I’m sure your thoughts are with Japan. If not, read now. The death count is unbearable, the initial Hollywood-style video footage has become merely a prelude to the suffering which is happening in its wake.

Reactor explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi plant

In Haiti last year, the earthquake brought with it artificial disasters: US imperialism. the squabbling cash divisions of NGOs, everything except real Haitian government. Now in Japan the natural, unchangeable series of events have been worsened by the Nuclear material artificially created and left in its path. The exploding reactors are not merely a part of the natural disaster, they are an avoidable exacerbation of suffering.

A friend of mine said to me earlier today “It’s times like this that I wish I hadn’t studied physics at University.” Most of us don’t understand what the effects to a nuclear disaster in Japan would be, but many who do are saying that this is worse than the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago.

Nuclear power and weapons have not gone away, we have merely taken them out of public thought. And the horrors of nuclear material remain. This is the kind of disaster which has made so many of us oppose nuclear power even in the face of climate change, even in the face of those citing the clean, safe, responsible nature of modern nuclear technology. It’s only purpose is to secure short term profit, never mind the human cost it has levied for decades in Japan, Russia and beyond. It isn’t clean, and it isn’t safe.

If any good can come out of this disaster, maybe it is that we can finally end the absurd calls for increased nuclear power, and turn our backs on its foul technology, and overturn a politics which puts short-term profit over life itself.

Guest post from Danny Chivers, one of six defendants whose charges were dropped in Nottingham Crown Court this week, following revelations about an undercover police officer who had infiltrated the UK’s environmental protest movement. Here, Danny explains the extraordinary events that led to the collapse of his trial, and what they tell us about the policing of protest in Britain today. Cross posted from the New Internationalist magazine.

Soaring ambitions

Being arrested and charged with a crime you didn’t commit is far less glamorous in real life than in the movies. It happened to me just before midnight, on April 12th 2009. I was huddled in my sleeping bag on a cold school floor in Nottingham when the police burst in to arrest me and 113 others in a highly controversial ‘pre-emptive’ raid on a meeting of climate campaigners. It was the biggest pre-emptive environmental protest arrest in British history, and the starting point for a truly bizarre sequence of events involving a ‘conspiracy to commit trespass’, an undercover police officer, a world-famous climate scientist, a coal-fired power station, two crown court trials, a spectacular legal U-turn and the greatest piece of climate activism that never was. Let me explain.

Back in early 2009, I was discreetly invited along to a special climate action meeting. To preserve maximum secrecy, we were given few details in advance: all I knew was that an action was being planned relating to coal and climate change. To learn more I needed to meet an early-morning minibus on Sunday April 12th, which would take me to a day-long briefing. After the briefing, I’d be able to decide whether or not to take part in the action, which would start the next day.

Apparently, attending a meeting and listening to some action briefings was enough for me to be arrested, photographed, fingerprinted, have my DNA taken, and be held in a police cell for nearly 20 hours.

Our meeting-place turned out to be a series of rooms round the back of a school in Nottingham, which were soon packed out with over 100 people from all over the country. Most, like me, knew no details of the proposed action until the briefings began. The fact that so many people had chosen to heed a climate action call-out based on trust alone impressed me greatly: the UK climate movement was clearly growing both in numbers and determination.

Ratcliffe power station. Photo by ratcliffeontrial.org

The plan was jaw-droppingly audacious: to invade and occupy Ratcliffe-on-Soar, the second-largest coal-fired power station in the country, and ‘calmly but firmly’ shut it down for a week. Briefings throughout the afternoon and evening laid out the plan in detail; we were shown how to use climbing equipment and lock-on devices, told our legal rights and given exhaustive health and safety information. Apparently, shutting the power station for a week would prevent the release of 150,000 tonnes of climate-wrecking CO2, saving lives, homes and livelihoods around the world. No-one in the UK would lose electric power while the station was shut down, thanks to the National Grid.

A premature ejection

Finally, at half eleven in the evening, the briefings drew to a close and I found a spot to curl up in my sleeping bag and collect my thoughts. The action was due to happen the next day: would I be joining them?

We’ll never know the answer to that question, because at that moment there was a banging at the door, and several hundred police officers smashed their way into the school. The lights went up, and before I knew what was going on the room was full of nervous-looking cops and there was a pair of handcuffs on my wrists. We were held there for what seemed like hours as the police tramped around the building barking into their radios, but eventually all 114 of us were shepherded into police vans. Apparently, attending a meeting and listening to some action briefings was enough for me to be arrested, photographed, fingerprinted, have my DNA taken, and be held in a police cell for nearly 20 hours. All 114 arrestees had their phones, wallets and money confiscated, before being released onto the streets of Nottingham in the middle of the night. Many people also had their homes raided or were given restrictive bail conditions.

As if all of this wasn’t dramatic enough, we now know that one of the 114 at the meeting was not what he seemed: he was, in fact, undercover police officer Mark Kennedy of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. He had been living a secret double life as environmental activist ‘Mark Stone’ for the previous six years.

The punishment lottery

This charge couldn’t even be described as thoughtcrime. Perhaps it was pondercrime? Mullingitovercrime? It gets stranger. All 114 of us were initially charged with the unusual crime of ‘Conspiracy to Commit Aggravated Trespass’ – a charge that had never before been tried in a British court, and so required special permission from the Attorney General. Over the following year, charges were dropped against 88 of the arrestees, leaving 26 of us ‘lucky winners’ to face trial at Nottingham Crown Court (while Aggravated Trespass is a minor crime normally dealt with by a magistrate, anything involving Conspiracy has to go in front of a jury at the Crown Court). Exactly why this particular group of 26 was singled out has never been explained by the prosecutors; there was no obvious common factor to distinguish us from the rest of the 114.

It turned out that twenty of the remaining defendants had indeed been intending to go on the action – they’d either been involved in the earlier planning stages before the meeting, or had made up their minds upon hearing the briefings. These twenty declared that they were still not guilty of any crime, because their actions would have been legally justified: the emissions from coal power stations cause climate change, leading to death and destruction around the world. This means that temporarily closing one down would prevent a far greater crime from occurring and thus be justified in law. Against all the odds, they persuaded the judge to allow this defence to be run, and their trial date was set for November 2010.

The first 20 Ratcliffe defendants outside court. Photo by ratcliffeontrial.org

Meanwhile, the remaining six of us were in a different position: we hadn’t yet made up our minds when the police arrived, and so were essentially on trial for thinking about taking climate action. This charge couldn’t even be described as thoughtcrime (as coined by George Orwell in ‘1984’) – perhaps it was pondercrime? Mullingitovercrime? The prosecution, on the other hand, maintained that everyone at the April meeting had known – and approved of – the action plan before they arrived at the school. This separate, second trial was set for the 10th January 2011.

The outing

Our defences were submitted in early 2010 and we spent the rest of that year furiously preparing for our respective trials, each slated to last around three weeks. But then things took another unlikely twist. By October 2010, some friends of Mark ‘Stone’ had grown increasingly suspicious about his comings and goings. They investigated, and discovered documents in his real name. They then confronted him, and he confessed that he had indeed been a serving police officer from the time he turned up in Nottingham in 2003 until at least 2009, including the time of the Nottingham arrests.

This was a shocking revelation for the UK climate movement. Officer Kennedy – in his role as Mark Stone – had been present at almost every major environmental protest of the last seven years. I’d encountered him once or twice – he seemed to be a trusted and useful activist, particularly with regard to his driving and climbing skills.

Giant banner drop at Didcot in 2006 (Mark Kennedy is the climber under the banner). Photo by Hugh Warwick

I now know (from some of my fellow arrestees) that he had been involved in planning the Ratcliffe-on-Soar action from the very beginning. It turns out that when a small group of people first hatched the power station invasion plan back in January 2009, they needed a trusted driver to help them scope out the site – so they gave Mark Stone a call. He showed them round the location, pointing out useful access points and footpaths, and helped make a film of the site to show at the April briefing day. He was also lined up for some key roles in the action itself. According to one of the other arrestees, Mark was going to drive people to the power station and then climb under the coal conveyor belt, suspending himself there to prevent it being switched back on. He was at the whole of the Sunday briefing, apparently preparing himself for these roles, and was arrested with everyone else when the police arrived.

Failures of justice

Once we’d got over the initial shock, we realised that this had serious implications for the six of us in the second trial. Kennedy was at the Nottingham school for the whole of that April briefing meeting, and must have submitted some kind of report of the day to his superiors. That report would show that most people at the meeting didn’t know the plan in advance, and be of great use in our defence. Surely the prosecution must have known that this evidence existed – which means they must have chosen to conceal it and continue with the case regardless.

People involved in our defence made some attempts to contact Kennedy (who was now apparently in the US) by email to see if he would be willing to provide material himself to support our case. He initially seemed willing, claiming that he wanted to ‘do the right thing’, but then later withdrew the offer. To be honest, we’d never really expected him to help – we’re not so foolish as to trust the guy an inch – but his emails suggested that he had indeed provided the police with evidence that would support our defence. Our lawyers sent an initial disclosure request to the prosecution, asking that they provide that evidence.

Meanwhile, the first twenty defendants were launching into their own trial, explaining that their plan to occupy a power station was justified in law. They ran a powerful defence, backed up by a hard-hitting team of expert witnesses including world-renowned climate scientist James Hansen. Over three weeks of evidence, they showed that they were planning to close the power station carefully and safely, in order to prevent real and measurable damage from climate change. It’s well worth reading the full story of their trial at ratcliffeontrial.org/blog.

Unfortunately, despite a highly positive summing-up by judge Jonathan Teare, they were eventually found guilty. Teare, who had clearly been very impressed by their defence, said he was handing down the most lenient sentences that he could (mostly conditional discharges, some community service and some costs), and told them ‘You are all decent men and women with a genuine concern for others’ and ‘I have no doubt that each of you acted with the highest possible motives’.

Collapse of judgment

And so we come to the final surprising chapter in this unlikely tale. Last week, the defence lawyers for the remaining six defendants sent a further demand to the prosecution for all evidence relating to Kennedy. Less than 48 hours later, the prosecution suddenly announced that ‘new evidence had come to light’ that ‘seriously undermined’ their case, and so they were withdrawing from the trial.

Surely the prosecution must have known that this evidence existed – which means they must have chosen to conceal it and continue with the case regardless.

After hanging over our heads for 20 months, the charges against us evaporated just days before the trial was due to start. The prosecution are claiming that their decision was ‘not due to the existence of an undercover officer’ – but note the careful wording here. We firmly believe that this trial collapsed not because of the existence of the officer, but because of the existence of evidence from that officer, evidence that would have supported our defence. Rather than disclose that evidence – which could have exonerated us, exposed the fact that they’d been sitting on it all along, and given the world further insights into the murky Kennedy affair – they chose to drop the case.

When tactics collide

This is a story woven from many different tangled (and unusual) threads, so it’s hardly surprising that the mainstream media have struggled to get their facts straight. Some outlets have been wrongly reporting that the case was withdrawn because Kennedy was about to speak up in our defence. In fact, he did no such thing – we were rescued from a wrongful prosecution by the courageous activists who exposed Mark Kennedy back in October. If they hadn’t uncovered him, we’d have never known about the crucial missing evidence in our case and we’d still be on trial at Nottingham Crown Court at this very moment. This, then, is a story about one repressive police tactic (mass pre-emptive arrest and conspiracy charges) being undermined by a different repressive police tactic (the infiltration of the UK environmental movement).

These are the tactics we have come to expect from a police force that seems determined to silence dissent at all costs.

The presence of Kennedy from the earliest stages of the planning of the Ratcliffe action throws up further worrying questions: if the police wanted to prevent the power station invasion, why didn’t they use Kennedy’s information to halt the action easily (and cheaply) in January 2009, when only a few people were involved? Instead, they waited until 113 campaigners (and one police officer) were gathered in one place, and launched a mass arrest costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, followed by a lengthy and expensive legal process. Why else would they do this, other than to gather information on climate campaigners (including names, addresses, photos, fingerprints and DNA), and to try to deter as many people as possible from future involvement in political direct action?

A heavy hand

This fits neatly into the now-familiar pattern of the excessive policing of protest across the board. From the unlawful blanket stops-and-searches, surveillance and mass confiscations of protesters’ property at the Kingsnorth Climate Camp in 2008, to the lethally aggressive policing of the G20 protests in 2009, to the 2010 student protests where schoolchildren were held in freezing conditions for hours, unarmed students were beaten and charged with horses and one protester was dragged violently out of his wheelchair; these are the tactics we have come to expect from a police force that seems determined to silence dissent at all costs. The Nottingham mass arrests and the Kennedy undercover operation give us two further shocking examples to add to the list.

The police are pouring huge resources into oppressive anti-protest tactics which protect, not the public, but the profits of corporations and the reputation of government. Is that really what the police force is meant to be doing?

This isn’t the Sopranos. Mark Kennedy wasn’t infiltrating the mob. He was embedded for seven years, at huge public expense, in a network of environmental and social activists. These are people who organise protest camps, blockades, sit-ins and occupations; they disrupt polluting companies, embarrass the government, raise the profile of crucial issues and challenge the status quo, but they don’t represent a threat to the public. In fact, their aim is to protect the public from, amongst other things, disastrous climate change. Despite this, the police are pouring huge resources into oppressive anti-protest tactics which protect, not the public, but the profits of corporations and the reputation of government. Is that really what the police force is meant to be doing? Is it really what you want it to be doing?

In this time of dangerous climate change, we need a powerful grassroots movement for climate justice more than ever. The good news is that, despite the best efforts of the British police, this movement is here and it’s growing: defendants in both cases have been overwhelmed by the support they’ve received from the public. Let’s just hope that the criticism heaped on the police this week can help to push back their worst excesses, and create more space for our vital protest movements – whether they’re tackling climate change, government cuts or other social justice issues – to grow and to flourish.

There’s a song by the short-lived and under appreciated British rock band The Jeevas, fronted by Kula Shaker singer Crispian Mills, called How Much do You Suck and it goes a little bit like this:

How much do you have to suck
To lose a popularity contest to Saddam Hussein
You’d have to be a sleaze
An oil-drilling fiend
How much do you suck?

Simple, effective, gets its point across, no prizes for guessing which ex President of America that one’s about. Sadly not all propaganda is quite as successful in communicating a clear message. Take the recent No Pressure video from the 10:10 campaign which has been causing quite a stirthis weekend for all the wrong reasons, for example.

It’s hard not to wonder how any right minded eco activist in the 10:10 campaign could have thought a film by Richard Curtis was a good idea in the first place, let alone a film about blowing kids up for expressing apathy over the issue of climate change. I suppose it could have been worse. It could have starred Hugh Grant.

There is a degree to which I think the anti-science loonies in the climate change deniers camp need to develop a bit of a sense of humour. South Park makes socio-political points in much more controversial ways every week. This video was clearly designed to tap into that kind of humour to make the point that softy-softly approaches to getting people to bring down their carbon emissions just won’t work anymore, that there has to be pressure because the millions of people who are having their lives destroyed by the effects of climate change are already feeling the pressure themselves.

But was that message successful? Clearly not if all the headlines that have followed have been about teachers blowing up kids, the most charitable finding fault with the judgement and humour of the campaign, the least holding it up as an example of the extreme and dangerous misanthropy of the ‘eco fascists’ and ‘climate tyrants’. Those holding the latter opinion, much like those who believe in fairies, Father Christmas or intelligent design, are not likely to be swayed by a more reasonable argument, or a more nuanced piece of propaganda. But if the wider public watching this video come away without knowing quite what the environmentalists were trying to say beyond ‘agree with us or we’ll blow you up’, then clearly this video is a bit of an own goal.

In other news, which has caused much less of a stir, Osama bin Laden has come out calling for action against climate change. Going by some of his past stunts, not least the demolition of a couple of rather famous buildings in downtown Manhettan nearly a decade ago, bin Laden is not exactly known for his overwhelming popularity, the subtlety of his attempts to get his point across, or the effectiveness of his public relations exercises. Which makes one wonder. How much do you have to suck to lose a popularity contest with Osama bin Laden?

In the Huffington Post, the co-founder of 350.org has written a piece titled ‘David Brought A Slingshot, Not A Suit‘, in which the environmental organiser reveals his true colours. It’s too late for lobbying, he cries. That just didn’t work. It’s time to move on from matching the oil companies dollar for dollar. It’s time to take serious action. I like what I’m reading. And then out comes the big idea: work.

Yes, the nice folks at 350.org have discovered the idea of work as a solution to a problem. This is meant to be an answer to those annoying critics who say ‘all you do is moan, where are your alternatives?’ Well, 10:10 have got the answer. At the beginning of this year 10:10 began designing their new campaign, having got to… well, 2010. So cutting 10% of your emissions isn’t enough. No, now we need to work.

There is of course a burning parrallel between this tactic and the Big Society. Running out of cash (or realising that you’ll never have the capital of the capitalists) means that we all need to do our bit for the green movement, by volunteering in autonomous projects. Across the world, 10:10:10 will be organising ‘work parties’ on October 10th, 2010. No, I didn’t make that up, the phrase really is ‘work party’, as if the last 150 years of continued leftist critique of the concept of work never happened.

It’s amazing that from the most image concious of groups, they still end up with the most liberal, reformist concept ever: hey, you know what you should do on your day off? Come to a work party! Even his version of ‘work’ is absurd: Henn includes ‘making phone calls’ in his list of things to do to save the world. I like the idea of fixing bikes and cooking meals (maybe even banner and placard making? door knocking?), but counting phone calls as non-lobbyist work shows just how far some NGOs have forgotten the historical roots of protest and radical reform. Of course, there are victories to be won, and some of them will come from lobbying governments, as unsuccessful and dispiriting as that is most of the time. So while the coalition of 10:10:10 continue their epic ascent into liberal heaven, I’ll still support comrades at Greenpeace and WDM who are pushing for the change we need.

There have been some good noises coming from 350.org, asking for the way forward to take direct action, yet again it’s filled with a pacifist, sectarian attitude which says: ‘peaceful protest only, and let’s make sure we don’t get infiltrated by trouble makers.’ Despite this attitude, thankfully radical climate action continues to happen, from the mountain tops of the Appalachian range, to the coal ports of Australia, and let’s not forget the activists from Copenhagen who are about to go on trial, after 10 months of police harassment for not towing the line.

It hasn’t been long since those talks, but already we’re seeing a change in mood regarding climate change. The government has so clearly dropped any climate action, that I feel many liberals are have realised that a stronger kind of action is needed. Let’s hope that when it comes to it, we have the courage to put down tools, and pick up the slingshots.

This piece is part diary, part analysis, about the Edinburgh Climate Camp, and I’ve *tried* to write it in a way that’s of interest to people with no knowledge of the camp as well as people who went along. If you want to know why we went to Edinburgh, give my pre-camp post a glance. There are already some ace blog posts about the Climate Camp: a good round-up by Amelia, a hearty anti-liberal rant by lasophielle, and a Scottish perspective from Harry which I highly recommend, particularly for anyone who went to the camp.

Small-Scale Revolution
On Wednesday at 9pm nearly 100 people, under the cover of darkness, and without a copper in sight, got onto RBS territory at Gogarburn, and started unloading trucks full of marquees and plumbing. It took RBS security a good 10 minutes to realise we were on the back lawn of the global headquarters, and the police another 5 on top of that. Let’s just get that again: around 100 amateur radicals, pulling off a secret action successfully, under the noses of arguably the biggest bank in the UK. Okay, so it’s Spy Kids, but frankly it’s bloody cool.

photo: amelia gregory

A lot of the secrecy stuff is, I’m sure, based on what is second nature to various kinds of software programmers, network managers and certain kinds of military and police personnel, so this isn’t to say that the skills in Climate Camp are unique. This goes for all the practical skills needed to put on a Climate Camp: plumbing, electrics, carpentry – all these things aren’t exactly rare.

What makes the camp quite different though, is that the vast majority of people involved don’t do these things professionally. This means that the form of mutual aid practised at the camp actually pushes away from the kind of monotonous labour-specialisation that the modern world offers us: it gives a chance for everyone to pitch in with other activities, in a way that actually has quite a lot of responsibility attached to it, not just as a hobby on the side.

So while the camp isn’t a solution in itself, I think it does offer some breathing space away from contemporary work patterns as much as it does economic ones (note that the camp works on a donation basis, and there are no commodities or the like sold on site). This doesn’t mean that the camp addresses fundamental issues like commodification on any profound or serious level, but people are transformed in their engagement with the camp, in small ways, and quite slowly. This is why I think it’s a small-scale revolution: like a Hornby™ revolution perhaps. But it’s also a dry-run: if the revolution needs practical skills, I know where I’m looking for them.

Towards A Class Analysis Of Landscape Gardening
The fields we built our camp in were RBS owned property. We held that site, and kept setting up for 3 days, though the RBS media machine would have it, peculiarly, that they ‘showed us the right place to camp’ when we got there. However, while RBS understandably didn’t want us there, and turned up the pressure to leave at 1pm on Wednesday (Section 60 stop and searches, heavy police road blockades, etc), there is something we shared with them: a taste in gardens.

Everyday I had a conversation with someone about how beautiful the site was, with its mixture of wheat and long grasses, the scenic clumps of trees complete with small frogs and the occasional adder, the clover and moss paths that wound over the hill and round the back of the meadows, the small bridge folly over the moat.

I suspect that there’s a lesson here about the bourgeois nature of environmentalist aesthetics. There’s certainly something fishy about the innocent-smoothie-style, happy-go-bunting imagery that occasionally bubbles over Climate Camp propaganda; something which shares a feel with the beautiful, semi-wild gardens of RBS’ choosing.

I’m not sure what an anti-capitalist critique of gardens would be, but I imagine it would be along the lines of ‘man and nature shouldn’t be separated; let’s do away with the manipulation of our environment to create a space that breaks down the boundaries of artificiality/ nature.’ Well, we didn’t do that. We enjoyed the landscaped, semi-18th century garden RBS’ landscapers designed as much as anyone.

How To Lay Siege To A Bank, Medieval Style
What came to pass in Gogarburn was essentially a distorted form of a medieval siege. An army of tents were set up directly overlooking RBS headquarters, complete with watchtower. Their shiny glass walls reflected our brightly coloured bunting. On Sunday evening hundred of activists swarmed on to the manicured back lawn of the headquarters, totally outfoxing the police once again, and a couple of windows were smashed. The fortress-like building itself became the target.

the rhino siege tower (photo: amelia gregory)

On the Monday, the day of action, the watchtower became converted into a rolling siege tower, complete with wheels and a rhinoceros head. Toy bows and arrows were made, and most impressively, the Molassapult: a catapult which threw molasses at the Headquarters. The sheer imagination of the actions was astounding. Most of these were in Edinburgh proper: the Cairn Energy molasses oil spill; the Lady Gaga spoof song ‘Dirty Oil’; all those white biohazard suits.

If Climate Camp was previously thought to be too slick and rehearsed, this was the remedy: anarchic, clowning, messy and really very surreal. No one who was there will forget the image of 40 police kitting up and looking scared shitless at the site of a 0.001mph moving papier-mâché and chicken-wire-rhino siege tower.

A few smashed windows, lots of subvertising, blockades of offices and a good swathe of molasses found that nice balance between mayhem and publicity stunt. The smashed windows alone will have sent RBS’ insurance premiums through the roof, never mind the gardening costs. Of course, there’s a serious question about the effects of inflicting economic damage on a bank that it basically owned by the state – it’s theoretically the taxpayer who loses out. But I don’t think anyone could argue that’s what will actually happen: it’s not as if the profits of RBS are currently being ploughed into the common good.

How do you take action against a bank? Well, I think the Edinburgh camp made a start at showing some ways forward. It’s not an easy thing to do, and the G20 Bank of England protests certainly didn’t achieve it. The Climate Camp definitely felt better than telling people to put their money in the Co-op or pull back from the capitalist system all together by investing in a extra-security mattress. This felt closer to the real thing: you stand outside, brandish your pots and pans, and run straight at it.

the molassapult (photo: tim morozzo)

I think the medieval feel came from the demonstration of our own powerlessness to which I alluded earlier, but also from a very practical consideration. There’s only so far we can go when up against the police before we’re classed as being a real threat, and therefor liable to far more oppressive reactions. A siege tower is one thing; a car driving at the fences would have been another. This is how I think we end up with the weird pre-modern (or what Antonio Negri might call alter-modern) protest form of the medieval siege: it’s the confrontational public mass actions pushed to the edge, without becoming and out-and-out military attack. Instead, people were quite happy to settle for the wacky races version of insurrectionism.

Broadcasting In Austerity
On the weekend there was lots of positive mainstream media coverage of the camp in the Scottish press: pictures of tents and campers, and lots of messages about RBS and climate change getting through. However, when it came to the day of mass action, the press just couldn’t cope. Too lazy to actually do any reporting, they just printed whatever press releases got sent to them. Many of these came from activists, but there were also several from the police, including two which made totally false allegations about a phantom oil slick.

Now, this attitude to printing press releases without checking them seems to have become a trend in journalism. I think it’s got worse since the financial crisis: many newspapers, faced with decreasing advertisement revenues, have simply fired their subeditors, and the journalists are overworked for low pay, pay which is  kept down by temps and interns on precarious contracts.

However, as Reuben pointed out on this blog last week, it’s not just about bad wages, but also the rise of totally free online content:

It was arguably naive for us all to assume that we could suddenly get journalistic content for free … without the product itself being altered … The age of online freeganism could prove deeply problematic both for journalists and those of us who have an interest in quality journalism.

The dominance of online media as a method of publication and broadcast had an upside and a downside. On the upside, our weird acts of spectacle could be easily turned into little pieces of information and sent around the world without any checks. The disparity in technology is really quite ironic: our medieval siege tower and catapult could be photographed, filmed and tweeted on the latest MacBooks, iPhones and Nikons, even though they themselves were constructed out of ticcy-taccy.

The downside, of course, is that all this can just as easily be done by canny police or lazy journalists. The net effect is that while there was a lot of ‘social media’ work done at the Camp, in the end it was the same tactics being used by the police which, seized the day and smeared the protests.

As is so often the case, the response to this might need to be a two-pronged approach, particularly as resistance grows against austerity measures over the next few years. On the one hand, as Reuben advocates, that means defending the ability for professional journalists to still produce some kind of high quality reporting; on the other it means taking our alternative media networks much more seriously, and putting the time into making them work.

All That Anarchist Shit
This, I think, is quite similar to the politics of the Climate Camp: pushing for reforms (e.g. an end to RBS investing in fossil fuels) while creating space to create far wider change. In the wee small hours of the morning after the last day of camp, a group of us drove far out of Edinburgh, away from the camp site, along with a truck loaded up with wheelie bins of human shit. High up in the Scottish hills, overlooking a beautiful loch, we unloaded our cargo, shovelling the waste material of 700 campers into hastily constructed composting crates. Penny Red might think just using the compost loos alone is commitment enough: let me tell you, there’s greater commitment than that.

Maybe that’s the difference between a socialist and an anarchist: while the one might be up for a bit of discomfort, the other gets right in there.

Guest post by Roland Miller McCall

Australia went to the polls today after the most mundane election campaigns anyone can remember. Neither Labor nor the Coalition opposition has engaged with the big issues nor proposed a vision for Australia’s future. In recent days the debate has descended into high farce with the defining issue of a substanceless campaign being a debate about whether there would be another leader’s debate.

The Labor Government is led by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who barely two months ago sensationally ousted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Labor had spooked at Rudd’s declining popularity and without any warning the Parliamentary Party installed Gillard after a late night coup. The Welsh born Gillard, who is Australia’s first female Prime Minister is an unmarried, childless atheist (the latter being her most controversial attribute).

Her opponent Tony Abbott, also British-born, is the leader of the ineptly named Liberal Party of Australia (the Conservatives). Abbott is a macho, straight-talking, Rhodes Scholar, surfer and onetime trainee-Catholic priest. An archconservative from the right of the Liberal Party he is the ideological heir of former PM John Howard. Abbott is often called the ‘mad monk’ of Australian politics and is known for espousing such as that girls should preserve their virginity as a “precious gift” for the wedding night.

Yet despite much being at stake, including whether we elect one of the most conservative Prime Ministers we have ever had, it is a hard one to get enthused about. Immigration, largely at the behest of the Liberal Party has once again come to dominate the political agenda. Despite receiving a tiny fraction of Europe’s asylum seekers, the presence of several thousand refugees or ‘Boat People’ arriving on our shores each year is apparently something that keeps the ‘swinging voter’ up at night. Australia, at least in its marginal seats, seems unable to escape its xenophobic past. The Liberals are planning to use the Royal Australian Navy to “STOP THE BOATS”, while Labor is promising to process asylum seekers in East Timor.

Arguably, much of the blame for the dullness of the campaign and lack of progressive agenda rests with Labor. Unfortunately Australian Labor displays much of the ideological bankruptcy of its British counterpart. Indeed, many of Gillard’s key policies bear the hallmark of New Labour. A friend recently asked “why are we copying all the policies that tried and failed in the UK about five years ago…are these people in some drugged out timewarp?!” My reply was that this was hardly surprising when it is considered that Gillard’s key policy advisor and deputy chief of staff is Tom Bentley, a former Blair advisor. Ultimately, Australia Labor’s, like British Labour’s, lack of progressive agenda can be put down the reality it is now the party of the middle classes. Both parties have struggled to redefine their ideology after abandoning their working class roots.

Yet for all Labor’s failings, as someone who grew up during John Howard’s decade of conservative rule, the last few years under Labor have been a welcome change. Gone are John Howard’s Thatcherite policies of undermining workers rights and the slashing of public spending (he based much of his ideology Thatcher’s). Labor has begun righting many of these wrongs and delivered modest increases in health and education spending. Amongst its major achievements were delivering a long over due apology to a generation of indigenous children who had been removed from their parents. Labor also ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which John Howard had spent a decade refusing to sign.

Climate change is the issue on which Labor has been most disappointing. In 2007, it was the defining issue of a campaign that was referred to the “the world’s first climate change election.” Australian’s had grown tired of Howard’s continued scepticism and wanted real and decisive action. Rudd and Labor promised much but delivered little. In fairness, the emissions trading scheme that was the centerpiece of Labor’s policy was rejected three times by the Australian Senate. But much of the blame rests with Labor for delivering legislation that in trying to satisfy both environmentalist and polluter alike ended up satisfying neither. Much of the blame can also be placed on the Liberal Party, which negotiated a compromise with the government, before the climate denying wing of the party got the numbers and dumped their leader, Malcolm Turnbull. In his place they installed Tony Abbott; a climate sceptic once described climate science as “absolute crap.” Abbott immediately went on the attack against what he called a “Great Big New Tax”, which combined with the disappointment from Copenhagen saw Labor lose its nerve.

In March 2010, Rudd announced that any emissions trading scheme be postponed until 2013. Rudd’s willingness to abandon action on an issue he emphatically described as “the greatest moral challenge of our time” was terminal to his popularity, which instantly plummeted along with his political fortunes. As Fairfax columnist Peter Hartcher commented, “Voters, especially Labor voters, [saw] the surrender on the scheme as evidence of a Labor Party that doesn’t believe in anything, a self-perpetuating patronage machine no longer willing to fight for any cause.”

Climate change has now played a role in the demise of at least two Liberal opposition leaders and a Liberal and Labor Prime Minister. These politicians have been unable to reconcile the competing, if not irreconcilable demands, of some of the world’s largest resource companies with a population who wants action to reduce emissions. Gillard has attempted to avoid this political deathtrap by deferring action until there is “a broad consensus in the community.” To achieve this several weeks ago Tom Bentley devised a Citizens Assembly of 150 randomly selected people who would meet and talk climate change. Such a ludicrous policy instantly ended Gillard’s honeymoon period as people questioned what she and the rest of Labor stood for.

Whatever happens today, the one thing that is almost certain is that the Australian Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate. They already have five Senators and are likely to gain two more. This will give them the power to block or amend legislation and potentially place them in a position to break the climate change policy deadlock. It will be their coming of age as a third force in Australian politics and whether they are able to meet the expectation of their supporters while reaching compromise on legislation with government remains to be seen. The Greens also have a chance of winning their first House of Representatives seat in the inner city electorate of Melbourne.

In the House of Representatives things are less clear-cut. At this stage it looks like although the Liberals inched ahead several weeks ago Labor appears to have clawed back a narrow lead. Although Labor is certain to lose seats in New South Wales and Queensland it looks like the party will retain power with a small majority on the basis of Greens preferences (Australia has a preferential system of voting). In all likelihood, hopefully the Gillard Labor government will be returned. Labor’s election slogan may be “Let’s move Australian forward’s” and despite there being very little indication about what this means, the one thing that is certain is that Tony Abbott and the Liberals would genuinely take Australia backwards. It’s going to be a long night tonight and while Labor may have its flaws it sure beats the alternative.

For the last two years or so, I have been engaging in a dastardly plot to destroy the Tory party. Yes, by writing silly outraged-liberal letters to my Conservative MP – to which she must respond – on matters she ultimately doesn’t care about, I’ll hopefully waste enough Tory time and resources to destroy the party from within. I’ve had mixed success so far.

A resident of Chipping Barnet, I live in a Tory safe seat – someone once said you could put a blue ribbon on a cabbage and it would get elected here – but at least my representative isn’t a total dinosaur. Theresa Villiers has been criticised by some cunts in the party for her liberal views on social issues – she voted to keep the abortion limit at 24 weeks, for which I thanked her – and her environmental record; she’s opposed airport expansion in the South of England and puts much emphasis on high-speed rail. She also gave Michael Gove a very public bollocking after his department refused academy status to a local school. A good egg, then, as far as Tories go.

One week I read this:

Cameron has put the man most to blame for the worst environmental disaster in living memory in charge of his cuts agenda, and appointed a man who has faced accusations of wriggling out of cleaning up a environmental atrocity to run his party’s finances. He has slashed programmes to prevent global warming first and hardest. He has decreed that the Department of Transport will take the hardest cuts, which will shutter much of our public transport network and force far more people onto smoggier roads. And he has appointed an oilman to ensure we begin deep-water drilling, Gulf of Mexico-style, off the coast of Britain – just as every newscast in the world is showing how well that turns out. Johann Hari, The Independent. Read the full thing here: http://bit.ly/c47OeU

The Department of Transport, you say? Why my liberally-prone constituency MP heads that department. Surely I should bring this to her attention, and get some sort of comment.

What did my MP have to say?

I appreciate your taking the time to let me know your views. I have noted your comments with regard to the appointment of John Browne [the former BP exec who oversaw a radical cuts agenda in the corporation that led to the deaths of several employees in oil rig explosions. He was also found to have lied in court about the whole thing. This man is now the government's 'Cuts Tsar'].

I am afraid that my responsibilities as Minister for Transport mean that I have to take care in relation to areas where my work in Government overlaps with cases I take up for constituents.

As recommended by the Ministerial Code, I am therefore passing your correspondence to officials at the Department for Transport to consider. They will be in touch in due course; and will keep me informed.

Thank you again for writing.

Kind regards

Theresa

What the fucking fuck????

It seems my MP has a hard time reconciling her constituents’ dual lives as both residents of  Barnet and transport users. And as for this ‘Ministerial Code’, I do appreciate having my ‘correspondence’ passed along to some unaccountable bureaucrat in the Ministry; I hope he gave it a thorough ponder before binning it.

I know what some of you will be thinking. What was I expecting? Did I think she was going to bravely resign in protest, spurred on by my letter? Well maybe not. But this woman is perfectly comfortable publicly admonishing a fellow member of the government for not granting academy status to a place with a rock-solid reputation as a shit-street sink school. Yet not a titter on this.

In particular that second paragraph is bugging me. Can someone please help me decipher this?

Anyway, my stern weekly letters have yet to end the government, but at least I’ve got one more Tory to loathe inflexibly.

Well, you’d be wrong of course. A few years ago, RBS launched a self-branding scheme as ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’. Some bright spark in marketing pointed out that this was probably a social faux-pas among the millions of people concerned about climate change, resource wars and the middle eastern situation, so it got moved to the side. But that phrase does reflect the reality of the bank. In the first 6 months after the bail out, RBS was still the biggest financier of fossil fuel industries in the UK.

When it comes to climate change, there’s been a lot of bullshit from both sides. In the run up to Copenhagen, there was the awful UEA affair (for which the Press Complaints Commission is finally getting some grovelling apologies), and the rise of the somewhat senseless idea that ‘now the recession’s here, no one cares about climate change’, which would make sense if it weren’t for the shared causes of both crises.

But from the other side, those purporting to be concerned about climate change, there’s also been a wave of crap. Tck Tck Tck, the online campaign spearheaded by internet-savvy videos and texts, failed to move people into action, but also failed to say anything interesting.

The UN Summit was a trade agreement, just like WTO or G20, and so was filled with the usual imperialist bullying from the ‘big powers’, all under the auspices of benefitting the little guy. Instead of ‘trickle down economics’ however, the white-wash (or green-wash, as it’s come to be known) was ‘Solving Climate Change’. But all three mechanisms (CDM, REDD & Carbon trading) that the UN has in its solution-bag do the same thing: transfer capital from poor states to rich states, and increase the control of the Global North by covering up their carbon emissions.

So it’s not really surprising that RBS continues to finance fossil fuels, or that the UN agreements will fail to do anything about emission levels, or that the petitions of NGOs have been pretty much ignored. And the crimes of RBS’s capital just keep going. This week Cairn Energy is seeking money from Vedanta, using profits gained from the exploitation of aluminium on India in order to finance exploration in offshore arctic greenland. Oh look: both Vedanta and Cairn Energy are already majorly financed by? RBS. In fact, the most destructive, fastest expanding and quite simply most gigantic fossil fuel project in the world – the Canadian Tar Sands - is financed by? RBS.

So it turns out, this is what gets people turned on. Despite all the spleen vented about the banks (and the bankers), there’ve been no poll-tax style protests. The G20 protest was precisely that: a G20 protest. An RBS branch window was smashed in (and a 2 year sentence handed out for it) but the protest itself was at a symbolic centre of finance, and not even directly against the Bank of England. While I like the idea of going to ‘the belly of the beast’, there wasn’t exactly a demand to lower interest rates.

The Climate Camp in Edinburgh isn’t going to change the world – in fact, on its own it won’t change RBS for more than a few days, though it might disrupt it a fair bit. But in 2007, when the Climate Camp at Heathrow set up, people didn’t really think the 3rd runway would be scrapped. In 2008, when we set up near Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent, we were planning for a rolling blockade: we didn’t actually think the whole project would be shelved under pressure about the needlessness of new coal.

And in 2010, how many people think we’ll actually change RBS, the banking sector, or the system as a whole? Very few. But we should start to think about what it would mean to win. I doubt that many Bolivian protesters thought that when they started demonstrating against the privatisation of their water by Bechtel, that they would actually throw the company out of the country and elect a new government on that basis. Not exactly my hopes and dreams, but it would be a start.

The Camp is from Thursday August 19th, over the weekend, and the big day of action against RBS (starting with the global HQ) is on Monday 23rd. The exact location of the site itself is still a secret (really, I don’t know where it is), but it’ll be in or very near to Edinburgh. If you can spare the time and train fare, I’ll see you there. And for those who can’t make it, I’ll try and post some stuff up here, but otherwise check out the constantly updated climate camp website, where there’ll be videos and photos posted as the camp progresses.

This is the full version of an article I co-authored with Ambika Hiranandani and Roland Miller McCall which was first published in this month’s New Internationalist

It is said that the cow is the mother of all civilisation. Of all the images of India, few are more enduring or endearing than that of the cow, revered by Hindus for its life-giving milk, roaming free in the city streets. But this postcard picture belies a darker truth. India is one of the world’s largest exporters of leather. And whilst the killing of cows is banned in all but two states, we find that in the world of the illegal leather trade, animal rights abuses and environmental degradation are rife as the country cashes in on its most sacred symbol to meet the Western desire for leather.

“According to many local council laws, slaughter houses need to be licensed,” says Nilesh Bhanage, head of the Plants and Animals Welfare Society. “Many of the other slaughter houses don’t have licences.” Despite stringent laws in place to protect the rights of animals, illegal slaughter houses remain unmonitored and unregulated. A source from one of India’s leading exporters of leather handbags to the UK, who wishes to remain anonymous, informs us that illegal leather is commonly used. “It is often cheaper that way,” they tell us. “It is not a transparent industry. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes to cut costs and make ends meet. Animal rights are greatly compromised.” A leading leather technologist, who also wishes to remain anonymous, estimates that as much as 75% of all Indian leather could be from illegal sources.

The slaughter of cattle is permitted only in West Bengal and Kerala and it is illegal to transport cows for slaughter across state borders. Neither boasts a significant cow population and yet hundreds of thousands of cows are taken to these states from all over India to be killed. “Traders bribe officials to look the other way as they pack the cows into vehicles in such high numbers that their bones break, they suffocate and many die en route to slaughter,” explains Poorva Joshipura, director of PETA Europe. “Thousands of others are made to walk – often without food or water. If they collapse from exhaustion, herders break their tailbones or smear chilli pepper and tobacco in their eyes to make them walk again.”

Animal cruelty in India, however, runs much deeper than the illegal trade. “The treatment of animals in both licensed and unlicensed slaughterhouses is the same,” Joshipura tells us. “In both cases, basic animal protection laws are totally ignored. Animals are dragged into slaughterhouses before they are cut open – often with dirty, blunt knives and in full view of one another – on floors that are covered with faeces, blood, guts and urine.” Some animals, she says, are even skinned and dismembered whilst still conscious.

Operating, as they do, in clear contravention of the law, it is unsurprising that India’s slaughterhouse workers are an infamously reticent bunch. We visited a slaughterhouse near Mumbai in an attempt to see for ourselves the conditions in which animals are killed. “Go away,” they told us. “We will not talk to you.”

Undeterred, we took our concerns to Ali Ahmed Khan, Executive Director of India’s Council for Leather Exports. “On behalf of the Indian leather industry, I would like to reiterate that the industry is indeed concerned and is of the firm opinion that the treatment of animals should be humane,” he tells us. “Animals are slaughtered mainly for the meat and are not being killed for the sake of leather. Hides and skins are recovered as by-products of the meat industry. Thus there are other stakeholders involved in the process of slaughtering of animals.”

“This is a myth,” counters Maneka Gandhi, former Minister for Animal Welfare. As a member of the renowned Nehru-Gandhi family, she has a powerful political name to live up to, but she has made her own name as one of India’s leading animal rights activists. “India is the largest leather manufacturer in the world,” she tells us. “This business running into hundreds of thousands of skins daily is not going to wait for slaughterhouse skins alone.” Although the skins and hides of sheep, pigs and goats are a significant source of material for tanners, Gandhi explains that cattle hides and calf skins account for most footwear and leather goods. “In the Al Kabeer meat processing plant, the animal is skinned while it is still alive and hanging upside down,” she says.

The problems endemic to India’s leather industry go far beyond the slaughter of cattle. “The leather industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world,” says MC Mehta, a leading environmental lawyer who has won a number of landmark cases against India’s tanneries. “In India it is responsible for creating a lot of suffering in peoples lives, by damaging their health and polluting their drinking water.” Large quantities of dangerous chemicals such as chromium are routinely dumped into the rivers. “Many tanneries have closed down and shifted to other states where governments are less vigilant,” Mehta says. Indeed authorities, keen to attract tanneries, often lower pollution standards as a draw card. Special tannery zones have been created with common effluent treatment plants, but Mehta points out that in order to save money on electricity, many operators only turn the plants on during government inspections. Like the cow, the Ganges is sacred to Hindu culture. Like the cow, it is suffering at the hands of the leather industry.

The UK is the third largest importer of Indian leather. Despite the mounting evidence, leading British retailers continue to use Indian leather in their shoes, garments, handbags and furniture. We raised the issue of serious animal cruelty and severe environmental degradation with Harrods and asked them what they were doing to ensure illegal leather did not end up in their products. “Harrods would prefer not to comment on this,” replies Becky Smith, Senior Fashion Press Officer.

Not all British retailers are as tight-lipped about the ethical side of their trade. Marks and Spencer have led the way in trumpeting corporate social responsibility. “As a result of our concerns around the industry, we took a major stance over ten years ago when we became the first major retailer to ban the use of cow hides sourced from India,” the company’s Deputy Head of Corporate PR tells us. Some American retail giants, such as Kenneth Cole and Liz Claiborne, have followed suit by boycotting Indian leather entirely.

But the illegal devastation to the environment and the inhumane treatment of India’s once sacred cows will continue as long as there is a demand for leather. The unfortunate truth that as environmental conservation and animal welfare legislation has been enforced in the West, cruel and destructive practises have been exported to the developing world, means the responsibility is one we all share.

The answer for Maneka Gandhi is clear. “Don’t buy leather,” she says. “The best thing you can do to help these animals is to stop wearing them.”

This week I want to write about three things: a film I watched (Milk), one protest I did go to (the Party at the Pumps) and another I didn’t (the Big Gay Flash Mob). What ties these things together is the idea of an activist community.

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected politician in the States. Having never done anything political before (except vote Republican), at the age of 40 he moved to San Francisco with his new partner, and opened a camera shop. To cut a long story short, the shop became the centre of the gay community in San Francisco, and Harvey became the spokesperson for that community. From boycotts co-organised with the Teamsters, to bringing thousands of gay men onto the streets to demand proper gay rights, the gay community became a movement, and that movement became an electorate.

Harvey was elected, kept fighting, and was eventually assassinated. The excellent film about his life which came out last year is gripping viewing and really should be watched. What got me thinking is the sequence that Harvey and his team made from community, to movement, to electorate. The gay community is a really good example of this: yesterday there was the Big Gay Flash Mob, really quite a good action, highlighting the Tories’ mugwumping over gay rights. While I really wouldn’t want anyone to think it’s okay to vote Tory if they were to have an acceptable gay rights policy, it’s generally a good thing that there’s the ability to call a big, vocal protest at short notice over such an important issue.

The nice pic used for the Big Gay Flashmob fbook group. But who exactly are our masked vigiliantes?

However, on Saturday a friend and I went to the ‘Party at the Pumps’, a very different activist community. In fact, that’s mainly what the community is: one made up of people who believe that activism works. As we got out at Oxford Circus tube station, we looked through the crowds of shoppers, sunglasses on and big square designer bags by their sides, to find the other activists. Pushing through, we looked over everyone’s heads and eventually saw the dreads and beards, the little flags and face paint that says ‘this way for mischief.’

Everyone was gathered at the four different pedestrian corners of Oxford Circus, though there was a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing across the new diagonal crossing. As reclaiming the streets goes, it’s not exactly fighting the system, but it’s pretty liberating if you’ve always been a Londoner and remember going through this every Summer.

Anyway, at 1.30pm on the dot flag-holders started blowing their whistles and everyone piled down into the underground, away from the hustle of shopping central, dreadlocks, poi, fold-up bikes and all. We swarmed down the tube, filling the escalators, making a racket, stuffing ourselves onto the trains (police in tow, of course). At Shepherd’s Bush, the whistles started going off again, and we all piled out of the tube, skirting round the passageways, following the flag-leaders, until escalators climbed and oyster cards beeping, we got out, turned the corner and all ran towards the BP petrol station in sight.

pic by amelia of ameliasmagazine.com

BP are considering going full throttle into extracting oil from the Canadian tar sands, the most destructive and polluting project on the planet. So, in the run up to the BP shareholders’ AGM on Thursday, various eco-protest groups thought we’d try and send BP a message of what we think about their consistent desire to put profit before workers, indigenous rights groups and impending catastrophic climate change.

We occupied the forecourt, and it seems the convenience store owner decided to close-up for the day – which actually wasn’t necessary; I dare say he could’ve sold a fair few beers to us (although it’s good that smoking was kept to a minimum). There were all the good markers of climate activism: samba bands, banner drops, stickers, subvertising, ceilidhs, rebel clowns (even though Jacob seems to think we don’t have such things). We danced, sang, stickered, leafleted everyone around, whether walking past, lounging in the sun or joining in the dance. But when people came to join in, who were they joining?

It’s a strange thing that for the last decade or so, the loudest ‘activist’ network hasn’t explicitly identified itself, or rather, where it comes from. The alter-globalisation movement, the ‘movement of movements’, doesn’t have a resounding socio-economic or legal status with which it campaigns. The gay community, trade unionists, feminists – all of these, to different extents, work towards a world in which not only their campaigns are unnecessary, but they’re communities themselves become absent as a distinguishable unit.

The activist community protests for others, the so-called ‘ethical politics.’ But what I can’t get out of my head is the fact that Harvey Milk, while him and those around him built a movement, could always know exactly who and what they’re community was. As the climate movement flounders post-Copenhagen, it would be good to really come out of the closet and say who we are.