Sadie Robinson | ukwatch.net

Nottingham ‘terror arrests’

Ellie Keen — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:45:30 +0000

‘The clampdown is about trying to depoliticise us’

The harrowing story of Rizwaan Sabir – a postgraduate student studying terrorism who was arrested for downloading an Al Qaida training manual – is testimony to the Islamaphobia that has been whipped up by politicians and the media.

Rizwaan, a student at Nottingham university, was held for almost a week without charge. He says his case shows where the steady erosion of academic freedom and civil liberties can lead.

It also shows why the government’s plans to further extend anti-terror legislation are dangerous and wrong-headed.

Rizwaan spoke to Socialist Worker about what happened and his fears for the future.

“At first when I was arrested I thought it was a joke,” he said. “I was taken to a cell and kept there all day. I kept asking why I’d been arrested but nobody would tell me.

“Later in the afternoon I was told that my house would be searched. I was photographed, fingerprinted, footprinted and a DNA swab was taken.”

The police held Rizwaan in their cells for six days and repeatedly questioned him.

“My family were trying to find out what had happened but the police wouldn’t tell them anything. The police just kept asking me the same questions. They asked me if I’d been to Pakistan, if I’d been to the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, if I’d been to Iraq. They asked me if I was planning on going camping.”

Rizwaan says he thinks that the police knew he was a genuine researcher after his first interview and that they knew they had no reason to hold him.

“They said that they had to go through all the papers they had seized – this becomes a reason for detaining people for ever longer periods of time,” he said.

“When I was released I was given a statement saying that the university had confirmed that the manual wasn’t relevant to my course. I don’t know where that came from.”

Some 500 students and university staff held a protest in support of Rizwaan and his friend and university employee Hicham Yezza, who had helped Rizwaan by printing the manual.

“People read bits of the manual out in front of the media to show solidarity,” said Rizwaan. “They can do that but if I read the manual again I could be investigated further.

Connection

“I think that the clampdown is about trying to depoliticise people, but treating people like this can further radicalise them.”

Maria Ryan is a lecturer at the university who was interviewed by the police in connection with Rizwaan. She told Socialist Worker, “The police told me Rizwaan had been arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Initially I just laughed. I told them he had downloaded the manual because he was researching radical Islam.

“I explained that the manual is in the public domain. They responded that if it gets into the ‘wrong hands’ there could be problems.

“They asked me various questions about Rizwaan – what he thinks of the US and US foreign policy and what he thinks of Israel and suicide bombing.

“They also asked me some personal questions about him. How many friends does he have? Does he pray? Does he drink alcohol? Does he go to pubs?

“I had another visit from a police officer a few days later. It was clear that they had realised he was a genuine researcher.

“But there is a problem – what do you do if the law prohibits possession of certain material?

“It’s worrying that the police have such wide-ranging powers to arrest people without charge. They arrest first and investigate after. And when they realise they’ve made a mistake they don’t know what to do.”

After being released without charge, Hicham was threatened with deportation to Algeria until a last-minute reprieve last week. He now faces a judicial review.

Roots of reformism

JamieSW — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:31:39 +0000

Since Gordon Brown became prime minister in June last year it seems as if the Labour Party has lurched from one crisis to another. The crisis at Northern Rock and the funding scandals engulfing Brown’s allies are just a couple of the deep problems he faces.

Brown’s troubles follow in the wake of widespread anger at his predecessor Tony Blair – over the war, but also over the fact that the Labour Party, originally conceived to improve the lives of working class people, now seems to have no reforms on offer.

Yet despite all this, the government manages to cling on. And despite the haemorrhaging of party members, working class people are by and large still trudging out to the ballot box and voting Labour.

Even in Scotland, last May’s victory by the Scottish National Party (SNP) over Labour was primarily due to the SNP attracting voters away from smaller, more radical parties.

The Labour vote itself remained more or less solid – though turnout fell, Labour still polled some 29.2 percent at the regional level, just 0.1 percentage points down from 2003.

How do we explain how Labour manages to hang on to the loyalty of so many, despite all the betrayals? And more fundamentally, why do a majority of workers still put their faith in the notion that the capitalist system can be reformed in their favour?

Reformism – the idea that capitalism can and should be gradually altered to work in the interests of working class people – has a long history in the socialist movement.

Reformists reject the need for a revolution to overthrow capitalism. Marxists, in contrast, argue that exploitation and class division are central to capitalism and cannot be reformed away.

There are times when it is fairly clear why such ideas can become “common sense” among workers. Between the 1940s and 1970s, for instance, capitalism in Britain experienced its “golden age”. An unprecedented boom meant that genuine reforms could be offered to ordinary people.

Lives improved

The lives of working class people improved immeasurably compared with those of their parents and grandparents. The National Health Service was created, a massive council house building programme began and unemployment was virtually zero.

It seemed that life was progressively getting better, with no need for any kind of revolutionary challenge.

In such a context, it’s easy to see why reformism made sense. But reformist ideas can also keep their grip at times when it has little to offer – or even when the Labour Party is actively dismantling the welfare state it helped set up.

If we are to explain this, we have to examine ideology – the system of ideas put forward by the ruling class to justify their rule.

As Karl Marx pointed out, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.” The education system, the mass media and key institutions of society such as the family all present our society as “natural”, the only possible way to live.

Crucially, this ideology separates out politics and economics. Political stories appear on one newspaper page and economic stories on another.

The effect of this separation is to deny that there is a political aspect to economic relations. In particular, it denies workers a political say in how the economy is run. “Democracy” does not stretch to giving people any meaningful control over the market.

Typically the views of workers reflect these ideological contradictions. They understand that democracy is something worth fighting for, but also sense the limits to the “purely political” democracy on offer.

So workers to some extent accept that they can fight over “bread and butter” issues such as wages and pensions. But in general politics is an area they avoid directly intervening in, instead relying on others, such as elected representatives, to fight for them.

This ideology is an important factor in understanding why, for much of the time, the majority of workers accept ideas that are not in their objective interests. But there is a more fundamental reason why reformist ideas make sense to workers.

Karl Marx wrote about how workers become “alienated” under capitalism. Workers have no collective control over the process of production or over the things being produced.

As a result the material world around us appears as something alien, rather than something that we have created. This alienation produces a feeling of powerlessness that pervades every aspect of workers’ lives.

Reformist ideas, in this context, make a huge amount of sense. Workers want improvements in their lives but don’t feel that society can be fundamentally changed – or that they could have a role in changing it. Instead, officials in parliament or trade unions are elected to tinker with the system on their behalf.

Of course, not everyone accepts reformist ideas. Ruling ideas may be dominant, but they are not the only ideas. The daily experience of workers may make them feel powerless, but it can also lead to them challenging the dominant ideology.

For instance, the notion that privatisation is the best way to run the railways collapses when millions of workers face delays, overcrowding and chaos every morning.

The position of workers is important for another reason. The fact that they produce things collectively means that to win any improvements in their conditions they are forced to fight together as a class against their bosses.

What lies beneath

When this happens, all sorts of previously accepted ideas are brought into question. Racism and sexism can be broken down if workers have to fight, black and white, male and female, together against a common enemy.

People start to see that they have common interests as a class, that the divide between them and their boss matters more than their previous prejudices.

Struggles also prompt people to see what lies beneath the veneer of “democracy”. They can start to realise their own strength and their ability to organise themselves and their society. Marx argued that in the course of changing society, people also change themselves.

Workers tend to have both the dominant ideology and oppositional ideas in their heads at the same time. This is what the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci called “contradictory consciousness”, with “good sense” such as solidarity with fellow workers battling with “common sense”, the prejudices that form the dominant ideology.

The contradictions mean that even in times of mass struggle, the logic of reformism can still keep a hold on people. Recent uprisings in Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil reflect this. Mass struggles have overthrown neoliberal leaders, but only to install new leaders who promise reforms.

Even in Russia, the successful revolutionary uprising of February 1917 overthrew the Tsar, but did not lead to the mass of workers concluding that they should run society. Instead a provisional government committed to maintaining capitalism came to power. It was not until October that this government was overthrown by workers’ councils (or soviets), led by the Bolsheviks.

So in times of struggle there is always a battle over ideas and strategies – and to win a majority of workers to revolutionary ideas requires that revolutionaries organise themselves in a revolutionary party.

In Britain today there is widespread disillusionment with the political process. The 2001 general election saw turnout slump to 59 percent – the lowest since 1918.

Membership slump

Labour Party membership has been falling since Blair took office. In 1997 membership was 407,000. This figure had fallen to below 200,000 by 2006.

Now workers face a massive attack on their living standards. In this situation the contradictions of capitalism are starker, and it can be easier for socialists to make their case. But the pull of reformism will not disappear just because one reformist party has lost much of its credibility.

Revolutionaries need to work alongside those who hold reformist ideas in every struggle, and fight to build more struggles – because it is through fighting back that workers can gain confidence and begin to see their position and interests as a class.

Today networks such as the anti-war movement provide a vital means of radicalising people and winning them to the idea of a revolutionary break with capitalism.

In today’s neoliberal world, struggles over council housing or health service privatisation can also swiftly lead to people grasping the reality of the system they are battling against.

By continually arguing for the self-activity of workers, revolutionaries can do two things. In the short term, they can make a decisive difference to the outcome of individual struggles.

But in the long term, they can also increase the confidence of workers to take matters into their own hands rather than relying on officials to fight on their behalf.

The contradictions in the system push workers to take action against their bosses. We can be certain that resistance and revolutions will take place in the future. But it is not guaranteed that these struggles will be successful.

By building a revolutionary party while fighting for reforms, revolutionaries can be in a position – when revolution does break out – to push forward a strategy that will win. Only then will reformist ideas be buried for good.

Imperialism And Women

jo — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 17:02:10 +0000

The repression of women is always and everywhere wrong. Some readers of Socialist Worker may be surprised to learn that the person quoted above is George Bush. Although not known for his radical, egalitarian views – or actions – its amazing how different one of our rulers can sound when there are wars to be fought.

The notion of saving oppressed women has been a recurring theme throughout both the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. When justifying the war in Afghanistan, Tony Blair talked of it being a war against those who stopped Afghan girls going to school, made women wear the burqa and beat them in the streets of Kabul.

Recently Blair pitched into the debate about the veil, suggesting that it raises questions about how Islam comes to terms with and is comfortable with the modern world.

But the notion of the enlightened West bringing civililsation and liberation to oppressed women is nothing new. The idea of liberating women from backward, uncivilised societies was promoted by the British ruling class to justify the British Empire.

Throughout the Victorian period, our rulers deemed that civilisation equalled Victorian morals and ways of life. The colonialists could then proclaim that they were civilising countries that did not adopt such morals. This sounded much nicer than grabbing land and resources and oppressing the colonised population.

The history of the British occupation of Egypt shows not only how claims about liberating women were used to justify imperialism, but also how Western notions of Islam were developed to suit the needs of Western rulers.

The position of women in Islam has always formed part of Western interpretations of Islamic societies. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries this was derived from old stories told by Crusaders and travellers, who only had limited access to male views of the meanings of Islamic practice.

These interpretations were then generalised from a few examples to define Islam as a totality. However, the issue of women within the Western interpretation of Islam only took centre stage as Europeans established themselves as colonial powers in Muslim countries.

The British consul general Lord Cromer led the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. According to Cromer, Islamic societies were inferior to the West. Native Egyptians lacked rationality and the capacity for logic, and needed to be persuaded or forced into adopting Western ways of life.

The worst aspect of Islamic societies, according to Cromer, was their treatment of women. He saw the oppression of women as being at the heart of Islams backwardness, and the veil in particular as the key obstacle to civilising the society.

But the policies of Cromer and the British administration show the shallowness of their claims to support womens rights in Egypt.

Access to higher education was blocked, and fees for primary education increased. This policy disproportionately affected girls education, and was pursued in spite of a popular demand for education for boys and girls.

Significance

Cromer believed that education should be curbed as it could foster nationalist sentiment. He also opposed the training of female doctors and argued that a womans place was in the home.

When the first young woman in Egypt obtained a secondary school certificate, it was of such significance that it was reported in the newspapers.

But Nabawiyya Musa had achieved this in spite of the obstacles put in the way by Douglas Dunlop, the British adviser to the ministry of education. He had refused to let her sit the examination because she was female.

The imperialists insisted that colonised women be oppressed the Western way, which is something Cromer knew a lot about. This great warrior for womens rights came home to Britain and founded the Mens League for Opposing Womens Suffrage.

Feminism that threatened the power of white ruling class men was opposed, while colonial feminism that could strengthen their power was embraced.

There were a variety of responses to colonial ideas from the colonised, largely shaped by class. In Egypt, the ruling and middle classes saw a potential for advancement by being aligned with the British. So some actively promoted the Western way of life.

In 1899, Qasim Amins controversial The Liberation of Woman was published in Egypt. It was completely bound up with the British colonial presence in Egypt.

The book called for the banning of the veil. It was sycophantic in praising the colonising powers, while repeating colonialist stereotypes of Islam. Native Egyptians were described as savages, lazy and stupid.

The key to changing this was the same for Amin and the colonialists – to alter the behaviour and customs of Egyptian women.

Ironically for a book supposedly championing women, Amins book is heavily sexist. It claims that Egyptian women did not know how to use a toothbrush and the ignorant woman does not understand inner feelings.

Muslim marriages are described as being inferior and based on ignorance – again this is seen as the fault of women.

Amins suggested reforms made his attitude to women clear. He wanted women to have primary education only – enough to fulfil their housewifely duties of managing the budget and raising children.

There was a mixed response to the publication of the book. This was one of the first times that colonial ideas had been expressed from within the colonised population. The pro-British press celebrated the book.

But Egyptian newspapers such as Al-Liwa were critical, disagreeing with the rush to imitate the West in everything. Al-Liwa opposed a proposed ban on the veil, not because the veil was seen as an immutable facet of Islam, but because the paper disagreed with having a colonial power imposing national culture.

Resistance to colonial oppression has therefore sometimes led to an even stronger defence of customs such as veiling. As Franz Fanon put it when looking at the resistance to French imperialism in Algeria, the veil was defended because the occupier was bent on unveiling Algeria. The West had made the veil into a symbol of resistance.

There are other examples of the British ruling class claiming concern for womens rights in order to justify imperial and colonial adventures.

In India, although the rights and status of women in many areas were greater than much of Europe, the British viewed Indian women as passive victims, backward and subordinate.

Morality

William Bentinck, the British governor-general of India, was just one of many British imperialists who took up the issue of sati (or suttee) – the practice of widows burning themselves on their husbands funeral pyre.

In 1829 he wrote On Ritual Murder In India in which he highlighted the issue of sati, arguing that he wanted to end such practices by bringing a purer morality and a more just conception of the will of god to the Indians.

Presiding over the systematic robbery of India and the bloody repression that went with it, Bentinck argued, The first and primary object of my heart is the benefit of the Hindus.

Of course sati is undoubtedly an oppressive practice, but the British campaign against it was used, as the writer Suvendrini Perera has pointed out, as a moral justification to the British to impose their rule on India.

Incidences of early motherhood resulting from child marriages were also used by the British to demonstrate Indias depraved gender relations.

Before British rule, India was widely regarded in Europe as a superior society. This changed when Britain needed to start to justify its conquest of India.

Indian men were portrayed as effeminate and inferior to British men – strengthening the idea that India was not fit for self-rule.

Britain presided over widespread impoverishment and famine in India, and consciously developed a policy of divide and rule to maintain power. The notion that any of this benefited Indian women is distasteful to say the least.

In Ireland similar ideas were used. Irish women were seen as being under threat from brutal, violent and animalistic Irish men. This is different to the portrayal of Indian men, but the implications for colonised women were the same – they were a defenceless and weak group who needed the enlightened British to rescue and protect them.

Imperialist powers have repeatedly captured the language of womens rights and used it to justify imperialism, while simultaneously blocking any reforms that could help liberate women.

Western rulers talk about the need for Muslim women to unveil so that they can be liberated. But when women demand concrete reforms that would mean real improvements in their lives, such as health funding, housing and education, they are denied.

Womens rights have been set back by the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraqi novelist Haifa Zangana has pointed out the hypocrisy of Bush and Blairs claims to liberate women: Iraqi women were long the most liberated in the Middle East. Occupation has largely confined them to their homes.

A typical Iraqi womans day begins with the struggle to get the basics: electricity, petrol or a cylinder of gas, water, food and medication. It ends with a sigh of relief at surviving death threats and violent attacks. For most women, simply to venture on to the street is to risk being attacked or kidnapped for profit or revenge.

In this context, she argues, most Iraqi women rightly view the rhetoric of womens rights with scepticism. In Iraq,womens rights is an absurd discourse chewing on meaningless words.

No wonder that the US-funded NGOs, which preach Western-style womens rights and democracy, are regarded as vehicles for foreign manipulation and are despised and boycotted.

Real liberation for women cannot be imposed by bombs, war or imperialism. It can only be brought about by struggle. When imperialist powers talk the language of liberating women it is never women who benefit. It is the imperialists.

© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.