Here are some often-forgotten human rights, as itemised in the UN General Assembly's Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th,1948.
A shortened version of the Universal Declaration was read by the General Assembly of Occupy Swansea outside the Swansea Guildhall on December 10th, 2011:
Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Articles 23-7
Everyone has the right to work, to rest and leisure, to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, to education, cultural life and share in scientific advancements
Article 28
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
(Signed by 48 countries, with 0 against and 8 abstentions including Soviet bloc countries, Saudi Arabia and white-ruled South Africa)
We also noted some outdated references to 'brotherhood', 'mankind' etc, and an emphasis on individual as distinct from communal rights to property etc. These failings are far outweighed by a determination to make basic rights a reality for all, and by the remarkable prescience of clause 28.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-CuHO-sKE0
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Social Economy Survey from London LSX October 2011
TOWARDS A SOCIAL ECONOMY: SOME IDEAS FROM THE LONDON OCCUPATION AND WORK IN PROGRESS
(Updated in light of latest survey returns)
What’s radical about the London occupations is not, or not yet, an outspoken manifesto but a common recognition that our ‘social democracy’ is neither social nor democratic and a shared determination to do better. A statement agreed at an early General Assembly outside St Pauls described the current system as ‘unsustainable, undemocratic and unjust. We need alternatives and this is where we work towards them…This is what democracy looks like, come and join us.’
This was not good enough for many press commentators and passers-by. ‘You know what you don’t want, but what DO you want?’ they asked. While groups were forming for the serious work, I took it on myself to list some possible answers. I drew on leaflets, posters and discussions I took part in or overheard. I boiled the list down to nine options and set them out in no particular order on a survey form, with a tenth box empty for suggestions. At the top of the form were a couple of positive aims based on the agreed initial statement:
• to build a just, sustainable and democratic economy, putting the good of the majority and the earth before corporate interests and profit for a few
• to practice and promote democracy, deciding between us how we live and work together.
Respondents were asked to tick, cross or query each of the nine options, add amendments and write their own suggestions in box no. 10. I handed out about 450 forms, of which about 100 went to passing visitors. Fifty completed forms were returned to a box-file marked ‘Social Economy’ in the information tent. That’s about 20% of the camp population.
After collating the results, I reordered the options in order of preference. Most respondents (in this small, self-selecting sample) ticked most of the boxes. All the first nine options won majority support. The results below surprised me by their moderation, especially in the light of latest pay figures for top CEOs. Perhaps I should I have included ‘Smash capitalism’ and harvested the ticks for that.
The following list includes respondents’ amendments (underlined). In joint first place were:
1. Alternative economy: individual and collective food-growing, building, making and mending, recycling and exchange (becoming more important if full employment is no longer possible)
2. Support for unions, co-operatives, mutuals, partnerships, profit-sharing and social enterprise - organizations that challenge or improve on conventional capitalism.*
3. Use our stake in bailed-out banks to build affordable homes, schools, sustainable industry and energy, essential services and foreign aid. ‘Quantitative easing’ (printed money) to go to this program, not back into bad banks. Buy out RBS as a National Investment Bank and put QE into new Green Bank.
4. Tax reforms: a) Land value tax to tap underlying wealth and redress basic inequalities; b) One-off wealth tax to pay off national debt and save interest costs; c) Tobin tax on financial transactions to discourage speculation and raise funds for better use; d) Closure of tax havens.
5. Reclaim unused land for food-growing, empty buildings for living or working in. Fight enclosure, take back commons.
6. Corporate reform: to make companies accountable for social and environmental outcomes as well as profit and loss; tighter regulation of banks, private equity and hedge funds. Companies to lead annual reports with statements of social/environmental objectives, pay-differentials and worker-involvement in decision-making.
7. Take individual responsibility for our own actions, spending and savings. Make banks, pension-funds etc tell us how they spend and invest our money.
8. Citizens’ Assemblies, to bring direct democracy to bear on local government, public services and community action.
9.. Social and Environmental Audit (on a par with current Credit ratings) to inform investors, savers, employees and general public of company performance (an alternative to top-down regulation, and involving unions, NGOs, progressive companies etc)
10. Workers councils and support for workers’ buy-outs (combining two write-ins).
Other write-ins included:
- reclaim bankers’ bonuses, base future payments on long-term performance.
- stop privatization of health and education
- tax and cut from top, not bottom. 90% tax for top 1%,
- general strike
- citizen-volunteer force
- replace capitalism (‘transitional program’)
- boycott banks and stop paying tax
- abolish money
- end unsustainable Growth
- international ‘Declaration rights for Mother Earth’ and law against ecocide
- outlaw food speculation
- promote moral/spiritual debate (interfaith and no-faith, including ‘outspoken socialism’)
- bail out the people, nationalise the banks.
- ban arms trade
- Enforce MAXIMUM wage
Clearly this survey is neither objective nor comprehensive. I am part of the movement I describe and cannot reach the whole of it. This is only a snapshot of some work in progress but I hope it helps to focus discussion in and around the occupation. None of us has the answers, but we can all help find them. Besides this survey, I have been encouraged by comments in the Occupation visitors’ book in the Information Tent). Again, not a random sample, but the views of those who care and dare to step inside. With almost no exceptions the entries are positive:
‘Stay strong, warm, safe… Rock and roll around the world…Keep it up, wish I could join you, from a very worried student nurse…I’m so proud of you young people…Even my nan likes it…Total soutien d’un camarade syndique CGT…I work for a business on its knees, banks want our money now, but the big guys take months to pay…I’ve brought my children to show them how democracy works…So happy I came here…People connecting, about time…Let’s occupy the world…This is the end of the world as we know it. I feel fine…Too little, too late…At least you’re TRYING…Female, 50, fed-up, (and now) inspired…DON’T LEAVE.
The main banner at the entrance to the St Pauls reads ‘Capitalism IS Crisis’ but a recent General Assembly agreed that this, though perhaps true, did not properly reflect the Occupation as a whole. Two other big posters once attached to the railings of the Victoria statue, have now been removed – by bad weather or official good taste? One read RESPECT EXISTENCE OR EXPECT RESISTANCE, the other said REVOLUTION but with the L reversed, pointing backwards to make LOVE.
*NOTE: The initial statement agreed by the General Assembly outside St Pauls 16.10.2011 gave
support to the November 30th union strike against cuts and student action on November 9th
(Updated in light of latest survey returns)
What’s radical about the London occupations is not, or not yet, an outspoken manifesto but a common recognition that our ‘social democracy’ is neither social nor democratic and a shared determination to do better. A statement agreed at an early General Assembly outside St Pauls described the current system as ‘unsustainable, undemocratic and unjust. We need alternatives and this is where we work towards them…This is what democracy looks like, come and join us.’
This was not good enough for many press commentators and passers-by. ‘You know what you don’t want, but what DO you want?’ they asked. While groups were forming for the serious work, I took it on myself to list some possible answers. I drew on leaflets, posters and discussions I took part in or overheard. I boiled the list down to nine options and set them out in no particular order on a survey form, with a tenth box empty for suggestions. At the top of the form were a couple of positive aims based on the agreed initial statement:
• to build a just, sustainable and democratic economy, putting the good of the majority and the earth before corporate interests and profit for a few
• to practice and promote democracy, deciding between us how we live and work together.
Respondents were asked to tick, cross or query each of the nine options, add amendments and write their own suggestions in box no. 10. I handed out about 450 forms, of which about 100 went to passing visitors. Fifty completed forms were returned to a box-file marked ‘Social Economy’ in the information tent. That’s about 20% of the camp population.
After collating the results, I reordered the options in order of preference. Most respondents (in this small, self-selecting sample) ticked most of the boxes. All the first nine options won majority support. The results below surprised me by their moderation, especially in the light of latest pay figures for top CEOs. Perhaps I should I have included ‘Smash capitalism’ and harvested the ticks for that.
The following list includes respondents’ amendments (underlined). In joint first place were:
1. Alternative economy: individual and collective food-growing, building, making and mending, recycling and exchange (becoming more important if full employment is no longer possible)
2. Support for unions, co-operatives, mutuals, partnerships, profit-sharing and social enterprise - organizations that challenge or improve on conventional capitalism.*
3. Use our stake in bailed-out banks to build affordable homes, schools, sustainable industry and energy, essential services and foreign aid. ‘Quantitative easing’ (printed money) to go to this program, not back into bad banks. Buy out RBS as a National Investment Bank and put QE into new Green Bank.
4. Tax reforms: a) Land value tax to tap underlying wealth and redress basic inequalities; b) One-off wealth tax to pay off national debt and save interest costs; c) Tobin tax on financial transactions to discourage speculation and raise funds for better use; d) Closure of tax havens.
5. Reclaim unused land for food-growing, empty buildings for living or working in. Fight enclosure, take back commons.
6. Corporate reform: to make companies accountable for social and environmental outcomes as well as profit and loss; tighter regulation of banks, private equity and hedge funds. Companies to lead annual reports with statements of social/environmental objectives, pay-differentials and worker-involvement in decision-making.
7. Take individual responsibility for our own actions, spending and savings. Make banks, pension-funds etc tell us how they spend and invest our money.
8. Citizens’ Assemblies, to bring direct democracy to bear on local government, public services and community action.
9.. Social and Environmental Audit (on a par with current Credit ratings) to inform investors, savers, employees and general public of company performance (an alternative to top-down regulation, and involving unions, NGOs, progressive companies etc)
10. Workers councils and support for workers’ buy-outs (combining two write-ins).
Other write-ins included:
- reclaim bankers’ bonuses, base future payments on long-term performance.
- stop privatization of health and education
- tax and cut from top, not bottom. 90% tax for top 1%,
- general strike
- citizen-volunteer force
- replace capitalism (‘transitional program’)
- boycott banks and stop paying tax
- abolish money
- end unsustainable Growth
- international ‘Declaration rights for Mother Earth’ and law against ecocide
- outlaw food speculation
- promote moral/spiritual debate (interfaith and no-faith, including ‘outspoken socialism’)
- bail out the people, nationalise the banks.
- ban arms trade
- Enforce MAXIMUM wage
Clearly this survey is neither objective nor comprehensive. I am part of the movement I describe and cannot reach the whole of it. This is only a snapshot of some work in progress but I hope it helps to focus discussion in and around the occupation. None of us has the answers, but we can all help find them. Besides this survey, I have been encouraged by comments in the Occupation visitors’ book in the Information Tent). Again, not a random sample, but the views of those who care and dare to step inside. With almost no exceptions the entries are positive:
‘Stay strong, warm, safe… Rock and roll around the world…Keep it up, wish I could join you, from a very worried student nurse…I’m so proud of you young people…Even my nan likes it…Total soutien d’un camarade syndique CGT…I work for a business on its knees, banks want our money now, but the big guys take months to pay…I’ve brought my children to show them how democracy works…So happy I came here…People connecting, about time…Let’s occupy the world…This is the end of the world as we know it. I feel fine…Too little, too late…At least you’re TRYING…Female, 50, fed-up, (and now) inspired…DON’T LEAVE.
The main banner at the entrance to the St Pauls reads ‘Capitalism IS Crisis’ but a recent General Assembly agreed that this, though perhaps true, did not properly reflect the Occupation as a whole. Two other big posters once attached to the railings of the Victoria statue, have now been removed – by bad weather or official good taste? One read RESPECT EXISTENCE OR EXPECT RESISTANCE, the other said REVOLUTION but with the L reversed, pointing backwards to make LOVE.
*NOTE: The initial statement agreed by the General Assembly outside St Pauls 16.10.2011 gave
support to the November 30th union strike against cuts and student action on November 9th
Observer, Times and Guardian, October 2011-January 2022
JUST THE ONES THEY PRINTED
To The Observer
Sent: Sunday, 5 February 2012, 10:52
Subject: vested interests
Yes (Ed Milliband on NHS) workers do have vested interests, but not only in how much they get paid. When I worked in an engineering factory, the pride and joy of the shopfloor was not in aircraft or weapons components, but a shining, perforated alloy disc called the Blood Machine. It was destined for the NHS.
On the walls of the same factory were notices that showed two workers talking behind their hands. The motto was 'Dont tell him, tell us,' with 'us' meaning management. More telling was the subtext: workers tend to know and care what they do, how it's done and for whom.
Labour rightly calls for employees to join remuneration committees. This will lead naturally to discussion of what people at all levels are doing for their money. Why not fast-forward the democratic process and get employees properly represented on the boards where working decisions are made and working lives shaped?
It would help everyone concerned if companies were also obliged to state their social objectives on a par with reward for shareholders (as is already happening among some companies in California).
Greg Wilkinson
To The Observer
Sent: Sunday, 22 January 2012, 19:45, printed 29.01.2012
Subject: political economy
If capitalism is unstable (Will Hutton ‘Words wont change capitalism’), it’s not just because it deals with unknowable risk but because it lives by that risk and makes it more unknowable.
Capitalism disconnects wealth, profit and growth from any material or social measure of benefit or improvement. Hutton calls for daring deeds not words, but fails to get much beyond the chimera of monetary growth and GDP. His bold measures treat mainly symptoms not causes, symbols not substance.
The task of government is not simply to quantify and manipulate financial targets, but to enable us to define and deliver the goods and services we most need. Not just to turn the tap marked Growth, but determine what is to be grown, and how.
Human wellbeing is never totally knowable or quantifiable. But we do know we all need health, housing, education, useful employment, peace and care in old age. And a world fit for our children and theirs.
This real market – or political economy - is all our business, central to good life and good government. Our future is not reducible to 'Profit' and 'Loss', or to be left at the door of ‘Good Capitalism.’
Greg Wilkinson
To The Observer
Sent: Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 15:11 (printed 22.01.1012)
Subject: millennium village
In drought-stricken West Africa, John Mulholland describes a joined-up programme to save a single village. Resources and expertise, government and community combine in a co-ordinated approach to health, education, agriculture, infrastructure and economic development.
Why didn't we think of that, in our corner of debt-stricken West Europe?
Instead, we get empty incantations: Cut-more, grow-more, Us-more, them-more. As the global village begins to bake, our tribal leaders bow to mysterious Market forces and our future hangs on the omens of Standard and Poor.
Greg Wilkinson
To The Times
Sent: Tuesday, 25 October 2011, 16:05
Subject: St Pauls
(in answer to report which used night scans to demonstrate that most of the tents outside St Pauls were not being slept in, and accused occupiers of damaging local businesses. Printed a day or two later, and flagged up on front page – the first thing I’ve written for a Murdoch paper)
Sir
I’m one of ‘the nine out of ten campers’ who quits my tent outside St Paul’s from time to time. I do so because like many others occupying the forecourt I have family, jobs and commitments elsewhere. I have spent several nights away from my tent seeing my family in Swansea and arranging a Prince’s Trust event on a community woodland in Carmarthenshire.
During my absence I lent the tent to a couple who decorated it with a poster about sleeping all week in London’s freezing streets – not my choice, but freedom of speech. My ‘tentants’ were not eager to leave when I returned but now I’m back.
During my week hereabouts I have also talked to staff in a café isolated by police railings round Paternoster Square. I asked the police if they could move their barriers to let more customers through. By contrast, the nearest café outside the barriers is doing an unusually brisk trade. ‘There are winners and losers’ as one café manager said.
We campers have no more closed the small businesses than we closed the Cathedral. We regard both closures as quite unnecessary and regret the difficulties caused to staff, customers and visitors
Like the trustees of St Pauls we are very concerned with health and safety, our own and that of everyone on the planet threatened by global warming and social unrest brought about by widening inequality.
Greg Wilkinson
To: The Guardian
Sent: 19.10.2011, printed day or two later
Subject: Between Mammon and old Religion
Some of us camped on the slabs and cobbles outside St Pauls have Capitalism in our sights, others are as reluctant as the Labour party to use the C-word. But we know which direction we're heading in, it's up and this is a sort of base-camp.
Other commentators, less sympathetic than your editorial, have ridiculed our lack of detailed manifesto or demands. But actions may speak louder than words. We're learning as we go and anyone with insight or expertise to share is welcome to join us. Meanwhile - and this we have spelt out in a general assembly - we all know that the present political economy is unsustainable, undemocratic and unjust. It's got to be changed and our presence is a step in that direction.
Like the globalised market, this movement is global. We stand with the others who have come into the streets around the world, and with the millions more who suffer and starve in silence. We support our UK unions as they strike against cuts in pensions, jobs and service.
Camped here between Mammon and old Religion - given sanctuary by the Cannon of St Pauls - I have spent several days talking and listening to strangers who seem like friends. The fact that we're all sorts of people adds to the joy of it.
One slogan on the railings says 'Respect our existence or expect our resistance'. Whatever words we happen to use, we will not let our lives and world be used and spoilt in service of a wealthy few. Nor do we trust politicians who find it easier to play along with corporate interests than stand up for the people who elected them.
We want a more direct democracy. Here nobody pays us, tells us what to do or puts words in our mouths. When the tents are blown down or flooded - as happens elsewhere in the world - we bail out and reconstruct as best we can. We are not dismayed by the stony faces of traders and brokers on their way to work and take heart from the people, local shops and businesses, who come in with food and offers of help.
Between us we can find better ways of doing things.
Greg Wilkinson
19 Trafalgar Place, Swansea SA2 0BU (and/or a dark green tent immediately opposite the Nat West bank outside St Pauls) 01792 455335 07895063030)
PS Ed: The last occupation I took part in was at the British Institute in Paris, May 1968. Cobblestones were for barricades and throwing at CRS, not sleeping on.
To The Observer
Sent: Sunday, 5 February 2012, 10:52
Subject: vested interests
Yes (Ed Milliband on NHS) workers do have vested interests, but not only in how much they get paid. When I worked in an engineering factory, the pride and joy of the shopfloor was not in aircraft or weapons components, but a shining, perforated alloy disc called the Blood Machine. It was destined for the NHS.
On the walls of the same factory were notices that showed two workers talking behind their hands. The motto was 'Dont tell him, tell us,' with 'us' meaning management. More telling was the subtext: workers tend to know and care what they do, how it's done and for whom.
Labour rightly calls for employees to join remuneration committees. This will lead naturally to discussion of what people at all levels are doing for their money. Why not fast-forward the democratic process and get employees properly represented on the boards where working decisions are made and working lives shaped?
It would help everyone concerned if companies were also obliged to state their social objectives on a par with reward for shareholders (as is already happening among some companies in California).
Greg Wilkinson
To The Observer
Sent: Sunday, 22 January 2012, 19:45, printed 29.01.2012
Subject: political economy
If capitalism is unstable (Will Hutton ‘Words wont change capitalism’), it’s not just because it deals with unknowable risk but because it lives by that risk and makes it more unknowable.
Capitalism disconnects wealth, profit and growth from any material or social measure of benefit or improvement. Hutton calls for daring deeds not words, but fails to get much beyond the chimera of monetary growth and GDP. His bold measures treat mainly symptoms not causes, symbols not substance.
The task of government is not simply to quantify and manipulate financial targets, but to enable us to define and deliver the goods and services we most need. Not just to turn the tap marked Growth, but determine what is to be grown, and how.
Human wellbeing is never totally knowable or quantifiable. But we do know we all need health, housing, education, useful employment, peace and care in old age. And a world fit for our children and theirs.
This real market – or political economy - is all our business, central to good life and good government. Our future is not reducible to 'Profit' and 'Loss', or to be left at the door of ‘Good Capitalism.’
Greg Wilkinson
To The Observer
Sent: Tuesday, 17 January 2012, 15:11 (printed 22.01.1012)
Subject: millennium village
In drought-stricken West Africa, John Mulholland describes a joined-up programme to save a single village. Resources and expertise, government and community combine in a co-ordinated approach to health, education, agriculture, infrastructure and economic development.
Why didn't we think of that, in our corner of debt-stricken West Europe?
Instead, we get empty incantations: Cut-more, grow-more, Us-more, them-more. As the global village begins to bake, our tribal leaders bow to mysterious Market forces and our future hangs on the omens of Standard and Poor.
Greg Wilkinson
To The Times
Sent: Tuesday, 25 October 2011, 16:05
Subject: St Pauls
(in answer to report which used night scans to demonstrate that most of the tents outside St Pauls were not being slept in, and accused occupiers of damaging local businesses. Printed a day or two later, and flagged up on front page – the first thing I’ve written for a Murdoch paper)
Sir
I’m one of ‘the nine out of ten campers’ who quits my tent outside St Paul’s from time to time. I do so because like many others occupying the forecourt I have family, jobs and commitments elsewhere. I have spent several nights away from my tent seeing my family in Swansea and arranging a Prince’s Trust event on a community woodland in Carmarthenshire.
During my absence I lent the tent to a couple who decorated it with a poster about sleeping all week in London’s freezing streets – not my choice, but freedom of speech. My ‘tentants’ were not eager to leave when I returned but now I’m back.
During my week hereabouts I have also talked to staff in a café isolated by police railings round Paternoster Square. I asked the police if they could move their barriers to let more customers through. By contrast, the nearest café outside the barriers is doing an unusually brisk trade. ‘There are winners and losers’ as one café manager said.
We campers have no more closed the small businesses than we closed the Cathedral. We regard both closures as quite unnecessary and regret the difficulties caused to staff, customers and visitors
Like the trustees of St Pauls we are very concerned with health and safety, our own and that of everyone on the planet threatened by global warming and social unrest brought about by widening inequality.
Greg Wilkinson
To: The Guardian
Sent: 19.10.2011, printed day or two later
Subject: Between Mammon and old Religion
Some of us camped on the slabs and cobbles outside St Pauls have Capitalism in our sights, others are as reluctant as the Labour party to use the C-word. But we know which direction we're heading in, it's up and this is a sort of base-camp.
Other commentators, less sympathetic than your editorial, have ridiculed our lack of detailed manifesto or demands. But actions may speak louder than words. We're learning as we go and anyone with insight or expertise to share is welcome to join us. Meanwhile - and this we have spelt out in a general assembly - we all know that the present political economy is unsustainable, undemocratic and unjust. It's got to be changed and our presence is a step in that direction.
Like the globalised market, this movement is global. We stand with the others who have come into the streets around the world, and with the millions more who suffer and starve in silence. We support our UK unions as they strike against cuts in pensions, jobs and service.
Camped here between Mammon and old Religion - given sanctuary by the Cannon of St Pauls - I have spent several days talking and listening to strangers who seem like friends. The fact that we're all sorts of people adds to the joy of it.
One slogan on the railings says 'Respect our existence or expect our resistance'. Whatever words we happen to use, we will not let our lives and world be used and spoilt in service of a wealthy few. Nor do we trust politicians who find it easier to play along with corporate interests than stand up for the people who elected them.
We want a more direct democracy. Here nobody pays us, tells us what to do or puts words in our mouths. When the tents are blown down or flooded - as happens elsewhere in the world - we bail out and reconstruct as best we can. We are not dismayed by the stony faces of traders and brokers on their way to work and take heart from the people, local shops and businesses, who come in with food and offers of help.
Between us we can find better ways of doing things.
Greg Wilkinson
19 Trafalgar Place, Swansea SA2 0BU (and/or a dark green tent immediately opposite the Nat West bank outside St Pauls) 01792 455335 07895063030)
PS Ed: The last occupation I took part in was at the British Institute in Paris, May 1968. Cobblestones were for barricades and throwing at CRS, not sleeping on.
Monday, 5 September 2011
More shots in the dark
To the Guardian
08.09.2011
NO TO 'FERAL UNDERCLASSS
...BUT IF THE FACE FITS
Nice that a police chief rejects talk of a 'feral underclass.' Not so good that your report, like most others, takes at face value Ken Clarke's announcement that 75% of those sentenced for riot offences had previous convictions.
That begs an important question, especially with police investigations so reliant on CCTV evidence. How many of those brought to court were identified and arrested BECAUSE of their previous convictions?
As I know from my own experience, it may not even take a conviction: you only have to be charged for your picture, fingerprints, DNA and address to be taken and stored for future reference.
In my case, I was arrested and charged for a protest action. Although the charges were then dropped, I was rearrested a couple of months later following a similar protest in another town, by persons unknown either to the police or me. With my data to hand, our house was searched, papers and computers seized.
No charges this time and the case was dropped for lack of evidence. I was lucky. There had been no public hue and cry, I was half a century older than last month's likely suspects and much more expensively educated (though prison costs as much as university).
However nonsensical many of the recent sentences, and however we apportion responsibility, hundreds will be guilty as charged. It remains unjust that while previous convictions are not usually admissible as evidence in court, previous charges can effectively determine who gets identified, arrested and brought to court.
To Independent on Sunday
04.09.2011
TALKING TOUGH
You call for a 'tough demand that those at the top of society show responsibility' to match the 'tough response to the looting and stealing' on the streets. But this easy equivalence breaks down when it comes to policing and enforcement.
Rioting is visible in a way that boardroom crime and misdemeanor can never be. Insider-dealing may be indistinguishable from casual conversation and a financial trade, unlike betting on horses or roulette, easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Companies - and other people's livelihoods - can be shut down, stripped or exported within a legal framework that largely ignores moral, social and environmental priorities.
Tweaks and taxes can make a difference, loopholes can be closed, but the root problem is in the structure of capitalist enterprise. The corporate executives, traders and investors who rip us off are working within a legal framework that empowers them to make money for themselves and each other at our expense.
Comprehensive regulation and monitoring would require an independent mirror-world of virtual corporations to match and mark main players in the global market, with inevitable revolving doors for poachers turning gamekeeper and vice versa.
The only alternative is more representative regulation from within, but with the circle of decision-makers extended to those whose lives and businesses are most involved. Capital hardly needs representation, its needs can be met in interest or a share of profits and it can vote with its winged feet. Structural regulation requires inclusion of the other groupings and interests essential to economic enterprise: employees, consumers, suppliers and community.
A long haul, but for a start we could do worse than develop a form of social-environmental audit - with listings (SEAL?) comparable to the now-fashionable credit ratings. The listing process would focus public scrutiny. The necessary research and monitoring could involve existing social and environmental groupings - unions, consumers, greens etc - as well as academics, economists and politicians.
And, yes, bankers, of whom there are many who would be happy to work in a better cause.
To Guardian Weekly
27.08.2011
A FINE BALANCE
You print three stories about the August flare-up between Israeli and Palestinian forces on the Gaza border. Two of them trace the fighting back to an attack/ambush by Palestinian militants, and the third is a close-up of fear and horror at the killing of an Israeli security official by a Palestinian rocket.
Every killing, whether of civilian or militant, is a tragedy. Your main article has eight Israelis killed in the Palestinian attack, and 15 Palestinians in the fighting that followed. A Palestinian body-count for the months of July and August names 45 'martyrs,' including six children. On August 1st, the first day of Ramadan, an Israeli raid on the Qalandia refugee camp near Jerusalem left two young men dead. One of them was found by his mother, his brains blown out on the road outside his front door.
To the Observer
21.08.2011
PROFOUNDLY DYSFUNCTIONAL
Tony Blair attributes rioting to a minority of ‘profoundly dysfunctional families.’ But family dysfunction, like criminality, does not spring from nowhere. Nor is it confined to certain classes or districts: if most dysfunctional families don’t turn to looting, it is because they can get what they want over the counter.
When I left school, aged 17, in 1954 I had no difficulty getting jobs. Most boys my age had already been working for a year and we all got paid. Just as importantly we felt grown up. At work we were eager to win the respect of older workmates and when we got home we were tired.
And then there was national service…
My family was not poor and when I failed my 11-plus, my parents sent me to a private school. Like many post-war professionals, they voted Labour. They counted on better schools and conditions for everyone, a gradual equalling-up to end class privilege and segregation. It never occurred to them that by this century, nearly half all children would leave state schools without the 3 Rs, with little prospect of ‘worthwhile jobs.’ Or that one bank-trader could earn as much as 1,500 teachers, or 3,000 of the carers who helped look after them in their last years.
It took Thatcher to kill their dream of a natural movement towards equality, opportunity and mutual respect for all. And Blair to bury it.
08.09.2011
NO TO 'FERAL UNDERCLASSS
...BUT IF THE FACE FITS
Nice that a police chief rejects talk of a 'feral underclass.' Not so good that your report, like most others, takes at face value Ken Clarke's announcement that 75% of those sentenced for riot offences had previous convictions.
That begs an important question, especially with police investigations so reliant on CCTV evidence. How many of those brought to court were identified and arrested BECAUSE of their previous convictions?
As I know from my own experience, it may not even take a conviction: you only have to be charged for your picture, fingerprints, DNA and address to be taken and stored for future reference.
In my case, I was arrested and charged for a protest action. Although the charges were then dropped, I was rearrested a couple of months later following a similar protest in another town, by persons unknown either to the police or me. With my data to hand, our house was searched, papers and computers seized.
No charges this time and the case was dropped for lack of evidence. I was lucky. There had been no public hue and cry, I was half a century older than last month's likely suspects and much more expensively educated (though prison costs as much as university).
However nonsensical many of the recent sentences, and however we apportion responsibility, hundreds will be guilty as charged. It remains unjust that while previous convictions are not usually admissible as evidence in court, previous charges can effectively determine who gets identified, arrested and brought to court.
To Independent on Sunday
04.09.2011
TALKING TOUGH
You call for a 'tough demand that those at the top of society show responsibility' to match the 'tough response to the looting and stealing' on the streets. But this easy equivalence breaks down when it comes to policing and enforcement.
Rioting is visible in a way that boardroom crime and misdemeanor can never be. Insider-dealing may be indistinguishable from casual conversation and a financial trade, unlike betting on horses or roulette, easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Companies - and other people's livelihoods - can be shut down, stripped or exported within a legal framework that largely ignores moral, social and environmental priorities.
Tweaks and taxes can make a difference, loopholes can be closed, but the root problem is in the structure of capitalist enterprise. The corporate executives, traders and investors who rip us off are working within a legal framework that empowers them to make money for themselves and each other at our expense.
Comprehensive regulation and monitoring would require an independent mirror-world of virtual corporations to match and mark main players in the global market, with inevitable revolving doors for poachers turning gamekeeper and vice versa.
The only alternative is more representative regulation from within, but with the circle of decision-makers extended to those whose lives and businesses are most involved. Capital hardly needs representation, its needs can be met in interest or a share of profits and it can vote with its winged feet. Structural regulation requires inclusion of the other groupings and interests essential to economic enterprise: employees, consumers, suppliers and community.
A long haul, but for a start we could do worse than develop a form of social-environmental audit - with listings (SEAL?) comparable to the now-fashionable credit ratings. The listing process would focus public scrutiny. The necessary research and monitoring could involve existing social and environmental groupings - unions, consumers, greens etc - as well as academics, economists and politicians.
And, yes, bankers, of whom there are many who would be happy to work in a better cause.
To Guardian Weekly
27.08.2011
A FINE BALANCE
You print three stories about the August flare-up between Israeli and Palestinian forces on the Gaza border. Two of them trace the fighting back to an attack/ambush by Palestinian militants, and the third is a close-up of fear and horror at the killing of an Israeli security official by a Palestinian rocket.
Every killing, whether of civilian or militant, is a tragedy. Your main article has eight Israelis killed in the Palestinian attack, and 15 Palestinians in the fighting that followed. A Palestinian body-count for the months of July and August names 45 'martyrs,' including six children. On August 1st, the first day of Ramadan, an Israeli raid on the Qalandia refugee camp near Jerusalem left two young men dead. One of them was found by his mother, his brains blown out on the road outside his front door.
To the Observer
21.08.2011
PROFOUNDLY DYSFUNCTIONAL
Tony Blair attributes rioting to a minority of ‘profoundly dysfunctional families.’ But family dysfunction, like criminality, does not spring from nowhere. Nor is it confined to certain classes or districts: if most dysfunctional families don’t turn to looting, it is because they can get what they want over the counter.
When I left school, aged 17, in 1954 I had no difficulty getting jobs. Most boys my age had already been working for a year and we all got paid. Just as importantly we felt grown up. At work we were eager to win the respect of older workmates and when we got home we were tired.
And then there was national service…
My family was not poor and when I failed my 11-plus, my parents sent me to a private school. Like many post-war professionals, they voted Labour. They counted on better schools and conditions for everyone, a gradual equalling-up to end class privilege and segregation. It never occurred to them that by this century, nearly half all children would leave state schools without the 3 Rs, with little prospect of ‘worthwhile jobs.’ Or that one bank-trader could earn as much as 1,500 teachers, or 3,000 of the carers who helped look after them in their last years.
It took Thatcher to kill their dream of a natural movement towards equality, opportunity and mutual respect for all. And Blair to bury it.
Thursday, 21 July 2011
To the editor, South Wales Evening Post
Thank you for drawing attention to our picket at Barclays Bank in Swansea (June 27-July 2). But what matters is not the ‘outrage’ or otherwise of one Swansea OAP. It is the facts that count, and what we do about them. What my age and pension give me is free time for what I tried to do in my job as foreign correspondent years ago: to get at the facts and bring them home to people they concern.
I'm not just on about arms, or bosses bonuses as such. Today, after teachers and others have stopped work in protest over government cuts, it's important to remember that it was the folly of big banks that prompted the cuts. And that they are now back to business as usual: the pay-package of one Barclays bank-trader, at £40+ million a year, could employ 1,800 teachers, nurses, police – or junior bank staff (Barclays recently closed one Swansea branch). The same money could pay 6,000 pensions like my own, or 3,000 carers to look after us when we become incapable. This grotesque inequality comes to roost with us in Swansea, where people in the poorest parts of town die 13 years younger than people in richer neighbourhoods.
That is why I’m picketing Barclays, as leader among piggy banks. With my wife I have made a Golden Pig Bad Bank Award, for presentation at mid-day on Saturday. The plaque on the plinth reads ‘for contributions to warfare, greed, inequality and pillage of the global village.’
Greg Wilkinson
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Nightmare drones: nouveaux jeux sans frontieres
Guardian on drone-stike sites in West Pakistan:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/17/us-drone-strikes-pakistan-waziristan
A local journalist goes from one drone hit village to another, detailing damage. A dangerous business because people taking pictures and asking questions may be suspected of helping CIA prepare next strike. What he finds suggests civilian casualties much higher than official accounts admit. An own goal for war-on-terror as local populations rage at US etc.
Obvious, really.
Less obvious but just as dangerous, this form of warfare is relatively cheap for those with the know-how, and leapfrogs old legal and geographical boundaries. Drones are now used by US, Israeli and more recently UK forces for surveillance and or missile strikes, not only in the acknowledged war-zones of Iraq and Afghanistan but Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and Gaza - wherever conventional forces cannot reach, or would rather not be seen to reach.
UK Watchkeeper drones are adapted from Israeli Hermes drones as perfected over Gaza. The UK version has been tested at Aberporth not far from us.
Drones can fly at 10,000 feet, for hours, days or nights, unseen and unheard from the ground, watching, reporting back to base or waiting to get a target in sights. US Predator drones, as seen on a CNN documentary (check Youtube), are controlled by more or less human 'pilots'at playstation consoles in a desert base, Arizona perhaps. The risk-free piloting is one reason why drones are relatively cheap: training pilots costs as much as making planes, and in conventional airwars too many get lost in crashes and combat stress.
One reason for my recent picket of Barclays is that the bank is a lead investor in the Israeli company, Elbit Systems, that makes the drones now adapted for UK use.
The former US President and WW2 supreme commander General Dwight Eisenhower one warned against what he called the 'military-industrial complex' intruding on politics and public life. Now the complex that threatens us is more complex still: military-industrial-political-financial, with funders often deciding what gets off the ground. And its global, no longer confined to one superpower.
The current light being shed on Murdoch's Newscorp web gives us a glimpse of what must also be happening between military, intelligence, political, industrial and financial power centres across continents, picking, mixing and making what suits themselves at our expense.
A recent New York Times report described experimental drones modelled on dragon-flies, and no bigger than insects, able to settle on a window ledge. With poison stings? No more need for human agents with umbrella tips...
One problem in this new form of airwar is the cost and complexity of decoding such a mass of detailed information. Imagine a continual feed from hundreds of spies in the sky, having to monitor so many monitors, fit and analyse the images.
One thing the roving reporter in Pakistan notes is the difficulty of putting together the casualties, not in the image, but in the flesh, on the ground, in what's left of walls, trees etc.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/17/us-drone-strikes-pakistan-waziristan
A local journalist goes from one drone hit village to another, detailing damage. A dangerous business because people taking pictures and asking questions may be suspected of helping CIA prepare next strike. What he finds suggests civilian casualties much higher than official accounts admit. An own goal for war-on-terror as local populations rage at US etc.
Obvious, really.
Less obvious but just as dangerous, this form of warfare is relatively cheap for those with the know-how, and leapfrogs old legal and geographical boundaries. Drones are now used by US, Israeli and more recently UK forces for surveillance and or missile strikes, not only in the acknowledged war-zones of Iraq and Afghanistan but Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and Gaza - wherever conventional forces cannot reach, or would rather not be seen to reach.
UK Watchkeeper drones are adapted from Israeli Hermes drones as perfected over Gaza. The UK version has been tested at Aberporth not far from us.
Drones can fly at 10,000 feet, for hours, days or nights, unseen and unheard from the ground, watching, reporting back to base or waiting to get a target in sights. US Predator drones, as seen on a CNN documentary (check Youtube), are controlled by more or less human 'pilots'at playstation consoles in a desert base, Arizona perhaps. The risk-free piloting is one reason why drones are relatively cheap: training pilots costs as much as making planes, and in conventional airwars too many get lost in crashes and combat stress.
One reason for my recent picket of Barclays is that the bank is a lead investor in the Israeli company, Elbit Systems, that makes the drones now adapted for UK use.
The former US President and WW2 supreme commander General Dwight Eisenhower one warned against what he called the 'military-industrial complex' intruding on politics and public life. Now the complex that threatens us is more complex still: military-industrial-political-financial, with funders often deciding what gets off the ground. And its global, no longer confined to one superpower.
The current light being shed on Murdoch's Newscorp web gives us a glimpse of what must also be happening between military, intelligence, political, industrial and financial power centres across continents, picking, mixing and making what suits themselves at our expense.
A recent New York Times report described experimental drones modelled on dragon-flies, and no bigger than insects, able to settle on a window ledge. With poison stings? No more need for human agents with umbrella tips...
One problem in this new form of airwar is the cost and complexity of decoding such a mass of detailed information. Imagine a continual feed from hundreds of spies in the sky, having to monitor so many monitors, fit and analyse the images.
One thing the roving reporter in Pakistan notes is the difficulty of putting together the casualties, not in the image, but in the flesh, on the ground, in what's left of walls, trees etc.
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