I listened to a sad story on BBCR4 today this morning – a grieving mother can’t bury her daughter, murdered, because there’s no body – in years of searching none has been found. The killer isn’t co-operating (they don’t have to, although it would improve their parole terms to do so). She wants a change in the law so murderers can’t get parole until a body is produced (habeas corpus, literally).
This is a worthy campaign, and it must blight her life. Thing is, this scenario affects ’70 whole families’, by her own numbers. Just 70 in the whole of the UK. A change in the *law* for this? A law which has to go through parliamentary scrutiny (twice), occupying time and resources.
Couldn’t sentencing just be updated, instead?
We have a vast number of small, tiny, individually important laws but are they collectively eating away at the vitality of our democracy? MPs need to be wrestling with and thoroughly, openly, debating the massive challenges of our time – automation, climate change, ageing, food security, migration. Most complain of long hours. Not every minor cause is lucky to have an effective MP to champion it, either – which ‘good ideas’ make it into law is arbitrary, in this sense. And finally: should we have hundreds of such minor bills on the book?
Or a simpler legal code, with more judges, able to devote more time to judicious sentencing, and a fast effective appeals process for victims and the convicted if they feel sentences and parole are unjust?
Southwark Council propose expensive and disruptive alterations to Camberwell Green junction and area. The plans are terrible. Southwark Cyclists have thoroughly examined their proposal with expert advice and we have decided to formally reject these plans.
The consultation closes tomorrow (Thurs 13th August). It only takes a minute or two to do. Please forward this email to all your friends and cycling or walking colleagues, encouraging them to reject the proposal too. Because this is a formal council consultation, not some online petition your voice counts – the council have to rethink if enough people object.
The council have to go back and rethink these terrible plans, which do nothing for cycling, and could do much more for walking. They are purely cosmetic alterations which do nothing to improve the terrible safety record of this junction, which includes one death already this year.
This is our reasoning – you can read the document in full at this link:
Southwark Cyclists reject these proposals.
Southwark Council’s proposals for Camberwell Green alterations do nothing to address serious and worsening safety issues for cyclists.
These largely cosmetic alterations also miss several opportunities to substantially improve crossing times and safety for pedestrians.
These proposals assume increasing traffic flow when TfL’s own figures show car ownership, use, and miles travelled are all decreasing in this part of London. The Council’s own figures and transport policy forecast a rise in cycle numbers.
We urge Southwark Council and Transport for London to reconsider their approach to this key junction and the Camberwell Green area. Space for cycling at the junction and/or a cycle bypass are feasible alternatives to their proposals.
Sensible Alternatives
A number of sensible alternatives exist which could be built in a similar amount of time and disruption, and would greatly improve the safety and convenience of the area for cyclists and pedestrians alike:
Six lanes of traffic at Camberwell Green – on Denmark Hill looking south.
The public environment. Firstly, even the council recognise that the Green itself is a retail and services destination. Thousands of local people use the Green every day for shopping, the library, pharmacy, clinic and courts. But the public environment on Camberwell Church Street and Denmark Hill (outside Butterfly Walk) is intimidating for pedestrians and cyclists alike, with trucks and coaches hurtling down six lanes of traffic at 30mph+, as this picture shows. It’s hard to cross and no wonder so many people prefer to drive short distances to these shops. The proposal does nothing to improve the environment – although the pavement itself will get some expensive new stone, nothing will be done to make it easier or more inviting to get to the Green by bike or on foot, or cross the road once you’re there. Southwark Cyclists propose the town centre, one of the historic local greens of South London, be more imaginatively redesigned as a retail and services destination where pedestrians and cyclists come first. This can be done while maintaining traffic capacity, but calming it.
Space for Cycling at the crossroads. Although both Southwark Council and Transport for London are committed to decreasing cycle and pedestrian deaths and injuries on the roads, and increasing numbers of cycling and walking trips in Southwark by 2020, the junction design Southwark Council propose is straight out of the 1980s – ‘stuff traffic through as quickly as possible, and hope nothing goes wrong’. In fact it’s barely different from the current layout here (one death already this year…) except that, incredibly, there are fewer cycle facilities than now. In conjunction with experts from another London borough and the London Cycling Campaign, Southwark Cyclists propose an alternative design for the green where pedestrians, cyclists and motor traffic all move separately. This layout will retains motor vehicle capacity, is safe for cyclists, and far more convenient for larger numbers of pedestrians. To read more, see our consultation response.
A bus hub – in Orpheus Street, not the high street. One of the council’s motivations for doing anything at all is the large numbers of pedestrians waiting for busses on the pavement outside the shopping centre. Often these spill out into the road; it’s unsafe and hard to get past with a pushchair or wheelchair. Instead of the council’s plans (which actually add hardly any space at all on the pavement in question, and do nothing to calm the traffic at all) we suggest several bus stops could be moved 10-20m down, into Orpheus Street, creating a local bus hub. With proper lighting and other features, this could also be a much safer place to wait, and would create additional retail or services frontages in Orpheus Street, which at the moment is a barren alley with just the art shop. Why move the bus stops at all? Well, moving them from the high street (Denmark Hill) would make the crossing simpler for pedestrians, make driving easier for cars (no busses cutting in and out suddenly), make cycling safer (by freeing space for a bike lane) and the environment far more pleasant for everyone.
Basically, there are several options, far better than the Council’s plans. Reject these plans today (Thurs 13th August closing date) and send them back to the drawing board!
Love fundraisers.* Next month we’re taking part in one that’s a little bit different.
Community Fusion is a new charity venture in Portsmouth, a youth volunteering programme that aims to match young people to community projects. The volunteers benefit from personal development, learning and CV-worthy experience, while important, local, community-centred projects are helped and supported by those young people in the immediate area.
It’s a great scheme and one of the first projects is the regeneration of the Hilsea Lido complex. This iconic open-air pool opened in 1935 and quickly became a loved landmark and even featured a miniature railway at one stage. At the end of the last century however, it fell into disrepair. Step in the Hilsea Lido For The People trust, who purchased a 99-year lease on the pool from Portsmouth Council. They’re slowly but surely reviving the lido’s fortunes, refurbishing it and creating a social and cultural nexus for the whole community.
To mark this new collaboration and raise funds, there’s going to be a big family-friendly party / BBQ on Sunday 14th August. I’ll be playing with the band, as well as Huw Olesker, Luke Ferre and Hannah O’Reilly. There will also be face-painting, magic and apparently, sun. That’s the Blue Lagoon, Hilsea Lido, London Road, Portsmouth, Hants, PO2 9RP (Map). Doors are from 1pm – 6pm and I have no idea when we’re on yet (plus it’s a big ole party) so get there early!
*Anyway, here’s a quick video of Stewart Lee talking about charity (go to about 3:00 if you have a terminally short attention span):
George Monbiot recently raised the issue of automated online astroturf campaigns, in this article for the Guardian, repeated on Monbiot.com. For those that don’t know, this involves a special interest group recruiting a team to create and maintain multiple digital personas (Facebook accounts, etc). This army of virtual ghost warriors can then be used to create the impression of mass support (a.k.a. ‘grassroots’ support – geddit?) for a given cause or campaign.
Now, while this might be used for what you or I might term ‘good’ causes, the truth is that as always, those with more money and other resources (usually, the baddies) are more likely to exploit it. If ‘one person: one vote’ is the apex of democracy, then the possibility that faceless corporations or governments (or even NGOs) can use the methods of geniune campaigners to further their aims is distinctly chilling. Especially so when you consider the spread of slacktivism – the tendency for individuals’ political/social engagement to stretch no further than the online petition or the Facebook ‘like’ button..
But… a thought occurred, and I wrote to St. George. Here’s what I said:
Dear George,
read your article on astroturf campaigns with interest – had noticed it going on subliminally, but your article suggests it’s more widespread than I could possibly have imagined. A big problem, especially in the age of slacktivism…
How to deal with it? I had a quick idea, possibly seeded by Blade Runner (which I saw last night):
An online standard, or score, authenticating online personas as real people. Volunteers could specifically query individuals in what would amount to a Turing test; and/or some interaction algorithm could assess a persona’s authenticity. Of course in the latter case interested malign parties could easily (especially if the algorithm was open-source). Why would people participate? Because a
I wonder a) whether it’s worth doing, and b) if it would catch on.
I personally think that anonymity online is a bit of a curse – fine to protect political dissidents from reprisals, but an open door for abusive cowards. More and more of my generation (b:1981) place more faith in identifiable online personas, linked to either personal websites or managed through Disqus, etc.
And of course philosophically it’s an incredible moment if we’ve arrived at a point in history where a majority of human communication is online, but we can no longer even tell human from machine, let alone friend from foe!
Anyway from a quick straw poll of programming friends it seems an interesting idea to explore, so I’d love to know what you think.
“A fair society starts with a fair election”
– Billy Bragg
So tomorrow we will go and cast our votes to try and pick a government. The Election has come at last.
Except there’s not one single election where we all pick our favourite to be the leader. Instead there are really 650 separate elections for local representatives. If your vote doesn’t end up backing the winner in your area, it looks a lot like a wasted vote**.
If you live in a safe Labour or Tory seat you’re effectively unable to vote: no matter what you do, the party you support won’t win in your area unless you’re very good at persuading 10,000 people to vote the same way you do. So how do you get heard if you’ve got a minority viewpoint?
Like most people, I’ve had real trouble making up my mind who to vote for this time.
This is basically because there seems to be very little difference between the parties on most of the important issues: everyone wants to get the national debt under control while protecting hospitals, schools and police, and trying to cut greenhouse emissions. In a way that’s a good thing: consensus on these really important issues means we ought to be able to take the decisions we need to take, even in a hung parliament.
On the other hand, there are lots of small issues where only one party really represents my views. In my particular case, that’s the Greens, but you may be different. This is a reflection of modern societies really – the big questions about healthcare and the budget are more-or-less matters of small policy tinkering that most people agree with, while other concerns are raised by NGOs and smaller parties (what you might call ‘single-issue’ parties).
In France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Spain – all rich, perfectly functioning, healthy modern democracies about the same size as the UK – they have a system of elections that allows for larger parties to govern based on a common consensus, while ensuring minority rules are also represented: proportional representation (PR), where MPs are elected according to the exact number of votes cast for their party. Every vote really does count.
For the first time in over 80 years we have the chance to reform our electoral system and finally make it truly democratic. Here the parties actually are different. The Tories oppose PR because they think that we (the plebs) can’t be trusted to elect a capable government if we’re allowed to vote directly, and because they worry that Britain is somehow a weaker or more indecisive country than Germany, France or Japan. This is, in a word, bollocks – the British people aren’t idiots, and last-time I checked, patriotism entailed pride in your country, not fear that it might fuck up where others have had no problems. Labour only dimly support PR, because they stand to lose a lot of power as the current setup massively favours them (in 2005 they won a double-digit majority with around 1/3 of the votes cast).
Only the Liberals support PR completely, and have pledged to hold a referendum to introduce it. Yes, this is because they have the most to gain of the 3 main parties, and yes, some of their policies I disagree with, and yes, a vote for them might in some cases be a vote for the Tories BUT we need to reform this rotten, outdated system (nearly 200 years old) and we may not get another chance in our lifetime.
To those who say that we need a Tory majority to deal with the economic crisis, here’s what I think: All the parties want to cut the deficit. The measures they’re all taking are basically the same in that they don’t go far enough. And most importantly, the best way to avoid a repeat of the mistakes that lead to that crisis (and others to come), ultimately, is to have a better-functioning democracy that represents us.
So. I live in Hythe, which is a Tory seat. Tomorrow I’ll be voting Lib Dem because the more votes and seats they get, the more likely it is that we’ll get a PR, a voting system where our votes actually count directly. And then in future I can vote Green, or UKIP, or whoever I damn well want, safe in the knowledge that this time, my vote really will count.
**The maths behind this is simple but pretty unsettling. Imagine there are only 10 constituencies (areas), of 10 voters each, and only two parties. Party A win 4 of the constituencies outright, with all 10 votes in each. In the remaining 6 constituencies, they come second with 4/10 votes. Party B, who win those 6 constituencies with 6/10 votes in each, have won a total of six of the available ten seats, and win the election. BUT only 36 people voted for them (6 votes in each of 6 constituencies) out of 100, compared with 64 votes cast (10 in each of 4 constituencies, plus 4 in each of 6 constituencies) for Party A. If this seems like an oversimplification, well, the results of the 2005 election pretty much exactly match these ratios.
“A small boy, about nine years old, was following his goats as they grazed in the mountains. His name is not known. He was probably playing a little, throwing stones maybe, or he would have noticed the small green mine that blew his foot off at the ankle. From what we know of how people react, from the memories of those who have survived, the little shepherd boy probably hopped or dragged himself to where his foot lay – it would have been quite close to him. He would have cried, or maybe just sat lonely and quiet and helpless and slipped into unconsciousness. His goats must have stayed until after he died, probably until the wild dogs arrived at the scene. We have no way of knowing exactly what happened; the dogs found him days before we did. He was certainly [to use the arms industry’s preferred terminology] a ‘soft target’.
McGrath, Rae (2000) Landmines and Unexploded Ordinance: A Resource Book.Pluto, London.
So, the book’s about landmines and cluster bombs, both manufactured, promoted and used by US / EU countries, including the UK. The author isn’t some hippie but a former British Army (REME) soldier who heads up one of the most respected demining NGOs and was nominated for the Nobel Prize. Landmines and cluster bombs cause massive death and misery long after a conflict’s end, as well as economic hardship once the TV cameras go home – how does a country like Somalia, Afghanistan or Rwanda deal with thousands of amputees? With unusable roads? With crops and fields peppered randomly with metallic seeds of death?
Because unlike the Hollywood depiction, there are no barbed-wire boundaries, no handy skull-and-crossbones, no ‘Achtung Minen!’ notices; that would defeat the point. Mines and cluster bombs are hidden killers. That is their grisly role.
When your prospective MP comes a-knocking in the next few weeks, ask him if his party will commit the UK to an outright ban on the manufacture, promotion, sale and use of cluster bombs as they promised when they signed (but have not yet implemented) the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.
(got to write this quick, dodgy connection. sorry for mistakes)
I really, really, really care about this stuff on all sorts of levels. Please read on if you’ve got five minutes. I’ve tried quite hard to make a slightly complex story simpler (though I’m a bit rusty at writing)
You don’t need me to tell you that we’re in the shit financially. The government has never been so in debt. we’re in real danger of losing our national credit rating, and money for hospitals, schools, police, roads etc will be cut, regardless of who wins the next election.
So, you might be surprised to learn that we spend hundreds of millions a year subsidising arms deals to dodgy countries. read on while i fill you in for a bit. Cos at the end I’m going to ask you to take a look at a really important petition to see if you want to sign it..
The story begins..
Said arms deals, like all the best scams, take place not in shady car parks at midnight with manilla envelopes, but in full plain sight of the nation. they tie in torture, women’s repression, oil, moolah, UK servicemen’s lives and a lot of tax money – flowing OUT of the coffers.
From an economic point of view, it’s all supposed to be about exports – selling goods and services to foreigners. They’re what build wealth in the long term, not shuttling money round and round this little island. Think about it like this: if I paint a picture and flog it to a mate, perhaps in exchange for a CD, that’s one thing. But we’re really just swapping stuff. On the other hand, if a stranger wants the painting I can take the cash and use it to buy some more paint cheap to do another painting etc. This is because of things like comparative advantage that you can read about later.
The point is that governments are (perhaps rightly) obsessed with having a ‘trade surplus’ – from the perspective of the Bank of England, our real national ‘profit’ each year is simply what we earn in exports minus what we spend on importing stuff. All those pounds shuffled about inside the UK each year don’t really matter.
The Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD) exists to promote British industry’s exports. If a UK company does a certain deal with an overseas company or government, and the foreigners feel like not paying, the UK taxpayer picks up the tab. The idea behind the system is to promote our export sales to other contries by making it less risky to do business with dodgy clients.
Setting aside for a moment the fact that government subsidies to exports (which these amount to) are illegal under international trade laws, and give our economic competitors a big shitty stick to beat us with in trade negotiations at the EU, WTO and G20, the logic behind taxpayer funding of the ECGD unravels as soon as you look at it. which is presumably why they gave it such a boring name (since ‘The Bribing Foreigners With Public Cash Department’ is a bit nearer the mark but less politically acceptable).
For starters, the arms industry has sucked in 30-60% of the ECGD’s funding over the last few decades, even though arms account for less than 4% of all our exports. Eh? So the other 96% of our exports (tractors, pharmaceuticals, Amy Winehouse) sell themselves just fine? Hmm… And exactly just who would need the services of the ECGD, should they be unable to pay for a brand-new tank, assault helicopter or aerial spy drone? Unstable dictatorships? Repressive regimes? You guessed it.
Secondly, the economic logic behind supporting the arms industry is a bit flawed. Jobs created in these contracts are already subsidised by us to the tune of £10,000 minimum each job, each year. And the profits these companies make (£16,000,000,000 operating profit for BAE in 2008 alone) *don’t* end up in the taxman’s coffers, but safely overseas in shareholders’ and managers’ tax havens. That new school round the corner? That new bridge? That MRI scanner? And yes, that soldier’s flak jacket? All were paid for by taxes collected on wages of call-centre workers, teachers, builders etc.
Of course, the minister signing off the deal usually gets a say on where those subsidised jobs go. You won’t be suprised to realise that they typically end up in a hotly-contested constituency. If you’re thinking of a comparison with the 18th-century ‘Pocket Borough’ episode of Blackadder, where he buys a parliament seat, well, so am I.
Along the way, some of you might have moral or ethical problems with selling weapons abroad to places like: Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive regimes in the world, especially to women; or Sri Lanka, who have just concluded a decade-long internal war against the Tamil ethinic minority through the simple tactic of shelling their refugee camps; Indonesia, whose General Suharto decided (in the name of internal order) to wipe out a bigger proportion of his own subjects than either Hitler, Mao or Stalin; or the Sudan, whose own internal persecutions hit the headlines every spring when refugees spill over into drought-struck and war-torn Somalia, precipitating famine. So you can also blame the ECGD for Bono.
But, lastly, the military / strategic arguments against these sales are compelling. The point behind advanced military technology is that it gives you an advantage. Ideally, it should render all previous weapons obsolete, giving you and your allies a decisive advantage / deterrent. So it’s distinctly odd that we should be selling weapons at all to the list of nasties listed above.
But they’re good (if desperate) customers. We probably shouldn’t serve them, but we think we know that, if we don’t someone else will (if you’ve ever worked with the ‘regulars’ in a pub, you know what i mean). The government’s Export Credit Guarantee Department, however, go above and beyond the call of duty for Britain. Not even the americans or the French (notoriously keen on government subsidy of industry) go so far as to run an ECGD of their own. So, to continue the drunkard analogy, the winos aren’t just queueing up to get in at 10am, but getting free bar snacks and 2-4-1 deals on strongbow and jagerbombs as well.
Subsidies are bad. But we’ve even gone one better with a big fat bribe.
Incredibly, *our* money was used to bribe the Saudis into buying a consignment of brand-new, state-of-the-art Eurofighter jets. You see, they were shopping around and looking at rival US models, and offering to pay in some badly-needed crude oil, so we beat everyone else to the punch by offering £20,000,000 in inducements to the canny Saudi princes in inducements and freebies. Because they’re worth it.
Unfortunately for BAE, two Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigations (in 1992 and 2006) threatened to call a bloody spade a spade, and order the deals called off and bribes repaid. Luckily, the Tory and Labour governments of the day ordered the SFO to stop sniffing around when the Saudis threatened not to stump up the oil.
Why do we, the taxpayers, pay for private companies to sell off military advantages to grisly gangs at a loss?
Money and blood.
Firstly, many senior members of government have shares in these companies, and have hustled from government to the boardrooms of these companies with indecent haste (former Defence Minister Nicholas ‘Fatty’ Soames being just the most colourful example.) But that’s only half the story.
The military reality is that, in a world where the business of killing has grown ever more complicated even as arms development and production has been increasingly privatised, the services of private companies have never been more vital. Forget all about not being able to lob Trident nuclear missiles around without the americans’ say-so; just keeping a Lynx helicopter airborne requires the participation of over 100 private corporations. The government needs these companies more than they need us. Perhaps if the industry in question was agriculture, or power generation, or computing, it might be possible to argue that the circle was a virtuous one, no matter how extreme the trade distortions and income inequalities it generated were. But remember that the final products of the arms industry are misery, death and despair.
Next time you get paid, look at that P.A.Y.E. knocked off your total hours, and think about that. remember, every pound spent like this isn’t being spent on schoolbooks, or electricity for hospitals, or subsidising the night bus.
Yesterday it was announced that yet another SFO fraud investigation into the Saudi, and other BAE deals (including Quatar and Tanzania) has been headed off at the pass – this time with BAE making a token $280m settlement out of court in the UK ans US. This is *very* small change out of their $2000m profit on $15,000m revenue this year.
Originally published in The Oxford Student, Feb 2008.
Read the original article here (.pdf format): OS6.20.OSTOS6.21.OST
It’s 8.30 on a wet Monday morning in January. I’m standing beside the Thames outside 11 Millbank – better known as ‘MI5’ – holding a small cork noticeboard taped to a broom handle. I’m trying hard to look reasoned, righteous and above all, lawful, as I have an excellent view of both the river and two black, efficient-looking submachine-guns gripped by a pair of the Met’s finest. For the last five minutes we’ve been having a heated debate spanning police operating procedures, Government green papers and ancient civil liberties that concerns my right to stand here at the corner of the road by the rush-hour traffic.
Eventually the policemen, their guns and a curious piece of legislation officially on the statute books as ‘SOCPA (2005) s132-138’ all prove as powerful as the mighty ebb tide of the Thames itself and so I walk away with my board. I have not been arrested but, in some sense, I don’t feel free, either.
The copper has offered to arrest (or, as he ominously puts it, ‘process’ me) because pinned to my board is an A3 piece of paper with the hand-written words ‘B-is-for-Margaret-Beckett – Get Out Of Your Caravan And Get A Clue’ and her mugshot in all its grainy laserjet glory.
It’s a modest enough statement of political opinion and I and my companions Todd and Chris are doing little more than standing benignly in the rain, taking turns to lean sleepily on the broom handle and half-heartedly offer our opinion in a Michael-Palin-cum-market-trader patter to anyone who’ll listen.
We have undertaken to carry out 26 separate demonstrations in one day, with a different target politician for each letter of the alphabet. We will become record breakers, stealing an official Guinness World Record held by comedian-activist Mark Thomas (21 protests) but though the tone of our demonstration (from ‘A-is-for-Dianne-Abbot: Stop Laughing At Portillo’s Rubbish Gags!’ to ‘Z-is-for-Zac-Goldsmith: Pick A Party And Stick To It!’) is flippant, our purpose is deadly serious.
This is because for every single one of our miniscule, peaceful, Goons-esque protests we have had to give the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police advance notice in writing detailing our proposed actions. Eye colour and favourite toothpaste aren’t quite included; exact timings to the minute, meeting details and press briefings are. It’s a lot of information to fill in 26 times over just to stand around with a silly banner and as well as being laborious, intimidating and Byzantine it turns out our rights can still be suspended, as our armed friends’ behaviour demonstrates.
Others have discovered this the hard way: Maya Evans was the first person convicted under the law, for reading out the names of the British an Iraqi war dead by the Cenotaph in Whitehall. Speaking to Tim Barton she pointed out that the weight of bureaucracy involved and range of police powers granted to the police on the day ‘…makes it so draconian and anti-freedom… that’s not really a free demonstration, once you go through the requirements.’
Similarly, comic-turned-activist Mark Thomas was incensed by the scope of SOCPA, but typically, saw the surreal nature of the special legal conditions around Parliament as a comic opportunity after a friend was threatened with arrest for picnicking with a political Victoria sponge (with ‘Peace’ iced upon its jammy face.) He has since organized a series of peculiarly British protests in favour of trolls, surrealism, bans on surrealism and the record-setting speed-protest we’re attempting to better today.
However with a straight face, and at some expense, he is currently seeking a public prosecution of Gordon Brown, who last autumn may have inadvertently committed an offence by reading aloud a speech by Nelson Mandela live on TV in Parliament Square itself. Could life get weirder?
This may have catalysed the Government into a partial retreat. This month they announce the results of a public consultation, though official nods and winks to ‘harmonization’ of police powers have led some to suggest an expansion of the rules countrywide. I put this to a Home Office spokesperson, who insists the consultation was merely to see if ‘there remains to be a case for the current legislation.” When pressed, however, they refused to comment on or rule out suggestions that powers might be expanded across the country, insisting there had to be a law governing protest since without one, ‘anyone could turn up’ – clearly a nightmare scenario for the Government.
Even cutting-edge political aggitators sometimes need to improve their timekeeping...
Suppose, I wondered, an ordinary member of the public – with no legal training – takes issue with a topical Government policy, gets an unpaid day off work and hops on a train down to London with a placard? Wouldn’t they be guilty through ignorance of an offence? The Home Office were at a total loss, ending the interview.
Baroness Sue Miller (LD) will this week question the Home Office on the outcome of a recent Green Paper consultation, with a view to introducing a Repeal Bill. She opposes the law, to the extent that she organized a public protest against it with fellow politicians. The law was, she explained, “clearly nonsense – incredibly beaureaucratic. It’s in place for one of three reasons, and only the Government can say why; because Brian Haw’s protest was undtdy; because it was an embarrassment to Blair; or because of a perceived terrorist threat. Well, the information we get from Black Rod – security briefings – tells us that in relation to the security issue it’s the road that’s always seen as the real difficulty, not protestors. It’s a small step towards a police state. People should be able to demonstrate”. Any proposal to extend the powers nationwide would, she said, be ‘chilling.’
Chief Inspector Paul Switzer is the policeman with responsibility for enforcing the law throughout most of the Parliament area. He is helpful, polite and (for someone simultaneously policing a football match during our interview) attentive. Nonetheless, he has the strained, even Canuteian air of a man trying to enforce the laws of an Alice In Wonderland world, where crossing a road can turn a ‘peace’ T-shirt into political heavy weaponry. Our team was repeatedly asked to produce a paper copy of our authorization, he reasoned, because it was ‘common sense… it saves time,’ but he agreed it wasn’t necessary. In that case, I ask, would then be unlawful for a policeman to demand it of a demonstrator under threat of arrest? He could only concede that ‘a lot of police pass through the area… some may not be as au fait with SOCPA as the various units that work that area.’ It seems even the police are in confusion over the law.
As he rings off, I feel a bit confused, too. It all seems reasoned, reasonable, even. But I reflect: The courageous protestor bravely standing up for their beliefs is a part of freedom’s folklore, a part of the language of democracy we take for granted. In recent months we have watched protestors in Pakistan, read about police pay pickets at home and joined Facebook causes from Burmese monks to marine conservationists.
The right to assemble with others, to freely and peacefully protest is one of the most ancient and basic liberties we have enjoyed. Since medieval times – the basic right to petition those ruling us has never been called into question. Security threats are clearly a smokescreen – but should we now subordinate this right to present a friendly face to visitors, or allow the government to meet in peace?
I hope not. I have been to another place in the world where the organs of government meet peacefully while tourists happily snap away. The photos are of Lenin’s tomb, the place is Red Square, and the ‘unhindered Government’ is that of Putin’s Russia. It’s efficient, certainly. But it’s not accountable, and an insult to our history and traditions if we allowed it to happen here.
Inspired by Mark Thomas‘ ‘official’ world record attempt (highlighting the ludicrous SOCPA law) we thought we’d try and break his WR of 20 protests in a day. We managed 24 out of 26 planned protests (being unlawfully prevented from completing one by the police, and failing to record another thanks to a camera fault.
It’s a great scheme and one of the first projects is the regeneration of the 
