Red Pepper » Adam Ramsay

Fortnum & Mason trial: a convicted defendant writes

emma — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:06:23 +0000

Before the credit crunch, the last run on a UK bank was in 1878. The directors of the Bank of Glasgow were jailed. Likewise many of those responsible for the 1929 Wall Street Crash were sent down.

Not so today. After the banking collapse of 2007/8, not a single financier has been found guilty of a crime. We are expected to believe that in the cocaine fuelled corridors of the city, not one of the choices which wiped the savings of millions was fraudulent: that everything done by these masters of the universe was cock up.

The same cannot be said for those who complain. Today, along with nine others, I was found guilty of ‘entering Fortnum & Mason and demonstrating’. I was given a conditional discharge for six months and ordered to pay £1000 of the prosecution’s legal costs. Over the last year, many of my friends have been fined, jailed, or beaten to a pulp by the police for such crimes as hanging banners from bridges, or having the audacity to be a journalist reporting on a protest.

In whose interest does the Crown Prosecution Service decide how to allocate its time and resources? In whose interest do the police police? To use the language in vogue: is it the 99%, or the 1%? How many hours have they spent over the last year or so trawling through footage in an attempt to prove that this peaceful protester breached that controversial law? Or that that peaceful protester may have crossed the fuzzy line around this equally contentious piece of legislation?

I maintain I committed no crime. But even if you wholly accept the case that the CPS presented- after days spent trawling through CCTV footage in an attempt to prove something more – all I did was go into a shop and facilitate a meeting. How does this compare with recklessly endangering the livelihoods and lives of millions? How does that compare with defrauding millions in order to make yourself billions? If the police have the time to intimidate protesters entering the city, why didn’t they have time ensure those who work there don’t commit fraud or embezzlement?

In our Fortnum and Mason case we have the benefit outstanding, passionate and hard working lawyers. They have fought for us every inch of the way, and will fight with us all the way to the High Court. Once there, we hope to win. But we should be clear. Even if we are successful there, we will have been found not guilty by the same legal system which imprisons our friends, which criminalises protesters, and attempts to humiliate those who stand up to power; the same legal system which has done nothing whatsoever to bring to justice those responsible for our economic collapse.

Even the crime for which we were on trial – aggravated trespass – was invented in 1994 with the intention of criminalising protest. The nature of the charge meant that there was no jury – just a lone judge. We might chant that the streets are ours, but the courthouse clearly is not. And whatever ruling it comes to, it is not where our battles will be won. So, we will see you on the picket lines and on the streets.

A timely jolt

admin — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:46:11 +0000

If you were born after September 1979, you are a member of the jilted generation, or so Shiv Malik and Ed Howker tell us in their book of the same name. They fill it with shocking facts, such as that 29 per cent of adult men under 35 still live with their parents. This generation earns less than its parents did – in fact, many are forced to work for free simply to get job experience. These facts are weaved together with an angry, punchy prose into a narrative that shows how a generation has been jilted.
The authors have clearly got some of their analysis right: in particular, that neoliberal capitalism has failed to plan for the future. The generation who were persuaded that greed was good were conned into stealing from their own children. But, crucially, Howker and Malik’s failure to deal with class weakens the book. And ultimately their statement that they support capitalism – albeit a form that requires rooted capital, mutuals, and community land banks – means they miss the roots of many of the problems they describe.
Since the book was written, the comprehensive spending review has re-confirmed its central narrative – because although the cuts are an assault on us all, the young will be hit harder than any other age group. In recent months, the false consensus of a generation’s apathy has also been shattered; that people under 35 are a jilted generation is no longer an interesting but intangible academic injustice. This book gives the hard statistics to demonstrate that young people are right to feel we’ve got a raw deal.
And so, while this book doesn’t tell the whole truth, it does tell a truth. And the truth that it tells is the one you will hear shouted on the streets of London and from occupied lecture theatres and classrooms across the country.

A real taxpayers’ alliance

James O'Nions — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 19:24:31 +0000

Pity the Taxpayers’ Alliance. For months they’ve been holding meetings with senior figures from America’s Tea Party. They thought they were about to kick start a popular movement against taxes in the UK – a grassroots movements powered by angry people fed up with paying through the teeth for a failed socialist experiment.

Unfortunately for the Taxpayers’ Alliance, this isn’t quite how people in Britain see public services. Rather than building a movement to bring Britain to the brink of a pro-cuts, anti-tax revolution, the Alliance – who have very few actual members, fewer of whom are sufficiently poor to bother paying taxes, but get more press coverage than any other campaigning organisation in Britain – have been completely outmanoeuvred by a small crowd of scruffy young activists with a twitter account, experience of direct action, an eye for a good story, and a few copies of Private Eye.

You can just feel Alliance chief Matthew Elliot’s frustration yesterday. The angry rabble he’d hoped to see descended not on ‘wasteful’ hospitals, or ‘sponging’ teachers, but on the high street chains it’s his job to protect. Three hundred of us converged in Oxford Street, London branch of Topshop, shouting slogans about how owner Philip Green must pay his share ‘where did all the money go? He sent it off to Monaco’, ‘unless you pay your tax we’ll shut you down’ … etc. Once it was shut, we proceeded on to other members of his empire – BHS and Dorothy Perkins, and other tax dodgers Boots and Vodafone.

And, at the same time, people all over the country – many who had never joined a protest before – responded similarly to the call that UKUncut had put out, and more than 20 tax-dodging stores saw protests: ‘unless you pay your tax, we’ll shut you down’.

Despite what Mr Taylor has been allowed to imply ad infunitum in the national media, no one who saw our protest; none of the shoppers inconvenienced by our friends across the country – in fact not a single passer by – responded by telling us that all tax is theft, or that wealth creators should be rewarded for the risk they take.

In fact, they responded by applauding, smiling, giving us pizza, or even joining in. Even the Mail on Sunday has responded by launching a campaign for Kraft to pay British taxes – the Mail? Poor Matthew Elliot!

Because the truth is that people in Britain value our public services. We are happy to pay taxes to support them. We just think that everyone should pay their fair share. And loony neo-liberals may be able to seem representative when they buy media coverage to spout nonsense that only reflects the interests of millionaires. But when faced with real movements of pissed off people, their facade fades fast. And as it does, so too will the false consensus that brutal cuts – any cuts – are needed. And as that media narrative unravels, so, too, could this disastrous government.

Adam Ramsay is an activist, Green Party member, and co-editor of Bright Green