Grassroots « Labour Uncut

The “big society” is just a big sham

05/02/2011, 10:30:25 AM

by Andy Dodd

The prime minister, as we know, is very fond of the “big society”, the notion that the government can be rolled back to allow individuals and communities to do more to help themselves and each other. How often have we been told in the past nine months that everyone, equally, is in this together? How often have we heard the lecture that through co-operation, self-sacrifice and personal responsibility, we’ll pull through this difficult economic period and emerge stronger on the other side?

But are we really all in it together? The recent by-election in Oldham showed the clear resentment of ordinary people who not so long ago were willing to accept the arguments put forward by the government that tough economic decisions were necessary to avoid disaster. This belief was built upon promises from ministers that everyone would be asked to make their contribution to the hard times ahead. (more…)

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We need the Marshall plan for Egypt that wasn’t ready for Iraq

03/02/2011, 06:00:55 PM

What is really happening in Egypt? And why? The country was close to collapse before the people took to the streets. Inflation has risen over 40% in the last three years, unemployment is rising, and the world food programme reports that almost 20% of its population live under the poverty line. Egypt was cracking under the weight of rocketing food prices, people were angry and Mubarak was the legitimate target.

But simply to remove Mubarak and “leave Egypt alone”, as Simon Jenkins argued this week would be as much a dereliction of duty as neglecting to rebuild Iraq after the tanks had removed Saddam Hussein. What has history taught us, if not that the way to provide a stable democratic government is not to leave a country on its knees, but to stretch out our hand and help it to its feet?

The connection has been often been made with the 1989 uprisings in Eastern Europe, but this is misleading. No matter how paranoid our vision of Islam may be, countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan are separate entities that have no overarching common idealogical enemy as the Soviet Union was.

Rather, we should be looking at how another recession started in the US (in 1929) affected the world. Then, unstable countries suffocated on their debt, were powerless to act as banks collapsed, unemployment rose and food prices rose, leading to the instability and helplessness that laid the grounds for extremism to rise in 1933. The similarities are striking. If the geographical focus has shifted from central Europe to southern Europe and the Middle East.

The historical exemplar should be the Marshall Plan, and the government and relief in occupied areas (GARIOA) that freely gave Europe and Japan the means to get back to their feet. This altruism after the second world war is the one of the few examples of intervention leading to stable government and the flourishing of democracy.

After so much blood on our hands from pushing the region from one post to another, walking away from the Middle East may seem like a logical step; but it would also be the cowardly one. Let’s be brave enough to swallow our pride, accept our mistakes and, instead of providing the gun, offer the real tangible support of a friend.

The question is: with our own wealth being squeezed, will we realise that the only way to provide long term stability to the Middle East is to put into place the structural and industrial practices that will ultimately lead to long term self reliance of these soon to be emerging democracies?

Ranjit Sidhu blogs here.

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We’re in much better shape than we had a right to expect – partly thanks to Ed

03/02/2011, 03:00:56 PM

by Ian Stewart

After last May’s dramatic rejection of Labour at the polls, and a summer spent debating exactly which Miliband we wanted to lead us, you would expect the Labour party to be in awful shape. Yet today we are ahead in the polls, with a by-election victory under our belts, and government policy deeply unpopular with many sections of society.

Many thousands, including myself, either joined or re-joined the party in the wake of May 6, and after Ed’s conference speech.

With the advent of coalition government, the traditionally loyal Tory press have been pretty muted in their praise, and even Nick Robinson looks slightly less chipper than he did last June, when his chums looked to be on rather more solid foundations.

In the blogosphere, the various tribes are either retreating into naïve hero worship, or at each other’s throats, politely in most cases, trenchantly in some.

This is a very interesting time to be building the opposition. So why are some of us still falling for the trap of questioning our choice? Why the drip-drip of questions about Ed’s security in his role? (more…)

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Labour in Helmand: Operation Overreach?

02/02/2011, 04:30:58 PM

by Rob Marchant

Things like this make me wrestle with myself. My instinct as an activist is to be supportive and I feel like we all need cheering on. But I also need to understand why this trip was a good idea. I felt uncomfortable watching the footage of Labour’s Afghanistan trip and I have this uneasy feeling that those on the receiving end did, too. In pictures, we saw a gung-ho Ed, Jim Murphy smiling supportively, a slightly sheepish-looking Douglas Alexander, and a bunch of impassive soldier faces. The media coverage seemed neutral, if a little light, because of the tight security and Egypt. But maybe that was just as well.

Perhaps, having grown up in a forces household, I have an over-developed sensitivity to how these things are perceived. Perhaps everyone else involved, here and in Afghanistan, thinks it was a great idea and saw a clear rationale. I understand the need to show we are not “soft” on defence, but are solidly behind our troops. It is also legitimate, up to a point, to try and emulate the prime minister in the things you do, so that voters can visualise you in the role. (more…)

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The toff takeover of British pop – it has to stop.

01/02/2011, 03:30:31 PM

by James Mills

The great delta bluesman, Bo Diddley, in response to a plummy-voiced English interviewer who asked him why he, a poor uneducated man, had had the audacity to make his own electric guitar and amp, replied: “the man who invented the wheel didn’t have a PhD in engineering”.

Today, many of the graduates who make the music in our country could probably qualify to do a PHD. Or as a recent survey by Word magazine found, 60 percent of current pop acts went to private schools compared to just one percent 20 years ago. This sometimes becomes unmistakable, for example around half of the 2009 Mercury music prize nominees were privately educated. Something which is very different to the 1990s Brit pop I grew up listening to, or the provincial working class sounds of bands like the Smiths. (more…)

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Forget Keys and Gray – Giles Coren and Katie Hopkins are the real calamity duo

29/01/2011, 10:30:10 AM

by David Hodges

Richard Keys and Andy Gray deserved to be sacked. Their idiotic claims judged a professional on the basis of gender instead of aptitude and ability. There is no place for that in the pub, let alone within a national television studio. Apologies accepted by Sian Massey, it is now time for their vilification to end. They have rightly paid a heavy price.

Since then, two loosely-termed political commentaries have proven that idiocy on this issue is not confined to either gender. This began with the bigoted man’s response in a quite superb article in yesterday’s Daily Mail by Giles Coren. He articulated that Keys and Gray were in the wrong, not because their comments were sexist, but merely as “You shouldn’t pass unflattering remarks about women behind their backs because it is not a well brought-up thing to do”. What a quaint upbringing Mr Coren must have endured.

He then purported to follow in the footsteps of Tory MP, Dominic Raab, in proclaiming that men are the real victims of oppression. That argument is bereft of evidence and highlights the intellectual malaise behind the defenders of the status quo. For instance, in 2008 average women’s hourly pay (excluding overtime) was 17.1 per cent less than men’s. (more…)

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Only direct action can save us from Cameron’s Machiavellian Prince

28/01/2011, 03:00:42 PM

by Robin Thorpe

Machiavelli advises any aspiring Prince (or ruler; royal blood not necessary, although being related to the Queen can’t harm) to be ruthless from the day that he seizes power and “to determine all the injuries that he needs to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all, and not have to renew them every day, and in that way he will set men’s minds at rest and win them over when he confers benefits”.

The ruler should do this while his people are still getting used to his rule so that they start off fearful and learn to love him as he becomes more lenient. The lesson is that people do not mind being afraid if they are looked after and that things improve. If they improve, then it does not matter if they are not as good as before, as long as there is tangible improvement on the immediately preceding time. Machiavelli advises not to be timid or delay any acts of violence, but to inflict them once and for all so that “people will then forget what it tastes like and so be less resentful”. (more…)

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As Ken steps back from Press TV, is there an organised Tory smear campaign against him?

27/01/2011, 02:00:32 PM

by Ian Stewart

Ken Livingstone has terminated his association with Press TV, the Iranian government sponsored TV channel. It was a difficult gig for him to defend and it is not surprising his enemies made much of it. Evidence is mounting, though, of an organised online smear campaign run by supporters of Mayor Johnson. One which goes far beyond the legitimate concerns about Press TV.

On 21 January, Conservative libertarian blogger, Peter Reynolds, posted that Conservative bloggers and supporters of Boris Johnson online were being encouraged to highlight Ken Livingstone’s continued employment by Press TV. Bloggers have apparently been encouraged to link Livingstone’s name with terms such as “holocaust denial”, “anti-women” and “anti-semitic”. Reynolds claims that he knows for certain that pressure has been brought to bear in this direction, in an attempt at cyber-smearing with guilt by association.

This is not a new tactic. But it is a disturbing development in the politics of London. By playing this card, Johnson is obviously hoping to firm up the “Jewish vote” in the capital, much in the same way that Respect tried to exploit the “Islamic vote” in East London. The trend is incredibly disturbing, as the last thing we need here is an escalation of US-style sectarian politics. (more…)

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Votes for prisoners: tough shadow ministerial soundbites don’t help

22/01/2011, 05:00:56 PM

by Hannah McFaull

Shadow justice minister, Sadiq Khan MP, has consistently said that the government should be “standing up for the victims of crime” instead of giving the vote to “dangerous convicted prisoners”. This is a false dichotomy, a comment which risks inflaming tension around an already emotive issue.

Research and polling has consistently shown that for the majority of victims of crime, the result they want from the criminal justice process is that no one has to suffer again in the way that they have. On a basic level, before you get into crime prevention, this means stopping reoffending. When you dig even further into the numbers, victims of crime rank rehabilitation and reform of the individual much higher than punishment as priorities for the justice system.

Casting aside other arguments about the need to address the underlying causes of crime, penal reformers are right to say that treating prisoners as citizens has a much higher success rate at reintroduction into society following time inside. Many prisoners come from socially excluded backgrounds and won’t have had the experiences of social responsibility that many people in society have.

This could be paying tax on earnings in prison and understanding why taxation is important. It could be training on how to fill in a job application or buy an Oyster card. Or it could be involvement in the political process through gaining the franchise. The truth is that voting, tax and working are social responsibilities more than they are social rights and getting prisoners involved in this process can only be a positive step.

I am not arguing that all prisoners should definitely have the right to vote. In fact, as a penal reformer there are much more pressing issues on which we should be concentrating.

But comments like those made by Sadiq Khan only serve to confuse what victims actually want – less offending in future – with what is politically viable for a shadow justice minister in opposition.

Issues of rehabilitation, reintegration, crime and punishment are complex and emotive. Here there are issues of delicate European and UK sovereignty at play too. Very little is self-evident in matters such as these. Perhaps the one thing that is, is that sound bites don’t do a great deal to help the debate.

Hannah McFaull blogs here.