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Labour proposes huge increase in state surveillance

tim — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 12:16:10 +0000

In a further escalation of the attack on democratic rights, the Labour government is proposing a huge increase in state surveillance. It is implementing new measures under the pretext of the “war on terror” to intrude ever deeper into the private lives of people who are viewed as potential criminals rather than citizens.

As things stand, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) introduced in 2004 allows hundreds of public bodies to monitor communications without a court warrant. The Commissioner for the Interception of Communications, Paul Kennedy, oversees 795 agencies and organisations permitted by RIPA to acquire communications data. These include 9 intelligence agencies, 52 police forces, 12 other law enforcement agencies, 139 prisons, 475 local authorities, and 108 other organisations such as the Post Office and the Food Standards Agency.

There were 519,000 requests for information in 2006/07, mainly from the police and security services—up from 440,000 the previous year. Official reports say law enforcement agencies were also authorised to “interfere with someone’s property” about 3,000 times in 2007/08, mount 355 “intrusive surveillance” operations (breaking in to someone’s property or planting a bug) and carry out 18,767 cases of “directed surveillance” (following someone and recording their activities).

Currently, telecommunications companies must store records of all phone calls for a year so that they can be examined. In 2005, Statewatch News Online revealed how T-mobile had “an automated e-mail system that allows law enforcement agencies to retrieve subscriber and billing details by consulting the system directly—all they need is a mobile phone number. This process requires no human intervention from T-mobile staff: the system automatically generates spreadsheets showing the subscriber and billing information and sends them to the law enforcement e-mail address.”

From next year, internet service providers will also be compelled to collect information about the web sites people visit and details of their emails. The Home Office said the new measures would force companies to store “a billion incidents of data exchange a day” and dismisses any concerns about these developments with the usual mantra, “we consider that these measures are a proportionate interference with individuals’ right to privacy to ensure protection of the public.”

There are plans to force all companies to hand over their data to one central “super” database so that government agencies will no longer need to submit requests to individual companies.

The government is also putting pressure on organisations besides the police and security services to make more use of spying powers. Kennedy complained, “I am concerned that so many authorities who applied for powers to be given to them, apparently do not use them and I do not know why this is … if this state of affairs continues unexplained, then consideration must be given to removing the powers from them.

“During the period covered by this report only 154 local authorities made use of their powers to acquire communications data. A total of 1,707 requests were made for communications data and the vast majority were for basic subscriber information. Very few local authorities have used their powers to acquire itemized call records in relation to the investigations, which they have conducted. Indeed our inspections have shown that generally the local authorities could make much more use of communications data as a powerful tool to investigate crime.”

UK Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, agreed saying, “The commissioners’ reports offer valuable oversight and provide reassurance that these powers are being used appropriately.” She added: “We need to ensure Ripa powers are used appropriately and are not undermined.”

Smith’s last remark is a reference to the recent furore over local authorities using phone and email records and carrying out video surveillance of people applying for schools for their children, housing benefit and other social services. The papers were also full of headlines about spying operations to detect dogs fouling the footpaths and people using refuse bins improperly.

Sir Christopher Rose, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner, warned local authorities that they risked losing “the protection that RIPA affords.” He used the “lack of understanding of the legislation” shown by councils and their “serious misunderstanding of the concept of proportionality” to call on them to “invest in properly trained intelligence officers who could operate covertly.”

Rose added, “The government is reviewing those public authorities that have access to these powers to ensure that they have a continuing and justifiable requirement for them. On completion the government will list the authorities that can use each of the powers and the purposes for which they can use them, and set out revised codes of practice.”

Simon Milton, outgoing chairman of the Local Government Association (LGA), attempted to defend local authorities against these accusations saying, “Councils have been criticised for using the powers in relation to issues that can be portrayed as trivial or not considered a crime by the public. Yet councils are caught between the rock of public opinion and the hard place of being told they should actually be using some of these powers more widely.” He agreed, however, that, “... it is important that they use these powers carefully and appropriately and we will be working with [the Surveillance Commissioner] to help enable this.”

Last April, Milton was the driving force behind a proposal to use supermarkets to collect data on migrant workers. Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, told MPs, “The LGA has recently suggested that we look at footfall in supermarkets. They reckon Tesco has pretty good accurate information about the people who use their stores. I welcome that kind of imaginative thinking if it can help us to get a better and more accurate view at the local level of what the impact [of migration] is.”

Earlier this year popular opposition to Labour’s anti-terror legislation and its erosion of civil liberties allowed former Conservative Shadow Home Secretary David Davis to adopt the mantle of “defender of liberty” when he won the Haltemprice and Howden by-election. A similar thing has happened with these new proposals. Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers has warned about “the ceding of intrusive powers to local government and other bodies and giving them access to once sacrosanct personal data” and Dominic Grieve, the current Conservative Shadow Home Secretary, said, “Yet again the Government has proved itself unable to resist the temptation to take a power, quite properly designed to combat terrorism, to snoop on the lives of ordinary people in everyday circumstances.”

The new powers are linked to the enactment in British law of a European Union directive on data retention, which the Labour government was largely responsible for steamrolling through the European Union in 2005.

It claimed they were vital to defeat terrorism after the September 11, 2001 bombings in New York but, in fact, the EU was considering police-state measures well before then. In 1998, attempts were made in the Enfopol proposals to allow law enforcement agencies access to all communications, which were only withdrawn after widespread condemnation by civil liberties groups. This, after all, was not long after the enactment of limited reforms expressed in Human Rights Acts and Data Protection procedures.

However, following George Bush’s October 2001 letter to the EU, which demanded that countries “revise draft privacy directives that call for mandatory destruction to permit the retention of critical data for a reasonable period” the Belgian government back by the UK introduced proposals for mandatory data retention.

In October 2005, after months of secret meetings, the European Council with its UK Presidency published a draft directive. The UK Home Secretary, Charles Clark, warned the European Parliament that if it did not vote for the proposals “he would make sure [it] would no longer have a say on any justice and home affairs matters.”

Civil rights organisations put their faith in the European Parliament to block the proposals. One NGO asked, “... the European Parliament faces a crucial decision. Is this the type of society we would like to live in? A society where all our actions are recorded, all of our interactions may be mapped, treating the use of communications infrastructures as criminal activity.”

In the event, the draft was fast-tracked through the parliament with little debate and few amendments and became law after the vast majority of socialist and conservative MEPs voted for it.

As many lawyers and experts pointed out, any EU member state was, in effect, now free to retain “any type of data for any type of security purpose for any period at all.” They expressed concern that there would inevitably be demands for more draconian measures such as ID cards required to use internet cafes, the banning of all international email services such as Hotmail, and blocking the use of all non-European Internet Service Providers.

The unprecedented infringements of civil liberties that the Labour government and its European counterparts have implemented and are proposing are not motivated by the “war on terror”. As the political representatives of big business and the super-rich, they are conscious that they cannot secure a popular mandate for policies based on militarism, colonial conquest and the systematic destruction of the living standards of millions of people and are preparing other means for their enforcement.

Targeting temporary workers

Ellie Keen — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:36:03 +0000

The recent gains of employment rights for temporary workers, such as the enforcement of equal pay and sick leave, have been a great step forward for a much under-represented section of the working class.

We should be in no doubt, however, that the motivation for this compromise. Gordon Brown and his big business pals intend to strengthen their hand in continuing their opposition to the proposed European Union (EU) Agency Workers Directive, which proposes far more progress.

Temporary workers remain largely unorganised and unions remain weak on the issue. Employers can offer lower pay and conditions to these workers as well as using them as a leverage point to drive down permanent workers' pay and conditions and to undermine militancy. As big businesses have recognised temporary workers as targets for exploitation, the number of agencies appearing on high streets has increased massively over the last few years.

Britain has over 1.4 million temporary or agency workers from both the public and private sectors. Agency workers are often some of the most vulnerable and young people.

The government, after negotiating and manoeuvring with the unions and the bosses' CBI, have announced that agency workers - following a 12-week "qualifying period" - will be entitled to employment rights such as sick leave, paid holidays, and equal pay with the lowest scale permanent employees.

This is great news for these much beleaguered workers. However, this agreement has been long in the making, with all but three EU members taking this on years ago. The EU looks set to further extend employment rights for temporary workers - but Britain looks set to oppose this as well.

This continued opposition goes against the Warwick agreement of July 2004. In exchange for continued union support, Tony Blair agreed to reforms of labour legislation including a commitment to support the new EU agency workers directive.

The main problem with the new bill is the 12-week qualifying period. Temporary workers' assignments are short, and many are unlikely to reach this.

Temporary workers need to be unionised. Unions find it difficult to engage with militant agency workers, being usually ill adjusted to working with this sector. The casualisation of workers does create difficulties here, so it is essential to begin to build networks.

Greater progress must come from grassroots self-organisation. Unions without this support and drive may only be able to secure superficial changes.

Tom Ramplin is an agency worker and activist

Striking a Chord: from Milibland to Johnson Land

Alex Doherty — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:16:51 +0000

What was extraordinary about the commentary surrounding David Milliband’s short, bland Guardian piece a couple of weeks ago was how little was made of its sheer banality. Beyond vague evocations of the need for change, his prescriptions were so resolutely non-specific that they could have been interpreted as justifying any policy programme from the wholesale privatisation of the NHS to the nationalisation of all major financial institutions. But what was depressing was not the age-old sight of a young and ambitious politician generating generic rhetoric in an effort to play to all sides of an argument, but the sight of commentators as intelligent as Sunder Katwala completely failing to call his bluff on it.

However, the content of Milliband’s statement does tell us something about the wider political formation. The fact is that any politician in the ‘developed’ world must make a predictable set of noises today. Whatever part of the political spectrum they hail from, they must offer to do something about the combined sense of political disenfranchisement and economic insecurity which any national citizenry must feel in a globalised economy; they must address the sense of a ‘loss of community’ which is so profound and so widespread, and yet impossible to diagnose within the terms of liberal political discourse; they must indicate that they know that something really has to be done about the environment. This is why David Cameron in 2008 sounds so much like Tony Blair in 1997. If your political position obliges you to acknowledge the various things which most humans inevitably find discomfiting about living with neoliberal capitalism, but without ever acknowledging that it is neoliberal capitalism which produces their discomfort, then there is not much else you can say (unless you plan to start blaming immigrants, the ungodly, or non-nuclear families). It seems very unlikely that any contender for the Labour leadership - least of all David Milliband - is going to do any different.

But still: the issue has been raised, so let’s have a think about it. Would changing Labour’s leader make any difference to anything? Could any of the touted candidates help, in however small a way, to shift the terms a little bit, in such a direction as to contribute to some eventual bigger change in the political landscape? Certainly not at the level of explicit policy or strategy. None of them have ever shown anything like the capacity to offer a coherent analysis of the crisis of political democracy and the catastrophic social consequences of neoliberalism, never mind developing or endorsing a policy programme which responds to these endemic issues. John Cruddas stands out as an exception, and although his potential candidacy is only for the deputy leadership, the quality of his political commentary in recent years (e.g. Towards a Progressive Immigration Policy) should be enough to make us pause and reflect upon what the Cruddas-Johnson ‘dream ticket’ might actually produce if were to become a real possibility.

Quantum Politics

So the issue is Alan Johnson. But let’s be clear what this means. The issue is not Johnson the man, or Johnson the political theorist or even Johnson the minister. The issue is Johnson the potential Labour leader, and there is no point in denying that the first job of a political leader in Britain in 2008 is to connect with voters through the medium of television. A tiny proportion of the electorate is actually swayed in any way by the perceived televisual personality of a party leader, but all the evidence suggests that is precisely those voters - middle income, middle England - in marginal constituencies, who are the only voters who really matter in a UK general election, who are swayed by such issues. Let’s be clearer still. When I say ‘swayed’, I do not mean ‘duped’. Rather, I mean that such voters make up their minds on the basis of a complex set of factors which are not easily quantified or rationalised, and hence tend to be mistrusted by political scientists (or their students, as most political journalists have been at one time), dismissed as ‘amorphous’, ‘irrational’, ‘emotional’.

The language of liberal political theory is quite incapable of grasping the reality of the complex cultural and social resonances between different groups and individuals which produce political identifications and decisions in a context like postmodern Britain, and this is pretty much the only language which the Anglo-Saxon political classes - journalists and politicians alike - ever get taught (just go look at the curriculum for an Oxford PPE degree or a Kennedy School programme). Hence they are generally incapable of grasping the complexity of those cultural resonances which political showmen like Blair can understand intuitively and the occasional political genius - Thatcher, for example - can figure out for themselves. Hence their habitual resort to the most unimaginative technique for trying to map such currents of emotion and sensation: the focus group.

It is perhaps no accident that Thatcher was a chemist by training: the logics of molecular matter are closer to the real processes of aggregation, disaggregation, stabilisation and dissolution which give rise to political identifications than are the rational calculations of liberal mythology (this is one of the lasting insights of the great French radical, Félix Guattari).

Contemporary politics is a quantum phenomenon, but mainstream political thought is stuck with Newtonian preconceptions, falsely imagining its basic units to be self-contained little atoms which bounce around in a vacuum, or else members of clearly defined groups which act together all the time. If that analogy is too confusing, then try thinking of politics like music. Ordinary English already has a phrase to capture the reality which I am trying to pin down: a politician must ‘strike a chord’ with her constituency. This is different from saying that she must look exactly like them or persuade them to think exactly as she does. Rather, she must offer something which is in harmony with the aspirations and self-images and daily experiences of voters. Harmony is not unity, but a sympathetic, non-discordant vibration between two distinct but compatible wavelengths. The politician need not be an object of identification or adoration, but must indicate, somewhere in the distance, a point of potential convergence, some sense that she is going in a direction which will not create obstacles to the voters’ ability to travel in the direction that they want to go in. This is not necessarily - although it could be - the same thing as offering herself as a competent manager or an intellectual heavyweight. It must often involve the politician presenting themselves as someone who is not so unlike the voter as to be entirely alien, but they need not be identical, and sometimes their differences can be inspiring rather than frightening. Above all, it must involve the politician convincing the voter that their desires are either shared, or mutually compatible. This is what Brown has so signally failed to do, and what we must ask is if Johnson could do.

Does this all sound far-fetched? Then reflect that not only was Thatcher a chemist: Tony Blair was an aspiring rock musician rather than a diligent scholar of political ‘science’ during his time at university, while John Major was the child of a music-hall artist and never went to university. They all understood something that the bright boys from the policy unit have never been able to get their heads around.

For while it all may seem very abstract, I think that this approach can help us to understand the strange parabola of the Brown premiership. Brown came into office with a cacophony of mixed signals, explicitly promising to continue and intensify the Blair project, while clearly implying that he had other intentions. He skilfully rode the long wave of anti-Blair feeling - which had never really died down once Blair had hitched his fortunes to Bush’s - and did much to encourage the general sense that he was a figure whose moral purpose would orient the country in a different direction to that in which had been driven by the exigencies of consumer capitalism. It is easy to forget now, but Brown was popular even with Southern English voters until his policy agenda crystallised to the point that it became apparent that it would, indeed, be ultra-Blairite. It may or may not be true that Brown’s heart is social democratic while his head his astutely pragmatic, but either way, this turn of events caused his public persona - previously always somewhat vague - to come into focus in a particular way, and it was a way that the public did not like. Either Brown was a coward - ultimately too scared of the CBI and Rupert Murdoch to follow through on his promise to change course and seek consent for such a change at the promised 2007 election - or he was a snake, having deliberately undermined Blair for years while actually having no alternative policy agenda at all.

Despite his lack of telegenic charm, despite even the growing nationalist fracture within the British political psyche identified by commentators such as Gerry Hassan and Steve Richards - Brown had the chance to tap into a generalised dissatisfaction with neoliberal outcomes and start to orient it in a more progressive direction. If ever there was a moment for a new Roosevelt, then this year - which finally saw some of the key elements of the post-New Deal financial regime come crashing to the ground - was it. But FDR knew that he had to mobilise the unions and the public against the speculators, and Brown showed nothing like the nerve for such a fight. He blew it, and now there is no reason for anyone to trust him again. It isn’t entirely surprising. Brown would have had to take an almost Churchillian heroic stand in order to persuade the public that his type of serious political intellectuality, a character trait which few of them share, was something which they could admire enough to harmonise with for the long-term: caution and transparent political calculation was never going to do it, and the result has been terminal for Brown and possibly for an entire generation of Labour politicians.

So if the question is, “Could Johnson - the direct opposite of Brown, admired for his telegenic personality rather than his politics or his intellect - be the figure to rescue Labour after all?” - then any answer has to take account of Brown’s initial popularity. Today, it is evident that Labour is doomed to electoral defeat under his leadership. But it is not the Prime Minister’s personality or appearance that is in itself so rebarbative as to be the cause of this.

Steve Richards regrets the way Kinnock, and now Brown, are hated. But Thatcher was hated far more, and just as personally. However, many who loathed Thatcher voted for her because they continued to see her as “necessary” in terms of the deeper music. At first, many, including those who are now intending to vote Tory, also saw Brown as orchestrating ‘necessary’ change. Today, no one thinks he is needed. An Alan Johnson leadership would have to get down to the necessary - and set out a new relationship between government, the public and the wider world - as well as finding a way to make it resonate with wider popular aspirations.

Johnson to the Rescue?

The historical precedents are not encouraging. It is only 30 years since the last time Labour was led by a right-wing Southern trade-unionist who had become leader while in government during a period of international economic crisis, and 18 of those subsequent years saw the Conservatives in power. It must be instructive, then, to reflect that the Callaghan government made the catastrophic historical mistake of capitulating to the demands of finance capital while alienating its core supporters, desperately trying to shore up a failed economic model (subsidising failing nationalised industries), while opening the door to a new one which could only benefit its enemies (with the first turns towards monetarism and fiscal austerity). If a Johnson leadership were to have any chance of succeeding, it would have to take a quite different approach, and risk the effort of finding new points of resonance between the desires of the 5 million lost Labour voters - including social-democratic Scots - and the swing-voters of the Southern suburbs.

This could happen: it is conceivable. Whatever his personal political convictions, Johnson has come up through the union ranks, and so is presumably less ideologically programmed than Milliband and the rest of his PPE/ Kennedy cohort to reproduce the assumptions of public choice theory (which, whatever the question or social problem under discussion, seem only to give the same answer: privatise something – unless, of course, it is a major financial institution we are permitted to feel sorry for).

Johnson’s estuary accent, easy manner and admirable dress sense could line up with his fascinating biography to produce the image of someone who is at the same time the embodiment of labour movement values and an icon of middle English aspiration. This might even open up the space for such a figure to say publicly what so many already know privately, even unconsciously: that the neoliberal project has gone as far as it can go while offering any benefit at all to consumers and citizens, that a new politics which harnesses the dynamic and democratic power of the collective (without nostalgia for the social democracy of the 1940s) must be found to tackle the challenges of the new century, that building such a new politics will demand direct confrontation between communities and state institutions on the one hand and corporations on the other.

That this all sounds so unlikely is indicative of just what a parlous state contemporary British politics is in. It is highly improbable that any of this will happen, or even that it really could without some much wider revival of coherent and explicit hostility to neoliberalism and the threat it poses to democracy and the ecosystem. But it is worth reflecting on the outside chance of such a scenario materialising, if only as an indicator of the kind of thing that democratic forces must try to imagine making possible in the years, and probably decades, to come.

Stick a fork in him

JamieSW — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:01:41 +0000

Brown is finished. Let me say that again: Brown is finished. One more time: Brown is finished. I had an inkling this was coming when I saw Margaret Curran's election message for Labour on the BBC - discoursing grimly on the unacceptable inequalities that made Glasgow East so poor, she insisted that the correct response was to ensure everyone had access to sports and ate healthily. Seriously, however, I doubt Curran had much to do with it. And she has every reason to feel disappointed. Labour was ahead in the polls, and there was a jumbo majority that the SNP had a tiny margin of time to erode. But the rate at which New Labour heartlands have been evaporating, turning over to any opposition that runs a half-decent campaign, has been nothing short of astonishing. And look, this turnout may have been down on the general election, but it's actually quite decent for a bye-election. It looks like, alongside glum Labour voters sitting on their hands, there were quite a few motivated voters determined to smack the government.

And let's look at what the Brown administration did to, er, assist its candidate in Glasgow East. They gave in to the City and the rich on tax evasion, declared a freeze on public spending, advertised for bids on the privatised delivery of welfare, and announced a 'revolutionary' shake-up of benefits for the unemployed and incapacitated that will treat both like criminals. Everybody knows by now that Glasgow East is an overwhelmingly working class constituency, with life expectancy in some areas lower than in Gaza. Unemployment is well above the national average: 10% for men over 25, 25% for women. It contains Shettleston, the most deprived area in Britain according to the UN. This is a place where even the Tory candidate was a trade union branch secretary. This is Labour turf, has been for generations, and it has stuck with Labour during the worst of the Blair years, through gritted teeth. A little bit of imagination should tell you something about the combination of fury and heartbreak that produced a 23% swing to an SNP candidate with no profile, no charisma and not much in the way of policy. Not only does the government have no solution for those squeezed by soaring food and fuel prices but to scrap the winter fuel allowance and abolish the 10p tax rate, they decide to go after those on benefits while allowing criminal companies to engage in tax evasion.

Commentators marvel at the government's apparent determination to make itself unelectable. It was once the Tories doing that, with a succession of bland right-wing leaders talking 'tough' on crime or asylum. Let me tell you something - I'm reluctant to link to the Tories, but they are actually running a petition against Brown's NHS cuts. They frame it in terms of inefficiency, of course, but in every other respect it looks like the kind of campaign one would see on a trade union website. The Tory strategy is unmistakeably to pitch for the slightly-left-of-New-Labour vote, and it may have some success. Now the government, aside from constantly attacking its own electoral base, frequently indulges in the right-wing populism that made the Tories look hateful and unelectable to many centre-right voters. (Not least of which, on Labour's part, is the surreptitious Islamophobic poison about the liberal blogger Osama Saeed, the SNP's candidate in Glasgow Central at the next election - a naked attempt to smear all SNP candidates by association with an "Islamic fundamentalist"). The story of the next election will probably be a continuation of the same: New Labour heartlands tumbling one after the others, as working class voters vent their fury about - well, take your pick from Post Office closures, privatisation, benefit cuts, public sector pay, tax breaks for the rich, the abolition of the ten pence tax rate, the abolition of the winter fuel allowance, soaring inequality, tuition fees, etc etc. So, the columnists wonder whether New Labour's head has disappeared up Brown's crack - surely, cabinet ministers with sense can see what's being done? Surely, the backbenchers can understand that their careers are at risk? Why isn't there a revolt? Well, there may be a revolt, but I suspect it would be a Blairite one aimed at removing an elephantine social misfit from a post that they would rather trust to Charles Clarke or Alan Milburn. There will not be a change of course. And the reason is simple: they are committed to this, they like doing what they're doing, they think it's sound economics and good politics. The Labour Party has spent twenty years talking itself into this happy little rut, and it no longer has the means to think that it might be good to get out.

All of which raises the question: what is to be done? My favourite kind of question as it happens. The left has to have a strategy for coping with the collapse of Labourism that doesn't threaten to drag it down with the irreparable hulk. That can neither take the form of sectarian disengagement with Labour supporters, nor can it take the form of some 'progressive alliance' uniting the various fragments of the radical left, since a) it would not necessarily be more than the sum of its parts, b) it is not going to happen anyway, and c) even if it did, it would in practise be tied to the Labour Party. Both of the above solutions are tempting short-cuts, to be sure, especially when there appears to be a paucity of alternatives. But an alternative to Labourism cannot be built from above by a loose association of 'ecosocialists' and Eurocommunists who flee under the Labour umbrella when there is the slightest of sign of precipitation. It has to come from below, and to that extent it has to come from the ongoing revival of trade union militancy, particularly from the fightback against Brown's government by the very working class who can no longer stand to vote for that shower. As these strike waves become more frequent and longer, as they are sure to do, the question that has dogged previous trade union conferences - why are we funding these bastards? - will return with force. The hardcore of Labour left hangers-on will have to look increasingly outward, toward alignments beyond the party that it is kicking them. Of course, no alternative that could conceivably be built would be a 'pure' working class movement, or from the old left. It would embrace all the diverse campaigns that the Left has thrown itself into, including defending council housing, defending asylum seekers, fighting the BNP, resisting the war, and so on.

I suppose it's about time I mentioned the People Before Profit charter, which has got the support of Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn MP, John Pilger and others. The purpose of the charter is to formulate a set of demands and signposts for the way forward. It expresses some basic requirements that the left can agree on - no wage increases below the rate of inflation, tax businesses and the rich to fund welfare and public services (particularly impose a windfall tax on energy companies), repeal anti-union laws etc. It also commits to support for various essential campaigns such as Stop the War, Unite Against Fascism, Keep Our NHS Public, and so on. You can read it in full here [pdf], although I believe a separate website is being developed for this. And you can sign it by e-mailing your name and details to: peoplebeforeprofitcharter@googlemail.com.

Don't be fooled by the climate change bill.

JamieSW — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:20:42 +0000

For the past two years I have been fretting over a mystery. Though Labour seems to have done everything possible to ensure that it stays out of office, there remains a possibility that it might form another government at some point between now and 2050. This means that its climate change bill, which will become law in the autumn, could come back to haunt it. Despite its evident flaws, this is radical and unprecedented legislation. It imposes a legal obligation on future governments to cut carbon dioxide pollution by 60% or more by 2050, with binding interim targets every five years.

The government has some good climate policies. It also has some bleeding disastrous ones, which appear to commit the United Kingdom to high carbon pollution for the entire period covered by the bill. A future Labour government would find itself snared by its own current policies. Surely it wouldn’t be foolish enough to set such a trap for itself?

One policy alone seems to doom future governments to prosecution: the planned doubling of the capacity of the UK’s airports by 2030. Using the Department for Transport’s projections, I estimate that by 2050 aeroplanes will account for 91% of all the greenhouse gases the country should be producing. Under the less optimistic figures published by Defra, the environment department, the proportion rises to 258% The calculations are explained here: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/12/19/preparing-for-take-off/.

Until now this hasn’t been a problem: the government has refused to include aircraft pollution in the 2050 target. But following an amendment in the Lords, the draft bill imposes a duty on the government either to include it or to explain to parliament why it hasn’t done so, within five years Draft Climate Change Bill, as amended in public bill committee, part 29. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmbills/129/08129.11-17.html#D002b. The government claims that it might not be possible to add these gases to the UK’s carbon budget because, “in the absence of an internationally agreed methodology”, no one knows how to calculate what proportion of this pollution belongs to us Defra, 15th July 2008. Climate Change Bill: Update following House of Commons Committee Stage. http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/legislation/pdf/080715-CC-Billupdate.pdf.

It’s a knotty problem, isn’t it? If you were the government and you knew that 67% of the passengers using UK airports were residents of this country Sally Cairns and Carey Newson, September 2006. Predict and Decide: aviation, climate change and UK policy. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, p8.
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/predictanddecide.pdf, could you work out what proportion of aircraft emissions should be counted in the UK’s carbon budget? No? Me neither. Wouldn’t know where to begin.

This ridiculous excuse can’t be sustained for much longer. At some point aircraft gases will have to be included in the carbon target. Throw in the government’s road-building programme and its intention to approve new coal-burning power plants and you can see that it has a problem.

The only factor now holding down carbon emissions is the price of energy. They fell by 2% last year, and the government admits that this “was largely explicable in terms of price relativities.” Defra, July 2008. UK Climate Change Programme. Annual Report to Parliament, July 2008, p17. http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/ukccp/pdf/ukccp-ann-report-july08.pdf In other words, it has again become cheaper to burn natural gas in power stations than to burn coal, while the cost of oil has encouraged people to drive less. The 2% reduction means that the UK’s carbon budget is now a grand total of 0.8% smaller than it was in 1997The figure for 1997 was 548.1MtCO2. The provisional figure for 2007 is 543.7 MtCO2. See Table 2, Defra, July 2008, ibid.. The government can post a 16% cut in greenhouse gases since 1990 only because of the accidental reductions made during the dash for gas under the Tories and the sharp reduction in methane and nitrous oxide from rubbish dumps and industry. Neither of these cuts can be repeated.

But this doesn’t even begin to describe the government’s problem. Its new climate change report contains a tantalising figure. It is expressed in such a back-handed way that you have to perform half a dozen small calculations to discover what it means. The report boasts that even when emissions in countries exporting goods to the UK are taken into account, “the total annual reduction of UK greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 was around 240 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent [MtCO2eq] below business as usual”.Defra, July 2008. UK Climate Change Programme. Annual Report to Parliament, July 2008, p18. http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/ukccp/pdf/ukccp-ann-report-july08.pdf The government says that “business as usual” would have led to an increase of 40% in emissions since 1990. This gives us a figure of 1079MtCO2eqThe 1990 figure was 770.8MtCO2eq. Table 2, Defra, July 2008, ibid.. Subtract 240 from 1079 and you get 839, or 187 MtCO2 eq above current emissionsThe latest figure (2006) for all ggs is 652.3 MtCO2eq. Table 2, Defra, July 2008, ibid.. This means that instead of declining by 16% since 1990, as the government insists, the greenhouse gases for which the UK is responsible have risen by 9%.

When I finished this sum I sat still for quite a long time. The UK’s entire climate change programme is based on a statistical artefact. The only reason our pollution appears to have declined is that we have outsourced our emissions. A fair account of our carbon emissions would include those we import minus those we export: a balance that can only worsen in a post-industrial economy.

So how can the government reconcile its energy policies with future political hazard? Well the mystery has at last been solved. The key to the puzzle is found in a minor briefing note just published by Defra. It explains that, during the latest stage of the bill, the government “remov[ed] the quantified limit on the use of internationally traded credits in meeting the UK’s targets”Defra, 15th July 2008, ibid.. In other words we could buy the entire cut from other countries.

Given that we are outsourcing some of our greenhouse gases, you might think it makes sense to outsource our carbon cuts as well. But there are three problems. The first is that we are exporting emissions that are difficult to address and importing, through carbon trading, the easiest and cheapest cuts.

The second is that while the emissions we export are certain and verifiable, the cuts we buy through carbon credits are often fraudulent. For example, as the writer Oliver Tickell documents, 96% of the carbon credits from hydroelectric dam construction were issued after construction had begun: the dams would have been built without the carbon market, so no additional cuts have been achievedOliver Tickell, forthcoming. Kyoto2: how to manage the global greenhouse. Zed Books, London.. Around 30% of all carbon credits comes from the sale of trifluoromethane cuts by Chinese and Indian companies making refrigeration gases. Many of them are still producing this pollutant only because they make so much money from cleaning it up: the carbon market pays them 47 times more for these cuts than the gas costs to removeibid..

Behind these problems lurks a much greater one, which is mathematically impossible to resolve. You can trade your way out of trouble when the cut you are trying to achieve is a small one. But when the global cut required to prevent two degrees of warming is 60 or 80 or 90%, then every rich nation must reduce its emissions by roughly the same amount. Otherwise half the world would have to buy credits equivalent to 180% of the emissions produced by the other half.

The government will have to impose some kind of cap on carbon trading. But I bet it will be set high enough to cover any failures in domestic policy, as measured by the rigged accounting methods civil servants use. This means that successive governments will have no legal incentive to change their energy policies. The carbon trading provision torpedoes the useful content of the entire bill.

But at least the mystery has been solved, and it will no longer keep me awake at night. Now I can focus on the real nightmares.

Glasgow East by-election

JamieSW — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:00:17 +0000

Social problems and poverty

A by-election is being held today in the constituency of Glasgow East following the resignation of sitting Labour Member of Parliament David Marshall. The seat, which Marshall held with a majority of 13,507 in the 2005 General Election, is a traditional Labour stronghold.

The Scottish National Party (SNP), which wrested control over the devolved Scottish parliament from Labour in 2007, hopes to take advantage of Labour’s woes and win the seat in which it came a distant second only three years ago.

The seat covers most of the east end of Glasgow, from the Parkhead area east of the city centre to the outlying Easterhouse estate. It includes some of Britain’s most impoverished neighbourhoods, and has become synonymous with urban decay and ill health.

The official unemployment rate in Glasgow East is more than twice the national average of 5.2 percent. But in total, around half of the working-age population of the constituency are without work, many of them in receipt of invalidity or disability benefit.

A survey by the Campaign to End Child Poverty (CECP) looked at the extent of childhood poverty across the UK, where children have nearly twice as much chance of living in a household with relatively low income than a generation ago. It found that Glasgow had the worst level of child poverty in Scotland, with a citywide rate of more than 50 percent. Around 60 percent of children living in the Glasgow east end, Bridgeton and Queenslie neighbourhoods were found to be living below the breadline.

No official figures are compiled on the rate of childhood poverty on the parliamentary constituency level. However, statistics from the CEPC on children living in families without someone in work and surviving on benefits provide an indication.

The Glasgow East constituency has the joint-fifteenth highest rate of children living in workless households in Britain, tied with the seats of Wythenshaw and Sale East in Greater Manchester and Knowsley North and Sefton East on Merseyside.

With 40 percent of children in the constituency living in households without work, the figure for Glasgow East is twice the UK average and five times the rate found in the nearby suburban area of East Dunbartonshire.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the city has Scotland’s highest rate of people on out-of-work benefits, the highest rate of people with limiting long-term illnesses and drug addiction, the worst problems with overcrowded housing, and the highest concentration of pensioners living below the poverty line.

Half of the adults in the area have no educational qualifications, and more than half of all households do not own a car.

Glasgow also has the lowest life expectancy in Britain. Data for 2004-2006 puts life expectancy in the city at birth at 73.7 years (70.5 years for men, 77 years for women), based on current life expectancy trends. The best indicators for the Glasgow East constituency point to a figure of 69.3 years for men and 76.2 year for women. This falls even further in the most impoverished neighbourhoods, such as Calton, with male life expectancy at a staggering 53.9 years.

A 2002 survey, conducted using the United Nations rating system for life expectancy, unemployment, incomes and rates of illiteracy, put the Shettleston area of the constituency as the most deprived in Britain. Nearby Baillieston, also in Glasgow East, was ranked seventh.

Statistics from the National Health Service showed that the east end of Glasgow had the highest rate of alcohol-related hospital admissions in Scotland. At 1,505 per 100,000, the east end of Glasgow had a rate of admissions more than three times that of the neighbouring suburb of East Renfrewshire.

Comparable social devastation mars many inner cities across Britain. According to the Office of National Statistics, life expectancy in the north of England towns of Liverpool, Blackpool, Manchester and Hartlepool are very similar to those for Glasgow. Analogous phenomena can be observed in the most depressed areas of European and North American cities. In the US city of Detroit, which has been devastated by years of car plant and supplier closures, nearly half of all children live in poverty, with life expectancy rates in the city also likened to overall figures for some Third World countries.

The Gaza comparison

Such is the combined impact of these statistics that some extremely distorted comparisons have been made. Much attention has been paid in the media to comments by the SNP’s Westminster faction leader, Angus Robertson, claiming that the constituency has a lower life expectancy than the war-torn Gaza Strip.

This echoes comments frequently made by the middle class radical and pro-independence parties, Solidarity and the Scottish Socialist Party. These groups, which claim that Scottish separatism is progressive as it would free the country from “London rule,” have made comparisons between areas of Glasgow and Gaza or even Iraq under US-led military occupation.

At one level, these comments are preposterous. Nowhere in Glasgow can one find occupying troops, missile and helicopter assaults. The city is not walled-off, there are no floods of refugees fleeing for their lives. The sewerage system and electricity work fairly well. Glasgow is a wealthy, and in some areas pleasant city, in an advanced imperialist country.

The primary aim of such comparisons is to portray the international phenomenon of urban poverty amidst great wealth as the result of an oppressive relationship between England and Scotland. It is used an argument for Scottish independence. But an independent Scotland is increasingly viewed by sections of big business as a means of further demolishing social provision through slashing taxes, cutting welfare and enriching themselves from North Sea oil profits.

Betrayal of the Labour bureaucracies

The deep social problems of Glasgow, or any other major city, are a product of international economic processes within capitalism that have opened up a devastating assault on the social position of the working class. The poor social conditions in much of Glasgow are a direct result of more than three decades of continual attacks on the working class, and provide a damning indictment of the historic failure of Labour.

Under the watch of the trade unions and the Labour Party, which has controlled the local council for decades, virtually all of the city’s steelworks, shipyards and engineering plants, which once employed tens of thousands, have closed.

Between 1978 and 1993, the city lost two thirds of its 107,515 manufacturing jobs. These have never been fully replaced by jobs in the service sector. To the extent they have, many are part-time and temporary and offer poverty-level wages. Many of the low-wage call centres that have located in the city over the past 15 years have closed or are shedding jobs, moving to take advantage of even more exploited labour in Asia and eastern Europe.

Large areas of former industrial sites closed during the 1970s and 1980s remain undeveloped. This is especially so in the east end of Glasgow, which has benefited less from Britain’s decade-long property boom and its attendant building activity than other parts of the city.

Heavy industry was once especially dominant. A couple of large retail parks today provide the main concentrations of employment within the constituency. One of these is the Parkhead Forge shopping centre, named after the site of what was once one of the largest metal works in Britain. Production at the forge was wound down for more than a decade with the complicity of the trade unions and Labour governments, until the works closed in 1975.

Several small community and health centres have been built, and there are a large number of recently built flats and houses, many of which are rented out by housing associations. There is a new college and a huge new shopping mall beside Easterhouse.

The constituency will host several events at the 2014 Commonwealth Games being held in Glasgow. A national indoor sports arena and velodrome complex is planned for the Parkhead area of the constituency, as well as an athletes’ village with 1,500 houses and apartments. But despite the fortune that the city’s building firms and service industries hope to make, only 300 units are scheduled to be turned into social housing after the games.

The area is also part of a £1.6 billion redevelopment project called the Clyde Gateway. This publicly and privately funded initiative aims to build 10,000 new housing units and 400,000 square metres of commercial property over two decades.

However, the scheme was initiated under conditions of a speculative boom in domestic and commercial property development, which is now coming to an end, casting uncertainty over whether the plans will be carried out.

In any case, such schemes cannot overcome decades of urban decline and the generalised assault on working class living standards, a process that can only intensify as the full implications of the global credit crunch become evident.

Boris Johnson’s return to “traditional Tory values”

tim — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:16:01 +0000

It is only two months since the newly elected Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson promised he would, with a new broom, sweep clean the sleaze and corruption he declared characterised the outgoing administration under the Labour Party’s Ken Livingstone.

Johnson also proclaimed that his mayoralty would be a return to “traditional Tory values.” As it has turned out, it is this pledge that is being realised as his own administration has begun to fall apart amidst accusations of racism and the type of “sleaze and corruption” he promised to root out.

Last week, longstanding allegations of financial and sexual misconduct against deputy mayor Ray Lewis ended in his resignation, and forced Johnson to set up an inquiry.

The media hailed Lewis’s appointment as deputy mayor for young people as a shrewd move aimed at countering adverse reports of comments made by Johnson in an article on Tony Blair in which he referred to “picaninnies” with “watermelon smiles.”

Lewis’s Eastside Young Leaders Academy in Edmonton, London, and its “tough love” ethos of army-style drilling, religion, uniforms and discipline, was proclaimed as the real answer to gang-related violence.

In the past several days, however, it was revealed that the former Church of England Minister had had restrictions placed on his ministry because of a series of allegations of sexual and financial misconduct against parishioners. In 1993 he was accused of “sexually inappropriate behaviour” by two members of the congregation at St. Matthew’s, West Ham and he was banned from preaching for six years.

Two years later he was accused of failing to repay a total of £41,000 borrowed from three parishioners, though the investigation was subsequently dropped. Lewis also faces accusations of assaulting pupils at his academy, all of which he denies.

The Lewis resignation follows that of Johnson’s chief policy advisor, James McGrath. When asked by a journalist if Johnson’s election would provoke a flight of black Londoners back to the Caribbean, McGrath replied, “Well, let them go if they don’t like it here.”

Johnson mounted a feeble defence of both men, but then dropped them fairly quickly.

McGrath was chosen as an advisor by fellow Australian, Lynton Crosby, the architect behind Johnson’ electoral campaign who earlier spearheaded electoral campaigns for former Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Central to the campaign was a barrage of allegations of misconduct against Livingstone and his leading aides. Almost daily, the conservative Evening Standard newspaper ran stories charging the Livingstone administration with corruption. This claimed its first scalp shortly before the election, when Lee Jasper—the focus of many of the unproven allegations of corruption—resigned his post as Senior Policy Advisor on Equalities following the leaking of sexually explicit emails he had sent to a female friend in an organisation that received funding from the Assembly.

However hostile a section of the Tory press was to Livingstone, he retained the backing of the City of London as its favoured candidate and also had the support of newspapers running the political spectrum from the Financial Times to the Guardian. It is a measure of the widespread resentment and hostility felt towards Labour—and towards Livingstone himself—that this failed to win him re-election and that Johnson’s posturing as “Mr. Clean” was partially successful.

Livingstone’s defeat coincided with the disastrous performance of Labour in the May 3 local elections, as the party continues to lose what remains of its working class base and is deserted by the better-off traditional Tory and “swing voters” it won in 1997.

Johnson benefited on both counts. Turnout among Labour supporters was down while Johnson successfully mobilised his own party’s “natural constituency.”

In addition, Labour’s reputation as a party of big business, sleaze, incompetence, authoritarianism and militarism could no longer be countered by Livingstone invoking his radical past. Labour promoted Livingstone’s support in the City of London, but the Greens, Respect Renewal and the Socialist Workers Party’s Left List, together with the Guardian, promoted him as the “progressive candidate” and sought to mobilise support in the inner-city areas, particularly amongst black and Asian workers.

But such claims could no longer be reconciled after two terms in which Livingstone made his peace with Labour after first being elected as an independent. He famously denounced striking London Underground workers as “selfish” and defended Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair after an Old Bailey jury convicted the Met of corporate failure over the killing of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes. Livingstone insisted there were no grounds for the resignation of this “incredibly talented officer,” stating that the court’s verdict might make stopping suicide bombers more difficult.

Anyone foolish enough to believe that Johnson’s would be the “clean hands” administration he had promised has soon been disabused. Johnson’s record since taking office has provided a glimpse of what can be expected.

Once in power, he quickly set about appointing his own cronies—an army of consultants and advisors—stating bluntly that “it is not intended that the fees for these (other) individuals will be made public.” Reports suggest that many will receive a salary of more than £100,000.

The chief executive of the London Development Agency (LDA)—which declares itself the “Mayor’s agency responsible for driving London’s sustainable economic growth”—was sacked and Harvey McGrath, former chairman of the hedge fund specialists the Man Group, nominated in his place.

A “forensic audit team” has been set up to investigate allegations of corruption in the LDA and Greater London Authority, headed by the former editor of the Sunday Telegraph Patience Wheatcroft, who had stirred up controversy after censoring a critical article about Conservative leader David Cameron.

Multimillionaire former asset stripper and private equity chief Tim Parker was made first deputy and chief executive, as well as being appointed the new chairman of Transport for London. Full delegated powers over major planning decisions were given to Ian Clement, an unelected advisor from Bexley Council, who became notorious for cutting the “meals on wheels” scheme for pensioners.

Johnson has appointed Simon Milton as director of planning, but had to backtrack after it was revealed that he is also chairman of the Local Authorities’ chief lobbying group. Although losing his title, he will still remain in Johnson’s office in the role of consultant.

Munira Mirza, a former radical, has arrived at the heart of a Tory administration as the new cultural advisor to the mayor, thanks to her opposition to “multiculturalism” and professions that the extent of “Islamophobia” is exaggerated. She writes for the Policy Exchange think tank, whose founder Nick Boles will likely work on marketing for the mayor along with Dan Ritterband, a former Saatchi & Saatchi advertising executive.

Policy Exchange, which is described as the most influential think tank “on the right,” is headed by Charles Moore, former editor of the Thatcherite Spectator magazine—a position held previously by Johnson. The organisation was embroiled in controversy only recently over allegations that documents it circulated to prove the influence of Islamic extremists in Britain’s mosques were fakes.

Once in office, Johnson swiftly implemented the right-wing policies outlined in his manifesto. Central to this agenda is to “beef up the police presence on our streets by increasing police numbers and cutting red tape at the Metropolitan Police Service.”

Within hours of his election, dozens of extra police were deployed to carry out random “stop and search” procedures across the city in “Operation Blunt 2,” exploiting the media frenzy over youth-related gun and knife crime in the last few months. This has not been addressed on the basis of tackling the wider issues of poverty, job opportunities and social inequality, but by increased police powers and a zero tolerance policing policy.

In a city with the dubious honour of having the most surveillance cameras in the world, Johnson has also promised more closed circuit TVs.

These initiatives closely parallel those undertaken by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, whose critics have argued that the fall in street crime had more to do with enrolling an extra 7,000 officers than with any strategic master-stroke, and that much crime simply moved to neighbouring districts. Bloomberg made a special visit to London’s City Hall to congratulate Johnson on his electoral victory, but the content of their meeting has remained strictly confidential.

Another indication of the real agenda of the new mayor is in his attitude to low-income earners. Johnson has cancelled the cheap oil deal Livingstone made with the Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez last year and declared that he will annul applications for cheap fares, which have benefited more than 80,000 Londoners on Income Support benefits. Livingstone used the deal as part of a handful of populist gestures to buttress his neo-liberal economic policies, making sure they did not conflict with the fundamental interests of the City of London, or compromise his record in promoting London as a magnet for global capital.

It is Livingstone and Labour that have paved the way for a deepening of the assaults they began on the working class in London, only now with Boris Johnson at the helm.

Support and strength

tim — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:10:09 +0000

Unite general secretary Derek Simpson hit the nail on the head in arguing: "If people feel that they can get the kind of support and strength that they need from a union, I don't think they mind what you call it."

Trade unions exist to do a basic job - to defend workers' pay and conditions.

They can and do take on other responsibilities and fringe benefits - everything from credit cards to concessionary insurance rates; but securing the best price for members' labour power and safeguarding their health, safety and workplace respect is always the priority.

If Unite members are convinced that merging with the large north American union USW will assist them in that task, they will jump at the opportunity.

And, certainly, at a time when a relatively small number of transnational corporations are dominating global production, anything that minimises the prospect of national trade unions accepting the "reality" of a race to the bottom to price members into a job is welcome.

These corporations must be laughing all the way to the bank to see unions in one country after another agreeing to cut corporate costs; basic pay, fringe benefits, overtime rates etc - in a bid to persuade them not to relocate overseas.

If international union mergers can ensure a co-ordinated principled approach, they can only be positive.

However, there are two major phenomena that will work to undermine the principles of internationalism and working class solidarity.

One is the existence of stultifying anti-trade union legislation, especially in Britain and the US, and the other is trade unions' poverty of ambition.

Solidarity action is specifically outlawed in the US and Britain, forcing workers in struggle to fight employers with one hand behind their backs.

Employers can ship in scabs from elsewhere in the country or from overseas. They can act in concert to undermine industrial action.

But woe betide any set of workers who act out of natural decency to try to tilt the balance of power in favour of members of their own union who are out on strike.

Think back to the efforts by workers at Heathrow airport who showed solidarity with the Gate Gourmet strikers and the storm of rage generated by employers, the media and the Labour government.

New Labour is now on the bones of its backside, abandoned by increasing numbers of its once generous boardroom donors and sinking into debt-laden oblivion.

Unions are ready and willing to bail Labour out, but they still seem to accept that Labour is only electable if it pursues Tory-style policies and gives up on any demands for real justice.

And previous union leaders who have copped the ermine, such as Baroness Prosser, are the most strident in rejecting the case for trade union freedom and for close Labour-union links.

The ability of a merged Unite-USW international union to punch its weight and to affect salaries, conditions and investment policies on a global basis will be enhanced by the capacity of its constituent parts to operate freely and effectively on their home turf.

A trade union freedom Bill in Britain is not only a prerequisite for effective international trade union solidarity but for domestic social justice too.

Where Now?

Ellie Keen — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:03:45 +0000

The British National Party’s success in the London Assembly elections coupled with its small but continued progress across the country provides an ideal opportunity critically to assess where the campaign against the British National Party is going.

For the past few years we have successfully limited the advance of the BNP in local elections, even reversing its fortunes in some of its traditional heartlands such as Sandwell, Oldham and Bradford. Even Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, has publicly admitted that we have developed an election operation that can beat the BNP almost everywhere.

But the truth is that as each year goes by our job is getting harder. There is an ever-growing list of wards at risk to the BNP, it’s becoming more difficult to turn out our voters and even when we do prevent the BNP from winning we do so by increasing turnout rather than necessarily reducing the BNP’s support. In today’s political climate we can sometimes feel a sense of relief just by keeping the BNP down to 30% support in key wards.

It is perfectly feasible to continue this approach over the next couple of years. We will defeat the BNP in many more wards than they win and perhaps we can hold them at bay long enough for wider external factors to fundamentally undercut the BNP’s support.

Or we can perhaps try a radically different approach.

This essay will look at possible approaches. It is the opening of a discussion about where we go now. There are no simple or easy solutions of course, no one anti-fascist strategy can defeat the BNP on its own. However, as I shall try to explain, unless we do something radically different the situation will get a lot worse before it gets better.

To do that we need to really understand what is going on.

We are currently witnessing a tangible change in British politics. The old traditional voting patterns are fragmenting as voters increasingly shop around for a party that best articulates their concerns and even prejudices.

The emergence of the BNP is just one consequence of the change under way, and it is a change far more fundamental than many political commentators and politicians appear to register. It is also primarily an issue affecting the Labour Party.

Labour’s support among its traditional working-class voters has been shrinking for many years and this goes well beyond the current decline in fortunes for the Brown Government. In many core Labour heartlands the party’s support among social groups C2 and DE was at a lower level in 2005, when it won a general election, than in 1983 at the height of its electoral unpopularity during the Thatcher years. It is a point graphically made in the excellent book by Alexander Lee and Timothy Stanley, The End of Politics: Triangulation, Realignment and the Battle for the Centre Ground.

In 1997, 50% of C2 voters and 59% of DE voters supported Labour. By 2005 this had dropped to 40% and 48% respectively.

This drop has been even more pronounced in many core Labour areas. In Sheffield Central Labour polled over 60% of the vote in every election between 1983 and 2001, yet in 2005 its vote fell to 49.9%. In Burnley, Labour’s share of the vote dropped 38.5% during the same period.

“In Yorkshire and Humberside, the North and the North West the swing may have not significantly affected the return of Labour MPs to Westminster but majorities have been seriously diminished and the party’s share of the vote dramatically reduced,” say the authors of The End of Politics.

Some of these disappearing voters switched to other parties and in local elections this was often the Liberal Democrats, but far greater numbers simply stayed at home. A declining turnout and general lack of interest in mainstream political parties was the key winner.

For the Labour leadership this long-term shift has not mattered. In the current political system general elections are not won or lost in the Labour heartlands but in the swing marginals, where a few votes can turn success into defeat. It is these voters towards whom all the main parties increasingly gravitate.

Labour has relied on the fact that its traditional support, although declining, has had nowhere else to go. Many of these voters, whose communities were decimated under Thatcher, would never countenance voting Conservative. A few switched to the Liberal Democrats, others stayed at home but the bulk of those who did vote continued to support Labour.

But this is now changing. The BNP is emerging as the voice of this forgotten working class. A survey of the wards that produced the 25 best BNP votes in May shows plainly the profile of BNP supporting areas. All but one rank well below average in the Indices of Deprivation and the one exception, Queensbury in Bradford, is roughly average. Nearly all are among the top 10% most deprived areas.

In every single one of these wards, including Queensbury, the proportion of the population with no qualifications at all is well below the national average. Likewise, the proportion of people with a level 4/5 qualification (degree or teaching/social work qualification) is a fraction of the national average.

The result is that the BNP is now challenging Labour in many of its heartlands and the effect is startling. As we show elsewhere in this magazine, the BNP received more votes than Labour in the redrawn Dagenham and Rainham constituency. And it was not the only one. As table 1 illustrates, the BNP received more votes than both Labour and the Conservatives in the new Morley and Outwood constit-uency, which will be contested by Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

The BNP also beat Labour in one of the two new Havering constituencies and would probably have polled more votes than Labour in Stoke-on-Trent South and Central if it had put forward more candidates.

It is also important not to view the BNP in isolation. Its rising support is just the most visible element of this changing political scene. Other areas, such as South and West Yorkshire and South Wales, have seen a rise in local independent groups.

Who would have thought that Labour could have lost the heartlands of Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent in South Wales to independents? In Stoke-on-Trent, a city where ten years ago Labour held all 60 seats, the party could only win four seats this year. In Barnsley, where the BNP polled 21%, the Barnsley Independent Group holds one third of the seats on the council.

Fundamental shift

The breaking with Labour reflects a far more fundamental shift than mid-term blues. For an increasing number of traditional Labour voters the party no longer reflects their interests. Lee and Stanley in The End of Politics blame New Labour’s triangulation policy under which it has moved into the centre ground of politics in order to win the key marginals.

This view is echoed by Labour MP Jon Cruddas. “The politics of middle England become even more dominant in the minds of our political leadership. The danger is that we ignore the reasons for the strength of the BNP, and in so doing reinforce the conditions that have created this situation.”

Many of the people now turning their back on the Labour Party have not shared the economic prosperity of recent years. Many in areas such as Stoke-on-Trent and Dagenham now find themselves in a worse economic position than a few years ago. Great swathes of these traditional Labour voters not only feel ignored but are increasingly seeing in the BNP a party that articulates their interests. This degree of alienation with the mainstream parties was clearly demonstrated in the BBC polling that accompanied its White Season.

A number of studies, such as those conducted by Vision 21 and more recently by Democratic Audit, show clearly that a reoccurring theme among BNP voters is the sense that no one listens to them any more. Labour is increasingly seen as a middle-class party that prioritises minority groups and the interests of more affluent voters over themselves.

This is an international phenomenon. In the United States the phenomenon of Middle American Nationalism has emerged over the past 30 years, which despises the corporate elites above and the “undeserving” poor below.

Across Western Europe we have seen working-class voters turn towards far-right and populist parties. In Denmark working-class voters have shifted from the Labour Party to the Danish People’s Party (DPP). In France the Front National remains dominant in many traditional working-class communities. In Norway, the Progress Party has become the country’s main opposition.

“Workers’ support for the socialist parties has fallen away,” say researchers from the Danish Valgprojektet (Election Project). “There is a class-defined demobilisation … an almost total loss of support for the worker parties among the younger part of the working class, especially among skilled workers.”

Writing in this month’s Red Pepper, the Norwegian writer Magnus Marsdal argues that class politics still exists but these far-right parties are “in effect the new Labour party”. He points to Denmark where in the 2001 elections 61% of the DPP’s support came from working-class voters, nearly three times as many worker voters as the Social Democrats.

In an interesting parallel with England, almost all of these voters were from poorer and less educated sections of society.

All this represents a fundamental shift in British politics and the real fear is that we are heading the way of so many other European countries where large segments of the working class have broken with their traditional centre-left parties and moved to the right.

The root of BNP support

The BNP is a racist party fuelled by a leadership that draws its political roots from fascism. That much is clear. However, its appeal goes far wider than the issue of race. The BNP is tapping into political alienation and economic deprivation. It is providing a voice for those who increasingly feel ignored and cast aside by Labour. The BNP is articulating their concerns, grievances and even prejudices.

Race is obviously a key factor but it is not the only issue. Race was a defining factor in the initial rise of the BNP in 2001. Riots, growing racial tensions and international terrorism conspired to build support for the BNP. But this is less so now.

A cursory look at where the BNP is gaining support shows that race is not necessarily the dominant issue that it was in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford. There are very small non-white communities in Stoke-on-Trent, Barnsley and Nuneaton and Bedworth. These are traditional working-class areas where people feel abandoned and ignored. It is into this alienation that the BNP moves. Yes, race is certainly a central key, but more because it provides a prism through which people can see and understand the world and, more importantly, an easy scapegoat to blame for their own situation.

But the BNP provides far more than a racist scapegoat. It gives some voters a sense of belonging, an articulation of their own frustration – even a new white identity.

This point was graphically illustrated in the BBC White Season, particularly the film set in a working men’s club in Wibsey, Bradford. “I wish I could be happy again,” said Graham Anderson. In an increasingly complicated and disorientated world it is easy to see how the BNP can point the finger of blame while simultaneously offering a new sense of white community.

Whatever the merits of the Season as a whole it did reflect the sense of loss, political abandonment and a search for identity and belonging of a minority of people in this country.

In an increasingly complex world, in which Britain’s place has changed, Britain itself is fragmenting and the old economic certainties provided by traditional employment are long gone. It is no coincidence that the BNP has emerged in those communities that have experienced most economic decline and change, principally in the former coalfields and car producing areas.

Why does all this matter for anti-fascists? Unless we can understand why the BNP is growing we have little chance of defeating it.

Anti-fascism has to continue to focus around elections. After all, this is how BNP support is measured and nothing helps the BNP grow more than substantial electoral victories.

However, it is clear that our message also has to develop. Yes, we still have to identify and turn out the anti-BNP vote, as we have successfully done in so many areas, but we must also have something to say to potential BNP voters.

A simple “Don’t vote nazi” is an irrelevant slogan that needs to be discarded immediately. That is not to say that we should not highlight the real politics of the BNP and its leadership but we must address people where they currently are. And in terms of that, very few people see the BNP as a nazi party.

It is also clear that a simple Hope not Hate message is insufficient. “You tell us to vote for Hope not hate but there is no hope round here,” one voter told me in Dagenham. Similar reports came in from Stoke-on-Trent and Nuneaton.

We need to replace empty slogans with substance, and that means involving ourselves in the community as never before. If the BNP support is driven by racial prejudice, often whipped up by the national media, economic deprivation and a loss of identity, then these are the three issues we need to contest.

Nationally, we must challenge and expose the racist lies and myths peddled in the media while also ending the muscular bidding war between the political parties over race and immigration. Not only is this politically damaging (Labour will never appease its opponents on immigration), it is also quite dishonest. The economic boom of recent years has been built on the influx of migrant workers, our public services would collapse without its non-white workforce and the pensions crisis would be even more severe without newcomers replacing those British people moving abroad in record numbers.

But it is locally that anti-fascists must focus their energies. Searchlight has long argued for a localised strategy to defeat the BNP and the need for this is even greater now. Each area is different and requires a slightly different solution.

Thinking nationally, acting locally

In the recent election we found that our general Hope not hate leaflets worked in some places but less well in others. The general trend was that they were more effective where the BNP was standing for the first time. In other places, such as Stoke-on-Trent and Dagenham, where support for the BNP is deeply entrenched, we need a different approach and one that addresses local issues and concerns.

Where we produced more localised leaflets, in Burnley, West Yorkshire and Sandwell, our material appears to have gone down a lot better.

Of course there is a limit to how much localised material we can physically produce during a short election campaign. Over the past few years we have tried to prioritise the most high risk areas and those where we have the best local contacts. Two ways of overcoming this are to widen the pool of people who can produce leaflets, and to produce more localised material at other times of the year outside election periods.

To achieve this we need more local groups – and building groups with an ability to intervene locally must be our key priority over the next two years. A good functioning local group is likely to achieve far more success. It needs to be community-orientated, broad-based and non-dogmatic.

It needs to be able to address local issues and concerns while having roots within the community. It needs to be able to form partnerships with other local groups to address issues and improve the area, while also gaining credibility within the community to break down barriers and promote cohesion.

Two good examples of community campaigning are Keighley and Epping. In Keighley the local TUC and Bradford anti-fascists confronted BNP lies over grooming, where others had ignored what was going on, while simultaneously assisting local community groups through good old fashioned community development work.

The Redbridge and Epping Forest Together group has adopted a slightly different approach but it too has been successful. It has sought to build a broad coalition of political parties and the non-aligned, and has involved residents’ and faith groups. While it has not done the community development work of Keighley, it has helped alter the political climate enough to defeat the BNP in two of the three seats it was defending.

Forming local Hope not hate groups would also be an excellent way of involving trade unionists, many of whom refuse to do any direct campaigning for the Labour Party any more. In addition to bringing extra people into activity it strengthens the relationship between unions and the local community.

There are other groups that need to be included from the start. Among them are faith groups, residents’ associations, community groups and the voluntary sector – people who care enough about their local community to be active while also having the respect of others.

It some places, such as Barking and Dagenham, one of the fundamental problems is the absence of any mainstream alternative to Labour, so the BNP is the sole beneficiary of the anti-Labour vote. For anti-fascists, this is a problem as it is hard to build a political coalition in an area where there is no one other than Labour to work with.

In these areas community work is even more important. In addition to the basic anti-BNP material to dispel the party’s lies and highlight the inadequacies of its councillors, we must collaborate with existing community and faith groups to help rebuild civic society and create an alternative pole of attraction to the BNP. It is often the lack of local positive institutions and community organisers that contributes to the feeling of despair and inability to change things for the better.

Empowering local communities to improve their local area in a positive fashion through working with and mobilising local people is essential. This includes developing a leadership programme that can provide basic organising skills and give confidence to local people.

Searchlight is not opposed to concerts and large city-centre activities but these cannot be the main focus. Large concerts, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds to stage, do not deliver leaflets in the key areas nor do they address the concerns and grievances of the people likely to vote BNP. They certainly have a place in mobilising and organising activists but the important work has got to be done at a more local level. It might not be glamorous and it might not be easy but it is vital.

Political solution

Of course on a wider level the BNP needs to be defeated politically. While much of this is outside the remit and capability of Searchlight we will strive to argue that the rise of the BNP is the consequence of the shift to the centre of all the mainstream parties. There can be no disguising this fact.

There will be some who argue for a solely class-based approach to anti-fascism but a refusal to work with the mainstream parties will only hand dozens of seats to the BNP and quicken its electoral advance.

The majority of people are still opposed to the racist message of the BNP and while it is important that we mobilise these voters we must also begin to address, at a local level, the grievances and insecurities that are giving rise to the BNP in the first place.

The clock is ticking and time is running out. The economic downturn, the credit crunch, the housing collapse and rising living costs are only going to increase insecurities over the next year or two. The political parties, and in particular Labour, are letting down a large section of the British population. Without radical and immediate change, Britain could experience the political earthquake that is engulfing much of Europe.

Conservative victory in Crewe and Nantwich as Labour disintegrates

tim — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:46:26 +0000

The Brown Labour government suffered its third major defeat in a month on Thursday in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, which saw the party’s 7,078 majority transformed into a 7,860 lead for the Conservatives.

Considered an extremely safe Labour seat, it had been held for 34 years by Gwyneth Dunwoody, the longest-serving female MP, until her death earlier this year.

The 17.6 percent swing to the Conservatives came despite Labour doing everything possible to maximise its advantage, including selecting Dunwoody’s daughter, Tamsin, as its candidate.

Only two weeks before, the Brown government had announced a £2.7 billion tax cut package, designed to placate voters’ anger over its decision to abolish the 10 pence tax band, which hit more than 5 million low earners.

Despite this, with turnout a relatively high 58.2 percent, the Conservative Party candidate Edward Timpson took 20,539 votes, up from 14,162 in the 2005 general election. Labour’s vote collapsed by almost half, from 21,240 to 12,679. Its sole consolation was that it was not beaten into third place by the Liberal Democrats, whose vote also fell, from 8,083 to 6,040.

“This was a classic ‘send a message’ by-election, and a sad one for us,” said Labour’s Steve McCabe.

The result is far more than that. The Financial Times opined: “Although Crewe is depicted as a traditional Labour stronghold, its make-up is more complex, part ‘true blue Cheshire,’ part working class. Labour’s unbroken hold over it was both a tribute to Gwyneth Dunwoody, its popular local MP, and New Labour’s ability to straddle the political centre ground. The loss by Dunwoody’s daughter Tamsin is a sign that the alliance that swept Labour to power is fragmenting.”

But Labour has not only lost the support of those “swing” voters—many previously Conservative supporters—that gave it its landslide victory in 1997 and has since maintained it in power. What marks out the result in Crewe is the extent to which former Labour voters switched directly to the Tories.

Reports in the days and weeks before the by-election were filled with personal accounts of long-time Labour supporters stating that for the first time in their lives they would vote Conservative.

This dramatic sea-change confirms that Labour is considered so opposed to the concerns and interests of working people that even the Conservatives appear attractive by comparison. Many of those interviewed remembered bitterly the period of the Thatcher Conservative government, but they were even more hostile to Labour’s 11 years in office.

Writing in the Guardian on Labour’s expected defeat, the pro-New Labour columnist Polly Toynbee cited recent research by Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics on the May 1 elections in London.

His analysis found that “the white working class has abandoned Labour. All Labour’s signals have been wrong for them,” she cited, adding, “Travers finds many millions of middle- and low-paid people who are young or middle-aged are right to feel Labour has done nothing for them—because those without children at home have had nothing, and they know it. They pay too much tax, they start paying tax on very low incomes, the minimum wage is very low, public sector pay is screwed down for five years—and then they see Labour ‘celebrating’ the mega-rewards of the rich. It may be daft to vote Tory in their anger, but they are not the deserters: Labour has deserted them.”

Such an appraisal should not come as a revelation. A central premise of the “New Labour” project initiated by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was that it did not matter how far the party removed itself from its traditional working class constituency, or how right-wing it became, working people would remain loyal because they had nowhere else to go.

For years, the likes of Toynbee bought into this claim. Now, so completely has Labour effaced the old distinctions between itself and the Conservatives—becoming for an entire period the preferred party of the City of London and the super-rich—that the former taboo on “switching sides” no longer applies.

According to reports, the Conservative campaign plan changed as this became apparent. The Financial Times reported that the Tories had “sensed a fundamental shift in Crewe. At first, their campaign plan was aimed at voters in Nantwich and more well-heeled villages surrounding Crewe. But after the first week they refocused, realising they were making inroads into solid Labour areas.”

Labour is completely incapable of stemming the rot. A publicity stunt mounted to point up Timpson’s privileged background (he is the multimillionaire son of the Timpson family’s shoe repair and key-cutting business) backfired badly. Conscious that far too many of its own supporters had similar backgrounds (it subsequently transpired that one of those dressed in top-hat and tails had attended a private school), and anxious not to alienate the well-to-do, the ploy was disowned by the government and central office, leaving Labour’s electoral campaign floundering.

Even the party’s attempts to brand the Conservative candidate “Thatcher boy Timpson”—a reference to a speech by Tory leader David Cameron on taxation—fell flat. After all, the Labour Party has claimed Thatcher as one of its own, with both Blair and Brown going out of their way to sing the former Conservative premier’s praise and to proclaim themselves as her true inheritors.

In the end, Labour’s campaign tried to outflank the Conservatives from the right by centring on law and order and anti-immigrant measures.

The pro-New Labour network, Compass, complained that Crewe represented “a new low” in Labour “ill-advisedly demonising its opponents, speaking the crass language of authoritarianism and clumsily trying to close down the issue of immigration.”

The party was resorting to the “hysterical maligning of young people” and “advocating police harassment,” it complained, citing the electoral pitch of Dunwoody: “I want the Police to harass yobs, get in their faces.”

“Perhaps most poisonous of all was the Crewe campaign’s attempt to make political capital out of issues involving Crewe’s large Polish population, via a claim that the Conservatives are opposed to ‘making foreign nationals carry ID cards.’ This smacks of the poison spread by the far right. In addition, it misrepresents the debate. The Tories are opposed to making anyone carry or be issued with an ID card. So, in the face of massive public unease about the project, should be the Labour Party.”

Labour now faces another by-election in Henley, the former seat of newly elected Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

In the lead-up to the Crewe ballot, Trade Union Congress leader Brendan Barber called on the government to “reconfigure its DNA” and take a stand against “casino capitalism.”

The government must challenge “corporate and personal greed at the top,” he said, in order to “reconnect” with “ordinary working people” who are “angry that they are struggling to pay the bills as a super-rich minority is allowed to float free from the rest of society.”

Entirely beholden to the banks and stock markets, Labour is incapable of making any such change in tack, even to salvage its own political fortunes. With little prospect of any substantial shift in policy, there will be renewed demands for Brown to stand down, in the hope that a shift in personnel will be enough to restore the party’s standing.

There were already demands being made for Brown to go, even before the Crewe result was known. Writing in the Guardian, for example, on the eve of the election, Jenni Russell stated that the lack of an apparent alternate leader should not prevent Brown’s removal. “The party’s unpopularity has hit an all-time low,” she wrote. “It cannot recover under Gordon Brown. He has to go, and go quickly…. The party must find the courage to depose him.”

Such calls, if heeded, would result in nothing more than an orgy of internecine feuding between contending right-wing forces. The desperation they express is amplified by the fact that it is not even a year since Brown was elected overwhelmingly and unopposed by the Labour Party, as the man who could salvage its fortunes in the wake of their collapse under Blair over the Iraq war.

So brief was Labour’s respite, however, that Brown even put off an early general election out of fear the government would lose it.

It was the run on the Northern Rock bank that revealed how exposed Britain is to the global economic crisis sparked by the credit crunch. A Bank of England forecast released just before the Crewe by-election projected that the UK faces its most protracted slowdown since the early 1990s, with its outlook on economic growth falling from 3.3 percent this year to 1.5 percent in 2009.

At the same time, the Home Builders Federation (HBF) warned that sales of newly built houses have “fallen off a cliff,” putting tens of thousands of jobs at risk. Chairman Stewart Baseley said, “The implications for the economy are dire. Tens of thousands of jobs are at risk, possibly even more, as the potentially massive layoffs amongst homebuilders start to filter through.”

The UK’s biggest homebuilder, Taylor Wimpey, is to close 13 offices and cut its workforce by more than 10 percent, having recorded a pre-tax loss of £19.5 million last year, compared with £406 million credit in 2006. Persimmon’s sales of new homes are already down 24 percent this year, causing it to put all new developments on hold while Redrow has laid off 15 percent of its staff.

The Crewe and Nantwich by-election marks a further shift in the ongoing disintegration of Labour. Whatever the various manoeuvres of the next months, the party is in meltdown. Haemorrhaging support and entirely dependent on a layer of self-interested, corrupt careerists—themselves riven with petty factional differences—the party is also in debt to the tune of £18 million.