Back From Travels To India

I haven't posted anything for a while because I have been away in India, visiting the Gilly Mundy memorial Community School in Haryana and spending a few days in Delhi: there was fairly limited internet access in the village and we were rushing around in the city.

The event that marked the fifth anniversary of Gilly's death in 2007 was huge, very emotional and it was great to see the school again after my first visit last October. It was also good to spend some time talking with the children, without the teachers present, to find out what they like about their school, what changes they would like to see and what hopes they have for the future - there are many aspiring teachers and engineers in this particular rural corner of India.

Delhi is a city that I have found it hard to warm to on previous visits, unlike Mumbai, which I love returning to. Having seen much of the vast number of incredible historical monuments in the city before, this time we were based in the more affluent south Delhi, staying in the Safdarjung Enclave and spending a lot of time in Haus Khas Village. I'll try and write more about this later, but the highlights were definitely weaving through the alleys leading up to the Nizamuddin Dargah to see the qawwali singers and being the only non-Punjabi male at a concert by the extremely popular singer Satinder Sataaj (although I missed some of it because I had to dash out with a dodgy stomach - inevitable in Delhi).

Meanwhile, here are some photos of the anniversary event:

Does No-one REALLY Want To Protest At the Olympics?

Last Friday, the Metropolitan police assistant commissioner and national Olympic security co-ordinator, Chris Allison, told the Guardian that his officers are monitoring Twitter and other social media for signs of disorder and, in particular, for organised protest, but that “there doesn't appear to be anyone who wants to protest against the Games”. This seems like a pretty bold statement to make when there have been demonstrations of one kind or another in every previous Olympic host city. And even if Allison is at least partly right and no-one 'appears' to want to protest, is anyone wondering why so little has been formally announced, with just over four months to go before the opening ceremony?

It is undoubtedly the case that critical voices opposing the impact of the Olympics have been fairly weak and disjointed, so the underlying local unease and resentment that many of us are aware of has hardly registered amid the relentless cheerleading from the London Organising Committee and the corporate sponsors. However, speaking to people I work with locally, even those who are generally enthusiastic about the Games, this growing unease results from fears about the level of Olympic security and what it will mean in practice. I live just a mile away from the Olympic Stadium and it does seem less like an event we are actively part of and more like something about to crash-land on us at any moment. For example, the imminent presence of large numbers of armed police brings back memories, particularly strong within Asian communities, of the anti-terrorism raids in Forest Gate in 2006, when one of my neighbours, who had no involvement in the conspiracy that dubious police ‘intelligence’ accused him of, was shot and then held in Paddington Green police station for days on end. No Londoner, meanwhile, can forgot the terrible fate that awaited Jean Charles de Menezes as he travelled to Stockwell station in 2005, a matter of weeks after the announcement of the successful London bid, or that heightened tension can easily lead to panicked mistakes with frightening consequences.

Anyone planning to exercise their right to freely assembly and to publicly express their views by staging a protest will have strong memories too – memories of marches and pickets swamped by police, memories of pre-emptive arrests before last year’s Royal wedding (which Allison says could happen again), memories of demonstrators manhandled, arrested and occasionally facing charges that are later quietly dropped. The introduction of the Metropolitan police’s new “total policing” approach, supposedly about taking a tough line against crime, has also represented a wholesale rejection of the apparently more tolerant approach that followed the Inspectorate of Constabulary’s ‘Adapting to Protest’ report in 2009.

The result has been to make many people wonder whether taking part in protest, even entirely peaceful acts of dissent, is an increasingly dangerous choice – and whether the greatest threat to their safety comes from the highly aggressive unformed officers that surround them. As I am now physically disabled and in chronic pain because of the cycle accident I suffered in March 2010, I can speak with experience on this – over the last two years I have been repeatedly forced to choose to stay away from protests I’ve wanted to participate in, because of the realistic prospect of being pushed around and assaulted by officers intent on ‘total containment’. In these circumstances and with an evident intention to deliver the 'perfect' Games, one that from the police’s point of view is incident-free, why would anyone concerned with their safety choose to willingly mark themselves out as a ‘protest organiser’, a target for the next four months, by announcing anything now?

Then there is the issue of where to protest near enough to the Olympic sites in order to achieve the fundamental reason for holding one in the first place – to make an impact, to ensure that a minority voice is not ignored. Much of the built environment of newly regenerated east London, like the Westfield Shopping Centre and its surroundings, are already closed off, privately-owned, patrolled by uniformed guards and monitored by CCTV. What little of the ‘public domain’ remains is gradually disappearing under a blanket of buffer zones and security cordons.

Anyone wanting to hold a protest in, say, Stratford and taking up Chris Allison’s offer to “come and speak to us” is likely to find themselves shunted down a back street, well away from any possibility of attracting attention or making a difference. Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me if, in the coming months, we hear an announcement of the kind of “authorised protest zone” that have been a feature at every Olympic Games since Sydney in 2000. The Metropolitan police now has such a narrow definition of “freedom of speech” that it sees the act of staging a protest as an end in itself, even one that has zero influence, is stuck behind a three-deep line of fluorescent jackets and where participants can talk to nobody but each other. But after years of ineffectual protests like this, fewer and fewer people see any value in this kind of approach.

So whilst the level of protest at this year’s Olympics is unlikely to replicate the strength of opposition seen, for example, during the Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010, my guess is that the Met’s recent heavy-handed approach to the policing of protest will directly result in sporadic, mobile affinity-group demonstrations that are unlikely to be widely publicised on Facebook or Twitter but organised by people who know and trust each other. This is certainly the feeling I picked up from some activists I spoke to at the Counter Olympic conference in January. I also suspect that many people (disabled or otherwise) who are fearful of the risk of arrest and assault will reluctantly have no part in them – even something that involves little more than a peaceful but unauthorised stunt or ‘flash mob’.

Ironically, by making it so difficult for larger numbers to demonstrate effectively during the Olympics, the direct consequence may be protests that the police find impossible to contain. Frankly, they have no-one to blame but themselves.

Yesterday's Save Leyton Marsh Rally

Yesterday afternoon, local people in Leyton held a rally against the enclosure of Leyton Marsh for the Olympics, which resonates with our own campaign in defence of Wanstead Flats.

Waltham Forest council has granted planning permission for the construction of a temporary Basketball training centre on the Marshes and work has already begun. The newly established campaign is seeking a judicial review, which as we know is a difficult process, especially when the courts are reluctant to stand in the way of the Olympics juggernaut. Anyway, this is what Wanstead Flats will look like from June - only with 11 foot high fencing. Here are some photos:

Security Contract Pushes Costs of Olympics Towards £11 Billion

Today the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee reported that the £9.3 billion Public Sector Funding Package for this summer's Olympics is close to running out, because of a £271 million increase in the cost of security for the venues and £41 million for more extravagant opening and closing ceremonies. The report states that "the increase in the overall cost of venue security is the main reason why the Public Sector Funding Package is now so finely balanced". In a statement, the committee chair Margaret Hodge now estimates that the full cost to the public of the Games and legacy projects is "already heading for around £11 billion".

The report highlights that in December 2010, the London Organising Committee (LOCOG) contracted with the global private security firm G4S to provide 2000 guards, expected that the remainder would come from volunteers and a government funded programme through colleges of further education. By the end of 2011, however, the overall estimated number of security guards required had more than doubled to a maximum of 23700 on peak days. This is why the Ministry of Defence has agreed to provide 7500 military personnel to work during the Games, in addition to around 3300 civilian volunteers. The remaining requirement of 13000 will be supplied by G4S.

G4S has done very well financially out of the barrel that LOCOG finds itself bent over. Following the renegotiation of the contract, there has been a 6-fold increase in the number of security guards it provides - but a nearly 9-fold increase in programme management costs (from £7 million to £60 million) and more than a 20-fold increase in operational costs (from £3 million to £65 million). The value of the contract has risen from £86 million in December 2010 to £284 million in December 2011. The Public Accounts Committee says that "it is not clear from the information provided to us that the increased costs under the contract with G4S reflect only the changed requirements, or whether, they are also the consequence of renegotiating the contract in a non-competitive environment".

Sadly, the reality is that like everything else to do with the Olympics, the costs remain obscured by a lack of transparency. After all, it was only a week ago that the government was claiming that more than £100m of the £9.3bn budget would be handed back to the Treasury. What we do know is that the biggest beneficiaries of the Olympics are more likely to be companies like G4S than local people - the profits of its UK operations rose by 11% in 2011 to £50 million.

Some Thoughts On Unite's New Community Membership

Back in December, my union Unite announced that it would become the first trade union in Britain to open its membership to the unemployed, students and others not in paid work, including retirees. For 50p per week, community members would have access to the union’s financial and legal support, but as Unite’s press release made clear, they hope that community members will become campaigners against cuts in services:

Community members will be developed as community activists, bringing together people across their locality who have felt left down or excluded by politics to ensure that they too have a voice at a time of economic turmoil and social change for the nation.

The idea not only reaching out to a new constituency but specifically training new members as campaigning community organisers is an exciting development, one that I really want to succeed. I was delighted to receive an invitation to take part in Unite’s first Community Members training course last week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite what I expected.

The first problem was that Unite forgot, in their enthusiasm for what is undoubtedly a ground-breaking approach for British trade unionism, that there are very few genuinely new ideas – and community organising certainly isn’t one of them. There is a wealth of experience out there already about building permanent community-level campaigning networks. Saul Alinksy’s book ‘Rules for Radicals’, has been in print since 1971 and there are organising models from grassroots activist groups in the US like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and MoveOn to faith-based organizations like Citizens UK to learn from. There are some very useful resources online, including this from Education Action. Even the government is funding a Community Organisers programme as a pillar of its ‘Big Society’ nonsense, although inevitably this version avoids any critical perspective on economic inequality and seems more concerned with self-help and reducing ‘dependence’ on the state.

Whether people agree or disagree with Alinksy’s insistence on working inside the system, are troubled by the evangelism of Citizens UK and its rather dismissive attitude towards mobilising individuals rather than institutions, or even endorse the concept of full or part time "Community Leaders" (I don't, as it happens), the point is that there is no need for Unite to start from scratch. At the very least, it would have been sensible to consult first with the union’s own voluntary and community sector branches and then talk to local and national organisations (the National Coalition for Independent Action, for instance), to draw up materials tailored to the specific needs of training community-based campaigners.

For that’s the second problem to overcome: organising in the workplace is very different from community campaigning. People are usually in daily contact with their work colleagues, union meetings are usually held in the workplace and the solidarity of trade unionism is built predominantly around employment issues. Staying in touch with a community network of members, particularly those who are stuck at home, who are busy searching for work or who have childcare responsibilities, throws up completely different challenges. How do they stay in touch and where do they meet? There is the question too of what interests and issues are likely to motivate people to become community organisers - and if we want durable community branches, how do we ensure members remain motivated? The argument has to be more than ‘the cuts are bad’, which may be a reason why people might support a local anti-cuts coalition, but how is union-affiliated community membership different? And who are Unite hoping will become the coordinators of local community branches – presumably not overstretched workplace organisers? So who?

I attended the Unite course hoping to find some answers to these questions, but instead sat through a rehashed version of its workplace activist training and was expected to flag up the many problems with it. This was incredibly frustrating, especially as I had taken annual leave to attend (those of us who aren’t already shop stewards don’t get time off for union work and as I’ve said, busy workplace organisers are the last people who should be at a course for a completely new way of campaigning). It struck me that in its haste to roll out its new level of membership, Unite had carried out too little preparation and had simply taken too many short cuts. I was almost relieved that unexpected events at work meant I couldn’t attend the second day.

In a slightly mischievous article in 2008 on the difference between community organising and other forms of activism, Aaron Schultz said:

Activists feel very good about how they are "fighting the power." But in the absence of a coherent strategy, a coherent target, a process for maintaining a fight over an extended period of time, and an institutional structure for holding people together and mobilizing large numbers, they usually don't accomplish much.

I largely agree - this could almost be a fifty word explanation of the general failure of the left to build sustainable institutions and movements. In the context of Unite’s community membership, it’s not enough to just announce a new way forward with little understanding of how to get there. I still really want this initiative to succeed, but based on experience so far, there is still an awful lot more thinking and planning to undertake if this is even a possibility.

Occupy Camp At St Paul's Cathedral Evicted

This video from Sky News shows riot police moving in just after midnight this morning to forcibly remove protesters from outside of St Paul's Cathedral. For the time being, the Occupy encampment in nearby Finsbury Square remains untouched.

Occupy London: Waitinng For Eviction

Following the Court of Appeal ruling On Wednesday that none of the applications presented by Occupy London would be heard, eviction by bailiffs on behalf of the City of London Corporation are now imminent. Yesterday I dropped by St Paul's Cathedral on the off-chance that they might begin this weekend: a sweep of the encampment seemed more likely with no City workers around. I found the camp slowly packing up, the atmosphere somewhat forlorn. Here are a few pictures - there are more on Flickr.

Newham Council Gives More Time To Forest Gate Developers

Newham council's Strategic Development Committee has decided to defer discussions on the planning application submitted by property company Obsidian for redeveloping Forest Gate, which were due to take place at its next meeting on 21 February. This decision was made with the agreement of the committee chair, Cllr Conor McAuley and means the plans will now most likely be reviewed again on 20 March. In an e-mail, Karen Dennis, Head of Technical Support Planning & Development Services, states:

The reason for deferral is because the applicant has recently submitted amended plans and documents for the Council to consider, and wishes for these to be formally assessed prior to any Council decision. The Council will shortly be reconsulting local residents as well as other statutory consultees regarding the amendments.

Another reason, a more likely one, is that council officers had recommended refusal of planning permission. A report drafted by Senior Planning Manager Ralph Mullen for the committee (now withdrawn) notes that objections were received from Kay Rowe Nursery School, the Methodist Church, Aston Mansfield Charitable Trust, the Woodgrange Society & Residents Association, 174 residents and the council's own Conservation Officer. Only two letters of support were received. The report recommends referral to the Mayor of London (GLA) saying the Council are minded to refuse application, as well as delegation of authority to the Director of Strategic Regeneration, Planning and Olympic Legacy to refuse full and outline planning permission and conservation area consent.

There is a powerful argument that Obsidian should have been better prepared before submitting their plans and have only themselves to blame for the level of opposition. Instead, they face the prospect of effectively rewriting their proposal from scratch. Unless Obsidian's proposals are drastically amended, it is also hard to see what further consultation with residents, who vehemently oppose the plans, can possibly achieve.

So why on earth is Newham council giving them more time for a plan that is so fundamentally flawed?

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

More Bad News For Forest Gate Developers

Aston-Mansfield, one of Newham's oldest charities and the owner of Durning Hall Community Centre, has today issued a statement on its formal objection to controversial regeneration proposals for Forest Gate submitted by developers Obsidian.

Last month, Obsidian's plans were rejected by Mayor of London Boris Johnson, with the Greater London Authority questioning the suitability of a 20 storey tower block on the current Durning Hall site and raising serious concerns about the lack of clarity on a range of issues from affordable housing to community facilities. Now the objection of a significant Forest Gate landowner - as well as Durning Hall, the charity owns a number of other properties in Woodgrange Road and Earlham Grove - has put further pressure on Obsidian to drastically change its plans. Whilst accepting that Forest Gate is in urgent need of redevelopment (lets not talk about the £92 million spent on the seven-year SRB programme that was supposed to rejuvenate the area), the charity's statement says:

Aston-Mansfield supports the principle of regenerating Forest Gate but does not believe that the proposals set out in the current Obsidian planning applications adequately meet the Council’s regeneration objectives nor are they in the best interests of the local residents and community groups. In particular:

1. The volume of space that Aston Mansfield currently provides for community use in Forest Gate is more than two and a half times larger than the amount proposed in the application;
   
   
2. We agree with high density housing near the station but think the proposed tower requires much greater justification both in terms of visual impact and financial viability;
   
   
3. The application makes no contribution to affordable housing and no mention of how the temporary hostel for homeless people provided within Durning Hall will be replaced or improved;
   
   
4. The five phase development proposed could disrupt life and work in the area for years causing operational difficulties and planning blight that will severely compromise our work;
   
   
5. There is no indication as to how the Charity is expected to maintain its services whilst the Durning Hall site is redeveloped.

Consequently the Charity is unable to support the application as it currently stands and is working on some constructive suggestions to put to Obsidian and the Council if the current application can be deferred for further consultation.

If this does not happen there is a real danger that Durning Hall will have to close during the period of redevelopment and may not be able to reopen in Forest Gate.

Aston-Mansfield's intervention will make it far more difficult for Newham council, which has been supportive of Obsidian's proposals, to make an early decision on the planning application in its current form. The planning committee is due to meet on on 21 February and if it decides to reject the call for further consultation and grant planning approval, the developers have said they aim to start construction work this year.

The Save Forest Gate camnpaign continues to call for local people to lobby councillors - more information here.