’re doing. As much as I dislike his tendentious style, I think Nick Cohen is genuinely concerned with the dangers of these tactics in responses to situations like the Toulouse shootings.

When the accusation is made by those in power against less powerful groups the trouble starts. I’m thinking of Gove versus ‘Trot’ school governors, for example. If we say that taking a politically informed stance is playing politics, we imply that there is a really existing neutral space in which events can be objectively observed and managed in a way that transcends politics. This is not the case. This argument is only ever invoked to support a deeply ideological position – one to do with the exclusion of certain events, problems, or forms of life from the arena of political thought or action – or more precisely, to remove them from the ambit of actors with politics in opposition to yours.

I can see where some of those who invoke the idea of ‘playing politics’ as critique are coming from – it’s infuriating to see someone as inept as George Osborne or Francis Maud flailing around to employ a situation to their advantage, and it’s infuriating to see how myopic parliament can be when it comes to dealing with sacred cows like the austerity drive. But the issue here isn’t that they’re politicising a neutral situation by, for example, using the strikes as a stick to beat the Labour party. It’s not even a problem that their position is ideological. The problem is their ideology. The situation is always already politicised, and the Tories (or Labour or the Lib Dems, why not) are on the wrong side when they assert the neutrality of the event.

That’s how these acts of ‘play’ should be dealt with: by asserting the politicised nature of the event, and bringing the discourse into that arena. I don’t care if you want to have a debate about what’s political and what’s not, I’ll happily argue with you. Just don’t deal with point-scoring by suggesting we should depoliticise things and people.

The European Union, in pursuit of an austerity agenda supported only by the elite, has now effectively suspended democracy in two European countries. We have now, within the space of a week, entered the age of the Technocrat government (described brilliantly by one writer in The Times as ‘a form of civilian junta’). It is unclear when this new era will be behind us.

Yesterday’s Independent provided an excellent and very worrying analysis of the extent to which Europe’s technocratic elite are almost a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, providing yet more evidence – as if we needed more – that the austerity project is being carried out for the benefit of financial institutions. (“The [Goldman Sachs] Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest.” Read the full thing here: http://ind.pn/snfaQ7).

This is not simply an attack on democracy in the form of the suspension of the democratic process, but the destruction of any relationship between public opinion and government policy. The concerns of Europe’s citizenry – mass unemployment, public services, pensions etc. – will not be addressed until Europe’s financial interests start to share these worries, an unlikely contingency.

What I want to ask is: why is support for this institution still considered progressive? It doesn’t matter that many of the arguments against the European project are often cogent, reasonable and progressive; there remains a nagging feeling that its still all a bit too UKIP. The assumption remains that to be pro-Europe is to be a good progressive type with the correct opinions, whereas to oppose the EU makes you a reactionary Little Englander.

This makes little sense when you look at the politics of other European countries in which the assumptions are the exact opposite. Both Sarkozy and Merkel represent the main conservative parties in their respective countries. In Scandinavia, the tradition has always been protecting the institutions of social democracy from encroachment by Brussels. It is almost as if our politics concerning Europe are the wrong way around.

The case used to be made that even before we begin to argue about fishing quotas, butter mountains, sovereignty or the CAP, we had to concede that the European Union has been a bastion of peace and stability for the continent after the horrors of the Second World War. It is an argument with which I had much sympathy. But is it not now perfectly clear that the European elite, by bypassing democracy and condemning millions of European workers to years of austerity, threatens that very stability? The EU may once have protected peace in the continent – it is now its principal threat.

Last week’s seminar at the Frontline Club asked a very pertinent question of the Occupy London movement pitched outside St. Paul’s. What do you want? I was surprised to see from the show of journalistic hands that the majority in the room did not know exactly what the protesters are camped out for, though, given the lineup of speakers included accountant turned campaigner Richard Murphy and Julian Assange, fresh from court after losing his extradition appeal earlier that day, it was less surprising that the majority supported their broad aims.

Self-confessed occupy sceptic, Harry Cole, one of only two voices of dissent on the panel, accused the protesters of possessing an overwhelming mismatch of ideas.

“If you’ve got a movement that is calling for a realignment of capitalism, having speeches about climate change and Kurds within the space of 10 minutes, it’s not working,” Cole said.

More baffling opposition came from Daniel Ben-Ami, who described himself as of the left, but lost me when he called the protesters a deeply conservative movement loved by the establishment.

It fell to Murphy to give the most passionate defence of the movement, offering a rare charisma I had thought was bred out of accountants at playschool.

“The message from Occupy is you guys have got it wrong,” Murphy said. “After 30 years of neo-liberalism, which has actually suited both left and right in many ways, we end up with a social movement which is actually saying hang on a minute, what this is about is creating a geography of dissent. A space where people can say we are looking for alternatives ideas because our right to dissent, our right to even think has been crushed.”

“Yes it’s messy, but so is reality,” Murphy added.

Assange, confessing he had “had a bit of a busy day”, played up the importance of new forms of media and criticised the role of the mainstream press as the reason movements like Occupy were not in place five years ago.

“We now have ways to bypass the mainstream press,” said Assange, whose own means of bypassing the mainstream press, Wikileaks, has already helped topple governments, “pouring oil on the fire” that fuelled the Arab Spring.

From the speeches, particularly that of activist Naomi Colvin, and from contributions from the floor, it was clear that Occupy, despite the disparate groups that came together to form it, knows what it wants. A stand against cuts and tax avoidance and for the reform of a broken capitalism; a stand for the world’s poorest against the excesses of the world’s richest.

After my lunch breaks spent at the camp and marching on Westminster, swapping caps between journalist and protester, I find it hard to see why anyone could accuse the movement, messy and messianic as it is, of not knowing what it wants. They are persistent in their cause and assured of their politics – turning on, tuning in and dropping out in true radical spirit – and in that I can only wholeheartedly support them.

Equally, when Colvin talked of government not working in the interests of the general population and of her concern with financial services out of control, I found it hard to disagree. What worries me slightly, however, is the tendency of some protesters to link the movement to the Arab Spring.

“It’s one manifestation of a global emancipation movement that began with Egypt and Tunisia,” said Colvin.

Those make for stirring words, powerful, pretty, but also pretentious. It’s a pretention exemplified for all to see in the sign sitting opposite St. Paul’s reading ‘Tahrir Square EC4M’.

I can see what Occupy is trying to do and in showing solidarity with the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and the millions oppressed across the Arab world yearning for freedom from the yoke of dictatorship, they have a noble cause.

But where are the bullets and the cavalry charges? Where are the arrests, the beatings and the killings? I do not envy the Occupy protesters shivering in tents towards Christmas. But Paternoster Square is not Tahrir Square and they are not putting their lives on the line trying to get into it. I’m sure no one in the camp means to belittle the struggle for democracy in the Middle East, or lay claim to a struggle as dangerous, but as destructive and exploitative as modern capitalism is, as immiserating as its failings have been for the most vulnerable people in this country, the Arabs paid in blood for their emancipation, while the St. Paul’s protesters have been given a protected space by state and church – at least until the new year – in which to air their rightful grievances. To forget that, or to elevate a lengthy unseasonal politically charged festival to the status of a fundamental struggle against a sovereign that is trying to destroy you for speaking out against it, smacks of pretention.

That said, what they have done, in creating a space for discussion and democracy, linked with movements across the world, with a clear sense of what they are for and who they are against, is create a powerful symbol that politicians cannot afford to ignore.

As Sun Tzu famously wrote, “if know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles”. I suspect there will be more than a hundred battles ahead. Capitalism will not be over by Christmas and the camp may be gone by Easter. But the Occupy movement has tapped into a mood that stretches much further than a few hundred tents outside a famous London landmark. And, if indeed they do this once speak for the 99%, then that mood is not going away anytime soon.

I was in Paris last week, reporting on the Task Force for Financial Integrity and Economic Development’s annual conference. After a fascinating day hearing how illicit financial flows and tax avoidance are destroying the developing world, American economist Jeffrey Sachs gave an excellent keynote speech over the video link. Particularly interesting were his points on the impact of corporate lobbying and financing on US democracy.

“Our democracies are getting eaten alive by lobbying,” Sachs said.

Sachs argued against companies being allowed to give unlimited resources to parties, and the particular problem of anonymous donations.

“The Supreme Court said corporate money given anonymously should be equated to free Speech,” Sachs said.

He pointed to Obama’s attempts to raise $1 billion for next year’s election campaign and the $35,000 per head dinners he has hosted to help him reach that target.

“What’s the point of that?” Sachs asked. “Maybe a few hundred of it is to get your picture taken with Obama, but most of it is to get access to the President. It’s an issue of financial integrity. It cuts to the heart of our democracies.”

Sachs called for regulation to prevent the growth of companies so large they threaten democracy.

“Corporate money equals free speech? No. It may not be the opposite, but it’s close to the opposite,” Sachs said.

Sachs sees that the role of companies in society should be to make money within an effective regulatory framework, not to try to change that framework for their own ends.

He believes that the reason nothing is getting done on climate change is corporate lobbying.

And he’s right. American democracy relies more on cents than sense. Its fundamental pillars are not built on votes, but dollars. When two billion dollar parties can be bought and sold by the same group of business interests holding both their purse strings, where do the people fit in? Does it even matter whether the Republicans or Democrats are in power if corporate money can throw the clog in the machine of any genuine attempts for change?

In recent weeks, as public sector strikes over pension reforms loom large, there’s been a growing call for tougher strike laws – specifically, for some kind of minimum threshold in strike ballots for them to be valid. The Telegraph were talking approvingly about it last week, but it’s been kicking around for some time – the Telegraph was getting all moist and happy when Boris Johnson and the CBI were calling for this at least as far back as October. Tory MP Dominic Raab then really got things going back in April, introducing a Bill to Parliament which required unions to get absolute majorities of all eligible members before a strike was legal, rather than simply a majority of those who voted. He was quickly defeated, but Boris Johnson took back the anti-union baton a couple of weeks later in response to a strike announced by the RMT, and allegedly got a sympathetic hearing from Cameron and Philip Hammond when he did so. Then Vince Cable was dispatched to the GMB conference to warn those pesky trade unionists that while of course he supported the right of workers to go on strike, if they had the temerity to actually exercise that right then it was regrettably possible that all those nasty Tories who he sat round the Cabinet table with might pass some horrible anti-strike laws, and wouldn’t that be a shame? Said nasty Tories then confirmed this.

Image: Keith Bacongco/flickr

The trouble is, while something like this is easy to deride from the comfort zone/echo chamber of the lefty blogosphere, the uncomfortable reality is that a law requiring some kind of threshold for strike ballots would actually be pretty popular – and not just among the rightwing commentariat either; 73% of people in the UK think there should be some kind of turnout threshold on strike ballots (Johnson and the CBI are suggesting a threshold on the proportion of yes votes which is a bit different but would have a similar effect). This shouldn’t be surprising; superficially, the case for a threshold of some sort seems quite plausible – why shouldn’t unions only be allowed to strike if they can demonstrate a majority (or at least a substantial chunk) of their members actually want to do so? Isn’t that the democratic thing to do?

There’s no denying that a higher turnout helps any ballot achieve greater legitimacy, and that it would probably be better if turnout in strike ballots was higher than it is most of the time. But this doesn’t mean that yes votes in strike ballots with low turnouts can just be discounted. To claim that a yes vote in a strike ballot is only valid if some kind of threshold requirement is met is to make the tacit assumption that anyone who doesn’t vote does so because they don’t support the strike enough to vote for it. But why assume this? Surely it’s just as legitimate to assume they didn’t vote because they don’t oppose the strike enough to voe against it? After all, going on strike can be a costly and hazardous activity – a point frequently made by rightwingers when they’re wringing their hands at the plight of the poor workers they claim are being held hostage by unrepresentative far-left cabals of union officials. Given this, surely any union member who thought going on strike was a bad idea would vote against it, rather than abstain? There are any number of reasons why someone might not vote, and as such it’s not justifiable to interpret a failure to fill in a ballot paper as either assent or dissent. Requiring unions to treat abstentions as some kind of weaker no vote is anti-democratic, pure and simple.

I received this through a friend; best report I have read.

Ninth Week of the Syrian Spring

This weekend, the Syrian Spring [entered] its ninth week, but still it remains too early to predict where it is going. The picture that is emerging for us here because of our work is very fuzzy, in spite of many conversations with people in Syria, with journalists and diplomats. To me it seems like a stalemate, in which the demonstrators are not achieving any real advances, but are still faced with a rising death toll. On the one hand, the regime is resorting to ever more drastic measures: with by now 800 dead demonstrators, the Syrian Spring is unfortunately already the most bloody of the recent Arab uprising (with the exception of the civil war in Libya).

More than 9000 people have been arrested and detained over the past weeks, and at least two prison- and torture-camps have been set up in football stadiums, countless apartments have been raided without legal basis, military units with tanks and snipers have occupied and devastated suburbs of Damascus and Homs, Daraa in the South, and most recently also the coastal town of Baniyas. The regime in Damascus is trying everything to systematically break and prevent the dynamics and actions of the protest movement.

On the other hand, last Friday saw the largest number of demonstrations, in more places and with people than ever before. And as soon as a town is surrounded and besieged, large demonstrations break our in neighbouring towns (which usually then also get surrounded a few days later). From my perspective, the government has not yet managed to effectively crush the protest and break people’s courage. But the protest movement has one central problem: the middle class in Aleppo and Damascus has so far hardly participated in the protests, something that, if it were to happen, would greatly strengthen the protest movement.

It is likely that the economic costs of this rebellion (parts of the country are repeatedly paralysed, there is hardly any foreign investment) will soon make the middle class realise the importance of political reform. It is thus most likely just a question of time, when they, too, will start resisting the regime. In our work here in Beirut we are constantly torn between euphoria and horror. The network is growing ever larger and more stable, and more structures are also emerging, albeit slowly. One of our achievements is that nearly all major media outlets by now rely on our information, that we collate from the Syrian network.

Alongside Rami [Nakhle, a prominent Syrian cyber activist], there are two activists working almost full-time on this. It was thanks to our extensive media work that today Rami spoke to the Liberal group in the European Parliament via Skype. Unfortunately this work is anything but safe, especially for the activists in Syria. In spite of excellent contacts to all the CNNs in the world we have been forced to realise how helpless we are when a good friend and activist in Syria is arrested and disappeared by the secret service. This happened just the day before yesterday. In last week’s report I focused on the protests, their composition and perspective. Today I want to try to sketch an outline of the new strategy employed over the last ten days by the Syrian state.

The new (Iranian) strategy

For the last ten days or so, we have been experiencing a massive strategic shift in the way the Syrian government deals with demonstrations. The Assad regime, no doubt surprised by the scope and unrelenting courage of the demonstrations, initially reacted with a mix of a feigned readiness to dialogue, and the use of live ammunition against the demonstrators. But instead of dead demonstrators achieving the hoped-for deterrent, every death made the demonstrations grow larger. Hundreds of people died in the first few weeks alone – Assad had fallen into the same trap as the other Arab dictators before him who had tried to break the will of the insurrections with guns and murder. For the last ten days, however, we have seen the government’s initially confused and weak behaviour give way to a new strategy.

Although people are still killed at demonstrations, these deaths are not intended on a large scale, they are rather collateral damage, and can be blamed on overwhelmed local security forces – they are not really in the state’s interests. The new strategy, rather, consists of arresting massive numbers if people, keep them detained for at least a week, and to torture them during that time. People are usually not arrested on the grounds of concrete suspicions, but more so based on their belonging to certain target groups. In Daraa and Baniyas, the last two weeks saw the arbitrary arrest of thousands of men between 20 and 35 years of age, in some suburbs of Damascus entire neighbourhoods have been emptied out by arrests.

The pattern by which these arrests proceed seems to always be the same: the place is surrounded by security police, the army’s fourth division and sometimes the presidential guard, at the same time, electricity and phone lines and networks are cut, while marksmen are positioned on the roofs. This creates an extremely effective, though unannounced, curfew. The next step are house-to-house raids and battles in order to detain people. When the security forces are done in one place, they are ordered to the next, there to arrest people in the same way.

For the regime, this new strategy has several advantages: it first of all leads to fewer funerals, which often turned into powerful demonstrations; second, the international response, the outside pressure is far more muted than if there are lots of deaths as in previous weeks (the reporting is sometimes very much focused on casualty figures); and third, the government manages to intimidate a far greater number of people than before with these mass arrests and through torture, simply because they affect (or might affect) far more people than the killings before. That most of those detained are released after no more than a week seems to us to not be due to capacity problems (as in: too many people in too few jails), but seems to rather be part of a strategy.

The people are meant to talk about the terror, the physical and psychological abuse in order to create more terror and deterrent. As long as the government manages to continue to exclude the international media from Syria and as long as the world does not see images of detainees and torture equipment, then this strategy of arresting and torturing ever larger numbers of people to create ever more deterrent seems to be successful.

So far the resistance movement has failed to develop a strategy that could counter this weakening – although the regime’s insidious strategy is far from being a nerw form. Some two years ago, the Green Wave in Iran was crushed by very similar means. We are therefore not surprised to hear – from various well-informed sources, including diplomatic circles – that there has been, over the last few weeks, massive strategic exchange between Tehran and Damascus (a number of ‘security advisors’ is also said to have been sent to Syria from Iran). By implementing this new strategy the government has also stopped all attempts to find a political solution (e.g. by way of reforms).

For weeks Assad and his government have been silent on this. So far, however, the international community has also not made any recognisable efforts towards a political solutions. A fact that many activists here simply do not understand. We still hope that we can manage to make this insidious new strategy, and the pictures of the thousands of detainees and torture victims, visible to the people in Syria and the outside world.

The only thing that can stop this brutality is growing pressure from the inside as well as the outside. But most of all we hope that in spite of or maybe even because of this new wave of repression, this Friday will once again see tens of thousands of people on the street to continue to risk their freedom and physical health in order to keep up their fight for freedom and democracy.

I’m not going to take issue with the title of Jacob’s last post, partly because I’ve been guilty of the odd bit of abusive language myself at times, and partly because I’ve known Jacob long enough to realise that trying to stop him being gratuitously offensive is a bit of a fool’s errand.

What I am going to take issue with, however, is that he’s completely and utterly wrong on the AV referendum. To make things simple, I’ll set out my piece to mirror his, addressing each of the pro-AV arguments he attacks:

“Won’t it be wonderful when you can vote for whoever you like without the concern that you’ll let the tories in?”

Jacob dismisses this on the grounds that the personal satisfaction at being able to vote for your minor lefty party of choice (and then presumably put Labour as a second or third preference) is a pretty poor substitute for actual meaningful political change. This would be an entirely reasonable argument, aside from the fact that this is a total straw man. The actual partisan leftwing pro-AV argument here isn’t that you’ll finally be able to feel all warm inside at voting for the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition regardless of whether they get elected or not; it’s that under AV the anti-Tory vote (which, it’s worth pointing out, has been a majority in practically every election for the past hundred years) won’t have to be split any more. That, needless to say, is why the Conservatives oppose it. Of course, what this would in all likelihood mean in the short-to-medium term is more Labour or Labour-led governments, which I’m sure Jacob and many other lefties – including me – would disagree with strongly on various issues. But if you really think that this wouldn’t be an improvement on the Conservatives, I’ve got a few million NHS patients, Minimum Wage recipients and EMA beneficiaries I’d like you to meet.

“It will give minority parties a better chance.”

Here Jacob’s argument is that at present leftwing candidates tend to get elected on a minority of the vote in their constituencies, and that under AV this would be less likely to happen. There are two ways of interpreting this. The first is that Jacob thinks that getting leftwing figures into Parliament is more important than having MPs who actually reflect the views of their constituents – in other words, that he gives more priority to having his political views (imperfectly) promoted by MPs than he does to having a House of Commons that’s actually democratically representative. I don’t think this is a position totally without merit, but since it effectively entails arguing that majority opinion is irrelevant, I’m going to be nice and assume that’s not what he’s actually trying to say. The second, more likely interpretation is that while at the moment the radically leftwing candidates who get elected on a minority of the vote probably aren’t that representative of the views of their constituents, at a national level this goes some way to make up for all the radical leftwing voters in other constituencies who have moderate or rightwing MPs. With AV, there’s less scope for this to happen as all candidates will have to appeal to centrist swing voters to get elected.

This is the most convincing anti-AV argument I’ve heard anyone put forward, but the best that can be said for it is that it’s a plausible possibility; it’s simply not possible to know whether this is actually how things are going to work out. It’s interesting to note that Jacob cites two MPs as exceptions to the case he’s trying to argue (Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell) but just one (Caroline Lucas) in support of it. I realise three examples isn’t exactly statistically significant, but one out of three ain’t great when you’re trying to marshal the numbers in support of your case.

The main reason to be dubious of this argument, however, is that it assumes that people vote for candidates solely on the basis of how right- or leftwing they deem them to be. In fact, this isn’t really how things work. There’s a reason the old saying goes ‘all politics is local’, not ‘all politics is interpretable purely on a simple left-right spectrum’. MPs get elected in large part on the basis of how well they deal with the issues their constituents care about, and how well they do this doesn’t necessarily have much to do with how leftwing they might or might not be. There’s no reason why a staunchly leftwing MP can’t also be good at dealing with local issues and listening to the concerns of their constituents – a lot of them manage it at the moment – and if they can’t, do you really want them in the House of Commons anyway regardless of how much Marx they’ve read? Five more years of George Galloway, anyone?

“This is the one route to proper proportional representation.”

Again, Jacob’s correct to say that PR isn’t on the cards anytime soon. But it’s a hell of a lot more likely to happen in our lifetimes if AV goes through than if it doesn’t, a point made very well by Sunny at LibCon not long ago:

[T]he left should not lose the stomach for revolutionary change or radical ideas. But it must also have the pragmatism to find ways to push for them, perhaps even incrementally, rather than constantly throw toys out of the pram when change does not go far enough quickly…

…Failure will not breed success. The Conservative party and Taxpayers Alliance funders etc will continue throwing money at keeping FPTP, and next time there will be even less traction to discard FPTP.

I don’t have much to add to Sunny’s arguments here.

“It is just inherently fairer and more representative.”

This is effectively the same argument as the one about minority parties above. The same comments apply.

Jacob also ignores one very important reason why a yes to AV matters. I take the point that a yes vote for AV isn’t going to change the political system all that much in itself. What it might well do though, is royally screw over the government. The argument that we should vote no to AV to spite Nick Clegg is horribly misguided, a point that, once again, I’m not the first to make. I’m sure most Marxists won’t want to hear from terrible bourgeois Fabian reformists like Sunder Katwala, but there’s no denying the power of his arguments on this:

[I]t will hardly surprise either [George Osborne's] friends or foes that the big idea is to cut deep enough to build an election war chest so the Tories can run on tax cuts as in the 1980s and 1992. For Osborne, the big prize is reversing their retreat on taxes against spending on public services after 1997. His ideological ambition is that it should be like the Labour years never happened.

For Osborne, keeping the current electoral system forms an important part of this plan. So he has stepped up to the plate in the campaign, though constitutional issues are not usually a major focus for a Chancellor of the Exchequer, particularly when his day job might be thought rather pressing in current conditions.

Osborne has hit the headlines with prominent attacks on the Yes campaign – though the idea that the Electoral Reform Society is backing electoral reform might seem unsurprising to many.

Probably more important has been the behind the scenes encouragement to Tory donors. (“Downing Street channelling cash to the No campaign, as the Telegraph reported) to get stuck in.

The message has been that they should support a No vote now – or expect to have to make bigger donations in future because Osborne and the Tories fear election campaigns would be harder to win under AV.

So, to sum up, there’s a good chance of further-decimated public services and a second wave of Thatcherism if AV fails, but we should vote no anyway in case a couple of members of the Socialist Campaign Group lose their seats? Yeah, you’ll have to forgive me for not being wholly convinced by that.

With recent news of the U.S. deploying predator drones in Libya to “degrade Gaddafi’s forces”, and Europe’s involvement teetering on the brink of all out invasion, we have to think carefully about what kind of message this sends out to the various protest movements which are on-going in the region. This is important not only because there is a certain arbitrary factor attached to Europe’s involvement specifically in Libya considering the widespread violence enveloping most of the region, but the self-interested attitude which Western states are projecting yet again to the people of these countries in turmoil.

Much care has been taken by Western governments to sidestep this potential accusation with their obvious hesitation to deploy any meaningful force – ground, air or naval – to properly and quickly depose Gaddafi. However, whatever involvement Britain plays will be under the microscope. A war of attrition, akin to the economic warfare exemplified by the “Oil for Food” sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 90’s, looks likely. Yet, overt action in Libya with inaction everywhere else will again smear British foreign policy. Precedents may be irrelevant in the dark, cloak and dagger corridors of Westminster, but the public, here and elsewhere, will always remember and vote/act accordingly. We are still keen to lead on a global stage, but where do we find this authority? Simply put, emanating from the mouths of our political establishment and ultimately for economic reasons.

The ruling Ba’ath party in Syria routinely suppresses any dissidence in the country with military force. Assad and his Ba’ath party have the support of the current Iraqi regime too in what represents a worrying hypocrisy. Despite this foreign policy, the Iraqi state has banned the remnants of its own Ba’ath party from public office and outlawed any Ba’ath sympathisers from assuming public service positions. The awful situation in Baghdad’s politics extends to the Kurdish north of the country. Billed as the freest, most stable, democratic and prosperous part of Iraq, there have nevertheless been daily protests since February, at first modestly calling for better services and democratic freedoms, but are now demanding the resignation of President of the Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, and the President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani – the two dynastic rulers who head the two fractious ruling Kurdish parties; the KDP and the PUK respectively.

This is important because Britain has forged strong ties with the leadership of the Kurdish region. As relationships like this are fostered between our political elites, it becomes incredibly difficult to approach the inevitable outrage of oppressed populations with any thoughtful and principled response to their concerns. It has become something of a last resort to abandon our tyrannical puppets, and this is shameful for all of us because its often too late.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once said in a speech in Cairo in 2005:

"For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither,"

"Throughout the Middle East the fear of free choices can no longer justify the denial of liberty,"

"It is time to abandon the excuses that are made to avoid the hard work of democracy."

This policy has most definitely not been abandoned. In fact, it has become popularised. The ousting of Mubarak was a prolonged and embarrassing sham for the U.S. and the U.K. It is only when the will of the people was demonstrated in impressive and immovable fashion, our governments conceded to inevitable democratic reform. Its almost as if they sighed afterwards at the inconvenience. The Egyptian army, the biggest recipient of U.S. aid ($1.5bn a year) is still very much in charge to preserve stability in the region. The Kurdish leadership is praised to preserve stability and contribute to the “Iraqi experiment” as a success, despite growing evidence of the opposite. And of course, Saudi involvement in Bahrain’s protests is largely ignored for political and economic reasons.

It is one thing to put the new (old) Libyan flag as an avatar on Facebook and Twitter to show your support, but spare a thought for all the movements in the region. In fact, spare more than a thought. They are certainly not helped by the succession of unprincipled and snivelling leadership figures we have now in this country and other Western states who depend on autocracies to preserve favourable and convenient trade and political arrangements. A democracy which is reliant on autocratic rulers and despots is a crumbling democracy. This is an emerging truth in our globalised economy and political landscape. Irresponsibility here means peoples lives. The civil war in Libya would be fought regardless of what we think or believe as British citizens, and any action or inaction by Britain will result in our embarrassment. Lets at least stop laying the foundations for these future crises by properly and seriously addressing our involvement and relationships elsewhere.

On the same day that David Cameron and arch-Blairite former Home Secretary, John Reid, shared a platform to denounce AV, the Evening Standard came out against voting reform, patronising the electorate by basing its flimsy argument on the crazy notion that AV is so much harder to understand. I wonder what’s so hard to understand about ranking candidates in order of preference. Most semi-intelligent people have learnt how to count to five by the time they reach 18. Then again, perhaps the Tories implicitly accept that right wing voters are inherently stupid and that’s why they’re so scared of electoral reform. It might also explain why the BNP are equally opposed to AV.

Meanwhile, with a few honourable exceptions, the Greens are out in force campaigning for AV. As Waveney Councillor Graham Elliott reports:

In Waveney I know several people who voted for their THIRD choice candidate in the 2010 general election in an attempt to keep the Conservatives out. They knew their first choice (Green) would not win and they also knew that the Lib Dems (their second choice) were weak in Waveney and the contest was really a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives. They therefore voted Labour which was their third choice. Under AV they would have been able to vote 1 for Green, 2 for Lib Dem and 3 for Labour with no increased risk of letting the Tories in. This is just one specific example to illustrate why the current system doesn’t work. Far too many people vote to keep a party out rather than vote for they believe in. AV will allow a more honest expression of voters values.

From my time campaigning with Elliott, back when I used to live in Suffolk, I’ve come to realise that he’s one of those people whom if they’re on your side, you’re probably on the right one. And if it’s a choice between the Greens, Ed Miliband and the Lib Dems vs. The Tories, John Reid, Nick Griffin and the Evening Standard, I think it becomes clear which side has the moral highground.

Of course, as Reid’s appearance with Cameron shows, the debate does cross party lines. But, increasingly it seems, it is running along ideological ones. With a few obvious exceptions, the left are falling behind AV and the right are coming out against it. No one wants to have Nick Clegg on their team, I admit, he’s the spotty fat geek with asthma we got lumbered with because nobody picked him. But set him aside for now. The referendum isn’t about kicking Clegg – we can wedgie him in the changing rooms come the next election – this is about setting the direction of our democracy.

We can go forward or we can stand still forever. It’s time for those on the left who, for whatever genuine and principled reasons they have, have come out against AV, to look around them and see who’s playing for their team and what their agenda is. It’s time for them to ask themselves, whose side are they on?

This is a guest post by Natalie.

Over the past year I’ve observed “autonomism” being periodically evoked by members of Trotskyist/Leninist socialist parties as a dangerous force in the anti-cuts movement. The “autonomist” does not bode well for any activist group- they are opposed to all forms of structure and organisation, they refuse to vote on things, they don’t believe in accountability, they don’t do outreach to try to build support across the population and they believe that creative spectacles are the only appropriate method for social change, rather than strikes or mass demonstrations. There are a few problems with this characterisation of the “autonomist”- the first one being that such an activist doesn’t really exist. It’s a straw man constructed to caricature and discredit activists who choose to organise in different ways to traditional socialist parties.

This leads to a second serious problem- the label autonomist is applied regularly to any activists who seek to build a political activism which challenges hierarchy and authoritarianism, fostering a political culture of democratic involvement and empowerment. The fact that many dedicated campaigners choose to slur activists they label as“autonomists” while putting out misinformation about what “autonomism” entails is a shameful example of factionalism. Articles such as Estelle Cooch’s seemingly baseless article on “autonomism and anarchism” is not just misinformed- it is intentionally misinformative- if not on the part of the author, then on the part of the editors of the Socialist Worker.

Very few of the activists dubbed “autonomists” would ever call themselves that- most define their politics as non-hierarchical, anti-state, anti-authoritarian, anarchist, or “horizontal”. These activists strive to organise in a way which challenges domination and authoritarianism, minimising the inequality between members of the groups they work in. These activists put a significant amount of time and energy towards developing political structures, processes and organisational tools which enable groups to work democratically, accountably and efficiently. The claims made by Trotskyist/Leninsts (which occur regularly, not just in Cooch’s article) that activists who organise non-hierarchically do not believe in organisation or structure are so clearly false that I can only assume that they are malicious. Non-hierarchical activism has laid the groundwork for radical social change for decades- in the feminist movement, climate change activism, and now in the anti-cuts movement. It is misleading to claim, as some do, that so called “autonomists” do not extend their politics beyond themselves- non-hierarchical activists organise marches, leaflet talk to the media and try to build a mass movement. Working non-hierarchically still demands a democratic process, but it creates a culture of democracy which fosters social movements in which people can truly challenge domination, oppressive structures and behaviours, and move beyond the follow-the-leader mentality that is often promoted in Trotskyist/Leninst groups.

There have been a lot of open letters and blog posts written as responses to the factional propaganda-piece in the Socialist Worker, and many have already addressed the lack of connection to reality in the article and the homogenising of various organisational practices (such as consensus decision making) under the banner of “autonomism”.
What I’d like to do is to examine the question “why are we talking about “autonomism”, anyway?” and then take the opportunity to more honestly engage with what it means to organise in a non-hierarchical way, and why I think that it has a lot to contribute to the anti-cuts movement.

The article in the Socialist Worker, which proposed a specious characterisation of non-hierarchical organising in order to demonstrate how it clearly falls short of “Marxism” was posted in the “Challenges to Marxism” section of the paper. Clearly the leadership of the SWP believe that non-hierarchical organising is a threat to Marxism- or at least Marxism how they see it. Many activists who are labelled as “autonomists” would far more quickly define themselves as Marxist- seeing a structural economic and class analysis of society as key to challenging capitalism. A lot of the anti-cuts protests have taken an anarchist flavour- the formation of networks rather than political parties, direct actions on a local and national level, student occupations which strive to work without leaders. I have seen a lot of great work being done by diverse groups of people who reject factionalism in order to work together. But I have also seen a lot of political wrangling in which non-hierarchical styles of organising and the individuals who promote them are slammed as anti-organisation, politically inept, and manipulative. I think it would be an oversimplification to say that this is purely due to groups like the SWP feeling threatened by the rise of different forms of organising, but I don’t think that this has nothing to do with it, either.

It is interesting that the term used to mis-characterise horizontal organising- “autonomism”- evokes the word “autonomy”. It almost feels like an unintentional acknowledgement that a lot of people are turned off by Trotskyist/Lenininst socialist parties because of their tendency towards authoritarianism. Most members of the Socialist Worker’s Party probably don’t realise that their constitution expects them to run for political positions to further the Party line, avoid publicly disagreeing with the leadership of the Party, and to show up to SWP events in order to fulfil their obligations as a Party member.

However, few SWP members missed the authoritarian extravaganza in 2009 of disciplining and expelling members of the SWP who did not adequately toe the party line. In trying to create a well-disciplined Leninist party, autonomy and empowerment are indeed sacrificed in favour of authoritarianism and homogeneity.

In contrast to a culture of authority in which elected leaders have far more authority than ordinary members, many people find that working in non-hierarchical groups asks all participants to be proactive and to develop their ability to self-manage and participate in democracy. There are a lot of different models that non-hierarchical organising follows, but some of the characteristics they normally espouse are self-management, solidarity or mutual aid, and direct action. Decisions are taken by those who they affect- when decisions must be made that involve a lot of people, groups need to find ways of representing the views of those people; this often involves representatives of some kind. Self-management takes on the view that decisions should be taken from the bottom up by those who they affect, and applies this to the workplace, communities and political groups. This gives rise to forms of organising which challenge the oppression inherent within the capitalist system, such as worker’s councils and cooperatives. This is often placed in contrast to more centralised or authoritarian measures of economic and social organisation, which focuses on a leadership making decisions that are passed down to and enforced upon the people they affect.

Direct action means being proactive in realising the changes we want to see in the world. There are a lot of different ways in which people take direct action, but some examples are Rosa Parks refusing to give her seat up to a white man in the American Civil Rights movement, setting up a local community garden to increase a sense of community and support local food production, protesting climate change by blockading coal-fired power stations, and engaging in many forms of industrial action like factory occupations and strikes. A key aspect to direct action is that groups of people feel empowered to self-organise- not wait for a leadership to decide what is an appropriate time for and form of action.

I don’t think that horizontally organised groups have found all of the answers, but I do think that non-hierarchical organising addresses a lot of the shortfalls in contemporary traditional Trotskyist/Leninist political parties. Dialogue, rather than monologue, is essential to building better forms of organising. The Socialist Worker editors committed a serious misjudgement when they published Cooch’s article on “autonomism”- what the article communicated is that the SWP has no respect for people who choose to organise differently – and effectively – for social change: “you’re either with us or we’re against you”. I have been disappointed by how few SWP members who have worked with exactly the kind of people that would be (and are) labelled “autonomist” have spoken out against the article- this must change.

Social movements are diverse, dynamic and experimental- we are trying to find new and better ways of organising our society as well as ourselves. We clearly haven’t hit upon the perfect formula yet, because we are still fighting for justice, peace and equality. Part of the joy of being an activist is working out solutions to the problems we are faced with, but I am hesitant to work with those who label me as one of the problems. For me, fighting for social change is about confronting and dismantling oppression- not replicating it. It’s about affirming a trust in people’s abilities, not undermining the potential for resistance. We cannot hope to build a more equal and just society if we base our movement on hierarchy, authority and distrust.