The perfect summation occurred to me during a branch meeting on the general election. There will be a swing back to Labour, as the default anti-tory vote, even for people with absolutely no illusions in the party. It will not be enough as many, many 'natural' supporters of the Labour Party abstain or search for a left alternative to support.
Neither point of view is illegitmate or wrong (in the immediate sense). The common between the people who will support Labour to stop the Tories and the people who'll never support Labour again, as they are as good as Tories is... dun, dun, duh, they hate the Tories.
Anti-Toryism is the general political cutting edge...
If only I'd thought of it at the time.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Tonight we march on a road of bones...
Today we look a war-related news. Here's a headline I like (I like the headline, not the factual content): Britain 'complicit in mistreatment and possible torture' says UN. My only quibble is it wasn't possibly torture but definitely torture.
Lord Goldsmith is currently giving evidence to the Iraq enquiry. Don't worry, you'll get your chance to arrest Blair on Friday. Much of the debate is round the legality of the war waged on Iraq. There is much to be made of the wheedling that the government performed over legality, the war was, after all, a blatant aggression.
The trouble is law is a synonym for power. Those of you wanting to arrest Blair on Friday will have to wade through several lines of armed police and secret servicemen. Good luck.
The UN investigation into torture and rendition across the globe since 9/11 lasted several years and was led by Martin Scheinin, UN special rapporteur on terrorism and human rights, and Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture. In a move that will do little to ease the discomfort of western governments that were the focus of the investigation, the two men and their aides were assisted by members of a UN working party on secret detentions that was first set up in 1979 to investigate the fate of people who were "disappeared" by the Pinochet regime in Chile.
Their report concludes that secret detention "amounts to a case of enforced disappearance" and that it is "a manifold human rights violation that cannot be justified under any circumstances, including during states of emergency".
Lord Goldsmith is currently giving evidence to the Iraq enquiry. Don't worry, you'll get your chance to arrest Blair on Friday. Much of the debate is round the legality of the war waged on Iraq. There is much to be made of the wheedling that the government performed over legality, the war was, after all, a blatant aggression.
The trouble is law is a synonym for power. Those of you wanting to arrest Blair on Friday will have to wade through several lines of armed police and secret servicemen. Good luck.
Further Future Legend
I feel like people exaggerate a little. Not everyone was dead. Some of us survived. We had to get on. We had an important job to do. Once it was safe everyone had to pitch with the clean up
The nastiest, most upsetting part was the massacre at Kings Cross. This was the demo that started with the big walkouts, the one that spilled out across Camden and Islington, the one that was bombed and strafed from the air. There were hundreds dead, maybe thousands. It took three days to clear. We’d only just finished when the next outbreak happened.
Each body was identified. We had lists of missing people from each commune, sometimes with pictures. If we had no pictures then we looked for anything that had their name. Two items and we were fairly certain, three and we were sure. Some people said they should be stripped, as good clothing would soon be in short supply. I thought that was disgusting. I’m glad we didn’t do that.
Identified bodies would then be taken away for disposal. The unidentified would be sorted, as would be the unidentifiable. Eventually they would be disposed of too. We built a pyre in a park square.
Face after face, sometimes no face… and the smell. I never want to have to do anything like that again.
---
The power went out on our estate on the fourth afternoon. I know it was later for some, most maybe. The fighting wasn’t really over by that point. It was lucky it went out in the middle of the day otherwise we’d been all over the place.
A group of us called an estate meeting. What to do? We made the usual rounds. Me, myself, I’d been so taken up with, well, estate matters. I’d not been to work all this time. It never even occurred to phone in. I suppose I just knew there was no work to go to. It was right there.
Anyway, we made the usual rounds, checking who was in and who was out. The first thing we did was rationing the battery supplies. Some were happy about giving up their stuff. We had to use persuasion (soft and heavy, if you know what I mean). Some of the kids were sent out to forage for some more. Batteries were sorted and counted (and monitored, if you ran them down too quickly you were put to the back of the queue) down in the community hall, which became the centre of life on the estate.
The trouble was that only dealt with small electrical items. There were dozens fridges and freezers full of slowly spoiling food. Most of the flats were gas heated (although that was soon gone too), although some had gone electric. We all guessed that we’d be without electricity for some time (I don’t think anyone suspected the national grid would be down permanently). We had to find a way of making our own.
Luckily there was an electrician on the estate. He said if someone could build a generator he’d be able to patch up the estate in time.
There were a few industrial estates down on Hackney Wick, plus one in Stoke Newington, but Simon knew some of the guys from the workshops under the railway bridge. They not only gave us some copper wire but reworked some old car engines as generators. Some of the kids were at Sixth Form College. They’d been taking science and knew how to make magnets.
There was a lot of trial and error. It took a while before we got the design right. We gave up on using petrol engines, as fuel was very scarce. Together with the workshop guys the science kids tried making wind generators. These were more successful, although keeping the wheels greased was a bit of a problem. Even so, on the good days we managed to generate enough power to start storing it (bless them, the science kids started making rechargeable batteries).
The problem wasn’t really solved until the communes started pooling resources. It must have been four, five months down the line before we fitted our first solar panel. That was good.
Back to the first night without electricity, with all this food about to go off, we searched for whatever preservatives we could find, salt, spices etc and potted as much food as we could, storing it in a cupboard in the community hall. With the rest the estate group decided to have a big cook-off. Though it was still a bit cold we all gathered up some wood (plenty of it on Hackney Downs), charcoal and tinfoil and had the first barbecue of the year. Not long after that we took the cooking indoors. Old Man Petersen (and a couple of his buddies) fitted a huge coal stove bought from an antique shop, and we’ve been eating down in, what we now call, the community hall ever since.
----
London, Central London was shattered, I mean really… I’d seen those films of World War Two. You think you’d know, you think you’d be able to handle it. We were in the building, Broadcast House the whole time. When I finally was able to leave it was just shocking.
It have been four, five solid days of fighting. By the following morning we’d effectively been conscripted reserves in this new militia. I didn’t want to be in such a position but, I guess, by that time it was too far-gone. You had to pick your side. I went with my people, our people, who were relying on us as a source of communication.
There was a solid belt of what were now being called Liberated Zones reaching down and across North and East London. The Knights were beginning to retreat. They were no longer on the streets. It’s funny, but it was only by the middle of the fourth morning that we realised there’d been no aerial attacks for twelve hours. Something had clearly happened.
There were rumours of groups of Knights approaching the remainder of the City of London and Chelsea barracks, plus there were always stories of snipers, lynching and snatch squads dotted over the place. The plan was to have organised groups go out and sweep the city. We were to be the base of communications.
The Central London Commune for Broadcasting (I did came up with the name) was charged with fixing and powering up the building and equipment, which we did, I’m proud to say, in less than six hours. What later became Radio Free London began broadcasting on digital and analogue frequencies, putting out public information and coded messages.
It took a couple of days; we all took shifts, slept in the building, had food and water and, eventually, a clean set of clothes brought to us. Carl, now the head of security at Broadcasting House, sent out a team to pick through Regent Street and Carnaby Street for some bargains. It was almost civilised.
We were eventually relieved. A gang of people had been rounded up, some former staff from Bush House and the Capitol Tower. I actually thought at the time, wow, now I can go home. Sure, there’d just been a colossal civil war raging through the city, but, you know, at least now I could go home.
A guy drove me off on this dirt bike. He was part of the recently established courier service. I asked why we couldn’t take a car. He said there was no room for cars where we were going, and stuffed a helmet onto my head. Off we went.
He took me along Oxford Street. I could see all the bullet holes, smashed and burned out shops, past car crashes, shattered bits of building, lumps of masonry and an exploded double-decker bus. There were people searching through the wreckage and, of course, carrying away the dead bodies. Through Holborn and down the Kingsway the picture was similar. Bush House seemed to have got off pretty likely, and there was still a queue to get into the Indian Embassy.
My driver went the wrong way round the Aldwych roundabout. My nerves jumped for a moment, then I realised, it didn’t matter now. There was no traffic. Onto Waterloo Bridge, there I could see the most shocking thing.
Where there used to be the South Bank buildings, Oxo Tower, the BFI, there was a gigantic pile of rubble, some of it still on fire. The Charing Cross Bridge was wrecked too. I asked my driver what’s that. He shouted something about a Dead Zone, don’t go there.
As we crossed over into South London I began giving directions. The terrain got tougher and tougher. We’d come across whole buildings that were blown out or burned down. We saw more people, more bodies. We came up to our first barricade, two piles of tortured brickwork, wood, PVC and the remains of what looked like old cars, with a swing gate and guards in the middle.
My driver, stating his name (which I’ve now forgotten) and communal credentials asked for us to be let past. The guards asked where we were going. I told them the address of my block of flats. They said, bluntly, it was firebombed and gutted… Lucy… There were no known survivors.
I was in shock. I spent an hour or two looking round the site, speaking to people. I… I then went back to work. It was at least a fortnight before I…
----
The nastiest, most upsetting part was the massacre at Kings Cross. This was the demo that started with the big walkouts, the one that spilled out across Camden and Islington, the one that was bombed and strafed from the air. There were hundreds dead, maybe thousands. It took three days to clear. We’d only just finished when the next outbreak happened.
Each body was identified. We had lists of missing people from each commune, sometimes with pictures. If we had no pictures then we looked for anything that had their name. Two items and we were fairly certain, three and we were sure. Some people said they should be stripped, as good clothing would soon be in short supply. I thought that was disgusting. I’m glad we didn’t do that.
Identified bodies would then be taken away for disposal. The unidentified would be sorted, as would be the unidentifiable. Eventually they would be disposed of too. We built a pyre in a park square.
Face after face, sometimes no face… and the smell. I never want to have to do anything like that again.
---
The power went out on our estate on the fourth afternoon. I know it was later for some, most maybe. The fighting wasn’t really over by that point. It was lucky it went out in the middle of the day otherwise we’d been all over the place.
A group of us called an estate meeting. What to do? We made the usual rounds. Me, myself, I’d been so taken up with, well, estate matters. I’d not been to work all this time. It never even occurred to phone in. I suppose I just knew there was no work to go to. It was right there.
Anyway, we made the usual rounds, checking who was in and who was out. The first thing we did was rationing the battery supplies. Some were happy about giving up their stuff. We had to use persuasion (soft and heavy, if you know what I mean). Some of the kids were sent out to forage for some more. Batteries were sorted and counted (and monitored, if you ran them down too quickly you were put to the back of the queue) down in the community hall, which became the centre of life on the estate.
The trouble was that only dealt with small electrical items. There were dozens fridges and freezers full of slowly spoiling food. Most of the flats were gas heated (although that was soon gone too), although some had gone electric. We all guessed that we’d be without electricity for some time (I don’t think anyone suspected the national grid would be down permanently). We had to find a way of making our own.
Luckily there was an electrician on the estate. He said if someone could build a generator he’d be able to patch up the estate in time.
There were a few industrial estates down on Hackney Wick, plus one in Stoke Newington, but Simon knew some of the guys from the workshops under the railway bridge. They not only gave us some copper wire but reworked some old car engines as generators. Some of the kids were at Sixth Form College. They’d been taking science and knew how to make magnets.
There was a lot of trial and error. It took a while before we got the design right. We gave up on using petrol engines, as fuel was very scarce. Together with the workshop guys the science kids tried making wind generators. These were more successful, although keeping the wheels greased was a bit of a problem. Even so, on the good days we managed to generate enough power to start storing it (bless them, the science kids started making rechargeable batteries).
The problem wasn’t really solved until the communes started pooling resources. It must have been four, five months down the line before we fitted our first solar panel. That was good.
Back to the first night without electricity, with all this food about to go off, we searched for whatever preservatives we could find, salt, spices etc and potted as much food as we could, storing it in a cupboard in the community hall. With the rest the estate group decided to have a big cook-off. Though it was still a bit cold we all gathered up some wood (plenty of it on Hackney Downs), charcoal and tinfoil and had the first barbecue of the year. Not long after that we took the cooking indoors. Old Man Petersen (and a couple of his buddies) fitted a huge coal stove bought from an antique shop, and we’ve been eating down in, what we now call, the community hall ever since.
----
London, Central London was shattered, I mean really… I’d seen those films of World War Two. You think you’d know, you think you’d be able to handle it. We were in the building, Broadcast House the whole time. When I finally was able to leave it was just shocking.
It have been four, five solid days of fighting. By the following morning we’d effectively been conscripted reserves in this new militia. I didn’t want to be in such a position but, I guess, by that time it was too far-gone. You had to pick your side. I went with my people, our people, who were relying on us as a source of communication.
There was a solid belt of what were now being called Liberated Zones reaching down and across North and East London. The Knights were beginning to retreat. They were no longer on the streets. It’s funny, but it was only by the middle of the fourth morning that we realised there’d been no aerial attacks for twelve hours. Something had clearly happened.
There were rumours of groups of Knights approaching the remainder of the City of London and Chelsea barracks, plus there were always stories of snipers, lynching and snatch squads dotted over the place. The plan was to have organised groups go out and sweep the city. We were to be the base of communications.
The Central London Commune for Broadcasting (I did came up with the name) was charged with fixing and powering up the building and equipment, which we did, I’m proud to say, in less than six hours. What later became Radio Free London began broadcasting on digital and analogue frequencies, putting out public information and coded messages.
It took a couple of days; we all took shifts, slept in the building, had food and water and, eventually, a clean set of clothes brought to us. Carl, now the head of security at Broadcasting House, sent out a team to pick through Regent Street and Carnaby Street for some bargains. It was almost civilised.
We were eventually relieved. A gang of people had been rounded up, some former staff from Bush House and the Capitol Tower. I actually thought at the time, wow, now I can go home. Sure, there’d just been a colossal civil war raging through the city, but, you know, at least now I could go home.
A guy drove me off on this dirt bike. He was part of the recently established courier service. I asked why we couldn’t take a car. He said there was no room for cars where we were going, and stuffed a helmet onto my head. Off we went.
He took me along Oxford Street. I could see all the bullet holes, smashed and burned out shops, past car crashes, shattered bits of building, lumps of masonry and an exploded double-decker bus. There were people searching through the wreckage and, of course, carrying away the dead bodies. Through Holborn and down the Kingsway the picture was similar. Bush House seemed to have got off pretty likely, and there was still a queue to get into the Indian Embassy.
My driver went the wrong way round the Aldwych roundabout. My nerves jumped for a moment, then I realised, it didn’t matter now. There was no traffic. Onto Waterloo Bridge, there I could see the most shocking thing.
Where there used to be the South Bank buildings, Oxo Tower, the BFI, there was a gigantic pile of rubble, some of it still on fire. The Charing Cross Bridge was wrecked too. I asked my driver what’s that. He shouted something about a Dead Zone, don’t go there.
As we crossed over into South London I began giving directions. The terrain got tougher and tougher. We’d come across whole buildings that were blown out or burned down. We saw more people, more bodies. We came up to our first barricade, two piles of tortured brickwork, wood, PVC and the remains of what looked like old cars, with a swing gate and guards in the middle.
My driver, stating his name (which I’ve now forgotten) and communal credentials asked for us to be let past. The guards asked where we were going. I told them the address of my block of flats. They said, bluntly, it was firebombed and gutted… Lucy… There were no known survivors.
I was in shock. I spent an hour or two looking round the site, speaking to people. I… I then went back to work. It was at least a fortnight before I…
----
Monday, January 25, 2010
You're just a bunch of low-income nobodies! Who are you to demand anything?
"Gordon, there's an election this year."
"What, again?"
Yes, it's sinking in, slowly. Grist to the election mill, Gordon Brown has criticised the Tories for promising £178 billion of immediate government cuts.
Brown said: "I am confident that the UK economy is emerging from recession. But there are dangerous global forces ... which mean that the world and the UK economy remain fragile.
"Policymakers around the UK ...must remain vigilant. That is why we are all agreed around the world that we must reduce our deficits steadily, according to a plan, but that we must do nothing this year which would put recovery, growth and jobs at risk."
It, of course, costs Gordon almost nothing to say this. The government putting minimal distance between it and the Tories will help lower the odds of an unlikely election win. Overt triangulation is not an option. If Labour could point some tangible difference, better still rhetorical difference between it an the Tories (if Labour wins it can always take back anything it promised, a successful rearguard action based on class instinct is possible.
It just depends on whether you can picture Ed Balls or Patricia Hewitt as fearless class warriors.
If you ignore everything Brown has ever said or ever done his argument is almost sound. In a recession, with restricted credit, depressed effective demand and leading export industries (financial services, pharmaceuticals, arms and agriculture) heavily dependent on subsidy, if you want to build a recovery the last thing you do is cut £178 billion from government expenditure, creating a new wave of unemployment and deprivation.
If you want to lever further wealth from the poor to the rich that's another matter. The Tories will wage brutal class war on the people of Britain if they get in. It's just the Labour Party will not oppose them, they are in no position to do so.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Actually existing news
Is mostly Haiti. Andy Kershaw (the world music DJ?) makes some well-aimed points about the apparently aimless aid mission to Haiti and the racist portrayal of Haitians in the media. Best of all:
Of course, as we know from Lenin's ongoing study of Haiti, the slothful response of world government is not an accident.
This self-imposed blockade by bureaucracy is a scandal but could be easily overcome. The NGOs and the military should recognise the hysteria over "security" for what it is and make use of Haiti's best resource and its most efficient distribution network: the Haitians themselves. Stop treating them as children. Or worse. Hand over to them immediately what they need at the airport. They will find the means to collect it. Fill up their trucks and cars with free fuel. Any further restriction on, and control of, the supply of aid is not only patronising but it is in that control and restriction where any "security issues" will really lurk. And it is the Haitians who best know where the aid is needed.
Of course, as we know from Lenin's ongoing study of Haiti, the slothful response of world government is not an accident.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
More Future Legend - it just keeps coming
We were in dispute at the time. I was a rep for the technical staff at Broadcasting House. Everyone would come to me for union news. It was slow going.
The management were trying to force wage cuts and compulsory redundancies across the stations, across the departments. Despite the mandate we had the executive didn’t want to call more than weekly one-day strikes, and the journalists… well, enough of them already.
So, we had the good luck, bad luck, whatever you want to call it of being out while these riots were going on. We’d had some good pickets previous two weeks. A dozen, almost twenty, and these were on 6-9am shifts. Of course there were dozens more people crossing the line. But, you know, we were feeling good. I was feeling good. I thought perhaps we could up the number of days.
Now, I remember, that morning getting there, sort of, ten to six with my portion of the union banners, some leaflets, stickers and so on. There were people waiting for me, six of them, all buzzing with the news about the riots, which I found a bit disturbing.
One of the guys, Alex, Greek guy who worked in the archives, had brought two of his mates. Apparently they’d been up all night fighting the police. Normally I would have asked them to leave but… I don’t know.
The strike was officially on. By 6.30 we had at least twenty pickets. Everything was set. The only problem was no one else turned up. Portland Place was, is a pretty quiet place at the best of times. Hardly anyone came down the street, let alone approached the building. I remember asking the one of the security guards about it. He didn’t know anything either.
While this was going on the guys were getting text messages, phone calls, people telling them what was going on. I was a bit annoyed by this. It felt a bit… undisciplined. It didn’t really dawn on me, the gravity of the situation, until about an hour and a half in.
I’d sent Alex and his mates down the road with a sandwich and coffee order, a big order. They came back a few minutes later. All the shops were shut, they said. They said they’d checked Oxford Street as well, but that was abandoned except for police, tube closed, no buses, no cars. I couldn’t believe it. I’d only been through Oxford Circus an hour or so earlier and it’d been averagely busy for that time of day, I thought.
Moments later a parade of police on horseback came past, heading south, a score at least, if not fifty. I tried phoning head office, then home. The system seemed to be jammed, like during the tube bombings.
A short while later the parade came back again. This time, behind them, was a large group of people. To begin with they looked (and sounded) like protestors. As they passed by it was clear they weren’t you usual dog-on-a-string types. They were your big types, Phil Mitchell guys, dressed out in boots, sports gear and the like. We know, I know now, Alex was right. These were the Knights.
Some of the demonstrators took an interest in our picket. They started chanting at us, “who are yer?” I didn’t have a clue what was going on. There was about 2-300 of them. They were very intimidating. Alex and his buddies (a few more had arrived somehow by this point) went round bracing everyone: be on your guard. Sure enough they started to get aggressive. They started to threaten us, call us traitors, get a job and such like. A few of them lobbed stuff over the police line. The police did nothing but stand between us.
One of the pickets, a new member, a temp who was working on the websites (I can’t even remember his name now, I’m sorry), went over to the demonstrators and tried to reason with them. This sparked a rush in the crowd. They sent the poor guy flying. To this day I don’t know what happened to him.
Alex was thinking quickly. He and one of the security guards jammed the front door open. We, by which I mean the rest of us, piled inside just in time to lock the doors. A few of them tried to charge the doors down. A couple of the windows were smashed, but we managed to keep the doors jammed shut long enough before the police intervened.
So, without intending to, we had occupied BBC Broadcasting House.
Suddenly it all became clear. Alex and the security guard, an old black guy called Carl started looking for stuff to cover the windows and barricade the door. I sent two groups out into the building to look for people. Another group went to the canteen to check on food. Myself and a couple of other technicians went to check what was working, who was actually broadcasting.
We only found one team, the poor sods thought they’d been broadcasting without relief since 1am. The entire broadcasting system had been switched off by someone, we couldn’t find who or how, and would take time to reconnect. I assumed there’d be a government emergency broadcast happening, but we couldn’t find one. Very puzzling, I thought.
After a couple of hours we gathered what we had, who we had, onto the 3rd floor. It turned out there were thirty-one of us occupying the building.
Alex, Carl and a few others had barricaded all the doors. They even said they’d started work on fallback positions. They surmised the police would be back, given how crucial the building was. On the flipside, a couple of Alex’s mates had the good idea of filling buckets and tubs with water, in case we were cut off. They’d even found some plastic mattresses, used for goodness knows what, that’d serve us if we stayed overnight.
We tried checking the radio stations. There was nothing going out, except for a few commercial stations playing pre-recorded stuff on a loop, that and various pirate stations on the far end of the old analogue bands. Most TV was off air. Wild stories reached us (when the phone system seemed to be working) that White City had been taken over (or burned to the ground). I tried phoning some of the guys I knew there but got no answer.
The best we could get were foreign TV news bulletins, but they seemed either sketchy or crazy stories of mob violence and army massacres.
Then a tank rolled down the street. A couple of Alex’s friends spotted it careering about toward Regent Street. There were dozen or so people riding on top, carrying St George’s flags. It was firing off wildly into the surrounds. We could hear it throughout the building, the most amazing din. For one moment I thought they’d come for us, but the tank bowled on past. Moment later we heard an almighty crash and bang as it ran into a building and blew up.
We kept hearing gunfire and helicopters for the rest of the day. None of us, I think, could believe that we would be ignored. It was too incredible. We kept talking and talking, who were these people, the Knights Templar, what were they up to?
We got hold of the rumour passed around, first by phone and then by twitter updates, there was a coup in motion (or successful). The government had been arrested (or killed). The Royal Family was under armed guard (or evacuated from the city). Air strikes were being called in. That rumour came true.
I never saw any bombings (a couple of people said they saw some from up on the roof). You could certainly hear them. A big roar went up around nightfall about a mile or so north of us, I guess around the Euston – Kings Cross area.
But the biggest shock came later that night. Most of the violence seemed to have passed us by. After much discussion (our group by now had turned into a fully fledged communal democracy) it was agreed we’d turn off the lights, spend the night with one eye open, and try to find a way out in the morning.
This friend of Alex, this guy called Dave, who was an unemployed artist (and looked it too, right down to the goatee beard and beret) had got word of a group of rioters, coming down from Edgware Road, looking for shelter. I thought it was mad, but the group voted to let them in.
I felt the whole situation was slipping away. I felt my responsibility. We had to get out of there, somehow, before things got really bad. But the more events progressed the more young Alex and Dave was running the show. They were organising things like rotas, patrols, collective meetings with chairs and lunch breaks with menus almost (there was some very nice cold food in the canteen store rooms).
Of course, who turned up later? Not rioters but militia. There was a banging on the main entrance. There were 40 or so armed men and women at the door, with guns and tazers and batons. There were several battered looking, obviously commandeered cars. Some had bicycles. A couple of them were carrying large boxes full of what turned out to be Molotov cocktails, flares, grenades and torches. They immediately made our occupation battle ready.
There were, apparently, another 20 or 30 people hiding in a hotel across the street. They were the leftover from a police station siege earlier that day. The mix, I found out, was amazing. There was a doctor, three builders, an IT tech, two cleaners, two train drivers and an engineer, a bus driver, a number of admin staff, four students (Biology and Physics, two for English Literature), a nightclub bouncer and a security guard. The rest were rebel soldiers. The militia been trying to flush out a group of police officers who were holding on inside when they were ambushed and overwhelmed by a mixture of Knights and soldiers backed up by a tank.
The militia escaped along a nearby canal and regrouped. The word was some groups had successfully dealt with tanks and armoured cars by luring them down narrower roads then bombing them. The key was to make a diversion and scatter anyone on foot behind the vehicle, such I was told. There was another team out on pushbikes trying to lure this particular column into Fitzrovia and surrounds.
The physics student told me all this while he was busy preparing this fearsome looking device. I asked him what his job was. He was the one actually going to plant the bomb under the tank.
The militia hadn’t wanted to confront the tank on such a wide plaza, but it was in hot pursuit and would arrive at any moment. Ten minutes or so after the militia members arrived a tank appeared on the crossroads with Cavendish Street, followed by a score of men on foot, seemingly armed. There was some hollering. The men fired a few pot shots off into the dark.
The tank obligingly turned and headed in our direction. Peering out of a conference room window on the third floor I noticed the road was funnelled slightly up to the bend by the church with parked vehicles and debris from a nearby building site. I could see a few militia members crouched in doorways and behind cars. As the tank approached I was yanked silently from the window by a soldier with a rife. He told me to get back and stay down before taking up position.
The silence was loud, but the breakout was louder. I tell you now, there’s nothing louder than war. The shooting went on for what seemed like an eternity. The militia cleared the road quite quickly but the bomb had to be delivered before the tank started loosing off shells. It seemed like forever.
Boom! What was that? It turned out the tank had fired into the hotel. I was half kneeling at the back this little room. At one point I looked up and saw six bullet holes scored across the wall, then a seventh six inches or so above my head. Thirty seconds, another crash. Most of the building across the road was gone. It’d be our turn next, I was sure. Ten seconds later, the biggest bang I may ever hear. The tank went up, along with many windows and, we found later, the entire front door, battered in by a huge lump of shrapnel.
One we were sure the street was clear we all went out to check the wreckage. The tank was now a ball of steel and flame. The militia searched the dead bodies for weapons and tools or any useful info. I came across the physics student, lying on the ground bullet-ridden, half-burned and dead.
A couple of us wanted to take him inside, along with our other casualties but, as Alex and Dave pointed out, there were wounded to deal with. Once they got treatment it was agreed we’d get on with re-barricading.
So began our first night of occupation.
The management were trying to force wage cuts and compulsory redundancies across the stations, across the departments. Despite the mandate we had the executive didn’t want to call more than weekly one-day strikes, and the journalists… well, enough of them already.
So, we had the good luck, bad luck, whatever you want to call it of being out while these riots were going on. We’d had some good pickets previous two weeks. A dozen, almost twenty, and these were on 6-9am shifts. Of course there were dozens more people crossing the line. But, you know, we were feeling good. I was feeling good. I thought perhaps we could up the number of days.
Now, I remember, that morning getting there, sort of, ten to six with my portion of the union banners, some leaflets, stickers and so on. There were people waiting for me, six of them, all buzzing with the news about the riots, which I found a bit disturbing.
One of the guys, Alex, Greek guy who worked in the archives, had brought two of his mates. Apparently they’d been up all night fighting the police. Normally I would have asked them to leave but… I don’t know.
The strike was officially on. By 6.30 we had at least twenty pickets. Everything was set. The only problem was no one else turned up. Portland Place was, is a pretty quiet place at the best of times. Hardly anyone came down the street, let alone approached the building. I remember asking the one of the security guards about it. He didn’t know anything either.
While this was going on the guys were getting text messages, phone calls, people telling them what was going on. I was a bit annoyed by this. It felt a bit… undisciplined. It didn’t really dawn on me, the gravity of the situation, until about an hour and a half in.
I’d sent Alex and his mates down the road with a sandwich and coffee order, a big order. They came back a few minutes later. All the shops were shut, they said. They said they’d checked Oxford Street as well, but that was abandoned except for police, tube closed, no buses, no cars. I couldn’t believe it. I’d only been through Oxford Circus an hour or so earlier and it’d been averagely busy for that time of day, I thought.
Moments later a parade of police on horseback came past, heading south, a score at least, if not fifty. I tried phoning head office, then home. The system seemed to be jammed, like during the tube bombings.
A short while later the parade came back again. This time, behind them, was a large group of people. To begin with they looked (and sounded) like protestors. As they passed by it was clear they weren’t you usual dog-on-a-string types. They were your big types, Phil Mitchell guys, dressed out in boots, sports gear and the like. We know, I know now, Alex was right. These were the Knights.
Some of the demonstrators took an interest in our picket. They started chanting at us, “who are yer?” I didn’t have a clue what was going on. There was about 2-300 of them. They were very intimidating. Alex and his buddies (a few more had arrived somehow by this point) went round bracing everyone: be on your guard. Sure enough they started to get aggressive. They started to threaten us, call us traitors, get a job and such like. A few of them lobbed stuff over the police line. The police did nothing but stand between us.
One of the pickets, a new member, a temp who was working on the websites (I can’t even remember his name now, I’m sorry), went over to the demonstrators and tried to reason with them. This sparked a rush in the crowd. They sent the poor guy flying. To this day I don’t know what happened to him.
Alex was thinking quickly. He and one of the security guards jammed the front door open. We, by which I mean the rest of us, piled inside just in time to lock the doors. A few of them tried to charge the doors down. A couple of the windows were smashed, but we managed to keep the doors jammed shut long enough before the police intervened.
So, without intending to, we had occupied BBC Broadcasting House.
Suddenly it all became clear. Alex and the security guard, an old black guy called Carl started looking for stuff to cover the windows and barricade the door. I sent two groups out into the building to look for people. Another group went to the canteen to check on food. Myself and a couple of other technicians went to check what was working, who was actually broadcasting.
We only found one team, the poor sods thought they’d been broadcasting without relief since 1am. The entire broadcasting system had been switched off by someone, we couldn’t find who or how, and would take time to reconnect. I assumed there’d be a government emergency broadcast happening, but we couldn’t find one. Very puzzling, I thought.
After a couple of hours we gathered what we had, who we had, onto the 3rd floor. It turned out there were thirty-one of us occupying the building.
Alex, Carl and a few others had barricaded all the doors. They even said they’d started work on fallback positions. They surmised the police would be back, given how crucial the building was. On the flipside, a couple of Alex’s mates had the good idea of filling buckets and tubs with water, in case we were cut off. They’d even found some plastic mattresses, used for goodness knows what, that’d serve us if we stayed overnight.
We tried checking the radio stations. There was nothing going out, except for a few commercial stations playing pre-recorded stuff on a loop, that and various pirate stations on the far end of the old analogue bands. Most TV was off air. Wild stories reached us (when the phone system seemed to be working) that White City had been taken over (or burned to the ground). I tried phoning some of the guys I knew there but got no answer.
The best we could get were foreign TV news bulletins, but they seemed either sketchy or crazy stories of mob violence and army massacres.
Then a tank rolled down the street. A couple of Alex’s friends spotted it careering about toward Regent Street. There were dozen or so people riding on top, carrying St George’s flags. It was firing off wildly into the surrounds. We could hear it throughout the building, the most amazing din. For one moment I thought they’d come for us, but the tank bowled on past. Moment later we heard an almighty crash and bang as it ran into a building and blew up.
We kept hearing gunfire and helicopters for the rest of the day. None of us, I think, could believe that we would be ignored. It was too incredible. We kept talking and talking, who were these people, the Knights Templar, what were they up to?
We got hold of the rumour passed around, first by phone and then by twitter updates, there was a coup in motion (or successful). The government had been arrested (or killed). The Royal Family was under armed guard (or evacuated from the city). Air strikes were being called in. That rumour came true.
I never saw any bombings (a couple of people said they saw some from up on the roof). You could certainly hear them. A big roar went up around nightfall about a mile or so north of us, I guess around the Euston – Kings Cross area.
But the biggest shock came later that night. Most of the violence seemed to have passed us by. After much discussion (our group by now had turned into a fully fledged communal democracy) it was agreed we’d turn off the lights, spend the night with one eye open, and try to find a way out in the morning.
This friend of Alex, this guy called Dave, who was an unemployed artist (and looked it too, right down to the goatee beard and beret) had got word of a group of rioters, coming down from Edgware Road, looking for shelter. I thought it was mad, but the group voted to let them in.
I felt the whole situation was slipping away. I felt my responsibility. We had to get out of there, somehow, before things got really bad. But the more events progressed the more young Alex and Dave was running the show. They were organising things like rotas, patrols, collective meetings with chairs and lunch breaks with menus almost (there was some very nice cold food in the canteen store rooms).
Of course, who turned up later? Not rioters but militia. There was a banging on the main entrance. There were 40 or so armed men and women at the door, with guns and tazers and batons. There were several battered looking, obviously commandeered cars. Some had bicycles. A couple of them were carrying large boxes full of what turned out to be Molotov cocktails, flares, grenades and torches. They immediately made our occupation battle ready.
There were, apparently, another 20 or 30 people hiding in a hotel across the street. They were the leftover from a police station siege earlier that day. The mix, I found out, was amazing. There was a doctor, three builders, an IT tech, two cleaners, two train drivers and an engineer, a bus driver, a number of admin staff, four students (Biology and Physics, two for English Literature), a nightclub bouncer and a security guard. The rest were rebel soldiers. The militia been trying to flush out a group of police officers who were holding on inside when they were ambushed and overwhelmed by a mixture of Knights and soldiers backed up by a tank.
The militia escaped along a nearby canal and regrouped. The word was some groups had successfully dealt with tanks and armoured cars by luring them down narrower roads then bombing them. The key was to make a diversion and scatter anyone on foot behind the vehicle, such I was told. There was another team out on pushbikes trying to lure this particular column into Fitzrovia and surrounds.
The physics student told me all this while he was busy preparing this fearsome looking device. I asked him what his job was. He was the one actually going to plant the bomb under the tank.
The militia hadn’t wanted to confront the tank on such a wide plaza, but it was in hot pursuit and would arrive at any moment. Ten minutes or so after the militia members arrived a tank appeared on the crossroads with Cavendish Street, followed by a score of men on foot, seemingly armed. There was some hollering. The men fired a few pot shots off into the dark.
The tank obligingly turned and headed in our direction. Peering out of a conference room window on the third floor I noticed the road was funnelled slightly up to the bend by the church with parked vehicles and debris from a nearby building site. I could see a few militia members crouched in doorways and behind cars. As the tank approached I was yanked silently from the window by a soldier with a rife. He told me to get back and stay down before taking up position.
The silence was loud, but the breakout was louder. I tell you now, there’s nothing louder than war. The shooting went on for what seemed like an eternity. The militia cleared the road quite quickly but the bomb had to be delivered before the tank started loosing off shells. It seemed like forever.
Boom! What was that? It turned out the tank had fired into the hotel. I was half kneeling at the back this little room. At one point I looked up and saw six bullet holes scored across the wall, then a seventh six inches or so above my head. Thirty seconds, another crash. Most of the building across the road was gone. It’d be our turn next, I was sure. Ten seconds later, the biggest bang I may ever hear. The tank went up, along with many windows and, we found later, the entire front door, battered in by a huge lump of shrapnel.
One we were sure the street was clear we all went out to check the wreckage. The tank was now a ball of steel and flame. The militia searched the dead bodies for weapons and tools or any useful info. I came across the physics student, lying on the ground bullet-ridden, half-burned and dead.
A couple of us wanted to take him inside, along with our other casualties but, as Alex and Dave pointed out, there were wounded to deal with. Once they got treatment it was agreed we’d get on with re-barricading.
So began our first night of occupation.
Monday, January 18, 2010
A rebel's guide to nitpicking
Something to do to fill the long void before the coming social apocalypse... Let's begin:
Don't say 'random' when you mean either unexpected, unusual (e.g. that was so random) or various (e.g. here's some random photos).
Alternate is not a synonym for alternative.
Methodology is not a synonym for method.
Yeah, no, but, anyway is just verbal padding...
As is well, you know, I mean, basically, at the end of the day (it gets dark).
A light year is not a measurement of time.
Pluralism is not a synonym for howcanweoutvotetheSWP.
Animal Farm does not prove that socialism inevitably leads to tyranny. It is a work of fiction. If it proves anything it shows you shouldn't put pigs in charge of a farm... that's all.
'Chillax' is a totally redundant word, in the context where they are related the words 'chill' and 'relax' mean exactly the same thing.
Persons using 'LOL' are almost never laughing out loud.
More to come, or perhaps not, who knows?
Don't say 'random' when you mean either unexpected, unusual (e.g. that was so random) or various (e.g. here's some random photos).
Alternate is not a synonym for alternative.
Methodology is not a synonym for method.
Yeah, no, but, anyway is just verbal padding...
As is well, you know, I mean, basically, at the end of the day (it gets dark).
A light year is not a measurement of time.
Pluralism is not a synonym for howcanweoutvotetheSWP.
Animal Farm does not prove that socialism inevitably leads to tyranny. It is a work of fiction. If it proves anything it shows you shouldn't put pigs in charge of a farm... that's all.
'Chillax' is a totally redundant word, in the context where they are related the words 'chill' and 'relax' mean exactly the same thing.
Persons using 'LOL' are almost never laughing out loud.
More to come, or perhaps not, who knows?
Friday, January 15, 2010
Vote left if you can vote Labour if you must...
I remember the day after the 1997 general election I was sitting in my college library wondering why I felt a sense of anti-climax. Partly, I thought, it was due to the long, long wait. The Tory government had been more or less doomed since September 16th 1992, the following four and a half years were just a countdown.
The other reason was the tremendous froth worked up about change. Froth because the Labour Party leadership did as much as it could do to dampen expectations, it was about the only reasonable thing it ever did. Maybe there was a mass illusion generated (the death of Princess Diana certainly seemed like a collective wig-out). I think, more likely, the vote was a tremendous negative act. People did not expect things to get better, only to get rid of John Major and crew.
The trouble with the endorsing the lesser of two evils is you're still endorsing evil. Vote Labour if you must? Where must you vote Labour?
Well, if the Labour Party is so stupid to pit Margaret Hodge against nazi Nick Griffin there might be a case for voting Labour. We can and must lead with Don't Vote Nazi, and generally undermine the fascist propaganda put about. But when it comes to the act of voting, depending on the Labour Party, there will be little to no choice.
But most consituencies will be fought between a varation of Labour, Tory and Lib Dem candidates. They are each looking for a mandate to destroy working class life in Britain. What fool would lend either of the three the support they require in full knowledge of what they intend to do?
Any vote should be a positive act, where there is the possibility of a tangible difference being made. There is a clear difference between having a Labour MP and a nazi, but you'd go crosseyed trying to look for a difference between the average Labour or Tory representative, especially in terms of what they actually do. What's more, most people know this. Who has illusions in the Labour Party anymore?
The other reason was the tremendous froth worked up about change. Froth because the Labour Party leadership did as much as it could do to dampen expectations, it was about the only reasonable thing it ever did. Maybe there was a mass illusion generated (the death of Princess Diana certainly seemed like a collective wig-out). I think, more likely, the vote was a tremendous negative act. People did not expect things to get better, only to get rid of John Major and crew.
The trouble with the endorsing the lesser of two evils is you're still endorsing evil. Vote Labour if you must? Where must you vote Labour?
Well, if the Labour Party is so stupid to pit Margaret Hodge against nazi Nick Griffin there might be a case for voting Labour. We can and must lead with Don't Vote Nazi, and generally undermine the fascist propaganda put about. But when it comes to the act of voting, depending on the Labour Party, there will be little to no choice.
But most consituencies will be fought between a varation of Labour, Tory and Lib Dem candidates. They are each looking for a mandate to destroy working class life in Britain. What fool would lend either of the three the support they require in full knowledge of what they intend to do?
Any vote should be a positive act, where there is the possibility of a tangible difference being made. There is a clear difference between having a Labour MP and a nazi, but you'd go crosseyed trying to look for a difference between the average Labour or Tory representative, especially in terms of what they actually do. What's more, most people know this. Who has illusions in the Labour Party anymore?
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The decline and fall of the Western Empire...
Alright, it's just stupid, frustrating things reported in the news, but if you like overegged nonsense, eeeeeh, fuggetabowtit:
An aside: it's a funny example of tourism when people go abroad to experience supposedly their own culture. Then again, what's the biggest tourist spot in London? Probably Leicester Square (in all it's silent 'i' glory), the bit of London that looks like every other shitty, corporate tourist trap around the globe.
It's also a minor irony when fares have been hiked by more than ten times the rate of inflation to cover a supposed hole in TFL's transport budget, the US embassy owes London £3.5 million.
Also in the news, shockhorror as ice is revealed to be the solid state of water. Also, in another deeply surprising move, a Labour Minister remembers about class (but doesn't forget to bind it to notions of race):
It's funny, I don't remember anyone saying everyone from an ethnic minority is completely at a disadvantage. The only way for such a statement to make sense is if there were literally no black members of the middle-class (or ruling class) in 2000 and now there are. Racism is an institutional question first, with casual social interaction a long way down the list. Casual racism is an effect rather than a cause.
No, now it's Weimar Germany if anything.
That would follow, I suppose, if we're going by Logic 101.
He's being nice and remembering the roots and all that. We are headed for an almighty struggle over the future of Britain's public services. All three mainstream parties have promised to slash social provision. What this talk really means is, as the axe falls on public services, the government and the ruling class in general, will play ethnic groups off each other. If this goes unchallenged racism will have all too bright a future.
Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, has been criticised for subsidising "wealthy Americans" after pledging £75,000 to fund a "USA Day" celebrating American culture.
The mayor's office said USA Day was designed to attract wealthy American tourists to the capital. But the Conservative mayor's decision to allocate money to the autumn event has angered critics months after he scrapped the Rise multicultural festival on cost grounds.
An aside: it's a funny example of tourism when people go abroad to experience supposedly their own culture. Then again, what's the biggest tourist spot in London? Probably Leicester Square (in all it's silent 'i' glory), the bit of London that looks like every other shitty, corporate tourist trap around the globe.
It's also a minor irony when fares have been hiked by more than ten times the rate of inflation to cover a supposed hole in TFL's transport budget, the US embassy owes London £3.5 million.
Also in the news, shockhorror as ice is revealed to be the solid state of water. Also, in another deeply surprising move, a Labour Minister remembers about class (but doesn't forget to bind it to notions of race):
People from ethnic minorities are no longer automatically disadvantaged in modern Britain, John Denham, the communities secretary, will say today.
Although racism still exists, progress on promoting racial equality in the last decade helped to create a society that is more comfortable with diversity than ever before, he will argue.
It's funny, I don't remember anyone saying everyone from an ethnic minority is completely at a disadvantage. The only way for such a statement to make sense is if there were literally no black members of the middle-class (or ruling class) in 2000 and now there are. Racism is an institutional question first, with casual social interaction a long way down the list. Casual racism is an effect rather than a cause.
"Britain today is not the same place as it was a decade ago," he will say.
No, now it's Weimar Germany if anything.
"We therefore need to make sure that our efforts are tackling problems of today and not those of the past."
That would follow, I suppose, if we're going by Logic 101.
"That does not mean that we should reduce our efforts to tackle racism and promote race equality, but we must avoid a one-dimensional debate that assumes all minority-ethnic people are disadvantaged.
"If the cause of disadvantage is social class, we will promote opportunity. And if the cause is a combination of racism and social class we will tackle both together."
Launching a review of government policy on race, Denham will pledge support to tackle inequality in white, working-class areas as well as in ethnic-minority communities.
He's being nice and remembering the roots and all that. We are headed for an almighty struggle over the future of Britain's public services. All three mainstream parties have promised to slash social provision. What this talk really means is, as the axe falls on public services, the government and the ruling class in general, will play ethnic groups off each other. If this goes unchallenged racism will have all too bright a future.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Goldfish of the world unite
And remember, remember, remember what happened. Iraq: it seems like a lifetime ago because, in terms of politics, it was. But the criminals are still at large. Never forget what was said and done.
Roughly 1 million people lighter (not including the estimate 4 million refugees). This is the time-line showing the evolution of the (third hand) claim (which may have come from an Iraqi taxi driver) that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that it could deploy within 45 minutes on British targets (we'll forget those targets would have been in Cyprus... If you ask what the British army is doing in Cyprus you are a traitor and a communist). This is the published statement:
It was a lie. The interesting thing is some of us knew it at the time.
Funny, I don't remember them breaking their backs to clear that one up.
Clearer as in at all. This is quite a quote:
Also:
Alistair, please, for your own sake get the story straight with Tony before you speak again.
Tony Blair's ex-spokesman Alastair Campbell has said he "defends every single word" of the 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
He told the UK's Iraq war inquiry that parts could have been "clearer" but it did not "misrepresent" Iraq's threat.
The UK should be "proud" of its role "in changing Iraq from what it was to what it is now becoming", he argued.
Roughly 1 million people lighter (not including the estimate 4 million refugees). This is the time-line showing the evolution of the (third hand) claim (which may have come from an Iraqi taxi driver) that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons that it could deploy within 45 minutes on British targets (we'll forget those targets would have been in Cyprus... If you ask what the British army is doing in Cyprus you are a traitor and a communist). This is the published statement:
24 September 2003
The dossier is published with a foreword from Tony Blair, which says: "The document discloses that his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them."
The prime minister tells MPs the intelligence concludes that Saddam Hussein "has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population".
London's Evening Standard carries the headline: "45 minutes from attack".
It was a lie. The interesting thing is some of us knew it at the time.
Mr Campbell, who drafted the first version of the foreword - ultimately approved by Mr Blair - said no-one in intelligence challenged this statement which, he added, never suggested Saddam Hussein "was able to do something terrible to the British mainland".
Funny, I don't remember them breaking their backs to clear that one up.
On the 45-minute claim, which was retracted after the war, he said the dossier "obviously" could have been clearer about it referring to battlefield munitions.
Clearer as in at all. This is quite a quote:
Mr Campbell said he was "never in doubt" that Iraq would be found to have weapons of mass destruction and the realisation that they did not was "very difficult".
Also:
"You seem to be wanting me to say that Tony Blair signed up to saying, regardless of the facts and WMD, we are going to get rid of this guy," he said. "It was not like this."
Alistair, please, for your own sake get the story straight with Tony before you speak again.
Friday, January 08, 2010
This week's actually existing news
Here's a headline: PM reshuffle to benefit Mandelson. To be honest, the way this chap's career has gone I wouldn't be surprised if he thought everything was put on for his benefit. He is a bastard, a crook, rightly a multiple felon, but, in this world who's going to stop him? I won't be happy to see a Tory government, but I will be glad when he's gone. Mind you, he'll probably land some plumb job as King of Sardinia or Emperor of the Moon and plague humanity from his new floating death fortress.
A nice little twist: the people of Australia (alright, Australian idiots) are upset with an Indian cartoon:
I don't know the first thing about the nature of these crimes. That said, it does sound a lot like the racism-is-no-longer-racism argument we get in Britain. It is just complete coincidence that the victims happen to be of an ethnic minority. Fuck 'em, I say. Some people deserve to be offended.
The Israeli state is to pay $10 million in compensation for its racial bombardment of Gaza this time last year. The thing is it's going to the UN for the damage inflicted to its buildings. The siege of Gaza remains.
A nice little twist: the people of Australia (alright, Australian idiots) are upset with an Indian cartoon:
Australia has condemned as "deeply offensive" an Indian newspaper cartoon depicting the police as members of the racist Ku Klux Klan.
India's Mail Today ran the cartoon showing a figure with an Australian police badge and a pointed white hood.
It follows the murder of Indian Nitin Garg, 21, in Melbourne and a string of other attacks on South Asians.
Australian officials say the attacks have not been racist, but random acts by opportunistic criminals.
I don't know the first thing about the nature of these crimes. That said, it does sound a lot like the racism-is-no-longer-racism argument we get in Britain. It is just complete coincidence that the victims happen to be of an ethnic minority. Fuck 'em, I say. Some people deserve to be offended.
The Israeli state is to pay $10 million in compensation for its racial bombardment of Gaza this time last year. The thing is it's going to the UN for the damage inflicted to its buildings. The siege of Gaza remains.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Good News Everyone!
Well, unfortunately it's not about the recession or climate change or anything else immediately relevant to humanity. It's also not really news but something I picked up from pop science TV.
There are two general hypotheses regarding the prevalence of Earth-like planets, and from that life and, from that, intelligent life in the universe.
One which suggests that the universe is a zoo. There are an unimaginable number of galaxies with an even greater number of stars. All the stars we see in the process of formation have disks, planets are formed from these disks. Find a rocky planet with water and an atmosphere and time plus the laws of chemistry will equal life. The Earth is quite mediocre.
The second theory is the Rare Earth Hypothesis and, it seems, is more popular. This theory stresses the contingent events that went into making life as we know it.
The only current model that explains (almost) everything about the Earth's Moon says that it was formed out of an early collision between the proto-Earth and a Mars-sized body. The Moon formed this way gave the Earth added mass, which meant a denser, hotter core, driving plate tectonics and forming a magnetosphere strong enough to protect the atmosphere from solar wind. The impact probably also accounts for the Earth's axial tilt, which accounts for the seasons crucial to the development of life.
But that's not all the Moon gives to us. It's strong gravitational pull helps stabilise Earth's orbit. It also creates the tides. These created the proving ground for life as it transferred from sea to land.
The formation of the Moon is not the only apparent chance event that created life as we know it. Judging by what we know now of the solar system (after the Viking, Voyager, Hubble, Galileo and Cassini missions) the solar system is deeply affected by history. It seems to set up a number of laws, only to break them all.
But our solar system is not the only system we know about. There are a growing number of Extra-Solar planets and systems being discovered. They are mostly incredible, outlandish bodies, which continue to defy the model of an orderly solar system. One of my favourites is Gliese 581 d. It is somewhere between a very large Earth or a warm Neptune existing on the fringe of its star's habitable zone.
But what seems to be a real cause for optimism is pulsar planets. This might sound strange. These are planets formed around the remains of supernova. Pulsars are small but massive and horrifically radioactive. The fact is, even after the overwhelming majority of a system's material is blasted away the principle of planet formation remains.
This shifts the odds in favour of life in the universe.
There are two general hypotheses regarding the prevalence of Earth-like planets, and from that life and, from that, intelligent life in the universe.
One which suggests that the universe is a zoo. There are an unimaginable number of galaxies with an even greater number of stars. All the stars we see in the process of formation have disks, planets are formed from these disks. Find a rocky planet with water and an atmosphere and time plus the laws of chemistry will equal life. The Earth is quite mediocre.
The second theory is the Rare Earth Hypothesis and, it seems, is more popular. This theory stresses the contingent events that went into making life as we know it.
The only current model that explains (almost) everything about the Earth's Moon says that it was formed out of an early collision between the proto-Earth and a Mars-sized body. The Moon formed this way gave the Earth added mass, which meant a denser, hotter core, driving plate tectonics and forming a magnetosphere strong enough to protect the atmosphere from solar wind. The impact probably also accounts for the Earth's axial tilt, which accounts for the seasons crucial to the development of life.
But that's not all the Moon gives to us. It's strong gravitational pull helps stabilise Earth's orbit. It also creates the tides. These created the proving ground for life as it transferred from sea to land.
The formation of the Moon is not the only apparent chance event that created life as we know it. Judging by what we know now of the solar system (after the Viking, Voyager, Hubble, Galileo and Cassini missions) the solar system is deeply affected by history. It seems to set up a number of laws, only to break them all.
But our solar system is not the only system we know about. There are a growing number of Extra-Solar planets and systems being discovered. They are mostly incredible, outlandish bodies, which continue to defy the model of an orderly solar system. One of my favourites is Gliese 581 d. It is somewhere between a very large Earth or a warm Neptune existing on the fringe of its star's habitable zone.
But what seems to be a real cause for optimism is pulsar planets. This might sound strange. These are planets formed around the remains of supernova. Pulsars are small but massive and horrifically radioactive. The fact is, even after the overwhelming majority of a system's material is blasted away the principle of planet formation remains.
This shifts the odds in favour of life in the universe.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Future Legend
Amazing, I come out of prison, all right it was a police cell, almost as soon I get out someone hands me a shovel and a pair of gloves.
I remember getting nabbed out in the street. The morning after, there was a showdown going on at the end of our street. Gary and I, Gary, my boyfriend, we’d taken a wander amongst the fighting that first night. It was, well, I’d never seen anything like it.
I’d just missed getting arrested earlier that day. Of course after the fighting broke out in the queue the job centre closed down. The kids thought they’d sent their buddy in a taxi and all would be well. People hung around. I think they somehow still thought the office would open like normal.
Of course five minutes later all of a sudden police came pouring in from what seemed like all angles, waiving batons and screaming. There must have been at least three hundred of them. Everyone ran.
A few of us pegged it down the high street. The police weren’t keeping up so well. I didn’t know what we were doing. All of a sudden two vans appeared out of a side street and we were cut off. The officers got out. They seemed to be smiling. I’m sure I heard one of them say, “got you now, you cunts”.
Then I heard someone say “this way”. None of the shops were open, it was mid morning but they all seemed to have their shutters down. A girl, ah, young woman, spotted one of the fire exits to the abandoned mall. So we made a dash for the door. Not everyone made it. Much later I managed to bump into the guy who was directly behind me. He told me he got club to the jaw. It fractured. He also showed me the finger shaped bruises on his right arm. He got free by kicking the door shut on the police officer’s wrist. It was that close.
We scattered through the mall. By this stage I just ran and didn’t look back. I could hear the yelling and thrashing and kicking behind me.
I got lucky. The mall was three stories high. I climbed up the broken escalator to the top level. The first shop I ran into There was a guy, one of the Somali lads from the queue, already in there. There was an air vent, loose enough that you could fit through.
He said, “brother, help me move this shelf”. I didn’t know what else to do, or how long we’d have. We climbed up the shelf, through the vent, into this wall space and kicked the shelf away. I remember it was dark and full of pipes and boilers and tanks and I think a few pigeons. I couldn’t see a thing but my friend managed to spot a skylight. We climbed out onto the roof.
I had to pause for breath. My friend asked if I was ok. I was fine. I started to make a run for the edge of the building. I could see there was a narrow alley out the back and a warehouse. My friend grabbed me and told me to stop.
“Don’t make a noise… They never look up”.
It was a metal corrugated roof that made a lot of noise.
We crept to the edge of the roof and peered down into the alley. Sure enough there were about two-dozen cops waiting at the back exit. Just as we looked they charged in as one and came out with about eight people, kicking and screaming, the police mostly.
They all got bundled into what sounded like vans. We waited a little longer. When we were sure they had given up on the mall we made a jump for the warehouse roof. First my friend, then I. It was six foot at least. We waited a little longer, although it was starting to rain. Once the coast was clear we found a sturdy looking drainpipe, thankfully made of metal, not plastic, to climb down (which was a heart stopper, I tell you).
Once down we bit each other salaam aleikum and goodbye, and I never saw him again. I got home about half two, shut all the curtains and double locked all the doors. Half six, Gary got back. Of course he was banging on the door. It was double locked, after all. I eventually ushered him in, expecting a rant, the first thing he said to me was, “you won’t believe what’s going on out there”.
Of course these were the riots going on, kids with their bottles and barricades. I couldn’t believe it. We went to have a look. I say it now like it’s strange but we didn’t want to get involved but it was… I don’t know, intoxicating, exciting.
We wandered through the crowd a bit, fell back when the police charged and crept forward with everyone else when they retreated. By sort of nine, ten o’clock (I’m not quite sure now) there was a lull. Gary and me we followed a group over to Wood Green. The bus garage appeared to be busy; there was a huge crowd outside. In fact the drivers had walked out. We were told some drove out with crowds of kids on board, looking for police to fight. The mood was definitely up.
It all seemed a bit chaotic. There looked to be some people in charge, some kids, some older people, a few of the bus drivers, sort of a coalition of… I don’t know. I wasn’t obvious what was happening; just some people seemed to be talking louder than others. There were conversations and arguments going on all over the place, we tried to listen in.
Then we both got handed these flags, they looked to be trade union flags and were told to get marching. So we did, about 5-6-700 of us. We went down the hill to the overpass by the shopping centre, I heard later a bit worse the wear for having been looted earlier. There was a police roadblock. There must have been at least six or seven vans, about a dozen cars and enough officers to fill them.
About half of us had flags of some sort, I’m sure the rest had either bricks or bottles they were keeping hidden. There were all sorts of flags, trade union, socialist, Muslim; I saw a couple of rainbow flags, a Jamaican flag, Venezuelan, Bolivian, even an Aymaran one. There were a few megaphones, and lots of chanting (none of which we really recognised at the time).
As we approached the police line I remember being incredibly nervous. They looked just like the police I’d seen earlier, just as eager to get nasty. There was a huge rush behind us. What looked like a flying wedge came through, people in masks charging. They’d whipped off their flags to reveal all sorts of weapons. I saw snooker cues, baseball bats, lead piping, table legs and all sorts.
They careered directly into the police line. The officers must have been caught off guard because they broke ranks immediately. A few, I’m sure, retreated to their cars. A volley of bricks and bottles then followed the flying wedge. The police began to retreat slowly, and then briskly, there simply weren’t enough of them to hold us; they weren’t riot police, they were too lightly armed. After a while they simply turned their backs to run. We tried to keep up, but our group ended up getting dangerously stretched. Some wanted to follow all the way but the loud talkers started gathering us in.
What a night. People cheered and danced, hugged each other like friends; no wonder people didn’t want to go home. But there seemed like nothing else left to do.
It was six in the morning, at home, when the police came crashing through our door. I was stunned, at first by being yanked out of bed, kicked in the kidneys, and then thrown to the floor with a semi-automatic rifle pointed in my face. Both Gary and me were bundled down the stairs and out the flat. We were pushed and knocked all the way. Gary, I know, almost lost the sight in one eye after being slammed into a doorframe.
Numb as I was, after we were thrown into the back of a van I can remember thinking how could they have found us? There were a couple of other people in the back. They said they’d been taken off the Domestic Extremist list. Gary had been to anti-war rallies back in the day when we were at college.
At the time I had no idea where they were taking us. We were taken to this police station. Gary and I were put in separate cells. I was in with three other people, which surprised me first off. There was a university student, a schoolteacher and an elderly caretaker. The place was noisy as anything to begin with, lots of yelling and banging. There’d clearly been a number of people arrested. The noise would quiet down for a while, but the bedlam would start up again with each fresh batch of arrests.
All that second day our cell was filling up. We had two more students, a taxi driver, a roofer and an old postie join us. It had been cold outside, but I remember the room getting very hot, muggy. Every once in a while the officers would check up on us, peep though the little slat. Some in the cell would give a little sass back. One of the students demanded water to drink and got a bottle chucked in her face.
Despite this morale was high. There was no earthly reason, at least none I could think of, why we’d be released. Nonetheless we were comrades, in the best sense, all in this together. Each new prisoner was an update on what was going on outside. What was going on? None of us could really get our heads round it. The old postie kept referring ro this revolution, but it seemed too far-fetched.
It got to the stage were some of us were getting tired. The lights had gone out. It had been several hours since our last visit and the building was generally quiet when a faint but clear commotion began building outside. We heard running, shouting, doors breaking open. Our door was then flung wide. I saw three young women, one with a battery torch and the others with crowbars. The one with touch said:
“C’mon, we’re busting you all out”.
I remember getting nabbed out in the street. The morning after, there was a showdown going on at the end of our street. Gary and I, Gary, my boyfriend, we’d taken a wander amongst the fighting that first night. It was, well, I’d never seen anything like it.
I’d just missed getting arrested earlier that day. Of course after the fighting broke out in the queue the job centre closed down. The kids thought they’d sent their buddy in a taxi and all would be well. People hung around. I think they somehow still thought the office would open like normal.
Of course five minutes later all of a sudden police came pouring in from what seemed like all angles, waiving batons and screaming. There must have been at least three hundred of them. Everyone ran.
A few of us pegged it down the high street. The police weren’t keeping up so well. I didn’t know what we were doing. All of a sudden two vans appeared out of a side street and we were cut off. The officers got out. They seemed to be smiling. I’m sure I heard one of them say, “got you now, you cunts”.
Then I heard someone say “this way”. None of the shops were open, it was mid morning but they all seemed to have their shutters down. A girl, ah, young woman, spotted one of the fire exits to the abandoned mall. So we made a dash for the door. Not everyone made it. Much later I managed to bump into the guy who was directly behind me. He told me he got club to the jaw. It fractured. He also showed me the finger shaped bruises on his right arm. He got free by kicking the door shut on the police officer’s wrist. It was that close.
We scattered through the mall. By this stage I just ran and didn’t look back. I could hear the yelling and thrashing and kicking behind me.
I got lucky. The mall was three stories high. I climbed up the broken escalator to the top level. The first shop I ran into There was a guy, one of the Somali lads from the queue, already in there. There was an air vent, loose enough that you could fit through.
He said, “brother, help me move this shelf”. I didn’t know what else to do, or how long we’d have. We climbed up the shelf, through the vent, into this wall space and kicked the shelf away. I remember it was dark and full of pipes and boilers and tanks and I think a few pigeons. I couldn’t see a thing but my friend managed to spot a skylight. We climbed out onto the roof.
I had to pause for breath. My friend asked if I was ok. I was fine. I started to make a run for the edge of the building. I could see there was a narrow alley out the back and a warehouse. My friend grabbed me and told me to stop.
“Don’t make a noise… They never look up”.
It was a metal corrugated roof that made a lot of noise.
We crept to the edge of the roof and peered down into the alley. Sure enough there were about two-dozen cops waiting at the back exit. Just as we looked they charged in as one and came out with about eight people, kicking and screaming, the police mostly.
They all got bundled into what sounded like vans. We waited a little longer. When we were sure they had given up on the mall we made a jump for the warehouse roof. First my friend, then I. It was six foot at least. We waited a little longer, although it was starting to rain. Once the coast was clear we found a sturdy looking drainpipe, thankfully made of metal, not plastic, to climb down (which was a heart stopper, I tell you).
Once down we bit each other salaam aleikum and goodbye, and I never saw him again. I got home about half two, shut all the curtains and double locked all the doors. Half six, Gary got back. Of course he was banging on the door. It was double locked, after all. I eventually ushered him in, expecting a rant, the first thing he said to me was, “you won’t believe what’s going on out there”.
Of course these were the riots going on, kids with their bottles and barricades. I couldn’t believe it. We went to have a look. I say it now like it’s strange but we didn’t want to get involved but it was… I don’t know, intoxicating, exciting.
We wandered through the crowd a bit, fell back when the police charged and crept forward with everyone else when they retreated. By sort of nine, ten o’clock (I’m not quite sure now) there was a lull. Gary and me we followed a group over to Wood Green. The bus garage appeared to be busy; there was a huge crowd outside. In fact the drivers had walked out. We were told some drove out with crowds of kids on board, looking for police to fight. The mood was definitely up.
It all seemed a bit chaotic. There looked to be some people in charge, some kids, some older people, a few of the bus drivers, sort of a coalition of… I don’t know. I wasn’t obvious what was happening; just some people seemed to be talking louder than others. There were conversations and arguments going on all over the place, we tried to listen in.
Then we both got handed these flags, they looked to be trade union flags and were told to get marching. So we did, about 5-6-700 of us. We went down the hill to the overpass by the shopping centre, I heard later a bit worse the wear for having been looted earlier. There was a police roadblock. There must have been at least six or seven vans, about a dozen cars and enough officers to fill them.
About half of us had flags of some sort, I’m sure the rest had either bricks or bottles they were keeping hidden. There were all sorts of flags, trade union, socialist, Muslim; I saw a couple of rainbow flags, a Jamaican flag, Venezuelan, Bolivian, even an Aymaran one. There were a few megaphones, and lots of chanting (none of which we really recognised at the time).
As we approached the police line I remember being incredibly nervous. They looked just like the police I’d seen earlier, just as eager to get nasty. There was a huge rush behind us. What looked like a flying wedge came through, people in masks charging. They’d whipped off their flags to reveal all sorts of weapons. I saw snooker cues, baseball bats, lead piping, table legs and all sorts.
They careered directly into the police line. The officers must have been caught off guard because they broke ranks immediately. A few, I’m sure, retreated to their cars. A volley of bricks and bottles then followed the flying wedge. The police began to retreat slowly, and then briskly, there simply weren’t enough of them to hold us; they weren’t riot police, they were too lightly armed. After a while they simply turned their backs to run. We tried to keep up, but our group ended up getting dangerously stretched. Some wanted to follow all the way but the loud talkers started gathering us in.
What a night. People cheered and danced, hugged each other like friends; no wonder people didn’t want to go home. But there seemed like nothing else left to do.
It was six in the morning, at home, when the police came crashing through our door. I was stunned, at first by being yanked out of bed, kicked in the kidneys, and then thrown to the floor with a semi-automatic rifle pointed in my face. Both Gary and me were bundled down the stairs and out the flat. We were pushed and knocked all the way. Gary, I know, almost lost the sight in one eye after being slammed into a doorframe.
Numb as I was, after we were thrown into the back of a van I can remember thinking how could they have found us? There were a couple of other people in the back. They said they’d been taken off the Domestic Extremist list. Gary had been to anti-war rallies back in the day when we were at college.
At the time I had no idea where they were taking us. We were taken to this police station. Gary and I were put in separate cells. I was in with three other people, which surprised me first off. There was a university student, a schoolteacher and an elderly caretaker. The place was noisy as anything to begin with, lots of yelling and banging. There’d clearly been a number of people arrested. The noise would quiet down for a while, but the bedlam would start up again with each fresh batch of arrests.
All that second day our cell was filling up. We had two more students, a taxi driver, a roofer and an old postie join us. It had been cold outside, but I remember the room getting very hot, muggy. Every once in a while the officers would check up on us, peep though the little slat. Some in the cell would give a little sass back. One of the students demanded water to drink and got a bottle chucked in her face.
Despite this morale was high. There was no earthly reason, at least none I could think of, why we’d be released. Nonetheless we were comrades, in the best sense, all in this together. Each new prisoner was an update on what was going on outside. What was going on? None of us could really get our heads round it. The old postie kept referring ro this revolution, but it seemed too far-fetched.
It got to the stage were some of us were getting tired. The lights had gone out. It had been several hours since our last visit and the building was generally quiet when a faint but clear commotion began building outside. We heard running, shouting, doors breaking open. Our door was then flung wide. I saw three young women, one with a battery torch and the others with crowbars. The one with touch said:
“C’mon, we’re busting you all out”.
Monday, January 04, 2010
It's tough...
But we have to be tougher. A front for the group Al-Muhajiroun intends to march through Wootton Bassett, the town where the coffins of British soldiers have been paraded. A couple of things to establish first:
(1) Al-Muhajiroun are not nice. Here is the current Wikipedia entry for the group. It is not an Islamic revolutionary organisation and there is no evidence it organises terrorist attacks, although it has made statements in praise of terrorist attacks, and people connected with the group have participated in conspiracies.
(2) In a remotely ideal world the march would not be happening. It still may not happen.
As a side note, it's always interesting that the police can approve or prohibit ostensibly peaceful political activity in a democracy. What kind of democracy needs police approval? But that's by the by. The real reason this march is unfortunate is it will stimulate the right and the far right, while any participants will remain isolated. The bullshit metre is already flaring:
Oh really, hang on a minute though:
Definitely not the brightest paperclip in the bowl. He probably drifts in and out of consciousness as he speaks, that or he has the kind of respect for the fine citizens of Wootton Bassett as the local MP.
James Gray MP voted for the invasion of Iraq. Enough said.
That fact that the far-right will mobilise around this (the EDL are threatening to target one of the organisers) means we must take an interest. There are enough loonies, nazis and ne'r do wells to bleat about Christianity, Queen and Laura Norder. This means:
(1) We don't form a 3-part harmony for their chorus. The march should not be banned from on high.
(2) A foolish and provocative as the demonstrators (who haven't yet demonstrated) may be, we may well have to stand between them and the EDL. Otherwise this kind of thing will happen more and more often.
(1) Al-Muhajiroun are not nice. Here is the current Wikipedia entry for the group. It is not an Islamic revolutionary organisation and there is no evidence it organises terrorist attacks, although it has made statements in praise of terrorist attacks, and people connected with the group have participated in conspiracies.
(2) In a remotely ideal world the march would not be happening. It still may not happen.
Local politicians have asked [Anjem] Choudary to abandon the protest and a Facebook site dedicated to preventing the march quickly attracted more than 120,000 members. The police said they were aware of "significant community concern" about the proposal.
Choudary said Wootton Bassett had been chosen because it would attract huge publicity and that he had not yet spoken to the police, who would have to approve the parade. He also had no date in mind, leaving him open to the accusation that the idea is a publicity stunt.
As a side note, it's always interesting that the police can approve or prohibit ostensibly peaceful political activity in a democracy. What kind of democracy needs police approval? But that's by the by. The real reason this march is unfortunate is it will stimulate the right and the far right, while any participants will remain isolated. The bullshit metre is already flaring:
The former mayor and councillor Chris Wannell said of the idea: "We don't do what we do at Wootton Bassett for any political reason at all...
Oh really, hang on a minute though:
"... but to pay our respects to those who have given their lives for our freedom.
"We are a Christian country and a traditional old English market town who honour very much our Queen and country. We obey the law and pay respects to our servicemen who protect our freedom".
Definitely not the brightest paperclip in the bowl. He probably drifts in and out of consciousness as he speaks, that or he has the kind of respect for the fine citizens of Wootton Bassett as the local MP.
The North Wiltshire MP, James Gray, said local people would not be drawn into political conflict with the group. "They will say these are foolish people making a silly point – we'll get on with our ordinary lives thank you.
"This also misunderstands the nature of what the people of Wootton Bassett do. They are not blood-thirstily in favour of the war. Most people would say they were not qualified to comment on the rightness or wrongness".
James Gray MP voted for the invasion of Iraq. Enough said.
That fact that the far-right will mobilise around this (the EDL are threatening to target one of the organisers) means we must take an interest. There are enough loonies, nazis and ne'r do wells to bleat about Christianity, Queen and Laura Norder. This means:
(1) We don't form a 3-part harmony for their chorus. The march should not be banned from on high.
(2) A foolish and provocative as the demonstrators (who haven't yet demonstrated) may be, we may well have to stand between them and the EDL. Otherwise this kind of thing will happen more and more often.
Cradley Heath’s Muslim community is appealing for help after its mosque was burnt to the ground by arsonists
A fire engulfed the Cradley Heath Mosque and Islamic Centre in Plant Street on Boxing Day destroying the building and the religious countless books inside. It is the second time in five years that the building has been targeted by arsonists and police are hunting the culprits.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Actually existing politics
Although, let' see if they exist by the end of the post...
What did the noughties actually mean? Were our hopes and ambitions of the decade realised or not and, if not, why not?
It’d be some rhetorical wheeze if we pretended they were, or that the entire decade was in vain (there are people who will pretend for the sake of their argument). I would opine that there are more people who are politically active now than ten years ago. What’s more they’re most often active outside of the established political framework (whether the political system manages to reabsorb this activity or not, take the example of NGOs, non-governmental in only the loosest sense).
But the context of this activity has been unchanged. There is a long and sometimes dubious intellectual tradition of putting past events and actions down to objective circumstances. The subjective factor objectively exists, in other words people exist and are free enough to consciously alter the conditions that shape them.
Was there any time in the decade when the neo-liberal consensus could have been challenged and significantly beaten? The winter of 2002-3 was arguably that time. The government was facing large set-piece industrial action from the Fire Brigades Union and, of course, a rapidly growing anti-war movement. These two movements involved large numbers and were tending to dovetail.
The point where each movement foundered (despite their great successes) was in the legacy of neo-liberalism in what's called the political class. Neo-liberalism (its local variant being Thatcherism) has been unpopular with the general public for at least fifteen years. But it has created an utterly solid political class dedicated to the cause, from the political parties to the unions, the mass media, the civil service and so on.
We are here referring to Gramsci's dirigente. In his military metaphor the human material for infantry is easy to come by, and there will be particular warriors among this who'd make a good general staff. It's the NCOs, dirigente, organic intellectuals, leaders on the ground that take longest to develop.
Given the context it had to work in, the anti-war movement was ultimately pitched at parliament. The Labour MPs especially chose their immediate careers over the long-term revival of democracy and with it their party. A similar thing can be said about the then leadership of the FBU, in near complete control of the strike, they sided with their political masters against their members.
The lesson is the gap between representatives and the represented. A movement that relies on established democracy is liable to be stymied or demobilised. Make Poverty History was a clear example.
The current objective circumstances mean neo-liberal practice will undergo further battering. The established political system will degrade but resist all attempts at reform. Judging by the noughties, an alternative democracy will not from come from an organised breakaway from the mainstream, at least not for now. This would suppose a rank and file strategy, as opposed to a broad left one. This will apply not just to the unions but politics in general.
What did the noughties actually mean? Were our hopes and ambitions of the decade realised or not and, if not, why not?
It’d be some rhetorical wheeze if we pretended they were, or that the entire decade was in vain (there are people who will pretend for the sake of their argument). I would opine that there are more people who are politically active now than ten years ago. What’s more they’re most often active outside of the established political framework (whether the political system manages to reabsorb this activity or not, take the example of NGOs, non-governmental in only the loosest sense).
But the context of this activity has been unchanged. There is a long and sometimes dubious intellectual tradition of putting past events and actions down to objective circumstances. The subjective factor objectively exists, in other words people exist and are free enough to consciously alter the conditions that shape them.
Was there any time in the decade when the neo-liberal consensus could have been challenged and significantly beaten? The winter of 2002-3 was arguably that time. The government was facing large set-piece industrial action from the Fire Brigades Union and, of course, a rapidly growing anti-war movement. These two movements involved large numbers and were tending to dovetail.
The point where each movement foundered (despite their great successes) was in the legacy of neo-liberalism in what's called the political class. Neo-liberalism (its local variant being Thatcherism) has been unpopular with the general public for at least fifteen years. But it has created an utterly solid political class dedicated to the cause, from the political parties to the unions, the mass media, the civil service and so on.
We are here referring to Gramsci's dirigente. In his military metaphor the human material for infantry is easy to come by, and there will be particular warriors among this who'd make a good general staff. It's the NCOs, dirigente, organic intellectuals, leaders on the ground that take longest to develop.
Given the context it had to work in, the anti-war movement was ultimately pitched at parliament. The Labour MPs especially chose their immediate careers over the long-term revival of democracy and with it their party. A similar thing can be said about the then leadership of the FBU, in near complete control of the strike, they sided with their political masters against their members.
The lesson is the gap between representatives and the represented. A movement that relies on established democracy is liable to be stymied or demobilised. Make Poverty History was a clear example.
The current objective circumstances mean neo-liberal practice will undergo further battering. The established political system will degrade but resist all attempts at reform. Judging by the noughties, an alternative democracy will not from come from an organised breakaway from the mainstream, at least not for now. This would suppose a rank and file strategy, as opposed to a broad left one. This will apply not just to the unions but politics in general.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Git Results
It was a crowded field with many deserving candidates. Turnout was excellent, in fact the voter turned out before breakfast. Though less scientific than a shampoo advert the result still stands for all-time. The top three gits of the decade were:
A distant third (just ahead of three other candidates), Bono (7 votes)* 9.09%. A close second Andy Newman (19 votes)* 24.68%. In first place, the bookies favourite, Tony Blair (21 votes)* 27.27%.
Tomorrow, hopefully, some actually existing politics.
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