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Category: UK

  • Bank of England about to ‘create mass homelessness’ as inflation soars again

    The Bank of England’s (BoE’s) latest policy will “create mass homelessness”, according to one financial professional. This comes as the central bank has said it’s going to start selling off government debt – a round-about way of trying to control our out-of-control inflation rate. However, in the process the BoE could plunge countless people into destitution.

    Financial carnage? ‘Hold my beer’ says the BoE

    The UK is in the midst of economic carnage. Inflation (how much the cost of everything goes up by) is currently 10.1% September figures). The BoE says it will hit 11% this month. It has also raised interest rates to 2.25% – meaning the cost of borrowing money is even higher. Add in post-Brexit financial chaos, the coronavirus pandemic, and 12 years of wilful Tory mismanagement of the economy and the end result is that the rest of us are suffering. So, what does the BoE (supposedly tasked with stopping this kind of thing happening) do? According to one accounting professor, it makes the situation even worse.

    The BoE had already fucked things up earlier in October. As the Canary‘s Maryam Jameela reported, Liz Truss and then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s fiscal kamikaze mini-budget caused financial chaos. The BoE stepped in to save near-collapsing pensions funds – albeit briefly. No sooner had it intervened than its boss Andrew Bailey came out and basically said ‘you’re on your own now – we’re not doing anymore’. The pound immediately collapsed; slow applause for Bailey. And now, he and his Saville Row-suited cronies look set to make things worse, again.

    The BoE has said it will start to flog gilts. These are essentially ‘IOUs’ it gives to the government. The government asks for some cash, the BoE writes an IOU (gilt), and the government might pay it back decades later. However, the BoE can also sell the IOU on to someone else – so the government will end up paying them. This is what it’s about to start doing, under the guise of the tired capitalist theory that doing this will sort the economy out.

    Flogging IOUs to fix the economy? Peak capitalism

    Our central bank said in a statement that:

    The first gilt sales operation was scheduled to take place on 31 October 2022 and proceed thereafter. In light of the Government’s fiscal announcement now scheduled for 31 October 2022, the first gilt sale operation will now take place on 1 November 2022.

    Translated, this means that the BoE is selling the IOUs to try and push up interest rates – specifically its own base rate, which then affects the ones that we all pay. The idea is that low gilt prices = high interest rates. So, flooding the market with more gilts should bring the price of them down further and push up interest rates. This in turn is supposed to bring down inflation, because you and I won’t be able to spend so much of our already meagre incomes. But as the Canary previously wrote, the other effect of this is a recession – which we are now essentially in. This could be catastrophic for countless people.

    “Mass homelessness”

    Accounting professor Richard Murphy has called it. He tweeted on Tuesday 18 October that the BoE gilt sell-off will:

    force interest rates up as fast as possible. Let’s be blunt about this: if you have a mortgage the Bank is trying to break your finances… There is nothing in the Bank of England’s mandate that says it should deliberately create mass homelessness, but that is very clearly what it is intent on doing. They are keeping Trussonomics on the agenda, even if she has failed… By trying to force up the cost of government borrowing the Bank of England is also trying to reinforce the austerity policy the government so clearly wants.

    Higher interest rates plus people already missing mortgage payments will probably equal a wave of repossessions soon. Earlier in the year, Capital Economics forecast that 12,000 people would lose their homes if interest rates went up to 0.5%. By 4 October, it said that:

    Overall, we expect arrears to rise from 0.7 per cent of mortgages now to 1.6 per cent in 2024, and repossessions from 0.01 per cent to over 0.06 per cent of outstanding mortgages per quarter by end-2025.

    This is a huge increase, and it’s plain to see will impact some people in a devastating way. Of course, the Tories could step in and whip the BoE into line.

    Or, they could stop with this corporate capitalist mantra and nationalise the energy companies, provide more coronavirus-style support for households, tax the rich, and stop spending money on BS like HS2. As the gilt situation has shown, the government can get money when it wants from the BoE’s IOUs. It just chooses not to. Instead, it and the bank would rather see countless people homeless and millions of us destitute. Once again, they’re all in this together – just without the rest of us.

    Featured image via the Bank of England -screengrab

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Case against Bristol Palestine campaigners collapses after state fails to submit evidence

    The case against three Palestine campaigners at Bristol Magistrates Court collapsed on 17 October.

    They were accused of aggravated trespass after they scaled the roof of the Bristol premises of Israeli drone makers Elbit Systems in November 2021, on the anniversary of the signing of the Balfour Declaration.

    Protesting Britain’s role in the colonisation of Palestine

    The Balfour Declaration is the name given to the statement made in 1917 by British foreign secretary lord Balfour. It promised to ‘establish’ in Palestine a “national home for the Jewish people”. Britain had taken control of Palestine after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. And that “national home” was to be created at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population.

    According to the campaigners’ statement at the time of the action:

    [The] 67-word document presented by Arthur Balfour in 1917 paved the way for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the violent dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians —more than half the indigenous population. This event is known as the Nakba, which directly translates into English as the ‘great catastrophe’.

    The rooftop action was also part of a campaign against Elbit Systems. Elbit is Israel’s largest private arms manufacturer and produces up to 85% of Israel’s drones. These drones have massacred Palestinians in Gaza. The company is also responsible for manufacturing small-calibre ammunition for the Israeli army. Direct action campaigners are therefore trying to force Elbit out of the UK.

    A long succession of failed prosecutions

    The case of the three rooftop occupiers fell apart after District Judge Mark Wattam ruled that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had failed to prove two parts of its case. He ruled that there was, in fact, ‘no case to answer’.

    The campaigners were charged with aggravated trespass, which means they were accused of disrupting lawful business. However, the judge ruled that there was no evidence to prove that the campaigners disrupted Elbit, or that the company’s business was lawful.

    The trial of the ‘Bristol 3’ is one of a long list of cases against anti-Elbit campaigners where the state has failed to secure a conviction for similar reasons. The common thread throughout these cases has been that Elbit has not provided evidence to prove that what it does is lawful

    In 2015, a case against nine protesters collapsed after defence lawyers asked for the disclosure of arms export licenses. Neither Elbit nor the UK government supplied them, and the court ruled the case shouldn’t go forward.

    Since then, Elbit, the CPS, and the campaigners have been at a stalemate. An onslaught of direct action against Elbit has closed down two of the company’s premises in the UK. But the state has failed to successfully prosecute people for actions at Elbit sites (although one person was convicted for an action against Elbit’s landlord in March).

    In December 2021, a group of three people were found not guilty of criminal damage when they appeared in court. This was after they threw red paint over Elbit subsidiary UAV Engines in Shenstone.

    Then in September 2022, the charges were dropped against five people accused of aggravated trespass and criminal damage, again at Elbit’s Shenstone site.

    Delays

    Many Elbit cases have been being postponed again and again too. Palestine Action commented that:

    The persistent postponement of hearings and trials is not unfamiliar to the direct action network, oftentimes owing to Elbit’s inability to prepare sufficient evidence to prosecute or refute the claims made against them.

    The state also uses the postponement of trials as a power and control tactic. It leaves people hanging – sometimes for years – with the threat of a case over their heads. And postponement often comes with restrictive bail conditions. This limits campaigners’ freedom as well as their ability to be involved in further direct action.

    These cases shouldn’t act as a fig leaf

    Campaigners are having some success in avoiding prosecution for direct action for Palestine. However, that doesn’t mean we should have any illusions at all about the rotten Criminal Justice System (CJS)

    Last week, I wrote that the CJS:

    is a tool created by the state to enforce repressive, racist and classist laws. From my own personal experience, class often plays a key role in jury verdicts, defendants who can pass as middle or upper class are more likely to be found not guilty.

    In the case of Palestine and the arms trade the situation is a little different. All the same racial and class biases are still present, but the cause itself – seen through a human rights lens – is capable of being viewed as more ‘worthy’ by juries – and even to an extent by judges too. This situation is beneficial for the Palestine solidarity movement, but it should never be allowed to obscure the massive suffering caused by the entire CJS

    The case in Bristol wasn’t a jury trial, but the point remains the same – we shouldn’t allow the acquittals in these specific cases to change our perceptions of the system as a whole. It is rotten to the core.

    “Acts of lawfare”

    Palestine Action has accused the British state of engaging in “lawfare” against them by using restrictive bail conditions to control campaigners. The state is also using ever more outlandish charges against Palestine campaigners. These include conspiracy to blackmail and ‘unlawful imprisonment’ of Elbit’s employees. Anti-Elbit organisers have had their passports confiscated, their houses raided, and been stopped under the terrorism act at UK borders.

    The Palestine Action campaign reflected on the charges of ‘unlawful imprisonment’:

    Such spurious allegations only demonstrate to what lengths Britain’s so-called justice system will go in order to supply the illegal Israeli military occupation and grease the machinery of the global weapons trade. And, as with all Palestine Action’s legal cases, the desperation of the British state to prevent people from standing with Palestine, and the fragility of Elbit Systems, is once again on display.

    They continued:

    Acts of lawfare such as this are characteristic of the British State and its ongoing commitment to enabling Israel’s violent domination over Palestine, a process that began in 1918 with the Balfour Agreement. Today, this includes the criminalisation of British citizens should they challenge the existence of the Zionist entity. For Palestine Action this simply illustrates what was already known: concrete action and transnational solidarity are tangible threats to, and immensely feared by, the Apartheid State, because its existence relies upon international complicity.

    Those in court deserve our solidarity

    Next month, six people are due to stand trial. They’re accused of unlawful imprisonment and causing £50k of damage to Elbit’s Shenstone site. The charges against them are serious, and they are calling for support.

    The people of Palestine have been asking for international supporters to take direct action against companies complicit in the Israeli state’s militarism and colonialism for many decades. The campaign against Elbit is an important act of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. If it is to be successful, we need to support the people who the state is trying to criminalise, both for standing with Palestine and against the arms trade.

    Featured image via Palestine Action

    By Tom Anderson

  • Suella Braverman is set to carry on the draconian work of Priti Patel

    Suella Braverman has been busy with a raft of characteristically draconian policies. In view of climate protests from Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion amongst others, Braverman is set to push forward the government’s anti-protest agenda. The BBC reported that:

    Suella Braverman says the new Public Order Bill will stop demonstrators holding the public “to ransom”.

    Ministers will be empowered to block protests causing “serious disruption” to key infrastructure and goods.

    What is the Public Order Bill?

    Priti Patel oversaw the widely derided Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act. As Eliza Egret explained:

    the act will affect our right to protest. But until we’re on the streets, we won’t know exactly what we’ll be arrested for. This is because the act is – in many sections – ambiguous, and will give police forces the freedom to interpret the law as they see fit.

    Earlier this year, the Canary’s Emily Apple explained how the government was using the Public Order Bill to enact amendments that did not pass in the PCSC Act:

    The bill is basically a rehash of some of the worse amendments to the PCSC act that were chucked out in the Lords.

    New offences include locking on, going equipped to lock on, and obstructing national infrastructure. There are new stop and search powers, including a suspicionless power for protest-related offences. This will be used to harass anyone who looks like a protester. But it will particularly impact marginalised communities who already bear the brunt of an institutionally racist police force.

    Suella Braverman, much like her predecessor, has been outspoken on stifling the right to protest. When discussing Just Stop Oil protesters, she said:

    I will not bend to protestors attempting to hold the British public to ransom.

    Preventing our emergency services from reaching those who desperately need them is indefensible, hideously selfish and in no way in the public interest.

    This serious and dangerous disruption, let alone the vandalism, is not a freedom of expression, nor a human right. It must stop.

    Braverman’s comments further normalise the creeping insistence that protests must not be disruptive. But by their very definition, protests are supposed to be disruptive. Such protests attract people’s attention and amplify the message that it is not acceptable to carry on with business as usual.

    Dissent

    Of course, many organisations have spoken out against the government’s plans – just like they had to under Patel’s tenure. The legal and policy officer at Big Brother Watch, Mark Johnson, said:

    When Truss’s new Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, stood up to address the Conservative Party Conference on Tuesday, her speech had all the hardline hallmarks of her predecessor, Priti Patel, and the previous government as a whole.

    Johnson warned that if the Public Order Bill becomes law, it would be a serious threat to everybody’s right to protest and freedom of speech:

    The idea that any free and innocent British citizen should be stripped of their right to protest is chilling. Protest banning orders may sound like the wild fantasies of despots, seeking to put away political dissidents, but in just a few short months they could become UK law.

    When discussing the details of the Public Order Bill, human rights organisation Liberty said:

    These proposals risk criminalising anyone who takes to the streets for a cause they believe in, from racial justice campaigners to grieving families looking for answers and justice.

    It’s another part of the Government’s plan to hide from accountability for its actions and make itself untouchable.

    Moreover, the bill isn’t only unpopular with human rights organisations – even some emergency services are hesitant to support it. The charity JUSTICE came out in opposition, saying:

    the Bill would serve to give the police carte blanche to target protesters – similar laws can be found in Russia and Belarus. It is therefore unsurprising that equivalent measures to the Protest Banning Orders were previously roundly rejected by the police, Home Office and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services on the basis that such measures “would neither be compatible with human rights legislation nor create an effective deterrent.”

    A right worth fighting for

    Clearly, Braverman is seamlessly continuing the draconian work of Patel. Her department is trying to enact legislation that is repressive and stifling. Just like the PCSC Act brought out protesters across the country, we need to do that again in order to stop the Public Order Bill. Braverman’s framing of protesters as petty vandals is a line in the sand – she’s letting us know that she does not hold the right to protest as a right worth protecting.

    Disruption and dissent are central to a functioning democratic society, no matter what Braverman says. The Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) has written an explainer on how to defend dissent. They mention the importance of knowing your rights, ‘resisting police surveillance’, and ‘challenging the use of police powers’.

    As the climate crisis and cost of living crisis worsens, and as politicians engineer an economic crisis, protest is going to be an essential tool in protecting people in our communities. We must resist any attempts to erode the right to protest and dissent. It’s a right that we’re clearly going to need in the coming months.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/David Woolfall via CC 3.0 and Wikimedia Commons/UK Department for International Development via CC 2.0 – resized to fit within 770×403 and background removed

    By Maryam Jameela

  • Complaints to the DWP up nearly 30% in just one year

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has released its latest claimant complaints figures. The Canary has crunched the numbers. They show a sudden increase this year, coupled with a steady increase in the previous year. However, this seems like news to the DWP – when the Canary asked the department about the issue, it got the figures wrong.

    DWP: complaints up this year

    Claimants can complain about the DWP to the department itself. Alternatively, they can lodge a complaint with the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) – a separate government body from the DWP. Then, the DWP tracks complaints with rolling totals every three months of the financial year. In 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, this rolling total almost consistently reduced every three months, when compared to the same period the prior year. There was also an overall fall in 2019. This was partly due to the DWP refusing to take complaints about the women’s state pension age. Now, however, the DWP’s latest figures show a sudden increase compared to previous years.

    From 1 April to 30 June:

    • 4,999 people complained to the DWP.
    • The ICE looked at 1,138 of these complaints.
    • It began formally investigating 416 of them.

    Compared to the same period in 2021, these figures are a 29% rise in overall complaints and a 33% rise in the number of cases ICE is investigating. This represents 37% of all cases the DWP passed to ICE – the highest for this quarter since 2017.

    Complaints also up on previous years

    A DWP spokesperson told the Canary:

    We work to support claimants as best we can, and whenever we receive a complaint we take it seriously and seek to follow appropriate processes. The number of complaints received by DWP has fallen for two consecutive quarters.

    This is not correct. The number of complaints received hasn’t fallen for two consecutive quarters. From 1 October to 31 December 2020, people lodged 4,881 new complaints to the DWP. For the same period in 2021, the number was 5,388 – a 10.4% increase. 1 January to 31 March 2021 versus 1 January to 31 March 2022 saw a 17.6% increase, from 4,462 to 5,249 complaints. Prior to that, complaints had been falling – for example, from 1 July to 30 September 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.

    This rise in complaints may well be driven by one social security entitlement: Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

    PIP: explaining increased DWP complaints?

    The number of households claiming Universal Credit went down by 3.7% in April 2022 compared to April 2021. However, the number of claimants of PIP went up by 10.9% in June 2022 versus June 2021.

    Alongside this has come increased DWP chaos with the social security payment. For example, the Guardian reported that since the start of 2021, 59% of successful PIP claimant appeals were because the DWP made wrong decisions. Then, you have waiting times for results of claims consistently increasing since 2015. Citizens Advice said on 6 July:

    the waiting list for an assessment now stands at 327,000 Disabled people, with an average waiting time of five months. Citizens Advice projects this means £294 million of payments that would be awarded are being held up.

    The possibility of an increase in complaints to the DWP being related to PIP also fits with ICE data. This shows there was around a 49% increase in 2020/21 versus 2019/20 for complaints about disability benefits the DWP passed to ICE. ICE said that the “majority of cases” were about PIP.

    DWP: still not fit for purpose

    The DWP has historically either handled claimants’ complaints badly or attempted to deal with them behind closed doors. ICE has sometimes not performed much better.

    The DWP overhauled its complaints procedures recently. However, this doesn’t appear to have affected the culture of it treating claimants so badly that they feel the need to complain. With new chancellor Jeremy Hunt expected to announce more austerity, and with the trajectory of complaints already rising, things will likely get worse.

    Featured image via Wikimedia

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Corbyn-era MPs have rallied to support the CWU

    Royal Mail has said it’s forcing up to 10,000 postal workers out of their jobs. It’s claiming that this is because of the Communication Workers’ Union’s (CWU’s) strike action, as well as financial losses. However, the union has hit back, saying the redundancies will be because of “gross mismanagement“. And now, nearly 50 MPs have rallied in support of workers – many of them being prominent members of the Jeremy Corbyn-era Labour Party.

    CWU: fighting Royal Mail redundancies

    BBC News reported that Royal Mail will be axing 6,000 jobs. It also won’t replace 4,000 positions when current staff leave. According to BBC News, Royal Mail said this was because:

    it expects its full-year losses to hit £350m. It said this included “the direct impact of eight days of industrial action” as well as lower volumes of parcels being posted. But the firm warned that losses could reach as much as £450m “if customers move volume away for longer periods” following strike action.

    CWU workers have been engaged in strike action. This is over Royal Mail’s paltry pay offer of nearly half the rate of inflation, as well as worsening working conditions. The last CWU strike day – on 13 September, which was the sixth in this action – saw 110,000 workers walk out. They will be downing tools again on Thursday 20 October. Predictably, Royal Mail boss Simon Thompson blamed the workers for the redundancies. He said that:

    Each strike day weakens our financial situation. The CWU’s decision to choose damaging strike action over resolution regrettably increases the risk of further headcount reductions.

    Thompson’s divisive and anti-worker rhetoric comes against a backdrop of Royal Mail making £758m last financial year and paying £400m of that in dividends to shareholders. As the Canary previously reported, this is the usual case of corporate capitalist bosses keeping shareholders happy while screwing over workers. So now, MPs have stepped in.

    Corbynite MPs out in force

    As the CWU tweeted, 45 MPs have written to Royal Mail’s boss:

    The letter was headed up by Ian Lavery MP, who is chair of the CWU parliamentary group. It called Royal Mail’s redundancies:

    a disgraceful attack on these key workers, who are taking strike action to protect their livelihoods.

    What was noteworthy in the letter was who signed it. Many of the MPs were prominent during Corbyn’s time as Labour leader – including Apsana Begum, Zarah Sultana, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Nadia Whittome and Richard Burgon. Current members of Labour’s shadow cabinet cannot sign these kind of letters. However, some have tweeted their support:

    So far, Keir Starmer has barely supported the CWU, or any other strikes for that matter. As the Guardian reported, CWU general secretary Dave Ward tabled a motion at the Labour conference on renationalising Royal Mail. The conference passed the motion, along with one about MPs attending picket lines.

    Royal Mail: asset-stripping while trashing workers’ livelihoods

    On Royal Mail’s redundancies, the Morning Star reported that Ward said they were because of:

    gross mismanagement and a failed business agenda.

    He told Royal Mail bosses that:

    What the company should be doing is abandoning its asset-stripping strategy and building the future based on utilising the competitive edge it already has in its deliveries to 32m addresses across the country.

    Not that they will listen, at the moment. So tens of thousands of workers will again walk out on 20 October. And everyone in Labour, not just some MPs, should be supporting them.

    Featured image via Chatham House – Wikimedia, resized to 770×403 under licence CC BY 2.0, and Alex Borland – Public Domain Pictures

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Shareholders have raked in £440bn more than workers

    New analysis has found that companies have increased shareholder dividends by over three times the rate they’ve increased wages. The problem has exploded since the 2008 financial crash. It shows the extent to which the corporate capitalist system has been hammering workers while lining the pockets of the rich.

    Dividends: money for nothing

    The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has released its research into shareholder dividends. As Investopedia noted:

    A dividend is a reward paid to the shareholders for their investment in a company’s equity, and it usually originates from the company’s net profits.

    In other words, a company gives shareholders dividends as a ‘thank you’ for giving it money – not for actually doing any work. However, the world of dividends is often murky at best. For example, many of the top dividend-paying companies are from some of capitalism’s most notorious industries, like tobacco, weapons manufacturing, and banks previously bailed out by the public. People often use dividends to avoid paying tax. Also, the UK government lets people pay less tax on their dividend payments. So, when company directors pay themselves in dividends for their work, it means they’re dodging the usual income tax rate.

    Ripping-off workers

    However, the TUC says the biggest problem is the difference between dividends and workers’ pay.

    The trade union body found that between 1987 and 2008, dividend payments increased by 10.4% a year, while wages went up by only 5.2%. This meant that shareholders’ earnings grew at double the rate of workers’ pay – for effectively doing no work. However, instead of the financial crisis of 2008 changing this, the TUC says it actually made the situation worse.

    It found that between 2008 and 2019, both dividends and wages didn’t grow by as much, but the difference in the growth was even worse. The TUC said that while dividend payments grew by 6.3%, wages only grew by 1.9%. This meant that, as the TUC said in a press release:

    Shareholder pay-outs have soared £440bn above inflation since 2008, while wages have been squeezed, growing £510bn less than inflation.

    The difference in growth between the two is stark: dividends grew by over three times the increase in wages. What makes this worse is that companies don’t have to pay dividends. They could invest the money in higher workers’ wages.

    But instead, companies pay out dividends as a way of tempting more people to invest money in the company. Meanwhile, greedy bosses and shareholders let workers suffer. For example, Unilever was one of the top dividend-paying companies this year while it has repeatedly been accused of violating workers’ rights.

    ‘Shareholders cash machine’

    TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady summed up the situation. She said in a press release:

    British companies are being used as cash machines for shareholders – because boardrooms have been given the wrong incentives. When you see working people fighting for better pay, they just want a fair share of the wealth they create. But boardrooms are raiding company coffers for shareholders, instead of funding fair pay rises and investment.

    The TUC thinks the government needs to do the following:

    • Modernise company law.
    • Make seats for workers on company boards a requirement.
    • Introduce stronger pay bargaining rights.
    • Introduce stronger employment rights for supply chain staff.
    • Increase the minimum wage to £15 an hour.

    Don’t just smash dividends, smash capitalism

    However, all of the TUC’s suggestions are trying to make corporate capitalism a bit fairer – which will not solve the problem. As LibCom wrote:

    without challenging capitalism, without abolishing the class system and the society based on that division, we will be plunged into the abyss, an ever worsening scenario edging towards utter destruction as the cycle of crisis and imperialist confrontation plays out… the working class cannot resolve its issues within capitalism, the fight for socialism is the only solution and that means class struggle and a political organisation built on the perspective of a break with the mirage of reforming this system which has nothing but worse in store.

    The TUC tinkering around the edges of the system will not solve the problem. Only a complete paradigm shift will do that – and currently, that’s not on the horizon.

    Featured image via Netflix – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

  • Militarist trade union moves to drop Corbyn-era military diversification policy

    One of the best ideas to come out of the Corbyn era will be dropped if a new motion from a pro-arms trade union is passed. A 2017 motion to diversify the ‘defence’ sector could be replaced by a much more militarist one proposed by the GMB union. Diversification would see workers reassigned to socially useful jobs, instead of producing arms. But, this is set to be abandoned.

    If approved at the Trade Union Congress (TUC), the motion would see the TUC lobbying for increased defence spending and cancel the 2017 position on diversification. Additionally, the motion instrumentalises the war in Ukraine and makes reference to AUKUS. AUKUS is a much-hyped military alliance between Australia, the UK, and the US.

    Militarist motion

    The precise wording of the motion is as follows:

    Congress believes that the world is becoming less safe and the policy carried in 2017 in favour of diversifying away from defence manufacturing is no longer fit for purpose.

    Congress recognises that defence manufacturing cuts have hindered the UK’s ability to aid the Ukrainian people under brutal assault from Putin’s regime.

    The motion demands that the TUC general council:

    campaign for immediate increases in defence spending.

    It also recognises that:

    there is welcome potential for manufacturing orders under the Aukus agreement.

    Defence policy

    Diversifying the defence economy is a key argument from campaign groups in the UK. However, only under Corbyn’s leadership did it become a firmer policy proposal. As early as 2015, CND lauded Corbyn’s plans to repurpose the nuclear weapons industry:

    As the only anti-Trident leadership contender, Jeremy Corbyn is not only giving a voice to the many Labour members who oppose nuclear weapons but is also setting out practical plans to transition the high-skilled workforce away from nuclear weapons production.

    They added:

    A Britain without nuclear weapons will contribute to a more peaceful world – and one that can build a sustainable, high-skilled economy with secure, socially productive jobs.

    Unions

    A major barrier to greener, more forward-thinking policy has been the synergy between certain trade unions and the military sector. GMB and other some other unions represent workers in the defence sector and, understandably, this is reflected in their resistance to change.

    As Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) points out:

    Employment in local areas heavily dependent on the defence industry is especially vulnerable to downturns in national military spending, or the ending of major contracts for the UK military, or for export abroad.

    This is a critical contradiction at the heart of UK manufacturing. Because of a national commitment to producing weapons, workers and unions are forced into a militarist position. Even though the weapons they produce are often exported to authoritarian regimes which can harm other workers – usually in the Global South.

    Urgent need

    The British arms trade is supported by institutions of all stripes. This includes the nuclear weapons industry and the maintenance of the fleet. Organised workers in that industry are thus forced into a militarist position to protect their interests.

    What should be happening, given the climate crisis, is a move away from skilled engineers and other workers building arms. They should be re-roled to build the ethical and green technologies we need for a just transition.

    This latest motion reflects the problem. The big British trade unions are essentially conservative status quo organisations. It’s a bizarre situation when a trade union is arguing in favour of flooding Ukraine with arms, and for more lobbying for defence spending. This is a major barrier that must be overcome in order to move towards a more equitable and secure world.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Ministry of Defence, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under Open Government Licence.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Bristol Copwatch is raising funds for the family of copwatcher Ahmed Fofanah

    On 4 August, Black Lives Matter campaigner and Bristol copwatcher Ahmed Fofanah died unexpectedly. Bristol Copwatch, a police monitoring group, has launched a crowdfunder to cover the costs of Ahmed’s funeral.

    Years of police harassment and racism

    Ahmed died suddenly – aged 42 – in August 2022, having faced years of police harassment. In a 2020 interview with Black Lives Matter Weston-super-Mare, Ahmed shared his experiences of targeted violence and racism by local police. Explaining how police made his life “hell”, Ahmed stated that police persistently racially profiled him, stopped and searched him, and even confronted him with guns.

    In September 2020, Black Lives Matter Weston-super-Mare organised a protest outside Bristol Magistrates’ Court in support of Ahmed’s appeal to overturn a conviction. Following his sudden death, a post on Black Lives Matter Weston-super-Mare‘s Facebook page stated that Ahmed:

    spent years trying to clear his name of false accusations from Avon & Somerset Police

    It added that:

    Ahmed was able to clear his name but still never received an apology or compensation for years of police harrasment.

    In his interview, Ahmed shared that his experiences of police harassment induced extreme “anxiety”. He added that due to being criminalised, he could no longer work in his security job. Reflecting the harmful impact of policing on families and communities, Ahmed said that his daughter started to self harm due to the distress caused by her father’s experiences. Meanwhile, Ahmed stopped driving, taking the bus or visiting the town centre for fear that armed police would shoot and kill him on sight.

    Reflecting on Ahmed’s struggle for justice, Bristol Copwatch founding member John Pegram said:

    Even at his lowest Ahmed had a strength that is rarely seen and a fierce determination to fight for his rights.

    Tributes to a ‘dear friend’

    The University of Leeds shared a tribute, explaining that:

    Ahmed was a key member of the Co-POWeR Community Engagement Panel.

    Co-POWeR is an association which produces research and recommendations relating to the “wellbeing and resilience” of Black and racially minoritised families and communities. In its statement, the university added that Ahmed “will be sadly missed”.

    In a tribute to a ‘dear friend’, Bristol Copwatch stated:

    We were deeply saddened to learn of his passing as he meant so much to all of us. His resilience and sheer bravery and determination in the face of adversity were truly beautiful things and seeing him rise time and again was an inspiration to us all.

    It added:

    All of us within the Bristol Copwatch core organising team are devastated by his death and will never forget his importance as someone we supported during his fight for justice and as a strong black man and loving father and husband.

    Ahmed leaves behind a wife, five children, and three grandchildren. Bristol Copwatch is raising money to support his grieving family. The police monitoring group is asking for supporters to donate what they can to reach its £7,000 target.

    Featured image via Kat Hobbs/YouTube

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Prison was a “death sentence” for those featured in INQUEST’s damning report

    INQUEST has published a report revealing new data and sharing the harrowing stories of 22 Black and racially minoritised people whose deaths in prison were “preventable and premature”. The report reflects the prevalence of institutionalised racism, systemic violence, and neglect in England and Wales’ prison system.

    Deaths in prison

    INQUEST is a charity which supports families bereaved by state neglect and violence. Freedom of Information (FoI) data gathered by the charity reveals that 2,220 people died in prison between January 2015 and December 2021.

    371 people died in prison in 2021, the highest number of deaths ever recorded in English and Welsh prisons. Responding to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) statistics in January, INQUEST director Deborah Coles argued that:

    the pandemic alone cannot explain away this record level of deaths.

    Indeed, in July, User Voice (a charity led by formerly incarcerated people) published evidence that in some cases, prison conditions during lockdown amounted to the UN’s definition of torture. The systemic neglect and restrictive regimes implemented during the pandemic inevitably took their toll on imprisoned people’s physical and mental wellbeing.

    Institutionalised racism

    INQUEST’s new report, Deaths of racialised people in prison 2015 – 2022, analysed the deaths of Black, mixed-race, Asian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, white Irish, white Gypsy and Irish Traveller people. Coles explained that the deaths of Black and racially minoritised people are “among some of the most contentious, violent and neglectful” deaths in prison.

    The report analyses the “preventable and premature” deaths of 22 racially minoritised people in prison. These cases include:

    • the inappropriate use of segregation;
    • the racial stereotyping of Black imprisoned people as “aggressive”;
    • the neglect of imprisoned people’s physical and mental health;
    • prison staff failures to seek help, particularly for Black and mixed-race imprisoned people; and
    • cases of extreme and violent bullying.

    According to INQUEST’s analysis, the highest number of prison deaths were among Black and mixed-race people. Black and mixed-race women accounted for almost half of the deaths of all racially minoritised women in prison. The researchers said that this is evidence of “the role of institutional racism in the prison estate”.

    In a press release, executive director of INQUEST Deborah Coles said:

    The failure of post-death investigations to examine the potential role of racism or discrimination in deaths renders racialised issues invisible. As a result, the opportunity to acknowledge and address racial injustices and inequalities is lost.

    Harrowing case studies

    The report details the death of 22-year-old Pakistani Mohammed Irfaan Afzal. Mohammed died from a chest infection on 4 August 2019 while being held on remand at HMP Leeds. According to INQUEST, he arrived in prison physically healthy. However, he lost almost a third of his body weight over the course of 48 days. This left him ‘vulnerable to infection’.

    Prison staff described Mohammed as “bewildered” and “child-like” during his time behind bars. Inquiries into his premature death found multiple failures to identify and meet his physical and mental health needs.

    Mohammed’s sister Ayesha Afzal told INQUEST:

    My brother suffered for the last few months of his life scared, starving, sick, and alone. That will haunt me every day until I die. No one has been held accountable for his death, and there has been no justice.

    The report details the premature, preventable and harrowing deaths of others in custody, including Anabella Landsberg, Tyrone Givans, Osman Ali Hassan, Natasha Chin, and Tommy Nicol.

    Stop prison expansion

    In INQUEST’s press release, Coles said:

    The decision to imprison the people featured in this report ended up being a death sentence. Imprisonment is ineffective in reducing crime and instead perpetuates harm and violence, with racialised and marginalised groups worst affected.

    INQUEST’s report comes at a time in which the government seeks to expand the prison system. In 2021, the Ministry of Justice announced plans to create 20,000 new prison places. These places will likely be filled by those criminalised by the government’s draconian new laws, as well as people pushed into destitution and mental health crises due to a cost-of-living crisis following years of austerity.

    These and other factors disproportionately target Black and racially minoritised people, who are already overrepresented in England and Wales’ prison population. Indeed, although they make up just 13% of the general population, they account for 28% of people behind bars.

    This disparity is even more pronounced in the youth carceral estate, with over half of children in custody being from Black and racially minoritised backgrounds.

    As INQUEST has detailed, imprisonment can be a ‘death sentence’ for criminalised people. Prisons don’t create justice or accountability – they cause irreparable harm to individuals and communities.

    The only way we will see an end to these preventable deaths is if the state ends its destructive prison expansion scheme. Instead of more prisons, we need community-based infrastructures of care which deal with the root causes of social harm through healthcare, housing and education.

    Featured image via Jonny Gios/Unsplash

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Liz Truss churns out characteristically terrible performance in PMQs

    Liz Truss has had a disastrous first month at 10 Downing Street. Her chancellor has overseen a disastrous mini-budget that sparked unprecedented fallout from the Bank of England. Her government is presiding over an expansion of fossil fuel use that spits in the face of the climate crisis. And Truss is cosying up to Quatar, an authoritarian state, despite promising to stop…er…being dependent on authoritarian states for energy.

    But this all just got worse with another disastrous performance at Prime Minister’s Questions.

    Amongst all this, Liz has had to deal with potshots from commentators. Well, we’re certainly not above that – let’s get into it.

    Damp squib

    As political editor Pippa Crerar noted it only took one minute for Truss to perform a U-turn:

    It would appear the lady is for turning, after all.

    Where did Truss go from there? Straight into ridicule:

    Writer Phil Harrison noted Truss’ vacant expression:

    A little unfair to labradors, but we’ll allow it.

    Labour MP Luke Pollard said even Truss’ own MPs were less than impressed:

    Presenter Emily Maitlis pointed out that Keir Starmer has a pretty easy job on his hands:

    Aftermath

    Well, how did our Liz end PMQs? As political correspondent Ava Santina said:

    As Labour MP Claudia Webbe summed up:

    Truss has proven in her first month in power that she’ll try anything she thinks she can get away with. That’s not a good enough political strategy during a time of several crises. Many in the country are facing a difficult winter, and the prime minister is rattling through terrible decision after terrible decision.

    Many of us will be familiar with imposter syndrome, where self-doubt plagues those who are actually perfectly competent. That’s not the case with Truss, as Professor Paul Bernal explained:

    Sometimes, imposter syndrome isn’t actually imposter syndrome. Sometimes it’s self-awareness that you’re doing a shit job, and need to fuck off for the good of the country.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/The Independent

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • The state is gearing up to prosecute dozens of people for direct action in support of Palestine

    In the coming months, the Crown Prosecution Service is gearing up its attempts to repress the UK Palestine solidarity movement. Palestine solidarity organisers are due to face a long succession of trials.

    For years, people around the UK have been taking action against Elbit, Israel’s largest private arms company.

    Elbit supplies the majority of the drones used by the Israeli military to murder Palestinians, and people have long been trying to push the company out of the UK.

    The direct action campaign stepped up in 2020, when the Palestine Action campaign was launched

    Two of Elbit’s UK sites have since been forced to close down permanently, and the British state isn’t happy about it.

    Conspiracy to attack corporate profit

    This week eight people were due to be tried for conspiracy to blackmail, a charge that – as far as we know –  hasn’t been used against UK social movements since the state’s suppression of the animal rights movement.

    When the state used the charge against the animal rights movement it led to brutal sentences of up to 11 years in prison (although the circumstances of the cases are vastly different).

    However, the blackmail trial against the ‘Elbit Eight’ was postponed at the last minute. Palestine Action said the trial had been delayed for a minimum of one year.

    The postponed blackmail trial followed the failed case of five people who had locked-on to the gates of Elbit’s UAV engines factory, and sprayed the gates with red paint. The case was dropped against them in September, on the day they had been due to attend a court hearing.

    A further three people, who had been arrested at an action outside Elbit’s office in London, also had their trial postponed after the prosecution failed to submit evidence.

    These kind of delays have been the norm for years; very few people have been successfully prosecuted during the course of the campaign against Elbit. The likely reason for this is that the Israeli company is extremely scared of having its business exposed through court proceedings.

    In 2015, a case against nine protesters collapsed after defence lawyers asked for disclosure of arms export licenses. This has set the scene for many years of failed prosecutions. In December 2021, the first case to actually reach trial resulted in three people being acquitted of criminal damage after throwing red paint over Elbit subsidiary UAV Engines in Shenstone. The judge:

    stated that the Crown had failed to prove that convicting the defendants would be proportionate with their freedom to protest. He stated further points which included: Palestine is an important issue, the arms trade is an important issue, the defendants believed in what they were doing, and the location was specifically chosen.

    The state defends arms dealers

    Despite the ongoing delays, the state is gearing up to criminalise the movement. Its hand has unfortunately been strengthened by the state’s recent appeal of the ‘not guilty’ verdict in the case of the Colston Four (the four people who were prosecuted for toppling the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol).

    The verdict of the Court of Appeal didn’t overturn the ‘not guilty’ verdict against the Colston Four, but it does limit the defences available to people accused of criminal damage through limiting the use of the human rights defence of ‘proportionality’.

    In the coming months we will see how this important appeal judgement plays out in the trials of those who have taken action against Elbit. However, the Colston judgement only takes away one possible defence. As Andy Meinke argued in Freedom:

    This judgement gives them [defendants] one less string to their bow, but it’s very tricky shooting multiple arrows at once. An obvious example is Palestine Action with 36+ people facing crown court cases with a high chance of imprisonment if convicted.

    Meinke further stated that he hoped that juries will “care more about the fact that people in Palestine are being killed and brutalised with British built weapons than a ‘right’ to protest about it”. This is because protesters can argue that they acted out of necessity or to prevent a greater crime – and neither of these defences are affected by the Colston judgement.

    Defendants are better off having their case in front of a jury, than leaving their fate up to a judge. But it’s important that we should never put juries on a pedestal, they are a part of the Criminal Justice System (CJS), which is a tool created by the state to enforce repressive, racist and classist laws. From my own personal experience, class often plays a key role in jury verdicts, defendants who can pass as middle or upper class are more likely to be found not guilty.

    In the case of Palestine and the arms trade the situation is a little different. All the same racial and class biases are still present, but the cause itself – seen through a human rights lens – is capable of being viewed as more ‘worthy’ by juries – and even to an extent by judges too. This situation is beneficial for the Palestine solidarity movement, but it should never be allowed to obscure the massive suffering caused by the entire CJS, which also includes the jury system. Those judges and juries are the same ones imprisoning those who fight back against police violence, disproportionately imprisoning people of colour, and upholding a system which protects capitalism, the rich and the powerful.

    More trials

    This week, two people are appearing at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court after locking-on to Elbit’s London HQ. Next week, people will be on trial at Bristol Magistrates’ Court for occupying the roof of Elbit’s Bristol premises.

    In November, several much more serious cases are due to take place. The defendants are charged with causing thousands of pounds worth of criminal damage to company property.

    Those in court are calling for support and solidarity.

    Direct action continues

    Meanwhile, the direct action campaign continues. On 3 October, Palestine Action wrote:

    This morning, two vans were ploughed into the gates of the Shenstone UAV Engines factory, with six activists swiftly locked-on to the vans to prevent their removal as they obstruct all entrances to the factory.

    Over the coming months, the state is hoping to criminalise and imprison those who’ve stood up in support of Palestine, in the hope of stamping out resistance. The people in court deserve our support. And the people in Palestine deserve our continued resistance.

    Featured image via Nehemia Gershuni-Aylho/Wikimedia Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license (resized to 770x403px)

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • The Bank of England just exacerbated the catastrophe caused by Kwarteng’s mini budget

    The Bank of England (BoE) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have both expressed continuing concern at Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget. As the Canary’s Steve Topple explained:

    After the Tories announced the package, the value of the pound collapsed, mortgage lenders pulled countless rates, and the Bank of England had to step in to save pension funds. But that wasn’t the end of it, even after Truss’s now-infamous U-turn. By Thursday 6 October the pound sunk again against the dollar after a credit rating agency warned of further problems with the UK economy.

    A few days later, and the BoE are being urged to intervene yet again. As the Guardian reported:

    The Bank of England is facing growing calls to extend its emergency intervention in financial markets triggered by Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget, amid concerns over the impact on struggling pension funds.

    However, Andrew Bailey – governor of the BoE – stated that they couldn’t intervene any further on pension funds, bluntly saying:

    You’ve got three days left now and you’ve got to sort it out.

    As he said that, the markets plummeted:

    The IMF also warned that:

    Without fiscal contraction elsewhere, and with tight supply, unfunded government spending increases or tax cuts will only push inflation up further and make monetary policymakers’ jobs harder.

    Deep concern

    With a worsening climate crisis, an energy crisis, and more economic turmoil on the horizon, the response on social media was understandably passionate.

    Economist and writer Will Hutton said:

    Economic justice campaigner Richard Murphy expressed confusion and concern:

    Human rights lawyer Jessica Simor was in disbelief:

    Accounting professor Prem Sikka also questioned the wisdom of Bailey’s comments:

    Former editor of the Financial Times Lionel Barber said:

    Catastrophe

    Kwarteng has hurled the country into a catastrophic situation. The fact that the BoE has had to intervene repeatedly speaks to how alarming this all is. Truss has certainly not been elected, and therefore her economic positions have not been discussed or debated amongst anyone but Conservative party members. Her government’s approach to the economy is unsanctioned chaos that doesn’t even have the consent of the electorate.

    This all shows, once again, that the privileged elites who run our country are way out of touch. It’s far past time for us to push back against this feckless government. We can’t rely on politicians to do the ethical thing, or to look out for the most vulnerable people in society.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Christopher Bill

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Mogg is a relic of the past and so are his plans for our future

    By Ralph Underhill

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Barristers have won a 15% payrise, but the whole rotten system needs to go

    Barristers have won a 15% payrise, after months of strike action, which put a spanner of the works of the UK’s legal system.

    The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) demanded a 25% increase in legal aid rates, but barristers finally agreed to the 15% offer after the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) agreed to pay the higher rate for cases within the 60,000 Crown Court backlog.

    57% of the CBA’s members voted to accept the MoJ’s deal.

    Critical solidarity

    At the Canary we maintain a stance of solidarity with workers taking collective action. We support defence barristers organising for better pay. Barristers who prosecute – on the other hand – are akin to cops, judges and prison officers.

    In September, as the strikers voted to escalate their action, we wrote:

    if strikes like this are going to help us move toward societal change, they need to be about more than just pay and conditions.

    It’s not enough for the ‘justice’ system to go back to normal once the CBA’s demands are met. We need to bring this system to its knees for good. The CJS [Criminal Justice System] is one of the primary mechanisms which the ruling class use to dominate and repress us. It is responsible for untold suffering and misery. It is a racist system which disproportionately affects people of colour. For example, Black people make up 10% of the prison population in the UK, despite only accounting for 3% of the UK’s overall population.

    And whilst a 15% payrise for defence barristers may benefit some of the people who are brought before this racist, classist, transphobic and misogynist legal system, and need a decent defence, it will still leave the rotten system itself wholly unchanged.

    Taking issue with the CBA

    I take issue with one part of the CBA’s message to its members. As the Association announced the final ballot which ended the strike, it wrote:

    The CBA remains committed to the future of the Criminal Bar and to the Criminal Justice System.

    It’s clear that if our future is to be a just one, then it has to involve the downfall of the Criminal ‘Justice’ System, and the creation of community-led and truly democratic systems of transformative justice. Siding with the future of the CJS means siding with the oppressor.

    A view on the strike from inside a segregation cell

    Back in September, we published a statement from Kevan Thakrar, who is currently imprisoned in the segregation unit of Belmarsh prison. Kevan has been in prison since 2008, after being convicted of murder under the unjust and racially biased joint enterprise doctrine. Kevan and his supporters maintain that he was wrongfully convicted, and are campaigning for his release.

    Kevan wrote:

    if criminal barristers had a real belief in defending the innocent from wrongful imprisonment, they would make this strike about a lot more than just their pay-packets and in doing so could draw in the support of wider society.

    It has not been the ever-decreasing standards of criminal trials – which have seen the introduction of anonymous witnesses, use of hearsay ‘evidence’, the slander that is bad character evidence, the ability for police and prosecutors to sit as jurors, the permissibility of double jeopardy or the mass use of the Joint Enterprise Doctrine – which has brought them out to protest. The campaigning organisation APPEAL set out 25 vital reforms to the criminal justice system earlier this year. It would not be difficult to adopt these as demands to go along with barristers’ quest for better rates of pay.

    Today, the CBA has been victorious, but a system of oppression remains firmly and squarely in place. It is up to us to imagine a world without this system, and to fight for it.

    Another prisoner’s perspective

    We asked ex-prisoner, and anarchist, John Bowden for his perspective on the CJS. John spent over 40 years in the UK prison system. He said:

    Essentially the criminal justice system exists as a state apparatus of repression and is the hard fist of that state, particularly exemplified by the prison system, whose inmate population is composed almost wholly of the poor and most marginalized, and disproportionately Black and ethnic minority, reflecting the institutionalised racism of the criminal justice system.

    The deep structural class inequalities of this society require an apparatus of social control and repression to maintain “Law and Order”, and that is the prime purpose of the criminal justice system.  Some lawyers are motivated by a noble intention to legally empower the most disempowered and provide them with the means to challenge injustice and state abuse, but the reality is that small partial legal victories do not change the structural reality of a fundamentally unjust and unequal society or a legal and judicial system that exists to defend and maintain that society. 

    True justice will never be achieved by a criminal justice system designed and intended to keep the poor down and maintain the social status quo. Those involved with that criminal justice system like lawyers, even when motivated by an intention to use the judiciary in a positive way to defend the powerless and most marginalised, should seriously consider if they’re just legitimising a system that exists for one sole purpose, to maintain and enforce the power of a system rooted in inequality and injustice.

    Lawyers need to pick a side

    In my opinion, we need to face two important facts. Firstly, the vast majority of barristers – including defence barristers (many of whom also prosecute) – stand with the establishment. Secondly, if we are to struggle against the state, we are going to need radical lawyers (that is, until the day when we can tear the whole rotten system down).

    However, if lawyers are truly to be comrades, we need more than professionalism and careerism. We need true militancy and bravery. We need lawyers to take risks for the struggle, just like others must.

    I’ve been involved in supporting comrades experiencing state repression for many years. Most recently, I’ve been supporting those criminalised after Bristol’s 2021 uprising against police violence. During my time as an organiser in this area I have met hundreds of lawyers, and only a tiny handful of them have displayed anything approaching radicalism.

    It is possible to be a truly radical lawyer

    Because of these experiences in my own communities, I’ve looked outside of the UK – at how people organise against state repression in other contexts. Occasionally, I’ve met lawyers who are integral parts of radical struggles, and who display bravery in opposing state oppression.

    In Bakur, the part of Kurdistan within Turkey’s borders, an intense struggle against the state is raging. I’ve met defence lawyers who are part of radical organisations supporting defendants, prisoners and their families. These lawyers are prepared to take risks on behalf of their comrades, and many of them have been imprisoned themselves. When I visited Bakur this year, one lawyer told me that he had been arrested by Turkish police while he was representing a client in the courtroom. Another – Ibrahim Bilmez – was imprisoned for three years for representing Kurdistan Workers’ Party co-founder Abdullah Öcalan. Bilmez has since spent over a decade under investigation for terrorism.

    Just two weeks ago, Salah Hammouri – a Palestinian radical lawyer – joined a hunger strike inside an Israeli millitary prison. He and his comrades are demanding an end to Israel’s policy of imprisonment without charge.

    I’d be willing to bet that none of these radical lawyers believe in the state system which they have trained in. Their role as radical lawyers is to defend – and to speak out for – their comrades. It is possible to firmly take a stand against the ‘justice’ system, even whilst working as a defence lawyer within it

    Our future lies in the downfall of this system

    The CBA’s statement that it is committed to the “future” of the CJS is at odds with the change we need in society. Our future lies in the downfall of that system.

    We need bravery and dedication from the UK’s radical lawyers. We need their complicity in building a movement which can challenge the system that they’re a part of. Most of all, we need them to pick a side and stand with the people against the system, instead of with the state, careerism and capitalism.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/MassiveEartha (cropped to 770x403px), Creative Commons license 4.0

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Man dies after being restrained by Hertfordshire police during mental health crisis

    A man has died after Hertfordshire Police restrained him during a mental health crisis. Police arrived after receiving reports of a man running in the street in distress late on Friday 7 October. Hertfordshire Police have now referred themselves to the IOPC (Independent Office for Police Conduct).

    The BBC reported the IOPC as ‘understanding’ that:

    officers reported the man appeared to be having a mental health crisis so the ambulance service was also called.

    The man is understood to have become unwell while being restrained at the scene…Officers began CPR until paramedics arrived shortly before midnight, but the man was pronounced dead at 00:17.

    The IOPC confirmed that Hertfordshire Police used PAVA spray (pelargonic acid vanillylamide), an incapacitant. It is unclear, and likely will remain so, why exactly the police chose to use an incapacitant spray on someone experiencing a mental health crisis.

    Incapacitant

    The director of the charity INQUEST, Deborah Coles, set out the facts:

    The Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) also noted the use of PAVA spray:

    As the Canary’s Emma Guy has outlined:

    PAVA spray is a chemically concentrated version of pepper spray that’s been a controversial deterrent due to its £2m rollout expense and its proven misuse in pilot trials.

    And according to Mental health charity Mind:

    PAVA spray is used as a defence tool to stop people resisting. It is sprayed into people’s eyes causing them to close and resulting severe pain. It is mainly used by police officers.

    Mind also cited a study which found that PAVA spray was used disproportionately against certain groups:

    [the study] revealed disproportionate use of force in prisons against younger people, black people and Muslim people, which the Ministry of Justice was unable to explain.

    PAVA spray is a type of pepper spray that is clearly controversial, whether used by police officers or in prisons. The fact that Hertfordshire Police used it on someone who was in mental distress is a travesty.

    Mental health crisis to tragedy

    Time and time again, the police harm members of the public who are having mental health crises. Just this year, INQUEST found that Oladeji Omishore was “experiencing a mental health crisis” when police officers confronted him with tasers. Oladeji backed off from the officers and jumped into the river below in an apparent attempt to escape. He died shortly afterwards.

    We don’t yet know more details about the man who died in the custody of Hertfordshire police. However, it’s clear that police turn mental health crises into tragedies. A report from the IOPC found that:

    In the majority of cases involving either allegations of discrimination or common stereotypes and assumptions, there was evidence that the individual concerned had mental health concerns or a learning disability. This supports findings by others that the intersectionality of race and mental health can increase the risk of higher levels of use of force.

    Obviously, higher levels of force mean a higher incidence of serious injury and death.

    As advocacy organisation Liberty argues:

    Police do not protect the public, or communities at large. Given their endemic racism and regular lack of accountability, we cannot rely on them to be truthful. We must resist police violence, and we must do so together. How many more times do police need to kill people experiencing mental distress before anything changes?

    Featured image via Unsplash/Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Tories push fossil fuel expansion even as climate crisis leads to record excess deaths

    On 7 October, the UK opened up a new licensing round for potentially over 100 fossil fuel licences in the North Sea. The government argues that this is “good for the environment”. On the contrary, scientific consensus clearly indicates that further fossil fuel expansion will be catastrophic for the planet and its inhabitants.

    This includes the Conservative government’s core voting base, namely older voters. Indeed, also on 7 October, reported figures showed that there were record excess deaths among over-65s this summer due to climate crisis-related weather extremes.

    Ignoring scientific consensus

    The decision by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) to open up more fossil fuel licences is controversial to say the least. It defies a 2021 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that called for no new oil and gas exploration, essentially because burning fossil fuels produces greenhouse gases that are the primary driver of global warming. The UK instructed the IEA to produce this report ahead of the COP26 climate conference. It is now effectively ignoring the IEA’s findings.

    The Green Party also pointed out that the IEA isn’t alone in its assertions about fossil fuels. Its co-leader Adrian Ramsay said:

    The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency and the United Nations have each warned there can be no new fossil fuel projects if there is to be any chance of keeping global temperature rises under 1.5 degrees.

    There’s wide consensus that 1.5 degrees is the level of global heating beyond which impacts would be cataclysmic. The warming level is currently between 1.1 and 1.2 degrees.

    The recent floods in Pakistan, prolonged droughts in parts of Africa, and extensive wildfires in North America, Australia and Siberia in recent years provide context for these seemingly incremental figures. Global warming makes such extreme weather more likely, and oftentimes more severe.

    Despite this, the UN Environment Programme says that current plans to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which drive global warming, are insufficient. Indeed, it highlights that estimates show warming will reach 2.7 degrees this century with “a continuation of current policies”.

    Record excess deaths, brought to you by fossil fuels

    The current levels of warming are having a direct impact on people in the UK in terms of excess deaths, as new analysis shows.

    The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Office of National Statistics (ONS) released the estimated figures on 7 October. Figures showed that during five periods of heat between June and August, there were an estimated 2,803 excess deaths in England among people over the age of 65. It’s important to note that this figure excludes Covid-19 related deaths.

    The UKHSA highlighted that:

    This is the highest excess mortality figure during heat-periods observed since the introduction of the Heatwave plan for England in 2004.

    The chief scientific officer at UKHSA, Isabel Oliver, further commented:

    These estimates show clearly that high temperatures can lead to premature death for those who are vulnerable.

    The high temperatures that the UK experienced in 2022 were themselves record-breaking. As Carbon Brief reported, temperatures exceeded 40C in July for the first time ever. The publication highlighted that a study found the climate crisis made the heatwave:

    at least 10 times more likely than it would have been without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions

    In other words, the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis is making extreme weather more likely. And this extreme weather can be lethal to people – as well as other animals – including in the UK.

    Lethal and illegal?

    Business and energy secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg says the fossil fuel expansion plan will help the economy and energy security. Rees-Mogg’s department sets the “overall policy” by which the NSTA abides. The government claims that the plan will also lower emissions. As the Guardian reported, climate minister Graham Stuart said:

    when we burn our own gas it’s got lower emissions around its production than foreign gas

    However, despite importing fossil fuels from elsewhere, the UK also exports significant amounts of the gas and oil that it already produces. This inconvenient fact challenges Stuart’s argument, which the oil and gas industry has used before. Moreover, as the Scottish Greens’ Ariane Burgess has previously pointed out:

    North Sea production already has more oil than we can afford to burn if we are to meet the Paris Agreement’s climate commitments

    Alongside its commitment to the Paris climate agreement, the UK has legally binding emissions reduction targets. Greenpeace UK’s energy transition campaigner Philip Evans said that the licences:

    are possibly unlawful and we will be carefully examining opportunities to take action.

    Legal action is increasingly being taken over inaction on the climate crisis. And as the UK’s fossil fuel expansion plans indicate, such action couldn’t be more necessary.

    Featured image via Sky News /YouTube

    By Tracy Keeling

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • 31 days later and Truss makes Johnson look like a genius

    Just over a month has passed since the Tory party made Liz Truss prime minister. And, it’s been hell on earth for everyone involved – including her. She has lurched from one crisis to another as the UK falls apart. But how bad is it really? And what has gone on in the past month that you may have missed? The Canary takes a look at 31 days of the new PM – where she’s made Boris Johnson look like a genius.

    Climate chaos

    The Tories installed Truss on 6 September. Now, as of the 7 October, the UK is facing pre-planned energy blackouts this winter, even after Truss said during the Tory leadership race that she wouldn’t let that happen. The National Grid has warned that due to capitalism’s fossil fuel crises, it may have to impose three-hour intentional power cuts on “pre-defined periods during a day”.  The news comes after Truss repeatedly lied about energy bills, saying her £2,500 ‘cap’ was the most households would pay – a claim groups like Full Fact repeatedly corrected. She even stopped the new king, Charles Windsor, going to the Cop27 climate summit – weaponising the climate and ecological crisis for her own, climate crisis-denial agenda when our planetary boundaries are collapsing and we’re in the midst of the Holocene (sixth) extinction event – which started at the end of the last ice age but has been turbocharged by human activity.

    Under Truss’s leadership the state is already continuing the drift to far-right authoritarianism. Madeleine Budd could face 18 months in jail after pouring human faeces over a memorial to Tom Moore. She admitted criminal damage and a judge denied her bail. The sentence seems ridiculous – and as the Canary‘s Joe Glenton alluded to – if Budd had poured the faeces into a river she probably would have gotten away with it. Because under Truss water companies have continued to violate the environment by pumping raw sewage into our rivers and seas.

    Economic chaos

    Truss has continued with the Tory policy of freeports – but upped the capitalism stakes by changing them to “investment zones” (onshore tax havens to the rest of us). This encapsulates her neoliberal approach to economic policy – with hers and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget nearly causing a financial catastrophe. After the Tories announced the package, the value of the pound collapsed, mortgage lenders pulled countless rates, and the Bank of England had to step in to save pension funds. But that wasn’t the end of it, even after Truss’s now-infamous U-turn. By Thursday 6 October the pound sunk again against the dollar after a credit rating agency warned of further problems with the UK economy.

    All this is without Truss’s other potential policies which could have disastrous consequences for the poorest people. As the Canary previously reported, her government is planning to cut social security in real-terms next April. Johnson’s government had already indicated it would increase benefits by around 10%. Now, Truss wants to change how April 2023’s rise is worked out – and track it to pay rises. This would mean social security would only go up by around 5.4% – which is a real-terms cut. Think tank the Resolution Foundation says this would mean households could see up to £500 a year wiped-off their incomes. This is on top of years of real-terms cuts Tory governments have already meted out.

    Truss: worse than Johnson?

    Director of campaign group Global Justice Now Nick Dearden summed the situation up. He wrote for Al Jazeera that:

    It might be hard for those outside Britain to believe we now have a worse government than that of Johnson. But we do. Johnson was deceitful, venal and incompetent but, in his desire to stay in power, he spent money. He knew it was popular. In fact, it was this lack of adherence to free market principles, as much as the shambolic nature of his government, that turned the Conservative Party membership against him.

    Dearden makes an interesting point. Previous Tory leaders were not neoliberal in the true sense of the word. David Cameron’s brand of capitalism was very much a globalist corporatism – where companies hold power over government, and the government therefore acts in their interests. Looking back, there was unease at this at the time from those that are now closest to Truss’s administration. For example, controversial think tank the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) criticised Cameron’s MO in 2011  – comparing him to Ted Heath and even Tony Benn. Theresa May then took a more moderate line of capitalism.

    But Johnson trashed all of this, as Dearden noted – and now we see the free market ideologues in charge. Truss’s agenda is in many ways more extreme than Johnson’s. Because even he realised shrinking the state and slashing public spending during a socioeconomic crisis was far-right conservatism too far. Of course, the current so-called cost of living crisis is now affecting the middle classes, hence the uproar. But even angering ‘Middle England‘ hasn’t discouraged Truss. After all, her ideology is so extreme that the middle classes are expendable, too.

    Classism, the Truss way

    This will not end well. Truss has infuriated mainstream corporate capitalists – to the point where even the nation-destroying International Monetary Fund (IMF) sounds moderately reasonable. Her economic policies are classism on steroids – designed to create a society of the dazzlingly rich versus the destitute, disposable poor, with everyone else in between simply ‘getting by’. Truss will be a disaster – and make Johnson look positively reasonable. Make no mistake, though – contrary to some opinions, she is not “incompetent“. Because if you look at her approach to economics – and therefore by default her approach to social security, the climate crisis, and criminal justice – it reveals what actually drives her to make decisions which seem ludicrous to most people.

    Her unfettered free market neoliberalism is ideological. Truss is a conservative who’s socially authoritarian, but her economics are that of libertarianism, by all accounts. She believes society should be free to do what it wants; people can get as rich as they desire – but only if she approves of their views. This of course includes a disdain for poor and marginalised people – because under Truss’s worldview it’s their fault they’re that way. The problem she’s faced is that this ideology is too extreme for the system (hence interventions from the likes of the IMF). Its proponents rely on the system seeming “human” or “inclusive” to get buy-in from most of the population. And Truss’s brand of worldview is neither of these things.

    The Financial Times posited that the Tories were now the most economically right-wing political party in the so-called “developed world”. So, like we saw with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour on the other end of the political spectrum, the system will attempt to crush Truss, too – hence her breakneck speed U-turn on tax cuts for the rich. She’s too neoliberal even for corporate capitalists.

    No-one is coming to save us

    Of course, the obvious problem with all of this is that no-one is coming to save us. Labour is dead; the SNP will evacuate the United Kingdom as soon as it can, and the Green party are still on the fringes. Even with Labour’s current polling, under our system, the party may still not win a majority – due to boundary changes that favour the Tories and the SNP’s strength in Scotland. And if they did, Keir Starmer’s brand of politics would still be a disaster for us all.

    After just a month in charge, Truss has shown the hell that is facing most of us. So, the fight against both her and the system has to continue from our communities and organisations – it just needs stepping up several more gears, now.

    Featured image via PoliticsJOE – YouTube 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Truss and Qatar: PM set to deepen relations with authoritarian Gulf state

    Prime minister Liz Truss has indicated she will court Qatar as an energy partner to counter the UK’s energy crisis. The authoritarian regime, known for its long list of human rights violations, is already closely aligned to the UK and will host the World Cup in December. Doha News reported that the Qatari and British energy ministers had spoken on Tuesday 5th October. But at the centre of these new plans, there is a gaping contradiction.

    Because Truss herself told Tories in her conference speech the following day that the UK had been reliant on gas from authoritarian regimes – meaning Russia – as Declassified UK were quick to point out:

    Presumably Qatar isn’t an authoritarian regime to Truss’s mind. Though quite a few people would disagree…

    Qatari regime

    Qatar is an authoritarian monarchy, like many of its Gulf neighbours. And like them, Qatar is the recipient of massive amounts of British military equipment.

    As the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) explains:

    Qatar is an authoritarian state with strict judicial constraints on freedom of expression. Detainees are subject to beatings and cruel treatment while a great many immigrant workers are trapped in conditions of forced labour.

    Also according to CAAT, Qatar was the 10th largest importer of arms globally between between 2015 and 2019. With UK arms exports licenses accounting for £384mn of the national total. In 2018 BAE Systems and Qatar signed a deal for Eurofighter underwritten by the government to the tune of £4.5bn. Meaning if Qatar defaults, BAE gets paid by the taxpayers.

    The World Cup

    These deals, and now any energy agreement which is reached, are conducted under the shadow of Qatar’s various human rights abuses. Of acute importance in 2022 is the treatment of migrant workers who have prepared Qatar to host the World Cup.

    Amnesty’s detailed 2020/21 report lists Qatar’s terrifying record on LGBT rights, women’s rights and trade unions. It also details the ‘kafala’ system to which many workers have been subjected. Kafala is, in effect, a system of indentured servitude which stops workers, for example, leaving the country or switching jobs.

    Human Rights Watch has said:

    the kafala system remains in place and continues to facilitate the abuse and exploitation of the country’s migrant workforce.

    Many migrant workers come from places like India and Bangladesh and have been forced to live and work in squalid conditions. Some estimates put the death toll for south Asian migrant labourers since Qatar won its bid for the World Cup at 6750.

    Human rights disaster

    Truss is well known for her clangers. And her latest plan to wean Britain off gas from a hardline regime, by getting it from a different hardline regime is another in a long of line of transparently stupid decisions. The energy crisis is very real, but it’s also the right time to start transitioning away from fossil fuels and towards more sustainable energy.

    Given she is literally the prime minster of the country, she clearly has the power. It’s time to stop being a moral vacuum on the matter of workers rights for the sake of resources.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/US Ambassador to the UK, cropped to 770 x 403

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Homophobia at an LGBT+ Conservative event? Colour me shocked

    An LGBT+ Conservative party at the Reflex nightclub in Birmingham was disrupted by homophobic abuse. The event took place on the final night of the Tories’ annual conference. Anyone with a conference pass could attend.

    Sources told ITV News that at least two individuals had to be removed for the use of derogatory, threatening, and deeply homophobic language directed at other partygoers. One victim reported that:

    We kicked someone out who was blind drunk and called me a dirty l***** and that I needed to watch my back.

    I don’t feel like I morally fit in anymore.

    A Tory spokesperson told ITV News:

    We have had discussions with LGBT+ Conservatives regarding this incident, which took place outside of the conference secure zone, and offered them our support.

    If those involved are identified as members of the Party, we will launch swift investigations.

    Any form of discrimination or abuse is wrong and complaints can be made in confidence under our Code of Conduct.

    Tory Homophobia

    I must ask though, is anyone really that surprised at homophobia at a Tory conference? The Conservatives have a long and storied history of voting against gay interests. 136 of them voted against gay marriage, including Priti Patel, David Davies, and Kwasi Kwarteng. 30 Tory MPs tried to halt the fast-tracking of a bill to ban conversion therapy. More recently, Thérèse Coffey – whose voting record is strongly anti-gay rights – disregarded advice to procure extra vaccines against monkeypox.  It just so happens that monkeypox is thus-far disproportionately affecting gay and bisexual men.

    On the opening day of the conference, the LGBT+ Conservatives shared an image of their badges:

    They used the caption “yOu cAnT bE gAy aNd a ToRy”. Though meant sarcastically, this obviously isn’t true. What is true, however, is that it takes someone willing to vote against their own interests to be LGBT+ and Tory. It takes someone who is willing to act as an ineffectual fig leaf for the party’s deep-running phobia. It takes someone willing to ignore a party that loathes them. This is a party that, at last year’s conference, just happened to put the LGBT+ Conservatives in section 28, recalling one of the most horrific acts of state hatred inflicted on queer people in the UK in modern times. The law known as Section 28 outlawed the promotion of homosexuality in schools and other institutions, and was only repealed in 2003 in England and Wales.

    Homophobia on the rise

    The news of homophobia at the LGBT+ Conservative party came just as the government released its official statistics on hate crime in the UK. The number of recorded homophobic hate crimes has increased by 41% since last year alone, rising from around 18,500 incidents to over 26,000. In turn, transphobic hate crimes have risen by 56%. This is a stark reminder of what any LGBT+ person living in the UK could already tell you: the UK is becoming a more openly hostile place for queer people to exist, day by day.

    We all saw the naked transphobia that was on display during and after the Tory leadership contest. Of course, openly hating trans people was always going to be the thin end of the wedge. Truss and Sunak, in particular, targeted ‘woke’ issues (read, anything remotely progressive) more broadly, leading LGBT+ Tories to fear that their rights were being weaponised for electoral points scoring.

    Falling silent

    In an almost poetic illustration, the LGBT+ Conservatives tweeted an image of their pledge boards:

    We can see numerous signatures on the board proclaiming “I pledge to be an ally to the LGBT+ community”. Beneath it, we can also see a board with maybe four signatures in total. It reads “I pledge to support trans rights”. This is a clear demonstration of what should be obvious: a Tory will drop their support for marginalised genders as soon as it becomes politically expedient. Why would this not be the case for marginalised sexualities, too?

    Every Tory MP is a member of a party which has never done more for LGBT+ individuals than they absolutely had to in order to maintain a thin veneer of tolerance. When the party says that it supports LGBT+ people, we know that the ‘T’ was always silent – why else would it invite the LGB Alliance to its events? As the mask slips, as homophobia becomes increasingly normalised, we will watch every one of those other letters fall silent in turn.

    Featured image by Wikimedia Commons/UK Government, via Open Government Licence v 3.0, resized to 770×403

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

  • New disclosures in Chris Kaba killing suggest the Met is still out of control

    Disclosures in the Chris Kaba case cast new light on the latest police killing of a young Black man. Kaba was shot dead by Metropolitan police officers in September. Kaba, who was 24, was about to become a father.

    Some, including the right-wing press, had claimed the killing followed a vehicle pursuit in Streatham, south London. But the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has shed more light on this.

    Inquest underway

    An inquest into the killing was told by an IOPC investigator:

    Officers continued to follow the Audi until 10.07pm. The officers did not activate their lights or sirens.

    Outside the hearing a member of the Kaba family told reporters:.

    The family is pleased that, in this statement, the IOPC made public some of its initial findings about what happened that night. Every new fact is a step towards justice for Chris.

    The inquest also heard that the officer who fired a single shot through the windscreen of Kaba’s car was currently suspended while investigations took place. The officer is named only as NX121.

    The Kaba family said:

    We need answers. Not just this family, but the whole of London – the whole of the country – needs to know how something like this could occur? How can a young man, sitting in a car, unarmed, be shot in the head by police in London in 2022? This should never have happened. It must never happen again. We must never accept this as normal. Someone must be held accountable.”

    Justice

    The Kaba case, which was largely drowned out in the mainstream media by the Queen’s death, led to outpourings of grief and even a protest in central London which was bizarrely conflated with the royal mourning period.

    Commentators echoed the Kaba family’s calls for justice. Some pointed out the parallels with other high profile police killings, including those where police claims were later found to be untrue:

    Another emphasised that there had not been a car chase, as had been reported, before the shooting took place:

    The UK branch of Black Lives Matter also demanded justice for Chris Kaba and his family:

    Pledges

    This new information comes as the most senior Met officer pledged to root out racism and other forms of prejudice in the force. It follows a scandal centred on officers sharing racist memes in a Whatsapp group.

    Sir Mark Rowley told reporters:

    I will be ruthless in rooting out those corrupting officers and staff, including racists and misogynists, from our organisation.

    An ex-Met police officer turned immigration officer is currently suspended over the Whatsapp revelations.

    Recommendations ignored

    As the Canary has reported, many of past inquiries into police violence have produced recommendations.

    The 1981 Scarman Report; the 1999 MacPherson Report; the 2013 Adebowale Report; the 2014 Young Review; the 2017 Angiolini Report; and the 2017 Lammy Review have all set out actionable recommendations on how the police and the criminal justice system can cause less harm and devastation.

    But these are generally not adopted:

    But they have failed to meaningfully implement the majority of the recommendations. The police themselves have demonstrated that it is impossible to reform an inherently oppressive and destructive institution.

    This is just the latest high profile killing of a Black person by the Met Police. Given that recent studies have found that the police are up to four times more likely to use force on Black people, it can come as no surprise that some of these incidents result in fatalities.

    Chris Kaba is just the latest victim. There have been many others over the years. Police violence against Black people is an endemic and enduring issue, and one where glacial promised reforms and mealy-mouthed pledges cannot begin to address.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/User:Canley, cropped to 770 x 403px.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Greenpeace Campaigners Disrupt Liz Truss Speech to Denounce U-Turn on Fracking

    Demanding to know “who voted for” new U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss’ reversal on fracking, Greenpeace campaigners on Wednesday prominently displayed a banner as the Conservative leader spoke at her party’s annual conference in Birmingham before being forcibly removed from the meeting.

    “Who voted for this?” read the sign displayed by Rebecca Newsom, Greenpeace U.K.’s head of public affairs, and Ami McCarthy, the group’s policy officer.

    After Truss called for the protesters to be “removed” from the conference hall, the banner was ripped from their hands by security guards, but Newsom and McCarthy quickly produced another sign.

    The protest came two weeks after Truss announced the Conservative government will reverse the fracking ban imposed by the party in 2019, following tremors near the country’s only fracking site in Lancashire.

    Last week, Truss told BBC Radio that the government “will only press ahead with fracking in areas where there is local community support for that” but did not provide details on how local consent would be secured, and did not respond when an interviewer noted that members of Parliament who represent the area don’t support fracking.

    The Greenpeace campaigners on Wednesday said Truss’ plan to return to fracking represents just part of her party’s “U-turn” on policy since she took office.

    “Nobody voted for fracking, nobody voted to cut benefits, nobody voted to trash nature, nobody voted to scrap workers’ rights,” Newsom told reporters after the pair were forced to leave the conference hall. “There’s a whole host of things that the Conservative government were elected to do in 2019 that they’re simply not doing.”

    The protest followed nationwide outcry over the “mini-budget” the Conservative government released last month, including a tax cut for the wealthy which Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced this week would no longer be included in the plan.

    “The chancellor said the government is now listening,” said Newsom. “If so, they may want to pay attention to the widening chorus of leading businesses, energy experts, former Conservative ministers, and even the U.S. president telling them to go in the opposite direction.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • DWP paid over £1m in staff bonuses in August as benefit cuts loom

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) paid staff over £1.2m in bonuses in August alone. This comes as Liz Truss’s Tory government has refused to commit to increasing social security rates next year. So social security claimants would be forgiven for thinking the DWP is taking the piss as it pays staff bonuses for plunging them into horrific poverty.

    DWP: more benefit cuts coming

    As the Herald reported, the government could potentially scrap the inflation-linked rise in social security next April. This was originally committed to by former chancellor Rishi Sunak. Truss said:

    In terms of benefits uprating, that is something the Work and Pensions Secretary is looking at and she will make an announcement in due course as is the normal practice, for the autumn.

    Coventry Live reported that the DWP would do this to save money. It said that the Tories might do this by changing how the DWP works out benefit rates. As the article noted, chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng:

    refused to say that Universal Credit and other benefits will be increased to match inflation – which could go over 10%. Instead the benefits are expected to rise by just 5.4% – meaning in real terms they will be cut because the amount they increase will be much lower than the rate at which everything is getting more expensive.

    The 5.4% would be the case if the DWP increased social security by average earnings, not inflation. Think tank the Resolution Foundation tweeted that if the government did this it would actually mean a cut to benefits:

    Given the Tories might be hitting the poorest families with cuts of up to £500 a year, you’d think they’d at least try and save money elsewhere. Clearly not – as the DWP has also just released its latest staff bonus figures.

    Bonuses for following DWP orders

    Figures from the DWP show that in August, it paid over £1.2m in “non-consolidated performance payments”. However, this dwarfs the figure for this financial year’s total. DWP civil servants get two types of bonuses – ones every month and also a full year one, paid the following July after the end of the financial year in April. This means the DWP have paid staff the following bonuses so far this year:

    This makes a total since April of £14.6m. July’s £12.2m for the previous year was an increase of nearly £2m on 2021. Plus, bosses got tens of thousands of pounds in individual bonuses in 2021/22. So, while the DWP is planning to cut social security it’s still paying out millions in bonuses. Effectively, it’s rewarding its staff for following its orders to make people destitute.

    As the Resolution Foundation said:

    Cutting working-age benefits by £5 billion next year would be done in the context of household incomes already falling in real-terms, and would therefore deepen – and extend – the cost-of-living crisis well into next year, and possibly beyond that.

    Yet still, the DWP is paying bonuses. While the issue isn’t new, the context is even worse now. With inflation still set to rise higher, the poorest people are facing a catastrophe. The DWP paying itself bonuses is just another sick twist of the knife for them.

    Featured image via the Guardian – YouTube, Richard Townshend – Wikimedia, cropped under licence CC BY 3.0, and Wikimedia

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Thousands are planning to protest for Assange on Saturday 8 October

    Imprisoned journalist Julian Assange is currently appealing the UK government’s decision to extradite him to the US to stand trial for his reporting. So, to ensure that the pressure is kept up on politicians and lawmakers to stop his removal, a campaign group is going surround the UK parliament with a human chain.

    Assange: forming a human chain

    As the Canary previously reported:

    On 17 June, [former] home secretary Priti Patel gave her approval to a court ruling to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US. He will face 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act and one of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

    In response, Assange filed his appeal. As campaign group Don’t Extradite Assange (DEA) wrote, the grounds include the fact that Assange “is being prosecuted and punished for his political opinions” and “for protected speech”. The appeal also says the extradition request “violates the US-UK Extradition Treaty and international law because it is for political offences”. It is unclear when the High Court will hear that appeal.

    DEA has organised a protest outside parliament on Saturday 8 October. Supporters of Assange will form a “human chain” surrounding the UK’s centre of so-called democracy. DEA wrote that:

    the chain of support… will go from the front of parliament over Westminster bridge, along the south bank of the Thames and back over Lambeth bridge.

    As of 12pm on Tuesday 4 October, over 3,700 people had said they would join DEA’s human chain. You can sign up to attend here.

    Prominent supporters

    Prominent supporters of DEA include groups like Amnesty and Reporters Without Borders; individuals and academics including Noam Chomsky, Edward Snowden and Oliver Stone, and politicians like US senator Bernie Sanders, UK MP Jeremy Corbyn and potential Brazilian president Lula da Silva. Rapper, academic and activist Lowkey tweeted that he would be at 8 October’s demo:

    Assange’s wife, Stella, explained the action in a video:

    DEA is also crowdfunding to keep its activities going. You can donate here – it certainly needs all the support it can get because the situation for Assange is looking desperate.

    The Assange case enables repression

    As DEA wrote:

    Assange is being sought by the current US administration for publishing US government documents which exposed war crimes and human rights abuses. The politically motivated charges represent an unprecedented attack on press freedom and the public’s right to know – seeking to criminalise basic journalistic activity.

    If convicted… Assange faces a sentence of 175 years, likely to be spent in isolation which would drive him to commit suicide.

    UK District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America and refused to extradite him, yet the case eventually moved to the UK Supreme Court where it overruled the decision and Assange’s extradition request moved forward to the UK Home Secretary.

    Meanwhile, the UK National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has published a supportive article on its website. Tim Dawson wrote:

    Assange’s conviction would place journalists the world over in similar jeopardy. Who in future would report on a classified US document when it might result in a lifetime of medieval-style incarceration?

    He concluded that:

    Criminalising investigative journalism enables every other kind of repression.

    Criminalising journalism: the thin end of the wedge

    Governments criminalising any kind of honest and truthful journalism is both a political decision and a gross abuse of human rights. As Stella summed up:

    Julian is fighting for his life – his life depends on not being extradited to the United States. This is a political case, it can be stopped here and it must be stopped here. So on the 8th of October, come to London to show your solidarity, come help free Julian Assange.

    Thank you for your support.

    The Canary will be covering DEA’s human chain on 8 October. We hope to see 5,000-plus people with us.

    Featured image via Don’t Extradite Assange 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • New allegations of degrading treatment of a Muslim prisoner in HMP Swaleside

    Content warning: Prison violence and racism

    The Canary has received allegations that a Muslim prisoner was left naked all day in a ‘special accommodation’ cell in HMP Swaleside’s segregation unit.

    The prisoner – who we are not naming – was allegedly denied access to food and water. He was reportedly told that he should use the drain in the floor of the cell as a toilet.

    In total the prisoner was kept in ‘special accommodation’ conditions for over 2 days, from Saturday 24 until Tuesday 27 September. We were informed that during the night he was left with no mattress or blanket, and that he was told that he had to sleep on the floor. He was also allegedly restrained twice for no reason, before being moved back into an ordinary segregation cell.

    The Canary contacted the Ministry of Justice whose spokesperson said that the “claims of mistreatment are categorically untrue.” They said that a prisoner had been placed in segregation after they “seriously injured a prison officer” and that a police investigation was underway.

    However, this is not the first report of abuse and mistreatment in HMP Swaleside’s segregation unit. Anti-Carceral Solidarity recently published an action alert calling for an end to violence and mistreatment of Muslim prisoners held in the unit.

    In 2016 prisoners rioted over conditions at Swaleside, setting several fires in one of the wings.

    Special accommodation should only be used for “minutes”

    According to Prison Service regulations ‘special accommodation’ cells have amenities such as furniture, bedding and sanitation removed. The regulations state that ‘special accommodation’ should be used “for the shortest necessary time” for the purpose of preventing prisoners injuring themselves or others, and should “not be used as a punishment”. 

    The rules state that ‘special accommodation’ is supposed to be used for “minutes rather than hours or days”, and that if the prisoner’s clothing is taken away then alternative clothing should be provided. Muslim prisoners should also be able to wash so that they can pray. 

    Part of a pattern of degrading treatment and institutional racism

    The Canary has reported several strikingly similar incidents of degrading treatment of Muslim prisoners in prisons across the UK. In July we published accusations that officers were racially harassing and abusing Kevan Thakrar in Belmarsh prison, with Kevan and his supporters accusing them of intentionally trying to trigger his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Kevan developed PTSD after being subjected to repeated attacks by officers in several different prisons.

    Last year we reported that Muslim prisoners at HMP Long Lartin received racist treatment from prison officers. Prisoners claimed that they were targeted for wearing Islamic clothing, and carrying out calls to prayer, and that one Muslim prisoner was allegedly punished for speaking out about this discrimination.

    Also in 2021, we received reports that Dwayne Fulgence – a Black and Muslim prisoner – was left bleeding on the floor of his cell in HMP Full Sutton, after an attack by prison officers. That same month Fabio Serrano was left with a gash to his head after an alleged attack by officers at the same prison.

    The Ministry of Justice has point-blank denied any wrongdoing by officers on all of the above occasions.

    Muslims subjected to discriminatory treatment

    The criminal ‘justice’ system is set up to disproportionately imprison people from marginalised communities. The result is that Muslims make up 16% of the prison population but just 5% of the general population, while 13% of the prison population is Black. Similarly, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) women make up 6% of the prison population, but only 0.7-1% of the general population.

    Muslims receive discriminatory treatment in prison. A 2019 report published by the Barrow Cadbury Trust found that Muslim Prisoners reported “not receiving basic care”, “not being treated respectfully by staff” and “not being able to turn to them for help”, “not easily being able to receive parcels and letters”, and “not easily being able to make complaints”. The Trust found that their experiences were more negative in comparison with white prisoners.

    Segregation is state-sanctioned torture

    In 2015, a ruling from the UK’s Supreme Court found that:

    The use of segregation in prisons should always be considered as a serious measure. Indeed, the Council of Europe’s Committee on the Prevention of Torture advises that for punitive purposes any stint should be limited to 14 days

    However, the Council Of Europe’s recommendations are ignored, and prisoners are routinely held in segregation for years.

    Segregation is disproportionately used on oppressed groups. A 2017 study by UK charity the Runnymede Trust found that Black and Muslim prisoners were more likely to be subjected to segregation in prison. A 2021 Traveller Movement report found that “24% [of GRT prisoners] had spent one or more nights in the segregation unit in the last 6 months, compared to 9% of non-Travellers.”

    We need to talk about prison abolition

    These days we – rightly – hear increased calls for the abolition of the police. However, it’s important to remember that the racism and violence of policing is mirrored by the institutional violence, classism and racism of the prison and criminal ‘justice’ system. Our task is to build a liberatory movement that can free our communities from these unjust institutions.

    In order to oppose the violence of the prison system, we must also listen to the voices of the people trapped inside it, and organise with them in solidarity.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Terry Joyce (cropped to 770x403px)

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • For the first time ever, the Canary is under workers’ control

    This article is part of a series about the workers’ revolution which led to the Canary becoming the Canary Workers’ Co-op. You can read all the articles in the series here. 

    This week, we are relaunching the Canary as a worker-owned cooperative.

    This means that all decisions will be made by the workers from now on. There will be no bosses, and everyone will get paid the same for a day’s work. We aim to be an example of radical democracy in action.

    The Canary has adopted a ‘sociocracy’ structure. Click here to read more about sociocracy.

    It should have been like this from the beginning

    Of course, this is the way it should have been from the beginning. It’s shocking that a media organisation set up to do “courageous”, “campaigning journalism” on the side of the oppressed was set up with a rigid hierarchy and inequality in pay and conditions between the workers and the bosses.

    We are releasing several articles and statements explaining the extent of the Canary leadership’s oppressive, unequal, and entitled behaviour. You might ask, why did we stay on?

    The reason we’re still here is because we all believe in the need for a radical media that isn’t afraid to speak truth to power, amplify the voices of the oppressed, and envision a world beyond capitalism and the state. However, radical media needs to be a microcosm of the world in which we want to live. It needs to be worker-run and truly democratic.

    Embodying the change we want to see

    Over the last six months we have been organising hard for control of our workplace. It wasn’t easy to achieve. In fact, it’s taken a workers’ revolution, but now we can honestly say that we are striving to embody the change we want to see.

    If we want to see revolutionary change in society, we first need to take back control of our lives, our livelihoods, and our workplaces to create an infrastructure that can be a resource for movements struggling for change. We hope the Canary can play an important role in providing a platform for a radical politics that seeks to transform society in a holistic way, not just to elect a social democratic leader while leaving the rotten state system in place.

    Here’s how the way we work is going to mirror our vision for change.

    A cooperative structure

    We have registered a new organisation – the Canary Workers’ Co-op – and filed Articles of Association outlining our structure. They state:

    The Canary Workers Co-op (CWC) has been set up to create a co-operative media platform which will be run by its members in a radically democratic way.

    That means that all of our decisions will be made by the workers themselves. UK law requires us to have directors, but our directors don’t have any more say in decision-making than the rest of us.

    Because we’re registered as a cooperative within UK law, our primary rules need to be written in a certain way, and meet certain criteria. However, we want the way we operate in practice to mirror a deeper radicalism and militancy. As such, the way that the Canary operates as a co-op – and a sociocracy – will be an unfolding process defined by the decisions we make day to day as a collective. We will work hard to ensure that what we create is an empowering expression of our collective vision.

    The decisions we make – and which actually govern the way we work together – will form our secondary rules.

    With cooperative principles

    The Canary Workers’ Co-op is guided by the cooperative principles. This means that:

    • We are owned and controlled by and for our members. Everyone who works at the Canary is a member of the co-op.
    • We’re democratic, and all our members have an equal say in how we’re run and how we spend our money.
    • We’re committed to providing education and training to our members. We believe in helping our members develop for the good of the co-op, and for the good of the movements for change that we are a part of.
    • We’ll work with other co-ops, and with wider communities, to achieve our aims.

    A commitment to struggle against hierarchy

    Under the old regime, the Canary‘s bosses got paid significantly more than the workers (in fact, the difference was a lot more than we were led to believe. When we began to take control, this was one of the very first things that we changed. Now everybody – from writers to editors, copy-editors, designers and video-journalists – gets exactly the same hourly rate, which is currently set at £12 an hour (a rate that we dearly hope we can increase in the future).

    Decisions were previously made at the Canary in a deeply hierarchical manner. Important choices about finances and strategy were made between a few bosses, and decisions about our content and direction were passed down from the ‘leadership team’ in a unilateral manner, with only the occasional half-hearted nod to a collective process. This has already begun to change: since we wrested control from the bosses, we have made decisions collectively through discussions in general meetings. Problems are solved through discussion and agreement, not by majority rule.

    We know that we have only just embarked on the path towards creating a radically democratic decision-making process. We’re the first to admit that we have a long way to go on that journey, but we have already established that decisions are taken by everyone, and that everyone’s voice should be included.

    Sociocracy

    Over the last six months, we have been discussing how we can implement a sociocracy system in the Canary. As of today, this is the system that we will use to run our organisation.

    According to the Sociocracy for All website, sociocracy is:

    a decentralized system of authority and intentional processes to improve our decisions and processes over time into a governance system that supports effective and efficient process while increasing connection, listening and co-creation among members.

    This means that a lot of the decision-making power in the Canary will be devolved to working groups – known as ‘circles‘ – which have a remit to decide certain things. Each circle has a delegate, tasked with communicating with the rest of the organisation.

    This kind of decentralised structure is nothing new in anti-authoritarian organising. Things like it have been used by militant and revolutionary movements for many generations, but the clear structure set out by Sociocracy for All is really useful for our purposes. Creating decentralised power within the Canary means we can take into account everyone’s views and work towards a shared aim without the potentially cumbersome process of making every decision as a group of fifteen workers.

    Within our sociocracy structure, all major decisions will be made by consent. If a decision does not gain consent, then it won’t go ahead. Instead, we will try to understand each other’s objections, and work out a new proposal.

    The start of a journey

    We understand that this process is unlikely to be a smooth one. And there will be a real need to work out how to make sure we listen to everyone and take into account everyone’s needs during times of disagreement. But we’re proud to be adopting a structure which has collective decision-making and non-hierarchy at its core.

    The Canary Workers’ Co-op doesn’t only want to exist for the good of its members. We want to be part of building power from the bottom up and outgrowing our current unequal and unjust system. We want to collaborate with other co-ops – particularly radical media cooperatives – and social movements to further this aim.

    We’re proud to launch the Canary Workers’ Co-op today: we feel we can finally begin to live up to the values that we write about on this site. We hope this can be the start of a new journey, and that our co-op will be a vital part of the radical media ecology in the UK. We intend to amplify the voices of the oppressed, and be a platform that demands and enables change.

    Written by Tom Anderson

    Featured image via Luke Forsythe – Flickr, resized to 770×403 under licence CC BY 2.0

    By Canary workers' co-op

    This post was originally published on Canary Workers’ Co-op.

  • Well done, Kwasi Kwarteng, for completely pissing off Tory ‘Middle England’

    Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget statement has succeeded in alienating millions of voters. Many of these would be Tories, as the proposed measures will hurt their pockets, too.

    Indeed, a survey by Opinium reports that a whopping 71% of those who voted Conservative at the last general election now believe the Tory government has “lost control” of the economy.

    Mortgage and rent rises

    The mini-budget saw mortgage interest rates rise, mortgage products withdrawn, and possible repossessions. Many victims of this financial onslaught are likely part of ‘Middle England‘ – predominantly voting Tory.

    The financial squeeze may also see rent rises and evictions of tenants who can’t afford to pay, according to Big Issue.

    This crisis has led to serious consequences. As Green Party MP Caroline Lucas pointed out, it affects not just mortgages but also rent and general living costs:

    Even former chancellor Rishi Sunak understood that tax cuts would mean higher interest rates and more expensive mortgages. At the time, Truss responded by saying Sunak’s warning was “project fear”:

    More cuts for the poor?

    Kwarteng is now considering benefit cuts to help pay for his proposed tax cuts for high income earners. When asked whether benefits would be increased in line with inflation, Kwarteng answered with the usual ambivalence that politicians fall back on:

    It’s premature for me to come to a decision on that, but we are absolutely focused on making sure that the most vulnerable in our society are protected through what could be a challenge.

    Benefits which may or may not rise in line with inflation include Disability Living Allowance, Carer’s Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, Attendance Allowance, and Incapacity Benefit.

    The Guardian’s Patrick Butler commented:

    The Resolution Foundation thinktank estimated that raising benefits in line with earnings – about 5% – rather than inflation would save the government £11bn next year, but would leave a couple with two children more than £1,061 a year worse off, and a single parent with one child £607 a year out of pocket.

    Any cuts would follow a year in which benefits were uprated in April by 3.1% – linked to the September 2021 inflation rate – despite inflation having soared to about 9%. This resulted in the biggest fall in the real value of the basic rate of unemployment benefits in 50 years.

    Misleading statements

    Meanwhile, Truss was caught repeatedly lying about her flagship £2,500 energy bills cap. This was despite Full Fact warning Truss in writing in advance of this error. Full Fact tweeted an explanation of what the cap really means:

    Full Fact demonstrated that, depending on energy usage, the typical bill for a detached house with average use would likely come to £3,300, not £2,500. Full Fact added that because of Truss’s misinformation, people would wrongly think they can use as much energy as they like, as their bill won’t exceed the £2,500 cap. For vulnerable people in particular, that would be disastrous.

    Money Saving Expert’s Martin Lewis has published a calculator for consumers in the UK other than those in the north of Ireland who are on a price-capped standard tariff.

    Crashing the economy

    Truss has refused to reverse her proposed cut in tax from 45% to 40% for high income earners, despite the pound plummeting. The fall in sterling will likely mean the price of imports will rocket, leading to higher prices generally and higher inflation.

    The IMF has rebuked the Truss government regarding the proposed financial measures. It also recommended that the government considers “ways to provide support that is more targeted and reevaluate the tax measures, especially those that benefit high income earners”.

    Unite the Union’s Howard Beckett put the choice more bluntly:

    As for crashing the economy, no doubt Kwarteng’s former boss and hedge-fund specialist Crispin Odey is delighted over recent events. It’s reported he’s been been betting that the cost of UK government debt would increase, and is consequently making a fortune.

    Moreover, Kwarteng reportedly attended an evening champagne party with hedge fund managers on the day he presented his mini-budget to parliament. The Liberal Democrats are demanding an inquiry into the party.

    Meanwhile, Good Law Project director Stuart Wood has reproduced a letter from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The OBR gives independent financial analysis to the government. It offered to draft an economic forecast according to the September budget statement, but Downing Street turned the offer down:

    Now for the good news

    As well as economic consequences, there are also political consequences resulting from Kwarteng’s mini-budget statement. One former cabinet minister told the Observer:

    It’s a matter of when [Truss] goes and we, the parliamentary party, need to seriously work on getting rid of her as soon as possible. That gives us more time before the next general election to forget this awful episode.

    Going by the Opinium survey, it appears Truss’s handling of the economy is facing a huge backlash from voters, including Conservative supporters. Indeed, Guardian columnist Peter Cole argues that “if Conservatives only seem able to bring to their own heartlands worry and despair, the game is surely up”.

    Tory MP Charles Wheeler, in an interview on 29 September with Channel 4 News, is equally blunt in his assessment of how the mini-budget is affecting his party. He said that if there was a general election tomorrow, the Conservative Party would be “wiped out” and “cease to exist as a functioning political party”.

    Good news, though there’s no room for complacency.

    Featured image via YouTube

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Scandal hits shooting industry as another bird killing season begins

    Not-so-brave hunters in England and Wales were able to slaughter two bird species – pheasant and woodcock – from 1 October. However, a scandal hit the shooting industry just as they took up arms against the birds. Footage emerged of dead and dying birds living in squalid conditions in pens allegedly on a shooting estate in Lancashire.

    A systemic failure of care or compassion

    Non-profit Keep The Ban and the Hunt Investigation Team (HIT) joined forces for the probe into the Leighton Hall Estate. As the estate explains on its website, it makes up 10% of the Arnside and Silverdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It has pheasant shooting listed as one of its “commercial activities”.

    HIT investigators say that they visited the pens where the estate raises pheasants in September. Keep The Ban released footage allegedly from that visit on 1 October:

    The footage shows birds in severe distress, with some appearing to be gasping for breath. Collapsed birds, dead birds, and the apparent cannibalising of weaker birds by others all feature in the video. The bodily conditions of most of the birds depicted are extremely poor, with individuals often featherless and skeletal. HIT also says that bird feeders and water troughs were empty and filthy.

    Keep The Ban founder Rob Pownall told the Canary:

    This footage is horrendous, there is no two ways about it. And it is important to emphasise that this wasn’t simply ‘a bad day’. The conditions in the pens at the Leighton Hall shooting estate, the numerous dying birds and dead bodies, and the lack of proper hygiene and disease control attest to a chronic and systemic failure of care or compassion.

    Pheasants are a non-native species in the UK. They are usually imported as eggs or young birds and raised in pens prior to release for shooting. The birds are variously considered livestock and wildlife at different points, depending on when the shooting industry wants to kill them or raise them (for killing).

    Potential violations

    The footage raises questions over potential violations of animal welfare laws. As the code of practice for the welfare of so-called gamebirds points out, breeders must abide by certain provisions in the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Breeders who cause unnecessary suffering to such birds commit an offence under section four of the act. Moreover, section nine of the act states that breeders commit an offence if they don’t take “reasonable” steps to meet “the needs of an animal”. This includes the birds’ need to “be protected from pain, suffering, injury and disease”.

    According to HIT, they reported the situation to the RSPCA as an urgent priority due to the “scale of the suffering”. They wrote:

    We are informed that the RSPCA and police attended the site. However by the time this visit was arranged, the gamekeeper had *somehow* been alerted and was able to clear away the evidence. Despite the horrifying footage obtained, we believe no further is action is being taken.

    The Canary contacted Leighton Hall Estate and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) about the allegations. Neither responded by the time of publication.

    We also contacted the RSPCA. A spokesperson said:

    We are aware of this upsetting footage and we would like to reassure people we will always look into concerns that are made to us about animal welfare. We won’t be commenting further at this stage.

    Disease risk

    The dire physical state of the birds in the footage also raises concerns over disease risk. Vigilance is particularly vital at present due to the spread of a highly pathogenic avian flu in 2021-22, which has devastated captive and wild bird populations in the UK. The RSPB’s director of policy Jeff Knott recently told National Geographic:

    the severity of the situation and scale of the impact is unprecedented and very, very scary. It’s a huge crisis that could turn into a catastrophe unless we get ahead of it.

    DEFRA says that there are multiple clinical signs of the avian flu. These include “incoordination and loss of balance”, “twisting of the head and neck”, and “respiratory distress”.

    Keep The Ban explained that the estate in question is an “immediate neighbour” to the RSPB Leighton Moss Nature Reserve. It further said that the estate has released “hundreds of pheasants” into the area.

    Shut it down

    Pownall told The Canary that the shoot needs to be “closed with immediate effect”. He added:

    we are calling on the public to politely contact the estate to ask them to do just that.

    This is just the latest in a long line of controversies that the shooting industry has faced.

    Another one involves the other species – woodcock – that also becomes a target from 1 October each year. Woodcock are wild wading birds that are in decline.

    Shooters gun down around 160,000 woodcock between October and January each year, despite their declining status. The wildlife advocacy organisation Wild Justice has highlighted that, under such circumstances, there is a case for halting all woodcock shooting. But it has proposed a modest measure that would be simple and quick to implement, calling for the shooting season for them to be restricted to two months.

    Prior to losing his DEFRA post, George Eustice signalled that the department was open to reviewing the protections for target birds, including species like woodcock.

    Curtail shooting industry to halt species decline

    As Eustice highlighted, the government has committed to halting species decline by 2030. This task couldn’t be more urgent, with a recent report from Birdlife International showing that 49% of the world’s bird species are in decline. This is an increase of nine percentage points from just four years ago. Its 2018 State of the World’s Birds report noted a 40% decline.

    Putting the brakes on the UK’s shooting seasons could help the country meet its purported goal. Experts say that the release of millions of non-native birds, like pheasants, has a devastating impact on other wildlife and ecosystems. Meanwhile, shooters kill numerous species like woodcock, coots, moorhens and more at various times of the year. Other species like carrion crows and jackdaws, meanwhile, are killed to protect the industry’s interests.

    In other words, the shooting industry causes ecological carnage. If the UK is to meet its goal of halting species decline by 2030, a review of the so-called sport and a crackdown on it is an absolute must.

    Featured image via Keep The Ban / YouTube

    By Tracy Keeling

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Denial and rebellion spread amongst backlash to disaster mini-budget

    On Friday 23 September, chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng revealed his new mini-budget for the UK. Some of the highlights include:

    • The cancellation of the planned increase in corporation tax – it was set to rise from 19% to 25%.
    • The scrapping of the 45% higher rate of income tax for everyone outside of Scotland.
    • The removal of rules capping bankers’ bonuses.
    • Tightening restrictions on Universal Credit, and heavier cuts for people who don’t meet targets for job searches.
    • The notable absence of a new Health and Social Care Levy to protect the NHS.

    The public reaction has been fiercely negative. 71% of those surveyed by YouGov thought that scrapping the bankers’ bonus cap was the wrong move. 72% thought similar of the removal of the highest rate of tax. The mini-budget has been branded as receiving “the worst reception of any financial statement” since the Tories took power 12 years ago.

    Financial woes

    The reception in the financial sector was similarly disastrous. The pound fell to a record low against the dollar – hitting as low as $1.03 on Monday 26 September.

    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also issued a rarely-heard rebuke of Kwarteng’s plans for £45bn in unfunded tax cuts. The financial agency asked the government to:

     consider ways to provide support that is more targeted and re-evaluate the tax measures, especially those that benefit high income earners.

    The UK housing market has also been plunged into further turmoil. Moneyfacts, a financial information monitoring company, said that 935 out of 3,596 mortgage products were pulled from the market overnight on Tuesday 27 September.

    The Bank of England (BoE) was also forced to step in by the “material risk to UK financial stability”. Normally, the government sells bonds – or ‘gilts’ – to investors in order to fund itself. However, these investors have demanded higher interest rates due to the catastrophic nature of the chancellor’s plan. The BoE hopes to ease the strain on the UK economy by buying the gilts itself.

    Tories in denial

    Of course, Conservatives old and new have been out in force, trying to blame everyone other than PM Liz Truss and Kwarteng for the chaos.

    Treasury financial secretary Andrew Griffith stated that the current financial unrest is being felt across the world because of the war in Ukraine. Of course, this conveniently ignores the fact that the pound waited until immediately after the budget announcement to sink:

    Meanwhile, counsellor Susan Hall of the London Assembly tweeted that the outrage following the budget was coming from “the left”, indicating that it was, in fact, a good plan. Presumably, the IMF and the BoE are included in this particular definition of the left:

    Former Conservative life peer Michael Ashcroft even went as far as to blame financial traders’ fear of a future Labour government:

    Rebellion in the ranks

    For her part, Truss has ruled out a U-turn on the plans laid out in the mini-budget. She stated that this was the “urgent action” needed to “grow the economy”, and seems determined to ignore any and all opposition.

    However, not all of the Tory rank and file are content to sit by and nod along with the chaos. Backbench MPs, including supporters of Rishi Sunak’s bid for leadership, have expressed outrage at the plans. An anonymous former minister went as far as to say:

    They are already putting letters in as think she will crash the economy. The tax cuts don’t matter as all noise anyway – mainly reversing back to the status quo this year.

    The issue is government fiscal policy is opposite to Bank of England monetary policy – so they are fighting each other. What Kwasi gives, the Bank takes away… You cannot have monetary policy and fiscal policy at loggerheads.

    These letters of no confidence will see no direct result, as Truss cannot be removed for another 12 months under the current leadership rules. However, they are a loud, clear signal of the fact that even some of her own party – along with the majority of the rest of the country – have little faith in her stewardship of the UK economy.

    Featured Image by Wikimedia Commons/UK Government via Creative Commons 3.0, resized to 770×403

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Support payments for those seeking asylum have dropped almost one third in the last 20 years

    Asylum Support payments have dropped by 27% since 2022, according to figures published by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.

    The Migration Observatory calculated that payment levels had dropped in real terms, despite nominal increases during the period. Currently, asylum support is just £5.84 per day:

    The Observatory writes:

    increases have not kept up with inflation. In real terms, the payment level in 2022 is 27% lower than in 2000 (in 2000, £5.22 bought £8 worth of goods and services in 2021 GBP). Since the single asylum support payment was introduced in 2015, the level of the payment has fallen in real terms

    Refugees forced into destitution

    People on asylum support are not allowed to work or claim state benefits while their claim is being processed. This means they are forced to subsist on under £6 a day.

    Asylum support is available to those with an ongoing asylum claim. However, almost a quarter of asylum applications are refused. Those who are refused are denied support, and have to go through a lengthy appeal process that may take years. Many of them are rendered destitute, as they are still unable to work legally in the UK or claim any kind of support from the state.

    The Refugee Council reports that since the government pulled out of the Dublin III Regulations, many people arriving have been informed that they will be removed from the UK without their claim even being looked at.

    Part of the state’s attack on refugees

    The cuts to asylum support payments are just one part of the attacks on refugees arriving in the UK that have been carried out by successive UK governments, and are part of the colonial DNA of the British state. That attack is most visible in the recent Nationality and Borders Act, which seeks to criminalise many of the people arriving in the UK.

    This attack on refugees is just one face of the white supremacy of the state, a system of oppression which is also visible in the recent police murder of Chris Kaba, and in the racist institutions of the prison and the criminal justice systems.

    It’s up to us to stand with refugees arriving in the UK as they face the policies of a racist colonial state.

    Featured image via Flickr/Walterw.a (cropped to 770x403px)

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Corporate media silent over Labour Files as Al Jazeera delays part three

    THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED AT 8:50PM ON TUESDAY 27 SEPTEMBER TO REFLECT AL JAZEERA RELEASING THE FINAL EPISODE OF THE DOCUMENTARY.

    Al Jazeera‘s The Labour Files has caused anger and uproar in much of the left wing of UK politics. The three-part documentary claims to have “the largest leak of documents in British political history”. Much of it covers the time Jeremy Corbyn was party leader. And yet so far, there has been negligible UK corporate media reporting on it. This is, of course, quite predictable – the press was complicit in much of what The Labour Files exposes. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera has run into problems – pulled part three twice from its schedule, finally releasing it late on Tuesday 27 September.

    The Labour Files 

    Al Jazeera‘s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) has touted the documentary as:

    exposing how unelected officials undermined democracy within the Labour Party.

    The leaked data comprises 500 gigabytes of documents, emails, video and audio files from the Labour Party dating from 1998 to 2021…

    The data reveals how the party’s bureaucrats, whose nominal function is to serve the interests of the party, attempted to undermine members supportive of Jeremy Corbyn

    As of 12pm on Tuesday 27 September, Al Jazeera had released the first two episodes:

    Al Jazeera was due to broadcast episode three on Monday 26 September. At first, it delayed it until Tuesday 27. Then, the Al Jazeera I-Unit pulled its tweets about the episode being broadcast. The Canary contacted the I-Unit for comment, but it had not responded at the time of publication.

    At around 8:45pm on 27 September, the I-Unit finally released episode three. It seems there was an error in the documentary, as it tweeted the following:

    ‘Weaponising’ antisemitism

    The series comes on top of the Forde Report – with both drawing similar conclusions in some areas. For example, Middle East Eye said that the Forde Report showed:

    antisemitism was treated as a ‘factional weapon’ by both supporters and opponents of Jeremy Corbyn in senior party positions.

    The Labour Files claimed similar, with Middle East Monitor reporting:

    allegations of anti-Semitism were said to have been weaponised to undermine Corbyn. The plan, it seems, was to tarnish Corbyn’s image in the eyes of the British electorate by failing to build a functioning complaints and disciplinary process capable of dealing with allegations of racism.

    But as Nasim Ahmed wrote, overall, The Labour Files showed that the “British establishment” led a:

    campaign against… [Corbyn]… aided by the right-wing press, as well as self-styled left-wing publications like the Guardian and, most shocking of all, the Labour party itself which, it would later be revealed, sabotaged Corbyn’s chance of becoming Prime Minister.

    Naturally, the corporate media appears to have been silent on The Labour Files except, bizarrely, the Express.

    Fingers in ears for corporate media

    Some corporate journalists have mentioned it on social media. For example, Michael Crick tweeted:

    The Guardian‘s Owen Jones was shocked – saying The Labour Files’ claims about an infamous Panorama documentary on antisemitism in the Labour Party were “extremely serious”:

    However, former journalist Josh Funnell reminded him that he and The Canary exposed this over three years ago:

    Of course, the story here is the same as it always is. Corbyn supporters and independent media like The Canary knew, and said, what was going on years ago. Now, the establishment lackeys feign shock – when they either turned a blind-eye previously, or actively colluded in the scandal.

    So, it’s been left to independent UK media and international outlets to report on the story – again.

    Independent media: The Labour Files

    Inside Croydon ran several articles, noting the South London-based politicians implicated, including Labour’s general secretary David Evans. North East Bylines called The Labour Files “compelling”. Novara Media discussed the show in two episodes of Tysky Sour.

    SKWAWKBOX gave perhaps the most coverage to The Labour Files. As it wrote:

    We are not in a functioning democracy and the rest of the UK ‘mainstream’ media will either ignore, or actively collude in covering up, the vicious, racist, misogynist and blatantly anti-democratic behaviour of what is now the so-called ‘Labour’ regime

    This is true. But what The Labour Files has also cemented is that the corporate media in the UK is broken. It is complicit in what the documentary revealed. And now it is actively trying to bury the revelations about its role. Fortunately, independent media in the UK is still alive and kicking – and it will not let the truth be forgotten.

    Featured image via Al Jazeera English – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.