GRASSROOTS: Labour must stand up for victims of sexual and domestic violence

29/01/2013, 10:30:08 AM

by Sarah Rabbitts

Many of us are still shocked by the brutal abduction, gang rape and murder of a female student on a bus in Delhi.

And closer to home, we’re also coming to terms with NSPCC’s confirmation that Jimmy Savile, was “without doubt one of the most prolific sex offenders we have ever come across”. The “Giving victims a voice” report states that Savile repeatedly abused girls, women and boys over six decades. The abuses happened in 13 hospitals, 14 schools and on BBC premises – institutions that should have been a safe place for both children and adults. Most worryingly, none of the victims or witnesses successfully exposed Savile’s widespread criminality before his death in 2011.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper responded to the report by asking for “a proper overarching review led by child protection experts into why everyone failed to stop Savile and what should be done now”. However, it is not only people in positions of influence who are a problem.

Last week, the ministry of defence, home office and office for national statistics released a joint review into rape and sexual assaults. This damning review states that only one in ten victims will report a sexual assault in this country, despite 90% of victims knowing the perpetrator. It also has to be a wake-up call for the home secretary that only 15,670 rapes are reported each year which only equates to a quarter of victims. In simple terms, this means that on average 47,010 rapes aren’t reported.

What these reports demonstrate is that first, a staggering number of women and men are still victims of sexual assault and that second, the British judicial system continues to generate very few convictions.

On the 14th February, or V-Day, a campaign called one billion rising will actively demand an end to violence against women across the world. They ask women to walk out, dance, rise up and demand an end to this violence by activating women and men across every country to organise local events. Read the rest of this entry »

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GRASSROOTS: To EU or not to EU: that is the question

28/01/2013, 08:34:43 PM

by Sophie Lambert Russell

In October 2011 David Cameron, along with Ed Miliband, voted against and straight in or out of the EU referendum so why now the change?

Support for the Conservatives is falling; with many disillusioned Tory voters leaning towards UKIP, now arguably the third most popular party in the UK (according to YouGov in the Sun last week anyway). In a rather desperate attempt to claw back support, Cameron has performed yet another U-Turn: possibly the most talked about of his time in office.

Unsurprisingly the Tory right have welcomed this move but others have criticised the prime minister for being weak and driven by the eurosceptics in his party, not by the interests of the country. Undoubtedly the Conservatives will appear united for a short while but this will not last, the backbenchers will not be placated for long by the referendum pledge and will soon ramp up the pressure, creating a more divided party than ever and forcing Cameron’s hand.

However we mustn’t jump the gun. Cameron’s promises of a referendum comes with so many ‘ifs’ and yesterday’s speech left crucial questions unanswered. He is likely to have a bigger fight with other EU members than within his own parliament. Ed Miliband characterised the in/out referendum as ‘a huge gamble designed to keep his fractious party together’ and he is not wrong. We need to work with EU members, not dictate from upon high as Cameron wants to do. Although Merkel said that she is willing to discuss a reform both France and Germany have made it clear that the UK cannot “cherry-pick” the EU laws which suit them and I am not in the least bit surprised.

It seems to me that when it comes to Europe, Cameron wants to have his cake and eat it too and while there is no problem with being ambitious there will be a lot of resistance along the way. The question of what will happen if the EU leaders do not give Cameron a new deal on the UK’s role in Europe still remains unanswered.

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UNCUT: Adam Afriyie. Who?

28/01/2013, 02:57:56 PM

by Kevin Meagher

What does Tory backbencher Adam Afriyie think we should be doing to boost the economy, reform public services and deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions?

Until I read yesterday’s newspapers, the thought to ask had never crossed my mind, but judging by yesterday’s Sunday Times it’s clear the MP for Windsor is the coming man; the saviour of a post-defeat Conservative party. A future prime minister. “Black MP is hot tip to be next Tory leader” ran the headline. I searched in vain in the subsequent story, (as bemused Tory MPs may have), for any indication of what Mr. Afriyie thinks, well, about anything.

Nevertheless, the paper reports “a secret operation is underway” to propel him to the party leadership. More than 100 Tory MPs have been approached to this end. A “friend” of Mr Afriyie explains that his cadre of backers are “very concerned” about the long-term direction of the party and believe that Afriyie is the best man to succeed David Cameron. “He has a fantastic back story and is very impressive.”

I admit to knowing the name and knew a bit of his biography, but to be honest I had quite forgotten Afriyie was there. He’s pretty low profile, but that’s not really an excuse as he’s been in parliament since 2005. Brutally, I assumed he had missed his mark and like Archie Norman and other business people who realise too late that the rough and tumble of Westminster is not their bag, led a quiet life before, inevitably, shuffling off back to business.

How wrong I was. What I did learn is that Afriyie is very rich and has a gang of eight fellow MPs pursuing his cause among Tory backbenchers in the expectation (hope?) that David Cameron will blow it in 2015.

I wrote last week that Cameron gives some of his troops the belief that he is weak and vacillating because he understands the compromises that are needed to make a coalition work. But within his own party he should be assured of more loyalty than he is clearly getting. A Thatcher, Blair or even a Brown would not be so sanguine about a well-heeled upstart flesh-pressing the backbenchers to build his on powerbase on the assumption of defeat for the party.

Where was the counter-briefing to knock holes in the Afriyie veneer once it became clear the Sundays were running with this story? Did Downing street do nothing to prick the bubble of arrant pomposity surrounding him with a pair of clod-hopping size 12s?

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UNCUT: Gove’s narcissistic dogma 1 – Evidence 0

28/01/2013, 08:57:26 AM

by Kevin Brennan

Last week’s announcement by Michael Gove that AS Levels would no longer count towards an A Level grade was a classic example of making policy based on dogma not evidence.

Back in 2010 Michael Gove announced his intention to get rid of AS Levels. They were originally introduced to give students a chance to study a broader range of subjects in year 12 (the old lower 6th). Students could decide to specialise in year 13 by dropping one or two subjects, but still have a good AS qualification to show for it. If they carried on, their AS mark could contribute to the final A Level grade in that subject.

One objection to AS Levels was that because of modular testing students in year 12 faced exams very early on, before having matured sufficiently. This was dealt with by getting rid of such early assessments which also discouraged entering early assessments just to ‘bank’ a mark. This was a reasonable reform to AS.

But Michael Gove was left with a problem that despite his stated intention to scrap AS Levels altogether, it was clear that he had very little support for his plans.

The right thing to do would have been to retain AS Levels as modified, but instead he has chosen to render them largely irrelevant by removing their ability to act as a building block to A-Level.

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UNCUT: Labour history uncut: Labour gets its first taste of government

25/01/2013, 06:48:07 PM

by Pete Goddard and Atul Hatwal

It was the start of 1915 and something wasn’t quite right. Contrary to the confident predictions of the press, the government and most of the Labour party, Fritz had not been sent packing and the government began to regret printing quite so many invitations to “1915’s big victory conga through no man’s land”.

In fact, to the uninformed bystander everything seemed to have ground to a halt in a bloody stalemate of trench-based slaughter.
Fortunately, the British public were very well informed by a national press that was still insisting victory was just around the corner.

For example, when the British attacked Neuve Chapelle at the start of March the Daily Express headline boomed “German’s routed…great victory at Neuve Chapelle”.

Which was sort of true, if your idea of victory was the loss of 13,000 men to gain two pocketfuls of French gravel. The offensive advanced 2km and then was abandoned due to the catastrophic losses.

Who could resist this upbeat plea to join the fun at Neuve-Chapelle?

With successes like these, it was no wonder the worry-o-meter in government was swinging towards the red. No-one had planned for war that devoured resources at such a rate. Not only were more troops needed, demand for munitions was outstripping production.

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UNCUT: Tackling racism is important but we can’t just see minorities as eternal victims

25/01/2013, 11:04:21 AM

by Dan McCurry

When I was a child, a lad in our street threw a stone through the window of the first Bangladeshi family to move into our street. We were rounded up by the local vicar and taken around to the family, and they gave us biscuits and lemonade, and made friends with us. Other Bangladeshi families arrived over the next few years, but they didn’t get their windows smashed.

More recently, I did some community work on the Boundary estate, near Brick Lane. One of the issues was the relations between the new middle-class white residents and the existing Bangladeshi community.  Leila’s cafe and shop, which sold organic food, had her windows smashed by the local Bangladeshi teenagers. Her response was to make friends with them, and these days they treat Leila with great respect, because they all want jobs in the cafe.

As one wave of migration gives way to another, similar tensions occur. Today is a different world to the 80s, bananas are no longer thrown at black players on the football pitch, but as socialists, we still hold some of the views that were developed in different times. These views are outdated.

It would be difficult to imagine the socialist movement mobilising to defend the Shoreditch web designers in Leila’s organic cafe. The Labour party are not going to arrive en masse to chant “fascists out!” at the Bangladeshi teenagers, even though the many issues are the same, just a different time and place.  Why is that?

There’s an experience I had as a teenager that is worth recounting here. It was rather like when Huckleberry Finn asked the question, “What’s a feud?” In my case, I asked “What’s Paki bashing?” I was told, “Aw, it’s brilliant. You get tooled up, then go about with your mates till you see one, and everyone shouts out “Paki!” He runs, and you all leg it down the street after him, and you catch up and….”

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UNCUT: Cameron’s EU policy is not about getting the best deal for Britain – it’s about keeping his own party quiet

24/01/2013, 11:00:15 AM

by Mark Stockwell

When we think of the great speeches in recent history, one perhaps stands out above all others: Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in March 1963. Nearly fifty years later, Barack Obama consciously channelled the spirit of that magnificent, spine-tingling oration in Monday’s inaugural address. It is, if you like, the gold standard by which major speeches are measured.

In his big set-piece on Europe on Wednesday, David Cameron seems instead to have sought inspiration from the man after whom MLK was named – the 16th-century German monk, Martin Luther, whose ideas and writings provided the theological underpinning of the Reformation.

Cameron must surely have had Luther in mind when he talked of Europe having “experience of heretics who turned out to have a point.” It is an allusion he must have hoped would not be lost on the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, herself the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. Judging from her response to the speech, indicating that she was open to negotiating “a fair compromise”, these hopes have not been entirely in vain.

Quite how this reference was greeted in some of the other chancelleries of Europe – in staunchly Catholic Italy, Spain, France or Poland, for example – is another matter. Other European leaders have been rather less complimentary in their responses, with the French in particular indulging in the sort of wryly-amused sneering in which they can legitimately claim to be world leaders.

Presumably Cameron feels this is relatively unimportant: the EU’s centre of gravity has shifted emphatically to Berlin as the eurozone crisis has unfolded. The prime minister no doubt believes it is primarily there, rather than Paris or Brussels, that the fate of his renegotiation strategy will be decided.

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UNCUT: On a day of political ineptitude, Cameron was forced into his mistake; Ed had a choice

24/01/2013, 07:05:30 AM

by Peter Watt

I am a pro-European.  I believe that the EU is basically a force for good in the world and that the single market is good for Britain.  I believe that there are some issues that can clearly only be dealt with internationally like climate change, human trafficking, food safety or terrorism.  I believe that British citizens are better protected by much of the social legislation emanating from Brussels.

But I also believe that the EU desperately needs reform in areas like its agricultural and fisheries policy and I do think that there has probably been a bit too much undermining of our national sovereignty.  On the last point by the way, I am quite prepared to accept that this may well be emotional rather than rational!

I also think that the advent of the euro and the continued expansion of membership, means that there already is a two or three or even a four speed Europe.  I don’t believe that Britain should or will ever join the euro but I hope against hope that the euro survives.  And I suspect that the steps taken to secure the future of the euro will continue to radical force changes in the relationships between members of the EU and between those inside and outside of the eurozone.

And I strongly believe that most people don’t give a flying fig about any of this.  The central issue of the day is clearly the economy and jobs.  We all know that David Cameron was forced to make his speech yesterday by the euro-obsessives in his party; it is a sign of his relative weakness.  But voters may not care all that much about the EU but increasingly many voters are disillusioned with political parties that they think are out of touch, unresponsive to their needs and self-interested.  They feel this about the town hall as much as MPs and their expenses.  And they certainly feel it about Europe, the EU/EEC/common market/the French/the Germans/the Greeks.  So David Cameron may well have been forced into this position of an in/out referendum by 2017 against his wishes, but in doing so he potentially taps into a rich vein of anti-politics sentiment.

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HOME: Time for policy in the pub with Maria Eagle

23/01/2013, 08:14:56 PM

Will you be in or around Bristol tomorrow evening? Yes? Well, good news. There will be some policy in the pub, Bristol style, with Maria Eagle, shadow secretary of state for transport. The fun happens this Thursday 24th January at the Hen and Chicken (upstairs from 6.30-8.30pm) on North street, Bedminster.

For those that haven’t been to one of these Pragmatic Radicalism events before, it’s a quick fire format with 90 seconds for speakers to present a policy idea, 2 minutes for questions and answers and then a vote at the end on the best policy. The topics up for discussion will be transport, communities, tackling poverty and social exclusion.

There will be pizza, prizes and drinks all thanks to the good people at ASLEF and TSSA.

So come on down, set the world to rights, and failing that, have a pint and slice of pizza.

See you in the pub.

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UNCUT: Today, Ed Miliband was damaged by Cameron’s speech, but the pain is coming for the Tories

23/01/2013, 05:50:40 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Judgement is a precious commodity. If a politician is seen to have it, they receive the benefit of the doubt from the media and colleagues alike. Their moves are viewed as part of a grand strategy, their competence taken on trust.

When they are seen to lose it, everything is questioned, loose threads are pulled and more often than not, much unravels.

Today, both Ed Miliband and David Cameron demonstrated desperately bad judgement. Both will pay a price. The immediate damage is to the Labour leader’s position, but over the coming months Cameron will be the one who suffers most.

For Ed Miliband, it is now a matter of when not if. When will he do a U-turn and commit Labour to an in/out referendum? The three options he has available leave him little choice.

Inside the leader’s inner circle there might have been some that still believed Labour’s current position of neither backing nor ruling out an in/out referendum was sustainable, but reality will be dawning. Witness Miliband’s own reaction in the heat of PMQs today when he seemed to rule out a referendum, only for Douglas Alexander and John Denham to walk back the commitment within hours.

Having no line to take is no way to run a party. Labour politicians trying to defend this position will be mercilessly skewered.

Alternately, permanently ruling out a referendum, as Miliband looked to have done, has the merit of certainty, but brings the certainty of unpopularity. Refusing to let the public have a say on such a contentious issue hardly locates Labour on the side of the people.

Which leaves supporting an in/out referendum as the only viable option.

Back in October I argued for a Labour commitment to a referendum to make the political weather and cast Cameron as weak when he was forced follow suit. Now Miliband will follow Cameron and will be the one to look weak.

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