Reasons to leave England, part 5

Part 5 in an occasional series featuring news stories that just make me want to pack my bags and escape across the Border to a civilised country.

Westminster Council proposes banning “tents and similar structures” and “noise equipment” in crackdown on political protest

Statewatch, 11/01/12

London’s Westminster Council is currently running a consultation on proposed new byelaws that seek to prohibit long-term or noisy political protests. If made law, the draft provisions would ban the erection or keeping of tents “or similar structures”, whether for sleeping in or not, as well as permitting “constables and authorised officers” to seize “noise equipment” being used to cause “annoyance”.

Kettling protesters is lawful, appeal court rules

Guardian 19/1/12

Police tactics of kettling protesters, used extensively during the G20 protests in London three years ago, have been upheld as lawful. The appeal court overturned a previous ruling by the high court on the controversial technique deployed to contain demonstrators during the climate camp sit-in.

UK riots: paratroopers are trained in riot control

Daily Telegraph, 28/1/12

Hundreds of soldiers from 3rd battalion The Parachute Regiment spent last week learning how to contain and arrest “rioters” in a series of exercises mirroring last summers violence. Defence sources have confirmed that if violence were to return to British cities, especially during the Olympic Games, the Paras would be “ideally placed” to provide “short-term” support to police forces around the UK.

Sick and disabled people could be forced to work for nothing

Guardian, 17/2/12

Some long-term sick and disabled people face being forced to work unpaid for an unlimited amount of time or have their benefits cut under plans being drawn up by the Department for Work and Pensions. [...] The policy could mean that those on employment and support allowance who have been placed in the work-related activity group (Wrag) could be compelled to undertake work experience for charities, public bodies and high-street retailers. The Wrag group includes those who have been diagnosed with terminal cancer but have more than six months to live; accident and stroke victims; and some of those with mental health issues.

Now, imagine that you’ve been given, say, a year to live by your doctor. What do you think you should be doing in that time? Having as good a time as you can have with your condition and making the most of what little life you have left, or working in some pointless McJob? No civilised society would make someone with terminal illness work for what remains of their living.

Gunning for Gold

Schnews, 6/1/12

The deployment of up to 13,500 military personnel, two of the navy’s largest warships, unspecified numbers of military attack helicopters staffed by snipers, typhoon fighter jets, surface to air missiles, support from the SAS and Navy Marines 12,000 police officers, 300 MI5 agents, 20,000 private security guards and up to 1000 US agents including 500 FBI. The extension of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act across the whole of Britain. All costing in the region of £6million.

So the invasion of Iran? The military contingent sent to join Arab Spring rebel groups? The recent deployment in Libya? No – it’s a just a few folk running and seeing who can throw something the furthest. In the capital city of a country that according to the Country Risk Index is one of the most stable in the world. East London is set to resemble a warzone (again) as the Olympic Games 2012 rolls into town. [...] All of this set to the background of a city crippled by the economic insanity of the last few decades. With the lottery fiasco of Olympic ticket allocation that has seen, predictably, wealthy and influential applicants cream the best of the seats and over a million ordinary families missing out on even the most obscure of events, this complete suspension of civil liberties and obscenely gross spending of millions of pounds is the final insult. The unprecedented security measures being put in place make a mockery of even the draconian Beijing Olympics in 2008 hosted by the Chinese Communist Party. These are the actions of a government that is very, very scared – not only of the ‘threat of international terrorism’ but also of its own people.

English-only riots

Here’s a curiousity which I’ve not seen mentioned in the English media during the recent riots/disturbances/unrest/anarchy (delete according to taste): all the riots have taken place in English cities. Not a one in Scotland or Wales (NI has its own sectarian rioting tradition that puts it in a league of its own). This has not gone unnoticed in Scotland – whilst the Herald headlined a story “Britain under siege“, the commenters quite correctly pointed out that it’s England under siege. Similarly, commenters on a Scotsman story “Riot-hit UK branded tourist danger zone“. Whilst I can remember back to the 1981 riots, I can’t remember if any happened in Scottish cities and a cursory web search doesn’t pick anything up.

It’s not as if Scotland doesn’t have areas at least, if not more, ‘deprived’ than those of inner-city London or Liverpool or Manchester. Govan and Easterhouse in Glasgow are rougher than a scabby dog’s arse and poorer than a dead church mouse, as is Sighthill in Edinburgh, and areas like Gourock are so down and out that Ken Loach makes films about them. So if deprivation, alienation and no future were the motivations of English rioters you’d think that would apply in Spades to Scotland. Neither are Scottish neds much different from their hoodie counterparts South of the Border other than in clothing and dialect, and street violence is a not-unknown occurrence in Glasgae and Embra, especially during sectarian football matches and the Prod marching season.

I don’t have any answers as to why Wales and Scotland have remained riot-free. I could speculate based on the many differences between Ingerlan and Scotland (wealth distribution, political autonomy, political consciousness, cultural identity, and more) but frankly there’s enough speculation and pontificating in the media on the basis of sod-all evidence and I don’t want to contribute to the volcano of hot air that’s grounded all rationality over the last few days. I just note the ‘discrepancy’ as a curiousity, and will be on the lookout for evidence as to why it exists. Of course, the neds might be out in force in the Central Belt tonight for all I know…

PS: as a bit of light relief, some folk have been busy Photoshopping riot photos with some quite silly and sometimes surreal accessories. Have a look at photoshoplooter for a chuckle or three.

Reasons to leave England, part 1

An occasional series featuring news stories that just make me want to pack my bags and escape across the Border to a civilised country.

Migration settlement cuts planned

BBC News, 9/6/11

Proposals to cut the number of migrants allowed to settle permanently in the UK have been published by the Home Office. In future, only a “tightly controlled minority” from outside the European Union will be allowed to stay for more than five years. Ministers say they are also considering stopping wealthy business people staying on after five years. The move is part of the government’s pledge to cut net migration to tens of thousands by the end of the Parliament.

Vince Cable warns unions strikes could spark clampdown on industrial action

Guardian, 6/6/11

The business secretary, Vince Cable, will issue a warning to the country’s union chiefs that if they ratchet up strikes opposing the coalition’s cuts the government may be forced to make it harder for them to embark on industrial action.

David Cameron to target Islamists who hold ‘un-British’ beliefs

Guardian, 6/6/11

David Cameron has won a cabinet battle to toughen up the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy and take a harder line against Islamic traditions that fail to “reflect British mainstream values”.

The successor to Labour’s Prevent strategy is likely to redefine extremists as those who hold “un-British” views, such as intolerance of equal rights for women, because ministers believe there is a link between non-violent extremism and violent acts of terrorism.

The new policy, which could be unveiled this week, will reflect the prime minister’s February speech in Munich in which he claimed “state multiculturalism” had failed. Further education colleges are likely to be targeted in the belief that they have become a breeding ground for young Islamists.

British airline passengers to US could have details kept for 15 years

Daily Telegraph, 26/5/11

British airline passengers flying to the United States face having their personal information, including addresses, phone numbers and credit card details, stored for 15 years under under a proposed agreement between the US and the European Union.

‘Talking about immigration’

The most irritating and damaging thing to come out of Gordon Brown’s “gaffe”, where he called a Rochdale woman who was banging on about Eastern European workers coming to the UK, a bigot, is that it’ll give carte blanche to all the racist green-inkers whose mantra is that “it’s not racist to talk about immigration”. As it happens, guys and gals, it is racist, because the only people in England who use that mantra are those who want to control or stop Johnny Foreigner coming to this green and unpleasant land. You don’t get someone in favour of further immigration or even open borders using the mantra, it’s only the bigots and the racists of Middle England [TM] who have a persecution complex about being ‘banned’ from talking about immigration (news to me – every other Mail and Express lead story is a negative story about immigration) by the ‘liberal politically-correct elite’.

Is ‘immigration’ a big issue amongst the Great British (well, English really) Public? Yep, and it’s so because the dominant form of Englishness – the reactionary nostalgia for imperial glories, warm beer and cricket, ‘two world wars and one world cup, doo-dah’, bootlicking obeisance to the monarchy, and hatred and contempt for all foreigners – is racist to the marrow. Racism is so much a part of ‘traditional’ Englishness, so ingrained in dominant English culture, that it’s not even remarked upon, and if you do try to show it up Englanders get the hump and bang on about how they’re “proud to be English” and “if the Jocks can be proud of Scottishness, why can’t we be proud of being English”, accompanied by a thrusting of the jaw and defiant Churchillian glare (and the barely concealed threat of a smack in the teeth). Well, O Pugnacious Patriots, it’s because you’re comparing chalk with cheese: English nationalism is exclusive, inward-looking, aggressive, imperialist, and backward-looking towards a mythical whites-only society where folk ‘respected their betters’ and ‘knew their place’ [2]; modern Scottish nationalism is explicitly inclusive, outward-looking (‘an independent Scotland in Europe’ is the SNP’s slogan), pacific and forward-looking.

This contrast between the nationalisms was made stark some years back when Jack McConnell, First Minister of Scotland 2001-7 and leader of the Scottish Labour Party, actively and publicly pleaded with Tony Blair to send all the asylum seekers and refugees that England was trying to keep out and deport, up to Scotland to help rebuild their society and economy. For sound reasons of self-interest, to be sure – Scotland’s population is falling, particularly in the deprived Highlands & Islands, and the country desperately needs fresh young blood to produce new generations of Scots and bring vitality and expertise to the land. Can you imagine the outcry in England from the petit-bourgeois and sewer Press were a top politician in England to actively welcome refugees? His or her political life would be measured in days, if not hours. In Scotland, it bolstered McConnells’ popular reputation.

If you’re in Scotland then ‘talking about immigration’ really does mean talking about pro as well as anti viewpoints, and these days more pro than anti. It’s not, as it is in England, unsubtle code for ‘kick the wogs aht’. Scots know full well that this isn’t some tiny little overcrowded island – you just have to go to the Highlands and Islands, where sheep outnumber people by orders of magnitude, to see that. Scots are also very well aware that there’s masses of empty space in the Highlands as a direct result of the Clearances, which were a combination of class war by lairds against peasants and ethnic cleansing by the English army. What happened in the Balkans in the 90s is what happened to Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries, a linkage the famous Gaelic poet and radical Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorley Maclean) frequently made in his work.

As for whether or not yer woman Brown cursed was a bigot or not, who knows for sure other than herself and those who know her, but that she was banging on about immigration in another decaying lumpen Pennine town twinned with Royston Vasey makes it pretty likely that she is, and for that reason I’ve some sympathy with Broon. Instead of apologising and saying he was ‘mortified’, he should have stood his ground and said that, in his view, the woman was a bigot. By cravenly backtracking and grovellingly apologising, he makes himself look even more of a tit than he already is.

[1] Gordon Brown ‘mortified’ by his ‘bigoted woman’ slur. BBC News online, 28/4/10

[2] A nostalgia that conveniently airbrushes all the riots and near-revolutions and strikes out of English history, but then that’s the sort of thing that an England-hating leftie would say, eh? Wat Tyler? Jimmy Reid? Levellers? Just a bunch of lefty inventions.

[3] Such a lovely irony, lost on White Van Man, that yer man Georgie was a Palestinian who never went within a hundred leagues of Ing-er-lan.

Anti-social behaviour in Nottingham: the legacy of the Miner’s Strike

The death, yesterday, of some poor bloke in Manchester after years of harassment by young scrotes [1], struck a chord with me, and I’m sure with many others who’ve found themselves under attack from youth gangs. In the my last few months in Bilborough, a grotty sink estate in West Nottingham [2], I was directly targetted by a local gang of youths, which at the time controlled my life. My whole evening timetable revolved around them, such that I stayed late at work to make sure I was out whilst they were active. The harassment campaign culminated in eggs being thrown at my door, then more seriously, after I’d run out one night to confront the cants (as Essex folk would say) and given them verbal grief, a brick put through my front window. This was particularly worrying as I was in the last throes of moving, and hard questions were asked of my buyers about the broken window (luckily they were desperate to get on the ‘property ladder’, this being a year before the house market collapse). When I finally escaped from that grot-hole I suspect you could hear my sigh of relief from the other side of Grottingham, and I now live in a petit-bourgeois area that’s dull but quiet and safe.

So why didn’t I do summat about it? After all, they were mostly mid-teens, and unless they were armed I could have taken any one of them, so why not just sort them out physically? Because a) I’d have been the criminal, and more importantly b) their parents would have come over and beaten the shite out of me. If I were a proper hard cant then I’d not be bothered about that, but if I were that hard they’d not have dared to harass me in the first place. Net result? Powerlessness. You can’t do sod-all.

A while back I wrote the following on a blog entitled, with justification, “Nottingham is Crap”:

I was also targetted by a bunch of hoodies, including, shamefully, two girls, after a ‘problem family’ moved in up the road. I tried being polite to them, which of course failed but you’ve got to try, then after a while complained to the local toolshed – sorry, police station. The cops made all the right noises and created a case, but nowt happened, which was what I expected – frankly, they don’t give a monkey’s what happens on such estates.

My next door neighbour, a single mother with a young kid, got into a dispute with the local ‘hard family’ and was driven out of her house, her front window being bricked and threats of violence made against her. I was in when she was bricked and came out to help, and she, her man and a relative who’d driven in hung around for over an hour for the cops to show, and then they were plainly disinterested. The council boarded up the window then, to its credit, rehoused her and the child the next day. Nothing happened to the ‘hard family’ who as far as I know still rule the Bilbra roost. Had this happened in Wollaton the cops would have been on the scene like a shot and doing house to house enquiries.

The only thing that can stop the hoodies and yobs is a local community that sticks together and works for each other. We didn’t have that in Bilborough, with folk hunkering away in their houses in their own worlds, not knowing their neighbours (I was as guilty of that as anyone), and as a result the scrotes picked us off easily. Where there’s a community it polices itself, one way or t’other, and the anti-social have nowhere to hide. [3]

I don’t draw any grand moral or political themes from the alleged “epidemic of anti-social behaviour”. Many pundits in the sewer and barking Press will rant and rave about lax morals, the need for harsher punishments, blah feckin’ blah; and pundits in the liberal Press will yak about social deprivation and poverty, blah feckin’ blah. As usual there’ll be plenty of sound and fury signifying feck all – all noise and no signal [4].

However, I do feel that I can tentatively draw a lesson about Nottingham based on my 6 years here [5]. In my humble view, a specific reason why Grottingham is so prone to destructive behaviour, and has so many grotty and occasionally lethal (St Anns, Meadows) sink estates, is the collapse of the mining industry following the defeat of the Miner’s Strike of 1984, when Notts miners formed a scab union and performed an inglorious role in the defeat of the strike. It’s poetic justice that the very forces on the Right which so wooed and financed and supported the Union of Democratic Mineworkers [6] (sic!) whilst it was strike-breaking, discarded the Notts miners like a used condom once they’d outlived their usefulness, and pits were closed throughout Notts with tens of thousands of miners made thrown on the slag heap. This has led directly to former mining communities, such as Bilborough and Broxtowe and Bestwood, becoming sink estates ruled by lumpen gangs and ‘hard families’, because all that’s left for their youth are McJobs and crime. Mining may have been a dirty, difficult and dangerous job, but it was comparatively well-paid and secure, and most importantly miners had a strong sense of solidarity and community, two qualities which were (and likely still are) markedly absent in Bilborough. And when you have no community you have no communal social control, and the hoodies and the dealers and the Families have free reign.

So, from outside, ex-mining communities in Yorkshire, Wales, Tyneside and elsewhere, can look on Nottingham with a sense of dark but justified schadenfreude because the city has sown what it reaped in its betrayal of the strike. It’s not right good for those left in Nottingham, though, particularly those born after the strike who are innocents suffering the sins of their fathers. They’ve no hope, no jobs, no community, and no solidarity. It’s hardly surprising that they turn to gangs as pallid substitutes for community, and to petty crime and harassment for excitement and fun.

I had the last laugh, of course. I’m in a moderately well-paid job and was able to move from Bilborough to somewhere relatively safe, unlike so many inmates on low incomes (for whom I definitely feel). But the hoodie scrotes will be stuck there for all their miserable lives, when they’re not in nick for minor crimes. They can enjoy their petty terrorism and the pathetic (in both senses of that word) feelings of power and excitement they get from it in the short term, but in the long term they’re the victims, and they’ll suffer. If they had consciousness and morality I’d have sympathy for, maybe even solidarity with, them; as they’ve neither and are amoral lumpen, I’m happy to see them rot in that grothole for the foreseeable.

References and notes

For a subjective chronicle of Bilbra life, see my Housemover’s Tale blog, now moribund on account of no longer living there. No news is good news.

[1] “Man, 64, collapses and dies after ‘abuse from youths’“. BBC News online, 11/3/10

[2] Mentioned in the same sentence as Meadows, Basford, Broxtowe and St Anns by a national journalist rightly slagging off Grottingham. Illustrious company indeed. See a report in the local rag, the Nottingham Evening Post, on 12/12/08

[3] “Living in fear”. Nottingham is Crap blog, 2/12/09

[4] One political theme that could be drawn by the fact that cops don’t give a monkeys about estates would relate to the real role of cops behind the public façade of crimefighting and social protection, as safeguarding the State and capitalism, but that’s not much more than the bleedin’ obvious to anyone with half an ounce of political consciousness.

[5] Why so long, when I think so little of it and constantly bang on about its scab history? Because that’s where the job is, dum-dum. Pride has to take a distant second place to economic necessity.

[6] There’s a laugh out loud – sorry, LOL! – moment on the UDM website, where the History section is composed of nowt but the lorem ipsum filler text.

Jail Guitar Doors

On Sunday I went to an inspiring, moving and emotional event at the Nottingham Broadway cinema. It was a benefit for the Jail Guitar Doors initiative set up by Billy Bragg, premiering the documentary film Breaking Rocks about the JGD initiative, which is to bring musical instruments (well, just guitars at the moment) into prisons to encourage prisoners to get involved in music-making. It was an inspiring and moving film about the redemptive power of music, followed by a Q&A session with Bragg and the Director, Alan Miles, then a mini-gig with two of the JGD ‘graduates’ and yer man Billy himself. Even though it was Sunday afternoon, the event was sold out, and I expect that with ticket sales and the bucket being passed around, an awful lot of guitars will be bought from the proceeds. It was great to be,  for once, amongst hundreds of like-minded folk who actually give a shit, and to see the commitment of Bragg and his mates (including ex-members of the Clash, from whose song the initiative title comes) to what is a highly unfashionable and unpopular cause: the rehabilitation of prisoners. I’ve got massive, massive respect for anyone who actually does something, who gets out there and makes a real difference by practical, positive action. Even those I disagree with, such as animal rightists, I respect because they take non-violent direct action – they don’t just sit behind the keyboard like us armchair activists or grumble over their beer, they put themselves ‘on the line’ for what they believe, and often put their bodies where it hurts (for instance, a recent demo at a Nottingham arms factory). Don’t wait for someone else to do summat, do it yourself and do it now.

I’ve also always had a lot of respect for Bragg himself, as an activist who’s always concentrated on the practical, has never sold out, and has never used causes for self-promotion (in stark contrast to, say, St Bonio of U2). He’s also a decent bloke, and I’d happily buy him a pint or three to chew the fat and have a laugh in the pub. The guy’s a friggin’ star.

The JGD initiative needs supporters and money. There’s a website and a Facebook group which you can join, or even better go to one of the events on the Breaking Rocks tour and see the guys face to face. As a bonus, you get some feckin’ good music too – the two ‘graduates’, Jonny Neesom and Leon Walker, are bloody good guitar players, singers and songwriters, and I sincerely hope that they’ve got good careers in music ahead of them. Bragg himself gives you a few songs as well, including on Sunday a ‘premiere’ of “Last plane to Abu Dhabi”, which was a bloody funny song about City traders down on their uppers. Pretty good value for a few quid (just £7 for the Nottingham event).

So that’s all the positive stuff. Now the furious ranting:

It’s easy, too easy, to write off ‘criminals’ as sub-human devils who barely deserve bread and water, let alone education in prison or – gasp! – as decent a life as you can have inside the nick. You just have to read the comments boards of the Nottingham Evening Post whenever any story involves crime to see the knuckledragging vengeful bigotry which is all too common these days. And whilst feelings of revenge are understandable in the heat of the moment – if you’re being terrorised in your home by a bunch of hoodie scrotes (as I and many others were back in my Bilborough days) your immediate instinct is to wish the perps having seven shades of shit beaten out of them -  irrational bloodlust vengeance is not the basis for a rational policy on crime and anti-social behaviour, and demonisation of perps just makes it highly likely that they’ll never ‘go straight’. If you keep beating the crap out of someone, can you really expect that, when the beating stops, they’ll be a productive and social member of society? Dream on, matey.

As Mark Thomas puts it in a clip in the Breaking Rocks film, folk put away will eventually come out, and it’s in everybodys interest that they come out as functioning social humans because they’ll be living amongst you and I and society. ‘Rehabilitation’ isn’t some kind of ‘soft option’, it’s just bloody common sense and in everyone’s self-interest – in modern jargon, it’s win-win. You get a productive and social member of society, and the ex-con gets to have some kind of life.

Don’t go thinking that only ‘criminal types’ get locked up. The NuLabor regime has created over 3000 new criminal – not civil – offences since coming to power in 1997 [1], which amounts to one per day that the regime’s been in power. Hell, you can even get locked up for thought crime these days (‘glorifying terrorism’, anyone?[2]).  It’s easier than ever to get locked up, and it could happen to you, Dear Mail and Sun readers, not just ‘lowlives’ and ‘chavs’. You could be a con too. This country has the highest prison population in Europe, and still the tabloids of the barking and sewer Press clamour for more and longer prison sentences. It would be easy to think that they’re a bunch of thick reactionaries, but of course they do it for money – the more scared and vengeful they are, the more readers and sales. The Mail and Express compete to be the most hang ‘em and flog ‘em (not to mention racist) in a fevered race for the shit-scared petit-bourgeois market.

Any rational government (shurely shome oxymoron? Ed.) would give the finger to the tabloids and pursue an evidence-based crime policy, but instead populist politicians compete in increasingly fevered bloodlust to be ‘tougher on crime’ than thou, and for the same reasons as the Press: scare the shit out of the populace, get more votes. Cynical and amoral, but that’s politicians for you.

[1] Blair’s ‘frenzied law making’: a new offence for every day spent in office. The Independent, 16/8/06

[2] Anger as ban on glorifying terror comes into force. The Independent, 14/8/06

Luton generates a neo-fascist group

It’s no surprise to me, as someone who was mostly dragged up in A Town Called Malice – sorry, Luton, ‘jewel of Bedfordshire’ (aka Crappest Town in Britain 2004 [1]) – that something like the neo-fascist streetgang called the English Defence League has come out of the place, born of the knuckledragging fans of Luton Town Football Club who, now that the club’s been relegated out of the Football League, have no ‘firms’ to fight anymore, so are looking for a scrap elsewhere, and angry jihadists are just the job.

According to the Independent on Sunday:

“The EDL, originally formed by football supporters in Luton, claims to be a non-violent group campaigning against Muslim fundamentalism but is alleged to have links to former hooligan networks and known British National Party agitators. It was formed in March in reaction to barracking by Muslim protesters at soldiers from the Royal Anglian Regiment parading through Luton on their return from Iraq.” [2]

Luton is that kind of town, where a low-level racism is so pervasive that it’s part of the miasmic atmosphere of the town, whose inhabitants have the political consciousness of jellyfish. It’s not that Lutonians are, on the whole, actively hostile to non-whites, it’s more that they take racism as such a fact of life that they really don’t understand that it’s racist to talk of, say, going down the “p*ki shop”, or carrying out a bit of “p*ki-bashing”, or getting a takeway from the “chinky”. It’s in such a fetid sea that the real racists and fascists swim so freely and occasionally, as has happened with the EDL, pop their heads above water. Not that most of the EDL will be fascists – they’ll be too stupid to understand the term. They just know that they don’t like “darkies” and “mozzies” and that they like a good ruck. They’ve probably practiced on matchdays, as they parade through Bury Park, where the Kennel – sorry, Kenilworth Road – is located, abusing and intimidating the Asian residents on the way.

As a (now armchair) Watford fan, I quite literally got it in the neck growing up in Luton, and saw first-hand genuine Loo’n ‘ooligans in their natural habitat. On a Monday at school after a Saturday’s ruck, they’d boast about making the opposition “run”, beating up some hapless kid who happened to be wearing oppo colours, doing a bit of “p@ki-bashing”, bricking houses in Bury Park, and so on. Knuckledragging scum you’d think, yet many were in the top form at school and came from ‘respectable’ middle-class backgrounds – I could name quite a few former classmates in A1 who were, frankly, violent psychopaths and virulent racists. The nature of Luton fans hasn’t changed much since those days, with Watford fans in particular getting vicious treatment at home matches, so I for one had little sympathy for the club’s rapid decline into the football conference – if, as I believe, a club is its fans, for better or worse, then LTFC deserves its demise.

I was determined to leave that dump, and after a false start I finally escaped in ’84 oop North. The best thing to come out of Luton is the M1 going Northbound.

References

[1] Luton was famously voted Crap Town of 2004, and with good reason. See Luton voted Britain’s worst town. BBC News Online, 27/9/04

[2] Anti-islamists target Palestinian rally in central London. Independent on Sunday, 13/9/09

Links

Wikipedia: English Defence League

‘Terror’ comes to Nottingham

The tentacles of the Security State reached into Nottingham University last week, when a postgraduate student and a staff member at the university were arrested and held without charge under the Terrorism Act 2006 [1], until their release six days later, when one was re-arrested in connection with immigration matters. They were accused of possessing “extremist material” by downloading an “Al Qaeda terror manual”. The plain facts of the case are now known:

1. The “terror manual” was, and still is, a document openly available on a US Government website and contained no ‘terror techniques’. The document is available on the US Military’s Air War College website as a translated and edited version of a training manual found in Manchester during a search of an Al Qaeda member’s home.

2. The postgrad student who downloaded it is undertaking a PhD in Islamic terrorism. According to a Times Higher article:

“Mr Sabir’s lawyer, Tayab Ali of McCormacks solicitors in London, told Times Higher Education that as preparation for a PhD on radical Islamic groups, Mr Sabir had downloaded an edited version of the al-Qaeda handbook from a US government website. It is understood that Mr Sabir sent the 1,500-page document to the staff member – who was subsequently arrested – because he had access to a printer. Mr Ali said: “The two members of the university were treated as though they were part of an al-Qaeda cell. They were detained for 48 hours, and a warrant for further detention was granted on the basis that the police had mobile phones and evidence taken from computers to justify this.” [2]

3. The cops were alerted by a member of clerical staff:

“A spokesman for Nottingham confirmed that the police had been called after material was found on the computer used by a junior clerical member of staff. “There was no reasonable rationale for this person to have that information,” he said. “The police were called in on the basis of reasonable anxiety and concern. In response to that, the police made a connection with a student who, we understand, was impeding the investigation and arrested that person.”” [2]

4. When the arrests took place, the cops stormed the campus mob-handed, stopped and searched students, and were still at it the day after the arrests:

“Secondly, Dr. Greatrix [University Registrar] claims that this was a low-level investigation. This claim, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. Students had their bags searched by uniformed police before entering the Trent Building the day after the arrests. The student and member of staff that was arrested was held from Wednesday May 14 until Tuesday, May 20 without charge, in spite of the fact that Rizwaan Sabir’s supervisor and personal tutor both confirmed to the police that the document they had downloaded and printed was legitimate research material on Friday, May 16. The homes of the two men were raided; they had their computers impounded and they have still not been returned; the family of Rizwaan Sabir was ejected from their home during the police’s search; several colleagues in the School of politics were interviewed for hours by the police. A low-key investigation would have resolved this matter within hours by contacting the relevant members of staff at the School of Politics and International Relations; indeed, a low-key investigation, to use Dr. Greatrix’s term, would have been conducted by the university itself, without any police involvement at all.” [3]

5. The document was passed by the postgrad student, Rizwaan Sabir, to the staff member, Hicham Yezza (an ex-postgrad student) because Sabir wanted to print it out and didn’t have enough print credits to do so on his own account, whereas Yezza, as a staff member, would have easy access to a printer.

6. Both men are entirely innocent of any wrongdoing and have zero to do with terrorism.

This has led to an understandable and righteous furore at the University, with staff getting up tight about academic freedom, students getting uptight about personal freedom and political repression, and foreign students getting very uptight about being targetted by the spooks on account of having dusky skins, as there certainly seems to be a strong ethnic element to the treatment by the cops of the detainees. A demonstration by students and staff will be taking place tomorrow (28th May) by the main campus library to protest against the arrests, in favour of academic freedom, and against the threatened deportation of Hicham Yezza.

That Yezza is being threatened with deportation smells of an act of spite by the cops, who have come out of this looking like complete idiots. They’ve held two guys for six days – imagine yourself in that position! – without charge, turned their homes and their lives upside-down, on sod-all evidence other than the download which even thick cops should have been able to track to a US government website – er, you do know what server logs are, don’t you, boys? It really feels like they’re trying to pin something on them just to give their bungling a fig-leaf of respectability. That Yezza would be deported to Algeria, a country not known for its tolerant attitude to political dissent, but well known for its love of torture and killing political opponents, plainly doesn’t bother the cops one little bit – the point seems to be to save face.

Students also feel that the arrests were part of a campaign against student activism:

“During questioning, the police regularly attempted to collate information about student activism and peaceful campaigning. They asked numerous questions about the student peace magazine ‘Ceasefire’, and other political student activities. The overt police presence on campus, combined with increased and intimidating police presence at peaceful demonstrations, has created a climate of fear amongst some students. Many saw the operation as a message from the police that they are likely to arrest those who have been engaged in peaceful political activities. There is widespread concern in the community that the police are criminalising peaceful activists using terrorism legislation, such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005.” [4]

The university has signally failed to support either man, and has covered itself in dishonour by its craven acceptance of the police line. Its only comment has been an email to staff, which accuses the THE article [2] of inaccuracy but otherwise says very little using a lot of words (reference [3] is a response to this statement). The main campus union, UCU (nèe AUT) has come out in support of the detainees, but only reluctantly and tepidly, saying that it wants to work “constructively” with the university to safeguard academic freedom, and maintaining that it has to support both the arrested staff member and the clerical staff member who shopped him so can’t stick its neck out in public comment. It’s been students and academic staff who’ve really been enraged by the whole affair and have brought it to public attention, and thanks to them the business is rapidly becoming a national cause cèlèbre – had it been up to UoN and the UCU the whole thing would have been quietly swept under the carpet.

As for the University, even if all questions of morality and ethics are put to one side, this story is going to hurt the institution financially. The university is absolutely dependent on overseas students from outside the EU, and in particular from SE Asia and China – it even has campuses in Malaysia and China. If word gets around that foreign students are being narked to the cops then they may well choose to go elsewhere, taking their very lucrative course fees with them. The uni has a lot of PR to do to repair the damage that this incident will cause.

Postscript

The demo on campus was well-attended, maybe around 300 at a guess despite it pouring with rain, and although mostly students there were a significant number of staff present. Wisely, the cops stayed away, though undoubtedly there were spooks in the crowd. An amusing fact that came up is that the ‘training manual’ is openly available on Amazon, a snip at $15. So much for illicit “extremist material”…

References:

[1] Two Nottingham terror arrests. Nottingham Evening Post, 16/5/08

[2] Research into Islamic terrorism led to police response. Times Higher Education, 22/5/08. See also the comments on the THE story which, for a change, are enlightening and reasoned.

[3] Comment on university communication on recent events. Statement by 3 academic members of staff, published on Nottingham Indymedia on 27/5/08.

[4] Terror law arrests at Nottingham: Statement by students and staff. Published on SACC website, 21/5/08.

Further reading:

Nottingham Uni detainee innocent but still facing deportation. Nottingham Indymedia, 23/5/08.

Al Qaeda download sparked my arrest. Nottingham Evening Post, 23/5/08

Terror arrest ‘cock up’ – MP. Nottingham Evening Post, 26/5/08

Student tells of his despair in ‘terror’ inquiry. Nottingham Evening Post, 23/5/08. The comments on this story from locals really show how stupid, ignorant and bigoted some Notts people are. No change since the days of the 83-84 Miner’s Strike, then… ;-\

Psst! Got any fags under the counter?

Another day, another ‘control measure’ to ‘safeguard the nations health’. This time the State is going to ban the display of cigarettes in shops in England in order to “stop children from taking up smoking” [1], so soon fags will become ‘under the counter’ goods with all the accompanying sleazy connotations. This follows on from a similar recently-announced ban in Scotland [2].

The State and politicians should have the courage to state openly that their intention is to stop smoking altogether, rather than lie that these measures are taken to benefit non-smokers or to save the children (shades of South Park and “think of the children!”). The ban on smoking in public places was always about public health and NHS expenditure, and it was a blatant and shameless lie that it was intended to protect non-smokers from passive smoking – had that been the real issue, then it would have been simple enough to work out ways, such as airlocked rooms, to allow people to smoke indoors.

The forthcoming ban on cigs being on display such that smokers have to ask for them to be brought out from under the counter is plainly aimed at stigmatising them and has nothing at all to do with children picking up the habit – under-18s can’t buy fags legally anyway, and the idea that an adolescent would be subject to hypnotic allure simply by seeing cig packets in the newsagents is the stuff of absurdist satire.

People who smoke have been subject to a systematic (quite literally) long-term project to demonise and dehumanise them, such that they’re not only seen as prey to a ‘filthy habit’ but, worse, are portrayed as threatening other’s health through exposure to cigarette smoke and imposing a “burden” on the NHS. It’s a matter of time before smoking parents with children are forced to smoke outside their houses, for fear of child abuse. Another inevitable measure is smokers being forced to pay for health treatment, or threatened with the withholding of treatment until they give up smoking (though that has its own ramifications – see Physician, heal thyself) . You can even see pet owners who smoke being investigated by the RSPCA for animal abuse. Ludicrous? No, just a logical extension of current policies and principles.

Many would say “serves them right”, and would support any measure, however draconian, to eradicate smoking and smokers. That such an attitude is gaining ground in society, and that smokers are seen by many as being on a par with child abusers, is an indication of the success of the stigmatisation project.

It would be far more honest for the State to ban smoking altogether. it would fail, of course, and would lead to the criminalisation of millions of people, but that doesn’t stop it banning other recreational drugs, such as cannabis  and E, which turns millions of citizens who just want to chill out into criminals who can be locked up.

Oh, and you non-smoking drinkers who raised a glass to the pub smoking ban? You’re next, you smug gits. Already the regime is making noises about “binge drinking”, banning outdoor drinking, ‘alcohol awareness’ advertising campaigns (such as are appearing on TV already), and raising taxes to punitive levels, and with good reason as the arguments used to stigmatise smoking – the damage to society and public health – apply in Spades to alcohol, which is demonstrably more damaging to personal (liver failure, heart disease) and societal (violence, alcoholism, work absenteeism) health than smoking. Now that the anti-smoking argument has been enthusiastically accepted by the State and its cheerleaders, the chattering classes, anti-drinking will follow as surely as night follows day.

[1] Cigarette ban proposals welcomed. BBC News Scotland, 25/5/08

[2] Tobacco display ban plan unveiled. BBC News Scotland, 21/5/08

[3] The last gasp: Health Secretary signals new smoking curbs. Independent, 26/5/08

Exploiting murder

It’s predictable, I suppose, but no sooner had two serial killers (Steve Wright, Mark Dixie) been convicted than the top cops’ ‘executive committee’ in Scotland (i capi dei tutti capi), ACPOS, called for DNA samples to be taken from everyone arrested, not just those convicted, and kept on the national DNA database for ever [1]. This is currently the law in England, which is handy as cops can arrest you for anything – ‘obstruction’ is a useful catch-all used regularly against political protesters – then drag you to the copshop, take your DNA for the database, then shove you out of the door again uncharged. Result. In Scotland, though, samples taken from arrestees can only be stored if the person is subsequently charged with a crime. That’s not great, from a freedom viewpoint, but was a measure passed by the McNewLabour administration back in 2007[2]. Still, at least the cops have to go through the legal aggro of filling out paperwork and launching a formal prosecution before they can keep your DNA on file, which is a disincentive if their mighty and continual whingeing about “paperwork” is to be believed. Of course, ACPOS argues that a DNA database would enable such serial killers to be caught earlier, because both Dixie and Wright were nabbed after DNA matching of samples taken from them when they were previously arrested for unrelated crimes. This argument begs two points, one minor, one major:

1. DNA matching is not the only, or even the main way, of catching and convicting perps. As numerous crime novels, TV series, true crime stories, and TV crime programmes, make plain time and again, most perps are nicked through ‘old-fashioned’ policing. Cops managed to nick killers long before DNA matching came along, and often the only reason they didn’t nick them in time (such as in the Yorkshire Ripper case) was sheer bloody incompetence and stupidity.
2. There is no item of information about a person that a cop would not consider to be ‘relevant to the investigation’.

The second is more disturbing. Yesterday it was mass fingerprinting, today it’s DNA, tomorrow it’ll be retinal scans, the day after it’ll be real-time 24/7 information on your whereabouts. The gathering of any item of personal information can be justified on the grounds of helping to prevent and/or solve crimes, and in the case of murder to save victims’ lives. This emotional blackmail is obvious and crude, and crudely exploitative of those who have been murder victims and their families and friends. It taps into people’s fears and insecurity, and if the ‘nothing to fear, nothing to hide’ principle is widely accepted, as seems to be the case in England, the blackmail is hard to argue against. The logical conclusion of the principle, though, is a world of ‘Total Information Awareness’, which is currently vividly and frighteningly illustrated in the near-future drama The Last Enemy on BBC1, where the State has complete knowledge of all individuals in real time. Or, if you want to be really dystopian and fascistic, a Judge Dredd world where cops are the law, and can search your home and ransack your life at will.

The Scottish government, to its credit, has resisted some of the more authoritarian measures being implemented in the nascent police state south of the Border, and polls of the Scottish population regularly show a greater concern for civil freedoms, and cynicism towards the Security State, than is to be found amongst the Sasannaich. It would be depressing if it were to accede to ACPOS demands as that would set a highly unwelcome precedent, that any information about anyone, crime suspect or innocent, is fair game to gather and keep. Accepting that principle would be highly dangerous for freedom in Ingerlan’s civilised neighbour.

[1] Call for DNA retention law change, BBC News Scotland, 23/2/08

[2] New powers to store suspects’ DNA, BBC News Scotland, 1/1/07