Red Pepper » Emma Hughes

Azerbaijan: The pipeline that would fuel a dictator

admin — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 10:00:06 +0000

A billboard of Heydar Aliyev, ‘Father of the Nation’, by the Heydar Aliyev Park. Photo: Emma Hughes
The government’s dash for gas has not only resulted in a raft of new gas-fired power stations in the UK; it is also supporting the drilling of 26 new gas wells in the BP-operated Shah Deniz gas field off the coast of Azerbaijan. Companies and decision-makers in London and Brussels are eagerly eyeing these wells and are currently assembling the agreements and finance for a mega‑pipeline from the Caspian to central Europe.
The proposed pipeline looks something like this: from the BP terminal at Sangachal the gas would be forced westwards through the South Caucasus Pipeline Expansion across Azerbaijan and Georgia. From there the Trans-Anatolian pipeline would pump the gas across the entire length of Turkey, to the border with Greece. Here a further final part of the pipeline: the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, will run across Greece, Albania and finally end in Italy. While each segment has a different name, in reality they are all part of one mega-pipeline. And the plans don’t end there. Pressure is building to extend it to Turkmenistan, Iraq and Iran, creating a significant resource grab as central Asian and Middle Eastern gas fields would be locked directly into the European grid.
Such a pipeline could be devastating for the environment, putting an extra 1,100 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere by 2048 – the equivalent of 2.5 years of total emissions from five of the countries it will run through: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Greece and Albania. And in the country of extraction, Azerbaijan, its construction would directly undermine the struggle to overthrow the country’s oil dictator Ilham Aliyev.
A fossil fuel dictator
[pullquote]‘BP is where the president got his power from. Where is his wealth, where are his police, without BP’s money?’[/pullquote]
The ruling family, the Aliyevs, have held onto power in Azerbaijan for the past two decades through a combination of fraudulent elections, arresting opposition candidates, beating protesters and curtailing media freedom. Ilham’s father, Heydar Aliyev, became president in 1993, following a military coup; he had previously been the head of Soviet Azerbaijan from 1969 to 1982. In 2003 he was forced to withdraw from the presidential elections due to ill health and his son stood and won instead. The elections were widely recognised as fraudulent.
The Aliyevs’ rule has been facilitated by the signing of the ‘contract of the century’ in 1994, which brought 11 corporations, including BP, Amoco, Lukoil of Russia and the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, into a consortium to extract oil from the Caspian Sea. The money from that oil not only made these corporations huge profits, but also gave the Aliyev family vast wealth and important allies overseas. The oil revenue means the regime is not dependent on taxes, so there is little incentive to pay attention to citizens’ voices or interests.
Mirvari Gahramanli works at the Oil Workers Rights Protection Organisation union. She blames BP for the country’s autocratic president: ‘BP is where the president got his power from. What is he without the money? Where is his wealth, where are his police, without BP’s money? They [the Aliyevs] have grown rich from BP and now as a result they have much more power.’
The money from the oil industry was supposed to be controlled by the State Oil Fund for Azerbaijan (SOFAZ), which was intended to finance the transition of the Azeri economy away from oil and to ensure the wealth was kept for future generations. Instead much of it has been pumped into construction.
Permanently under construction
Arrive in Azerbaijan’s capital city, Baku, at night and it seems like one of the most opulent places on earth. The drive from the Heydar Aliyev international airport whizzes past in a blur of lights and colour. A daylight walk reveals a different side to the city. The opulence is still evident in the pristine shopping streets, filled with bright plazas and innumerable designer shops – most of which are empty. But walking down a side street is like stepping backstage on a film set. Dust and debris are everywhere; whole buildings are torn apart, spewing their dusty interiors onto the street. Baku is a city permanently under construction.Baku’s highest skyscrapers, the Flame Towers. They were built at a cost of $350 million but appear mostly unused. Photo: Emma Hughes
Just who is benefiting from Baku’s continuous state of demolition has been made clear by the work of Azeri journalists. Khadija Ismayilova has linked many of the construction projects with the president and his family. These include the building of Crystal Hall, which staged the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012, and the nearby State Flag Square, which cost $38 million and briefly held the Guinness world record for the tallest flagpole in the world until its 162-metre height was overshadowed a few months later by a rival pole in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Two-thirds of the cost of the square in Baku came from the reserve fund of the head of state and the other third from the 2011 state budget, yet it was companies connected with Aliyev that profited.
The list of enterprises the Aliyevs are linked to is extensive. It includes phone companies, gold mining and an energy infrastructure company. It is common for big infrastructure projects, financed by public money from oil revenues, to be distributed to companies that belong to high-ranking officials, including the president himself. New laws mean that ownership remains secret, and they are often registered offshore anyway, so that public accountability is impossible.
Khadija Ismayilova’s part in exposing the personal profits made by the Aliyev family has led to her being blackmailed. In the middle of her investigation into the companies profiting from the flagpole square she was sent a tape of her and her boyfriend having sex that had been filmed from a camera hidden in her flat. The accompanying letter threatened to publish the tape if she didn’t stop her investigation. She continued and the tape was published on the internet. It was followed by a smear campaign and harassment by government officials at public events.
While the authorities attempted to label her a ‘loose woman’ for having sex outside of marriage, she says the plan backfired. ‘Society turned out to be more liberal than the government and I got support messages not just from the liberal parts of society but also from the Islamic parties because they are also in a struggle against the government, so they urged me to keep going,’ she says.
In Azerbaijan there are almost no independent media; most newspapers and nearly all TV channels are controlled by the government. Khadija Ismayilova’s experience is unusual only in that she didn’t find herself in prison or hospital – or the morgue. In 2005 the founder and editor of the critical opposition weekly news magazine Monitor, Elmar Huseynov, was gunned down in his apartment building. He had received threats because of his writing and many in Azerbaijan believe he was murdered because of it.
Expectant protesters
Azerbaijanis are furious at how their money has been squandered. Despite the opulence in the centre of Baku, citizens have to pay large sums to use basic services, including healthcare. Much of the county’s infrastructure is in need of repair.
Housing near Tibilisi Avenue in Baku. Photo: Emma Hughes
A new generation is finding new ways to organise through Facebook, blogs and flashmobs. The mood in Baku is expectant; people are talking about when Aliyev will go rather than if. With Baku hosting the Eurovision Song Contest in 2012, the rising protest movements had an opportunity to generate international attention, although it didn’t stop the government responding with continued repression. In October, 200 Muslim activists protesting against a ban on hijabs in secondary schools clashed with the police outside the education ministry. Seventy-two were arrested – the majority of whom were still being detained six months later.
In January, in the town of Ismayilli, west of Baku, the drunk son of the labour minister crashed his SUV into a taxi and then beat up the driver. In response, local residents set fire to his truck, as well as other vehicles and hotels belonging to the same family. Volleys of tear gas filled the streets as a militarised police force marched in. A state of emergency was declared in the town and neighbouring regions, cafes were closed down and the internet censored. The troops stayed for over a month in a show of force. With the regime afraid of change, it is resorting to ever-greater violence and repression. In the run up to presidential elections set for October there are increasing numbers of arrests.
Democracy will not be won easily. Pushing the Aliyev family out of power will be a difficult process. It is made even harder by the actions of the government’s allies in the west. On a recent trip to Brussels, Aliyev promised two trillion cubic metres of Azerbaijani gas for Europe. At the same meeting European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso spoke about the ‘very good exchange’ he had with Aliyev and praised the country for the progress it had made on democracy and human rights.
It was recently announced that the formal signing of the final part of the mega-pipeline agreement between the Shah Deniz consortium and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) looks likely to happen in mid-October. This means it will coincide with the Azerbaijan presidential elections and will effectively silence those in the EU Commission who wish to speak out about Azerbaijan’s political prisoners and fraudulent elections. Azerbaijani democracy activists accuse the country’s dictator, Ilham Aliyev, of manipulating the timing to ensure the EU is not critical of his regime’s appalling record on human rights and democracy.
Khadija Ismayilova is familiar with Aliyev’s tactics. ‘The TAP signing is perfect timing for Aliyev,’ she says. ‘We will hear hardly anything from the EU about human rights and election rigging until after that moment.’
Emma Hughes is a Red Pepper co-editor and a campaigner with Platform. She spent April in Baku meeting democracy activists. More on the planned mega-pipeline: www.platformlondon.org

Editorial: Anti-establishment politics done right

admin — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 10:00:08 +0000

‘My priority is a new political party and movement in this country that wants to stand up for the interests of ordinary people.’ These were the words of UKIP’s grinning frontman, Nigel Farage, on the BBC the weekend after UKIP won 139 new council seats in the local elections. During the interview, the man who so dislikes immigrants, the EU and wind turbines presented himself as genuinely anti-establishment, distinguishing his party from the elite and remote Westminster vacuum by emphasising the working-class background of some candidates and describing himself as ‘someone who wants to do something’ rather than ‘someone who wants to be something’.
Of course, Farage would love to be part of the Westminster elite every bit as much as the next grey-suited, privately-schooled City trader. His own background is about as establishment as you get. And it didn’t take much by way of dirt-digging to uncover some UKIP candidates as the knife-in-teeth baring holocaust deniers that are so familiar to sub-cultures of the right. It’s clear that UKIP is sprinkling the kind of people who might have flirted with the BNP a few years ago with Farage fairy dust and providing them with a place of amelioration.
Right-wing Tories are using UKIP’s election success as a convenient reason to advance their own anti-EU, anti-immigration agenda, but there are other elements of Farage’s success that are worth reflecting on. In particular, UKIP’s focus on issues that affect people’s daily lives; Farage’s frequent citing of class; and the way he has separated himself from the austerity-obsessed political mainstream. While this can all be dismissed as a cynical bandwagon hitch, Farage is adept at making it look sincere. In doing so he is occupying space that should be the terrain of the left.
The insipid ‘one nation’-ism Ed Miliband took from the Tories will go no way to establishing Labour as a party that can challenge the elite; it is just a bland endorsement of a slightly less painful cuts agenda. The Green Party is articulating something different: a vision of social and environmental justice that challenges the market economy, rather than being co-opted by it. Yet despite this, its councillors have still acted as austerity enforcers at the local level, albeit unwillingly.
Recently in Brighton and Hove, where a minority administration runs the first Green-led council in Britain, a dispute over low-paid council employees’ wages caused a rift between the local Green Party and Green council leader Jason Kitcat. The experiences in Brighton have not so far provided an inspiring example of the difference a Green council could make, especially when compared with the resistance of some Labour councillors during the 1980s battles over rate-capping (see Mike Marqusee, page 14).
Many parts of the left have sought to offer an anti-establishment alternative outside party political spheres. The Occupy movements formed in an explosion of popular energy that was directed against a corporate co-option of politics. Other campaigns, such as Boycott Workfare and Fuel Poverty Action, begin with people’s lived experiences (either of unemployment or the inability to heat their homes) and offer sharp critiques of the corporate capture of the state. Last year, Fuel Poverty Action held a demo with about 50 members of the Greater London Pensioners’ Association. The group, along with No Dash For Gas, recently attended the pensioners’ AGM, where a motion was passed that condemned both the deaths of thousands of people every year from fuel poverty and the extortionate profits of the big six energy companies.
Such grounded struggles are seen by many on the UK left as the foundation for wider change. With attacks on every front, local struggles are making links and, at least informally, see themselves as engaged in a wider, systemic resistance. Too often, though, there is a gulf between these groups and national initiatives that do not always pay enough attention to the transformative potential of what is emerging from grassroots groups.
Hilary Wainwright urges us to pay more attention to the strategic importance of the local. Potentially it is where the forces for radical and egalitarian change are able to reach out to a wider public, including some of the people UKIP appeals to. It is here that there is an underestimated potential for the left to challenge dominant ideas. But these struggles need support and wider platforms.
Farage only talks of taking on big business, but groups like Boycott Workfare and Fuel Poverty Action actually do so. When the People’s Assembly gathers on 22 June, the organisers would do well to make sure it is a space in which the demands of working-class communities are heard and where the people assembling are able to plan a resistance that challenges the day-to-day impacts of capital. That would be a real anti-establishment politics.

Egypt: The revolution is alive

admin — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 10:00:05 +0000

Protesters opposing Egypt’s president Mohamed Mursi demonstrate in front of the presidential palace. The placard reads: ‘Void’. Photo: Reuters
Emma Hughes The years of organisation that lead up to the revolution often get overlooked but you’ve been an activist in Egypt for many years. Can you speak about the organisational work that led to the revolution?
Ola Shahba This revolution was built on ten years of organising. In 2003, when there were protests about the Iraq war we occupied Tahrir Square, but no one heard about it because we had to flee. That was the first time anti-Mubarak chants were heard. After this a continuation of movements happened – the Kefaya Movement for Change during the 2005 election, the movement for judicial independence, the April 6 Youth Movement event in 2008, the anti-torture movement and student movement – so we’re building on all of those. I started organising with a workers’ movement umbrella called Tadamon, or ‘Solidarity’ in Arabic. I was also in the Revolutionary Socialist Organisation. I was involved in Youth for Justice and Freedom – this was the main youth movement that was represented in the revolution.
EH Who are you organising with now?
OS After Mubarak had gone we saw it as a moment when a leftist movement should be formed. We needed to mobilise outside Tahrir, we couldn’t just occupy Tahrir. Some of us decided to form a little organisation of revolutionary socialists called the Socialist Renewal Current. This current recognised that we need a party that will bring us all together. Society is not ready for a radical party and we’re not strong enough to have four or five parties between us, so we need to unite. It is a mistake to think that we’ll only start a revolution with a revolutionary party – the revolution already started!
So the Socialist Renewal Current co-founded a political party. It’s a wide left party and we are the radical front within the party. It’s called the Popular Socialist Alliance. I would rather it was just called the Popular Alliance as it doesn’t have a socialist programme. Nevertheless I’m proud of the programme because it clearly states how we see the country functioning and how we see social justice. We participated in the election with a coalition of others and won seven parliamentary seats.
EH Was participating in the elections a difficult decision?
OS It was a difficult experience. Many people were critical and said we should boycott the elections. We discussed boycotting but decided to enter. We decided if the masses are giving the election legitimacy by participating then it is important that we are there and the people listen to something different. We expected to gain two or three seats and we won seven seats. We were supported by many front-liners of the revolution because they know this list involves no money or influence from the old?regime.
EH What is it like being out on the streets now?
OS We’re facing challenges on the streets. Because it is no longer just confrontations between revolutionaries and the police or the army but it is also starting to become a citizen versus citizen confrontation. This is what happened in front of the presidential palace on 6 December when the Muslim Brotherhood moved their members and the Salafi Al-Nour party also moved their members. We started sitting in front of the palace and a few hours later confrontation started.
EH You were grabbed on that day – what happened?
OS I was kidnapped and beaten that day by the Muslim Brotherhood. They took me and another comrade from the front line. They accused us of killing members of the group, which is absurd – we were actually there to provide medical assistance. They grabbed us and 40 or 50 men started beating us. They took us to a cordon by the wall of the presidential palace; the men detaining us actually came from inside the palace. They continued beating us. I was sexually harassed.
There was a line of men who were Salafis demanding that we should be injured or killed to teach the revolutionaries to not dare to oppose the president. I was held for six hours but there were 40 men who were held for longer, 14 hours, and given to the police later. The police treated them as victims, not as accused men. I was the only woman, so there was a separate line of negotiation for me because the Salafis there were insisting that as a woman, who had co-operated with the other side, I had to be killed and couldn’t be handed to the police. Eventually comrades negotiated my release.
EH How do activists find the strength to carry on organising after experiences like that?
OS The situation is totally unfair in this county and the whole world. We have started something big and we can’t stop. We have lost comrades, and some of our comrades have lost their eyes. The price that has been paid is really huge but the hopes and achievements are also huge.
Yes, sometimes we face harder things than people in other countries, and sometimes we find ourselves in life-threatening situations, but who are we to complain? I would never have dreamt of a revolution starting in my lifetime, starting when I am organised and healthy enough to participate. So for me it’s not even negotiable that I should stop – and hopefully I won’t have to.
EH What would a finished Egyptian revolution look like?
OS The Egyptian government and the so-called international community would really like the revolution to be finished. They would like to go back to establishing trade and political relations. But this revolution isn’t finished. We have a right-wing government of Islamists ruling now but we’re actually pressuring, affecting and changing things. This is not a victorious revolution but it’s not a finished one – this revolution is alive!
This is not a left revolution – it is not that yet. And we on the left must recognise that. We’ve acquired no social justice – we need a state that has better worker laws, subsidised education, health insurance law, residency coverage for the citizens and so on.
EH Strategically, how can you achieve those aims?
OS By building alliances in the workers’ movement. We must have a strong connection with the workers’ movement to build a front that can achieve change. In the last three or four days of the sit-in in Tahrir it was the workers striking in their factories that tipped the balance of power in our favour. At the moment the workers’ movement is not close to leading the revolution, but that is our route to a successful conclusion.
EH How are you fighting against the privatisation and austerity measures stipulated by the IMF loan?
OS One of the challenges we’re facing is how to link the disastrous effects of the loan, privatisation and all the policies that Mubarak was implementing, and that the Muslim Brotherhood also believe should be implemented, to the revolutionary struggle. We are trying to organise on the ground and link these policies with the daily suffering of workers and explain how the loan will make Egyptians’ lives worse. We’re starting a campaign next week on the increase in prices and it will link with another campaign started months ago against the IMF loan.
EH What action can people in the UK take in solidarity with the Egyptian revolution?
OS Monitoring your own government and pointing out that they are siding with a government that is violating human rights. The other thing is working against the IMF loan, insisting that there are certain rules for a country to receive a loan and that vicious loans and vicious debts are not needed.
Also motions of solidarity when there are confrontations on the ground. We’ve always needed that. We’ve always been able to say we’re not being beaten alone in a dark alley – the world can see and the world will hold you accountable. That is very important: solidarity means a lot to the Egyptians.

If they can do it, we can too – cleaners get organised

admin — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:00:05 +0000

Photo: LL28 Photography
A crowd has gathered outside the British Medical Association (BMA) headquarters in London. Red flags fly in the wind as lively demonstrators hand leaflets to passers-by. Campaign literature explains their reasons. Despite the BMA being a trade union and campaigning body, the cleaners of the buildings from which it functions are subcontracted to a company that pays a poverty wage of £6.08 per hour. They are part of the army of thousands of cleaning staff who serve the capital in poorly-paid and insecure jobs for little-known contract cleaning companies.
The BMA outsources the cleaning of its buildings to the global ‘facilities management’ company Interserve. It offers the perennial outsourcing excuse that as a client it has no responsibility for the conditions of those employed by Interserve. In turn Interserve blames poverty pay on the contract conditions set by its clients. It forms a cycle of diminished responsibility.
Yet despite the argument that the money for pay rises can’t be found in such a highly competitive market, organised cleaners – and there has been a momentous increase in organisation in recent years – won’t back down. The fight is a moral one.
In the case of Interserve, the company recorded profits of £65 million last year; its directors shared a pay pot of £4 million. It has found itself taken to employment tribunals time and time again for pocketing staff’s holiday pay and for unlawful deductions in wages. Its chairman, incidentally, is Lord Blackwell, a Tory peer.
Hidden and ignored
‘A lot of these workers are hidden from public view and the companies like it that way. These workers really exist in the dark,’ says Stuart Dobson*, a regional organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union, which has been at the centre of several cleaners’ campaigns. ‘That’s another thing about the demonstrations – a demonstration’s not as powerful a tactic as a strike obviously but it’s very empowering to workers who feel hidden, who feel ignored.’
Many are migrant workers with insecure immigration status or language limitations, who do not have a support network in the UK – something that companies in the sector exploit. Stories abound about excessively hard work, cuts, dodgy contracts and long hours. Companies have been accused of a ‘bullying’ mentality.
One of the biggest problems is pay. Poverty pay has always existed but rising living costs are resulting in worse living conditions. The recent VAT increase has been compounded by significant price rises for necessities such as utilities and transport, particularly in London where fares have gone up substantially. Meanwhile, benefit cuts for in-work claimants will squeeze many low-paid workers even further. For the many working taxpayers with no recourse to public funds – mainly migrant workers – even the limited relief of in-work benefits is unavailable.
Suzanne Fenno*, a cleaner in London, describes the realities of life on the minimum wage: ‘You sit on a train, and you see people who are earning more than you . . . This is a very expensive town. We have a workforce who are unable get a travelcard, that can’t put food on the table for the kids. There are people who can’t come to work because they haven’t got the means to come.’
Big issue for unions
Organising low-paid workers has become a big issue for the larger unions. The Justice for Cleaners campaign involved Unite, Unison and the GMB, who had learned from the experience of the Justice for Janitors movement in the US. The Latin American Workers Association (LAWA) has also been very active since the movement began.
Union activity has been closely aligned with the Living Wage Campaign of Citizens UK (locally London Citizens), and campaigning has led to a string of successes. The Greater London Authority is a living wage employer and calculates the living wage rate annually. It currently stands at £8.30 per hour in London and £7.20 nationwide. Tube cleaners organised with the RMT transport union and in 2010 all London Underground cleaners, regardless of their contractor, won the living wage. Thirteen different London universities are now paying cleaners a living wage. Other victories include signing up London hospitals and universities, major city financial firms and making the 2012 Olympics pay the living wage.
Such successes have challenged assumptions about union organising. Once the outsourcing battle was lost many unions decided they were unable to represent contracted staff. Some of the poorest paid employees, such as cleaners, were denied union membership, facilities and staff time. Continued outsourcing has meant that unions are being forced to find ways to organise with all employees if they wish to remain a relevant force in public sector institutions.
Some union reps already recognised the moral, as well as the strategic, imperative for organising with outsourced workers. At London Metropolitan University a pay review in 2010 provided an opportunity to demand a living wage for all workers. Management agreed to meet with cleaners, catering and security staff, who were all on poverty pay, and conceded to Unison’s demands for a living wage.
At the time of this victory relatively few of the workers affected were unionised. But those cleaners and caterers who got involved continued to organise on the back of this success and membership rapidly increased. Ninety per cent of catering staff are now in Unison and they have since achieved further pay increases for some staff.
In March cleaners at London Met took part in their first public demonstration. They were taking action in support of their colleague Stephane Marais, who was suspended after he walked out of a meeting with management because there was no union representative present. Recognising this as an attack on their recent unionisation, cleaners stated they were ‘all Stephane’ and wore masks with his face at the demo. Stephane was swiftly reinstated.
Similar successes have been achieved at SOAS and the University of East London. At the University of London’s Senate House, where negotiations to secure missing overtime payments and a living wage dragged on for months, cleaners organised their own unofficial walk out. They were supported by local Unison activists, if not by the union. This action resulted in them winning the living wage and back pay.
Sustained organising
Max Watson, chair of Unison’s London Metropolitan University branch, says the key to success was building relationships of trust. Long term alliances have given previously unorganised workers the chance to build up their own activist base, elect representatives and become self-sufficient: ‘There are a variety of experiences but it’s been most effective where organising has been on a sustained basis. There are places where the living wage was won but activists left no legacy of unionisation, so the wins could be undermined. Winning and moving on doesn’t work.’
Cleaners are now proactively fighting for further improvements. At SOAS they have been demanding access to pensions, holiday and sick pay, the same basic rights as in-house staff. Low paid workers organising with the RMT are calling for an increase in the London living wage to £10 per hour and for cleaners with contractor ISS to be brought in-house when the contract expires in March 2013.
Despite the advances made by unions there are still many cleaners who receive poverty pay. A recent campaign against John Lewis showed discrepancies exist even within companies. Cleaners at the Oxford Street branch secured a pay rise after strikes and demonstrations gained media coverage but now staff at other branches are asking why the benefits haven’t extended to them.
Recognising the gaps in cleaner organising, the IWW and now the Industrial Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) have started organising with cleaners, arranging protests outside the Old Bailey, London Guildhall, Société Générale and Thomson Reuters week after week.
A campaign has been started at the flagship Peter Jones store in Sloane Square, also part of the John Lewis partnership. A series of meetings have been held with the management by IWW workers demanding pay equal to what Oxford Street workers now receive. They turned to the IWW because, as one cleaner put it, ‘We think they can help us out, because they helped them over there to get to where they are at the moment.’
Campaigns have not been easy – striking and holding demonstrations and sit-ins is risky for employees. In recent years unions have fought for reinstatement of workers sacked for union activity. In other cases, such as at Société Générale, employers have given with one hand, agreeing to a living wage, while taking away with the other, in the form of cuts to staff and increased working hours. A new campaign was instigated to fight the changes.
Immigration status
Both the IWW and the IWGB are committed to solidarity with all workers regardless of immigration status. They seek to foster community links through social and cultural events and self-help initiatives around language, immigration or housing help. Other unions have also recognised the challenges facing migrant workers. Some branches of Unison have paid for language lessons for their members in recognition of the problems even highly skilled workers can face if they don’t speak English.
Some employers have counter-attacked with alleged collusion with the UK Border Agency (UKBA). Members of the IWW have experienced deportation threats, dawn raids and going into workplace meetings only to find UKBA officers waiting for them.
Stuart Dobson says UKBA’s apparent role in policing workers (see page 10) is symptomatic of the border regime: ‘It’s intended to keep people frightened. It’s intended as a mechanism to stop people organising. That is how they’re using it.’
The sector is being changed, target by target, but it’s a slow process. The cleaners’ campaigns have not halted what the PCS union aptly described as employers’ ‘grotesque race to the bottom’. Cleaners at the British Museum, who organised with PCS and Unite, went on strike in October over plans to contract out their work.
Despite the continued outsourcing of low paid workers, the cleaners’ movement has made significant gains and in the process reignited trade unionism. Real success will come if this is replicated in other low paid sectors without a tradition of union representation. As Stuart Dobson says: ‘We are seeing bigger sections of the working classes call for more militant action, call for economic action. And the thing with the cleaners is that their bravery is absolutely inspirational. You’re dealing with people on the lowest pay, lowest job security, outsourced, contracts changing all the time. What I think you’ll see is other groups of workers following suit and saying, “Well if they can do it, we can do it as well.”’
* Names have been changed

Why the future isn’t working

admin — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 14:00:56 +0000

Greece’s ‘troika’ of creditors – the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – has demanded that the Athens government introduce a six-day working week as part of the terms for the country’s second bailout. Those Greek workers who still have full time jobs already work the longest hours in the EU. Yet now the austerity technocrats are ordering them to work even longer and harder to pay off the bankers’ debts.
It is not just in Greece that longer hours are heralded as a solution to capitalism’s crisis. Britannia Unchained, the recent book by five Tory MPs from the 2010 intake, claimed that ‘the British are among the worst idlers in the world’. They bemoaned the country’s low work hours and early retirement age and ended by lamenting ‘the lost virtue of hard graft’. The authors render invisible the vast amount of labour that takes place outside official working hours.
On 20 October the TUC is holding a mass march for ‘a future that works’. There are many problems with work today: unemployment, low wages, precarious and temporary employment. Struggles for ‘more and better jobs’ are important. That is why we begin our ‘beyond work’ section by surveying current trends in industrial planning and look at the limits and omissions of these.
But even jobs with relatively ‘decent’ terms and conditions often monopolise too much of people’s lives. It isn’t just Britannia Unchained that valorises hard work and long hours – the work ethic pervades current thinking. Work, as defined by the labour market, is accepted as an obligation of citizenship – and the main way in which people are offered a role in society.
People’s desire to contribute to the common good, or their dreams of accomplishment, are only offered realisation through waged work – even though its prime purpose is not to produce social wealth but private surplus value: profit. Work has occupied the imaginations of both the political right and the left. When envisaging the future, social movements should not just consider how to make work better but also how to move beyond the wage contract.
The future cannot be postponed; it must be built today. If we want an alternative tomorrow we must find a way to reach it in our current struggles. To borrow Kathi Weeks’ phrase we must make ‘utopian demands’ – ones which offer concrete goals but can also act as a bridge towards transformation.
Such ideas are easy to describe and far harder to put into practice, but demands that point to a world beyond the wage already exist. Calling for shorter working hours without a reduction in wages is just such an idea. A 30-hour working week would help address some of the problems of underemployment and overwork. In addition it also challenges accepted ideas about the role of work in relation to other activities. While a shorter week may seem a moderate demand, it opens up new questions and critiques, and therefore offers a possible way towards more radical aspirations.
In our section looking beyond work Red Pepper also offers some moderate demands with potentially radical ends – demands like food sovereignty which aim to give people control over the material elements of their life and collectively reclaim food from the market. Or a citizen’s income which, like the women’s movement, recognises the labour involved in reproduction and also takes an imaginative step further, to think of a life outside of wage work.
We explore neighbourhood assemblies in Spain, which are beginning to root themselves in the day to day organising of local activities: spawning co-ops and action groups. Such creative new forms of co-operation outside of the workplace open up the possibility of a wider challenge to capital.
And in our essay, Hilary Wainwright highlights examples of trade union activity in the workplace that aren’t just organising for better terms and conditions but challenging the very purpose of work. She explores what it would mean for industrial policies to be devised with the purpose of releasing the social creativity of labour, whether in the workplace or not.
The disparate ideas we point to are connected by a creativity that is neither proprietary nor patented, by a labour that is neither individual nor alienated. The crisis of capital is not abating, and in this moment of post-Occupy strategising an imaginative leap beyond work can link current goals with future hopes.
Subcomandante Marcos said the society for which the Zapatistas struggle would be like a cinema programme in which they could choose to live a different film every day – and that the reason they have risen in revolt is that for the past 500 years they have been forced to live the same film over and over again. We must look beyond the screen of work to other possibilities and horizons. An alternative future is not based on working, but enabling creative and productive activity to occur beyond selling our creativity on the market.

What are they building in there?

emma — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 09:50:44 +0000

The art activist collective Liberate Tate is asking people to join them for a mysterious event in London this Saturday (7th July).
Liberate Tate aims ‘to free art from the grips of the oil industry’. They focus on BP’s sponsorship of the Tate arguing that the oil company’s sponsorship of this cultural institution is key in providing it with a ‘social license to operate’. In Summer 2010 Tate provided a forceful demonstration of this. As oil was still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s Deepwater Horizon, Tate held its annual Summer Party which celebrated twenty years of BP sponsorship. Liberate Tate also turned up creating their own tribute to BP in the form of an artistic ‘oil’ spill.
BP’s sponsorship of the arts has been attracting increasing controversy over the last few weeks as the ‘Reclaim Shakespeare Company‘have taken over stages to highlight BP’s sponsorship of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Liberate Tate’s past performances have featured black veils, helium balloons bearing dead fish and a naked person covered in ‘oil’ but Saturday’s event promises to be bigger than anything seen before. To add to the intrigue they’ve created this Tom Waits inspired video. What indeed are they building? If you want to find out add a mobile phone number here to find out the location and wait for the fun to begin on Saturday!

A new Cymru – Leanne Wood interviewed

admin — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 10:00:50 +0000

Leanne Wood is on the move, travelling by car to Aberystwyth. She’ll spend the morning meeting Plaid Cymru local election candidates before driving down the Welsh coast to Aberteifi (Cardigan, as it’s called in English) to visit a community co-operative. The day is typical for Plaid’s newly elected leader. In the leadership campaign she was appearing at meetings all over Wales, and since her victory she’s been on the road again visiting hopeful candidates. Her enthusiasm for meeting people and talking face to face partly accounts for how she came from behind to win the leadership. It also helps explain why Plaid’s membership increased by 23 per cent during the leadership race.
She didn’t manage to repeat the success in the local elections. Plaid lost councillors instead of gaining them, including in Caerphilly, the one Welsh authority where they’d been in control. Labour tapped into concerns about public sector job losses and Plaid’s vote suffered as a result. The party isn’t going to be turning on its new star just yet though: Wood was only elected six weeks ago and Plaid has barely begun its process of renewal.
As Wood told party activists after the results: ‘We know from the findings of our internal review, Camu ’Mlaen, what we need to do to turn Plaid Cymru into a successful party capable of making inroads into new territory. Plaid Cymru activists must now be ready to roll up their sleeves to carry out the hard work needed to rebuild our internal party structures.’
Camu ’Mlaen (Moving Forward) was an internal review carried out after the 2011 Welsh Assembly elections. Plaid had just lost seats they won from Labour in 2007 and dropped from being the second to the third party in the assembly (after Labour and the Conservatives). The election results were particularly poor as Plaid had been in coalition with Labour during the previous term. Camu ’Mlaen argued that Plaid had not succeeded in distinguishing itself from the Welsh Labour party, and called on the party to define and articulate a vision of decentralised community socialism to contrast with Labour’s centralist approach.
In many ways Leanne Wood’s election fulfils the recommendations of this review: there can be no doubt that she offers a vision of decentralised socialism. Her Twitter feed sums up her position: ‘Plaid Cymru. Welsh Socialist and Republican. Environmentalist. Anti-racist. Feminist. Valleys.’
In South Wales she is known as a woman who lives by her politics. She has supported activists and striking workers, spoken out about police brutality and attended many a demonstration. Her actions have caused controversy on occasion, most famously when she was expelled from the assembly for refusing to retract a statement calling the queen ‘Mrs Windsor’. She lives in (and represents) the former coal mining valley where she was born: the Rhondda. She recently turned down the extra £23,000 she was entitled to as party leader (which would have put her annual wage at £77,000). Her continued connection to Welsh social movements ensured her election as leader was greeted with delight, especially on her home turf of South Wales, where anarchists and local SWP members alike described her success as the victory of a comrade.
Left expectations
Wood spends her journey to Aberystwyth talking to me. We begin by discussing the Welsh left’s expectations for her leadership. She is clear that her first priority is to represent the members of Plaid: ‘The Plaid Cymru leadership have appeared distant and I think that’s why the membership now have opted for me. I’ve said that I will honour and respect conference decisions and take the views of the membership very seriously. That’s the basis of democracy and that’s what I intend to do. But if Plaid members are up for going down the route of a more radical politics, and I think that’s what my vote reflected, then we’re in for a really interesting time in Wales.’
Wood’s victory does indeed mark a departure from the traditional party leadership. Not only is she the first female Plaid leader, she is the first not to be fluent in Welsh and the first, at least since Dafydd Elis Thomas in the 1980s, to so clearly define herself as socialist. Plaid remains a broad coalition that includes conservative cultural nationalists, but it is clear that the left of the party is now setting the agenda.
For Wood the key policy area is the economy: ‘We’d focus on a long-term job creation plan to enable people to earn an income because without jobs you can’t have anything. So I think addressing Wales’ economic problems and the inequalities both between Wales and other parts of the UK and the EU and also inequality within Wales is key. What we need is a US-style “new deal”, like they did in the Thirties in the United States, but for us it should be around renewable energy and food production.’
Economic greenprint
Decentralisation is crucial to Wood’s economic vision. Last year she wrote A Greenprint for the Valleys, in which she set out why credit unions and co-operatives are central to financial renewal in the upper part of the valleys. It’s an idea she’s keen to expand on.
‘Co-operatives have a great potential at this time. If the workforce have more of a say in the way their industry is run, that creates a more successful organisation. I think people need to have a say in the work they do. In the past the answer for the Welsh economy was attracting companies on the basis that we can provide cheaper labour than elsewhere – and so in recent years where labour has become cheaper in other places those companies have up and left. If we can encourage more indigenous, worker-controlled businesses they’re more likely to stay.’
Wood cites the Mondragon Co-operative as an attractive example because of the number of people it employs, but she argues such a model might not be suitable for Wales: ‘I would rather see smaller units of people connected up instead of one big company. I think Wales lends itself to that kind of organisation because we’re quite a small country. But there’s a vast rural area within Wales as well, so you could have small co-operatives in towns and villages that would have a huge impact in terms of unemployment because we’re talking about small numbers of people living in those places anyway. And it would help to secure the viability of those communities over the long term, because without jobs those communities can’t be viable.’
Wood doesn’t just want worker involvement – community participation is also important. ‘If you look at Denmark,’ she says, ‘wind farms can only get planning permission if the community owns a certain percentage, so the money is plied back into community facilities like youth clubs, libraries – that’s the sort of model I favour. Public services are being run down in many areas and removed from some places. So where these big gaps start appearing in the welfare net people need to come together to fill these gaps.
‘There’s obviously the danger of the “big society” agenda here, which I think is a massive con because that is about trying to reduce the state, so we have to be wary not to fall into the traps set for us by the Conservatives. But with, for example, the closing of the Remploy factories [a state‑owned firm that employs mostly disabled workers], we’re losing seven factories – what’s going to happen to the workers in those factories? Who’s going to keep an eye on them? How can we ensure that the communities they live in are supportive communities? Maybe by developing cooperatives in the community we could have a diversity of people in work because they’re supported.’
Community control
Community involvement means people having control over basic resources. Decentralised food and energy production is particularly important, Wood says: ‘At the moment the assembly only has powers to determine energy consents up to 50 megawatts, so we want full power over all energy consents for Wales. But I’d like to go further and give responsibility to communities for generating their own energy and becoming self-sufficient in renewable energy as far as they possibly can. For example, [we could say] to community X (however you define it), if you can produce 50 per cent of your own energy renewably then all of the people living in that area can have 10 per cent off their council tax. But we can only do that if we have all of the powers.’
‘Food production is the other issue,’ she continues. ‘We’re at the end of many supply chains in Wales, so if the price of oil continues to go up then that’s going to have an impact on food. We should be growing our own food for the population in Wales.’
During her tours of Wales, Wood has visited some of the growing number of co-operatives that already exist. She argues these examples should be replicated throughout the country: ‘Last week I went to visit a social enterprise on Caia Park council estate, a very large sprawling council estate in Wrexham. It began when a group of women came together, single parents from the estate, and they set up the creche first. There are now various operations: a community cafe, a wood workshop, a plant nursery, a toddlers’ creche. They’re employing 70 people, all from the local estate. If that sort of model could be replicated it could make a serious dent in our employment problem.’
Wood says her commitment to worker and community cooperatives is something she’s inherited from her predecessors in Plaid Cymru and the Welsh people in general: ‘It does go back a long way. Some of the early thinkers in Plaid Cymru on the economy were DJ and Noelle Davies and they very much came at the question from an anti-big state perspective. So we talk about decentralist socialism. We want power devolved down to communities and people to take decisions as much as possible at a local level, but that has to balanced, for example, by things like the NHS, which should be run nationally.
‘We only need to look back in our history in Wales . . . all of our communities were built by people coming together, putting their money, time and labour together and creating the institutions we have today – miners’ institutions, working men’s halls, libraries, they were built by people coming together. That is Welsh society. We’ve had our own version of it for decades, maybe even centuries.’
Nuclear division
Wood’s Greenprint document presents a manifesto for how Valley communities could mobilise this tradition to reverse the structural neglect that has created decades of economic decline. It’s a vision that has inspired Plaid, uniting it around this plan.
In other policy areas, though, the party is divided. Nuclear power proved particularly contentious in the leadership race, with candidates fighting over whether a new power station on Ynys Môn (Anglesey) should be given Plaid support. Although Plaid is officially anti-nuclear, the promise of new jobs saw rival candidate Dafydd Elis-Thomas supporting the power station. Wood remained vehemently opposed and when she won the election she shifted the former leader from environment spokesperson to food, fisheries and rural affairs, removing him from responsibility for the power station decision.
‘Some members have promoted the building of a new power station because of the dire situation with jobs on Ynys Môn,’ says Wood. ‘If you look at the GDP figures they are horrendous; there’s about 58 per cent of [average per capita] UK GDP on Anglesey. So the jobs question is the big driver. But my argument has always been “yes, jobs, but not at any cost”. So the Real Independent Energy paper I wrote was an attempt to provide alternative solutions for jobs in Anglesey that didn’t involve nuclear. We could create an energy island on Anglesey, really pushing on the marine renewable energy sector like they have in Scotland, and there could be more jobs created than there would from a nuclear power station.’
Another question that plagues Plaid is how to increase support for an independent Wales. Wood’s commitment to socialism is matched by her belief in liberation nationalism, but it’s a belief much less fervently held by the country at large. Support for Welsh independence currently stands at only 10 per cent.
Wood says Plaid’s success will hinge on the economic case for independence: ‘People fear that we would be much worse off economically if we were independent and so we have to address that. I would argue that Wales can’t prosper unless we become independent, unless we have the lever of control in our hands. Our poverty isn’t inevitable – we don’t have to have a weak economy – but our effort needs to go into making that case.’
Voting for cuts
Despite arguing against the cuts, Plaid Cymru councillors have voted for reduced budgets. While the Socialist Party of Wales and others, including some trade unions, have pushed the Welsh government to set a needs-based budget, Plaid refused to support the campaign. Wood says it was a pragmatic decision.
‘There’s no mechanism for voting down the settlement as it comes from Westminster,’ she says. ‘So [regarding] the idea of setting the needs-based budget, I just don’t see how it could practically be done. There’s no independent means of raising income through the assembly, no tax-raising powers, and that’s why we’re pushing for fiscal powers now so that we can raise money to plug the gap. And that’s the difference between [us and], say, Liverpool council in the 1980s, who tried to stand against cuts – they could independently raise their own revenue.’
Like the Green Party in Brighton, Plaid is struggling to put clear ground between its choices in power and Labour’s ‘management of the cuts’. Wood says the key issue is where the cuts fall: ‘What I’m seeing is that the people on the lowest income are bearing the brunt, whereas the people at the top of the tree aren’t taking a hit. If you had a maximum pay policy for the public sector you could then save money at the top end. So I wouldn’t take a position of absolutely no cuts.
‘The Wales Audit Office paid a package to one of their senior officers of £750,000 and those sorts of fat cat pay deals do need to be addressed. We’ve also got a situation in the Rhondda Cynon Taf council where the Labour leader of the council has got four jobs, earning more than £100,000. The same authority has ripped up the contracts of their lowest paid workers and imposed a wage cut of 40 per cent on some of them. It’s that sort of inequality that needs to be addressed.’
Tax and business
Cannily perhaps, Wood refuses to commit herself on tax levels. ‘We want power over all taxes in Wales so we can determine the best way to stimulate the economy,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to get into a debate about what levels of tax would be set, that’s a matter for discussion when we have those powers. It will depend on the particular problem we were trying to tackle.’
Nor does she want to come across as hostile to business. For example, although the Greenprint document strongly argues in favour of co-operatives, Plaid also supports giving Welsh brands financial assistance. ‘I do support government support for business,’ says Wood. ‘But it’s the type of support and business we need to look at. I would like to see support linked to ethical businesses, businesses that treat their workers well, as well as being Welsh businesses. I would prefer the loans approach rather than grants, so that that money can be put back into the system and recycled.’
To argue this case convincingly, Plaid will need to closely define the size, organisational structure and remit of an ‘ethical company’. If the party is serious about supporting co-operatives, then the criteria should surely include some elements of worker control.
Plaid’s socialist credentials are yet to be proved, but Leanne Wood’s victory marks a significant step in establishing Plaid as a party of the left. It also ensures there won’t be a repeat of 2007, when Plaid entered into coalition talks with the Conservatives – a move that horrified many Plaid voters and members. Wood’s success will also put pressure on Welsh Labour to maintain its policy of keeping ‘clear red water’ between Welsh and Westminster Labour.
Wood is unequivocal that her role is to represent the views of Plaid members. Although she favours a more radical direction for the party, she will not head that way without grassroots support. When I ask Wood how she’d suggest the people of Wales should spend their jubilee holiday, the woman who has rejected an invitation to take part in ‘Mrs Windsor’s’ jubilee visit laughingly reminds me that Plaid does not have a policy on republicanism.
‘People should spend it in the way they feel most comfortable. If you want to participate in the celebrations that’s okay, but if you don’t that’s fine too.’ She pauses, before adding, ‘Personally, I won’t be hanging the bunting out.’

Murdoch is unfit and improper – but how do we get rid of all the press barons?

admin — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 10:00:15 +0000

Emma Hughes
It is the details that make the Leveson inquiry so fascinating – among them the publication of emails revealing that the Conservatives and News Corporation used the code name ‘Project Rubicon’ to refer to the BSkyB bid. The point of no return was never reached, thanks to the efforts of those who exposed the phone hacking scandal, but market influence over media content continues regardless.
While the Murdochs have been declared unfit to own a media empire, what the scandal really shows is how unfit our media system is for a functioning democracy. The press is often cited as a crucial component in the ‘public sphere’: a space where people can freely discuss societal problems and influence political action. This has only ever been an ideal – the mainstream media always operated on an exclusionary basis – but commercialisation has greatly increased this trait.
Market values dictate that if you want people to hear your views you have to promote them. This is precisely the reason why the PR industry exists. Consumer capitalism dominates both economic and cultural space; its logic restricts alternative viewpoints. While our media are held captive by neoliberalism they can never serve democracy.
The Murdochs are finally being held to account, and that is worth celebrating, but we should not indulge ourselves by thinking that our media system has fundamentally changed. As James Curran and Donnacha DeLong argue, if we want a free press, we’re going to have to fight for it. The Leveson inquiry is the start of that struggle, not the end.

James Curran
There seems to be general agreement that the reign of the Murdochs is over. Peter Oborne, the Telegraph’s consistently insightful commentator, exults that the air of public life is now cleaner. Those close to Ed Miliband crow with seeming justification that the Labour leader changed the political weather by taking on the Murdoch empire. The malignant influence of Rupert Murdoch in coarsening public life, presiding over a network of backdoor political influence and pushing his Tea Party views wherever possible through his media empire, has seemingly been exorcised.
This view may be right if the Murdoch dynasty sells up its UK press group, if Ofcom recommends a reduction of its BSkyB holdings and, above all, if Murdoch runs into legal difficulties in the US. But this is a lot of ‘ifs’. Meanwhile, the Murdochs have a plurality of voting shares in News Corp, and a lot of influence still to dispose – something not lost on the wily Scottish nationalist leader, Alex Salmond, who has continued his courtship with them even as Leveson unfolds.
It is also argued that the rise of the internet and social media have eroded the Murdochs’ power based on press and television. This is a view that Rupert Murdoch has publicly endorsed. It makes his power more acceptable by portraying it as a thing of the past.
This is enormously misleading. Leading newspapers and TV organisations have established very successful news websites, supported by cross-subsidies, large news-gathering resources and prominent brand names. In 2011, these ‘legacy’ media and content aggregators accounted for all 10 of the most visited news websites in the UK, and nine out of 10 in the US. Content aggregators like Google tend to give prominence to mainstream rather than alternative news sources. Appearing on the first page of search results, these mainstream sources are the ones that tend to be consumed.
Even if the Murdoch family is vanquished, the conditions that gave rise to its influence have not fundamentally changed. Ownership of the press is highly concentrated. Politicians, with party machines hobbled by loss of membership, and now arousing distrust rather than stable party loyalties, will continue to need favourable press coverage.
The mere changing of the media guard will not eliminate the underlying structures that give rise to the disproportionate influence exerted by media magnates. If the Murdochs sell up their UK press group, they will find a buyer – because News International not only still makes money as a single entity, it also, as the largest British national press group, offers a platform for political influence. Its sale will merely introduce a new entrant in a long line of press oligarchs, to join Rothermere (Mail), the Barclay brothers (Telegraph), and Richard Desmond (Express).
That is why we need to shrink media moguls’ power through effective anti-monopoly controls. There should be a limit of 15 per cent on control of the total revenue of the core media industry. In the case of designated sub-markets, market share of more than 15 per cent (up to a ceiling of 30 per cent) should incur public service obligations. These should be content-neutral and concerned with process. Their aim should be to promote internal pluralism, and limit the centralisation of power within media organisations (by, for example, introducing a conscience clause in journalists’ contract of employment, and securing staff representation on the board of directors).
Hoping that the Murdoch phenomenon will go away with the personal humbling of Rupert Murdoch is wishful thinking. We need to tackle the conditions that give rise to the Murdochs of this world in the first place. And that means the centralisation and concentration of press and media power in Britain – far greater than in Germany or the US – needs to be curbed.
James Curran is chair of the Coordinating Committee for Media Reform

Donnacha DeLong
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the end of the Wapping dispute. After 13 months of strike action, the dispute by the print unions ended in defeat in February 1987. Murdoch had won; the unions were gone from News International.
However, 2012 is also the year when the unions returned to Wapping. The first NUJ chapel since the dispute began in 1986 has been formed in the Times. And, more surprisingly, in his evidence to the Leveson inquiry on 26 April, Rupert Murdoch himself said that journalists were free to join the NUJ and if a majority of journalists wanted to do so, he’d accept their democratic decision and recognise the union.
What a distance we’ve come in a year in which Murdoch’s bid for full control of BSkyB collapsed, the phone hacking scandal led to the closure of the News of the World and the establishment of the Leveson inquiry, and the Press Complaints Commission abolished itself. And it’s not over yet. Major politicians including Cameron, Blair, Brown and Jeremy Hunt are still to appear before the inquiry as I write. Who knows what further skeletons will fall out of the closet when they do?
But Murdoch isn’t the only problem in the media. While Ofcom looks at whether the Murdochs are fit and proper persons to own broadcast media in the UK, another proprietor was given a green light to do so only two years ago. Richard Desmond, whose journalists twice complained to the PCC about the paper they write for, in 2001 and 2004, owns the Daily Express and Daily Star. In 2006, the NUJ chapel rose up and prevented publication of a page mocking Islam. Yet Desmond, despite this, was regarded as ‘fit and proper’ to buy Channel 5 in 2010.
Elsewhere major newspaper groups – Johnston Press, Trinity Mirror and Newsquest – have been sucking the lifeblood out of the local newspaper sector and, in Trinity Mirror’s case, the Mirror newspapers. Staffing cuts year on year for nigh on a decade have decimated the ability of these papers to cover the news and have eaten into their circulations. Many are still profitable, but not profitable enough to pay off the insane debts these companies have built up with years of bad investments.
Enough is enough. It’s time for people to come together and rebuild the media on our terms. No more monopolies, no more huge multinational corporations – proper media for the people and owned by the people.
Donnacha DeLong is president of the NUJ and an online journalist

Fence Records: ‘We’re not trendy, we’re not competing, we just do our thing’

admin — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:16:30 +0000

Hailing from the village of Cellardyke, East Fife, the Fence Records co-op of coastal-dwelling musicians has created a unique style of electro-infused folk. While the artists record their own material, they continue the folk tradition of sharing songs among the collective and often collaborate live.
KT Tunstall, a former member of Fence, once complained that they lacked commercial ambition. The collective chose to ignore such criticism and last year’s Mercury nomination for King Creosote and Jon Hopkins’ Diamond Mine proved the musical wisdom in chasing originality not commerciality.
Could you start off by telling us a bit about your music?
I record music as The Pictish Trail and sometimes as Silver Columns with my friend Adem. I started writing songs in about 2001, and released a mini-album on Fence Records in 2002. As soon as I left university, I went full time at Fence – organising gigs for the artist roster at first, and then gradually taking on more label responsibilities. I’m now co-director of Fence Records Ltd… oooh!
How did Fence Records get started?
Well… The label was started up by Kenny Anderson (aka King Creosote) in around 1996. He’d been in a few moderately successful bluegrass bands and had toured all over the UK and Europe throughout the early nineties… but suddenly found himself without a band to play with. He purchased a Fostex digital 8-track machine and one of the first generation CD-R burners, and started recording lo-fi albums, playing all the instruments himself.
Burning copies of these albums, individually one by one, putting them in hand-assembled artwork, and selling them in the CD shop he had a day job with, he started a label.
Kenny released recordings by his brothers (Lone Pigeon and Pip Dylan), attracted the attention of his other musician friends – James Yorkston, Billy Pilgrim, Gummi Bako – and all of a sudden St Andrews had its own music scene. The Fence Collective was born, and 40 albums down the line, King Creosote still releases music through Fence (and also Domino Records).
Cellardyke must be a very musical village! Is the label still run out of there?
Yup, the label is still based in the East Neuk of Fife. Kenny’s based in Crail, and I live in Cellardyke most of the time (but I’m spending increasing amounts of time on the island of Eigg, in the Hebrides). The internet has made it possible for us to operate outside of the city scene – everyone all over the world is only an email away. I think the fact that we’re from somewhere quite remote actually attracts folk to our label – we’re not trendy, we’re not competing, we just do our thing.
Fence is an inspiring alternative to the multinational record company, so it’s useful to hear how such alternatives are practically organised. How is Fence set up?
Fence now operates as a limited company – of which Kenny and myself are directors. We take dividends from the business, and we both have an equal share. As we’re both musicians in our own right we tend to focus on our own careers, and this tends to steer how the business is run. Following a Mercury nomination last year, Kenny’s profile has been raised dramatically, which has meant he’s been a lot busier with King Creosote stuff. This has been great for Fence, as he is the label’s biggest ambassador. I’ve spent most of the past year working on Fence events that can harness this new audience.
It’s not a one man show, though. Kate Canaveral has been helping to run our webshop, which is increasingly becoming a full-time job. David Galletly, a fantastic artist from Glasgow, has done a lot of work for us too, as has our pal Hardsparrow, and Gummi Bako.
You describe Fence as having a do-it-yourself work ethic. How does that inform the day-to-day running of the label?
The label is very much cottage industry – we all work from our respective homes. We used to burn CD-Rs and spraypaint/stamp all the artwork individually, so in that respect we were very DIY. We now have things manufactured by other companies but the day-to-day running of the business is still done from our homes. It’s fine, unless you have to wait in all day for a delivery.
Does Fence enable artists to make a living out of music who might not be able to ‘go professional’ otherwise?
I think we help. We don’t offer our acts any advances or anything like that but we try and give them a platform so that they can make music their life. Not all of our acts want to do music for a living, though. It’s a very competitive, heartless industry at times.
The most important part of any business is ideas. If you don’t have new ones, then you’re fucked. It doesn’t matter how uncommercial or how weird the idea is. As long as you’re consistently trying to innovate the way you communicate with people, you’ll do well.
With the increasing professionalisation of the arts there’s a danger that culture, be it music, literature or art, is left to the ‘professionals’. Fence seems more participative – how do you encourage people to create culture for themselves rather than just consume it?
We’re approachable, I guess. I think the live events that we put on really show how grassroots this all is – and how easy it is to share music with one another by supporting fellow musicians and promoting their music. I know we’ve inspired a bunch of other labels to start because they’ve told me. It’s a great thing.
Some Fence artists have signed to other record labels (King Creosote, James Yorkston) but are still very much involved in the Fence Collective. Does it devalue Fence?
It makes Fence stronger. As a label, we can only do so much. There’s very little infrastructure to Fence. We can only get a certain amount of attention from the press and radio and the public at large. When one of our acts signs to a bigger label that is the greatest advert for us because we’re always keen to keep our association and friendship with the act.
When did Fence start putting on festivals?
Kenny ran all-day events called Sunday socials way back in the early noughties. They were incredible. It’d be in a pub, free entry, they’d start around 2pm, and it’d be live music from Fence Collective folk until the bar shut. Very drunken affairs.
What festivals have you got lined up this year?
Quite a few things, actually but the next two are called ‘Eye O’ the Dug’ and ‘Away Game’. Eye O’ the Dug is happening in St Andrews in April, over the 14th and 15th – tickets available from the Fence Records website. Away Game is happening on the island of Eigg in July – tickets have already sold out. They are both going to be amazing, the line-ups are phenomenal.
The people who live on the Isle of Eigg have an inspirational story – securing community ownership of Eigg after years of insecure tenure…
We love Eigg, and all who live in her. They’re a great community – and big party lovers! The islanders throw their own event in June to celebrate the ‘buy-out’ and it’s a beautiful thing. Away Game isn’t directly related to that but the island is the perfect setting. Great people.

‘The government may have trampled over democracy but people will still be squatting’

admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:15:48 +0000

A last-minute change to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill in November criminalised squatting in residential buildings. The government announced the additional clause just six days before the vote, making serious campaigning against criminalisation impossible. But the government’s haste may yet prove its downfall. Parliament has produced an unclear piece of law that may not stand up to legal scrutiny.
Paul Reynolds, a SQUASH (Squatters Action for Secure Homes) activist, describes the legislation as ‘the criminalisation of the homeless in a housing crisis’. There are currently 700,000 empty properties in the UK, and 600,000 people facing homelessness, which increased by 17 per cent last year. According to Crisis, 40 per cent of homeless people have slept in disused buildings to avoid sleeping rough. The new legislation will criminalise people who are already vulnerable.
SQUASH was resurrected in May this year, having started when previous attempts to criminalise squatting were tabled in the 1990s. The campaign involves a broad coalition of groups, including Crisis, the Empty Homes Agency, lawyers, activists and squatters themselves. It focused its efforts on getting people to take part in the government’s consultation. Their success was phenomenal: 96 per cent of respondents expressed concern about criminalisation, including the police, magistrates and even one landlords’ association. Just 25 members of the public responded to say they were concerned about squatting, compared with 2,126 who expressed concern about the harm caused by criminalisation.
The Ministry of Justice declared that although ‘the statistical weight of responses was against taking action on squatting’, it had taken a ‘qualitative rather than a quantitative’ approach as so many responses (90 per cent) were received in support of SQUASH’s campaign. Yet even if these are discounted, five out of six individual respondents were still against criminalisation. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ commented SQUASH campaigner Joseph Blake. ‘They’re completely ignoring the results of their own consultation.’
Headlines in some newspapers have suggested that squatters pose a significant threat to home owners. Yet it is almost unheard of for an occupied house to be squatted, and existing legislation already enables ‘displaced residential occupiers’ or ‘intended occupiers’ to immediately evict squatters with police help.
What the new law does is call legitimate protest tactics into question. The ambiguous definition of the term ‘occupier’ could criminalise many forms of dissent. If the tweets of housing minister Grant Shapps are anything to go by, this is exactly what the new legislation will be used for. On the day of the vote he tweeted this threat: ‘St Paul’s: Right to protest NOT a right to squat. Looking at law to see if change needed to deal w/ camps like St Paul’s & Dale Farm faster.’
There are plenty of reasons why the government might have thought it useful to rush through this legislation, and criminalising the current wave of civil and student occupations seems a likely one.
SQUASH activists have already seen their right to protest denied. On the night before the vote an organised ‘mass sleep out’ in Parliament Square, to highlight the number of people who may be forced onto the streets, resulted in 17 arrests. The police claimed the protest was unauthorised because SQUASH hadn’t given seven days’ notice: an impossibility as there were only six days between the clause being announced and voted through.
An emergency amendment was written by Crisis and tabled by John McDonnell MP. This proposed that criminalisation should not apply to residential buildings left empty for over six months, and that the particularly vulnerable – such as care leavers and those registered as homeless or at risk – should be exempt. The amendment failed and with Labour abstaining, the bill was easily passed.
The rush to legislate leaves various issues unanswered and potential loopholes for the future. It criminalises squatting only in residential rather than commercial properties and it is unclear what this distinction actually means. Does it, for example, include any building with residential planning permission? It will be up to the Lords to make sense of this confusion before it passes into law, and SQUASH will be lobbying peers to rip up the legislation and start again.
SQUASH’s Paul Reynolds is convinced that the legislation will prove legally unsound when scrutinised in detail. And whatever the outcome, he says, it won’t end squatting. ‘The government may have trampled over democracy but people will still be squatting,’ he comments. ‘They’ll just be more organised now.’
www.squashcampaign.org