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Transatlantic bomb plot- jury fails to convict

tim — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:20:19 +0000

The conclusion of the trial of those accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic airlines in 2006 has created a major crisis for the Labour government and the security services. It has revealed the gaping disconnect between public opinion and official propaganda on the “war on terror.” So great is the damage that within days of the verdict the Crown Prosecution Service announced its intention to demand a retrial.

On August 10, 2006, British security services dramatically announced they had foiled an imminent attack on a number of transatlantic planes flying out of London. Described as the most significant terror plot since 9/11, the early hours saw a series of raids in southern England and the detention of some 24 young men, predominantly British citizens of Pakistani origin, including a Muslim charity worker and an employee at Heathrow airport.

London’s Heathrow airport—the world’s largest in terms of international passenger traffic—was shut down, thousands of flights were cancelled and an indefinite ban was imposed on hand luggage.

Police and government officials reported that the men had intended to use liquid chemicals, disguised as drinks, to cause a series of explosions on up to 17 aircraft in midflight.

Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson of the Metropolitan Police said the intention was to “cause untold death and destruction and, quite frankly, to commit mass murder.” Then Home Secretary John Reid said that the scale of the plot was potentially larger than 9/11 and that the loss of life “would have been on an unprecedented scale.”

In the United States, President George W. Bush told a press conference that the plot was a “historical reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.” Michael Chertoff, as homeland security secretary, said the plan was “suggestive of an Al Qaeda plot,” was “well advanced” and “really quite close to the execution phase.”

Some two years later—after a five-month trial costing £10 million—on September 8, a jury was unable to agree that such a plot ever existed, and failed to convict the eight men on trial on the prosecution’s central charge of plotting to explode transatlantic aircraft.

The court had heard that “martyrdom videos” recorded by six of the defendants had been found in which they threatened death and destruction, and that evidence gathered by undercover officers and through surveillance techniques proved that the men had established a bomb factory in an east London flat.

The prosecution said that evidence also established that the bomb plot had been hatched in Pakistan and that when defendant Abdulla Ahmed Ali was arrested, he had a “blueprint” for the plot in a pocket diary. A computer memory stick containing details of flights and airport security arrangements had also been uncovered.

The eight denied such a plan. Ali said that the videos were intended to form part of a documentary highlighting Western attacks on Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon. Ali, Assad Ali Sarwar and Tanvir Hussian pled guilty to conspiracy to cause explosions, but said these were only ever intended as a publicity stunt to draw attention to the video and were never intended to cause harm.

The jury rejected this claim and convicted the three of conspiracy to murder. But it was deadlocked on the central charge of conspiring to explode airliners.

The four other men—Waheed Zaman, Umar Islam, Arafat Waheed Khan and Ibrahim Savant—had admitted conspiring to cause a public nuisance. But the jury was unable to reach verdicts on them in relation to charges of conspiracy to murder.

Even more damaging from the standpoint of the prosecution’s case, Mohammed Gulzar—who was described as the plot’s ringleader but who always denied any involvement—was acquitted of all charges. He cannot be retried, but the Home Office has said that Gulzar, who is from Birmingham, will be subject to control orders curtailing his movements.

Furious response to the verdict

The verdict has brought a furious response from the government, security services and the media.

The trial judge, Mr. Justice Calvert-Smith, has been singled out for criticism. He had led a slipshod trial, it was alleged, in which he had pandered to the juror’s every whim—allowing them a holiday, and even time off for a family emergency.

Given the need to maintain juror continuity in such a lengthy case, the judge (in this instance, a former director of public prosecutions) was in fact required to set a holiday period at the start of the hearing and to make certain arrangements for other exigencies. After the jury had deliberated for 11 days without reaching agreement on the central charge, the judge had directed that he would accept a majority verdict of 11-1 or 10-2, which it subsequently failed to achieve.

The jury itself has also been denounced as lax and incompetent. Typical of this approach was Max Hastings in the Daily Mail, who complained that the jurors’ conclusions could only lead people to assume “either that those responsible for protecting us do not know what they are doing; or that some jury members are stunningly indifferent to the activities of allegedly would-be mass-murderers.”

Amidst suggestions that the verdict proved it was necessary that lengthy, “complex” trials should not be heard by jurors, Frances Gibb in the Times cautioned that “jurors must ensure that they do not fuel the opinion that, in long trials at least, their time is up.”

In reality, the jury demonstrated a high degree of concern for points of law. They rejected the three main defendants’ claim that they were only seeking minor explosions for propaganda purposes, but were not satisfied “beyond reasonable doubt”—the burden of proof at trial—that they had specifically intended to explode bombs on transatlantic flights.

The jury’s diligence was such that Justice Calvert-Smith praised their conduct at the end of the trial. Excusing them from any further juror service for their lifetimes, he described them as a “unique bunch of 12 people” and said they could “Depart this court with the full-hearted thanks of the community for your service to it, which is far beyond the duty for most jurors, and my personal thanks.”

A political conspiracy

The Crown Prosecution Service’s announcement that it intends to seek a retrial of the seven demonstrates only contempt for due process. Having failed to secure the conviction it required, the CPS intends to keep going until it succeeds.

On the face of it, this determination seems perverse. Why the concern with proving the specific charge of intention to explode transatlantic aircraft? After all, the three have been found guilty of conspiracy to murder, which carries a life sentence.

Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the jury could not reasonably convict on the central charge. Within days of the initial raids and arrests, it was already apparent that there were gaping holes in the assertions by US and British authorities that they had stopped an imminent terror attack. Reports stated that no bombs had actually been assembled; that none of those detained had purchased airline tickets and some did not even have passports.

In short, nothing presented during the trial proved that aircraft had been targeted.

But an enormous political investment has been made in this case.

As the World Socialist Web Site explained in “The politics of the latest terror scare,” the alleged plot was seized on not because of supposed security considerations but “for transparently political purposes of a deeply reactionary character. It has, rather, to do with the machinations of the clique of political gangsters—Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, among others—who run the US government.”

The context of the terror plot, the WSWS stated, was the ever-bloodier quagmire faced by the US-led occupation in both Iraq and Afghanistan and the politically explosive failure of the US-backed Israeli assault on Lebanon. With Bush’s approval ratings plummeting, Republicans feared a wipeout in the upcoming November elections.

“The answer of the Cheney-Rove conspirators is to engineer a new wave of panic and hysteria in an attempt to once again stampede voters behind Bush’s ‘war on terrorism.’ They did the same in 2004, when in the run-up to the election the government suddenly announced a plot to attack major financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark, New Jersey—a plot that came to nothing.”

This is now so clearly a matter of record that Simon Jenkins in the Guardian notes, “It has been an open secret in police circles that Operation Overt, the most complex in counter-terror history, was sabotaged by the American vice president, Dick Cheney, desperate for a headline boost to the Republicans’ 2006 mid-term elections.”

He cites the recent book “The Way of the World” by Ron Suskind, the Wall Street Journal’s former senior national affairs writer. This sets out how, after Prime Minister Tony Blair had informed Bush in July 2006 of the British intelligence services’ two-year-long investigation, Operation Overt, into alleged Muslim extremists, “Cheney then privately dispatched the CIA’s operations director, Jose Rodriguez, to Islamabad to secure the arrest of one of the British suspects, Rashid Rauf, believed to be a possible link with al-Qaida,” Jenkins writes.

The capture of Rauf (who subsequently and inexplicably escaped detention) created panic in London, as “the police had desperately to round up as many suspects as they could find overnight,” and “all for the mid-term elections.”

So rushed were the arrests that Blair had left for his Caribbean holiday just 48 hours before, and neither the head of the Metropolitan Police Special Operations department nor Britain’s transport secretary was aware that the raids were imminent until the last moment.

That did not prevent the British government using the scare for its political objectives—in pressing for the extension of the period in which detainees could be held without charge for 90 days.

As the WSWS stated, “There undeniably is a conspiracy. It is a plot to use terrorist threats, real or imagined, to terrorise the American people, intimidate them, disorient them, and accustom them to accept the militarisation of every aspect of their lives and the destruction of their democratic rights. The centre of this conspiracy is the American government itself.”

It is this political conspiracy that the British authorities are seeking to perpetuate in demanding a retrial.

NUJ film shows police obstruction of journalists

Ellie Keen — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:59:00 +0000

The NUJ has released a short film highlighting some of the problems faced by journalists covering public demonstrations. View it here

The video was released the day after the TUC in Brighton condemned the erosion of civil liberties and media freedoms in Britain. TUC unions unanimously backed a motion, proposed by the National Union of Journalists, which called for a rethink of government policies that put journalists at risk of imprisonment just for doing their job.

Speaking after the TUC vote, NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear said: “Journalism is facing grave threats in an age of intolerance. Whilst on the streets dissent is being criminalized, independent journalism is being increasingly caught in the civil liberties clampdown.”

The nine-minute video, called Press Freedom: Collateral Damage, includes examples of the police obstructing journalists in their work.

Release of the film follows numerous complaints from media workers who have experiences of the police going beyond their powers in attempting to restrict the ability of journalists to do their work. The NUJ’s motion to the TUC was part of a wider campaign for a greater recognition of press freedom by the UK government.

The motion also highlights cases of journalists, such as Robin Ackroyd and Shiv Malik, who have faced the threat of jail because of legal demands to reveal confidential source information.

In his speech to Congress, Jeremy Dear drew attention to the case of Sally Murrer, who is facing criminal prosecution for receiving information from a police source, and highlighted the problems faced by journalists attempting to cover the recent Climate Camp in Kent.

Jeremy said: “The terrorising of journalists isn’t just done by shadowy men in balaclavas, but also by governments and organisations who use the apparatus of the law or state authorities to suppress and distort the information they do not want the public to know and to terrorise the journalists involved through injunctions, threats to imprisonment and financial ruin.

“The use of the Terrorism Act and SOCPA increasingly criminalize not just those who protest but those deemed to be giving the oxygen of publicity to such dissent. Journalists’ material and their sources are increasingly targeted by those who wish to pull a cloak of secrecy over their actions.”

The speech concluded: “This isn’t over-zealous policing this is a co-ordinated and systematic abuse of media freedom – and we must expose it, challenge it and act against those who undermine the rights of photographers, journalists and media workers.

“And we must do so because if whistleblowers and sources fear speaking out, if photographers and journalists cannot probe the dark corners of business, politics or human rights, the ability of the media – already under threat from concentration of ownership and cost-cutting – to hold power to account, to expose wrongdoing, to provide the information on which citizens can make informed decisions about their lives will be seriously compromised.

“The Terrorism Act and SOCPA are not sophisticated security policies – they are the blunt instruments of an intolerant government.

“As if in some Orwellian nightmare the Ministry of Freedom tells us that the price we must pay for peace and liberty at home is not just a war in Iraq – not just the billions spent on war – but, in the wake of the London bombings, is the fingerprinting of council workers and the covert surveillance of M&S workers. It is ID cards and 42-day detention. It is curbs on the right to protest, the civil contingencies act and it is the extension of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, a snoopers’ charter giving access to personal texts, emails and internet use.

“The price is too high. Less liberty does not imply greater security. It never has.

“Our movement has been at the forefront of the great struggles for human and civil rights over the past century. In this age of intolerance new struggles must be waged and we must lead that fight.”

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.

Notting Hill Carnival crackdown targets young black men

JamieSW — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:36:28 +0000

London’s Notting Hill Carnival is rightly hailed as a celebration of multi-ethnic Britain.

But it turned into a nightmare for hundreds of young black men as heavily armed police swooped on buses carrying them to the street party.

In a pre-planned operation, police boarded buses in the Oval area of south London to take off those who fitted their profile.

The first of dozens of partygoers were corralled into a side street next to the famous cricket ground from around 2pm onwards.

Hundreds of police, some carrying machine guns, sealed off the surrounding area and fingerprinted and searched the mainly teenagers inside the cordon.

Over the course of the afternoon the police raided bus after bus. By 7pm around 200 men, overwhelmingly black and some appearing to be as young as 13, were being held.

Teenagers walking on nearby streets weren’t safe either. One young man, who had been with a group of friends returning from a birthday party, told Socialist Worker that police had put him and his friends into the cordon.

He explained how they had been on the way to the park to play football when a police van screeched to a halt and officers piled out.

Outside the cordon Socialist Worker spoke to many people who had just been released and were now waiting, hoping their friends would emerge soon.

Handcuffed

While some were resigned, saying that this kind of policing had become the norm, others were incensed. “This is some Rodney King shit going on here,” said one, referring to the beating of a black man by police that led to the Los Angeles riot in 1992.

“The Feds [the police] had us up against the wall and some of us on the floor being handcuffed until they searched us. Then they just let us go because they know we hadn’t done anything wrong.”

By early evening parents were joining the crowds outside the cordon, arguing with police about why their children were being held, and angry that a trip to carnival should be the pretext for such a clampdown.

The police commandeered buses to take more than 100 young people to police stations – though only seven were charged with any offence.

For some who made it to carnival, things were only a little better. Outside Notting Hill tube station, among the diverse mix of tens of thousands of revellers, gangs of police swooped almost exclusively on young black males.

It was the first of many hurdles that they would face. In the 200 metres between the station and the road where carnival floats were parading there were five separate police lines.

Socialist Worker stood behind one line of police that formed a “control point”. There was no sign of the much publicised “knife arches” that were supposed to keep carnival safe – instead there was old fashioned stop and search.

We witnessed dozens of black males being searched. The only white men we saw being held were part of racially mixed groups.

One young black teenager told Socialist Worker that this was the fifth time the police had searched him this year. “I have even been stopped twice in one day,” he said.

Those who have responded to the tragedy of knife crime by calling for police crackdowns ought to take note. The criminalisation of a generation of black youth will undoubtedly lead to explosions of anger in the future, just as it did a generation ago with the riots that swept Britain’s inner cities.

Patience has its limits

tim — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:23:19 +0000

In the recent history of the Irish peace process, a process which is still working itself out, it has always been Sinn Fein which was prepared to go the extra mile in the cause of advancing the process.

At the same time, the unionists, of whatever denomination, have been tardy in their responses and tried to hold things back, relying on the sympathies of Westminster to back them up in their desperate efforts to retard progress.

So it was in 2007, when the Sinn Fein leadership held its special ard fheis on whether or not republicans should give their full support to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Prior to that meeting, Gerry Adams and his colleagues put the case for endorsement of the PSNI to their supporters in the face of harsh criticism from groups of republicans opposed to the policing policy.

The traditional republican position held that support for any police force in Northern Ireland would be unacceptable, with endorsement of the police seen to represent the ultimate recognition of the British state’s dominance.

But the Sinn Fein leadership challenged that position and, at considerable risk to its own organisation, fought for and won a commitment to police reform.

Even though the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill of May 2000 had fallen well short of fully implementing its preferred option, that of disbanding the Royal Ulster Constabulary, in favour of its transformation into the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein pressed ahead in the cause of peace and national unity and carried its members, many with great reluctance, with it.

The St Andrews agreement of October 2006 had called on Sinn Fein to fully endorse the PSNI as a prerequisite for the return of devolved government to Northern Ireland and Sinn Fein delivered fully.

Which makes it all the more worrying that its leader in the Irish parliament Caoimhghin O Caolain has felt the need to warn supporters that his party’s patience should not be tested.

“If we are forced to conclude that change will not be forthcoming from the executive, we will have no option but to pull out our ministers and seek to put pressure where responsibility ultimately lies, which is on the British government in London,” he said.

“Our ministers are not in the executive to fill seats, to make careers or to be administrators.

Their mandate is to bring about lasting and fundamental change. That is why Sinn Fein put them there,” he continued.

Such a warning must be taken seriously, both in Westminster and in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

In the context of Sinn Fein’s unquestioned commitment to the peace process, it rings alarm bells that Gordon Brown’s government is not managing to rein in the prevaricators and equivocators in the Ulster Unionist Party.

Mr Brown and his minions in new Labour have a poor record in exerting any pressure whatsoever on their allies, be they in the US over Iraq and Iran or in the CBI over the British economy.

Should they show as little determination with the Ulster Unionists over their continued intransigence, the signs are not good for devolved government in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein has shown great forbearance and a huge commitment to peace in the country.

But no-one should believe that patience to be inexhaustible and, certainly, no-one can take the commitment of the unionists to continuing progress as an established fact in the absence of continued pressure.

Going Overboard

JamieSW — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:07:14 +0000

AS ROSSPORT ACTIVISTS TAKE ON SHELL IN IRELAND

The protests against Shell’s Corrib gas project in Rossport, Ireland, saw waves of direct action this week. More work has started on the pipeline with a special pipe-laying ship arriving last weekend with just two weeks to do its job. But it’s yet to start – so if protesters can stop or delay it over the next week, the project will be set back a long way and cause massive problems for Shell. Protesters are asking people to come and help them resist at this crucial time…

DANGEROUS WATERS

Yesterday (21st) at 10am, fifteen Shell to Sea activists entered the water at Glengad Beach as dinghies, surfers and swimmers surrounded the machine and stopped work. Three Gardai in a boat began arrests and taking the boats an hour later. With no regard for health or safety, they wrestled with protesters in the water. On at least one occasion they worked together with the Shell security team who grabbed a protester and held him until the Gardai got there.

Then three protesters moved onto a rock in the sea near the dredging operation. At around 11.40am the dredging machine started picking up large amounts of debris from the sea bed and dumping it within inches of the protesters – as the Gardai stood and watched – before then arresting all three.

Mary Jones, who witnessed events said, “It was so dangerous. The huge dredging machine continued working right over those lads’ heads and then the Gardai half drowned them. It’s amazing no one was killed. It’s a crime that the Gardai can work for Shell like that.”

SOLIDARITY CAMP BACK ON

With the gas refinery half built, Shell are now starting work on the accompanying pipeline.
In late July, the company set up a compound on Glengad beach (former site of Rossport Solidarity Camp) to begin preparatory pipeline work. A causeway was constructed and over half a mile of 10 foot high steel fencing was used to cordon off a large part of the beach. Many local people resisted Shell’s occupation of Glengad and destruction of the pristine Broadhaven Bay (a Special Area of Conservation). They were met by a joint team of 40 Gardai and 70 Shell specialist security – 13 were arrested and one hospitalized for several weeks after being injured in Garda custody.

This week, in anticipation of the arrival of the world’s largest pipe laying ship, the Solitaire, a week of action was called. Booked up solidly for the next two years, it is believed to have just two weeks before going off to the next job. Marine & Public Information Notices had announced the Solitaire would arrive in Broadhaven Bay last weekend, but at present it is still docked over 5 hours away in Donegal Bay.

Last Saturday, a team of kayakers – some fresh from the Camp For Climate Action’s Rebel Regatta – began the week of action by reclaiming Glengad beach. To a crowd of cheering onlookers they entered the compound via the water, hanging a banner inside.

On Monday, Rospport Solidarity Camp was reborn and a large marquee and tents were set up in Glengad, just 100 metres from the compound. In a display of things to come, as soon as the marquee was up, Shell’s compound was invaded.

On Tuesday, when the Solitaire still hadn’t arrived in the bay, three kayakers went over to Donegal to meet her there. They paddled 1200 metres out to sea to deliver a letter to the Captain of the ship asking him to reconsider the ships involvement and informing him that if he continued he would meet strong resistance in the waters of Rossport.

NOXIOUS GAS

The story behind this latest stage in the Corrib project is filled with the usual dose of political corruption and intimidation tactics. When Shell first moved into Glengad it appeared that planning consent for the work had not been granted. Later, Minister for Energy Eamon Ryan stated that the authorisation had been given, but the government had made an “oversight” in failing to publicise them. Oversights such as this are a defining feature of the project and exactly what the Green Party minister was so critical of in opposition before he got into office.

This key section of the onshore pipeline at Glengad was granted permission outside of the usual planning process. Eamon Ryan used the Gas Act to exempt this 200 metres of the onshore pipeline from the planning process, which is arguably the most dangerous part of the whole project. Subject to the pipeline’s highest pressures (potentially up to 345 bar, the highest pipeline pressure in a residential area anywhere in the world), it runs from the landfall at Glengad under Dooncarton mountain. Dooncarton mountain is notorious for landslides and the original landfall permission was awarded in 2002 before the devastating 2003 landslide that saw 200,000 M3 of debris washed off Dooncarton, destroying houses, bridges and roads. Despite the obvious dangers, no review has taken place since.

Aside from this, no planning permission exists for the onshore pipeline. The proposed route runs 9km through protected blanket bog habitats, a Special Areas of Conservation, Specially Protected Area (protected habitats under the EU habitats directive), common and farmland. However, activity at Glengad and the arrival of the Solitaire demonstrates that Shell are certain that permission is already in the bag. Perhaps this is because they know the government will be using the Strategic Infrastructure Act to get round any troubling resistance. The act allows chosen planning consents to bypass the local democratic process and be forced through from above. It was surely not just co-incidence that this handy piece of legislation was first proposed by Bertie Ahern after a meeting with Shell where the company expressed concerns at the Irish planning process!

Since Shell occupied Glengad beach, their small army of security have been an ominous presence in the area. The unidentified security (often wearing balaclavas), use video cameras and binoculars to monitor anyone on, or near, the public beach, including children. The company hired by Shell is headed by a former member of the elite Irish Rangers Unit and while the company claim that current members of the defense force are not part of the operation, it is known that other former military personal have been hired.

Meanwhile, Shell has used its usual tactics of divide and rule and bribery to silence resistance from local fishers to the project, overcoming what the company views as one of the final hurdles preventing the Solitaire beginning work in the bay. The local fishers universally expressed concerns over the location of the discharge pipe and its outfall diffuser (certain to pollute both Broadhaven Bay and inshore waters), and disruption to their work during the laying of the pipeline. However, last week, after long negotiations, a significant number of fishers have agreed to keep quiet in return for compensation. On the other hand some remain resolute in their opposition. Fisherman Pat O’Donnell stated that he would continue fishing in the path of the Solitaire. He added that even if a court order was granted, if the state wanted to stop them they would “have to send [him] and the other fishermen to gaol.”

Rossport Solidarity Camp is a hive of activity this week, with new recruits and random boats and water equipment arriving all the time… Actions against the Solitiare will continue for the next few weeks. Sail and rail tickets from anywhere in the UK to the area cost just £35. Pack yer arm-bands and join the fun.

For background see SchNEWS 611, 603, 595

Check out www.corribsos.com for the latest news and videos.

Evidence Uncovered of Political Policing at Climate Camp

tim — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:02:24 +0000

Ninety percent of the costs of the heavy-handed policing at the Climate Camp are being paid for by the Government, local council sources have admitted this week [1]. Campers are pointing to this revelation as evidence that the government has been directly involved in the decision to police the camp in this fashion.

“The Government claims to care about climate change, but is pressing ahead with new coal fired power stations” said Jessica Glynn, one of the campers. “Now we discover that the Home Office is paying the police to harass and attack people who are peacefully opposing this decision. It’s not hard to put two and two together.”

Meanwhile, at 8.30 on Friday morning, people from the camp superglued themselves to the Royal Bank of Scotland’s oil and gas offices, in protest at the bank’s financing of the expansion of the fossil fuel industry all over the world. A few hours later, twelve naked campaigners superglued themselves to the offices of BERR (the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform), the Government department colluding with E.ON to give the green light to new coal power stations.

Miniature protestors also struck at Legoland (sponsored by E.ON) in Windsor, where a Lego model of Kingsnorth coal power station was scaled by Lego activists, who dodged the Lego police helicopters to drop a banner reading “STOP CLIMATE CHANGE”. [2]

Cambridge Liberal Democrat Councillor, Neale Upstone announced at the camp today that he is prepared to break the law on Saturday’s day of mass action.

Speaking from the camp, Councillor Upstone said, “It has now become impossible for citizens to assert their views against the money and influence of a wealthy few. The only option left is for us to take personal responsibility for the actions where the government is failing us… For the sake of our children, tomorrow, I am willing to peacefully break the law in order to draw a line in the sand. It’s time more politicians joined me.”

Participants at the camp, who now number more than 2,000, are spending the evening busily preparing for the day of mass action on Saturday.

“This is the clearest expression yet of the widespread public disapproval for E.ON’s plans to build new coal plants,” said Shri Gupta. “Despite the police campaign of intimidation and harassment, thousands have turned out to stop this environmental catastrophe. People across the country are showing they are no longer prepared to sit back and watch politicians andcompanies destroy our future. Today the climate movement has come of age.”

Notes
1.Medway Messenger, 08 August 2008
2.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykkJJWgOu8A

Hoo u gonna coal?

JamieSW — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:39:49 +0000

AS CLIMATE CAMP FOR ACTION GETS STOKED UP AT KINGSNORTH...

It’s another mediocre summer and we’re back at the Camp for Climate Action. First there was Drax, then Heathrow and now the sequel… Climate Camp III has been set on the east coast of Kent three miles or so from Kingsnorth – already home to a power station that pumps out as much carbon dioxide as the 30 least-polluting countries in the world combined – and proposed site of first new UK coal-fired power station for 30 years.

So SchNEWS reporters have joined the great unwashed throng of around a thousand and a half others, made up of yer usual rabble-rousing regulars – including, according to cops, 150 extremists (only 150? Come on black bloc let’s be aving yer!), plus up-for-it students, ageing hippies and Guardian-carrying liberals (the paper did their own bijoux guide to the camp – getting the day of the mass action wrong. Oops).

Having taken the site – a mile outside Hoo St Weburgh on Wednesday last week (July 30), initially there were not enough people to defend it and riot police carried out a number of heavy-handed raids, beating up campaigners and nicking important infrastructure gear like plumbing etc. Whilst some of this is still impounded, ever-resourceful campers have found ways round it and the actual organisation is once again clockwork. One hard-bitten, over-60 was heard to comment: “How come it’s always the anarchists who provide the best organised, most efficient kitchens”. Couldn’t agree more mate – the SchNEWS chef de resistance has given the vegan food a rating of 8/10 this year!

Police tactics have been the main talking point at the camp so far. A rumoured wholly-proportionate 1,400 cops are involved at a cost of £5m, with forces from Wales, Kent itself and the trusty ‘boot ‘em first pay compensation later’ Met. Unlike the hotels which were laid on for cops last year, it looks like they’re slumming it in their very own super tent (a kind of close encounters white dome structure) up on the hill back down past Hoo. Clearly unhappy at being so completely out-manoeuvred once again by camp organisers – setting up camp under their noses – they are venting their frustrations in a number of ways.

For starters everyone on the main route into the camp (on Dux Court Rd) gets searched, coming in as well as out (one to bear in mind for Saturday’s mass action when green/orange/blue/silver blocks will aim to shut Kingsnorth down for the day). Things which have been so far been confiscated include, er, some glue and a bar of soap. As well as wheeling out a War on Terror board game for Murdoch journo types to slaver over, police claim they found a stash of weapons in the woods nearby including a ‘replica’ ninja throwing star (a plastic toy maybe?) and an assortment of knives including a three bladed affair which could allegedley be used against a police horse (lots of vegan horse killers at the camp this year then?)

Other bullshit to come protesters way include the constant buzzing of police helicopters during the day and night – including low flying for the purposes of thermal imaging or intimidation presumably. It looks like top brass are looking to cause as much discomfort to campers as possible, despite paying lip-service with the softly softly police liaison teams. These have tried to get a police caravan on site – which was turned down – and last year’s arrangements of an escorted police beat every couple of hours is not happening. With the stand-off hardening, each night the camp has been awoken two or three times to deal with the threat of a raid with increased numbers pigging out the front and rear access points.

Vehicles have been impounded – included the camp shuttle bus running from Strood to site on one occasion – and most of the supplies have as a result had to be carried in on bikes/wheelbarrows and Shanks pony.

Still, not to be put off, the camp is proving popular with locals around the Medway area, despite the welcoming local paper A-boards (‘Medway invaded by eco-warriors’ and the like). More families, pensioners, and terrible teens have been turning up than did last year at Heathrow.

With Saturday’s shenanighans to come it’s looking like Kingsnorth could be a timely reminder to Brown and co. that we won’t be taking their greenwash lying down. For more info on the mass action and the reasons behind the No New Coal message go to www.climatecamp.org.uk

Open letter to police on repression at Kingsnorth

JamieSW — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:39:20 +0000

In light of events at this week’s Climate Camp in Kingsnorth, Green MEP for the South East Caroline Lucas has joined forces with Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, and Colin Challen, Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell, to write a letter to the Gold Commander of Kent Police – please see below.

Dr Lucas MEP is also querying Kent police about emerging reports that legal observers are being restricted from observing searches on individuals.

Letter in full:

Dear Mr Allyn Thomas,

RE: Climate camp at Kingsnorth

We are writing to express our concern at the developing situation on this site. There has undoubtedly been a steady escalation of friction between the climate change protesters and police. On one morning, we are informed, riot police with dogs entered the site. During the course of this operation a vehicle was damaged and a number of arrests were made. Twenty protesters apparently required medical attention and a number were taken to the A & E Department of Medway Hospital with suspected head injuries.

In the past few days there have been a series of searches and confiscations. No doubt some of these have been justified under the terms of a general search warrant. Others, such as the confiscation of tents, ground sheets, marker pens, mobile phones and protest banners are difficult to justify on any other basis than an attempt to disrupt the protest itself.

Policing of demonstrations and protests is always necessary. However, growing and confirmed anecdotal evidence suggests that this serious and escalating situation has been caused, at least in part, by a disproportionate police response. Norman Baker MP has reinforced this during his visit to the site itself. Despite undertakings to him by DCI Ian Hall (Kent Police) that only regular, uniformed police officers would be employed on patrol duties within the site, he witnessed, immediately afterwards, a charge by full riot police (Metropolitan) and the inappropriate use of batons on two occasions.

We have severally been in contact with police officers charged with this operation and have received various undertakings including the provision of an inventory of seized material and the reason for its retention. This has not been forthcoming but may well have been overtaken by these serious events.

Climate change must be a wholly legitimate subject of protest and demonstration. If it is met (or is perceived to be met) by an arbitrary, destructive and aggressive police response the consequences will undoubtedly be a continued alienation between police and many decent, law abiding people, particularly the young.

In view of the above we would ask you as a matter of urgency to take personal, immediate and direct action to resolve an increasingly threatening confrontation.

We look forward to your very early response.

Yours sincerely,

Caroline Lucas MEP

Norman Baker MP

Colin Challon MP

Police bullying at Camp Kingsnorth

JamieSW — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:06:15 +0000

I’ve just returned from a 2-3 day sojourn at the Climate Camp at Kingsnorth — site of a proposed new coal-fired power station – which is now gearing up towards its climax. As usual the headlines focus upon policing and the inevitable ‘discovery’ of a weapons cache, more on which below. But once you make the effort – a word I use advisedly — to get through police lines and into the camp itself the overwhelming impression is of a D.I.Y. heaven: solar panels and a wind turbine being erected, water pipes connected, sanitation systems constructed, media and cinema tents put up, impromptu kitchens, cleaning zones … an al fresco and non-commercial soukh catering to the pleasures and necessities of daily life.

The Camp’s great strength is that theory and practice share a space for a week. Having kicked off with marches and due to finish on Saturday with direct action, in the days between there are workshops galore – a hundred or more – covering the usual themes as well as not a few tailored to specialist tastes: “the world lawn tango championships,” “five-finger direct action training,” and – one cannot but wonder whether practice and theory were united here — “safe sex for activists.” That Arthur Scargill made an appearance was welcome, although it was disappointing to see that he has not yet got it. (In the USA at the outset of World War Two it was union leaders who, against bitter resistance from big business, championed the conversion of auto plants to make planes. In the war upon climate change, just think: the skills of power station engineers; solar, wave and wind; surely a no-brainer.) The high-point was a session (pictured below) at which George Monbiot spoke on the role of the state in mitigating climate chaos — although it was marred when that organ itself, in the shape of riot police, threatened to enter the camp, prompting most of the 250-strong audience to exit theory in a headlong rush to practice.

A degree of division arose with regard to the appropriate tactics for countering the police, but it was a no-win situation. Agreement to allow the police onto site – with their batons and video cameras, their bullying, snooping, sniffing and otherwise canine ways – would have necessitated constant surveillance of the surveillers, a continuous and enervating tug-of-war. The other option, the one taken, was to concentrate forces at the gates, to keep them at bay. With this, the boys in blue-and-dayglow-yellow needed only to build up forces at one gate, deploy riot police to the fore, or engage in any minor feint, in order to panic and disrupt the Camp. Which of course they did. In afternoons, during workshops. At two a.m. — waking all with a cacophony of sirens that sparked a mass exit from tents, followed by the thuds of sleepy running bodies tripping over guy ropes. And then again, after adrenaline levels had subsided and campers had returned to sleep, at the break of dawn.

The question is, why have Her Majesty’s police force decided to subject a crew of campers to such astonishing levels of harassment? What tactics are involved, and at what level were they authorised?

On harassment and intimidation the litany is endless. We observed their tactics, aghast. They must’ve looked up and memorised every petty by-law they could find, in addition to compendia of recent legislation. (Thanks to the cop who dropped his copy of the ‘Pocket Legislation Guide on Policing Protest,’ which gives an overview of legislation that can be used to stifle any form of legitimate protest, we know a bit more about an organisation, the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit, that assisted them in this.) They terminated our shuttlebus service (for ferrying participants from rail station to campsite) and arrested the driver on the grounds that one copper, claiming to have witnessed a passenger give a driver a donation, deemed it to be an unlicensed taxi. They filmed everyone. There were interminable and repeated searches of anyone entering or exiting camp — and these were not the usual cursory pat down. In my case (not an extreme one): in addition to searching all bags and pockets they were uncommonly interested in the linings of my trousers; and they dismantled my mobile phone and took the battery out (“in case there’s a razor blade concealed inside”). From me they took nothing but others were less fortunate. The innumerable items confiscated included: plywood, wheelie bins, a track for wheelchair access, a puncture repair kit, carpet, a board game and part of a windmill. And, of course, childrens’ crayons. (They’re a graffiti hazard, don’t you know?)

Arguably the most visible and unarguably the most audible police presence is the helicopter. Upon arrival, I asked the copper who was searching me – time for such conversations was not rationed — why the chopper was in the air. “It’s because an incident is going on. Don’t worry, it costs a fortune to keep it up there, it’ll only be sent up when there’s something going on.” In fact, it was airborne about one minute in every three; deafening, menacing, watching. Even at night it hovered above us, and would sometimes swoop low – perhaps in case its clatter at normal altitude hadn’t yet woken a few of those below.

So we may return to the question: why apply these tactics? The resources involved, in terms of manpower, equipment and fuel, are colossal. In conversation with a senior police officer, I listened to his point of view. “Don’t get us wrong: we know very well that 99% of the people in the camp are completely non-violent. It’s the other 1% we’re concerned about.” A machete, he claimed, had been found in nearby undergrowth. During my days there, I saw nothing to suggest a potentially violent “1%” – and, unlike the officer, I was observing campers up close. The machete story is a smear. Chances are it is a fiction, or planted, or belonged to a nearby villager. Activists, being ecologically aware, know full well that to approach Kingsnorth does not require hacking paths through jungle. But let’s assume for a moment that he is right. There are around 1,000 people at the Camp. If that same officer were responsible for policing a village of 1,000 people, and was informed that 10 were potentially violent, would he call up a fleet of fully-manned vans from the North Wales Heddlu, alongside similar convoys from the West Mids, South Yorks, the Met, Essex, Kent and all? Rumour has it that 27 forces were involved! Would he call in a helicopter, and riot police? Or would he think “me oh my what an English idyll – a pity, perhaps, about one or two delinquents at closing time on a Friday night, but a token presence should deal with that”?

Perhaps there is a better reason: the police tactic is all about defending Kingsnorth. After all, the Camp’s clearly and openly stated aim is to shut it down. But this explanation has no more traction than does the “violent 1%.” Participants show no sign of going anywhere near Kingsnorth until Saturday, so why police the Camp, which is situated many miles away, all week long? To the possible rejoinder that an absence of police attention would encourage activists to approach the power station sooner than declared, there is an obvious reply. With the same police numbers deployed to harass the Camp, the power station could be thrice encircled: it could be sealed off by land, sea, air and any other conceivable avenue of approach, and with enough spare policepower to boot (no pun intended) that the Heddlu and the Brummies could be sent back home. Just think of all the trouble and tension that could be spared, not to mention police overspend.

The only possible reason for this level of intimidation – apart, perhaps, from an interest in giving riot cops some live training — is that the police force is hell bent on hounding and intimidating the movement against climate chaos. This does not represent a departure from recent trends in policing – as witnessed in London at the anti-Bush protest (with its use of agent provocateurs) and the ‘Circle Line Party.’ Yet it is an escalation.

The question that remains is: who authorised this strategy? Downing Street, one would suppose, but we should be told.

Tasers: less lethal, but still potentially deadly

JamieSW — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:53:39 +0000

The recent Home Office figures revealed that Tasers have been used more frequently over the last 12 months. While this report gives us cause for concern, essentially it is inevitable.

Since September last year, more officers have had these potentially lethal electro shock weapons at their disposal. The Home Office piloted a 12-month trial across 10 police authorities, enabling some non-specialist firearms officers to use Tasers, and allowing the weapon to be used in what was nebulously described as a “wider set of circumstances”.

It’s exactly this lack of clarity and the easing of restrictions that is causing Amnesty International real concern about the usage of these weapons.

Let me be clear: Amnesty International is not opposed to the use of Tasers by the UK police force. In fact, we recognise that there are circumstances when Tasers should be deployed, in response to life-threatening situations.

But the level of training should be rigorous and to the highest standards before they are widely deployed.

Tasers are potentially lethal and highly dangerous weapons. People have died after being shocked by a Taser.

Many may recall the video footage posted on YouTube of a Polish man who died after being stunned with a Taser by Canadian police in Vancouver airport.

According to Amnesty’s latest figures, more than 300 people have died after being shocked by a Taser in the US and Canada since 2001.

Just last year, the UN committee against torture described the impact of the Taser weapon as “provoking extreme pain, constituted a form of torture and that in certain cases it could also cause death.”

Clearly the UK government has to ensure that the most stringent safeguards are in place when this weapon is being used.

The Home Office minister Tony McNulty said yesterday that police should be equipped with the necessary tools required to carry out their duties. I completely agree with that. I also appreciate that police officers have a duty to protect themselves and the community at large from violent situations across Britain.

But I refute the claim that arming officers with Tasers without the necessary safeguards and appropriate training is the answer.

Any officer carrying a Taser should be trained to the same high standard as they are for using a firearm. This means that their training should be intensive, ongoing and rigorous to ensure that these dangerous weapons are only used in the appropriate situations. And even in those circumstances, roll out of Tasers should be highly restricted. We do not want to have the same situation as in the US where police officers are routinely armed with Tasers.

Amnesty has always feared that the wider deployment of Tasers could be the start of a slippery slope towards arming all UK police officers.

With the latest Home Office figures suggesting a clear increase, it is highly possible that our fears may yet be realised.

Crime and punishment in the neoliberal twilight

JamieSW — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:10:11 +0000

Last year it was gun crime, this year it is knife crime, and next year it will be blunt object crime. There is hardly a day that passes without a headline about another young man who has been stabbed, usually in south London. And this is not to be dismissed. It is a serious issue. Regardless of the overall statistics, which show violent crime to be quite low compared to, say, the early 1990s, the problem is concentrated in a number of run-down working class areas and the risk is experienced in an elevated way there. And while it is true that people generally overestimate their own chances of being subject to violent crime, an artefact of a politically-driven campaign to frighten and demoralise people, in some areas and for some population groups the risk is very real. Yet, to have the issue serialised as a tabloid shriek-fest is possibly the least appropriate way to address the problem. Joan Smith pointed out the other day that serious and ongoing violent crime against women isn’t receiving this treatment (apparently she has forgotten that misogynistic violence is only a media topic if Muslims are involved). Endemic violence against children by authority figures is also generally ignored.

Nonetheless, this being the topic du jour, and quite a serious one, what is the cause of it? One hears from pundits that young black men in particular are prone to violence because they exist in a survivalist subculture that values macho behaviour and endorses violence (blame Fifty Cent again). One also hears that they often come from ‘broken homes’ (those ‘deadbeat dads’ and ‘absent black fathers’) and thus don’t form a strong identification with social norms. Various associated explanations – drugs, ‘gang culture’ etc – are posited with equal gravity. I simply take it as obvious that these kinds of explanations, more often than not, are about scapegoating population groups deemed in the ruling culture to be somehow ‘alien’ and a problem in and of themselves. Moreover, these explanations are incoherent. There are those who have listened to the So Solid Crew without blasting someone’s head off. There are those who have bought and even sold drugs without knifing someone to death. And some people from single parent families are perfectly average human beings who don’t carry knives with them. Again, the fact that these explanations neither explain nor cohere is not strictly relevant, since their purpose is to create an overriding impression of menace and disorder. A problem whose boundaries are not defined by race is given a racist twist in such analyses. It is the ‘New Barbarism’ thesis transplanted into New Cross and Stockwell. Even where it isn’t explicitly racist, it is doggedly reactionary, as when commentators recycle Blair’s old speeches on ‘respect’ and its putative breakdown. Can’t we just go back to the 1930s, when everyone knew their place and the kids could get a clip round the ear from a disgruntled bobby if they misbehaved?

The scholarly research points to alternative conclusions, with radical policy implications. For example, one recent study by Fajnzylber et al on the causes of violent crime took a trans-national analysis of various trends and found one outstanding factor: income inequality raises violent crime rates dramatically. This is backed up by earlier research. Related factors such as educational inequality, and ‘ethnic polarisation’ (racism in the society) contribute as well, while the rate of such crimes fluctuates with the economic cycle (much of violent crime being property-related). The dry statistics point to a reality that is palpable for anyone who lives in London, where all of these social ills co-exist, and where inequality of all kinds is glaringly apparent. It is not so surprising that there are a relatively small number of extremely damaged individuals who, as Yuri Prasad argues, “see little value in human life – neither theirs, nor anyone else’s”.

What about drugs? Andrew Resignato at Florida State University has summed up a wealth of literature on this topic, and concludes that there is in fact scarce data to support the thesis of a positive correlation between drug use and violent crime. On the contrary, there is a much stronger correlation between the enforcement of drug laws and violent crime. Drug users who do have to support the cost of their habit (inflated by dint of its control by criminal cartels) through crime tend to opt for non-violent means. On the other hand, the more investment in policing to control the sumptuary habits of the poor, the more likely there is to be violent crime. This is unsurprising. Create an illicit capitalist economy in the hands of extra-legal cartels embroiled in competition with one another, with that competition delegated down to those lowest in the hierarchy, and you get a great deal of violence in the process. I strongly suspect that states which impose drug laws are well aware of this, and that their function is to facilitate a strongly interventionist police force with ready-made pretexts for detaining and imprisoning people considered dysfunctional to the society’s requirements. It keeps ‘problem’ populations, generally the urban poor, under tight surveillance. It criminalises them before they have necessarily even broken the law.

If talking tough and ratcheting up repression, with heavily policed schools and widely used stop-and-search applied in a racist fashion, worked, then American cities would be the safest in the world. Yet this is exactly what New Labour, and the Tories after them, will continue to do. Can we even take them seriously when they claim to want to deal with the problem? Is it not obvious that the periodic episodes of hysteria on what are chronic problems are opportunistic attempts to expand the state’s repressive capacities? Isn’t this just what we have seen in other fields, such as ‘anti-terror’ legislation, whose dystopian precepts were being driven through parliament by New Labour well before 9/11 or 7/7? We now have a criminal justice system with an extraordinary scope for control, with such disgraceful policies as curfews and ASBOs, in which non-criminal behaviour becomes the subject of sanction. Given that crime rates are not soaring, given that the risks that people face of encountering violence have not substantially altered, the most likely explanation is that as the neoliberal era enters its most decadent phase, states are attempting to manage the adverse social by-products of the descent with an iron fist.

And next year, when they’ve got round to blunt object crime, the newspapers and politicians will pretend that it’s all new again, that we’ve never been here before, and that whatever repression is in place isn’t enough.

The Police force with no crime

tim — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:57:06 +0000

Northumbria Police is one of Britain’s biggest and busiest forces. It employs more than 4,000 officers and has a budget of around £320 million a year. Of that, more than £1 million is spent on its PR department. However, as a freelance journalist based in Northumberland, I am frequently amazed at how peaceful the area is – or at least if you believe the force’s press office. Despite the force now paying to staff its press office on Saturdays and Sundays, there are whole weekends when not one crime is released to the media.

It would be easy to argue that, as a journalist, I only believe in the police being more open because it will help me to do my job. Yes, that’s true. But there is a more fundamental principle here and that is the age-old tradition of the police using the media to warn the public about what is going on – and to help them catch criminals.

For the last decade, I have campaigned for Northumbria Police to be more open with the public – i.e. the people who pay their wages. I have collected hundreds of examples of serious crimes that have either not been released to the media or have been released weeks or even months later.These include rapes, armed robberies and other horrendous attacks that have been kept hidden from the public.

After having a number of meetings with the Chief Constable Michael Craik over the years, I have been repeatedly promised the service would improve. And yes, the budget for the press office, has been boosted – growing from £620,000 two years ago to the £1 million it now consumes. There has also been a big increase in the number of stories about how senior officers are cutting crime figures.

Indeed, every time there is a horrific crime – such as a murder or a knife attack – the PR machine kicks into life with a quote from a senior officer stressing how “rare” such crimes are. As well as stretching credibility, some of these statements are appallingly insensitive. One chief inspector recently went as far as describing a double murder as an “isolated incident”.

In fact, it would appear they are cutting them so dramatically that one recent weekend saw not one crime worthy of being given out by Northumbria. Not one incident from Friday afternoon to Monday morning that was worth putting on the tape-recorded telephone “voice-bank” which journalists now have to rely on for their information. However, through an application under the Freedom of Information Act, I discovered there had been more than 4,800 incidents that weekend, including 161 serious crimes. So why may you ask were none of these released to the public ?

A good question – and one I’ve been trying to have answered for nearly 10 years now. In the past, I have taken the liberty of occasionally writing to or telephoning the senior officer concerned. There then usually followed a reasonable and well-mannered debate in which they would either quote particular “operational reasons” or admit there was no good reason why the public had not been warned.

But now, following the publication of a series of articles in The Guardian, The Times, Press Gazette and other publications, I have been banned from even daring to ask such questions. In a letter, Deputy Chief Constable David Warcup claims crimes are not released for “operational reasons” and the force does not have to “justify” such decisions. Needless to say, my correspondence on the issue now goes unanswered.

As a journalist with more than 23 years’ experience – most of it spent specialising in crime – I appreciate there are times when crimes might have to be held back for genuine “operational reasons”. But there is no way they have to be held back in such huge numbers. No, the simple truth is that the £1 million spent on Northumbria’s press office is more interested in promoting the image of the force’s senior officers.

My contacts tell me that, as part of that strategy, they have to reduce the “fear of crime” and, if that means telling the public less, then so be it. Mr Warcup recently defended the force’s expenditure on PR by saying: “Although crime in Northumbria has fallen significantly in the past 10 years, our research shows that the perception of crime has not. “We have therefore invested a significant amount in services which aim to make sure people have a better understanding of crime in their region.” In other words, he is spending more money making sure people believe the crime figures they put out.

Ironically, since the publication of my comments, I have been contacted by a number of police contacts who agree with my stance. Like me, they are not anti-police. However, as well as being police officers, they are also members of the public – and taxpayers. And, like me, they believe that, in a democracy, the likes of Mr Warcup should have to justify why the public are kept in the dark about what is happening in their area.

Young People, Violence and Media

tim — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:58:12 +0000

Crime, violence and young people out of control – is this the true story of Britain or is it a media exaggeration of problems we have always had? Here is a simple test. As a researcher, I am aware that all the people I know, plus the ones that they know actually constitute a very large sample if I chose to ask them questions. It is a rough and ready sample and distorted in some ways, but it will still illustrate trends. I don’t know anyone who has been in an air crash, but if I ask about car accidents, then almost everyone has a story. From this I can deduce that one is much more likely than the other. Now try crimes of violence.

Here are some of the ones I know about: A young relative of mine was attacked on the council estate where he lived; in the street behind me a local boy was attacked outside his house by a wandering gang; the son of another neighbour was beaten by a group of boys in a local village; a colleague at work told how her son was beaten by a group of boys who wound belt buckles around their fists; the son of another work colleague was chased and stabbed in the face by a group of skinheads; my daughter described how the brother of a close friend was killed. He was standing in a taxi queue and a stranger apparently on drugs and drunk struck him on the head with a baseball bat. A boy from a local school stabbed a relative to death, another with his father kidnapped a drug addict and brutally assaulted him.

Gang fights now spill over into the school. A teacher told how a terrified boy had taken refuge in the staffroom while the gang trying to attack him was in the corridor outside (shouting ‘get a knife’). I mention these to friends and they give their own catalogue of horrors. Their children speak freely of the dangers they face. In London, the night 29 bus is spoken of with awe as the one you do not go on alone. Word of mouth is not necessarily more reliable than media accounts. Stories must be checked, but direct experience does have a certain power to convince.

I grew up in south east London on the borders of Bexleyheath and Erith. In the 60s, I walked about places like Abbey Wood with my friends or alone, and at weekends wandered all over London. I was once pushed by a guy who was showing off to his pals, but that was about it. There were no knives or guns and no gangs that I, or any of my friends saw. There were remote tales of mods and rockers fighting but these were largely media constructions¹. So my experience is of a quite decisive change and the available statistics bear this out. Between 1979 and 1997 recorded crimes of violence increased by two and half times. In the following ten years they doubled again². The figures need qualification because sometimes different crimes are being counted and some types may be going down- for example, domestic violence if women are leaving abusive relationships earlier. But the trend has been clearly upward with well over a million recorded offences in 2005-6 with young males most at risk. So what has happened?

Important changes came in the 1980s with the rise of new right politics and the release of the free market. This signalled the movement away from regulation and planning by the state in what was seen as the public interest, to a new philosophy which reduced the role of government and focused on the encouragement of individuals to make money and prosper. The ‘wealth makers’ would pay less tax and their enrichment would supposedly trickle down to benefit others. This political approach very rapidly divided Britain into a society of winners and losers, and exacerbated the economic difficulties which already existed. The traditional industries were already in decline but without state organisation and investment the decline became terminal. This laid waste many communities and produced sustained, structural unemployment. Children experienced growing up in families where no-one had officially worked – parents or grandparents.

Currently, about 11% of 16-18 year olds are not in employment education or training³ (estimates put the figure for 16-24 year olds at 1.2 million people). As apprenticeships and links to industry declined, school became increasingly irrelevant to many working class children. Classroom discipline problems come in part from the inability of teachers to link good behaviour to future references and the possibility of jobs. One teacher described how some 16 year old boys are only in the classroom because they are being paid around £50 a week by the local authority to be there. They have no interest in the school, are disruptive and sometimes violent. But they cannot be excluded, for as the teacher put it: “their parents are desperate for the money, for drugs, so if you stop them coming the parents will wait to get you as you leave the school”.

There was an instability produced by the displacement and movement of populations. In the 1980s, youth unemployment meant that young people were targeted for cuts in benefits and were pressured to move in search of work. The transient population also included new migrants moving from the poor to the rich world – a process intensified by the de-regulation of the international economy and the effects of conflict and war. The free flow of capital is followed by the flow of labour as people search for jobs, and the children of migrants and disadvantaged groups grow up in the poorest areas of cities like London. The vulnerable population was then added to by the policy of emptying the traditional long term mental health facilities, which in practice left many people on the streets or moving in and out of prisons.

In the new service economy, those with money and property or who traded in these did well. The top 1% doubled their wealth between 1996 and 2002. But by 2002, the bottom half of the population owned only 5% of the total wealth (down from 10% in 1986⁴). Some unskilled, low income groups were effectively excluded from the mainstream economy. One response to this amongst young people is depression and anxiety, so suicide rates especially for young males rose sharply. But this excluded class can also generate an alternative economy with its own entrepreneurs – people trading in fake designer clothes, car parts or drugs. Another response in the council estates and low income areas is the traditional human behaviour of forming into groups and fighting for what resources and territory do exist. Success goes to the toughest young males who lead in the culture of aggression and machismo. Gangs, guns, knives and drugs then tend to overlap. Research from the University of Leicester shows that gang members are more likely than non members to deal in drugs and are five times more likely to carry a gun – though street gangs are more likely to prefer knives⁵.

Another de-stabilising factor was the increased availability of cheap alcohol and drugs, and the targeting of young people by the drinks industry. In the eighties and nineties, the tourist areas of Spain, Ibiza and Crete showed the possibility of having whole villages largely filled with young people drinking. In my youth I would probably have favoured the idea of drinking a large amount and misbehaving with my friends in my local pub. But the adults there would have thrown us out. The drinks industry solved this problem by putting loud music in the bars to drive away the grown ups and packing young people vertically, into what were streamlined alcohol delivery systems. This, together with the growth of violent subcultures turned town centres into the Wild West, and quaint old pubs in St Albans now have bouncers on the door.

I want to finish by commenting on some of the points that have been raised in this conference. It has been mentioned that people sometimes look back to a golden age that perhaps never existed. The suggestion is that current concerns about the young and violent crime are influenced by such rose tinted views, while in reality the same sorts of behaviour are with us all the time. I don’t accept this argument. My view is that behaviour changes in relation to a variety of social and economic conditions and these can be affected by political policy. It is not true that people always look back to a mythical past in which times were thought to be better. Look for example at the end of the nineteenth century, when British society was seen to be calmer and more settled than in earlier periods of industrialisation. The Criminal Registrar noted in 1901 that, since the 1840s, ‘we have witnessed a great change in manners: the substitution of words without blows for blows with or without words…a decline in the spirit of lawlessness⁶‘.

There has also been discussion here about the accuracy of media portrayals of young people and crime. I was interested in a comment made by one delegate that there had been a long campaign in his area for a youth club, but it was only when someone was stabbed that anything was done about it. Many other people complained about the persistently negative images given in the press and on television. But is there not a contradiction here? Media reports of a knife attack can actually push politicians into thinking about the problems of young people and solutions such as setting up youth clubs and other facilities.

We need to face the issue that there really are problems which have to be dealt with. On the other hand I accept that there are issues of balance in representation. To present only negative images would lead to a false stereotyping of very large numbers of young people (and play to right wing political solutions such as simply building more prisons). So there is a need for a more sympathetic account in the media of what is happening in youth culture and how young people think, believe and act. There is a great lead in this being given by local media groups such as The Mouth That Roars (www.mouththatroars.com).

My main point is that the changes to our culture, which I have spoken of here, are not a media fiction. In fact the bulk of violent acts are not covered. They become like car crashes – horrific, but just too many to report. Another key conclusion is that the changes are a result of political and economic policy. The negative consequences were not always intended, but they are the result of bad government.

Gangs and violence did not begin in the 1980s –people have attacked each other with knives and other weapons for long periods of our history. But decisive intervention by the state and the building of alternative cultures has at times markedly reduced this. The challenge for social scientists is to identify possible solutions for the problems which we now face. Some of these will require a large scale re-allocation of resources and good planning. Those who worry about the nanny state and regulation forget that we either plan or put up with what the jungle delivers.

Notes:

1. See the account by Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Routledge, 2002
2. Home Office, ‘Violence against the person’ – long-term national recorded crime trend,http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/page38.asp. For Scotland the figures from 1997-2006 show a one third increase( See Scottish Parliament written answer by Cathie Jamieson 23 March, 2007) http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search
3. Department for Education and Skills, Departmental Report 2007, TSO
4. Office for National Statistics, Social Inequalities, December 2004, HMSO
5. University of Leicester, ‘Gang Culture’, ebulletin, based on article in National Community Safety network News, Spring 2006.
6. Cited in H.C.G. Matthew and Kenneth O. Morgan. (1992) The Oxford History of Britain, Oxford University Press, P32-33. For a longer account of this argument see Greg Philo and David Miller, ‘The Effective Media’ in Greg Philo, 1999 (ed) Message Received, Pearson, London (http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mediagroup/Effective%20Media.pdf)

Police powers increased by new London mayor

tim — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:24:18 +0000

The new Conservative mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has announced sweeping measures to ramp up police powers. After a series of highly publicised knifings in central London last month, the mayor called for a policy of “zero tolerance” and “immediate operational response.” This announcement neatly dovetailed with the launch of a £3 million public relations campaign funded by the Home Office.

The measures introduced include an extension of the existing “stop and search” procedures, the introduction of metal detectors at Underground tube stations across 10 London boroughs and scanning of suspects with hand-held devices.

“Operation Blunt” was launched barely days after the attacks with 4,277 stop and searches around the capital over two weeks. Young people are being singled out for particular attention under the new initiative, with police taking their pictures even if they are found to be innocent of any crime.

Since the beginning of 2007, 68 people aged under 25 have been killed in London, including 13 teenagers. But the new policing measures have been enforced with little attention to the actual levels of violent crime that have been recorded in recent years. There was in fact a sharp fall in knife crime in 2007 and overall knife crime has fallen by 19 percent since 2004.

The increases in violent crime that have been recorded this year have been amongst the young—from teenagers up to people in their early twenties. But civil rights campaigners in the capital have urged caution instead of this knee-jerk and heavy-handed response to the recent incidents. They have called attention to the fact that historically the use of “stop and search” has discriminated against black minorities and, more recently, Asian and Middle-Eastern ethnic minorities. Government figures suggest black people are six times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, while Asians are almost twice as likely.

Peter Herbert, a barrister and a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, was also critical of the plan.

“It will undoubtedly lead to more stop and search, and more racist stop and searches where people are stopped on the basis of their appearance or ethnicity,” he said. “The MPA was not consulted and it should have been. It is another example of policy being manufactured on the hoof for political expediency.”

The Newham Monitoring Project, a group that works against racial discrimination, police misconduct and on civil rights issues, gave a cautionary statement on the mayor’s response:

“If Boris Johnson wishes to address gun and knife crime, he needs to first carefully examine why current police powers, which are some of the toughest in Europe, are failing to deal with this issue effectively. If the police do not have to apply reasonable suspicion, what grounds will they use to determine who they stop and search? Selecting individuals based on appearance and ethnicity is fundamentally flawed, will criminalise and alienate communities and is ultimately likely to fail like the hated Sus laws that were abolished in the 1980s.”

Under the “Sus” laws police were able to stop and search based on suspicion alone, using the precedent of sections of a Vagrancy Act of 1982, making it illegal to “loiter in a public place” with “intent” to “commit an arrestable offence.”

The police singled out young people in the impoverished areas of the city, stoking tensions between youth—particularly poor black youth—and the police in the early 1980s.

In 1981, police launched “Operation Swamp,” involving stop and searches across large swathes of the poorest working class regions. This was a major factor in provoking the Brixton riots in London, and those in St. Pauls, Bristol and Toxteth, Liverpool.

Under pressure from the public backlash, the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act introduced new rules for stop and search. Officers would now require “reasonable suspicion” that an offence had been committed.

Stop and search powers were again curtailed in 1999, after a public inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence found the police guilty of “institutional racism” and negligence in the case.

After the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001, the powers were again extended under Section 44 of the Anti-Terrorism Act. Under the previous laws, people stopped for the purpose of a search must have the reason explained to them if they request this from the police. The police are then obligated to explain “reasonable grounds for suspicion”—for example, a recent violent crime in the area or the person stopped matching the description of a suspect.

Under Section 44, the exception to this rule is in cases associated with terrorism, in which case the police have no obligation to give a reason for the stop. In other words, the “clause of exception” gives the police powers to stop, search and detain anyone arbitrarily. Similar powers to detain arbitrarily have been given under Section 60 of the Public Order Act.

The official “Stop and Search” web site produced by the Home Office states that these powers “help to deter terrorist activity by creating a hostile environment for would-be terrorists—ensuring it is not easy for them to carry or use explosives.”

It then explains how this “hostile environment” is created: “Police can search anybody anywhere under this law, and they do not need reasonable suspicion to do so. It is under this law that police conduct random searches in train and tube stations.”

The extremely low efficiency of the stop and search laws in combating street crime is revealed by official statistics: In 2004-05, when 100 people were stopped each day, only 455 arrests were made out of 35,776 searches.

In line with Johnson’s ratcheting up of police powers, the opposition Conservative leader David Cameron called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to scrap forms officers must fill in when they stop someone. This would effectively enable police to carry out a far greater number of stops with even less accountability for their actions.

Cameron’s call to cut “red tape” reflected views expressed in the Flanagan report, published the following week. Ronnie Flanagan, the chief inspector of constabulary in England and Wales, said police were afraid to use their own judgment because of bureaucracy and form filling.

The Conservatives were competing with Labour in backing Flanagan’s report. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith responded with an official letter of endorsement, urging immediate action to cut down on “needless bureaucracy” and extend police powers to stop and search.

Johnson has also held a highly publicised meeting with the billionaire mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, in early May, announcing a “new partnership” between the two capitals.

Bloomberg has presided over a city that has experienced an unprecedented disparity of earnings between workers and a parasitic financial aristocracy on Wall Street. His administration has made drastic cuts in social services, including health and education, while increasing police powers.

In Britain, over the last decade policing has seen major increases in funding, rising by 39 percent to £5 billion. The overall police workforce has increased by 25 percent in the same period.

Nottingham University demonstration in defence of academic freedom

tim — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:51:31 +0000

Today at the University of Nottingham, academic staff gave a public reading from an Al-Qaeda training manual, outside the Hallward Library, University Park Campus. The demonstration expressed the outrage amongst staff and students after two innocent members of the academic community were arrested under ‘terror’ legislation in connection with this document, downloaded from an official US government website. Strong concerns were voiced over academic freedom at the university, in addition to a focus of support and solidarity with one of the arrested, Hicham Yezza (1). Hicham is an employee (2) within the School of Modern Languages, who is now facing imminent deportation on Sunday 1st June (3).

Around 500 staff and students gathered in front of the library to hear the readings of the alleged ‘radical material’. Banners with messages such as ‘protect academic freedom’, ‘Right to research’, and ‘Free Hich’ were on display. Snacks, ‘Free Hich’ T-shirts and copies of Ceasefire (the peace movement journal of which Hicham is editor), were on sale to help raise money to cover Hichams’ legal costs.

Alan Simpson, MP for Nottingham South attended to show his support for the demonstration. He described the arrests as a “dreadful cock-up”. Addressing the university authorities he said, “how ashamed you should be of yourselves. How ashamed that you cannot come to the defence of one of your staff.” Speaking on the terror legislation Simpson said, “we would live in a society where we fear each other and that is what the treatment of Hicham and Rizwaan actually demonstrates.”

The protestors then marched across campus to Trent Building, the administrative centre of the university. A silent protest was held in the building courtyard, with protestors standing still and silent, symbolically gagged in the pouring rain. Hicham was called and addressed the protestors from detention. Hicham said, “I am humbled and buoyed by all the support I have received, and my spirits are high. Thank you everyone, you are a credit to Nottingham.”

The demonstrators are demanding that the university offers full support to their employee, Hicham, who has made immense contributions to Nottingham life. The event successfully highlighted the outrage felt by large portions of Nottingham over the Home Offices’ rushed and unjust attempt to deport such a valued member of the academic community, without a fair haring in a court of law.

Notes

(1) Hicham’s arrest took place on Wednesday 14th May. Rizwaan Sabir, an MA Politics research student was also arrested. Both were released without charge six days later. It has subsequently become clear that these arrests, which related to so-called “radical materials” involved an Al Qaeda manual downloaded by Sabir from an official US Government website, as part of his dissertation research into political Islam, and emailed to Yezza for printing.

(2) Hicham is employed as PA to the Head of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Professor Lesley Milne.

(3) Hicham was re-arrested on immigration grounds. Hicham was re-arrested under immigration legislation and charged with offences relating to his immigration status. On Friday 23rd May, the Home Office informed his solicitor that he was being removed on Sunday 1st June and Hicham was moved to an immigration detention centre. He now faces imminent deportation to Algeria without due process.