Rich Simcox for editor of the Journalist

Vote Rich!

No, that doesn’t mean support the Tories (“we are all in this together” my arse).

Ballot papers went out today to NUJ members asking them to chose the next editor of the Journalist. This very important post is responsible for the print magazine, but will increasingly be doing things online.

There are eight candidates, but I’m happy to be supporting Rich Simcox. Rich is a very active and connected grassroots trade unionist. He’s also an expert in union communications, currently working on the Public and Commercial Services union’s communications.

I’ve gotten to know Rich reasonably well over the last year or so and had no hesitation adding my name to his campaign. From a new media point of view, I’m confident that Rich will not only have some great ideas for the NUJ’s site, but will also be open to suggestions.

You can visit Rich’s campaign website at: http://richsimcox.co.uk/

If you’re in London tomorrow (Wednesday, 7 October), there is a hustings for candidates from 7pm in the big upstairs committee room at NUJ HQ, 308 Gray’s Inn Road, London, WC1X 8DP, where you can judge for yourself who the best candidate is.

The Baltic roots of gay rights activism

It looks like I’m off to Riga again this year to support the Pride march. This year it’s Baltic Pride, all three Baltic countries coming together. Last year, and previous years, it was just Riga Pride. I was there last year and saw hatred in the face of many behind the protective police lines.

Many of those who came out to condemn the Pride march were ethnic Russians and conservative Christian Latvians. One of their major bones of contention is how, in their eyes, the Western European agenda of liberalism and acceptance of homosexuality is being forced on them. This is an issue that has united two communities who have often been in conflict in the post-Soviet era.

There is a major irony in this and it revolves around one very important figure — a Russian Jew who scandalised American society at the end of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th.The infamous anarchist and trouble-maker, “Red” Emma Goldman, was born in Kovno – now Lithuania’s second city, Kaunas.

Emma Goldman blazed across the United States from 1885 to 1919, challenging virtually every idea mainstream society held dear. Preaching anarchism, often supporting violence, distributing birth control, proposing and practicing free love and, for many, most scandalous of all – standing up for the rights of people to love who they liked.

Emma Goldman was enraged and inflamed by the prosecution of Oscar Wilde in 1895. In her biography, “Living My Life”, she writes of a conversation she had with Dr. Eugene Schmidt in Paris, 1900, after she had missed an opportunity to meet Wilde. She described how she had “pleaded his case against the miserable hypocrites who had sent him to his doom.”

When the doctor challenged her, question how she, “a mere youngster”, could have dared “come out in public for Oscar Wilde in puritan America?”, she responded:

“Nonsense! No daring is required to protest against a great injustice”

Goldman faced down challenges from within the anarchist movement over her speeches about homosexuality. She wrote:

“Censorship came from some of my own comrades because I was treating such ‘unnatural’ themes as homosexuality. Anarchism was already enough misunderstood, and anarchists considered depraved; it was inadvisable to add to the misconceptions by taking up perverted sex-forms, they argued.”

She let nothing stand in her way and, writing about people she met on a speaking tour in 1915:

“The men and women who used to come to see me after my lectures on homosexuality, and who confided to me their anguish and their isolation, were often of finer grain than those who had cast them out.”

She writes of one woman who regarded her revulsion to men as an affliction:

“She had never met anyone, she told me, who suffered from a similar affliction, nor had she ever read books dealing with the subject. My lecture had set her free; I had given her back her self-respect.”

Emma Goldman revolutionised left-wing politics by forcing her anarchist comrades to accept that politics were also personal and that all forms of persecution and oppression were wrong. Her profile in the US was so high at the time that she was able to bring the issues of sexual equality of all kinds to a larger audience than most could.

Her influence was strongly felt in the 1960s when sexual liberation and equality came back on the agenda in the United States and elsewhere.

The ultimate irony, however, is how “puritan America” responded to this woman from Lithuania. The Immigration Act of October 16, 1918, made specific reference to anarchists and the dangerous ideas of anarchism being imported from abroad. It was used to deport Goldman and many of her comrades back to Russia.

In other words, Emma Goldman was kicked out of the US for trying to push a radical agenda of social liberation and gay rights on a conservative Christian society – radical ideas that had their roots in Eastern Europe.

Ideas of freedom and liberation have no geography. Gay rights were not a Russian or a Lithuanian idea in 1909 and they are not a Western European idea 100 years later. Those who violently reject the LGBT community in the Baltics are expressing the same hostility Emma Goldman met in the US 100 years ago.

Did the cops try to cause a riot at G20?

In the week or so since the G20 demos, report after report of police brutality have emerged, both at the big demo on the Wednesday and at the squats and smaller Bank of England demo on Thursday. The mainstream media is gradually catching up with what’s been up on Indymedia, Libcom and other radical websites for days. The police violently attack the Climate Camp, the police pointed Tasers at non-threatening people on the floor of the squatted convergence centre, the police did lots of bad things and the IPCC is investigating.

However, one element I haven’t yet seen in print is the question of whether the police deliberately set things up to try to cause a riot. Think about it, if there had actually been a full-on riot, the police wouldn’t sound as pathetic blaming “pushing” by demonstrators or a small woman shouting at them as “incitement”. Burning cars on the street, Greek-style street battles with petrol bombs flying one way and tear-gas flying the other. The cops could, literally, have gotten away with murder if there had actually been sustained and extreme violence from demonstrators. The problem for them was – there wasn’t.

This might sound a little bit conspiratorial – OK, it sounds a lot conspiratorial, but I think the police in London tried very hard to start a riot and their plans and tactics were built around the riot that never happened. I was at the Bank on Wednesday; I arrived with a colleague doing some filming with the red horseman of the apocalypse. From the beginning, police tactics seemed designed to annoy and frustrate demonstrators.

The whole idea of G20 Meltdown was convergence of the four themes, represented by the four horsemen, in the area in front of the Royal Exchange steps beside Bank station. The cops, from the very start, didn’t seem to want all the groups coming together and set up a very thin line on Threadneedle Street, to the side of the Exchange to prevent the convergence. A single line of yellow-clad cops with hundreds of demonstrators on one side and well over a thousand on the other – tactically idiotic and potentially dangerous. After much pushing and shoving, the police decided it was strategic to withdraw; scrambling rather ridiculously up a side wall.

Convergence achieved, the mood lightened, annoyance receded and a party atmosphere started to take hold – for a while. Police lines started to appear around the edges – shutting down the side streets. After a while, the most clearly anarchist contingent (black-clad with quite a few masks along with the four horsemen) decided to move towards the apparently unprotected and strangely not boarded windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland down Threadneedle Street.

This time, the police line was somewhat more substantial – at least three deep, though, situated as it was further down Threadneedle Street, there was no convenient low wall to the side. This line seemed determined to stay, even as a large part of the demonstration started to pile onto the street behind between the anarchist front-line. Within a short time, the police were trying to hold the line against at least a thousand people and the pushing started again. Then demonstrators started to fill in on the other side of the police lines, leaving the police once again trapped between pushing protesters on either side determined to break their line.

Then violence broke out. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see who hit who first, but it was clear that some of the demonstrators had turned banner poles into weapons and were striking into the police lines, while the police had pulled out their telescopic batons. The situation deteriorated as the entire police line, including their medics, started to lash out with batons and solid truncheons, while plastic bottles, cans, flour and at least one smoke bomb rained down on them. At least one policeman’s helmet was removed and thrown back into the crowd. The temperature was rising and rising as blood started to flow.

And then the police withdrew to the side and hundreds of demonstrators, accompanied by a very large number of camera carrying media, flowed down the road to the RBS. This was where it got very strange – despite the police lines visible beyond the RBS, there were only a few officers at the bank’s doors and nothing beside the windows. The protester then found that police were lined up at the end of the road on the other side of the RBS. In effect, very solid police lines were lined up to contain the now angry protest beside the RBS windows.

The inevitable and sadly predictable happened. Surrounded by cameras eager for some action shots, a handful of demonstrators started to smash the windows. No police response. Some people climbed in the windows and started throwing computers and office equipment out and setting a few fires. The police response came slowly. Then the riot police moved in and cleared the bank and gradually pushed the demonstrators back up Threadneedle Street.

Before that happened, my colleague and I decided to move back a bit and see if we could get around the back of the police lines. No go, the police wouldn’t let anyone in around the back of the riot police lines – citing the fact that there had been a disturbance of the peace. Press cards meant nothing, the only part of the now obvious “kettle” around the whole of the area that allowed journalists through was at the end furthest away from the action at the RBS. Once outside, no-one was allowed back in at any point, not demonstrators or journalists.

What this meant in practice was that, other than the important media people who had sorted out vantage points over the crowd, the only people who could record the riot police push were those in its path, mostly trying to get out of the way. No journalist was allowed to take up safe position behind it.

In effect, the police gave carte blanche to angry protestors to attack the RBS in front of the media’s cameras creating the violence necessary to unleash the riot police, complete with horses and dogs. Why didn’t the riot police just set themselves up in front of the bank to protect the windows and make it clear that this line wasn’t going to break?

The police restricted the ability of the press to cover their response, a tactic that continued for the rest of the day as this response became more and more extreme. They responded to a riot that never happened. After the RBS windows were broken, the whole thing chilled out again. Music played, people danced and the police over-reacted. At one point, having accidentally managed to get back inside the kettle (a police line disintegrated in front of us as a new one formed behind us), my colleague and I were standing in front of a riot police line on Threadneedle Street.

After a bit of filming of the solid police line, complete with horses, we started talking to some people beside us. We were clearly media. On the ground beside us were some young people lying down and enjoying the sun. Further across, there was a group of young Italian anarchists, one of whom was dancing in front of the police. In other words, it was a chilled out, unthreatening and definitely non-violent group of people. So we were shocked when we heard the yell “RUN” as the police lines started to push forward with absolutely no warning. It was hard to tell in the craziness if the kids on the ground had managed to get up in time. Completely unprovoked and unnecessary.

It could have been very different. The police could have defended the Bank; in fact, someone with some foresight could have boarded up the windows like so many other businesses in the area. The police could legitimately have restrained the demonstration to a specific area and allowed the peaceful carnival atmosphere to rule the day. They could have let people go home when they wanted; they could have fulfilled their official function to maintain peace and order. Instead, they tried and failed to incite a riot and acted as if they had.

Remembering Bob

The great Robert Anton Wilson moved onto the next plane of existence on 11 January 2007 (Sweetmorn, Chaos 11, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3173). With the growing chaos in the world, it’s time to remember Bob (it’s always time to remember Bob, really, but just in case people have forgotten to remember Bob).

Hail Bob, Hail Eris, I’m a Pope, je suis une Pope, Tilly, Tom and Tiny!

Support striking journalists in York

NUJ members at Newsquest York are taking industrial action against job cuts.

Please text messages of support to 07791 626238.

Follow their progress on their blog: http://www.nujyork.blogspot.com/

Not too far away, journalists at the Yorkshire Post are also out on strike from Thursday. You can read about their action at: http://www.nujyork.blogspot.com/

The UK media in crisis (Corporatism in crisis Part I)

Beyond the banks and the retailers, there are two very live and interconnected issues in the UK at the moment where people are clashing with the damaging effects of corporatism.

The first is in the media. Corporatism came late to the media in the UK, the media was a tool of corporations, so, for a long time, it was fairly protected. At least until the ’80s, most UK newspapers generally had a proprietor, broadcasting was divided between the public-funded sector (the BBC) and an atomised private sector (independent television used to be owned regionally and feed into a central broadcasting channel – ITV).

As a platform for advertisers, the media showed a strong commitment to providing their readership with engaging content. The public service broadcasting ethos of the BBC and, to a defined degree, the independent broadcasters (literally defined – providing defined hours of PSB content was part of the broadcasting license for independent broadcasters) that influenced the independent print media that led to a high standard of journalism across the British media.

Defined political stances of newspapers gave the media a strong level of plurality. The Mail, Express and Telegraph on one side, the Mirror and Guardian on the other, gave readers the opportunity to see clearly a story told from different perspectives. Effective coverage of foreign news was a matter of serious pride in the British media – it was long-standing and had developed and improved over the years. John Pilger was the Mirror’s star reporter in the 1960s, reporting from all over the world.

Then came the Murdochs and Maxwells and the beginnings of corporate logic. Profit and paying shareholders came first, quality content second and employment rights last. Murdoch is still infamous in the media industry for his attempted destruction of the media unions. Celebrities started to replace the world as the key subject for coverage – it was cheaper and the public seemed to like it.

There were a few bumps along the way (Maxwell, Conrad Black), but corporate logic has become so deeply embedded in the UK media that it’s destroying it. The independent TV companies became one company. Regional media was bought up by ever larger corporations – few bigger than Newsquest, owned by US corporate giant Gannet.

The logic of these media corporations has been to squeeze as much profit as possible from their holdings. As advertising revenues have declined in recent years, they’ve started to cut, and cut, and cut, and cut. Journalism in the UK has, since the 1960s, gradually become churnalism – desk-bound journalists recycling agency copy and press releases and largely featuring the same content. Pluralism destroyed by lack of journalistic capacity.

Two weeks ago, the National Union of Journalists held a jobs summit and declared war. Stay tuned for strike after strike across the country as journalists fight to take back the media from the corporations. Right now, discussions are starting to figure out new funding models for the media.

To see more: http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=1035

To join the discussion, come along to the NUJ Left’s public meeting on media ownership on 17 February –
http://www.nujleft.org/2009/01/public-meeting-on-media-ownership/

The other major issue is the outbreak of wildcat strikes that spread across the UK in the last week or so, which I’ll get to in the next post.

Stuck in the past – Islington’s council’s out-dated online payments

I’m useless, I admit it. I rarely manage to remember to pay my council tax at the beginning of the month. I’ve resisted going for direct debit as long as possible because I don’t like handing control of my money over to other people, but I’m going to have to go for it now. Because… I “have lost the right to pay by instalments”.

Yes, I had to be reminded too many times with red-topped letters and now I either pay it all at once (not too bad as we approach the end of the council tax year) or sign up for direct debit. Of course, the council could actually have made it a bit easier to pay.

Oh, hang on, didn’t I get that nice payment card in the post a couple of weeks back. A payment card that I can bring with me to the post office or other places instead of the bits of paper I normally bring… to the web. I’ve been paying exclusively online for around 5 years and the council wastes god knows how much of my council tax to send me a useless piece of plastic designed to make it easier to do something I haven’t done in half a decade. I’m guessing I’m not the only online payer who got sent one of these, so the waste of money has got to be a lot.

The council’s website used to allow you to set up an account so you could save your details, log in and pay relatively easily. Unfortunately, the system kept screwing up (I’ve probably still got the email trail when I kept complaining to them about this) and they replaced it – with the worst online payment system I’ve seen in a long time.

You want to pay? Well, if you can find the link (no longer highlighted on a page with WAY too many links – try using a screen-reader with this baby), you get a page with more links, then a link to a pop-up and then another page of links. So, you tell it twice you want to pay something and have to tell it twice you want to pay council tax. Then you get finally get a form that asks you what your reference number is and how much you want to pay (so you need your bill handy – the handy payment card is no use here).

Then you have to fill out all your card details. Every bloody time, 11 times a year. Where else do you have to fill out all of your details every bloody time? What year is this, 1998?

How about a proper system where you can save your details, set up email reminders, get your account balance – something that’s a little bit modern, effort saving and likely to help ensure someone as useless as me pays my bills on time? Or they could just continue to make it awkward and force me to pay by direct debit next year.

Poverty and the need for new radicalism

Ten years ago saw the first major global Reclaim the Streets action and, in many ways, the birth of what was to become known as the anti-globalization movement. The street battles of the years that followed, as activists around the world targeted all the symbols of the world’s financial inequality – the WTO, IMF, WEF, G8 – put poverty back on the global agenda. However, the mainstreaming of the debate took the wind out of the movement’s sail and, by 2005’s G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland, the activism was overshadowed by Live 8 and politicians promises that came to nothing.

Right now, in October 2008, poverty is on the agenda for a very different reason – it’s come home to the global north. The credit crunch, runaway inflation and impending recession mean that poverty is no longer an issue for others in Africa or elsewhere. And people are becoming angrier and angrier about the extravagance of the various parts of the financial sector, with its massive pay packets and bonuses, which have so completely failed and are gobbling up tax-payers money freely given by governments. And it’s this very extravagance that has led to financial inequalities the world over that are making it so easy for people to fall into poverty.

The anti-globalisation movement came and went without really bringing about the other world enshrined in the slogan “Another World is Possible”. It wasn’t activism that brought the banks and the stock markets down, it was the fact their excesses weren’t halted or restrained by the mass movements that filled Genoa, Prague or Cancun, they got worse until the system collapsed in on itself.

2008 needs a new radicalism and new global movement to tackle a capitalist system that has absolutely proved itself a complete failure. And we need a movement that combines the anarchic spirit of the anti-globalization movement with an earlier, more successful, radicalism.

In the first three decades of the last century, syndicalist trade unions in Europe created real change in society. From Rudolf Rocker and the Jewish trade unions of London’s East End who finally dragged the immigrant population out of the poverty of the sweatshops to the social revolution that changed Catalonia in Spain for a tragically short time, radical trade unions changed the world. At its height, the International Workers of the World (IWW) really started to live up to its name and stretched from USA to Europe to Australia.

Syndicalist unions were smashed by fascist forces and state oppression, overtaken by Soviet-inspired (or controlled) organisations or parliamentary-focused trade unions. And, while these may have maintained high levels of influence for a few more decades, they all went into terminal decline in the 1980s and have yet to fully recover. But, as we can see in the UK where the union-created and funded Labour Party has abandoned its roots that the old models need to be revised.

We need a new movement the brings together the anarchic spirit of the anti-globalization movement and the anarchist organisation of the syndicalist unions, a movement that leaves political parties to the squabbling and brings the fight against poverty to the people and the streets.

Attention Americans – Greg Palast on the BBC

This report from Greg Palast on the BBC should be required watching for any American interested in democracy in their country. Greg Palast, who uncovered vote fixing in the 2000 and 2004 elections, gives the picture in the lead up to the next one.

And Part 2 is on YouTube.

Union Demotivators meme

Right, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything here (lots of ideas in my head, but few reached the keyboard). Anyway, John from the TUC challenged me to do a union parodying poster with Despair Inc’s Demotivators, so here’s my first attempt: