Extinction Rebellion London – I was Arrested, but that’s Not going to Stop Me Protesting

Written by Allan Todd

Following my involvement, on Saturday 17 November, in Extinction Rebellion’s very successful Rebellion Day 1 in London, friends have said I should feel proud of what I did.  ‘Yes’, I was one of over 6000 climate protectors who, peacefully, blocked 5 of London’s central bridges for most of that day - my allocated one was Lambeth Bridge:

The scene on Lambeth Bridge, Saturday 17 November

And, ‘Yes’, because of my actions, I was one of the 85 who were arrested for ‘willful obstruction of a highway’:

About to be arrested for refusing to move off the Bridge

A link to a short video clip of the arresting process can be seen here

After 2 hours in Barking and Dagenham police station, having initially been told I would be detained overnight, I was later ‘released, without bail, pending further investigations’.

From guilt to shame

However, I have to say that, of the 2 main feelings I’ve had about that Rebellion Day, ‘pride’ is most definitely NOT one of them. During the day itself, the main feeling was a combined one of exhilaration and hope.

Exhilaration, because so many people were prepared, peacefully, to break the law in order to protect the planet, and all those species currently living on it.  And hope, that this Extinction Rebellion movement will quickly grow into an overwhelming force which will succeed in at last pushing the UK government to protect its citizens by doing all that is needed to achieve a zero-carbon economy over the next 10-15 years.

But, travelling back to Cumbria on the Sunday afterwards - the last train to Penrith on the Saturday had left 30 minutes before I was released  from custody - an equally strong feeling began increasingly to take hold: guilt. Profound guilt. Though, as I’m now putting into the public domain, for the first time, the reasons why I feel so guilty, then that feeling now becomes one of shame - as my failings are no longer known only to me.

Essentially, I am deeply ashamed of how little - in just over 50 years of political activism - I have done to protect the planet and, consequently, our children’s and grandchildren’s generations.

Because for most of those 50 years - as well as the usual attractions and distractions - I was involved in campaigns that had nothing to do with the environment. Beginning with becoming a supporter of CND, I got successively involved in the campaigns against the Vietnam War and Apartheid South Africa; countering far right and fascist groups; as well as supporting the Bennite movement within the Labour Party.

Yet my first general political awareness was actually closely connected to the environment and how big corporations were despoiling it. In 1963, I read extracts from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring:

This was at a time when her warnings were increasingly becoming visible - and invisible - in rural Norfolk, where I grew up. Visible, as regards the number of small birds which could be found dead by the sides of fields: invisible, by the gradual reduction in the numbers of owls and hawks.

Knowing, but not acknowledging

This failure was not because I had no knowledge of the growing environmental problems - or had lost my very early interest in wildlife. Various nuggets of information concerning the environment came to my attention, even whilst I was engaged with other, more overtly, political movements and campaigns.

However, for whatever reasons, the various but isolated facts concerning the emerging environmental crisis were largely pushed to the back of my mind. Even though, some 4 years ago, I’d read Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction.

All this environmental ‘knowledge’ was like some increasingly disturbing background music that I just wasn’t properly engaging with. I knew various bits of ‘stuff’ about the environment but - crucially - just wasn’t acknowledging it.

As Stan Cohen pointed out in States of Denial, knowing how bad something is, is one thing; but, once you’ve acknowledged something is bad, then you have to make one of two choices. Either you say: ‘I know it’s bad, but I can’t/won’t do anything about it’ - and you ignore it and cross to the other side of the road. Or, you say ‘It is bad, and I must try to do something about it’.

Too little, too late?

It wasn’t until over 3 years ago that, as I was reading Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, I began to fully acknowledge the state we’re now in - and where, if we don’t take serious action soon, we’re heading.

Because, as I read her book, I thought: “If only half of this is true, then - if we don’t act now - the world my grandchildren will inhabit will be truly awful.”

Thus it was mainly Naomi Klein’s book which prompted me, in 2016, to do nvda training with Greenpeace, in order to become an environmental activist. This summer, for instance, I was part of the Greenpeace actions against Barclays (over their funding of new tar sands pipelines in North America) and VW (over air pollution and their continued production of diesel vehicles).

Then, 2 years ago, I read Ian Angus’ Facing the Anthropocene - and thought: “Never mind our grandchildren, the planet is going to be really horrendous for our children - even though my generation will probably ok.”

It was that which prompted me to become increasingly involved - eventually by organising the Green Mondays - in the anti-fracking campaign at Preston New Road, in Lancashire.

Now, of course, as this summer’s unprecedented global heatwave and, most recently of all, the catastrophic wildfires in California have shown, even my generation - which has done so much to cause, and so little to prevent this climate crisis - is also vulnerable to the increasingly frequent and destructive extreme ‘weather’ events resulting from global warming.

So, “No”, I don’t feel proud of my small part in Rebellion Day 1. Nor will I feel pride in anything else I may do in trying to prevent catastrophic Climate Breakdown. What I will feel, to my dying day, will be shame. Shame that I have failed our daughters and grandchildren, and their generations - and all the wildlife that currently still lives on this vulnerable planet. 

However, I do try to follow Antonio Gramsci’s dictum: “Pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will.” Even though I increasingly fear we may have left it too late - and that the powerful dirty energy corporations will block the changes that are needed - there ARE definite signs of hope. The IPCC says we have 12 years in which to make the drastic changes that are necessary to get global warming to 1.5C or less.

Plus Kate Raworth’s brilliant book, Doughnut Economics - she has been one of our Green Monday speakers at Preston New Road - provides an intelligent and inspiring roadmap of what needs to be done:

And, finally, Extinction Rebellion seems to be the organisation and movement that we need right now - and that could well be what finally pushes the UK’s government to act in the interests of the 99%.

As an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson has said:

“Peaceful civil disobedience has a long, proud and successful history in bringing about positive and necessary change - in the UK, and in other countries, such as India and the US.”

Allan Todd is a member of Allerdale & Copeland Green Party, an anti-fracking activist and a Green Left supporter

Fracking Protesters Jailed by UK 'Banana Monarchy' Judiciary

Written by Allan Todd

Although I’m the organiser of the anti-fracking Green Monday protests at Preston New Road, and am also the Membership Secretary of my local Green party, what follows is very much my own individual view, and must in no way be taken as necessarily representing the opinion of any other individual involved in the Preston New Road, Lancashire, protests, or of any organisation.

Fast forward to the past

This week, Preston Crown Court - or, to be more precise, Judge Robert Altham - took us back to 1932. For the first time since the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass, environmental protestors have been sentenced to prison for the offence of Public Nuisance. Though 7 peaceful environmental protesters were jailed for 28 days in 1993, for their part in the 1992 Tywford Down protests (against the building of M3), they were imprisoned for breaching an injunction in which they were named - not for Public Nuisance.

The Frack Free Four - Richard Roberts, Simon Blevins, Rich Loizou and Julian Brock - had previously been found guilty of Public Nuisance because of their involvement in what (so far!) has been the UK’s longest anti-fracking protest in July 2017, during Reclaim The Power’s month of anti-fracking Rolling Resistance. The 4 protestors had climbed onto lorries delivering pipes to Cuadrilla’s shale gas site at Preston New Road - and had prevented the lorries from delivering those pipes for a total of 99 hours, 31 minutes:

Judge Altham handed out prison sentences of 16 months to Richard Roberts (who had stayed on his lorry for a staggering 84 hours, 19 minutes!) and to Simon Blevins; whilst Rich Loizou received a prison sentence of 15 months. Julian Brock received a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months. The 3 sent to prison are the first people in the UK to be jailed for taking part in peaceful anti-fracking protests.  The crowd of about 60 anti-fracking campaigners, who had gathered outside the court for the start of the hearing, were shocked by the severity of the sentences:

One of the defence lawyers, Kirsty Brimelow QC, referred to an earlier ruling by Lord Hoffmann, who had said:

“It is a mark of a civilised society that it can accommodate protest.”

But, clearly, the UK doesn’t seem to be able to accommodate even entirely peaceful protest. As was pointed out in court, the motivation of the Frack Free Four was to act for future generations and the future of the planet; and, at all times, this was an entirely peaceful political protest against an industry that has been either permanently or temporarily banned in many European countries.

After the sentences were handed down, Rosalind Blevins, mother of Simon Blevins, had this to say:

“My son and the others were working under a social conscience for the good of the planet. I am proud of them for standing up against climate change. There is no doubt about climate change. 98% of scientists agree that climate chaos is happening. We have all got to stand up and reduce our use of fossil fuels now.”

Living in a ‘Banana Monarchy’

The severity of these sentences is just the latest in a series of democracy red lines that have been crossed which, I believe, has turned the UK into a ‘banana monarchy’ where freedom is increasingly eroded and corruption is rife. For instance, apparently Judge Altham didn’t think there was a possible conflict of interest in his dealing with the case, despite his parents being part of the Altham family business that supplies provisions to the oil & gas industry, including to rigs off the Lancashire coast!

The main red lines previously crossed are:

·       Massive Tory election fraud in GE2015, via over-spending in 33 key marginal constituencies. This was totally unopposed by all opposition parties - including the Green Party. This was despite my Emergency Motion, calling for the Green Party to campaign for by-elections in all those marginal seats, being overwhelmingly passed at our 2016 Spring Conference. The ILLEGAL Tory government, in 2016, overturning Lancashire County Council’s 2015 decision not to grant Cuadrilla permission to frack at Preston New Road.

·       Current attempts to alter planning regulations so that fracking companies can by-pass local councils

·       The wide-ranging injunctions granted against effective peaceful protests - no doubt inspired by the fact that, as a result of the Frack Free Four’s protests in July 2017, one of the lorry companies involved in the protest said it would not deliver to the site again.

On the positive side, it seems that, as a result of these prison sentences, more and more people are coming to realise just how our rights to engage in peaceful protest are being eroded. Consequently, there have been several comments pointing out just how far our rights are being reduced:

Miranda Cox, a campaigner against Cuadrilla’s operations in Lancashire and a Kirkham Town councillor, said: “This is a very dark day for British justice and for democracy.”

Whilst Greenpeace UK’s executive director, John Sauven, said: "It's a strange society that massively rewards those responsible for causing more climate change while putting those trying to stop it in jail. Ministers have changed laws, taken away homeowners' rights and distorted the planning process to make way for the shale industry, yet it's four peaceful protesters that get punished for climbing on a lorry.”

Green Party MEP, Keith Taylor, who has campaigned against the onshore oil and gas industry in south-east England, said: “Any government that conspires with the dirty fossil fuel industry against its own people is rotten to the core. Dissent is not a crime in any country with a political system fit to be called a democracy. Consequently, the sentences handed to the frack-free four are chilling.”

But it seems that things may get worse before they get better: just the other day, a young female protester’s arm was broken by a police officer at Preston New Road:

Young anti-fracking protester at PNR, whose suffered torn ligaments and heavy bruising to her arm during her arrest

Yet further evidence, if it were needed, how the fracking companies and their facilitators seem intent on destroying our democracy, as well as our planet. 

Spread out and disrupt

The injunction has clearly greatly reduced the number of people prepared to continue participating in effective non-violent direct action. Plus, once fracking actually begins at PNR, it will be increasingly unhealthy for protesters to stand outside the fracking site’s gates. In part, this will be because of the greatly increased diesel traffic that accompanies fracking.

In addition, whilst wells are being fracked, the flaring process - likely to take place 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - releases massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Government ‘regulations’ also allow other chemicals to be released: including benzene, acrylamide, ethylene oxide, toluene, bisphenol and several radioactive substances. Most of these are known human carcinogens which are linked, among other illnesses, to breast cancer and myeloid luekemia.

For all these reasons, it makes sense to start to widen out the scope of anti-fracking protests. Instead of focussing almost exclusively on the perpetrators of the climate crime that is fracking, maybe the time has come to take our protests to the many facilitators of fracking.

In fact, an excellent start along such lines has already been made by the 100 Women group from Lancashire: they paid a visit to Parliament Square on Wednesday 12 September; and, on Monday (1 October) will be taking their anti-fracking protest to the Tory conference in Birmingham:

Some of the 100 Women who have begun to take the anti-fracking protests to the country at large

However, I would suggest much more is needed: in particular, to disrupt the days of those disrupting our local communities and our planet’s climate. Certainly this is the lesson I have taken from the two Greenpeace actions I was part of this summer: one against Barclays Bank (a facilitator of new toxic tar sands pipelines in North America); as well as one against VW (a perpetrator of air pollution). Both actions were entirely peaceful - but also highly disruptive of the working day.  

Possible ‘legitimate targets’ for anti-frackers include government offices; Parliament, for approving changes to planning regulations; the financial institutions lending money to fracking companies; the High Courts handing out injunctions and, now, prison sentences; and the police.

If the dirty energy companies, and their many facilitators, think injunctions, prison sentence and ‘robust’ policing will stop the movement to protect our water, communities and climate from fracking, they are in for a surprise!

What is to be done now?

More immediately, though, we need to begin planning - NOW - for what we do once Cuadrilla have finally managed to carry out their first frack at Preston New Road.

What’s needed is a BIG national protest demo at PNR as soon as possible after that first frack.  Ideally, this should be on a Saturday, as this will enable as many people as possible to attend.

As well as members of other anti-fracking groups, activists of local Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth groups, and Green Party members and supporters, we really need to maximise the number of Labour Party and trade union branches.  

We need to show - in a highly visible way - that the reason the Frack Free Four were given prison sentences was because there is no social licence for fracking.

To do that, we need to start contacting all relevant groups and organisations - NOW. 

There is no time to waste.

To slightly misquote James Larkin:

“The powerful only seem powerful because we are on our knees. Let us rise!”

Allan Todd is a member of Allerdale & Copeland Green Party, an anti-fracking activist and a Green Left supporter

Book Review – Red Green Revolution - On the Precipice

Written by Victor Wallis and first published at Political Animal

Like many others (unless they are in a state of simple denial), I sometimes feel paralyzed by the enormity of the environmental challenge.

How to break through this?

We must begin with the certainties.

First is the science. Not every aspect of it, of course, but the basic contours. The most in-depth, up-to-date, and accessible account is Ian Angus’s 2016 Monthly Review Press book, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System (see my review at Climate and Capitalism). When you read this book, you will see how in some respects the point of no return has already been reached. But even if full collapse is only a matter of time, many life-and-death choices will still confront us along the way – over what we may hope will be more than a single lifetime.

The second certainty is that we are being systematically lied to by the most powerful interests in this society. It is now known that the big oil companies, by their own research in the 1970s, confirmed what would later become common knowledge about the climate-impact of greenhouse gases, but they then undertook a deliberate campaign of obfuscation which continues to this day (see updates at kochvsclean.com).

The third certainty is an outcome of the second: hundreds of millions of people who should – and could – be waging the battle of and for their lives, are instead propelled by a structured inertia, part “practical” and part ideological, to continue with their daily routines – of heating or cooling, driving, flying, over-indulging in one or another addiction, and acquiescing in wars of domination – as though nothing had changed.

And yet things have changed! This is the fourth certainty, although it is less obvious than the first three because its manifestations don’t appear with equal severity everywhere at once. Here I am thinking not of the underlying trends but of the countless unusual phenomena that are evident to even the most casual observer – or TV watcher – but whose cumulative message we mostly ignore in our day-to-day lives. We see TV images of fire, flood, and war – what started as a war for oil – but yet our highways become ever more congested and continue to be widened. We hear of water shortages, new viruses, crop blights, and species extinctions, but we have yet to do away with even the least needed and most harmful lines of production.

Where collapse is most tangible is where environmental extremes intersect with the extremes of social polarization. Texas prisoners are now frequently dying in the torrid summers as the indoor heat index climbs as high as 130 (F). Most of the state prisons lack air conditioning,[1] and political leaders refuse to remedy the situation, even as the state generates millions of dollars from the prisoners’ unpaid labor. The conditions are not new, but global warming is taking them past the tipping point. The example of the prisons is replicated in the growing incidence, globally, of people being deprived of water, food, or dry land.

It is not surprising that the most inveterate opposition to addressing this crisis stems from the very interests that have profited the most from bringing it on. The problem is that whereas those interests – the corporations along with the technocrats and politicians who speak for them – are tightly organized, the rest of us are not. The immediately felt disasters (our fourth “certainty”) are scattered, and so are their victims, giving credence to the contention that people will not take action until some future threshold is reached.

Out of the resulting uncertainty must be forged a proactive response. Does this bring us back to our anxious starting-point? Not quite, because in pinpointing the systemic culprit for the impending disaster, we discover the necessary focal point for our own unity. The fight to preserve our species-life is a political struggle par excellence. 

Having identified who the enemy is, we know who our potential allies are – the other “99%.” All the differences within this vast agglomeration pale next to the overwhelming urgency of our common task.

But the blending of people’s more immediate preoccupations into the common agenda does not come automatically. The priorities of each constituency need to be addressed on their own merits (as I discuss in the last three chapters of my newly released book, Red-Green Revolution). But the capacity to do this without losing sight of the common thread will depend on the building of a political organization in which all our constituencies are represented.

Adapted from an article in And Then #20 (2018)

Victor Wallis is a professor of Liberal Arts at the Berklee College of Music. He was for twenty years the managing editor of Socialism and Democracy and has been writing on ecological issues since the early 1990s. His writings have appeared in journals such as Monthly Review and New Political Science, and have been translated into thirteen languages.

He is the author of the book Red-Green Revolution, published by this magazine’s parent company, Political Animal Press.

Carillion Collapse – If this was Iceland, those responsible would be in Jail

(PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images)

The collapse into administration of the construction and out sourcing business Carillion, has caused waves across the political and business establishment. Tens of thousands of employees will lose their jobs and pensions, small businesses will go bust through non payment of debts and shareholders and taxpayers will lose money. Carillion employees will hardly have been cheered to hear that the government had set up a Jobcentre plus helpline, to help them find new work.

The company had 450 government contracts ranging from HS2 to providing school lunches, building hospitals, roads and maintaining 50,000 homes on military bases. They also had several private construction contracts in the middle-east.

The political fall out might lead to resignations from the government, who have plenty of questions to answer on why they kept giving contracts to a company that was known to be struggling financially? The government may also reflect on the irony of Carillion’s chairman, Philip Green, advising them on corporate responsibility. There might also be a re-think on whole practise of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deals and the out sourcing of public services.

The government has said that there will be an investigation, where the conduct of directors in charge at the time of company's failure and previous directors will be examined. The Business secretary, Greg Clarke said ‘any evidence of misconduct will be taken very seriously.’ We heard similar noises after the 2008 financial crisis, but nothing really materialised. Whether it will be different this time we will have to wait and see, but I am sceptical.

The first thing that springs to mind, is what was going on with the accounting and auditing (by KPMG) of Carillion, that made it justifiable to be paying out big dividends as recently as last year, to shareholders and bonuses to senior managers, who are no doubt shareholders too?

The company issued the first of three warnings on its lack of financial health in July of last year, why was this not acted on, by the management and indeed the government? Why were they allowed to pay £83 million in share dividends last year, when their pension deficit was £580 million?

The 2008 financial crash was taken very seriously in Iceland, where politicians resigned from their posts, including the prime minister, and directors of the banks involved were imprisoned, which was made possible by the Iceland Parliament enacting new legislation to enable this. Will this happen in the UK over the Carillion affair? I somehow doubt it.

The whole area of PFI’s, Public Private Partnerships (PPP’s) and the outsourcing of public services to private contractors needs to be ended. An idea that originally originated in the US and was first introduced to the UK by the Tory government led by John Major in the 1990’s. The first scheme in the UK was the Isle of Skye road bridge, which has since been taken into public ownership by the Scottish government, after the Scottish Parliament was first established in 1999.

The new Labour UK government, elected in 1997, picked the PFI ball up and ran with it, signing hundreds of deals for the construction of new hospitals and schools, which had the advantage of the spending not being counted against public sector borrowing, but in the long run the taxpayer has paid considerably more than would have been the case with conventional government contracting. It has been quite accurately compared to buying a house on your credit card, with extortionate fees payable for usually 25 years, whether or not the facility is needed or used.

Out sourcing of public services goes back even further to the days of the Thatcher Tory government, and almost always leads to worse pay and conditions for workers, and not necessarily good quality services - think of the railways! These companies tend to avoid paying UK taxes too, by off shoring their headquarters in tax havens. And as we have seen with the Carillion case, the nature of these deals is that the profits are privatised but the risks are nationalised. So much for the entrepreneurial private sector, then.

Although there will always be government contracts for building infrastructure, these type of deals are terrible for UK tax payers and service users alike. These PFI/PPP and outsourcing service provisions should to be dispensed with, and provided without excessive profits for these private companies, and the risks to the public purse. We will likely get better, and value for money public services into the bargain, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. The current system is effectively a corporate welfare state.   

Russian Revolutionary Art 1917 to 1932 - From Socialism to Authoritarianism

I visited the Royal Academy of the Arts exhibition 'Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932' in London yesterday, just before it closes tomorrow. It is inspired by the exhibition shown in Russia in 1932, just before Stalin's clampdown on artistic free expression.

The exhibition covers paintings, films, sculpture, textiles and ceramics from the early days of the Russia revolution in 1917, and follows changes through the 1920s and into the 1930s under the influence of the Bolshevik leadership, particularly after the death of Lenin and the rise to power of Stalin.

In the early years of the revolution there was a great explosion of the arts, which built on the trend towards the avant garde that had already begun in Russian (and more widely) before the revolution. There was much excitement in artistic circles about the new dawn opening up in Russia, brought about by revolutionary thinking. Two examples are below.

(Ivan Kliun 1923)

(Lyubov Popova 1921)

The Bolshevik's were only a fairly small force with something like 350,000 supporters in a country with a population of 140 million at the time of the revolution. It was decided that propaganda was necessary to spread revolutionary thinking to the masses.

(I predict a riot: Bolshevik (1920) by Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev)    

By the late 1920s the Soviet authorities condemned the avant garde style and promoted what became known as Socialist Realism, a style that was easy for the masses to understand. For a few years these different approaches co-existed, but in 1932 Stalin decreed that Socialist Realism was the only acceptable style for the Soviet Union, ending a era of dazzling creativity in the arts.

(Poster shows the workers triump over the capitalists 1920)

 (The power of the workers 1931)

(Andrey Golubev, Red Spinner, 1930) 

Stalin's principle goal was to turn the Soviet Union into a world power by expanding its industrial production. In 1928 he introduced the first of his five year plans, which set targets for each factory. A new breed of superhero workers known as 'shock workers' symbolised this synthesis of man and machine. Artists were encouraged to depict this in their work.

Workers were seen as the liberated proletariat who no longer had to sell their life and labour for the profit of others. Together they collectively owned the means of production interpreting what Marx called the 'dictatorship of the proletariat,' in this new worker led productivist system.

This conveniently ignored Marx's concept of 'freely associated' producers, in favour of what Lenin first called 'state capitalism,' which was ruthlessly and brutally driven forward by Stalin. The reality was that many workers were effectively slaves, and strikers and slow workers were imprsioned or even shot. Thousands died in accidents, of starvation or from freezing temperatures.

After the revolution, the peasants were promoted as equal partners with industrial workers, symbolised by the by Soviet emblem the hammer and sickle.

(The poster above is actually from the 1960s, but captures this partnership of industrial and agricultural workers)

(1930s poster depicting agricultural workers)

Stalin's plan involved the industrialisation of agriculture which included the collectivisation of farms into large operations, but took little notice of local conditions and practises. Famine was the result where millions died of starvation, through crop failures.

Stalin also promoted sports in Russia, with the competition with the US in events such as the Olmypics eventually. By the 1970s it was seen as a demonstration of the strength of the Soviet system over the capitalist USA. In the same way, Russia beat the US into putting a man into space, only 40 years after the revolution, which had started from a low point of a virtual feudal economy.

  (The Shot-putter, by Alexander Samokhvalov, 1933)

The 1932 exhibition was the last call of freedom for the arts, afterwards avant garde art was suppressed. Within a year it had vanished from public view, locked in storerooms. From this moment onwards the Union of Soviet Artists was the sole arbiter of Soviet art. Socialist Realism became the only approved style in the USSR.

I knew from political history much of what this exhibition portrays, but it was still interesting to view it through the prism of art. The euphoria and promise of the early years of the revolution, with its upsurge in creative arts, gradually ground down into simplistic propaganda, in the cause of authoritarianism and suppression. A vivid dream turned into a nightmare. The exhibition details neatly the bastardisation of socialism in the USSR, and left me feeling sad, an opportunity missed.   

  

Alleged Tory Election Expenses Fraud Should Lead to 33 By-Elections

The Independent reports that the judge who has granted Kent police more time to fully investigate the allegations of fraud in the Parliamentary seat of South Thanet, at last year’s general election, said that if it is proven, a by-election would need to held in the constituency. Normally there is a 12 month limit on investigations under the Representation of the People Act.

Judge Justin Barron said "The consequences of a conviction would be of a local and national significance with the potential for election results being declared void."   

The Independent piece is in the context of this giving Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, a second shot at winning the seat, where he lost in last year’s general election by around 3,000 votes. It seems it takes a UKIP angle to get this story some coverage in the mainstream media. There has been one previous story in the Independent about this scandal and one in The Guardian, the Whig press as I like to call it, but little elsewhere.

The original story was broken by Channel 4 News where they say that over the country 33 constituencies are involved with 29 winning Tory MPs involved, and up to ten police forces involved. All of these constituencies were marginals at the election, which is why they were targeted. 

The main allegation in all these cases is that spending on a campaign battle bus, as well as election material handed out, naming the local Tory candidate, was only declared as national spending, and within those limits.

Accommodation for staff who worked on some local campaigns, including in South Thanet, weren't declared at all. If the staff were helping with the local campaign then it should have been declared as a local expense.

These alleged false declarations of these constituencies has taken spending above the limit allowed, which is against the law. The Electoral Commission is also conducting an investigation.

I know, as a former election agent for eight years in my local Green Party, how careful you have to be with spending returns, as agent I could have finished up in jail, if I made a false declaration. But it is not just the election agents who gets in trouble if spending limits are breached; the candidates also sign the declarations. We have never come near the general election spending limits, but in local elections we did run it close in our target wards. 

If the allegations are true, and the police at least think they are worthy of further investigation, some sitting MPs could be sent to jail. At the very least these MPs (and other losing candidates) are likely to be barred from holding public office, which will entail the elections being re-run.

With the Tory government only holding a 12 seat overall majority, if they lose some of these by-elections, they could become a minority administration, with all of the problems that brings, in trying to get legislation through the House of Commons. 

Basically, it would be a lame duck government, and a fresh general election would surely follow within months. And without the gerrymandering of constituency boundaries in the Tories favour, which has long been the plan.

It never rains, but it pours for the Tories at the moment, what with a rebellion breaking out amongst Tory MPs over the government’s handling of the EU referendum campaign, and a certain Boris Johnson MP staking out his claim to the party’s leadership, post referendum.

We live in very volatile political times, all kinds of things could happen in the next six months or so.    

Will Cannabis use be Legalised in the UK?

I’m not known for heaping praise on the Liberal  Democrat Party, but hats off to them on this issue. As The Independent reports today, the Lib Dems set up an independent panel of experts to look into legalising cannabis in this country, comprising of, scientists, academics and police chiefs, which has recommended making the currently outlawed drug legal.

This follows in the wake of a shift in thinking around the world, with the realisation that the ‘war on drugs’ has been an abject failure in preventing the use of drugs, including cannabis, and costs a huge amount in public resources, and all for what? What is the point of criminalising people in possession of small amounts weed?

In the US, Colorado and Washington have legalised cannabis use, whilst Uruguay has followed suit. Jamaica has legalised the possession of up two ounces of the drug and Canada looks set to regulate cannabis use in the near future too.

The panel recommends the UK taking a similar approach to that of Uruguay, which is a less commercial model than in Colorado, where cannabis can be bought over the counter at licensed outlets, quite possibly chemist shops here and small scale cultivation for self use is allowed. Cannabis clubs could also be allowed to sell the drug to their members.

There would be a state regulator, similar to Ofcom or Ofwat, and perhaps it will be called Ofhead?

At present, in the UK, cannabis is an illegal class B drug, with a maximum penalty for possession of relatively small amounts, of five years in jail. Cultivation and supplying the drug has a maximum custodial sentence of 14 years. In practice, many police forces around the country will issue only police cautions to those caught in possession of small amounts.

One of the few benefits of the government’s slashing of public spending in London, has seen the police abandon the practice of descending on underground station forecourts with cannabis sniffer dogs, to catch people carrying a bit of weed. As I say, often this only results in a police caution, but it is harassment all the same. The police have rightly identified this activity as a waste of money and resources, for no real benefit to policing the city.

Allowing home cultivation and legal suppliers is actually likely to reduce crime generally, as the criminal gangs that make a lot of money supplying cannabis will become redundant, with all the savings for police resources that will entail. Prohibition just doesn’t work. On top of which, the panel believes legal sales could raise up to £1 billion in tax revenues.

So, the case is over whelming, and frankly obvious to anyone who thinks about it for five minutes. Will it happen in the UK? I have to say, I very much doubt it. The Daily Mail would be outraged, as they peddle a kind of Victorian morality where no one is allowed to enjoy themselves.  

Indeed, all illegal drug policy needs to be rethought through, with it being treated as a health and education issue, not one for the criminal justice system.

This is what a Home Office spokesperson said on the matter, as reported at the UK Huffington Post:

"clear scientific and medical evidence that cannabis is a harmful drug which can damage people's mental and physical health, and harms individuals and communities". The government has no plans for any changes to the law.

As if alcohol is any different, in fact it is much more injurious to physical and mental health, not to mention the problems caused by drink related violent crime.

Our politicians have a blind spot on this, or probably more likely they know the facts but are too scared of upsetting some of the reactionary elements in the mainstream media, to allow sound logic to dictate drug policy.

Heathrow 13 need your support Wednesday 24th February - Stand up for Climate Justice

The #Heathrow13 will return to court for final sentencing, on Wednesday February  24th at Willesden Magistrates Court, having all been found guilty of aggravated trespass and entering the security restricted area of London Heathrow Airport’s (LHR) north runway in protest of plans to build a third runway. All 13 have been told by District Judge Deborah Wright that they "should all come expecting custodial sentences”.

Caroline Lucas MP said:

Sending the Heathrow 13 to prison would be utterly unwarranted. They took a principled and non-violent stand against the colossal environmental cost of expanding an airport that already breaches air pollution laws- yet they’re being treated is if they are somehow a danger to society.

The real danger we face are the toxic fumes emitted by airports and the looming threat of catastrophic climate change. Sending these committed activists to jail would be deeply unjust.

Please come and join the protest  OUTSIDE the court from 9am SHARP to 10am, together with Heathrow residents and others, to say that climate justice is the only appropriate form of justice here; that prison time for protecting the climate is a massive #Redline, and that we need to Stop Aviation Expansion & Stop Co2lonialism!

Come ready to express your solidarity, be it in song, spoken word, festival or dancing, as we co-create and animate our climate defence in support of the #Heathrow13

Sentencing expected around noon. Your solidarity is welcome all day here on FB and on Twitter #Heathrow13

The full address for the court is:

Willesden Magistrates’ Court

448 High Road

London

NW10 2DZ

Nearest tube: Neasden OR Dollis Hill (Jubilee Line)

Note: the solidarity hashtag will be #Heathrow13 so please keep sending your support before and on the day!

Note: The sentencing hearing will start at 10am, and we have been informed access inside the court has been ticketed and restricted to family only.