Book Event: Still Counting Sri Lanka's Hidden Dead

On Friday 16 November, former BBC foreign correspondent Frances Harrison will be discussing her book Still Counting the Dead - Survivors of Sri Lanka's Hidden War with the Sri Lankan born artist and writer.Roma Tearne, at the Trinity Community Centre in Manor Park. The event is organised by Newham Bookshop, in partnership with Newham Monitoring Project..

Harrison covered the civil war in Sri Lanka from 2000 to 2004 and has written the first account of the end of the least reported major conflict of recent times. She is one of the few foreign journalists to maintain contact with those trapped inside the war zone until the very end. In 2009, as the war between the Tamil Tiger guerrillas and the government reached its bloody climax, thousands of schoolchildren, doctors, farmers, fishermen, nuns and other civilians were caught in the crossfire. However, the Sri Lankan government maintained a strict media blackout so that the world was unaware of their suffering. A United Nations Panel of Experts has reported that estimates of up to 40,000 dead are credible and has called for war-crimes investigations. Still Counting the Dead recounts the human stories and faces behind the war.

Friday 16 November  2012
at 7 pm at The Trinity Centre, East Avenue, Manor Park E12.
Nearest tube: East Ham
Tickets are only £3 and available from Newham Bookshop: telephone 020 8552 9993 to reserve


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Attica Locke at Stratford Picturehouse

Attica Locke with Cilius Victor

 Last night's event at Stratford Picturehouse with Attica Locke, author the the excellent Black Water Rising, in conversation with my old friend Cilius Victor, was one of the most enjoyable  Newham Bookshop has organised: more a relaxed chat between old friends than a literary gathering. In fact, Attica has spoken in public with Cilius before, back in 2009 when she was largely unknown and just before she was short-listed for the Orange Prize.

Attica's new book is 'The Cutting Season' and is set in a former slave plantation in Louisiana, now an historical site and tourist destination. Last night we discovered it is based on a real place, Oak Alley Plantation, where Attica attended a wedding in 2004. Like her previous novel, her new book examines race in the US and how progress for middle-class African Americans, especially women, is dependent upon the support of others, At a wider level this overwhelmingly means Latino immigrants and there are deep parallels between a new layer of people who hold up an economy but do not have full citizenship rights, who are divided from their families and who in many cases are expected to 'know their place'.

Signed copies of The Cutting Season are available from Newham Bookshop - drop in and see if they have any copies left.

Alternative Olympianism

This is my book review for Red pepper magazine of Mark Perryman's Why The Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be. It appears in the current issue and online here

In Why The Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be, Mark Perryman offers a timely reminder that sport and politics are always intertwined, and this has been just as true of the Olympics as other major sporting events. He argues, however, that a significant change began in 1984 in Los Angeles, as sponsorship and product placement started to gain greater prominence. By the time of the 1996 Games in Atlanta – the home of Coca Cola – global corporate interests had completed their takeover and aligned the proprieties of the International Olympic Committee to their own.

The book, a collection of short essays, goes on to explain how little evidence there is for the alleged benefits – everything from tourism and jobs to regeneration and increased participation in sport – of becoming a Host City. In unpicking the fallacies that demolish ‘the entire promise of the Olympics as something socially benevolent’, it provides a helpful summary of arguments familiar to critics of this summer’s Games.

What I find less convincing is the idea that this critique provides the basis for an ‘alternative Olympianism’. Perryman offers ‘Five New Olympic Rings’ to reform the Games. These include decentralising the hosting from cities to nations, and making individual events more open and more of them free-to-watch. The fifth of the new principles is the disconnection of the Games from corporate interests. Perryman is right to argue that the commercialisation of sport is not irresistible, but I see little evidence of a groundswell of grassroots opposition in defence of a genuine ‘Olympic spirit’.

More than other events, the Olympics historically has been the plaything of a tight, mainly European clique, an almost arbitrary gathering together of different, largely minority sports. Perryman’s ideas would undoubtedly make a positive impact on the nature of the Olympics as a participatory event. But he seems unclear where the pressure for change, pressure strong enough to topple the powerful commercial interests that control the IOC, might actually come from.

Nonetheless the book is an enjoyable polemic – and after a summer of relentless hyperbole about the London Olympics, it will come as a welcome relief to many Red Pepper readers.

Newham Bookshop Hosts UK Launch Of Orange Prize Nominee's New Novel

On Thursday 13 September, the Orange Prize short-listed author Attica Locke will return to Stratford for another conversation with my old friend and Newham Monitoring Project comrade Cilius Victor, at the official UK launch of her new novel "The Cutting Season".

The event is organised by Newham Bookshop, who were one of the first to recognise and promote Attica's brilliant first novel "Black Water Rising" back in 2009. The last encounter between her and Cilius was hugely enjoyable, as was her book - a crime thriller set in 1980s Houston in Texas that centres on the discovery of a body by a struggling African-American lawyer. The new novel also starts with a dead body, this time found in the grounds of Belle Vie, a historic plantation house in Louisiana's Sugar Cane county that is managed by the book's central character, Caren Gray. The murder of a migrant worker unravels dark secrets about the plantation’s past and the history of slavery in the American South.

The Cutting Season
Attica Locke in Conversation
at Stratford Picturehouse, Salway Road  London E15 1BX
Thursday 13 September, 7pm

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Tickets are £5 and available directly from the Picturehouse cinema by calling 0871 902 5740 or booking online here

Clive Stafford Smith Joins Newham Bookshop To Raise Funds For Reprieve

An advance notice for your diaries: on Sunday 30 September, the founder and Director of Reprieve, Clive Stafford Smith, will sign copies of his new book at Newham Bookshop's stall at Goldsmiths Row Book Market. The event aims to help raise funds for Reprieve, the campaigning charity that provides legal support for prisoners accused of the most extreme crimes, such as acts of murder or terrorism, which are exactly the kind of cases where human rights are most likely to be jettisoned or eroded.

"Injustice: Life and Death in the Courtrooms of America" tells the story of Kris Maharaj, a British businessman living in Miami, who was arrested in 1986 for the brutal murder of two ex-business associates. His lawyer did not present a strong alibi; Kris was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair.

Since Clive Stafford Smith took on his case, strong evidence has began to emerge that the state of Florida had got the wrong man on Death Row. However, as Stafford Smith argues, the American justice system is actually designed to ignore innocence. Twenty-six years later, Maharaj is still in jail. The book, which I've heard reads like a detective novel, untangles the Maharaj case and the system that makes injustices like this inevitable.

For those who haven't made it down to Goldmsiths Row Book Market, it's well worth a visit. It started only recently and is situated at the end of Goldsmith Row that meets Hackney Road. Sellers include Pages of Hackney, Brick Lane Books, Newham Books and 20 other traders.

Sunday 30 September 2012, 1pm at Newham Bookshop Stall, Goldmith's Row Book Market, London E2 8QA


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Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere

Newham Bookshop has managed to persuade Newsnight economics editor and author Paul Mason to talk about his book "Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions" at Wanstead Library on Saturday 17 March at 7pm.

Mason's book explores the wave of protest that emerged in 2011, from the so-called 'Arab Spring' to the Occupy movement, and whether new forms of activism involving dynamic networks of young, social media savvy cyber-protesters are redefining what 'revolution' and political alternatives to capitalism now means.

Tickets for the event, which is likely to sell out very quickly, can be reserved by calling 020 8552 9993. Wanstead Library is on Spratt Hall Road, Wanstead, London E11 2RQ

What Happens To Bookshops at Night?

If you have ever been curious about happens at night inside the wonderful Newham Bookshop on Barking Road, this brilliant animation from a store called Type in Toronto gives the game away:

REVIEW - Chavs: the Demonization of the Working Class

A edited version of this review appears in the next issue of Red Pepper

The stereotypical ‘chav’ may be a fairly recent phenomenon but it has become so pervasive that few would struggle to conjure up their own image of what it represents. In a thoughtful, polemical examination of the changing perceptions of working class culture, Owen Jones draws on testimony from extensive interviews to unravel how ‘chavs’ have become a byword for a vision of society that David Cameron calls ‘broken Britain’ and is used to blame the poor and dispossessed for ‘choosing’ their poverty and exclusion.

In part, Jones points the finger at websites such as the appalling ‘Chavscum’ and comedians like the creators of Little Britain, famous for picking on society’s most vulnerable, for the spread of the new chav caricature, as well as the kind of lazy journalism exposed in Nick Davies’ excellent Flat Earth News. However, he argues persuasively that the roots of renewed and vicious class hatred are found in the destruction of working class communities that began with rapid deindustrialisation under Thatcher and that led to a collapse in values like solidarity in favour of rampant, dog-eat-dog individualism. For thirty years, “to be working class was no longer something to be proud of, never mind to celebrate”, as first the Tories and then New Labour have tried to persuade us that we are now ‘all middle class’. Those who failed to prosper during the boom years have been written off and ridiculed as a ‘chav’ rump, a despised underclass.

Jones argues that in truth, “the myth of the classless society gained ground just as society became more rigged in favour of the middle class. Britain remains as divided by class as it ever was”. He makes a persuasive and at times exhaustive case, but it begins to lose its way when trying to explain support for the BNP in working class areas. He rightly condemns Labour for abandoning communities like Barking and criticises liberal multiculturalism for ignoring class by descending into identity politics. However, he is too quick to explain away the conscious racism that leads a minority to deliberately vote for the far-Right and at times embraces a simplistic economic reductionism that risks focusing on the legitimate grievances of the white working class at the expense of other, equally exploited and marginalised workers. The slogan ‘black and white, unite and fight’ has been around for years, but the problem has always been that achieving this laudable aim is impossible without black workers confronting the racism of many of their white counterparts.

Jones is also too ready to accept that the Labour Party remains the vehicle for a ‘new class politics’ that can mobilise the working class electorate, when the evidence suggests its only interest is in mild placation of its base. His sentimentality for Labour’s past, one that can be restored by "the first priority" of improving working class parliamentary representation, is rather at odds with the call for new ideas and new initiatives.

Nevertheless, Chavs is a useful and informative book: not least because the wider left is just as ill-prepared to confront the open class hostility of the wealthy and powerful when it has no sizable base in working class communities. Single issue campaigns are important, but only if they become a stepping stone to a broader class-conscious movement.

Chavs is published by Verso.

On Monday 19 September, Owen Jones will be discussing and signing his book at St John's Church in Stratford, at an event starting at 7pm and organised by Newham Bookshop and Newham Monitoring Project. Flyer here.

Tickets cost £5 and are available from the bookshop. Call 020 8552 9993 to reserve yours.

Newham Bookshop Presents: Mark Thomas - Extreme Ramblings

On 19 April, comedian and activist Mark Thomas joins Newham Bookshop to launch his book Extreme Ramblings at Stratford Circus. During 2010 Mark decided to go rambling in the Middle East and walked the entire length of the Israeli Separation Barrier, crossing between the Israeli and the Palestinian side. This is the story of 300,000 settlers, a 750 km wall, six arrests, one stoning, too much hummus and one simple question: can you ever get away from it all with a good walk?

Tuesday 19 April
Stratford Circus
Theatre Square,
Stratford E15 1BX

The event starts at 7.30 pm. Tickets are pricey (£16) but includes a copy of the book. They are available from Stratford Circus - telephone 0844 357 2625. Here's more from Mark on Radio 4's Loose Ends:

Smile Or Die - Animated

I reviewed Barbara Ehrenreich's fascinating book Smile or Die back in March - this animation from the RSA is a superb summary.

Lawrence Archer Shows Why Juries Matter

Like most jurors, Lawrence Archer was a typical, not especially political member of the public, a BT engineer who was called for jury service at the Old Bailey in 2005 and became the foreman of the jury during the infamous "ricin plot" trial. What made yesterday evening's discussion in Stratford, about his book on the trial and its aftermath, so completely fascinating is how his experience was revelatory - and how it has changed him into a campaigner against the injustices of the 'war on terror' here in Britain.

In 2003, anti-terrorism police raided a north London flat after a tip-off from the Algerian government, which was almost certainly based on evidence extracted using torture. They had alleged that there was an Al-Qaeda plot to attack the London underground using the poison ricin. Five men were arrested and Tony Blair said the threat of international terrorism was "present and real and with us now and its potential is huge". In the incredibly paranoid and hysterical period after 2001, the press inevitably went berserk, with The Sun reporting the discovery of a "factory of death" (an sensationalist claim that was recycled following the police raids in 2006 of my neighbours in Forest Gate). The Daily Mirror front page (above), which was reprinted and displayed last night, had a map of the UK emblazoned with a skull and cross bones and the headline: "It's Here".

But after the jury had spent six months hearing evidence, they had heard that no ricin had ever been found, that biological weapons experts at the government's Porton Down Laboratory knew this within two days and that there had never been a sophisticated plot, only loose associations between the five men. After taking a then-record 17 days to reach a decision, they acquitted four of the defendants and found a fifth guilty of the Victorian-era offence of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, a charge dug up specially for the trial.

After the trial was over, however, the jurors saw that the media coverage of the trial bore little relation to the evidence they had heard. Journalists, who had faced a media black out during the trial and hardly attended the court proceedings, preferred to rely on briefings from the police and security services. The story they told was a pack of lies. Britain's most politicised police officer, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, went further: he used the failure to convict to demand legislation for “acts preparatory to terrorism”, because 'terrorists' operate using “very loose-knit conspiracies.” The then home secretary, Charles Clarke, duly obliged.

Remarkably, a number of the jurors decided not to simply walk away but to investigate further, meeting the defence lawyer Gareth Peirce, and the some of the defendants themselves. Lawrence Archer was one of those who spoke out when several of the men were rearrested and threatened with deportation. He has given evidence at the secretive Special Immigration Appeals Commission hearings and expressed his horror that the 'ricin' plot was used by Colin Powell as alleged proof that Saddam Hussein had been secretly arming terrorist groups in the approach to the war in Iraq. Last night he described his scepticism whenever he hears reports about 'intelligence', calling it "guesswork based on fourth hand sources, some extracted under torture."

A jury trial not only prevented an injustice - it also led some jurors, people like Archer, to take a greater interest in the way the state operates and to continue to believe in a 'duty of care' beyond the courtroom. None of this would have happened without the jury system and the involvement of citizens in the criminal justice system. It's the reason why defending the principle of trial-by-jury is so important and explains why the security establishment, if it could have its way, would favour its abolition in alleged terrorism cases.

Ricin! The Terror Plot That Never Was

Tomorrow evening, Newham Monitoring Project and Newham Bookshop present Lawrence Archer talking about his book Ricin! The Inside Story of the Terror Plot That Never Was.

Archer was the jury foreman in the trial of an alleged al-Qaeda cell that anti-terrorism police alleged had planned to release the deadly poison ricin on London in 2003. However, the Old Bailey trial revealed that the ‘ricin plot’ had been a shameless distortion by government, media and security services: there was no ricin and no sophisticated plot. In 2005, defendants Samir Asli, Khalid Alwerfeli, Mouloud Bouhrama and Kamel Merzoug were all cleared.

The event takes place at 7 pm at St John’s Church, The Broadway, Stratford E15. Tickets are still available and cost £5 from Newham Bookshop

Tonight's Launch Of 'Dispatches from the Dark Side'

No-one organises political events on a Friday night. It's almost a golden rule. But this evening's launch in Stratford of Dispatches from the Dark Side, a series of essays by the radical lawyer Gareth Peirce, was packed out, completely absorbing and, because of Gareth's long association with Newham, an opportunity to celebrate her extraordinary commitment to fighting injustices that most people choose to ignore.

In the past this commitment involved challenging the state over its treatment of black and Irish communities and innocent so-called 'terrorists' like the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, people vilified during an earlier period of paranoia and suspicion. Now it means defending those who are caught up in the government's new and increasingly draconian 'war' against Islamism, suppression of which is used to justify 24 hour surveillance, house arrest and state complicity in torture, actions that Britain has the audacity to condemn others nations for participating in. Who knows, in the future perhaps another group - anarchists maybe, or anti-government campaigners in general - may become the new enemies (the concept of 'domestic extremism' certainly points in that direction) and the widening powers to suppress and harass in the name of 'security' will turn onto others. That's why we need lawyers like Gareth - and as she made clear this evening, campaigns to bring injustice to the attention of a public that might prefer not to hear what has become of their 'free' country.

Tonight was also, quite deliberately, an opportunity to show support for former Guantánamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg, who has been one of those horrendously vilified over the last year. The unsubstantiated and often irrational attacks on him by Gita Saghal and her supporters from February this year, which left many of us utterly confused and then increasing angry, have undoubtedly had an effect on Moazzam - as he said this evening, he is a survivor of torture and although he tries to appear confident and articulate, like the rest of us that isn't always how he feels.

Inviting him to speak alongside Gareth was a way of expressing a little solidarity and it was great that he was able to attend. It's also to the credit of Stratford Circus that they ignored a complaint from at least one (as yet unnamed) Newham councillor and a telephone call today from anti-terrorism officers, saying they were aware of the event and asking for copies of any leaflets distributed this evening to be kept. When a literary event becomes the subject of state suspicion and condemnation by council morons, you begin to understand why solidarity is so important.

In ten days time we have another event organised jointly by Newham Monitoring Project and Newham Bookshop - about the 'terror plot' that never existed. In January 2003, the media splashed the news that anti-terrorism police had disrupted an alleged al-Qaeda cell, poised to unleash the deadly poison ricin on London. Police had reportedly found traces of ricin, as well as a panoply of bomb and poison-making equipment in the cell’s ‘factory of death’ – a shabby flat in north London. ‘This danger is present and real, and with us now’ announced former prime minister Tony Blair.

But, when the ‘ricin plot’ came to trial at the Old Bailey, a very different story emerged: there was no ricin and no sophisticated plot. Rarely has a legal case been so shamelessly distorted by government, media and security forces to push their 'war on terror’ agenda. In Ricin! The Inside Story of the Terror Plot That Never Was, jury foreman Lawrence Archer and Fiona Bawdon give the definitive story of the ricin plot, the trial and its aftermath.

The event takes place on Monday 22 November at 7 pm at St John’s Church, The Broadway, Stratford E15. Tickets cost £5 from Newham Bookshop (020 8552 9993) and copies of the book, published by Pluto Press, will be available to buy.

At Today's London Anarchist Bookfair

So it was off this morning to Queen May College in Mile End for the London Anarchist Bookfair, an annual event as unchanging as the seasons. As always, it had the mix of bookstalls, t-shirts sellers, hawkers of pirate DVDs and loads of tiny-print pamphlets with obscure titles, along with lectures and workshops on everything from anarchism in Croatia to setting up a co-op.

The big draw was evidently Michael Albert, the American activist and co-editor of Z Magazine, whose session Life After Capitalism was an introduction to his ideas about participatory economics (parecon). Unfortunately, it was so popular that I couldn't get in. I did manage to catch the Fitwatch workshop, which was as interesting and informative as ever but also revealed the level of self-absorption within what even the police have come to call 'the protest community'. There was far too great a focus on the possibility of infiltration of protest groups by undercover police (perhaps not completely surprising, considering the revelation only two days ago that a well known activist called Mark Stone was secretly an Met copper). There wasn't enough time, however, for debate on the alarming implications for anyone, 'protest community' member or first time demonstrator, of intrusive surveillance by the different police units responsible for 'domestic extremism'.

The other event I made it to, at the request of ur32daurt in Sheffield, was Ian Bone and Martin Wright’s preposterously titled "Annual Address to the Movement". This was the chance for Bone, always an entertaining speaker, to don the mantle of cider-fuelled political commissar and berate the entire anarchist 'movement' for its inaction and ineffectiveness (a completely fair and valid accusation, depending of course on who is making it). He then announced that the Whitechapel Anarchist Group, buoyed by their burst of activism back in June against the possible appearance of the English Defence League in Tower Hamlets, will stand in elections in 2012 for the London Assembly seat currently held by Labour's John Biggs and that covers Barking & Dagenham, City of London, Newham and Tower Hamlets.

Like previous comedy candidacies offered by the likes of Screaming Lord Sutch, the WAGs have no chance or expectation of winning. With Martin Wright as their candidate, more pub bore to Bone's bar room wit, with no apparent message other than the old Class War standard of 'bash the rich', with an incredibly narrow view of east London's working class (basically, pub goers who look like WAG members) and with a tiny number of supporters, they'll lose their deposit spectacularly. Still, Bone was kind enough to give the thumbs up to the Save Wanstead Flats campaign in his oration. So that's nice.

I finally managed to pick up a copy of Beating the Fascists, the Red Action version of the history of Anti-Fascist Action. I guess everyone who was involved in anti-fascism campaigns in the late 80s and early 90s will have done what my friend Cilius and I both did today - flick through to find mentions of people we know. I see Newham councillor Unmesh Desai, now Executive Member for Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour, is certainly in the book - and I suspect that this part of his past is probably something he'd prefer not to see in print. I'll write up a review as soon as I've had a chance to read it.

Angry Rant - Nation's Most Obnoxious Writer Wins Man Booker Prize

The loathsome Howard Jacobson last night won publishing's most prestigious prize, the Man Booker, for another one of his 'comic' novels packed full of Jewish stereotypes.

Jacobson already holds the title of Nation's Most Rambling and Incoherent Newspaper Columnist™, a position he has used to abuse all kinds of people - like a Richard Littlejohn with a background in the classics. Take this example from 2005, attacking the campaign supporting the family of Jean Charles de Menezes:

If we are to speak of immorality and barbarism, "the real" barbarians are those who have enlisted the de Menezes tragedy to their political agenda. A ghoul is a malevolent spirit or person who robs graves. Asad Rehman and his fellow campaigners aren't just feeding on Jean Charles de Menezes' body; they are dining out on the family's grief as well.

You can obviously see why the judges think he's hilarious - except the people Jacobson libellously and disgracefully called "ghouls... dining out on the family's grief'' are my friends Asad, Yasmin, Estelle, Cilius, Mike - oh, and me. What a absolute wanker the man is.

As it turned out, everyone who believed that the death of Jean Charles was rather more than "accidental death of an innocent bystander" were right, whilst history will judge middle-class warmongering anti civil libertarians like Jacobson as writers who badly misjudged the times they lived through. But at least he has his writing to fall back on and now a boost in sales. That should keep him in enough fine wine to continue rambling incoherently for the Independent.

That doesn't mean, however, that some of us aren't holding a grudge and still waiting for an apology. If Jacobson has the balls to show up in east London for a reading of his side-splitting novel, he can definitely expect a very pissed-off section of the crowd - wearing 'Ghoul' t-shirts, no doubt.

Go on, Howard - I dare you. Disrupting an event involving an arsehole like you would really make up for all the health problems I've had this year.

REVIEW: Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution

My review of Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution appears in the current issue of Red Pepper magazine.

Can ‘green capitalism’ really save the planet? Leaders of the G20 countries certainly think so. They insist that through the market in renewable energy, new technological solutions and regulatory reform, it is possible to achieve both major reduction in CO₂ emissions and save the global economy.

Unfortunately, as Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution sets out to explain, there are one or two problems with this rosy picture of capitalism solving climate change on its own terms. To begin with, regulation has been an almost completely failure, as we saw with the collapse of the talks last year in Copenhagen and more recently in Bonn. It has failed not least because the bigger problem is the most obvious one: a system of production based on endless growth and expansion is completely incompatible with a long term reduction in energy consumption.

Technological fixes such as carbon capture or agrofuels, which essentially seek to maintain consumer demand and continued fossil fuel dependency, are an appealing way for rich nations to avoid making hard choices about their unsustainable consumption. Meanwhile, the growing energy crisis is resulting in huge profits for oil companies.

The result has been rising prices for basic necessities, the kind of environmental disasters we see in Nigeria and the Gulf of Mexico and a greater number of economic refugees, who are either exploited as cheap labour or excluded entirely from the world’s centres of wealth. From this perspective, the battle to shape the transition to post-petrol world is just as much about class as any of the struggles that have preceded it.

Sparking a Worldwide Energy Revolution is not, as it confesses, a “book of soundbites”, not least because there are no easy answers. At more than 650 pages spread over 59 chapters, it is also a book that is almost impossible to read from cover to cover. Its real strength is as a comprehensive reference guide to the huge range of interconnected issues facing climate activists and to the struggles for the control of energy taking place around the world.

Its mix of essays by frontline organisations, academics and campaigners means that anyone looking for arguments about whether a ‘green new deal’ is really possible, or how a just transition for energy-sector workers might be achieved, or what the impact of privatised ownership of new technologies has been on indigenous communities, will find concise and thoughtful contributions.

Together, they help explain why long-term solutions are indeed possible, but ‘green capitalism’ certainly isn’t one of them. An essential book for the committed climate campaigner, then, but probably too dense and too overwhelming for anyone new to the subject.

Sparking A Worldwide Energy Revolution: Social Struggles in the Transition to a Post-Petrol World - Kolya Abramsky [editor] was published in July by AK Press

Violent London

Newham Bookshop presents Clive Bloom, Emeritus Professor of English and American Studies at Middlesex University, discussing his book:

Violent London
2000 Years of Riots, Rebels and Revolts

Thursday 7 October
7.30 pm | Bishopsgate Institute
230 Bishopsgate, London EC2 | Map

Violent London is the alternative political history of the capital, one that explores the underground world of radicals and subversives from Wat Tyler to the Anti-Globalisation Movement, via the Gordon Riots, the Cato Street Conspirators, the Suffragettes, Moselyites and the IRA. Covering nearly 2000 years of political protest, it is a story of political activism expressed in street fighting and slum warfare, in assassination and bombing, peopled by a fascinating array of demagogues and democrats, lunatics and libertarians, bigots and social revolutionaries.

Tickets £6, concessions £4, from Bishopsgate Institute: telephone 020 7392 9220

Gareth Peirce & Moazzam Begg - Dispatches From The Dark Side

At the start of the year, former Guantánamo Bay detainee Moazaam Begg and the organisation he founded, Cageprisoners, came under a sustained attack within the press from those who described Begg as only a 'so-called' victim of the War on Terror and someone who was "committed to systematic discrimination" - although nothing but smears and innuendo were ever offered to back up these claims.

I'm therefore delighted that Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) has a opportunity to show a little solidarity with Moazaam, by inviting him to discuss British collusion in torture and rendition with another ally, the brilliant human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce. On 12 November, Newham Bookshop and NMP are hosting an event at Stratford Circus to publicise Gareth' s new book, Dispatches From the Dark Side: On Torture and the Death of Justice.

In a series of devastating essays, Gareth argues that, just as pressure from the US anti-war movement has forced the release of (albeit carefully-selected) evidence in the United States concerning the widespread use of torture, the time has come for the British government to be held accountable for its own activities. Exploring a number of cases, including those of Guantánamo detainees Shafiq Rasul and Binyam Mohamed, she argues they provide evidence of a deeply entrenched culture of impunity toward the new suspect community in the UK - British Muslim nationals and residents.

The book shows how the New Labour government colluded in a whole range of extrajudicial activities – rendition, internment without trial, torture – and has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal its actions: its devices for maintaining secrecy are probably more deep-rooted than those of any other comparable democracy. Gareth argues that if the British government continues along this path, it will destroy much of the moral and legal fabric it claims to be protecting.

Gareth Peirce and Moazzam Begg:
Dispatches From the Dark Side

Friday 12 November
7 pm at Stratford Circus, Theatre Square, Stratford E15 1BX | Map
Tickets are £6 from Stratford Circus - telephone 0844 357 2625
or visit www.stratford-circus.co.uk

Dispatches from the Dark Side is out in hardback this month and published by Verso

Beating the Fascists: The Authorised History of Anti-Fascist Action

This sounds really interesting - courtesy of Freedom Press:

Freedom Press is proud to announce the forthcoming publication of the authorised history of Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), one of the most effective political groups of the past quarter of a century. Written by those actively involved in confronting the far right between 1977-1997 it is an authentic piece of living social history.

Beating the Fascists: The Authorised History of Anti-Fascist Action is published on 28th July 2010, the 25th anniversary of the launch of the original AFA. Copies can be pre-ordered from Freedom at the special price of £10.00. Email to reserve your copy.

"Following the electoral collapse of the National Front in 1979, fascists went on the rampage. Race attacks escalated. NF/BNP gangs employed violence on the streets, on the terraces and to control the music scene. Young anti-fascists stepped up. A new hardline leadership emerged and AFA was formed in 1985. ‘A state of war’ was how one rueful BNP leader would describe what happened next.

Not only is ‘Beating the Fascists’ a meticulously researched study, it is also a much-needed piece of ‘history from below’. Throughout, the voices of working class anti-fascists come across hard, clear, and without apology. Illuminating and sometimes chilling by turn, the running commentary they provide helps ensure the tempo never flags. Gradually the reader is drawn into an outlaw world of back street idealism, paramilitary style violence and heroic self-sacrifice".

REVIEW: Disgusting Bliss - The Brass Eye of Chris Morris

This review appears in the next issue of Red Pepper, out at the beginning of June...

Chris Morris, the director of the recently released ‘suicide bomber comedy’ Four Lions, is a tough subject for a biography. Influential as a fearless satirist and respected for radio and television programmes including The Day Today, Blue Jam and Brass Eye, Morris has not performed as a stand up comedian, seldom gives interviews and unlike comic collaborators like Steve Coogan, has never become the subject of gossip or scandal. Indeed, he appears deliberately contemptuous of the idea of celebrity, not least in his willingness to ridicule the media’s pomposity and in inviting the press to explode in self-righteous outrage by pushing the limits of ‘acceptable’ taste.

This poses something of a problem for Lucian Randall in filling a book that has his subject’s blessing but not his cooperation. It is an achievement that Disgusting Bliss manages to draw out stories from fiercely loyal friends and to sort through the often improbable myths surrounding Morris’ career, but over 250 pages it often seems bogged down in the detail of radio and television production. But when a more detailed perspective of the power of the media would have been welcome – on the controversy surrounding the humiliation of celebrities and MPs by Morris’ Brass Eye series and especially the storm of protest about the now infamous special on paedophilia – Randall left me wanting to know more. When a comedy is condemned by government ministers in Parliament, it probably deserves more analysis and a far greater range of contributions than Randall has managed to muster.

Definitely a biography for the committed fan, then, and after reading it I went online and bought The Day Today and Brass Eye DVD box sets. Although some of the early sketches look a little dated, Brass Eye in particular is still brilliantly savage and the real-life absurdities of television news are, if anything, even closer to Morris’ mocking vision with the advent of 24 hour rolling coverage. The thing is, you can pick up both series for about the same cost as Disgusting Bliss and for my money, they say about as much – and as little – as Randall’s book reveals about Chris Morris as a writer and performer.