protest | Andy Roberts

I posted to distributedresearch.net

Zapatero’s socialists defeated by People’s party in regional elections

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/23/zapateros-socialists-defeated-by-peoples-party-in-regional-elections

Results seen as protest vote against Spain’s José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s handling of the Spanish economy since 2008This article titled “Zapatero’s socialists defeated by People’s party in regional elections” was written by Giles Tremlett in Madrid, for The Guardian on Monday 23rd May 2011 17.28 UTCThe socialist party of Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is licking its wounds after defeat by the conservative opposition People’s party (PP) in municipal and regional elections.In what was widely seen as a protest vote against Zapatero himself and his handling of Spain’s economy, his party lost control of key city halls in places such as Barcelona and Seville while the PP took control of most of the country’s powerful regional governments.The central Castilla La Mancha region, Aragon and the Balearic islands all ejected socialist administrations.“We are aware of the situation that had distanced people from our party and caused them to criticise us with their vote or abstention,” party spokesman José Blanco said.The socialist drubbing came just 10 months before a general election and appeared to clear the way for PP leader Mariano Rajoy to take possession of the prime minister’s Moncloa Palace residence on his third attempt.The voting coincided with the eruption of numerous popular protests against established politics across Spain, with demonstrators camping out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol and in dozens of other cities. A backdrop of 21% unemployment and sluggish growth has spread pessimism throughout Spain as the country struggles to find its feet after the 2008 crash.The socialists lost one in five voters on Sunday, compared to the municipal elections of 2007. Not all those votes were picked up by other mainstream parties, however, and the number of spoilt ballots doubled. But overall turnout was a high 66%.Zapatero is blamed by some for mismanaging a debt crisis that saw Spain on the edge of disaster last year. Others dislike the austerity measures he has since imposed in order to avoid a Portuguese- or Greek-style debacle in Spain.His popularity has plunged since a U-turn last year saw him bring in a strict deficit-cutting plan, which he has pledged to stick to, along with labour and pensions reforms.Markets reacted nervously to the poll result on Monday, pushing up the price of Spanish bonds and pushing down Spanish share prices.The PP urged Zapatero to call a snap general election. “Zapatero and the whole socialist party must reflect on what has happened. Spain cannot waste another year like this,” said the party’s general secretary María Dolores de Cospedal.The one socialist leader to have survived Sunday’s debacle, the head of the Extramadura regional government Guillermo Fernández, also suggested that an early general election might be considered.The socialists must first choose a new leader to take them into those elections, with deputy prime minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba and defence minister Carme Chacón as favourites.Party officials said that a timetable for electing the new leader would be set on Saturday.With a general election due in Portugal on 5 June, and with opinion polls showing that socialist prime minister José Sócrates will struggle to hang on to power, the rolling back of leftwing politics that has already taken place in northern Europe now appears to have moved south. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogZapatero’s socialists defeated by People’s party in regional electionsRelated posts:Blair to go, now give back the Labour PartyCatalan independence boost after Barcelona voteZapatero says Spain safe from bailout
May 23 2011, 12:35pm | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/21/spain-reveals-pain-over-cuts-and-unemployment

Spain protests: Young protesters in Madrid and beyond have many different demands, but they are united in opposing the Spanish governmentThis article titled “Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment” was written by Giles Tremlett in Madrid, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 21st May 2011 11.59 UTCThe arrival of the table, a battered piece of formica bashed on top of four rough, oversized legs raised a cry of joy. Never mind that anyone on a normal chair would barely be able to see over the top – here was another small triumph of the new Spanish revolution, the gathering of angry Spaniards of all colours, ages and persuasions that is sweeping across the country and beyond its borders.The table that arrived in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square was part of the swirl of creative chaos, naive enthusiasm and pent-up frustration that has transformed it into a makeshift camp for thousand of protesters who call themselves los indignados, the indignant ones.Tents and mattresses, armchairs and sofas, a canteen, portaloos and solar panels have sprung up in a remarkable display of organisational prowess. And the mass of people jostling around, each pursuing their own dream or demand, or just watching others doing the same, seemed more like something transported from the Arab spring in North Africa than from Europe.As the protests continued to swell on Friday, with 60,000 people defying authorities to obey the campaign’s “Take over the square!” slogan in dozens of Spanish cities, and with copycat demonstrations across Europe, the question was whether this was the new May 1968 – a youth-led popular revolt against an establishment deemed to have failed an entire generation.Esther Gutierréz, an elfin 26-year-old, wandered through the crowd with a battered shopping cart full of fruit.“We’ve got so much food we don’t know what to do with it. People just bring it to us for free and it’s wonderful stuff,” she said. “We want real democracy. Not just freedom for bankers. You’re not from the Spanish press, are you? We don’t speak to them.”Cynical and ingenuous by turns, the Madrid protesters and those who last week refused to obey orders to budge from the occupied city squares have torn up the rule book of Spanish public politics. The heavyweights of old – political parties, trade unions and media commentators – are not wanted here.“I was sacked when the Madrid regional government closed down a women’s centre last year when it imposed cuts,” explained Beatriz García as she bashed a small frying pan with a wooden spoon. “The unions didn’t even bother to turn up.”The political parties were worse, she said. “There is no renovation. There is nothing new or different, just two parties who take it in turn to govern because our electoral laws favour them.”Just a week ago Spain was known for the passivity of its citizens as they put up with one of the most depressing eras in recent history. Despite unemployment hitting 21%, widespread spending cuts and a socialist government bound to obey the diktats of Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the financial markets, they had refused to show their pain. Marches, sit-ins or riots were for the French – or British students. The real drama, anyway, was in North Africa. Spaniards stayed at home.All that changed this week as demonstrations organised via Facebook and Twitter became static protests in city squares, mushrooming into something that caught politicians, unions and the media by surprise.While journalists were following the dull routine of campaigning for Sunday’s municipal and regional elections, the steam was beginning to escape from a pressure cooker of discontent.Many Spaniards had told pollsters they were tired of the same, well-known political faces – especially those who are due to be re-elected despite being mired in corruption scandals. Politicians have rarely been held in such disregard, with the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and opposition leader, Mariano Rajoy, of the conservative People’s party, rating lowest. Rajoy seems set to take over after a general election next March.When police forcibly evicted the Madrid demonstrators on Tuesday morning, they came back in even greater numbers later that day. By Friday night authorities had lost the battle to impose rules banning public politics on the day before elections. Police could only look on. “Join us, police officers!” the demonstrators shouted.By the early hours of Friday, it was already elbow-room only in the Puerta del Sol – the square which prides itself on being Spain’s “kilometre zero”, the spot from which all other distances are measured.On the statue of King Carlos III, somebody had pinned a sign that read: “We are anti-idiots, not anti-politicians.” Other placards read: “We aren’t against the system, we want to change it”, “Democracy, a daily fight”, and “Take your money out of the bank!”“We’ve brought tents, food and even Trivial Pursuit to keep us entertained,” said Pablo Cantó, a fresh-faced 23-year-old journalism student. Like many younger protesters, and the movement as a whole, he had trouble expressing exactly why he was here. “We want change,” he said. “Things just can’t carry on as they are.”The heavy clouds of cannabis smoke suggested others had brought their own form of entertainment.“I’ve been protesting for decades,” said 60-year-old school teacher Rosa Marín. “I’m glad to see so many young people here. The questions is this: Is this another May 1968, or are they just here for the party?”A gang of drunken skinheads, mindlessly chanting football terrace slogans, were there for the latter.But a neat, disciplined circle of people intently debating social reform showed many were here in earnest. They took turns to stand up and make their proposals, the audience listening and using the sign language applause of the deaf – by shaking their hands above their heads – to show approval without drowning the speakers out.The proposals, due to make their way through a laborious process of committees, working parties and general assemblies, varied from calls for less spending on the military to helping businesses. “Because it is not just money for the owners. They are the ones who give people like us jobs,” said one young man.For some younger protesters, it was a political baptism. “I don’t know what will come out of this, but it is enough just to show everyone how upset we are,” explained Javier de Coca by phone from the protest camp in Barcelona’s Plaza de Catalunya, where there was a surprising absence of the nationalist or separatist symbols of protest movements in recent years.“It’s as if they’ve realised they have more serious problems to deal with,” said one protester. One of those problems is 45% youth unemployment.On a wall beside the tarpaulin-covered command centre in what some were calling Madrid’s “Republic of Sol” – home to a press office, an infirmary and a legal centre – a list of needs had been pinned up. Toilet paper and food were scratched off the list. Bookshelves, wood, rubber gloves and bottles of cooking gas were on it. Volunteers were needed for a creche.“We process the proposals and try to turn them into something that makes legal sense,” explained a volunteer at the legal centre.However, the open assemblies are painfully slow. Some last for hours, as everybody is given their turn to speak. After almost a week of protests, the demonstrators have failed to come up with a coherent set of demands.Electoral reform to end the two-party system and action to both punish corrupt politicians and limit their luxuries and privileges were the main areas of agreement.So is the Arab spring spreading to southern Europe? “You can’t really compare us to people who were risking their lives by protesting,” said 23-year-old computer engineer Jaime Viyuela. “But yes, you can say that we are inspired by the courage of the Arab spring.” guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogSpain reveals pain over cuts and unemploymentRelated posts:Zapatero says Spain safe from bailoutProtest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square
- Tags:
- money
- spain
- food
- king
- Europe
- election
- business
- crowd
- Article
- demands
- Protest
- Protesters
- World news
- democracy
- Giles Tremlett
- Arab Spring
- Global economy
- socialist
- Demonstrators
- rage
- demonstration
- youth
- Global recession
- Recession
- Angela Merkel
- Germany
- north Africa
- financial markets
- protester
- reform
- Barcelona
- movement
- gathering
- Regional
- Madrid
- Euro
- unemployment
- Trade unions
- spanish government
- josé luis rodríguez zapatero
- José Luis Zapatero
- socialist government
- Carlos III
- Mariano Rajoy
- puerta del sol
- regional government
- revolt
- spaniards
- spanish cities
- spanish revolution
May 21 2011, 8:54am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Tesco protesters charged after second night of violence in Bristol

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/02/tesco-protesters-charged-after-second-night-of-violence-in-bristol

Police appeal for informants to identify others involved in violent disorder surrounding Tesco opening in Bristol Stokes Croft riots area

This article titled “Tesco protesters charged after second night of violence in Bristol” was written by Jamie Doward, for The Observer on Saturday 30th April 2011 23.06 UTC Two people have been charged following a second round of violent protests against the opening of a Tesco shop in Bristol. Stephen Carroll, 32, was charged with assaulting a police officer and criminal damage. A 17-year-old, who cannot be named, is accused of violent disorder and theft. The two were among 30 people detained after violence in the Stokes Croft area of the city saw officers and protesters injured early on Friday. A further 13 men and two women remain in custody, while 12 men have been released on bail pending further inquiries, police said. The violence, which saw stones, bottles and other missiles thrown, came a week after high-profile demonstrations followed the shop’s opening. CCTV images of more than 80 people were issued by police following the first eruption, which came after officers raided a flat in search of petrol bombs they believed were about to be thrown at the shop. “I am appealing to the community, to residents, and traders and other people whose lives have been severely disrupted, whose property may have been damaged and whose personal safety may have been put at risk by the violence,” said assistant chief constable Rod Hansen. “I urge people to study the photographs, and if you think you know any of these people and where they might be, please contact us.” Police said Thursday night’s demonstration began as a “good-spirited event” attended by eight neighbourhood beat officers. But the crowd grew from about 250 to more than 400.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogTesco protesters charged after second night of violence in Bristol

Related posts:Bristol Stokes Croft Riot Bristol 1831 Mural Artist compares Arab Spring 2011 and Bristol Stokes Croft Riots UK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests
- Tags:
- Art
- UK
- politics
- Photograph
- photo
- photographs
- business
- crowd
- neighbourhood
- UK news
- News
- Article
- Main section
- Protest
- Protesters
- Jamie Doward
- The Observer
- World news
- demonstration
- Retail industry
- Supermarkets
- Tesco
- supermarket
- identify
- police officer
- bristol
- CCTV
- chief constable
- Crime
- Croft
- informants
- missiles
- petrol bombs
- rod hansen
- Stephen Carroll
- Stokes
May 2 2011, 9:33am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

A misplaced May Day dream for the masses

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/29/a-misplaced-may-day-dream-for-the-masses

May Day by John Sommerfield describes a society on the edge. The parallels with today are obvious – but it’s the differences that make it worth reading.

This article titled “A misplaced May Day dream for the masses” was written by Sam Jordison, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 29th April 2011 14.15 UTC It might have associations with people in funny clothes performing arcane rites and with Oxford students getting smashed off their gourds, but most us don’t think about Tories when we think about May Day. As several union leaders have already pointed out, the party’s current desire to replace May Day with Trafalgar Day (supposedly to “lengthen the holiday season”) is not practical so much as ideological. May Day might feel like a natural part of the calendar – but it has only been marked by a bank holiday since 1978, introduced by a Labour government to mark international workers’ day. And that, of course, is why the rightwingers don’t like it. They’d like it even less if they picked up the book that I’ve just been reading: May Day by John Sommerfield. This was written in 1936, but has just been reissued, with excellent timing, by London Books. It describes a society on the edge. The rich are getting richer and the poor are paying for it. The authorities clamp down on protest with the cynical use of force. Someone on a march is killed in an “accident”. The success of a march leads someone to comment: “I don’t think there’ll be so much damned squeamish argument against arming the police.” The parallels with our current troubles are obvious – but it’s the differences that make May Day worth reading. Sommerfield describes a few days in the lives of dozens of different characters across London, showing them at work, at play, down the pub, in bed, making love, feeling regret the day after, giving birth, dying, plotting to overthrow the bosses, plotting to undermine the workers. It’s a broad, ambitious sweep, but it’s all heading in the same direction: the inevitability of a general strike and the exultant victory of the Communist point of view. By the time Sommerfield was writing, Stalin had embarked on one of the biggest murder sprees in human history, but Sommerfield pants for Soviet Britain. So much so that he frequently loses all restraint:

“Then into this sudden pool of quiet splintered an alien voice, a hoarse shout of ‘Workers, all out on May Day. Demonstrate for a free Soviet Britain!’ … This rang in a million ears. Eyes remembered the chalked slogans on walls and pavements. The slogans, the rain of leaflets, the shouts and songs of demonstrators echoed in a million minds.” He also gushes:

“The printing presses were spinning themselves dizzy. There had never been so many leaflets before. They fell like rain, they were scattered like machine gun bullets.” Sommerfield loved his leaflets. He was also absolute in his convictions. For him there are two races in the world – rich and poor and that is where all conflict will lie. “Soon a lot more people will be having to take sides,” he wrote. They did indeed – but not in the way he thought. They would be fighting against fascism, not for “Soviet Britain”. There are plenty of things to be said in the book’s favour, particularly in the ambitious way he looks into so many lives around London, explores their living conditions, and lays bare their pleasures and pains. There’s also plenty more to be said against his writing which veers from the ridiculous to the not-too-bad and never really gets close to the sublime. Yet it’s as an attempt at social realism that it is most fascinating – and most flawed. In 1984 Sommerfield wrote a new forward for the book acknowledging how few favours time had done for his “1930s Communist romanticism”, but also said he hoped the book could be read as “an historical novel – worth reading, now, I hope, in relation to our own times.” To an extent it can. But I read it more as a reflection on a lost past and an exercise in folly. Possibly, it is harsh to judge Sommerfield’s May Day, for getting things so spectacularly wrong. It’s a novel, after all. It deals in fiction, not fact. But then again, while I was reading May Day, I couldn’t help thinking of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novella with the same title. It’s just one mark of Fitzgerald’s genius that his reflections on the day – although written in 1920 – still apply. The protests he describes seem hopeless, futile, distorted by absurd mobs on both sides: “all crowds have to howl”. The rich are oblivious at best, unforgiving and condescending the rest of the time. The tragedies he depicts are universal – but also painfully personal. His lead, Gordon Sterett, is a penniless, struggling artist who has never found his feet since returning from the First World War, but who has found booze and bad company. He is drowning in the tide of history, but his problems are more individual than any Sommerfield manages to describe. He is more real. So too is the world around him. The clothes are smarter, the dancing is more formal and the drinks sound more exotic. No one has a smart phone and radicals print their views on paper. Otherwise, Fitzgerald could be writing about today – or forever. His despair and defeat for the small man rings far more true than Sommerfield’s misplaced dream for the masses. May Day is a crushed dream. It makes the Tory vendetta against the holiday seem even more than usually petty.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogA misplaced May Day dream for the masses

Related posts:TV review: Jamie’s Dream School The Kindle and the Tube TV review: Jamie’s Dream School
- Tags:
- London
- labour
- Art
- politics
- calendar
- Oxford
- may
- march
- crowd
- Bank Holiday
- Government
- Article
- culture
- Protest
- Society
- International
- Blogposts
- Books
- Fiction
- Books blog
- Demonstrators
- Students
- May Day
- Romanticism
- Student
- demo
- worker
- conflict
- Communist
- 1920
- F Scott Fitzgerald
- F Scott Fitzgeralds
- fascism
- history
- holiday season
- john sommerfield
- labour government
- Sam Jordison
- Soviet
- Stalin
- union leaders
April 29 2011, 9:47am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Bristol 1831 Mural Artist compares Arab Spring 2011 and Bristol Stokes Croft Riots

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/22/bristol-1831-mural-artist-compares-arab-spring-2011-and-bristol-stokes-croft-riots

Bristol Riot by Scott Buchanan Barden A blank wall on Bath Road in Bristol has become host to a massive mural depicting one of the most horrific events in the city’s history. Now in a nearly complete state, the almost cartoon-like mural underlines what a precious gift democracy is and how difficult it is to attain. The artist, Scott Buchanan Barden, says his motivation to undertake this massive work was not simply to highlight a very important but largely forgotten milestone in the history of British democracy. In fact, he sees a clear parallel between the Bristol riots in 1831 and the current situation in North Africa and the Middle East where extreme brutality to suppress legitimate protest always seems to be the first instinct of the ruling classes. “At a time when attention is focussed on North Africa and the Middle East where ordinary people have been asserting their rights to greater democracy and an end to corruption, I feel it’s important to remind ourselves that the brutal treatment being meted out to them is not much different to what many citizens of Bristol were subjected to in similar circumstances just 180 years ago,” he explained. “We look on at current events in the Middle East with a degree of unwarranted arrogance and feeling of moral superiority, often forgetting that our own path to democracy was just as bloody. “What brought people onto the streets of Bristol was the fact that reactionary elements in the House of Lords had thwarted a parliamentary bill that would have enfranchised many more people in Britain. Public demand for this had been growing ever since the French Revolution 40 years earlier. “Out of a population in Bristol of some 104,000 at that time, only about 6,000 were eligible to vote and most of these were part of the establishment of property and business owners. Political corruption was endemic throughout Britain, with many MPs representing ‘rotten boroughs’ that had little or no electorate to speak of.” The artist went on to explain that it is interesting to note that military commanders are not always willing to carry out the kind of draconian measures against their own people often demanded by their political masters at such times. “The Egyptian army’s refusal to be Mubarak’s pawn a month or so ago was crucial in saving thousands of lives. Unfortunately the same doesn’t seem to have happened in Libya. In 1831, a local military commander – an Irish guy called Brereton – was initially reluctant to use force against the Bristol protesters and it was only after extreme political pressure that he did so. As a result, hundreds of people were butchered by his dragoons in and around Queen’s Square. “He was subsequently court-martialled, amazingly not for the massacre he had committed but for his initial leniency. He shot himself before the court-martial ended. “The Bristol event is a sad reflection of the fact that, no matter where it may be in the world, we seldom seem able to overcome oppression without innocent blood being spilled on a massive scale.” Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogBristol 1831 Mural Artist compares Arab Spring 2011 and Bristol Stokes Croft Riots

Related posts:Bristol Stokes Croft Riot Arab youth: the tipping point Artist Anish Kapoor warns arts cuts are ‘rolling us back to the Thatcher years’
- Tags:
- Art
- UK
- Middle East
- revolution
- Military
- Protest
- Protesters
- Libya
- democracy
- Arab Spring
- Mubarak
- Britain
- north Africa
- egyptian army
- bristol
- Bath Road
- bristol riots
- british democracy
- french revolution
- political corruption
- scott buchanan
April 22 2011, 5:43pm | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Egyptian soldiers attack Tahrir Square protesters

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/09/egyptian-soldiers-attack-tahrir-square-protesters

This is tragic. Those altruistic spontaneous revolutionaries in Tahrir Square were so convinced the Egyptian army was on the people’s side. Now at least two people have been killed in a pre-dawn raid on protesters calling for the trial of Mubarak and the removal of the army chief.

This article titled “Egyptian soldiers attack Tahrir Square protesters” was written by Peter Beaumont, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 9th April 2011 14.48 UTC Egypt’s deepening political crisis following the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak has taken a dangerous new turn after soldiers armed with clubs and rifles stormed protesters occupying Cairo’s Tahrir Square in a pre-dawn raid, killing at least two. The demonstrators, angry at the slow progress of reform since the country’s 18-day revolution earlier this year, had been demanding the trial of Mubarak, his son Gamal and close associates, and an immediate transition from military to civilian rule. The rally revealed the increasing impatience and mistrust that many Egyptians feel towards the military, which took over when Mubarak was forced out of office on 11 February. Some protesters accuse the top brass of protecting the former leader. Eyewitnesses who spoke to the Observer – accounts confirmed by graphic video footage – described hundreds of troops charging into the square firing rubber bullets at 3am on Saturday to clear it. The assault appears to have been triggered by the decision of several dozen Egyptian soldiers on Friday to defy orders and join a protest in the square to call for the removal of Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, who is titular head of the country. “The people want the fall of the field marshal,” said protesters, in a variation on the chant that has become famous across the Middle East. In the aftermath of the assault, as security forces retreated, witnesses described an army officer leading slogans against Tantawi, while anti-army graffiti appeared on barricades. Tamer el-Said, an Egyptian film-maker who was in the square, described what happened. “There was a huge demonstration that started at about 11 o’clock [on Friday]. There were some military officers who joined it who were dissatisfied with what the supreme military council was doing. There were between 15 and 20 of them. Obviously it was really dangerous for them so the other protesters decided that they would protect them from being arrested by the military police. “At about 11 o’clock last night the security forces, who had surrounded the square, tried to enter it to try and catch these soldiers but the protesters would not allow them to come in. There were army and police and special forces. At 3 o’clock they attacked the square. They were firing bullets in the air: at first rubber bullets and then live rounds. They pushed all the demonstrators out of the square. Then they started to chase the protesters into the surrounding streets and the downtown area using tear gas and bullets. I have a friend who was there who said there was continuous shooting.” The huge turnout in the square has followed growing fears in some sections of Egyptian society that the army has hijacked the revolution. According to eyewitnesses, the raid was led by a mixture of army, police and internal security forces in 20-30 military trucks. They said the firing continued in the square until about 5.30am. Although an army spokesman insisted the army had fired only “blanks” and not live rounds to warn protesters, images posted on social media sites appeared to show both blank and live shell casings. The force of around 300 soldiers honed in on a tent camp where protesters had formed a human cordon to protect army officers who had joined them. The troops dragged protesters away, throwing them into trucks, which video footage showed driving into the square amid the sound of gunfire. At least seven of the soldiers were reported to have been snatched. “I saw women being slapped in the face, women being kicked,” cried one female protester, who took refuge in a nearby mosque. Troops surrounded the mosque and heavy gunfire was heard for hours. The military issued a statement afterward blaming “outlaws” for rioting and violating the country’s 2am to 5am curfew, and asserted that no one was harmed or arrested. “The armed forces stress that they will not tolerate any acts of rioting or any act that harms the interest of the country and the people,” it said. “We are staging a sit-in until the field marshal is prosecuted,” said Anas Esmat, a 22-year-old university student in the square, as protesters dragged debris and barbed wire to seal off the streets leading into it. Protesters chanted: “Tantawi is Mubarak and Mubarak is Tantawi”, explicitly equating the field marshal with the president who appointed him.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogEgyptian soldiers attack Tahrir Square protesters

Related posts:Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square Army and protesters disagree over Egypt’s path to democracy Egypt’s generals unveil reform package
- Tags:
- tent
- politics
- Middle East
- News
- Egypt
- Hosni Mubarak
- revolution
- Article
- Cairo
- Protest
- Tahrir Square
- Protesters
- World news
- police
- Peter Beaumont
- Demonstrators
- president
- demonstration
- barricades
- egyptians
- president hosni mubarak
- protester
- Arab and Middle East unrest
- revolutionaries
- army chief
- egyptian army
- Eyewitness
- political crisis
- rubber bullets
- shooting
- Tantawi
- titular head
- top brass
April 9 2011, 11:08am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

UK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/02/uk-uncut-accuses-police-of-politically-motivated-arrests

The UK Uncut Campaign group are claiming that the police are trying to disband it following arrests at Fortnum and Mason sit-in.

This article titled “UK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests” was written by Mark Townsend, for The Observer on Saturday 2nd April 2011 20.44 UTC Protest group UK Uncut signalled its intention to continue occupying high street stores as police released images of individuals wanted in connection with violent disorder. A spokesman for the tax avoidance campaigners insisted they would not be cowed, despite concerns that the Met is intent on disabling the group’s command structure and has “politically targeted” its ringleaders. The Met has charged 138 people – practically the movement’s entire leadership – with aggravated trespass after a UK Uncut occupation of Fortnum & Mason in central London during the anti-cuts march. A meeting of UK Uncut supporters heard that those charged have had their phones confiscated. The mobiles contain details of the group’s secure networks and email accounts used to mobilise and organise its actions. The group believes the decision to charge all those inside Fortnum & Mason was an attempt by police to crush the movement. Only two of its chief ringleaders were outside the store at the time. “Practically the entire UK Uncut was inside, but it’s definitely not the end of that tactic because most people can see that this is political policing,” said the spokesman. The group is baffled why Scotland Yard, which rejects claims of politically motivated policing, decided to charge its members while previous peaceful occupations had seen officers take no action. Video evidence reveals a senior police officer assuring protesters on the day that they would not be detained upon leaving the store. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard has released 18 images of protesters, unconnected to UK Uncut, that they are keen to identify in the wake of the disorder. The investigation, Operation Brontide, is expected to publicise more images, mainly from CCTV. The Met is eager to disrupt those engaged in “black bloc” tactics, and is believed to have footage showing anarchists removing black clothing, bandanas and scarves before changing into civilian gear to evade detection. Detective chief superintendent Matthew Horne, leading Operation Brontide, said: “A significant minority came to London to cause violence and damage. There is an extensive operation to identify these people.” Fresh claims of politically motivated policing have also surfaced in a report alleging that officers prevented Muslims from attending counter demonstrations against a major English Defence League rally. Leicester constabulary operated a policy of stopping elements of the Muslim community protesting against the EDL during a high-profile march in the city last October, according to the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol). It said that the force attempted to dissuade Muslims through mosques and schools from protesting against the EDL demonstration at an authorised protest by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) on the same day, and issued leaflets advising that young people could be picked up and held in “safe areas”. Val Swain of Netpol said: “This is a strategy that we have seen up and down the country, and it appears to have been sanctioned at the highest levels. “The way in which the police are interfering in communities to deter people from organising and participating in lawful, legitimate protest is deeply disturbing. It is not for the police to decide which sectors of society are allowed to protest and which are not.” Saqib Deshmukh, a youth worker in the East Midlands, said it appeared that officers were willing to facilitate the EDL’s right to protest at the expense of the Muslim community, adding: “Certain groups of people are being denied the right to protest. It seems that the government is far more worried about the mobilisation of Muslim people than they are about the EDL.” Police in Lancashire adopted another tactic, imposing a limit of 3,000 on both an EDL march and one by counter-demonstrators in Blackburn to reduce the possibility of violence. The report by Netpol claims the reaction by Leicester constabulary could breach articles 10 and 11, the freedom of assembly and expression, of the European convention on human rights. It also reveals widespread disquiet over why the EDL was allowed to congregate in city centre pubs before the march and move close to Muslim areas. One community worker described their treatment as a “policy of appeasement”. The Leicester force has previously stated that it adopted polices to reduce the risk of public disorder and that it engaged with the Muslim community and acted in its interests.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogUK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests

Related posts:UK Uncut arrests threaten future protests, lawyer warns UK Uncut’s fears over clampdown on black bloc tactics UK Uncut protesters target Barclays over tax avoidance
- Tags:
- UK
- Community
- politics
- central london
- Communities
- scotland
- english
- march
- leadership
- Tax
- Tax avoidance
- UK news
- News
- Article
- Main section
- Protest
- Campaign
- Protesters
- UK Uncut
- Society
- The Observer
- World news
- police
- freedom
- Demonstrators
- interest
- Public sector cuts
- strategy
- assembly
- demonstration
- youth
- network
- spokesman
- Mark Townsend
- Law
- movement
- occupation
- League
- Euro
- Anti-cuts
- disquiet
- campaigner
- fortnum and mason
- trespass
- violence
- Anarchist
- anarchists
- black bloc
- Fortnum
- violent disorder
- campaign group
- campaigners
- command structure
- congregate
- Deshmukh
- Detective
- East Midlands
- email accounts
- group uk
- Lancashire
- Matthew Horne
- mobilisation
- Monitoring
- occupations
- police officer
- Practically
- protest group
- scarves
- scotland yard
- secure networks
- superintendent
- tactic
- video evidence
April 2 2011, 4:17pm | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

UK Uncut’s fears over clampdown on black bloc tactics

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/uk-uncuts-fears-over-clampdown-on-black-bloc-tactics

Activists from UK Uncut and the Black Bloc are concerned that Theresa May’s vow to curb further violence may impinge on the group’s direct action protests

This article titled “UK Uncut’s fears over clampdown on black bloc tactics” was written by Robert Booth, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 20.54 UTC TV news footage of last Saturday’s protests focused on anarchists using black bloc tactics to smash bank windows and attack shops, but the arrest of 145 activists from UK Uncut, a completely separate group who occupied Fortnum & Mason, grabbed the headlines. The result was a blurring in many people’s minds between the two groups, which threatens to hamper UK Uncut’s ability to operate, especially after the home secretary, Theresa May, ordered a review of police powers to handle public demonstrations following the weekend’s violent disorder. There are clear differences between the two groupings: black bloc anarchists condone violence and want to smash the system, while UK Uncut supporters promote peaceful direct action, with a particular focus on the reform of tax laws that allow avoidance by big business. Many UK Uncut supporters emerged from the Climate Camp movement. Their trademark tactic is a sit-down protest in a shop owned by an allegedly tax-avoiding company. Spiky v fluffy, some observers say, although Boris Johnson claimed the Uncut activists at Fortnum & Mason “stormed that building, terrified the staff, upset the customers and caused tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage”. Confusion with the black bloc was compounded when a UK Uncut spokeswoman refused to condemn violent direct action when she appeared on BBC2′s Newsnight. Now UK Uncut is worried that talk of a crackdown to curb further violence could impinge on its activities, which this weekend are planned in Bangor, Barnstaple, Edinburgh, London and Oxford. “Theresa May’s comments are quite worrying,” said a spokesman. “She seemed to imply that anyone who goes beyond marching would be criminalised and that would be dangerous. Our actions are direct but we consider them creative civil disobedience.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogUK Uncut’s fears over clampdown on black bloc tactics

Related posts:‘Black bloc’ anarchists behind anti-cuts rampage reject thuggery claims UK Uncut arrests threaten future protests, lawyer warns Libya protests: ‘Now we’ve seen the blood our fears have gone’
- Tags:
- politics
- Oxford
- Boris Johnson
- Edinburgh
- The Guardian
- UK news
- News
- Article
- Main section
- Protest
- UK Uncut
- police
- crackdown
- climate
- activist
- demonstration
- spokesman
- Robert Booth
- danger
- movement
- disobedience
- demo
- Theresa May
- violence
- Anarchist
- anarchists
- Black
- black bloc
- Bloc
- home secretary
- Bangor
- barnstaple
- footage
- Fortnum
- newsnight
- police powers
- Spiky
- spokeswoman
- violent disorder
April 1 2011, 5:53pm | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

‘Black bloc’ anarchists behind anti-cuts rampage reject thuggery claims

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/black-bloc-anarchists-behind-anti-cuts-rampage-reject-thuggery-claims

Masked protesters called ‘Black Bloc’ from the Anarchist section of London protestors say their ranks have swollen to 1,500 and include social workers and nurses.

This article titled “‘Black bloc’ anarchists behind anti-cuts rampage reject thuggery claims” was written by Robert Booth and Marc Vallée, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 17.36 UTC They dressed in black, masked their faces and flew red and black flags as if they were a revolutionary army, but anarchists who smashed up shops, banks and hotels during last Saturday’s anti-cuts protests in London have dismissed government allegations they are “mindless thugs”. Amid growing public anxiety about the actions of the so-called black bloc, the home secretary, Theresa May, this week threatened pre-emptive police action while Kit Malthouse, London’s deputy mayor, branded them “fascist agitators”. But unmasked and talking to the Guardian, anarchists involved in last weekend’s violence claimed their direct action tactics were going viral. They said they were legitimate representatives of the public’s concern about public sector cuts and their ranks had swollen to an estimated 1,500, boosted by student first-timers. The black bloc tactic involves masked militants moving in tight units cordoned by flags, vandalising symbolic property and sometimes attacking police. The group created chaos in central London’s busiest shopping area last weekend, seizing attention from about half a million peaceful anti-cuts protesters on a Trades Union Congress-organised march and terrifying onlookers. Anarchists attacked the Ritz hotel, smashed the windows of banks, fought with police officers and vandalised police vans. There were 201 arrests (mostly non-violent protesters at Fortnum & Mason) and at least 84 people were injured including 31 police officers, 12 of whom required hospital treatment for minor injuries. One activist admitted criminal gangs and small numbers of football hooligans were among those who adopted the approach. But the anarchists stressed that those in the black bloc last weekend included graduates, social workers, students, the unemployed, militant feminists and mental health nurses. The anarchists who agreed to talk also revealed their own deeper motivations: anger at family poverty as they grew up, the exhilarating sense of belonging they found in the black bloc, and longstanding grudges against the police. All of them said the failure of the peaceful anti-Iraq war march to overturn government policy was formative in their decision to turn to aggression and violence over the cuts. “We realised that political change in this country isn’t predicated on being right and winning a debate,” said Peter Wright, a twentysomething teacher who was in the black bloc with the South London Solidarity Federation, “which seeks to destroy capitalism and the state”. “You have to force your agenda. The slogan on Saturday was to make the country ungovernable,” he said. On Saturday, some anti-cuts activists plan to occupy Trafalgar Square and have asked anarchists to attend even though the opprobrium they drew after the march has sparked a debate inside the movement about whether their tactics are self-defeating. Nevertheless, with the royal wedding and May Day around the corner police are braced for more unrest. “We are not in any way setting out to terrorise the public. We are the public,” said Robert James, a smartly turned-out unemployed anarchist in his mid-20s. “We should do our utmost to ensure no one is harmed, but we can’t guarantee that people will not be shaken up by scenes of disorder … We are not calling for political reform or changes to the tax system. We are sending a clear message to capitalism that we can’t be bargained with. There is no reform. We only seek your abolition.” Jason Sands, 32, a graduate and local authority IT worker in south London and black bloc veteran, said the ranks of anarchists appeared to be “growing in confidence, skill and numbers”. He said there had been an influx of students galvanised by last year’s violence at the Conservative party headquarters in Millbank Tower during anti-tuition fees protests and by police tactics used against conventional demonstrators such as kettling. “It feels good to be part of it,” Sands said. “You are in a group of people who have a shared outlook which you don’t always feel in normal life. It can feel exhilarating running down a street and moving as a group. It is an atmosphere of resistance, not of chaos. You could get hurt or arrested so you have a combination of fear and adrenaline and a sense that this is the moment to act because it could all end shortly. There’s an intensity to the moment. It is not just about breaking things. It is manifesting your politics and personal feeling in the street.” He said some anarchist protesters only turned up if there was going to be a black bloc, finding it “boring” otherwise. Both Sands and James traced their anarchism to their experience of growing up relatively poor in the 1990s. “I have been going on protests since my parents took me on CND marches and anti-poll tax protests,” said Sands. “I realised kids from other families had more stuff and bigger houses but the most acute thing was the poll tax.” After university he found marches in London too “institutionalised” and became involved in violent action abroad, taking part in anti-G8 action in Rostock, Germany, in 2007, during which the offices of Caterpillar, the bulldozer company, were firebombed. James said he was radicalised when he saw his working-class family fall behind during the consumer and debt boom. “People growing up in the 1990s experienced capitalism moving away from the production of goods towards finance capitalism and the movement of debt,” he said. “Social mobility was everything but was quite difficult to attain. We achieved that through consumption and financed it through debt. Those who weren’t able to do that, especially as children, found themselves becoming the collateral damage of the consumer war.” He later went on anti-war marches and found himself feeling “utter contempt” for the state. “You would be incredibly surprised by the demographic that uses black bloc tactics, in terms of age, gender, occupation,” James said. “The media like to paint a picture of hooligans and thugs, mindless men on the rampage. It is simply not true. There are women and probably transgender people too. Some of the scariest-looking anarchists work in jobs like social care and mental health. It doesn’t come from a thuggish place.” The anarchists named in this article insisted on using pseudonyms.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blog‘Black bloc’ anarchists behind anti-cuts rampage reject thuggery claims

Related posts:Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square Protest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000 Thousands march in London against spending cuts
- Tags:
- London
- politics
- party
- trafalgar square
- central london
- march
- production
- Conservative
- Solidarity
- Tax
- The Guardian
- UK news
- News
- revolution
- Article
- Main section
- Protest
- Protesters
- Poverty
- Society
- World news
- Demonstrators
- Public sector cuts
- resistance
- activist
- Protestors
- Students
- university
- capitalism
- Robert Booth
- protester
- south London
- movement
- occupation
- Anti-cuts
- social mobility
- Student
- Property
- Theresa May
- violence
- Anarchist
- anarchists
- Black
- black bloc
- black flags
- Bloc
- deputy mayor
- home secretary
- iraq war
- Marc Vallée
- Millbank
- opprobrium
- Peter Wright
- police action
- police vans
- public anxiety
- rampage
- revolutionary army
- Robert James
- Royal wedding
- trades union congress
- Tuition fees
April 1 2011, 4:30pm | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

UK Uncut arrests threaten future protests, lawyer warns

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/30/uk-uncut-arrests-threaten-future-protests-lawyer-warns

Matt Foot, a solicitor at Birnberg Pierce, says the detention of 145 UK Uncut activists will threaten the right to peacefully protest. Perhaps they did this because it’s easier to catch people sitting peacefully in a shop than people running round the streets outside. Perhaps they wanted to gather intelligence on a network of peaceful protesters. Either way the Met have serious questions to answer.

This article titled “UK Uncut arrests threaten future protests, lawyer warns” was written by Shiv Malik, for The Guardian on Wednesday 30th March 2011 08.05 UTC A lawyer at a leading civil liberties firm has expressed fears for the future of direct action protest after the mass arrest of UK Uncut activists during last Saturday’s anti-cuts demonstrations in London. Matt Foot, a criminal defence solicitor at Birnberg Pierce, said the detention of 145 activists during an occupation of luxury food store Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly was “unprecedented”. He has questioned the police’s motivation. After being arrested for aggravated trespass and criminal damage, scores of Uncut campaigners were dispersed to police stations around London as far apart as Harrow, Ilford and Romford and were held for up to 24 hours. The next day, the accusation of criminal damage was dropped but 138 activists were bailed on the charge of aggravated trespass. Foot, son of the campaigning journalist Paul Foot, said: “It is unprecedented to arrest so many people for simply protesting peacefully in a building. And then it is intimidating to keep peaceful protesters for so long at the police station and then charge them so quickly without reviewing the evidence first. “To rush to treat people in this way and charge them on such a scale suggests the police want to make a statement. This is going to threaten the right to peacefully protest through direct action.” Commenting on video footage obtained by the Guardian, in which a senior officer inside Fortnum’s was captured telling Uncut campaigners they were “non-violent” and “sensible”, Foot said: “It’s fascinating that the police clearly took a view that these were peaceful protesters.” He added: “Given the police’s public comments about violence on the demonstration, it is extraordinary that the overwhelming numbers of arrests and charges have been for non-violent protesters. One has to question the motivation behind this.” Replying to a Commons question on Monday about whether UK Uncut activists had been “misrepresented”, the home secretary, Theresa May, said the police were right to make the arrests. “I say to them [UK Uncut] that they certainly have not been misrepresented and I think that what we need to do at this point in time is make it absolutely clear; the police are right in what they were doing in trying to prevent violence for taking place in our streets,” May said. The Guardian has published further footage from the event showing that senior officers on the ground at Fortnum and Mason were confused as to whether UK Uncut activists would be arrested or not. Luke Heighton, a 32-year-old trainee journalist from East Dulwich, saw the exchange between police officers outside the store as he stood beside police lines with his girlfriend. “I was within a couple of feet of a police officer in a fluorescent standard issue jacket who I took to be one of the more senior officers there and I overheard what was being said. Speaking to an officer in black riot gear and a peaked cap, he said: ‘It’s you that’s stopping me from letting them out. What’s the problem?’” Heighton said a second officer in black riot gear and a peaked black cap replied: “We don’t want them let out yet. We want them detained and arrested.” “The officer [in the fluorescent jacket] didn’t contradict that. He looked baffled by the decision,” Heighton said. “You got the sense that he was being overruled but he immediately issued that order to other members of the Met. The whole conversation probably took less than two minutes.” A Guardian video producer, Cameron Robertson, who was at the protests with officers from the Met’s public order unit, the Territorial Support Group, captured a pre-demonstration briefing that made it clear senior officers wanted to draw a “line in the sand” over legal and illegal occupations. Adam Ramsay, a campaigner with UK Uncut who was detained for more than 20 hours, said the arrests might have been politically motivated or to faciliate information gathering on the group. “At the time, the chief inspector at Fortnum and Mason effectively told us there we had committed no criminal damage – that we were all ‘non-violent’ and ‘sensible’. But moments later we were all arrested for criminal damage – a charge later dropped. This certainly looks to me like political policing.”. “Perhaps they did this because it’s easier to catch people sitting peacefully in a shop than people running round the streets outside. Perhaps they wanted to gather intelligence on a network of peaceful protesters. Either way the Met have serious questions to answer.” In a statement the Metropolitan police said: “The matter is now sub judice. It would be inappropriate to discuss further whilst proceedings are active.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogUK Uncut arrests threaten future protests, lawyer warns

Related posts:UK Uncut protesters target Barclays over tax avoidance Libya protests: ‘Now we’ve seen the blood our fears have gone’ How will Libya’s protests play out?
- Tags:
- UK
- politics
- information
- Conservative
- alternative
- The Guardian
- UK news
- News
- Main section
- Protest
- Campaign
- Protesters
- UK Uncut
- police
- Cameron
- activist
- demonstration
- Liberal-Conservative coalition
- protester
- Law
- gathering
- occupation
- police lines
- demo
- girlfriend
- accusation
- Adam Ramsay
- campaigner
- criminal defence
- East Dulwich
- fortnum and mason
- intelligence
- journalist
- Luke Heighton
- luxury food
- mass arrest
- Matt Foot
- Paul Foot
- peaceful protesters
- piccadilly
- Shiv Malik
- solicitor
- Theresa May
- trespass
- UK civil liberties
- violence
March 30 2011, 9:32am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Thousands march in London against spending cuts

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/26/thousands-march-in-london-against-spending-cuts

Turnout for the anti-cuts demo and march to Trafalgar Square has been revised upwards to around 400,000 as people take to the streets in London to protest against the government’s planned public service cuts.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogThousands march in London against spending cuts

Related posts:Protest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000 Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square Bank of England governor blames spending cuts on bank bailouts
- Tags:
- London
- politics
- trafalgar square
- Government
- UK news
- News
- 2012
- Protest
- Tahrir Square
- Campaign
- coalition
- Gallery
- Anti-cuts
- protest march
- demo
- service cuts
- Turnout
March 26 2011, 10:10am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Protest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/26/protest-march-against-coalition-cuts-expected-to-attract-300000

Police braced for high numbers of political demonstrators and protestors in London with 800 coaches and at least 10 trains chartered from around the UK

This article titled “Protest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000″ was written by Polly Curtis, Matthew Taylor and Vikram Dodd, for The Guardian on Saturday 26th March 2011 00.52 UTC More than a quarter of a million protesters against public sector cuts are expected to flood central London today in the biggest political demonstration for nearly a decade. Police sources, normally cautious about estimating numbers, said last night they were braced for up to 300,000 people to join the march – far higher than previous forecasts from TUC organisers. More than 800 coaches and at least 10 trains have been chartered to bring people to the capital from as far afield as Cornwall and Inverness. The Metropolitan police, under fire for their use of kettling in previous protests, said “a small but significant minority” plan to hijack the march to stage violent attacks. Organisers, however, insist it will be a peaceful family event. Union members are expected be joined by a broad coalition, from pensioners to doctors, families and first-time protesters to football supporters and anarchists. Ed Miliband said the government was dragging the country back to the “rotten” 1980s. Labour is calling today’s event the “march of the mainstream”. The opposition leader will address the rally – his biggest audience ever – in Hyde Park to set out Labour’s alternative to the cuts, accusing the government of fomenting the “politics of division” not seen since Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s. His remarks are reinforced by a Guardian/ICM poll that shows the public divided over the cuts. Of 1,014 people questioned this week, 35% believe the cuts go too far, 28% say they strike the right balance and 29% say they don’t go far enough; 8% don’t know. Two other polls put the balance more strongly against cuts. A YouGov survey for Unison found that 56% believe the cuts are too harsh and a ComRes poll for ITV showed that two-thirds think the government should reconsider its planned spending cuts programme. Just one in five disagree with that view. The TUC organisers of the event said they had organised a family-friendly demonstration with brass, jazz and Bollywood bands. But with unofficial feeder marches, sit-down protests and a takeover of Trafalgar Square planned, there was increasing nervousness that acts of peaceful civil disobedience could lead to stand-offs with police and outbursts of violence. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, which is providing 100 legal observers along the route to monitor the scenes, said she had been heartened by advance co-operation between the TUC and police, but added: “Events around in the world show the precious nature of peaceful dissent guaranteed by our Human Rights Act. This fundamental freedom was hard won and is still much envied elsewhere. It must not be jeopardised either by over-zealous policing or anyone looking for trouble.” Miliband said in a speech in Nottingham: “I thought the politics of the 1980s were rotten because they divided our country. I fear that this government is practising the politics of division.” He argued that the government’s policies divided rich against poor, public sector workers against private sector workers and north against south. “These aren’t the voices of people marginal to our country but the voices of the mainstream majority in our country and that’s why I’ll be addressing the rally tomorrow,” he said. He had been told not to join the march because of safety concerns. The Tories called on Miliband and the TUC leader, Brendan Barber, to take responsibility for any disruption on the march. Michael Fallon, deputy chairman of the Conservative party, said: “Under Ed Miliband, Labour are abandoning the centre ground, retreating into their comfort zone of left-wing protest and cosying up to the unions.” Barber will tell the rally that no part of the public realm is protected from the cuts, highlighting the proposals to radically change the NHS. “Today let us say [to David Cameron]: we will not let you destroy what has taken generations to build,” he will say. The bulk of the march will be made up of trade unionists, with virtually all of the TUC’s 55 affiliated unions represented. Also among the marchers will be a coachload of mothers and toddlers from Hampshire demonstrating against the closure of Sure Start centres in the county. Catherine Ovenden, 31, said the decision to cut the service would have a devastating impact on families. “So many people rely on these centres and we are going to lose a third of them,” she said . The demonstration is timed to mark the new financial year next week, when many of the cuts kick in. Research by the Fabian Society suggests that taken with the wider tax and benefit reforms announced since the election, this week’s budget would in fact force large number of working families into tax, instead of lifting them out as the coalition has claimed. Tens of thousands of the lowest-income families will lose around 6% of their net income in the next year because of the government’s tax and benefit changes with the bulk of the cuts kicking in next week, the analysis by the Fabian Society shows. From next week the childcare element of the tax credit system will be reduced from 80% to 70% of qualifying families’ nursery bills. A family with one child and one earner earning up to £23,000 will lose between 5.7% and 6.4% of their net income, compared with last year. This would cost such a family with an income of £6,000 £1,362 a year and a family on £23,000 £1,710 a year.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogProtest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000

Related posts:March for the alternative – live updates Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square Bank of England governor blames spending cuts on bank bailouts
- Tags:
- London
- labour
- politics
- hyde-park
- trafalgar square
- central london
- David Cameron
- Conservative
- Economic policy
- The Guardian
- UK news
- Financial
- News
- Main section
- Protest
- Tahrir Square
- Society
- World news
- Top stories
- police
- Demonstrators
- Public finance
- Public sector cuts
- Public services policy
- Protestors
- demonstration
- Ed Miliband
- Margaret Thatcher
- disruption
- Matthew Taylor
- public sector workers
- Economic
- Anti-cuts
- Brendan Barber
- disobedience
- metropolitan police
- Opinion polls
- Organisers
- political demonstration
- Polly Curtis
- protest march
- Trade unions
- TUC
- Vikram Dodd
March 26 2011, 9:01am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

If you earn less than the average wage, you’re not middle class. It’s all a scam

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/26/if-you-earn-less-than-the-average-wage-youre-not-middle-class-its-all-a-scam

I don’t know what class will be protesting today – squeezed, strugglers. But will they resist the fiction that class no long matters? If you earn less than the average wage, you’re not middle class. It’s all a scam.

This article titled “If you earn less than the average wage, you’re not middle class. It’s all a scam” was written by Suzanne Moore, for The Guardian on Saturday 26th March 2011 09.00 UTC My cafetiere is pink. Shocking pink. I am shocked myself, as I reckon now I must be the most middle-class person ever to have lived. For this is one of the ways we now reckon class. According to pollsters. So disturbed was I that I checked its make. Boden? Aaaah! No, Bodum, and I need glasses. This is not product placement by the way, I am simply trying to place myself in class terms. If class is now deemed to be about what one consumes as opposed to being about what one produces, I might as well put it out there: my coffee maker. Judge me not by my ancestors, but by my penchant for vividly coloured kitchenware. Posher friends, or at least some people who claim to know about food, scoff at my cafetiere and say I should make coffee in those proper French metal things, and they are probably right and they shall inherit the land. I won’t inherit the land, nor, I imagine, will the classes who drink instant coffee. They probably don’t deserve to. I mean, have they no aspirations, these non-real-coffee-drinking low-lifes? They are probably the same type of people whose children don’t read 50 books a year, I bet. Really, there is no hope. Seven out of 10 people now define themselves as middle class, so we may just look up or down on the three who don’t. Presumably they just tick the box marked “non–dom” or “can’t be arsed”. Who is to know? But really there is more to it than cappuccinos. I am shocked at the bloodless coup that has been achieved here. As social mobility has faltered over the last 20 years, we have the majority of people “self-certifying” as middle class. Certified is the right word, if you ask me. Delusions of grandeur are one thing. Delusions of being middle class when you earn less than the average income, and are indeed struggling, may suggest the class war is not going that well. It’s really difficult maintaining a class war when everyone says that they are on the same side. And believe me, I try. I hate to argue with Lady Gaga (deeply middle class) but I wasn’t Born This Way. I was born another way and got on and got out somehow. My cohort is probably the last generation to achieve real social mobility. And if you now look at the studies, despite the myth constantly repeated, it’s not grammar schools that made the difference. To change one’s class position leaves one in a kind of no-man’s land, unable to share the nostalgia for the good old working classes, but always willing and able to rubbish one’s new milieu. Much about working-class life is deathly dull and about anaesthetising oneself into numbing stupidity. The nobility of manual work was a necessary fiction. No man would live half their lives underground if they had another choice. No woman now happily gets up in the middle of the night and leaves her children to go and clean office floors. What has happened is that the main political parties cottoned on to the idea of aspiration being a vote-winner exactly at the same time when those aspirations could not be met for many in a globalised economy. Home-owning, self-reliance, a decent job for life, nice holidays, a taste for authenticity and real “experiences” came to define us. What we bought, rather than what we produced, became our core identity. As any fule kno, or OK, any old Marxist, this is not what social class actually means. This is reducing class to the trivia of etiquette and consumer power. The reality has been that as we produce fewer and fewer goods, our patterns of employment have become more haphazard and confused across the class spectrum. People on incredibly low wages are still required to look smart, present immaculate CVs and be respectful, even when on hideously short-term contracts. This may make them “feel” middle class. Alongside this, every politician has tried to wrap us up in some warm, fuzzy blanket of uniform classlessness. Last year Gordon Brown was promising that Labour would create “more middle-class jobs than ever”, and would also represent “the mainstream majority”. What on earth did this mean? Is it any more true than Osborne’s more obvious lie, “We’re all in this together”? The coercion of smooth, achievable middle classness was brought about under New Labour. Triangulation, remember, meant there need be no more class conflict or fights between workers and bosses. We were just floating in a perfectly harmonious world where things could only get better. The real working class remained problematic, and the workless morphed into what we now call the underclass. When Charles Murray started using that word in the mid-90s we reeled. The poor were not just people, he said, who didn’t have money, they were also morally impoverished. Now we use that word and others like it all the time: Chavs, “urban”, people from estates. Look at these people and their vulgar desire for instant gratification. Even instant coffee. Middle-class “values”, on the other hand, mean what? Some idea of restraint, of naturally knowing what’s good and being prepared to work for it. And, er, having a Ford Focus. If you don’t mind being defined by vote-hungry politicians or people who want to sell you stuff, then go for it! But I am sorry to say that when you are earning less than the average wage, even though your work may be sedentary rather than manual, don’t kid yourself, people. This is a massive scam, this horrible mutation of all into some homogenised vision of middle-classness. The old word for it was hegemony. Which, I can see, is as about as fashionable as class war. But when Gramsci described a culture in which the ruling class “persuades” the lower classes to accept its values, he could have had little idea of how parties of “the left” would also bring this about. But the rush for the centre ground means just that. The old collectivities of unions or the bonds of manual work have given way to individual fear and loathing in the workplace. Technology means outsourcing, and has been a liberation for some, but for others it means total loss of autonomy, and a working life that is under constant observation. The problem now is that mere aspiration, middle-class or not, is not enough. As if it ever was. The much-derided aspiration of the young – to become famous without necessarily having any talent – is no less nutty than many current political aspirations. We are to have growth without investment. Daft. We are all to stand tall and proud while we lop off the limbs of the public sector. Crazy. I don’t know what class of people will be protesting today. They may well be squeezed. Strugglers, downsizers. Or not from any of these marketing categories. They may simply be registering the fact that their individual interests are actually not those of the ruling class. Some may think they are middle class, and some indeed may be. Whether they resist the fiction that class no longer matters is surely much more significant than how they drink their coffee. For these new decaffeinated, tepid definitions of class are nothing like the real thing. And certainly not for the likes of us.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogIf you earn less than the average wage, you’re not middle class. It’s all a scam

Related posts:Wisconsin is making the battle lines clear in America’s hidden class war The citizens wage Acas booklet on flexible working
- Tags:
- school
- woman
- marketing
- politics
- trafalgar square
- Features
- Drinking
- Gordon Brown
- holidays
- Class
- Comment
- The Guardian
- UK news
- Article
- culture
- Main section
- Protest
- Tahrir Square
- Campaign
- Society
- Wisconsin
- Comment is free
- mobility
- employment
- middle class
- story
- Osborne
- economy
- new labour
- Anti-cuts
- aspirations
- authenticity
- average wage
- Boden
- cafetiere
- consumer
- instant coffee
- kitchenware
- majority
- middle class person
- nobility
- pollsters
- product placement
- reality
- Saturday
- scoff
- social mobility
- Suzanne Moore
March 26 2011, 8:48am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

March for the alternative – live updates

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/26/march-for-the-alternative-%E2%80%93%C2%A0live-updates

More than 250,000 people are expected to march against the governing coalition’s cuts. Protesters gather in London in the biggest demo for eight years. Organisers warn against infiltration by police provacateurs.

This article titled “March for the alternative – live updates” was written by David Batty and Rowenna Davis, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 26th March 2011 10.01 UTC

1.15pm: Tom Wills, a student journalist based in Brighton, has posted a set of photos from the march on Flickr, which give a sense of the mass turnout.

1.10pm: EastLondonLines, a news website run by the journalism department of Goldsmiths, has posted this Twitpic, which shows the protesters marching past police lines near Parliament.

1.04pm: Paul Lewis has sent through an update, describing the wide range of groups who have joined today’s protest. “Standing here watching hundreds of thousands of people stream past, you get a real sense of the broad coalition against the government. I noted down every banner that past through over a couple of minutes. “Somerset Teachers Association, Vulnerable Chinese Migrants Association, Society of Radiographers, Prison Officers Association, Don’t Cut Out The Disabled, Southend On Sea Unison Branch, Ipswich Labour Party, Cut Trident, Nurses Uncut, Met Police Group PCS Union, Calderdale Division of the NUT, Chelsea Anti Cuts Alliance, Colchester NHS SOS, South Ribble Children, The Bohemian Storm is Rising, Parents Alliance of Community Schools, Isle of Wight Uncut.”

1.02pm: Matthew Taylor says thousands of people are still joining the march, with the total number estimated at around 400,000. “I am now on a footbridge overlooking the Embankment and people have been streaming underneath us for about an hour. People are queuing as far back as I a can see and tens of thousands more are still arriving from side streets. Organisers are suggesting there could be as many as 400,000 here today. That is impossible to verify at this stage. But it is clear that this is a very big demo.”

1.00pm: While this photo from Mary shows crowds gathering at Embankment.

12.58pm: This photo by Mary Hamilton pokes fun at undercover police officers – whose activities have recently been investigated by the Guardian.

12.45pm: Journalist Mary Hamilton – aka newsmary – has been posting photos of the march on Twitpic.

12.35pm: The Public and Commercial Services Union has set up its own live blog of the march.

12.30pm: Here’s a map of the march route

12.20pm: PA news agency has been speaking to some of the protesters: Peter Keats, 54, from Lowestoft, Suffolk, who works for Jobcentre Plus, said: “We’re toasting the success as so many people have turned out. The press were saying 100,000 people but I think we have far exceeded that. I’m hoping for half a million. I’m hoping the government will start to listen with this many out. “Personally, I think it’s wrong the way we are hitting the poor. I’m not so much worried about myself but the customers I deal with are vulnerable and I’m worried about them and I’m worried about the kids of this country.” Alan Dowling, 40, who works for the UK Border Agency in Sheffield, said: “The other day the immigration minister was on TV saying we need to do more. How are we going to do more enforcement when we are cutting enforcement officers?”

12.17pm: Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, estimates there are half a million people taking part in the protest. He told PA: “This is an absolutely incredible turnout and display of anger which the government will have to take notice of.” Hundreds of police officers lined up outside parliament behind metal barriers as the marchers passed by and moved down Whitehall.

12.09pm: Matthew Taylor, who has been following the education feeder march, has now joined the main protest. In this audio report, he says the main march dwarfs the scale of the education protest: “The student block has suddenly become much quieter than it was now they see the scale of the TUC march.”

11.58am: Paul Lewis is on the Golden Jubilee Bridge near the Embankment, overlooking the march. He says the turnout is huge, stretching from the Houses of Parliament to St Paul’s Cathedral. He says the atmosphere is good natured. The only scuffle he’s seen was a protester heckling the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls.

10.49am: My colleague Matthew Taylor is with the education feeder march, which set off from the University of London in Mallet Street, Bloomsbury, around 20 minutes ago. Groups of Scottish students who set off at 11pm last night are leading the chanting. Student organisers had said ‘more than 10000′ people would meet here but so far there are probably month more than 2000 – although more are arriving all the time. Students and lecturers are being joined by various activist groups and so far the mood is vocal but pretty good natured. We’re at Russell Square now. There’s a small police presence. The police and the organisers don’t seem clear on the route but we’re on our way down to join the main march.

10.34am: My colleague Paul Lewis has just sent in his thoughts about the potential for trouble between protesters and the police. “I don’t think anyone doubts that the main march will be in large part good natured and peaceful. Most protesters will spend several hours marching through London, seeing little more than the placards in front of them, and finish with sandwiches in Hyde Park. But that isn’t to say there won’t be pockets of trouble, and if past experiences are anything to go by they could flare into some quite nasty confrontations with police. “Flashpoints could come when a handful of unofficial feeder marches, coming from across the capital, plan to join the main march. Will police let them? Many of the seasoned activists – those police like to call ‘trouble-makers’ – are likely to be on these fringe processions (watch out for delegations gathering right now in Kennington Park, Camden and Mallet Street) and the instinct of police, who at times exhibit an almost medieval vision of crowd psychology, is often to prevent groups mixing. That would spell trouble. “The other likely hotspots will be Oxford Street at 2pm, where UK Uncuts plan to close down shops, and Trafalgar Square late in the afternoon, which there are plans to occupy. Both of these locations, and others we don’t yet know about, are likely to be magnets for those intending to peel off from the slow procession through London in search of “direct action”. Coping sensibly with all these splinters from the main march will be a policing nightmare for Scotland Yard. It all comes down to how much coercion police use. Stop people from walking where they want and sparks fly.”

10.29am: Here’s some more comments from union leaders ahead of the march. Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, will tell the demonstrators that every time the government votes through more cuts, they should hear the “angry voices” of public sector workers losing their jobs. He also warned it faced being wiped out in May’s elections. “Every day when they discuss squeezing NHS budgets I want them to remember the nurses here on the march, the paramedics – workers who keep our NHS going. Workers who see every day the effect of the cuts on patients who are having vital pain-relieving operations cut or delayed. “Workers who worry about patient care suffering, because job cuts mean there are not enough staff on the ward. NHS workers and the public fearful that the Health and Social Care Bill will mean the break-up of the NHS – the end of our much loved health service as we know it. A new dawn of privatisation for the Tories’ friends in big business. “Every month when a library closes, a care home shuts its doors, or services for struggling young people are withdrawn, I want them to feel the fear, and anger of the people who have come here today from every part of the UK to vent their frustration and to stand up for a fairer future.” Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said: “Cameron and Clegg have launched a war on working people and today’s demonstration is the start of the fightback. They expect us to suffer tax increases, pay cuts, unemployment and devastation of our pensions to pay for the crisis their friends in the City caused. They should expect the fight of their lives.” Len McCluskey, leader of Unite, said those taking part in the march were the “tip of the iceberg” because millions were opposed to the cuts. “There is growing anger, which will build and build as the impact of the cuts take effect.”

10.13am: Labour politicians will join the march and party leader Ed Miliband will address the rally in Hyde Park. He will use the speech to set out Labour’s alternative to the cuts and to accuse the coalition of fomenting the “politics of division” not seen since the “rotten” Thatcher era. Labour is calling the demonstration the “march of the mainstream”. But Gove told the Today programme there were “really big dangers” for Miliband in addressing the rally at the end of the march. “One is that people will say ‘You are calling for a plan B from the government, you don’t even have a plan A. More than that, you are associating yourself with a march which could, I’m afraid, move from being family event into being something darker.”

10.10am: Education secretary Michael Gove said today that he recognised the public concerns about the planned cuts. But he insisted that the government would not be deflected from its strategy. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “Of course people will feel a sense of disquiet, in some cases anger, at what they see happening, but the difficulty we have as the government inheriting a terrible economic mess, is that we have to take steps to bring the public finances back into balance.”

10.02am: Barber will tell today’s rally that there is an alternative to the “brutal” spending cuts. Ahead of the march, he accused the coalition government of threatening the NHS and destroying communities with the scale of the job cuts. “No part of our public realm is to be protected. And don’t believe it when ministers say that the NHS is safe in their hands. With over 50,000 job cuts already in the pipeline – nurses, doctors, physios, midwives – in the name of so-called efficiency savings of £20 billion, the NHS as we know it, is already in intensive care. “With David Cameron talking about selling it off to any willing provider out to make a profit, the NHS is facing the gravest threat in its history. “Today let us say to him: we will not let you destroy what has taken generations to build. Let’s be brutally clear about these brutal cuts. They’re going to cost jobs on a huge scale – adding to the misery of the 2.5 million people already on the dole. “They’re going to hammer crucial services that bind our communities together, and they’re going to hit the poorest and the most vulnerable hardest. Anyone who tells you different is a bare-faced liar. “The government claims there is no alternative, but there is. Let’s keep people in work and get our economy growing. Let’s get tax revenues flowing and tackle the tax cheats, and let’s have a Robin Hood Tax on the banks, so they pay us back for the mess they caused.”

9.45am: A Guardian/ICM poll published today shows that the public are divided over the cuts, while two other polls last night put the balance more strongly against cuts. The Guardian/ICM poll of 1,014 found that 35% believe the cuts go too far, 28% think they strike the right balance and 29% think they don’t go far enough; 8% don’t know. A YouGov survey for Unison found that 56% believe the cuts are too harsh and a ComRes poll for ITV showed that two-thirds think the government should reconsider its planned spending cuts programme. Just one in five disagreed with that view. Speaking ahead of the march, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said of the Unison survey: “I’m sure that many of our critics will try to write us off today as a minority, vested interest. This poll nails that lie. “The thousands coming to London from across the country will be speaking for their communities when they call for a plan B that saves vital services, gets the jobless back to work and tackles the deficit through growth and fair tax.”

9.15am: Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the mass protest in London against the coalition government’s public sector cuts. Around 300,000 people are expected to join the March for the Alternative organised by the TUC, the biggest union-organised event for over 20 years and the largest in the country since the protest against the Iraq war in 2003. More than 800 coaches and 10 trains have been chartered to bring people to the capital from as far afield as Cornwall and Inverness. Union members are expected to be joined by a broad coalition, from pensioners to doctors, families and first-time protesters, to football supporters and anarchists. My colleague Matthew Taylor has written a guide to all the organisations – both official and unofficial – who will be taking part. The Metropolitan Police believe a small minority will try to hijack the anti-cuts march to stage violent attacks on property and the police. The TUC organisers of the event say they have organised a family-friendly demonstration with brass, jazz and Bollywood bands. But there are concerns that unofficial feeder marches, sit-down protests and a takeover of Trafalgar Square could turn from peaceful civil disobedience into stand-offs with the police. The march assembles on the Embankment from 11am but it will still be leaving at 2pm and possibly even later. The TUC has drawn up a set of tips for those planning to join the march. The protest will culminate in a rally in Hyde Park. Guardian reporters Matthew Taylor and Paul Lewis will be out on the streets covering the protest as it happens. If you’re at the demo and want to send me any comments – or share any pictures, audio clips and videos – you can contact me either on david.batty@guardian.co.uk or on Twitter – @David_Batty

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogMarch for the alternative – live updates

Related posts:Libya military action: live updates Libya no-fly zone – live updates Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square
- Tags:
- London
- economics
- labour
- politics
- Education
- hyde-park
- trafalgar square
- scotland
- southend on sea
- business
- alternative
- Government
- city
- UK news
- Protest
- Psychology
- Society
- Ed Balls
- Public sector cuts
- Thatcher
- activist
- parliament
- demonstration
- Cuts and closures
- Camden
- Privatisation
- Oxford Street
- Minute by minutes
- News blog
- Ed Miliband
- protester
- gathering
- Matthew Taylor
- Block
- Clegg
- coercion
- Dave Prentis
- David Batty
- disquiet
- Flashpoints
- footbridge
- isle of wight
- Kennington Park
- labour party
- Len McCluskey
- Mallet Street
- Matt Wrack
- Michael Gove
- NHS
- Paul Lewis
- police lines
- prison officers association
- procession
- Rowenna Davis
- Russell Square
- scuffle
- side streets
- speech
- Student
- Uncuts
- unemployment
- union
- Unison
March 26 2011, 8:38am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Eurozone crisis: Why we’re all in this together, too

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/25/eurozone-crisis-why-were-all-in-this-together-too

Portugal‘s financial situation looks bleak – so can the eurozone muddle through yet again?

This article titled “Eurozone crisis: Why we’re all in this together, too” was written by Michael White, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 25th March 2011 12.19 UTC I see the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis is safely off the front pages, so things must be getting serious. EU leaders, who have got their Nato knickers in a quite separate twist over Libya this week, are gathering in Brussels today to sort it out. Tin helmets on. It’s not primarily Britain’s problem, because Britain is not part of the eurozone. We have retained our own currency and our own central bank and are therefore free to make, and correct, our own mistakes, as 17 of our EU partners are not. Who kept us out of the eurozone, asked the veteran Tory fixer Tristram Garel-Jones, into whom I bumped at Westminster this week. “Gordon got that bit right,” said the clever new Labour MP in the conservation. “John Major, that underestimated man,” TG-J replied before popping outside the building for a fag. Fair dos – it was Major’s UK exemption, negotiated at Maastrict in December 1991, which left the option open for euro enthusiasts (as he then was) like Gordon Brown to exercise, except that he didn’t. Ed Balls talked him out of it, and Tony Blair’s enthusiasm clinched the Treasury veto. Not that Major will get much credit from assorted Tory airheads now jumping up and down, warning David Cameron that he mustn’t contribute a penny to the looming Portuguese bailout – “£300 for every family in Britain” as today’s Daily Mail puts it, as though the Lisbon bailiffs were knocking at the door like tinkers. The bailout will be £3.96bn, according to the eurosceptic (Rupert told them to be) Times, £6bn according to the Mail, though the paper’s City pages seem much calmer than the news pages – as usual. It’s a detail. In a crisis, Britain has commitments via the IMF and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which Alistair Darling signed on the last weekend of the Labour government and George Osborne would probably have signed had he taken over by then. But, as the BBC’s Robert Peston gently points out, it’s very indirect and the chances of losing any money via guarantees are remote, more so than the damage which would affect confidence in the wider EU economy – including ours – if Portugal defaulted on its debts, with or without a prior restructuring. Never mind. You can read here (under European summit) how Tory MPs like my old chum Bill Cash got over-excited in the Commons, denouncing the ESM as legally doubtful and urging Cameron to dig his heels in against more British financial support at today’s summit. As Ian Traynor reports, this week’s collapse of Portugal’s minority government after the opposition refused to back another austerity package leaves the EU without a government in Lisbon to negotiate with. As with Ireland last winter, the eurozone’s German paymasters (the French tagging along) want the Portuguese to seek a formal bailout for their debts for fear of “contagion” in the financial markets which could spread to much larger Spain or Italy. The cost of servicing Ireland’s 10-year debt rose again this week, to 10.1%, and Portugal’s is pushing 8% – a level at which it cannot realistically hope to grow its way to solvency. It’s like a mortgage in which the accumulated interest keeps enlarging the householder’s debt. Notwithstanding chancellor Osborne’s justified boast that his austerity package has kept ours closer to debt-free Germany’s at 3.6%, one of the soporific credit agencies, Moodys, warned him yesterday that the UK could lose its triple-A status if his growth predictions don’t come good. Few think they can. This is all grim stuff. Just as Greek voters rioted against their government’s enforced austerity and Irish voters kicked their government out after they agreed to underwrite their country’s grotesque banking debts, so the Portuguese are angrily resisting their doom. More austerity will be hard to bear and, as elsewhere, may not do much good anyway if they overwhelm hopes of resumed growth. Forty-eight hours after the UK coalition’s second budget reconfirmed a similar-sounding Plan A, and on the day the Guardian launches its own review of the cuts now descending on Britain’s public and third sector services, I know what you are thinking. But at least we are managing our own affairs. Because the debtor nations inside the eurozone are not the only ones cutting up rough. The creditors, not just those sober North German Protestants, but their Dutch neighbours, plus the French – and even the Finns – are finding that their voters are ill-disposed towards their profligate southern allies, who borrowed money they could not repay. Hopes of a “grand bargain”, whereby the new stability mechanism, due to come into force in 2013, will have a lot more money to shore up the edifice (€440bn instead of €250bn) remain in doubt. The Germans and Dutch want to restrict its capacity to buy bonds to buying them from ailing governments which must agree fresh austerity in return. And Finland’s normally-staid government has been hit by a surge of populist anti-euro rhetoric which threatens trouble at next month’s elections, and forced Helsinki, another triple-A rated state in creditworthiness, to block its increased contributions to the new stability mechanism. Meanwhile, Italy – whose respected central bank governor has kept the show on the road (he should be the next man to head the European central bank except the Germans won’t have a southerner) despite Silvio Berlusconi’s antics – is moving to block unpopular French takeovers of important Italian firms like Bulgari the jewellers, and the food company Parmalat. It’s what the French do, of course, but it’s very un-European. It’s not a currency issue but it is a nationalist one, explicitly protectionist and reflected in the currency battles. Britain has been allowed to devalue sterling by close to a quarter – thereby boosting exports – without triggering the protectionist charge which is levelled against the Chinese, who have been doing the same thing for years. We should be grateful, but we’re not. None of this is good for them, or good for any of us in our cold north Atlantic corner of an increasingly Pacific-orientated world. It’s no good saying “I told you so,” that it’s hard to imagine a single currency without a single state, at least for tax and spending purposes. But lots of people did say that (me included), and the German answer seems to be to say: “Ok, let’s construct a fiscal as well as monetary union.” There is logic to that position, but it won’t easily hold politically. The broken-backed Portuguese government, now facing a two-month general election campaign without a credible option, this week embraced even tougher cuts in return for a lower interest rate on its EU debts over a longer period. Ireland’s new Fine Gael-Labour government rejected similar terms because part of Berlin’s price would have been abandonment of the republic’s core economic strategy, the 12.5% rate of corporation tax which attracts inward investment so well. Irish voters have told all parties it is a red line for them but, to Germans, it is fiscal piracy. Osborne is offering a similar rate for Northern Ireland in returns for grant cuts elsewhere, a differential rate that will annoy the rest of corporate Britain, where the post-budget rate is still 26%. Tricky, isn’t it? Will the eurozone make sensible compromises it can sell to angry voters, north and south, ones not bound by ties of language or national culture? Will it fall apart? It shouldn’t. Portugal’s is a small economy, its debt problems less acute than those of Greece or Ireland, though its politics have been weak. But we should all hope it muddles through and support the process where we can, despite our own acute domestic problems. “Beggar my neighbour” policies are always tempting but rarely smart, because my neighbour does it back. By the way, which member of the G7 saw the largest rise in per capita income in the 20 years after Margaret Thatcher’s fall in 1990? Why, Britain did, according to new figures, by 36.5 % – just ahead of the US and Canada (32%), Germany (29.3%) and France (23.1%). Where did it go? Not fairly shared, I realise. Unsustainable? In part, yes. The coalition’s budget says the answer is austerity and supply side measures to boost growth. Here’s hoping.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogEurozone crisis: Why we’re all in this together, too

Related posts:Budget Deficit Portugal teeters on brink of bailout Portugal bailout fears rise as credit rating cut
- Tags:
- economics
- spain
- politics
- Westminster
- Europe
- David Cameron
- Gordon Brown
- Banking
- Article
- Protest
- Libya
- World news
- Blogposts
- austerity
- Britain
- Ed Balls
- Thatcher
- Brussels
- Ireland
- Tax and spending
- Tony Blair
- george osborne
- European Union
- Liberal-Conservative coalition
- Germany
- European Central Bank
- Portugal
- sovereign debt
- bailout
- eurozone
- Lisbon
- Alistair Darling
- Bill Cash
- debt crisis
- Euro
- european stability
- eurosceptic
- Italy
- John Major
- maastrict
- Michael White
- new labour
- Politics blog
- Robert Peston
March 25 2011, 7:52am | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/anti-cuts-campaigners-plan-to-turn-trafalgar-square-into-tahrir-square

Student activists draw inspiration from Egypt protests at Tahrir Square and call for 24-hour occupation of London‘s Trafalgar Square

This article titled “Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square” was written by Matthew Taylor, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd March 2011 08.01 UTC Campaigners against public service cuts are calling for a 24-hour occupation of Trafalgar Square – drawing inspiration from revolts in the Middle East – to coincide with Saturday’s trade union protest in London. Student activists who organised last year’s demonstrations say there will be a rolling programme of sit-ins and protests on the day and have called on people to occupy the central London square turning “Trafalgar into Tahrir” – a reference to the gathering point in Cairo that was at the heart of the revolution in Egypt earlier this year. “We want Trafalgar Square to become a focal point for the ongoing occupations, marches and sit-ins that will carry on throughout the weekend,” said Michael Chessum from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. “There are a lot of smaller scale demonstrations and actions planned and, just as we have seen in recent protests in the Middle East and north Africa, we want to create an ongoing organising hub.” Saturday’s main demonstration has been organised by the TUC and is expected to see more than 200,000 people – including public sector workers, families and first-time protesters – take to the capital’s streets to oppose government cuts. This month the TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, promised a barrage of protests against the cuts, ranging from industrial strikes and “peaceful civil disobedience” to petitions by Tory voters in the shires. The plan to occupy Trafalgar Square is the latest in a wave of proposed sit-ins, occupations and “people’s assemblies” that activists have branded a “carnival of civil disobedience”. “We have seen time and again that marches from A to B do not achieve their objectives,” said Chessum. “This is about creating an ongoing movement that will put pressure on the government. This is the start of what is going to be a hot summer of protest against the ideological nature of what this government is doing.” The call for an occupation of the London landmark is backed by student groups, activists and two Labour MPs – John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. In a joint statement they have called on people to “stay in Trafalgar Square for 24 hours to discuss how we can beat this government and to send a message across the globe that we stand with the people of Egypt, Libya, Wisconsin and with all those fighting for equality, freedom and justice. “We want to turn Trafalgar Square into a place of people’s power where we assert our alternative to cuts and austerity and make it a day that this government won’t forget.” Alongside the main march, which will set off from the Embankment before making its way to Hyde Park for a rally, anti-cuts campaigners say they plan to occupy some of the capital’s “great buildings”, close down scores of high street stores and occupy Hyde Park. UK Uncut, a peaceful direct action group set up five months ago to oppose government cuts and protest against corporate tax avoidance, is planning to occupy and force the temporary closure of scores of shops on Oxford Street on Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, student groups will meet at the University of London student union building in Bloomsbury at 10am. Some are then expected to make their way to the main assembly point in a “feeder march”; others will peel off to take part in various “direct actions” . “Since Christmas the movement has become much more autonomous,” one veteran of last year’s protests told the Guardian last week. “There are smaller, semi-independent groups planning small-scale direct action against a range of targets. It will be a bit of a disappointment if we get to the end of the day and one of London’s great buildings is not occupied. We have to make an impact.” Online, other groups are calling for more widespread direct action on Saturday. An organisation calling itself Resist 26 claims it will stage a number of “people’s assemblies” along the route of the march. Under the banner “Battle of Britain” it is calling for a 24-hour occupation of Hyde Park and “after parties” at famous London landmarks including Piccadilly Circus and Buckingham Palace. Scotland Yard says it has worked closely with the TUC to ensure the demonstration passes off peacefully and senior officers are due to give a detailed briefing on police plans on Tuesday morning.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogAnti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square

Related posts:Artist Anish Kapoor warns arts cuts are ‘rolling us back to the Thatcher years’ Bank of England governor blames spending cuts on bank bailouts Leeds to Paris in four hours – but high-speed rail plan faces protests
- Tags:
- London
- UK
- politics
- Education
- hyde-park
- trafalgar square
- central london
- scotland
- John McDonnell
- UK news
- Middle East
- News
- Egypt
- Article
- Cairo
- Protest
- Tahrir Square
- Higher education
- Campaign
- UK Uncut
- Libya
- World news
- arab
- capital
- freedom
- Olympic Park
- demonstration
- Cuts and closures
- Students
- university
- Oxford Street
- High Street
- north Africa
- egyptians
- disappointment
- gathering
- general secretary
- government cuts
- industrial strikes
- Jeremy Corbyn
- Matthew Taylor
- Michael Chessum
- occupation
- public sector workers
- student activists
March 23 2011, 3:56pm | Comments »
I posted to distributedresearch.net

Libya rebels on the defensive as Gaddafi forces enter Benghazi

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/19/libya-rebels-on-the-defensive-as-gaddafi-forces-enter-benghazi

Intense fighting continues as Gaddafi forces enter the rebel stronghold of Benghazi. One jet, believed to be the rebels’ only plane, is shot down. International leaders meet in Paris to discuss action against Gaddafi in Libya.

This article titled “Libya rebels on the defensive as Gaddafi forces enter Benghazi” was written by Chris McGreal in Benghazi and Matt Wells, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 19th March 2011 13.08 UTC Forces loyal to the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi have penetrated the rebel stronghold of Benghazi, apparently shooting down the revolutionaries’ only jet fighter and capturing parts of the city. Intense but sporadic fighting has taken place in the south-west of Benghazi, in defiance of international demands for an immediate ceasefire and forcing rebels to mount a fierce defence. It was not immediately clear whether the downed jet belonged to Gaddafi or rebel fighters, but rebels later conceded it was their only plane. Talks on implementing the UN-sanctioned no-fly zone have started in Paris, attended by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the British and French prime ministers, Arab leaders and ambassadors from the 28 Nato states. Benghazi residents were angry at the delay. “Europe and America have sold us out. We have been hearing bombing all night and they have been doing nothing. Why? We have no one to help us but God,” Hassan Marouf, 58, told Reuters, standing outside the door of his house. “Us men are not afraid to die, but I have women and children inside and they are crying and in tears. Help us.” Diplomats say military action is unlikely until after the Paris meeting. A French government source told Reuters: “Everything is ready but the decision is now a political one. It’s clear we have to move quickly.” Fighting continued in Benghazi and Misrata, despite a promise of a ceasefire on Friday by the Libyan foreign minister, Moussa Koussa. That statement has not been broadcast on Libyan state TV, suggesting it was intended only for an international audience. Rebels told the Guardian that Gaddafi’s forces had entered the south-west of Benghazi, where a large, well-armed contingent was holding them back. The rebels later claimed to have repelled the Gaddafi forces, saying they had captured tanks and prisoners. Earlier on Saturday, a jet fighter was seen in the air, circling Benghazi. Suddenly it went into a spin, erupted in a ball of fire, and plunged to the ground in the west of the city. The rebels concede it was their only plane, a Russian-made fighter-bomber. Rebel leaders called for the west to act quickly. Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, head of the rebel council, told al-Jazeera: “Now there is a bombardment by artillery and rockets on all districts of Benghazi. There will be a catastrophe if the international community does not implement the resolutions of the UN security council. “We appeal to the international community, to the all the free world, to stop this tyranny from exterminating civilians.” Gaddafi said western powers had no right to intervene in Libya. Mussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, quoted the Libyan leader as saying in a letter to France, Britain and the UN: “This is injustice, this is clear aggression. You will regret it if you take a step towards interfering in our internal affairs.” The Libyan government blamed the rebels, which it says are members of al-Qaida, for breaking the ceasefire around Benghazi. But rebels said Libyan jets had bombed the road to Benghazi airport and elsewhere on the outskirts. Fathi Abidi, a rebel supporter who works on logistics, said at the western entrance to the city: “They have just entered Benghazi and they are flanking us with tanks, missiles and mortars.” Inside the city, residents set up makeshift barricades with furniture, benches, road signs and even a barbecue at intervals along main streets. Each barricade was manned by half a dozen rebels, but only about half of those were armed. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, said she believed Gaddafi had violated the terms of the UN resolution which required him to stop fighting in Libya.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogLibya rebels on the defensive as Gaddafi forces enter Benghazi

Related posts:Benghazi rebels plead for Libya air strikes as Gaddafi forces advance Libya rebels isolate Gaddafi, seizing cities and oilfields Benghazi celebrates as reports emerge of battles in central Tripoli
March 19 2011, 12:42pm | Comments »

1 2

Andy Roberts

Zapatero’s socialists defeated by People’s party in regional elections

Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment

Tesco protesters charged after second night of violence in Bristol

A misplaced May Day dream for the masses

Bristol 1831 Mural Artist compares Arab Spring 2011 and Bristol Stokes Croft Riots

Egyptian soldiers attack Tahrir Square protesters

UK Uncut accuses police of politically motivated arrests

UK Uncut’s fears over clampdown on black bloc tactics

‘Black bloc’ anarchists behind anti-cuts rampage reject thuggery claims

UK Uncut arrests threaten future protests, lawyer warns

Thousands march in London against spending cuts

Protest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000

If you earn less than the average wage, you’re not middle class. It’s all a scam

March for the alternative – live updates

Eurozone crisis: Why we’re all in this together, too

Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square

Libya rebels on the defensive as Gaddafi forces enter Benghazi

Learn about AndyRobertsBlog.co.uk

Visit Andy Roberts Music sites

Get Andy Roberts Sampler CD

Listen Right here Right Now:

Andy Roberts Photos

London Theatre Breaks

Browse via Popular Tags here

Search