Brian Coleman wants to sack all London’s Firefighters

Brian Coleman, or Mr Toad, is now trending on twitter – the reason being is that he has “run out of patience with the FBU” and as the Evening Standard are reporting “will press ahead with [the London Fire Authority’s] “fallback option” of re-employing staff under new terms and conditions.”

It’s hard to believe, but since the union does not want to be pressured into signing new contracts, and because Coleman wants it his way, 5,500 London firefighters could face the sack.

This is the kind of austere democracy we’ve come to expect from Coleman.

Though he wouldn’t like it up himself.

Coleman is Britain’s highest paid councillor (a different side to the EasyCouncil of Barnet). He’s been repeatedly caught out over his expense claims, which tallied up largely reveal expensive taxi fares.

For 2010-2011 this is no different, as his London Fire Brigade expenses will reveal. At a time when we’re all in this together, some notable claims made are:

• 21/11/2010 – Taxi (invoiced) – Taxi journey for Chairman and Chairman’s Lady – from the Cenotaph, Whitehall SW1 for Annual Service of Remembrance (£66.09)
• 12/11/2010 – Taxi (invoiced) – Taxi journeys: Chairman and Chairman’s Lady – to GLA Annual Remembrance Service at City Hall, SE1; Chairman only – from GLA City Hall to CLG Eland House, SW1 for Fire Futures Steering Group; from CLG Eland House to Bevis Marks Synagogue, Heneage Lane EC3 for Service of Thanksgiving; from Bevis Marks Synagogue to home (£145.93)
• 27/10/2010 – Taxi (invoiced) – Taxi journey from Houses of Parliament SW1 to Union St. (£19.20)
• 12/09/2010 – Taxi (invoiced) – Taxi journeys with Mrs Coleman – drop off at Church of St Bartholomew the Great, EC1; pick up from St Pauls Cathedral, EC4 – Firefighters Memorial Trust Annual Service of Remembrance (held in two different locations) (drop off at Church of St Bartholomew the Great, EC1; pick up from St Pauls Cathedral, EC4 – Firefighters Memorial Trust Annual Service of Remembrance (held in two different locations) (£140.55)

Anyone would think he didn’t get free travel around London worth £1,700.

But for all his misgivings about firefighters having two jobs, Mr Coleman in fact has four. And he’s not short of a few bob either (something to be considered when you think how much he costs the taxpayer for car mileage and the congestion charge – when we’re all in this together).

Investigative journalist David Hencke did some number crunching to reveal his income:

Brian Coleman holds down four jobs all funded by the taxpayer. They are:

Member of the London Assembly                                                      allowance: £53,439

Cabinet member Barnet Council                                                         allowance: £38,177

Chair London Fire Brigade                                                                   allowance: £26,883

Chair LGA* fire services management committee                    allowance: £10,365

Grand Total from the taxpayer                                                                                £128,864

*Local Government Association, a voluntary body funded by councils from council taxpayers.

And of course his expenses:

Brian is a great expense claimer never knowingly underclaimed. He can claim for expenses for three of his four jobs – the LGA don’t allow him.

He is a big patron of London cabbies claiming once over £10,000 a year  from the London Assembly on trips (2006-07). He is now more modest – claims have varied between £8000 -plus a £1700 travel card (2007-08) and £345 for 2009-10. All from the taxpayer.

His fire brigade expense claims are not much different.These include a £119 taxi fare to the Fire Service Awards Ceremony in  May 2009 and £143 to attend Westminster’s Lord Mayor’s reception for the Lord Mayor of London. He also spent £402 on a  rail ticket to go a LGA conference in Manchester. Little difference in 2011 -with a £145 taxi fare for him and his mum to go to a  firefighters service of remembrance  and meetings in London.

His red letter claims day is May 12 this year – where he managed to claim car mileage, congestion charge and over £67 in taxis  for a dinner -all on the same day.

His gifts include four dinners (three of them before the company won the contract) and a £350  Harvey Nichols hamper from the head of AssetCo, John Shannon, the company which has a £9m PFI deal with his authority and provided strike cover.

There’s also some interesting details on his home life, and his landlords the Methodist Church in Finchley.

Colman justifies all this by saying he works 100-hour weeks with few days off, but this hasn’t been enough to convince the website, aptly called Is Brian Coleman a tedious cock?, who remind us that:

• Brian Coleman thinks peaceful, friendly, good-natured political protests scare off tourists.
• Brian Coleman, as head of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, lied about when you should dial 999, to smear a political opponent. The London Fire Brigade called him out on it.
• Since July 2006, Brian Coleman has run up over £14,000 in taxi fares, paid for by London tax payers — who already pay £1,700 for his travelcard.
• What do ordinary members of his own party think about Brian Coleman? Here’s how they reacted to his views on one of their former leaders.
• Brian Coleman has received more free gifts of dinner than any other Greater London Assembly member. Instead of being grateful, he publicly complains.

How long will he get away with it for?

“Tuition fee rise could boost our college” – quite beyond the point

Being on the other side of the wagon, I tend not to think the pro-cuts, pro-student-fee-increase lot have a leg to stand on with their sums, but of course there are to every argument good and bad.

The following example, from tonight’s Basildon Echo, represents the bad, nay, utter nutbag daft corner. The article is titled ‘Tuition fee rise could boost our college’ and is an interview with the principal of my old college which I left 6 years ago. I’ll fisk as appropriate.

On the subject of “riots in central London, MPs quitting frontbench positions and an attack on the royal car”:

These incidents … dominated the news agenda towards the end of last year and attracted a lot of criticism.

I ought to point out for reference, this particular paper, with its award-wnning estate agent turned journalist Jon Austin, spends most of its time waxing hysterical about the local travellers. It didn’t cause too much fuss about the election of the Tory MP Stephen Metcalfe, who when I emailed to ask him, in vain, to vote against tuition fee rises, replied – in short – no! In short, the paper will probably make no bones about stating all the criticism without the amount of PRAISE the students received.

Jan Hodges, college principal and cheif executive, said higher university tuition fees mean more people may choose to study locally.

Surely the only logic here is that people will not be able to afford to move out, which while this may be a good guess, is pulled straight out of the wind. Also, it’s rather perverse; the notion that your poverty could keep you in Southend will not be pleasing anybody.

In her, slight, defense, Hodges is quoted as saying:

The increase is not a good thing, but it might be something we capitalise on.

Do we suspect Ms Hodges isn’t taking this, backdoor creeping financial exclusivity seriously? She goes on:

It might be the case the tuition fees increase means people look to study locally instead of at university – the local education offer is a strong one.

Is that really the two alternatives? Does this even make sense? At this stage I wonder whether Hodges actually said this, or whether the journalist was making shit up. To draw a serious comment from this, is it good to keep local people taking up local education? From her perspective shouldn’t it be about retaining numbers? Instead of making inglorious attempts to address how the fee rises could help benefit college – which really is contestable – would it not be better to address how bad the fee rises are generally? As old wisdom will tell you, if you have nothing sensible to say keep your trap shut – so what if the local education offer is a strong one if, in her words, “the increase is not  a good thing”.

Internal bickering versus “whistling in the dark”

Hopi Sen, in his intellectually impure and prosaic manner, said on twitter last night:

Oh-ho, has the new left thingummy reached stage three of all left wing movements then (tedious internal bickering?) / Campaign model for all leftie “revolutionary “groups – Stage 1: Campaign. Stage 2: overblown rhetoric about transforming world. / Stage 3: Internal bickering. Stage 4: Assign blame for failure to achieve stage 2. Stage 5. Appear on Newsnight to criticise Labour party.

Droll, I’m sure. But what has been characterised here as ‘internal bickering’ is a vital component of assessing next stages of any successful movement of people.

Questions on whether applying theory to practice is necessary anymore have emerged (see NLP here, SWP) as well as questions on whether leadership is necessary in such an organised gathering of protesters (see Seymour; Seymour; and Seymour’s apology) – particularly concerning UK Uncut (a better summary of events can be found at The Great Unrest blog).

The argument against discussing theory – characterised by some as meaningless intellectual masturbation – and against leadership – characterised by some as the adoption of old, stale bureaucratic structures – is made while drawing on the current success of the movement (see Laurie Penny and Marcus Malarky on this, then see Owen Jones on the problems of leaderless youth). But to pretend these structures are unnecessary, and that the movement is unique and distinct from other movements, is a grave error, and one which has been host to so many casualties. Take for example the struggle of German labor movements from 1912 to 1923. Paul Mattick had this to say about them in 1947, and it sounds very familiar to the place where the student movement is at now:

In retrospect, the struggle of the German proletariat from 1912 to 1923 appeared as minor frictions that accompanied the capitalistic re-organization process which followed the war-crisis. But there has always been a tendency to consider the by-products of violent changes in the capitalistic structure as expressions of the revolutionary will of the proletariat. The radical optimists, however, were merely whistling in the dark. The darkness was real, to be sure, and the noise was encouraging, yet at this late hour there is no need to take it seriously. As exciting as it is to recall the days of proletarian actions in Germany – the mass meetings, demonstrations, strikes, street fights, the heated discussions, the hopes, fears, and disappointments, the bitterness of defeat and the pain of prison and death – yet no lessons but negative ones can now be drawn from all these undertakings. All the energy and all the enthusiasm were not enough to bring about a social change or to alter the contemporary mind. The lesson learned was how not to proceed. How to realize the revolutionary needs of the proletariat was not discovered.

Mattick recalls the excitement of the actions; I fear the excitement of the actions taking place during current demonstrations and direct actions today make it difficult to see the necessity of assessing next steps, theory and leadership. But so as to ensure nobody today is “whistling in the dark” internal dialogue must remain – even if Hopi Sen and the other New Labour Dinosaurs laugh about it.

On the Multiculturalism/Zizek debate

I put off writing this because I had already got the subject out of my system, but it has returned and it’s very difficult to ignore: it is the question of multiculturalism, and more specifically what this means to anti-fascists.

Richard Seymour recently produced a blog entry about philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s attempts to critically analyse violence and provocation carried out against the Strojan family – an extended family of 31 Gypsies, 14 of them children.

Seymour’s beef is with two things: firstly the outcome of the events, which culminated in the police succumbing to pressure by violent mobs and forcing the family to leave, who, as he notes, had they not “driven the gypsies out, the racist mob would have done so with fire and blades.”

The second thing Seymour has beef about is Zizek’s poor research on the matter. Zizek has used this example to underline his own controversial view of multiculturalism (more of which in a moment) but what he has failed to do is properly understand what happened to the family. As Seymour says in a reply to critics of the aforementioned entry:

I find no evidence that the Strojan family are car thieves, and they didn’t murder anyone. It is true that locals blamed the Strojan family for a number of thefts, but it’s also true that they acknowledge when pressed that the Strojans have been scapegoated on this issue.

I’m with Seymour here; had Zizek done his homework, he would’ve seen that this is a case of scapegoating, or at best a heavy-handed response to petite-theft among some individuals of a family, perhaps spurred on because of the family’s racial background. Zizek here is not being racist, he has just erroneously placed this disgraceful event in the wrong context; by implication I feel that Zizek’s “apologia for anti-Roma racism” is due to a misjudgement by the Slovenian.

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As it happens I find Zizek’s critique of multiculturalism very useful (which is why one can agree with Seymour on this issue, and still be in defence of Slavoj Zizek, so to speak). I will attempt to place it in its correct context.

Multiculturalism, according to Kenan Malik, author of From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy, has come to be defined as a policy promoting diversity among a society of people with fixed identities, partly as a reaction to inharmonious feeling at a time of increased immigration into the UK. For Malik this has simultaneously become the problem and solution to intolerance. While it rather nobly aims to celebrate difference, it also rather crudely pigeon-holes people, on account of their racial or national heritage.

In trying to effect “respect for pluralism [and] avowal of identity politics” – which have come to be “hallmarks of a progressive, anti-racist outlook” – segregation has simply become institutionalised.

As a consequence to the respect agenda, all cultures have become of equal value, which may mean that in purely multicultural terms everything is permissible if it can be justified on the grounds of cultural heritage – which leads to the question who can authoritatively account for what a cultural trait is (for Malik, such policies in the eighties served only to strengthen conservative Muslim leaders in Birmingham, on the daft assumption that they alone could authoritatively account for what Islam is).

For Zizek, there is a bourgeois liberal variant of multiculturalism that is repulsed by (far) right wing populism of the Other (the immigrant for example) to the extent that it starts to fetishise the Other. Not content with opposing all racism directed at this Other, it starts to think the Other can do no wrong. Take as an example the song “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer” often sung by Julius Malema, President of the African National Congress Youth League; the real anti-racist would oppose this song in spite of its historical context, for whatever the white farmers’ crimes during the apartheid, this is a song that is derogatory towards a race. The bourgeois liberal fetishist, of the ilk to which Zizek refers, may justify singing the song on the grounds that such retaliation is historically justified (you could perhaps ascribe to this the notion of “white guilt”).

For Zizek, the bourgeois liberal justifying Malema singing the song is akin to expressing the belief that Melama knows no better, leading Zizek to assert that certain modes of politically correct tolerance of the Other is grounded upon the belief that certain groups can be judged differently (which is why the BNP for example are wrong for being racist populists, but Malema is clear on the grounds that he has experienced racism himself). This ends up being monoculturalism based upon a rather stereotypical ideal of how the Other should act – the point being that the bourgeois liberal, for Zizek, is deluding himself by thinking he is a mutliculturalist, since it is almost a colonial understanding of the foreign Other who he is identifying.

In short, this notion of multiculturalism masks a racist idea of the Other who needs to be “tolerated” (for more on this see Naadir Jeewa’s excellent analysis).

The confusion here lies in who we identify as this bourgeois liberal, naïve apologist? For many people who subscribe to multiculturalism this simply doesn’t resonate. For me, Zizek’s analysis is less a critique of multiculturalism, and more a critique of naïve, neo-colonial monoculturalism (which I assume he is well aware of, though if not, we ought to understand that the bourgeois liberal variant of multiculturalism is not necessarily inherent to multiculturalism proper). But maybe the word multiculturalism lends itself too easily to the idea that cultural relativism is appropriate– since we’re immediately in a struggle to identify what we can call culture (authority on which, as Malik explains, can often fall into the wrong hands).

When most people support multiculturalism, what they mean is that a country ought not to have a dominant national character immigrants are obliged to adopt as a guarantee of their debt to their new homeland. Instead a country should allow all to practice what they wish, as they wish, provided that it doesn’t harm anyone. Perhaps I’ll adopt the term socialist universalism?

A fight without sectarianism, is not a fight without arguments

The strength in the anti-cuts movement, emanating from the draconian and dangerous agenda of cuts from the existing government, and led in many ways by students and trade union activists, has increased greatly in its current form – and as a consequence further questions are being raised inside it, that extend further than merely “what is it we are against?” (as Tom Miller has rightly written about here).

As the movement grows even stronger, numbers increase and demands start to be met, it is inevitable that questions will get tougher: “Yes, we want change to government policy, but what will that change look like?” and “Yes, the government should crumble, but how do we promote and help form a credible government in its place?”

Many people have been fairly scepitcal of entering into debates on theory, saying things like “save this waffle for the dinosaurs at the branch meeting” – I’m not of that opinion, and I’m also glad of the reference Miller, mentioned above, makes about Lenin (I myself used the Spanish Civil War, for example, to illustrate a point on so-called “left unity” ).

A common criticism of Marx is that while he critiqued and criticised capitalism expertly, he spent less time mapping out what Communism would be like operationally or morally. Perhaps he needn’t have. This, people will say, allowed Communist leaders to do some pretty drastic things justifying their means by their ends, while public intellectuals could excuse killing if it meant a Communistic outcome. It’s no surprise to me that in the periods from WWI to the end of the Cold War the left were not only carved up into Reformists, democratic socialists, revolutionary socialists, utopian socialists, Communists, and Anarchsists, but each of these were carved up in the form of libertarian socialists, Bolshevists, Menshevists, Council Communists (you get my gist).

The left is a broad spectrum, inevitably it will fall out on issues, and at points one faction will wonder why another is being compromised with (why, for example should a statist reformist, work with an an anti-statist libertarian socialist, while he compromises with a civic republican on certain matters). It’s good to belong to a broad church, but differences should be rationalised, and difficult conversations should be engaged – and they should be done earlier rather than later. It is not an option to put off this conversation, no matter how difficult, and no matter how inconsequential it seems at the time, particularly as some of the activism is so exciting and so all encompassing.

In order to steer clear of in-fighting later on, difficult conversations are a must – now.

The movement of students, workers and sympathisers of whatever stripe, with continued energy, focus, and direction, will start to see differences; there was a feeling the night before the tuition fee bill vote that Lib Dem MPs were on their backfeet – we may have lost that battle, but there is a war to be won (a cliche, sure, but you see my point). Unity can bring this disgusting and ideological government to its knees, but as that other cliche establishes, action without theory is aimless.

In lieu of a sustainable livestock law

Rob Flello, MP for Stoke-on-Trent South, failed to get his sustainable livestock bill through Parliament on 15 November, which would have allowed farmers to swap imported soy animal feed for home-grown alternatives. Dependency on imported crop is unsustainable for the protection of the planet, which has near unanimity among politicians and business leaders today, yet opposition to the bill focused on its attempt to forge new regulation on an issue already being addressed by the food industry.

According to Pits n Pots news in Stoke on Trent, the bill enjoyed support from some 55,000 people, Friends of the Earth, and had the backing of 176 MPs, but in the end only managed to secure 62 votes – with some pointing out that many MPs needed to stay in their constituencies that day for Armistice Day Services.

Nevertheless, the failure of the bill to be passed does not spell doom. During the bill debate held in the House of Commons on 12 November, the more thoughtful Conservative opposition noted the work by many individuals and organisations helping to decrease dependency on imported crop and save rainforests in South America.

Tony Baldry for example, the MP for North Oxfordshire and as he refers to himself, the last surviving Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in the House of Commons, recognises the benefits of increasing British livestock production, however he is unimpressed with how much “red tape” the bill required.

Like Flello, Baldry wants British reliance on imported soy to decrease in order to lower the nation’s carbon footprint. Additionally he would like Britain to address the problem of chronic poverty in developing nations caused by livestock asset loss (such as losing the benefits of mixed farming methods, livestock consumption of waste products, pest control, fertiliser and food production) however he is confident the industry can bring about the changes itself.

Jim Paice, the Minister of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) noted in the debate that the Dairy Supply Chain Forum’s Milk Roadmap is a good example of where producers, processors and retailers come together and commit to common goals on environmental stewardship, nutrient planning, and recycled plastic milk bottles among other concerns of the day. He reminded MPs that the beef and sheep sectors are also working towards sustainability measures.

While well meaning in their criticisms, they forget that this law was not created to undercut good work taking place, but to ensure mechanisms are in place to stop unsustainable farming and to drive out wrongdoers. The reason the bill enjoyed so much support from organisations as diverse as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, National Heart Forum, and Compassion in World Farming is not in the hope of frustrating self-directed sustainable measures, but to counter unsustainable ones.

A legal framework to combat reliance on soy – which two thirds of all manufactured food products in the UK contain – grown in South American plantations would begin to reduce the amount of rainforest being converted into farmland. Though livestock is not the only sector where soy reliance exists, measures to incentivise the maximisation of local production have not gone far enough; the bill would’ve made a significant difference to local production while ensuring other nations keep more of their produce.

Other criticisms suggested that the bill would place a ban on large dairies, reduce meat and dairy in people’s diets, and set trade barriers on imported animal feed. However if true, this will be the case even if sustainability measures are taken in ways described by Tory opposition to the bill, at least with the first two.

If local production of milk and soy is increased, it will be precisely this, and not cheap foreign imports, competing with large dairies to stock shop shelves. Furthermore, in growing more reliant on national livestock farming, whether through law or through accepted milestones mentioned by Jim Paice, the availability of meat and dairy will be dependent upon production supplying to demand – just as usual. The real problem here, much like that of the price disparity between local produce and cheaper imports in general, is whether people will be able to afford good diets while measures are taken to cut import reliance. Organic and locally produced foods can be up to double the price of imported produce. What had been missing from Flello’s bill were measures to make sure consumers could afford to maintain healthy diets while a reduction in imports took place.

Solving this problem would not mean reinventing the wheel. The Healthy Start vouchers for pregnant Mothers or families with one child under four and who are claiming income support, is a government scheme providing free milk, fresh fruit and vegetables, infant formula, and vitamins. Flello should have taken the opportunity to promote widening this scheme so many more families could be entitled to help. In the absence of the law, yet with willing participants in the farming industry eager to meet the goals of the bill, organisations should call on the government to compensate by extending local produce vouchers to those who will be most affected by the rise in their shopping bills.

As for barriers to animal feed, goods inside the EU are not considered imports, so this will only apply to trade countries outside the EU, and for reasons already explained is an appropriate measure to take in promoting sustainability and reducing the nation’s carbon footprint.

The failure of the bill to be passed will make it a lot harder to ensure sustainable practice is carried out, but not impossible. Individuals and organisations need to continue putting pressure on the government to oversee realistic and effective objectives are achieved in the farming industry, while ensuring people can afford a healthy diet alongside changes to production are made for the betterment of the planet is a national must.

The Human Prison: A review of John Berger’s “Meanwhile”

John Berger is an English art critic and cultural theorist known best – if at all – for his 1972 book Ways of Seeing – a work written partly in homage to Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In 2008 Drawbridge Books published an essay of his called, simply, Meanwhile, which attempts to look at our historical age as we live it – an impossible task.

As Berger rightly noticed, descriptions of history need words, words need definitions, definitions need figurative images to serve as landmarks and without landmarks “there is the great human risk of turning in circles”. The landmark, as Berger notes, that he has found, to define our age, “is that of prison.”

The advent of the penitentiary, so Michel Foucault once noted, was linked to industrial production, “its factories and its utilitarian philosophy.” Time has not stood still. And neither has the world – which has come to be defined by capital relations. Thus, Berger notes in today’s era of globalisation, it is not industrial, but financial capital which has informed the logic of criminality and imprisonment. The utilitarianism of the pentientiary, of which Berger mediates, put specially selected individuals – criminals – under surveillance, while the dawn of new financial instruments and global logics of capital have emerged at the same time as surveying us all – hence prison being the landmark that defines our age. We are all imprisoned.

As Guy Debord, French Situationist writer, once noticed, via the Swiss urbanist and architect Le Corbusier, “commuting time … is a surplus labor which correspondingly reduces the amount of “free” time”. A mere modernist pseudo-problem in hindsight. In the dystopian, postmodernist, neo-liberal, late capitalist world imagined by Berger, the worker never enjoys free time, owing to finite free space – since all space is de-centralised financial capital, locked into a consumerist Arcadia. While “[s]peculative financial transactions add up, each day, to 1,300 billion dollars” as Berger points out, “[t]he prison is now as large as the planet and its allotted zones vary and can be termed worksite, refugee camp, shopping mall, periphery, ghetto, office block, favela, suburb. What is essential is that those incarcerated in these zones are fellow prisoners.”

Berger obviously foresees drab things for the immigrant worker. In an American context, he ponders upon the criminalisation of the Mexican worker, but of course it is not overseen the neoliberal agenda of the global oil industry – unable to be properly contained by any major government or power, and cynically, never being in that power’s interests. However, the faddish crux of neoliberalism has possibly made Berger cautious not to speak wildly on the green agenda. Marxist writers specifically in the wake (or shadow) of Frederic Jameson such as Terry Eagleton or Alex Callinicos have all picked up upon the ruinous corporate exploitation of natural resources, and indeed nature; but the more eagle eyed writer like John Gray – still steeped in enough cynicism – notices that out of the green agenda is a market as well as a set of life-saving moral predicates. On this very basis, it is not out of the reach of conglomerates to “green up” – faddishness, to say the least, is a necessary and almost obligatory component of late capitalism. The deal which capitalism, and its state sanctioned protectors, have been unable yet to settle is how to cope with human flight when vast areas of land, and indeed whole countries, start to become uninhabitable and undernourished owing to global warming. The oil business, it would seem, is designing its own type of worker, who Berger believes neoliberalism has rewritten as “hidden criminal” – that is a criminal as a consequence of natural catastrophe and illegal immigration.

The prison which Berger has designated as our current lot is actually free of indoctrination, but authorities will do their best to misinform. Being tuned in to new technologies, cyberspace is a means with which (mis)information is channelled in order that indoctrination is rendered quite pointless. But here, forgets Berger, is a space to subordinate that misinformation. While our only power online may be to apprehend information when its too late – consider for example the realisation, tonight in fact, that the US has the power to close down a global payment system, with disastrous effects – knowledge is power. Wikileaks, if it has achieved nothing else, has shown itself to be locked in a power struggle – this does not spell the dawn of a new hegemony, from the bottom up, but at least frames the struggle as equals at war, whereas before the powerless were expected to fend off the advances of the powerful. Wikileaks is a gamechanger; but what we now realise about the game, is that the powerless could gain power without actually subordinating the existing status quo – something hitherto overlooked, not understated.

Freedom and liberty however is separate from power entirely, and it seems as though Berger is far more willing to accept that in our prison we can be free. As he notes “[f]or prisoners, small visible signs of nature’s continuity have always been, and still are, a covert encouragement”. This can simply be read as a question of contrast; small changes mean more to the prisoner than massive changes do to he who is free. So given that the issue with our historic place, our prison, is the lack of free space, we must forge such a space free from the trappings of capitalism. The problem some will have with this is the same problem many have with Naomi Klein’s books – she seems to be happy and content with the communalist existence of space subordinate to capitalism, which already still renders capitalism existent. In fact within the faculties of late capitalism, or postmodernist capitalism, such communalism is actively encouraged, since subordination is commodifiable. It almost seems as if there is no hope. Berger’s essay concludes by saying: “[l]iberty is slowly being founded not outside but in the depths of the prison”. It sounds like the conclusion of so many disillusioned voices post-Cold War; it’s almost impossible not to feel its ferocity.

http://twitter.com/paulstpancras/status/16225667674804224

John Berger is an English art critic and cultural theorist known best for his 1972 book Ways of Seeing – a work written partly in homage to Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In 2008 Drawbridge Books published an essay of his called, simply, Meanwhile, which attempts to look at our historical age as we live it – an impossible task.

As Berger has rightly noticed, descriptions of history need word, words need definitions, definitions need figurative images to serve as landmarks and without landmarks “there is the great human risk of turning in circles”. The landmark, as Berger notes, that he has found, to define our age, “is that of prison.”

The advent of the penitentiary, so Michel Foucault once noted, was linked to industrial production, “its factories and its utilitarian philosophy.” Time has not stood still. And neither has the world – which has come to be defined by capital relations. Thus, Berger notes in today’s era of globalisation, it is not industrial, but financial capital which have informed the logic of criminality and imprisonment. The utilitarianism of the pentientiary, of which Berger mediates, put specially selected individuals – criminals – under surveillance, while the dawn of new financial instruments and global logics of capital have emerged at the same time as surveying us all – hence prison being the landmark that defines our age. We are all imprisoned.

As Guy Debord, French Situationist writer, once noticed, via the Swiss urbanist and architect Le Corbusier, “commuting time … is a surplus labor which correspondingly reduces the amount of “free” time”. A mere modernist pseudo-problem in hindsight. In the dystopian, postmodernist, neo-liberal, late capitalist world imagined by Berger, the worker never enjoys free time, owing to finite free space – since all space is de-centralised financial capital, locked into a consumerist Arcadia. While “[s]peculative financial transactions add up, each day, to 1,300 billion dollars” as Berger points out, “[t]he prison is now as large as the planet and its allotted zones vary and can be termed worksite, refugee camp, shopping mall, periphery, ghetto, office block, favela, suburb. What is essential is that those incarcerated in these zones are fellow prisoners.”

Berger obviously foresees drab things for the immigrant worker. In an American context, he ponders upon the criminalisation of the Mexican worker, but of course it is not overseen the neoliberal agenda of the global oil industry – unable to be properly contained by any major government or power, and cynically, never being in that power’s interests. However, the faddish crux of neoliberalism has possibly made Berger cautious not to speak wildly on the green agenda. Marxist writers specifically in the wake (or shadow) of Frederic Jameson such as Terry Eagleton or Alex Callinicos have all picked up upon the ruinous corporate exploitation of natural resources, and indeed nature; but the more eagle eyed writer like John Gray – still steeped in enough cynicism – notices that out of the green agenda is a market as well as a set of life-saving moral predicates. On this very basis, it is not out of the reach of conglomerates to “green up” – faddishness, to say the least, is a necessary and almost obligatory component of late capitalism. The deal which capitalism, and its state sanctioned protectors, have been unable yet to settle is how to cope with human flight when vast areas of land, and indeed whole countries, start to become uninhabitable and undernourished owing to global warming. The oil business, it would seem, is designing its own type of worker, who Berger believes neoliberalism has rewritten as “hidden criminal” – that is a criminal as a consequence of natural catastrophe and illegal immigration.

The prison which Berger has designated as our current lot is actually free of indoctrination, but authorities will do their best to misinform. Being tuned in to new technologies, cyberspace is a means with which (mis)information is channelled in order that indoctrination is rendered quite pointless. But here, forgets Berger, is a space to subordinate that misinformation. While our only power online may be to apprehend information when its too late – consider for example the realisation, tonight in fact, that the US has the power to close down a global payment system – knowledge is power. Wikileaks, if it has achieved nothing else, has shown itself to be locked in a power struggle – this does not spell the dawn of a new hegemony, from the bottom up, but at least frames the struggle as equals at war, whereas before the powerless were expected to fend off the advances of the powerful. Wikileaks is a gamechanger; but what we now realise about the game, is that the powerless could gain power without actually subordinating the existing status quo – something clearly that hitherto has been overlooked not understated.

Freedom and liberty however is separate from power entirely, and it seems as though Berger is far more willing to accept that in our prison we can be free. As he notes “[f]or prisoners, small visible signs of nature’s continuity have always been, and still are, a covert encouragement”. This can simply be read as a question of contrast; small changes mean more to the prisoner than massive changes do to he who is free. So given that the issue with our historic place, our prison, is the lack of free space, we must forge such a space free from the trappings of capitalism. The problem some will have with this is the same problem many have with Naomi Klein’s books – she seems to be happy and content with the communalist existence of space subordinate to capitalism, which already still renders capitalism existent. In fact within the faculties of late capitalism, or postmodernist capitalism, such communalism is actively encouraged, since subordination is commodifiable. It almost seems as if there is no hope. Berger’s essay concludes by saying: “[l]iberty is slowly being founded not outside but in the depths of the prison”. It sounds like the conclusion of so many disillusioned voices post-Cold War; it’s almost impossible not to feel its ferocity.

 

So-called left wing unity and the Spanish Civil War

By some accounts Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has blamed “English anarchists” for the Europe-wide discontent, while he addressed Italy’s Senate yesterday. It’s doubtful he is referring specifically to a small number of die hard Kroptkinites or even try hard “black flaggers” whose only knowledge of anarchism is through the lyrics of the Dead Kennedy’s. Who I suspect he is referring to is the student movement itself – proof, if any were needed, that their organisation and mobilisation is starting to put the willies up the establishment.

Much to its credit, the movement has been largely self-motivated, dealing with operations in small collectives. One of the consequences of this has been a widening separation between the National Union of Students leadership – under Aaron Porter – and the wider anti-cuts student movement in general. As far as effectiveness is concerned, whether or not Porter has publicly backed the students has not been a problem. However where there have been problems is in Porter’s “dithering” as to whether student occupations can rely on him for his support – which would make a difference to student representatives when present in a court of law – his inability to properly condemn heavy handed police tactics and whether legal aid is readily available to them.

In a comment I left at the Liberal Conspiracy blog yesterday, some people were quick to remind me just how expensive such a promise on legal aid would be – which it is hard to disagree with. However it was not me who promised it. If the disparity between what the NUS can afford and how much legal costs are is so high, why would someone, presumably in a position to know both amounts, make a promise like that. The efforts by many students to drive Porter out is based not upon a far leftist instinct to sectarianism, but on the question of leadership competence – which it looks increasingly as though Porter is lacking in (for a wry take on Porter’s failing leadership do take a look at Latte Labour blog).

One reason to oppose this ousting attempt is in faithfulness to something called “left unity” – brought to the fore recently by Sunny Hundal. In his piece on the “plot” to pass a no-confidence motion against Porter, he cites four reasons to oppose such attempts taking place: 1) It’s not a sensible move strategically at a time when the movement as a whole needs to be united, so as to be more effective; 2) it’s too early, particularly given that only a small proportion of students have taken part in an occupation; 3) the leadership is not actually getting in the way of the students wanting to take direct action; 4) if the no-confidence motion fails then it has only served to cause tension.

I’ve already taken into consideration the third point above, the second point doesn’t seem true within the ranks of the mobilised student movements involved, or previously involved, in university occupations, for whom the time for precise and dedicated action is now, and the need for adequate leadership is vital, and to point number four, the same could be said about any attempt – this certainly is no way in which to judge whether to act or not; as the American poet and Spanish Republican supporter Archibald MacLeish once said: “The man who refuses to defend his convictions, for fear he may defend them in the wrong company, has no convictions.”

As of Hundal’s first point, we get this age old adage “left unity”. But what does that actually mean? And how can we be certain unity on the left is not slightly arbitrary?

To explore this, what better subject is there than the Spanish Civil War. It has been said that “The Spanish Revolution is an object lesson, in the negative, of the need to forge revolutionary workers parties of the Bolshevik type.” The reason this could be said by a Spartacist front is because for them the Spanish Civil War was destined to fail on the grounds that the main left wing group (or the one considered principally most broad) were too willing to flirt with right wing workers and peasantry unions as well as bourgeois capitalist party systems in Catalonia. The origins of the POUM (Partido Obrero Unificación Marxista) – to whom George Orwell was joined when he fought in the war – already passed through phases of splinters and cells before properly coming to fruition. Andres Nin – who was murdered on the 22^nd June 1937 by Stalinists – originally fell out with Leon Trotsky for opposing the move for the ICE (Communist Left of Spain), affiliated with the Trotsky founded ILO (International Left Opposition), to become entryists in the Spanish Socialist Youth, instead desiring to unite with the BOC (Workers and Peasants Bloc – considered on the right wing of the Communists). Eventually Nin founded the POUM, after which he was accused by Trotsky of “veer[ing] between reform and revolution” (it has also been stated that Nin curbed the revolutionary subjectivity of the workers in the POUM – whose fault it was not that they had such a lousy leader).

The actors in the Spanish Civil War knew who it was they wanted to keep from power – the mess of anti-Communists, Fascists and anti-Masonic, anti-Semitic Catholics who composed the Falange founded in 1933 by José Antonio Primo de Rivera – but what they wanted to achieve in the event of a victory was quite unsure. This issue had been dealt in a particularly diplomatic way between anarchists and Bolsheviks. As Trotsky himself had said on 17 December 1937 in a work called Lesson of Spain: The Last Warning, the anarchist workers joined on the Bolshevik road to revolution, but opposed the goals. The problems became far worse when questions started to arise as to whether this was a civil war at all or a revolution? Most groups involved agreed that defeating the fascists was the most pressing task. But even in the programme of the POUM the steps post-victory were towards a dictatorship of the proletariat – demonstrating it’s avowedly Leninist position. This didn’t sit particularly easy with the Stalinists, for whom worker power is a dangerous tool. It’s hardly surprising that many Stalinists, as well as Stalin himself, were to be considered counter-revolutionary, but it is slightly more surprising that the POUM were, and still are, themselves considered counter-revolutionary by cells of Trostkyites, Fifth Internationalists and anarchists.

Orwell fled as the in-fighting between Stalinists and Trostkyites took a turn towards extreme violence and loss of life (he was actually shot in the neck by some Communists). In spite of this Orwell chose to focus on the so-called Spanish character in his account of the war, Homage to Catalonia, as the reason why the Republicans did not succeed. The foremost scholar of the period Professor Paul Preston criticised Orwell for his lazy analysis of the disorganised Spaniard, instead looking towards other factors which explain why the Republicans couldn’t get the better of the enemy. One possible reason is that they spent too much time fighting themselves. However this may have been a necessary evil; after all if they hadn’t argued the toss about what post-victory looked like then, it would have been necessary to do it during the revolutionary period – whereby the infighting would’ve rendered their governance weak.

Actors in the civil war against Franco included PSUC (Catalonia United Socialist Party); FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation); POUM; CNT (Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo) as well as anarchists, Communists, Socialists, Reformists, Liberals and everything in between in Barcelona. It is possible to gather these groups to a common purpose, but for a common goal it’s not possible, nor desirable (as a Socialist, I feel absolutely no need to want to bargain with anarchists for example). Stalinists were ideologically geared towards ruining the efforts of those actors, be that through in-fighting or providing gash weaponry from the USSR (it was Trotsky who accused Nin of being too hostile towards the Soviets, though had Trotsky listened to Nin, Stalinsim wouldn’t have been as relevant as it was to the war effort, and both men may have survived death at Stalin’s hands – another of history’s ironies), but real problems had already entered the consciousness’ of all involved – how was left unity possible when “the left” has never been linked to a set of coherent ideas/strategy? Why is it that it seems quite natural to call for unity on the left, when in fact for most of the time many of what counts for left wing ideas are in conflict with one another (something Sunny Hundal must realise, since a lot of his criticism has been directed at what he calls the “far left” who still are, whether we like it or not, on the left).

To draw this back to the original argument, about students wanting to see the back of Aaron Porter, and Sunny Hundal’s (frequent) call for left unity, first of all their call does not represent in-fighting, it has to do with the competence of their union leader. As for left unity, inasmuch as you can sit people down as diverse as anarchists and liberals in the debate against fees, it’s foreseeable that we can agree to a common enemy, but ridiculous to suggest aims and goals can be settled between these people. The problem in the Spanish Civil War among left wing actors was that post-victory apprehensions seeped through prematurely – but perhaps that was inevitable. Anyone who believes the problem with the students today is of left unity is wrong, but perhaps such a concept is a myth anyway.

Tuition fee changes are problematic in so many ways

Irony was not lost on me reading a recent article in Standpoint magazine by Jonathan Bate, on the “costly idea of a new university”. Jeremy Bentham – whose name has been used by the room I’m sitting in, while it is occupied by UCL students – was used as an example of someone with a fine mind, but whose impact “was minimal”. The point being that out of this great mind, the world has seen relatively small returns, if you were to consider that on the back of book sales. This was not an original point, nor was it meant to be. John Stuart Mill had been the one to observe this, yet whether he made this a way of justifying further marketising further education, like Bate seemed to be attempting to do, is anyone’s guess – though I’m not going to bank on it.

The article advances the view that not everyone is entitled to higher education. For Bate, unlike junior and senior levels of education or other provisions such as healthcare, it is not cost-effective to have it as a free for all. Not only do we need plumbers – who seem to be exemplified as a low skilled, uneducated worker in Bate’s article – but the amount of money, in the form of public taxation, going into the further education system will not be nearly as beneficial as some would want to make out.

Bate notes that the proportion of young people in higher education has risen, as if this fact were a direct correlation on the drop in manual labourers. He kindly allows for the public understanding that society benefits from degree educated professionals such as doctors – but generally the article misses the entire point. Top-up fees for Bate, as well as for both the Labour and Tory parties (at least), represents the proportion of money the government should not have to pay, on account that better considered degrees – such as in medicine – are worth far more, in addition to the amount universities can’t/won’t afford to pay, since caps have been put on all higher education study – which is made up for in larger classes and less one-on-one time.

One of the perverse effects of the rise in tuition fees, according to Birkbeck Professsor Claire Callender, is that the more financial aid a university has to fork out for an individual student – accounting for the decreasing amount government has to put in – the less attractive the student is for a university. The issue of free higher education for all who want it is of course very important, but moreover, in a system where the amount of top up fees a prospective student can pay decides on whether that person is financially solvent for the university is extremely problematic. For Callender, this represents the current model of US higher education.

The initial problematic remains; the marketisation of university will mean prospective students choose subjects on a utilitarian basis – what will be the most enticing for employers, or rather, what prospective students imagine will be most enticing for employers – rather than universities being institutions of knowledge. Taking grant cuts into consideration, humanities and art subjects will become fewer, this will start to impact upon research in this area, and Britain’s importance on an international scale will become stagnant. But furthermore students will feel less inclined to get themselves into tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt in universities that aren’t in the upper deciles, institutions will merge, the less lucky ones will fold. This is in addition to how much debt an individual student can expect to be in after their course, which will crush any chance of a future savings culture of any worth – lest I mention the scrapped child trust fund.

This move, supported by most Ministers in the government, has many implications and consequences. Tonight student movements around the country will be making final adjustments to their work before Parliament goes to vote tomorrow. This work will include ringing the parliamentary offices of noted MPs, writing letters to newspapers, pressuring universities’ management to condemn the cuts agenda, and the war the government is waging on higher education institutions in general. Tomorrow is of course a day of action – it is the determination of this movement – composed of many who will not be directly affected by the changes to fees – which proves the urgency to take a stand against proposed changes.

Assange debate has nothing to do with feminist men selling out – it’s a different compulsion

I’ve read just about everything you could want on Julian Assange now – and I’ve reached my own conclusion. But first we should break down other opinions on the blogosphere. On 21 August of this year Dave Allen Green on his Jack of Kent blog cleared up one or two things when he said “we must be careful not to jump to the conclusion that it must be a smear.” Of course for the unthinking conspiratorial minded among us, this has to be a smear. Assange, after all, is undercutting US hegemony, utilising internet tools and creating bottom up power. Politicians talk about civic empowerment, and deliberative/participatory democracy, but when it actually happens they get nervous – was Assange simply on the receiving end of this?

As Andy Newman at Socialist Unity blog has said perhaps Assange has been caught up in a CIA honeytrap – which has got under the skin of Louise, who rightly points out that “We don’t know the full story. Wait for the full story, wait to see the evidence tested in court.” This brings us back to Green’s point; due process dictates this: one is innocent until proven guilty. Newman’s honeytrap represents precisely the compulsion to seek perfect narratives where such narratives are absent. But perhaps this is not his fault; after all it looks dodgy – but I’m on the side of Louise and Green, lets leave the theories at home, and await results from the trial.

In the mean time another debate has taken place between Cath Elliot and Sunny Hundal relating to a rubbish article written by John Band (Cath actually has a full account of her debate with Sunny on twitter, which I have now read, and immediately agreed with the last statement: “Now can we all please move on.”). This seems to relate to the terms of the debate of rape. Elliot worries that men on the left – so-called feminists – are too quick jumping at the conclusion that women are wrong when it comes to calling on rape. This is perhaps a simplified way to summarise the debate, but in any case it misses one, aforementioned, point; the left wing, feminist men are probably consumed by the timing of the allegation, with prior knowledge of CIA attempts to try and silence critics and dissenters, rather than trying to downplay the serious allegations made against Assange.

No male feminist I have ever met has ever tried to question what counts as rape in a way unpalatable – but the cynic in me thinks the problem here is men trying to define rape at all, which sticks in the throat of some feminists. Perhaps this is justified, but I fail to see how. Some of the comments on a blog entry by Dawn Foster, for the F for Philistine blog, call into question use of the word rape (this is what stung Andy Newman and John Band). See for example this comment by Soeren Passer:

Well described post and content.

But I disagree with you wholeheartedly – how can you justify that having sex willingly with someone, going on record that it was consensual and then still charge him with rape because you regretted your own actions? Sexual misconduct if you must press the issue of unprotected sex – consensual unprotected sex – and now that is being considered rape?

If a woman has the right to change her mind AFTER sex, then the man should have the option of deciding whether an accidental pregnancy should be aborted without input from the woman…. ponder that for a second.

I know that is an extreme and completely irrational example but so is being able to charge someone with rape because the woman regretted having consensual sex days after it happened. Remember that both women are on official police record stating that all the sex was consensual.

The reason people are so busy acquitting him for rape is because THERE WAS NO RAPE. To state otherwise is basically admitting stupidity.

Also one of the women has a blog and on this blog she posted a guide who to use the Swedish laws to charge someone with fake rape. That is just facts and from the “horse’s own mouth” so to say.

Let me be clear – I think real rape is unforgiving and I cannot imagine the horrors rape victims go through – but to call what happened between Julian Assange and the two women rape is belittling the real victims of rape.

This is the point at which leftist men might “sell out”. While trying to say this is a smear from the US, they feel almost obliged to call into question the rape allegations, in order to fit the narrative. Not necessarily in a way that questions “female accounts” – we’re not in a Saudi court here – but in a way that wonders whether there has been US intimidation involved, or something similar.

My own conclusion is as follows: it is bad timing, all true, but due process is so very important. Perhaps it’s not below the US to do something like this, perhaps the women filing an allegation are telling porkies or have changed their mind, perhaps Swedish law has some homework to do. Perhaps. We simply do not know. Making these facile little narratives add up to each other is a task not worth falling out with each other about. For reasons I have mentioned, I don’t think feminist men eventually sell out women in the end, this could be geared towards other compulsions we have, and not just feminist men, everyone, and that is desiring a narrative that fits. Lets all keep our hair on, and not fall out about this. Really.