UFFC Procession 2008

Photos from Saturday's United Families and Friends Campaign Remembrance Procession in Whitehall.

The Bush Era Closes

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

And the judgement of history looks likely to be harsh. Meanwhile, thanks to The Onion, we can still laugh...

Good Riddance: Joerg Haider dead in car crash

A Response to Nick Cohen

"De Menezes – the Left’s new excuse to beat up the police" - a response to Nick Cohen

The following is a response to the journalist Nick Cohen's article in yesterday's Evening Standard.

I’m sure there was a time when the journalist Nick Cohen understood that to describe oneself as broadly part of ‘the Left’, or even a liberal, requires at least some understanding of the unequal relationship between the power of the state and its people. The history of the modern state – from the framing of America’s constitution to the development of international human rights law – has been founded on limiting the repressive power of governments over their citizens. But faced with a theocratic rejection of universal human rights by proponents of a radical form of Islam, itself a dismissal of the Enlightenment ideals that first challenged absolute power, Cohen has worked himself into such a fury that he chooses to reject them too.

Cohen’s argument are so thread-bare and confused, but so prevalent amongst those who denigrate the search for justice for Jean Charles de Menezes, that it’s worth refuting them point by point.

He says that “when the police kill an innocent man in a dictatorship, no one dares protest”, which may come as a surprise to those who protested against the death of Steve Biko in apartheid South Africa, but in general it’s true: dictatorships have a tendency to “shoot first and ask questions later”, often justifying their actions on the basis of national security and condemning and persecuting citizens who protest as ‘terrorist sympathisers’. Presumably Cohen believes that Brazil is not a dictatorship, for he acknowledges that in cities like Rio, “there are protests aplenty about police violence but they have scant effect on men who are little more than murderers in uniform.” But the subtext of his argument is clear enough: because the Rio police kill three people every day, we shouldn’t make such a fuss about the killing of one man in London.

Exactly how many people need to die at the hands of the police in a liberal democracy before it becomes ‘a national scandal’ is less clear. Perhaps there’s a mathematical formula or some graphs that Cohen knows about and we don’t. Or perhaps (and here Cohen’s logic becomes even more confused) every death is a disgrace, for “we don't always realise it but we are lucky to live in a country that takes breaches of its rules so seriously.”

What Cohen fails to acknowledge is that the level of anger about the killing of an innocent individual by the state has particular national characteristics and a death becomes a scandal precisely because of its impact on others. In the UK, routine arming o the police is generally resisted by the public – even the police themselves oppose it. It’s not true, however, that deaths in police custody are exceptionally rare, for in truth, whilst deceitfully playing the numbers-game in comparing Britain with Brazil may encourage Cohen to feel lucky, we don’t live in a country that takes breaches of its rules as seriously as it should. Since 1993, there have been 674 recorded deaths in police custody. Forty six people have been shot dead by police since 1990. There have been fifteen inquest verdicts of ‘unlawful killing’ by police officers – and no convictions by the courts.

Most bereaved families would argue that these deaths (never mind the many deaths in other countries) have been largely ignored. It's the idea that, suddenly, anyone who has brown skin or looks like a Muslim or happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, is at an increased risk of being gunned down by those charged with protecting the public, and that this might actually be acceptable at a time when people already face the terrifying threat of morbidly zealous fanatics with rucksack bombs, that is precisely the reason why Jean Charles de Menezes’ death has particularly horrified so many when other deaths have not.

Cohen prefers to see other motives, but the example he chooses in order to make a sweeping generalisation about the “partisans in the vicious arguments over London's policing” is frankly bizarre. His anecdote about a radio producer, asking for a comment that the Met is as much a threat to the lives of Londoners as radical Islam, says more about the nature of Cohen’s own profession and its eagerness to sensationalise and simplify, traits that Cohen is himself a master of and that are described in forensic detail in fellow Guardian journalist Nick Davies’ book Flat Earth News. Nevertheless, with all the obsession of a conspiracy theorist, Cohen sees this as evidence, where no evidence exists, that thousands have a “psychological need to deny the horrors of the world” for daring to protest (something no-one in a dictatorship has the courage to do, but clearly no-one anywhere, in Cohen's view, should ever consider).

Finally, Cohen then psychologically projects his own prejudices onto “the very people who are shouting loudest about the death of poor Mr de Menezes” by suggesting that we would be the first to denounce the police if a terrorist detonated a bomb on the London Underground. Somehow, I imagine that no-one would be issuing louder denunciations than Nick Cohen himself in such circumstances. The rest of us would probably recognise that fault for a bombing would lie squarely with the bombers, that sometimes it is impossible to stop those who are really determined to murder, but that questions about the quality of police intelligence, how it is acted upon and what steps were taken to stop a suspect from entering a Tube station are legitimate tests of the accountability of public servants – just as they are in the case of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Benjamin Franklin, one of America’s Founding Fathers, a scientist and a giant of the Enlightenment that theocracy stands opposed to, said that “those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I wonder what he would have made of someone who says, “I don't want to defend the Met's mistakes but it is blindingly obvious that when the police think they are confronting suicide bombers they will shoot first and ask questions later.”

Franklin also advised that that we should ”use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly." More in hope than expectation, I'd suggest that at some point soon, Nick Cohen would do well to follow this wisest of counsel.

Ten Films That Help Take Sides

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)
An in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.

Battle for Haditha (2007)
Nick Broomfield's docu-drama investigating the massacre of 24 men, women and children in Haditha in Iraq by U.S. Marines in retaliation for the death of a colleague killed by a roadside bomb.

No End in Sight (2007)
Documentary about the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq and why the insurgency and demands for US withdrawal quickly became popular amongst the majority of Iraqis.

Taking Liberties (2007)
Flawed but interesting account of the attacks on civil liberties under New Labour.

USA vs Al-Arian (2007)
Portrait of the trauma facing Arab-American family as draconian terrorism charges are levelled against Abdullah Al-Arian, a professor at the University of South Florida accused of membership of Islamic Jihad.

The Road to Guantanamo (2006)
Part drama, part documentary, The Road to Guantánamo focuses on the Tipton Three, a trio of British Muslims who were held in Guantanamo Bay for two years until they were released without charge.

When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" (2006)
Spike Lee's damining examination of the U.S. government's role and its response to Hurricane Katrina.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005)
Brilliant account of the fall of Enron, the seventh largest company in the US, whose top executives walked away with over one billion dollars, leaving investors and employees with nothing. The film explains how Wall Street analysts, financial regulators, the accountancy firm Arthur Andersen and the company's lawyers allowed Enron to post fictitious profits and engage in corrupt business practices. These included deliberately engineering electricity blackouts in California and creating the conditions for the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Death in Gaza (2004)
Harrowing documentary that portrays the horror of living under Israeli occupation in Gaza and the resulting death of its director, James Miller.

Control Room (2004)
Documentary about the Arab television network Al-Jazeera's coverage of the U.S.-led Iraqi war

Oh, Bummer...

“We have no choice but to eliminate the threat. This is a guy who is an extreme danger to the world.”

Senator Joe Biden, Democrat Vice-Presidential candidate, on removing Saddam and his justification for supporting the war in Iraq in 2002

"The weapons inspectors said he had them. He catalogued—they catalogued them. This was not some, some Cheney, you know, pipe dream. This was, in fact, catalogued."

Senator Joe Biden, in 2007, lying about the pre-war assessment of UN weapons inspectors on non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Biden is infamous for refusing to allow the weapons inspector Scott Riiter to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, saying it was "beyond his pay grade". As Stephen Zunes in the Asia Times puts it:

Senator Barack Obama's selection of Joseph Biden as his running mate constitutes a stunning betrayal of the anti-war constituency who made possible his hard-fought victory in the Democratic primaries and caucuses.

The veteran Delaware senator has been one of the leading congressional supporters of US militarization of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, of strict economic sanctions against Cuba, and of Israeli occupation policies.

The BBC's analysis on the choice of Biden as Vice Presidential candidate, incidentally, doesn't even mention the war.

Veterans and active duty military personnel participated in an antiwar protest near the Democratic National Convention site in Denver

Amidst the slavish enthusiasm for Barack Obama in the UK (the BBC has been a particular cheerleader), protests against the war in Iraq, outside the Pepsi Center where the Democrat Convention is taking place in Denver, have been largely unreported.

Iraq Veterans Against the War, including more than 50 Iraq veterans in full uniform, led more than 3,500 protesters filling eight city blocks, in a march called for the immediate withdraw troops from Iraq and reparations to the Iraqi people.

Some New Things We Know About The Olympics

We know that the Beijing Games was probably the most orchestrated attempt since the Berlin Olympics in 1936 to show that a nation is a rising power that should command respect.

We know that a country can secure an enormous return by spending $41 billion, including more gold medals than any other nation and the attendance of world leaders at the Olympics despite their apparent misgivings about China’s human rights record.

We know that the worldwide Olympic torch protests seem like a very long time ago now…

We know that during the 2008 Games, there were 53 detained pro-Tibet activists, 77 rejected protest applications from 149 individuals, at least 15 Chinese citizens arrested for seeking to protest, about 10 dissidents jailed and at least 30 websites blocked. At least 50 human-rights activists were expelled from Beijing, harassed or placed under house arrest during the Olympics, according to Reporters Without Borders. There were 30 cases of government interference in the reporting work of foreign media, included 10 cases of journalists being beaten or roughed up by police who sometimes smashed their cameras, according to the Beijing-based Foreign Correspondents Club of China. While bidding in April 2001 for to host the 2008 Olympics, the Executive Vice President of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Bid Committee Liu Jingmin said that "by allowing Beijing to host the Games you will help the development of human rights. China and the outside world need to integrate. China’s opening up is irreversible. The Olympic Games is a good opportunity to promote understanding."

We know that Liu Jingmin is not someone that we'd want to buy a used car from...

We know that the International Olympic Committee sells sponsorships in four-year increments to cover both Winter and Summer Games and twelve companies paid $866 million, or an average of $72 million apiece, to sponsor the Turin and Beijing Games. That's almost one-third more than the $663 million total paid to back the Salt Lake City and Athens Games in 2002. Hilariously, we also know that a survey of 1,500 Beijing residents in early 2008 by Fournaise Marketing Group found that only 15% could name two of the 12 sponsors and just 40% could name one sponsor: Coca-Cola.

We know that there were 313 British athletes in Beijing but more than 600 publicly-funded employees, including government ministers, press officers, local councillors, police officers and 437 BBC staff.

We know that the number of medals won in Beijing by “Team GB” has led to a call for pushing Britain into third place in the medal tables in 2012, meaning that the chances of funding elite athletes by cutting community sport is now even greater.

We know that the organisers of London’s contribution to the closing ceremony in Beijing had even less of a clue about how to symbolise cosmopolitan Britain than the government had when struggling to work out what the hell to put in the Millennium Dome.

We know that the government’s fixation with defining national identity will have become even worse with the tabloid stories about ‘British heroes’ and the slapping down of Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond

We know that winning a gold medal isn’t always enough. Swimmer Rebecca Adlington’s desire to follow Olympic success with appearances on Strictly Come Dancing and Top Gear says as much about Britain’s obsession with celebrity as David Beckham’s appearance at the closing ceremony next to a London bus.

And we know that a 2012 Olympics involving Boris Johnston adds insult to injury...

PS: we know that 'The Great Escape' plans for getting out of London in four years time have already begun: visit Escape2012 for more information.

Please, not Another Party Invite!

Seldom do I engage in debate about the state of the Left with members of small left-wing groups, for the simple reason that on past experience they tend to take disagreement rather badly and starting throwing insults.

Check out the level of some of the debate on the Socialist Unity blog if you want examples

But because an old friend and comrade edits the journal of The United Socialist Party (TUSP), because this (very) small group was set up by those involved in the Liverpool Dockers strike and because there needs to be more debate about why the anti-war movement failed to live up to its potential, I've written the following response to a TUSP statement from December 2007 on the need for a 'mass workers' party'.

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Please, not Another Party Invite!

Gather together a group of old comrades and soon they’ll be talking with sadness and longing about the triumphs and defeats of the past. Anyone who has been a political activist since their teens and has now turned forty knows this is true; we’ve all done it. The defeats, unfortunately, have been so many that the temptation to mythologize even the smallest of rare victories is hard to resist. But basing an entire political perspective on harking back to a fabled golden age and discounting anything new if it fails to fit in with those fallible memories is a particular talent of large sections of the Left in Britain.

So, having read for the first time a copy of ‘Socialist Studies’ magazine given to me by an old friend and comrade, it was therefore very disappointed to read The United Socialist Party statement setting out its case for the need to create a ‘mass workers party’. Notwithstanding some sound analysis on capitalism’s international crisis, the statement draws some alarmingly simplistic conclusions about the anti-war movement and new movements such as those that embraced horizontalidad in Argentina. And it rather fails to make a convincing case for its central argument – that the setting up of another ‘mass workers party’ is, in the words used in the statement’s title, “the main issue of the day”.

The main issue? I know of no independent socialists and campaigners, the very people who in the past have dropped out in disgust from either the Labour Party or one of the many factional left groups, who would make such a bold assertion. A new party may be the main issue for the increasingly dwindling numbers that make up the Trotskyist Left: indeed party-building has arguably always been their main preoccupation, if not the overriding doctrine of the faithful. Little wonder, then, in the face of yet another lost opportunity, there were five competing events on 17 November 2007, all purporting to launch THE new party of the working class. But why does the Left continually fall back onto setting up a new party as the apparently unavoidable first step to renewing itself?

A cynic might argue that it’s because the Left has frankly had so much practice, given its track record. But at least one possibility is that this is the way things have always been done. Falling back on the old and familiar is tempting even if it has consistently failed in the past: what might be characterised as the ‘reaching for the Bolshevik template’. Each of the five events last year offered their participants the comforting possibility of a new beginning, a clean slate and in most cases, the absence of former comrades who have ‘lost their way’. In most cases this also meant a smaller gathering of activists. Nevertheless, I’m sure all those who gathered last year at one of November’s Left conferences believed it was a purer gathering: one that, against all the evidence of the Left’s continuous mitosis and factionalism over the last forty years, would this time be different.

Starting afresh almost always means avoiding too any recognition or analysis that it is not just the allies we make, or the “downplaying in practice… of the importance of the working class”, or even the soul-destroying sectarianism, that alone have caused a collapse of former attempts at party-building. There is at least a possibility that the top-down, hierarchical and authoritarian models of political organisation that are so prevalent within the Left, that indeed are in my view central to the concept of ‘the party’, have played an equally important role, particularly in alienating those who have walked away. It’s a possibility that is almost always ignored and it’s certainly one that TUSP’s statement, which talks about a ‘mass workers’ party’ without giving any hint of its character or organisation, fails to address.

So let’s look at whether putting the business of party building is itself an obstacle to encouraging ordinary people to embrace socialist ideas, by looking at the anti-war movement. TUSP’s statement is correct in acknowledging the broad popular support for anti-war movements across the world in 2003, culminating in the massive marches worldwide that brought over a million people on the streets on London. It is quite wrong, however, to argue that “the methods of middle class protest were tested in the movement against the invasion and occupation of Iraq and were found to be inadequate.” Whilst it is certainly true that ‘the state loves a parade’, one that does nothing to change anything tangible in terms of the functioning of power, attempting to characterise the huge march on 15 February 2003 as “middle class protest” is to enormously downplay its significance.

The prelude to the invasion of Iraq was an exhilarating time. For a brief moment, those who participated in the anti-war movement in Britain genuinely believed that they could do more than simply bear witness. People felt they could actually stop British involvement in the war in Iraq, despite Tony Blair’s messianic belief that he alone knew what was right and wrong. There was ample evidence around the country of optimism, spontaneity and fizzing energy from working class people who had never been involved in campaigning before. As a result, there was also genuine panic in government ranks as it prepared for the vote in Parliament in March 2003; one that led to the biggest Labour rebellion against Blair and that was carried with the support of the Tories.

So why did that energy and enthusiasm dissipate? The invasion itself undoubtedly slowed the momentum of the anti-war movement. The naively optimistic, those who believed the war in Iraq could itself be completely prevented, were bitterly disappointed despite the ample evidence that the drive to war had little to do with events in Baghdad but was driven by neo-conservative ideology in Washington, which had long planned to remake the Middle East for the benefit of international capitalism and the security of Israel.

But the most prominent players in the anti-war movement, the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) and the Socialist Workers Party that dominated it, must also bear a large measure of responsibility. Not unlike the Bush administration’s post-invasion occupation, it had no Plan B. There was no apparent recognition that a movement facing a long haul needs roots, that local groups that might be better placed to underpin the spontaneity and energy that brought so many out onto the streets needed support. Instead, time and resources were devoted to organising the same central London protest, over and over again, which quickly amounted to little more than bearing witness and was essentially a parade that the state could comfortably tolerate.

Why did this happen? Largely because the senior figures in the Socialist Workers Party who controlled decision-making in the StWC had come to see themselves as the movement’s ‘leaders’, or perhaps a better word might be ‘vanguard’. They were the generals who believed they could mobilise and direct an army of hundreds of thousands, even when the decline in numbers on each subsequent march made it evident that anti-war movement didn’t want to be led in this way. And to prevent any challenge to their ‘leadership’, spontaneity and energy were actively discouraged: the leaders alone knew what was right and wrong, as is so often the case. Local Stop the War groups contracted and local campaigns that were not SWP dominated were ignored (such as the protests near where I live, against the international arms fair in Canning Town – surely an obvious target for anti-war campaigners). StWC at a local level became little more than an irregular e-mail from a loyal local SWP member, advertising yet another march.

Then, when it was clear that StWC was going nowhere, its ‘leadership’ fell back on the old and familiar and set up the RESPECT party, an uneasy electoral alliance that at best can hardly be described as emerging naturally from debate within the anti-war movement. With the benefit of hindsight, RESPECT was never thought through properly either and its ignominious collapse revealed the same hierarchical and authoritarian approach to leadership and control that so often discredits the Left.

None of this is considered in TUSP’s statement, which instead identifies the failure of the anti-war movement to embrace “the action of the working class and its allies using the weapons of working class struggle, mass strikes and refusal to transport munitions and military stores” as “the best way to fight militarism and war.” This is the kind of demand that sounds good but is meaningless idealism in the context of the current position of the Left and the trade union movement. It also seems to be based on the classic Marxist assumption that working class identities are determined solely by our jobs and occupations, which leads me to the TUSP’s statement’s fundamentally misunderstand the significance of the economic and political crisis in Argentina in 2001-2003.

Criticising writers like Naomi Klein, the “fashionable theoreticians of the ‘anti-globalisation’ movement”, for attempting to draw conclusions from the popular working-class movements that emerged in Argentina, is easy when the only conclusion you are willing to draw is that these movements failed for want of a ‘mass workers’ party’. If success or failure were the only measure of working class resistance to an enemy as powerful as capitalism, we’d all have given up in despair years ago. However, the most important impact of the movements that occupied factories, organised protests and set up neighbourhood assemblies is not what they achieved, but how they responded to the economic collapse created by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The spontaneous demonstrations that began in Argentina in December 2001 were more than simply calling for the “removal of all the corrupt politicians” of the day, although that was the undoubted starting point. This is a misrepresentation of Klein’s analysis. The movements that emerged from these protests were instead both in opposition to the period of neo-liberalism that had begun with the military coup in 1976 and reflected the disillusionment in the 1990s with forms of democracy within all political parties as institutions.

Horizontalidad (horizontalism), the idea that these movements are most closely associated with, is a specific rejection of the idea of political parties, of leaders and representatives, of those who command and those who obey. It is not some form of new ideology but a non-idealised way of people relating to one another in a directly democratic manner and working towards decisions collectively. It was undoubtedly a more difficult and time-consuming means of organisation than having a small group of leaders making all the decisions but the result was the creation of linked movements, some that later folded but many that continue to this day, which responded to the 2001 crisis in practical ways. These ranged from occupied but functioning factories to neighbourhood assemblies, piquetero (picket) groups that blocked roads, popular education centres, the Movement of Unemployed Workers and neighbourhood kitchens. Crucially though, horizontalism helped to define working class identities not simply through people’s jobs and occupations but also through the relationships between each other and through solidarity beyond the workplace. It had a particular impact on the participation of women, who had been largely sidelined from political activism but who made up the majority of the new movements that were created in 2001. I’d recommend reading the oral histories in Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina, edited by Marina Sitrin, for a better understanding of the first-hand experiences of this new method of organising.

Whilst the circumstances that led to the growth of horizontalism may be peculiar to Argentina’s history, the methods of organising that developed point to some important lessons for the Left in this country, lessons that the TUSP statement should perhaps not so easily dismiss. Are hierarchical and authoritarian forms of organisation really the only option, especially as they have failed so badly and so often in the past? Why do we need ‘leadership’ and another rigid programme as the starting point, when both have proven so divisive and such an obstacle to collaboration? Do we have to always fall back on the old and familiar, always ‘reaching for the Bolshevik template’ and dismissing anything new that fails to fit within it, simply because it’s easier and less time-consuming? Is solidarity more than just an issue for organised labour in confrontation with capitalism, or also an antidote to individualism and competition for dominance and control, a way of conducting ourselves that should be an integral part of how working class movements operate on a day-to-day basis? And if so, why do we need one ‘mass workers’ party’ when a ‘movement of movements’ is an equally realistic possibility?

Whilst much of the organised Left has continued to repeat its mistakes, stuck rigidly to its favoured means of organisation and, in doing so, too often undermined and demoralised movements such as those against war, it has failed to progress and arguably has shrunk further. Few would deny that increasingly it has become distrusted by many potential allies, which is why so many activists have looked elsewhere for people to work with and ways to organise. Indeed, whilst there are comrades I respect enough to spend time writing a 2000+ word discussion article, there are plenty more that I would probably think twice about ever working with again. Multiply that by the number of independent socialists and campaigners who have quit or drifted away from the mainstream Left and there’s some measure of the problem that Left organisations currently face.

If anything is “the main issue of the day”, that must be pretty near the top.

Teaser for Oliver Stone's George Bush biopic "W"

One Hundred and Eighty Nine Days

Today there are 189 days left before George W Bush leaves office.

A reminder of why it won't be a day too soon, although is it now time to start worrying about the next President?