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Category: UK

  • Bold ocean protection plan could help right one of the UK’s historic wrongs

    This story was produced as part of the 2022 UN Ocean Conference Fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch).

    Britain’s expulsion of Chagos islanders from their Indian Ocean home in the 1960s and 70s is a shameful moment in its history. The eviction, which the UK carried out after allegedly pressuring Mauritius to sell it the islands ahead of independence, is an enduring part of the former’s colonial legacy. Chagossians continue to fight for the right to return home to this day.

    At the recent UN Ocean Conference in Portugal, Mauritius laid out an ambitious plan. It could enable the resettlement of some Chagossians on the islands. The proposal involves the establishment of a vast Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Chagos archipelago.

    ‘Get some rocks which will remain ours’

    As historian and journalist Mark Curtis explained in his book Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World, the UK effectively created a new colony during its mid-20th Century decolonisation process. Curtis noted that a UK official laid out their aim in a secret file, namely to “get some rocks which will remain ours”. The new colony included Mauritius’s Chagos archipelago and islands which were part of the Seychelles. The UK named this area the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

    Since 1966, the UK has leased some of these ‘rocks’ to the US military. It brutally removed the Chagossians to facilitate the deal and assert its claim to the islands, allegedly poisoning and gassing the islanders’ beloved dogs in the process. The US has a base on Diego Garcia, the archipelago’s biggest island, which was given its name by the UK, according to the organisation CAGE.

    The UK handed the Seychelles its islands back in 1976 when it gained independence, ostensibly because the US and UK militaries didn’t plan to use them. But it has fought tooth and claw to keep hold of the Chagos archipelago. The US military lease there doesn’t expire until 2036.

    Illegal MPA

    The UK created a massive Marine Protected Area/ MPA around the archipelago in 2010. It claims the MPA serves to “ensure the future protection” of the highly biodiverse waters. But WikiLeaks has released US state department cables that indicate UK officials believed the MPA would stymie resettlement of Chagossians for the long-term.

    Mauritius challenged the legality of the MPA under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). As David Snoxell, the UK’s Chagos Islands All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) coordinator, recently wrote in Mauritian publication l’Express Weekly, the BIOT MPA banned Mauritius from inshore fishing in Chagos waters. The UK had committed to such access for Mauritius in the original agreement for the purchase of the islands.

    The UNCLOS tribunal ruled the MPA unlawful in a 2015 decision.

    Successive rulings against the UK

    This is just one in a series of determinations against the UK in relation to the archipelago in recent years.

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory ruling in 2019 that the separation of the islands was unlawful. Later that year, a majority of UN member states also voted in a non-binding resolution that the UK should hand the territory back to Mauritius.

    In 2021, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) confirmed Mauritius’s sovereignty over the Chagos Islands and urged the UK to end its occupation of them. ITLOS is currently engaged in establishing the maritime boundaries between Mauritius and the Maldives, known as delimiting. Once that’s done, the former intends to move forward with its own plan for an extensive MPA.

    Biodiversity, sovereignty, and resettlement

    Mauritius laid out the plan at an event at the UN Ocean Conference on 1 July. Dr Rezah Badal, director general of the Department for Continental Shelf, Maritime Zones Administration & Exploration, ​explained that the country will take a “scientific approach” to the MPA.

    It will rely on four key principles, he said. These are:

    • Biodiversity preservation and protection.
    • “Restitution of the cultural assets” of the archipelago.
    • Resettlement of Mauritians, including Chagossians, along with “accompanying sustainable fisheries”.
    • Maritime security for the region.

    The country extended an open invite for cooperation from the international community, including those in the scientific and environmental sphere, in establishing and managing the multi-purpose MPA. The plan currently is to designate the vast majority – 520,000 km² – of the 650,000 km² area as a ‘sustainable use zone’ with “limited fishing activities”.

    Additionally, there will be a conservation zone and habitat protection zone where Mauritius permits some controlled human activities. These will be accompanied by a strict conservation zone of around 37,000 km² that will have “strictly controlled and limited” activity. Last, but by no means least, there will be a resettlement zone measuring some 9,000 km².

    The Canary asked the Mauritian government whether it will permit industrial fishing, which is typically highly damaging to marine ecosystems, anywhere in the MPA. No comment was received by the time of publication.

    Not an invitation for excessive exploitation

    Pre-recorded comments at the event from Mauritius’s prime minister Pravind Jugnauth indicated that resettled Chagossians will be the “future custodians of the MPA”. President of the Chagos Refugee Group Oliver Bancoult also spoke in the session. He left his island home of Peros Banhos in the archipelago at the age of four.

    Bancoult asserted that assessments a few years after the Chagossians’ removal showed that their around 200 year presence on the islands had left coral reefs in a “near pristine state”. Looking forward, he said:

    we will run a sustainable and well-managed fisheries both to feed ourselves and to provide income and employment and, if possible, export food to other nations.

    Bancoult further insisted that the MPA is “not an invitation to foreign states to remove precious resources from our homeland”.

    Conservation is vital

    As Rev Ocean’s Dr Alex Rogers explained in a pre-recorded presentation, the waters around the archipelago are extremely important in ecological terms. They contain between 25-50% of Indian ocean coral reefs considered in an excellent condition. Meanwhile, the fish in these reefs are six times as abundant as reefs elsewhere in the Indian ocean, which Rogers’ presentation indicated was largely due to the presence of large fish, such as sharks.

    Additionally, the locality is a key nesting area for both green and hawksbill turtles. It’s also important for bird species, with 12 of the islands “classifiable” as Important Bird Areas (IBAs) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

    Rogers explained that the proposed MPA contains both opportunities and risks. Done well, it could ensure protection of the reefs and wildlife, with Chagossians able to monitor and limit damaging activities, such as illegal fishing, after resettlement. But ensuring the sustainability of fishing activities – particularly the protection of bigger fish such as sharks – is paramount to its success.

    Insufficient protections

    According to speakers at the event, illegal fishing is an existing issue in the locality. Philippe Sands QC, legal advisor to the Mauritius government on the Chagos Islands, explained that the UK’s MPA is meant to be a ‘no-take’ zone aside from three nautical miles around the US base. But despite this, the UK hasn’t passed any regulations to enforce that zone. Moreover, he said that the UK only has a single vessel patrolling the 640,000 km² area.

    The Canary asked the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office about the level of protection in its declared MPA and Mauritius’s plan. A spokesperson said:

    We do not recognise the proposals made by Mauritius at the 2022 UN Oceans Conference. The UK declared the British Indian Ocean Territory Marine Protected Area in 2010.

    Demands answered

    Others in the UK, however, have taken a different position. Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is honorary president of the Chagos Islands APPG. He told The Canary:

    I welcome this Mauritian initiative because, unlike the BIOT MPA of April 2010, it is in conformity with international law and the requirements of international courts (ICJ, UNCLOS Tribunal) and the UN General Assembly.

    He said that the UK’s MPA “was intended to be” a barrier to the resettlement that Mauritius’s plan offers the Chagossians. And he insisted that the APPG will continue to champion the cause of the Chagos community, some of whom live in the UK.

    Corbyn highlighted that the Chagos community “have been extremely active in making their needs known over the years”. For some Chagossians, Mauritius’s plan for the MPA promises to meet those needs.

    Featured image via Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office / Wikimedia Commons, cropped to 700×403, licensed under Open Government Licence 1.0

    By Tracy Keeling

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Government advised to withhold evidence from coronavirus inquiry as we cross 200,000 deaths

    James Eadie QC has reportedly advised the government to limit the information it provides to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry on its handling of the pandemic. And he’s warned ministers that they could face claims for damages from bereaved families. The inquiry is due to commence in 2023.

    Leading barrister Mike Mansfield QC chaired an earlier people’s inquiry into the pandemic. According to the inquiry’s report, departments such as the DHSC could face corporate manslaughter charges.

    People’s inquiry

    The People’s Covid Inquiry (PCI), chaired by Mansfield, published a report in December 2021. Its panel included leading clinicians and witnesses, comprised of:

    bereaved families, frontline NHS and key workers, national and international experts, trade union and council leaders, and representatives from disabled people’s and pensioners’ organisations.

    The report’s preface says:

    There were lives lost and lives devastated, which was foreseeable and preventable. From lack of preparation and coherent policy, unconscionable delay, through to preferred and wasteful procurement, to ministers themselves breaking the rules, the misconduct is earth-shattering

    And a separate summary refers to a Commons select committee report that listed some of the government’s failings:

    the initial response was delayed, care homes were abandoned, the ‘world-beating’ test and trace system had marginal impact.

    ‘Democide’

    Examining the legal implications of the government’s response to the pandemic, the PCI report pointed out:

    Under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) the Government has a duty to protect the public at large, frontline workers and at-risk groups. … Claims against breaches of ECHR could be brought in UK domestic courts. …

    individuals can’t be charged with corporate manslaughter, but an organisation, such as the Department of Health and Social Care, could be.

    Significantly, it added:

    The question is raised as to whether this amounts to democide (‘the killing of members of a country’s civilian population, as a result of its government’s policy, including by direct action, indifference, and neglect’), ‘social murder’, gross negligence manslaughter, or misconduct in a public office?

    Perhaps it’s these observations that lie behind the government’s fear of providing full disclosure to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry.

    ‘Corrupt’ contracting

    In an article on the PCI report in the British Medical Journal, Clare Dyer said:

    The government repeatedly put the economy before people’s health, made poor decisions too slowly, and outsourced critical work to private companies that had no experience.

    She added that the report made it clear:

    there was a failure to provide adequate personal protective equipment [PPE] to staff, with the result that frontline workers had a sevenfold higher risk of getting covid. The “corrupt” contracting system set up by the government resulted in contracts for PPE being awarded without tender to people who had no experience in providing it.

    Indeed, the report explained:

    The disastrous decision to bypass the NHS and use the private sector to run the FTTIS [find, test, trace, isolate, support] system… has thus far cost the taxpayer £37bn

    200,000 dead and rising

    Meanwhile, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the number of coronavirus (Covid-19) deaths in the UK has now crossed 200,000. Dr Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at University of Southampton, commented how the vast majority of these deaths were preventable. They happened because of “policy failures at national level”.

    Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, clarified that:

    Many of the deaths in early 2020 could have been prevented by a more timely response in the UK and by not discharging large numbers of infectious people to care homes.

    More than 13,000 people in hospital in England on 11 July had tested positive for coronavirus. At the same time, just under 3 million adults in England remain unvaccinated. And according to an ONS estimation, the number of people with Long Covid has increased from 1.3 million (January 2022) to 2 million (as of 1 May 2022).

    Access to free lateral flow tests, meanwhile, remains limited. This means infection rates are likely even higher than what’s being recorded. As Jo Goodman, co-founder of the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign, observed:

    making people pay for tests, not enforcing adequate sick pay or taking measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in hospitals, the Government is effectively throwing the most vulnerable in our society to the wolves.

    Record daily high

    We’ve reached another milestone too. According to the ZOE study app, coronavirus cases are at a record high. The app recorded 351,546 symptomatic infections in one day alone. Professor Tim Spector, who runs the app, commented:

    We’re in a leaderless country hitting another crisis without anyone to guide it. …Going on holiday, people standing for six hours in airports without masks, it’s crazy.

    And Swansea University psychologist Simon Williams warned:

    Although many in the public feel as though the pandemic is over – understandably given the relative lack of media coverage and the UK Government’s focus on ‘Living with Covid’ strategy – it is very much still ongoing.

    It’s not surprising the NHS is feeling the strain. As Dr Deepti Gurdasani tweeted:

    Professor Stephen Powis, national medical director for NHS England, warned:

    the NHS still faces significant pressures, from rising Covid admissions, thousands of staff absences due to the virus, the heatwave, and record demand for ambulances and emergency care.

    The government’s true pandemic legacy

    A brief summary shows that the UK government’s pandemic legacy is shocking if not criminal. It includes:

    • The PPE scandal that saw millions of pounds siphoned off to companies with no history of supplying such equipment or failing to provide PPE of the correct quality.
    • The creation of a secret VIP list of highly selected contacts to whom the government awarded PPE deals.
    • A failed £37bn test and trace programme headed by Tory peer Dido Harding. Harding takes the Conservative party whip and is married to a Conservative MP.
    • The near collapse of a historically underfunded NHS.
    • Delay in imposing the initial 2020 lockdown, leading to thousands of additional deaths.
    • Easing restrictions too early for Christmas 2021.
    • Keeping India off the red list (restricted travel) until 23 April 2021, a month after the Delta variant was found there, so putting more lives at risk.
    • The highest number of coronavirus deaths in Europe (apart from Russia).

    This is only a partial list of the government’s many failures in handling the pandemic.

    Meanwhile, the current Tory government needs to act urgently to limit more deaths from coronavirus.

    As for its successor, it remains to be seen if it will follow Eadie’s advice to withhold evidence on the many government failures that punctuated the pandemic. Either way, we need accountability.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona cropped 770×403 pixels

     

    By Tom Coburg

  • RMT tells Grant Shapps to get on with his job and stop tweeting nonsense

    Failed Tory leadership candidate Grant Shapps got more than he bargained for today when he had a go at the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) Union. The serving transport minister tweeted that the union’s strike plans would cause “misery” and “disruption”. Shapps is back in the office after his bid to replace Boris Johnson failed:

    But the RMT, whose social media team has become renowned for its no-nonsense approach to Tories and capitalists, was taking no prisoners. It told Shapps he should get on with his job and stop tweeting nonsense:

    ‘Couldn’t run a bath’

    Harsh but fair, it has to be said. Shapps’ bid lasted only a few days before he pulled out and backed hyper-capitalist Rishi Sunak, who served as chancellor under Boris Johnson and is the richest MP in the land.

    Shapps pulling out of the race is lucky if you share the views of TSSA trade union leader Manuel Cortes, who recently said Shapps “couldn’t run a bath“, let alone a country. Cortes told the Morning Star:

    It’s beyond belief that he thinks he’s up to the job: Tory arrogance knows no bounds.

    Negotiations

    Since he’s a Tory, we must assume Shapps isn’t a fan of state intervention into the economy. Yet the RMT’s elected leader Mike Lynch had to explain once again today that Shapps is deeply involved in the stand-off between workers and rail barons:

    So much for the free market. And despite Shapps’ talk of angry commuters and militant unions, Lynch reported that everywhere he had travelled, people were very supportive of the workers’ struggle for fair, safe conditions:

    Modernisation?

    Shapps’ rant that the RMT was holding back progress was given short thrift too. Free marketeers constantly claim that pay cuts, competition and removing safety rules are actually good. But one Twitter user laid out the truth of the matter:

    While another pointed out that if it was modernisation Shapps was after, he’d be better off starting at the top with the massively overpaid private rail barons:

    Shapps on the run

    The notion Grant Shapps could have been PM is a bizarre one. Especially given he can’t even seem to handle the job he already has as transport minister. That said, his contempt for working people is precisely in line with the Tory norm.

    What we do know for sure is that more strikes are coming on 18 and 20 August. And if the choice is between the Tories and working people, it’s a no-brainer which one des erves our support.

     

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Web Summit, cropped to 770 x 403, CC BY 2.0.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • DWP: 800,000 Universal Credit claimants may not get cost of living payment

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will not give cost of living payments to potentially 800,000 people on Universal Credit. This includes over 150,000 children. Following an investigation prompted by a reader’s comment, The Canary can reveal that these figures are despite what the department claims about entitlement.

    DWP: 1.5 million people without support

    As The Canary reported on 14 July, the DWP is denying 1.5 million people the £650 cost of living payment. We crunched the numbers of people who won’t get it. Overall, the number of people the DWP is abandoning includes:

    • 433,000 Housing Benefit claimants
    • 523,000 Carer’s Allowance claimants
    • 568,000 PIP/DLA claimants

    It isn’t possible to work out the number of ESA/JSA claimants not entitled to the payment because the figures aren’t publicly available. So, overall, around 1.5 million social security claimants will not be entitled to cost of living payments.

    The article from 14 July prompted a comment from a Canary reader. They said:

    Why is nobody talking about the fact people on UC [Universal Credit] who didn’t receive a payment during the qualifying period don’t get the money either?

    So, The Canary decided to look into this.

    Universal Credit “nil awards”

    When the DWP doesn’t give a Universal Credit claimant a payment but still keeps their claim open, it’s called a “nil award“. As it wrote:

    A household is counted in Universal Credit statistics… with claims that… have a nil award (due to earnings or deductions)

    So, even if the DWP doesn’t pay you anything, you’re still classed as a claimant. But with the cost of living payment, there’s a catch.

    As the DWP wrote:

    You will not be eligible for the Cost of Living Payment if your earnings reduced your Universal Credit to £0 for the qualifying assessment period. This is sometimes called a ‘nil award’. If money has also been taken off for other reasons (such as payments of rent to your landlord or for money that you owe), you might still be eligible.

    So, how many people are going to be affected by nil awards?

    800,000 people the DWP may abandon

    The Canary crunched the numbers using DWP figures.

    We found that in the most recent data (February 2022), there were 824,000 people who had a Universal Credit claim but the DWP gave them a nil award. It’s unlikely that the number of nil award households has dropped a lot since February 2022.

    It is not clear how many of these people had nil awards because of deductions. Therefore, they might still be eligible for a cost of living payment. But given the average Universal Credit payment is £790 per household and the average deduction £61, it is unlikely that the number of nil awards due to deductions is that high.

    Moreover, the DWP hasn’t shared the criteria according to which people with nil awards due to deductions would still get the cost of living payment. Given that an algorithm is working out who is entitled to Universal Credit, it may mean the DWP makes mistakes with this process.

    Also, as The Canary reader wrote:

    the qualifying period fell… during a known time for tax rebates to hit wages

    For self-employed people who filed their tax return before the 31 January deadline, then HMRC would have given them any tax rebates they were owed during the DWP cost of living payment qualifying period. This means that if they claimed Universal Credit, the tax return would be deducted from their award.

    Hollow claims of DWP support

    So, potentially the DWP will deny hundreds of thousands of Universal Credit claimants the cost of living payment. As The Canary previously wrote regarding 1.5 million people not being entitled to support:

    For the DWP to give cost of living payments only to some people while ignoring… others is highly regressive. Many of the people it is ignoring may well be no financially better off than those who are entitled to the payments.

    Now, with potentially another 800,000 people added to this – the DWP’s claims of support with the cost of living crisis ring utterly hollow.

    Featured image via VideoBlogg Productions/The Canary, Wikimedia and Sky News – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Allegations that elite UK troops slaughtered innocents fit an international pattern

    Elite soldiers, cover-ups, night-time house raids, and evidence of execution-style killings. The story of Britain’s recent wars will be told for many years to come. And, the latest allegations of war crimes suggest that it will not be a tale of military glory.

    Military personnel from the US, Australia, and the UK are held in high regard, often hero-worshipped by the public and politicians alike. However, their involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has led to accusations of criminal activity – including the murder of civilians – as well as seemingly endless allegations of further wrong-doing which have proven difficult to pin down.

    The SAS

    The newest allegations concern operations in Afghanistan over a decade ago. The BBC published their findings on Tuesday 12 July. Through whistleblowers, experts, and witnesses, they found that multiple war crimes had been carried out by an SAS unit in 2011.

    This includes the allegation that innocent civilians were executed during house raids in Helmand Province. Furthermore, senior military officers may have covered up evidence and worked against military police investigators. General Mark Carleton-Smith, a former head of special forces, and later head of the army, was also criticised in the report.

    In one operational tour, it was alleged, up to 54 civilians may have been murdered. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) rejects the claims, calling them “subjective” and “unjustified”.

    Disbanded?

    The responses to the latest in a long line of allegations have been polarised. Some have said the regiment should be disbanded if the claims are true. Others have framed the allegations as improbable. In Parliament, Boris Johnson extended the tradition of never commenting on special forces matters when asked if there would be an investigation. Also in the Commons, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for special forces to be made democratically accountable:

    Some criticised the use of footage from an execution-style killing by Australian SAS soldiers in the BBC film. Like the British military, the Australian military have repeatedly been accused of war crimes in Afghanistan – the problem extends throughout Anglophone Western armies.

    War crimes

    In 2020, the Australian SAS was subject to war crimes allegations. These included the video, mentioned above, of a soldier executing a prisoner at point-blank range.

    Investigators reported that a culture of violent impunity has developed in the elite unit. One described the soldiers conduct as:

    deliberate, repeated and targeted war crimes.

    Other allegations included a practice called ‘blooding’, in which new SAS soldiers were made to murder prisoners in order to acquire their first kill.

    A report noted that the unit’s ‘distorted’ culture:

    …was embraced and amplified by some experienced, charismatic and influential non-commissioned officers and their proteges, who sought to fuse military excellence with ego, elitism and entitlement.

    Seal Team 6

    For their part, elite US forces have been subject to similar allegations, including unlawful killings and the mutilation of bodies. In the latter case, this included the use of specially made hatchets modelled after indigenous American tomahawks.

    Like the Australians, reports suggest that a toxic unit culture developed in the SEALS, a US Navy special forces unit. They reportedly treated killing like a sport, fetishising particular kinds of headshot:

    “There is and was no military reason whatsoever to split someone’s skull open with a single round,” said a former SEAL Team 6 leader. “It’s sport.”

    One of the highest-profile cases was of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, who was accused of various crimes but eventually acquitted. Among those to rally to his cause was Donald Trump. In other cases, Trump pardoned elite soldiers accused of wartime atrocities.

    Overseas Operation Bill

    Responses from the state have varied across the US, UK, and Australia. In Australia, an investigation was launched. In the US, war crimes became a partisan issue, with Trump intervening in favour of soldiers. In the UK, the process culminated in the Overseas Operations Bill. This has since become law.

    The bill, which was heavily criticised by veterans, military charities, lawyers, and human rights groups, has made it harder to investigate and prosecute war criminals. It includes what is in effect a five-year run-out date for allegations to be brought. Keir Starmer’s Labour was whipped to abstain from the bill, and the few who voted against it were disciplined.

    Immunity from justice

    The “war on terror” has seen armed forces personnel, and particularly elite military units, elevated to the status of heroes. Beneath that façade, there have been numerous accusations of brutality and murder. Special forces units from across the Western world often appear to have evolved toxic leadership cultures and enjoy little accountability.

    In cases where they have been accused – or even found guilty of crimes – they have usually been framed as victims. The truth is, the victims have always been the often-nameless, forgotten, occupied people in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. And without a serious reckoning with these allegations, similar atrocities will happen again and again.

    Featured image via Elite Forces UK, cropped to 770 x 403.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Ten more Black women have accused Tim Westwood of sexual abuse

    This article includes discussion of rape and sexual abuse

    Ten more Black women have spoken out to accuse former long-time BBC Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood of sexual abuse. This includes one woman who claims that Westwood repeatedly raped her when she was 14 years old. These further allegations come after seven Black women spoke out in April, accusing the celebrated DJ of “predatory and unwanted sexual behaviour” taking place between 1992 and 2017.

    An open secret

    In April 2022, the BBC and the Guardian released a joint investigation based on seven Black women’s allegations of sexual abuse against Westwood. The alleged abuse spans a period of more than two decades.

    Although this is the first time these allegations gained mainstream press coverage, Westwood’s predatory behaviour has long been one of the music industry’s worst kept secrets.

    This makes Westwood’s longtime employers complicit in his abuse of young Black women and girls. Rather than investigating the allegations against the DJ, Westwood’s employers – including the BBC and Global – maintained Westwood’s platform and protected his reputation.

    For a number of years, journalists – mostly young women of colour – have tried to investigate the historical allegations against Westwood. However, they came up against extreme resistance when seeking information and trying to raise awareness about Westwood’s misconduct.

    Following the release of the BBC and Guardian investigation in April, journalist Nadine White shared:

    Others had their pitches repeatedly rejected by news outlets, reflecting the mainstream media’s tendency to protect powerful white men while silencing marginalised young women. Sharing her frustrating experience of this, journalist Iman Amrani tweeted:

    Highlighting one of the ways Westwood’s employers protected the DJ against sexual abuse allegations, journalist Lorraine King said:

    Still avoiding accountability

    Responding to the joint BBC and Guardian investigation into allegations against the DJ in April, the BBC‘s director general Tim Davie stated that he had “seen no evidence of complaints” made to the corporation against Westwood.

    However, in July, it was revealed that the BBC had in fact received a number of sexual misconduct complaints against Westwood, including one that was referred to the police.

    Responding to this news, actress and public speaker Kelechi Okafor tweeted:

    Westwood’s alleged actions are heinous – but the BBC is also complicit. Rumours of the DJ’s sexual misconduct have been an open secret for many years. Rather than investigating the allegations, Westwood’s employers protected the DJ and helped him to maintain his powerful position in the Black British music industry, which he used to abuse and exploit Black young women and girls.

    Statutory rape of a minor

    The BBC‘s gross mishandling of the situation continues. In its story revealing the further allegations made against Westwood, the BBC states that Westwood stands “accused of sex with a 14-year-old“.

    This language is incredibly harmful. Because a child cannot consent, adults engaging in sexual contact with children under the age of consent is statutory rape. Calling it anything else simply normalises, sanitises, and excuses child sexual abuse.

    This reporting reflects the widespread adultification of Black children, who tend to be treated and regarded as adults. This bias has tangible consequences. It leads to the inadequate protection and safeguarding of Black children, opening the door to a host of children’s rights abuses.

    Clarifying this, psychologist Guilaine Kinouani tweeted:

    Explaining the gravity of such a misuse of language, the Rowan Project – a specialist sexual abuse service provider – posted in February:

    Still no accountability

    Highlighting the ongoing lack of action being taken against Westwood, PR consultant Ronke Lawal said:

    This continuous inaction speaks to some of the reasons why Black women and girls who are affected by sexual violence are so reluctant to report abuse and seek support.

    In this society, Black women and girls are not protected from violence. And they are not believed when they speak out about the harm they have experienced. This is rooted in a culture of racism and misogyny which sexualises and adultifies Black girls and young women.

    This is exemplified in the revelations of Met Police officers strip searching Black schoolgirls. Other officers took and shared dehumanising photos of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry. Meanwhile, public services still fail to meet the needs of Black women and girls, and often put them at further risk of harm.

    This is precisely why Westwood’s alleged victims were afraid to speak out. We must listen to these women, amplify their stories, and hold all those who contributed to their abuse accountable.

    Featured image via Rory/Wikimedia Commons, CC by 2.0, resized 770 x 403 px

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • DWP is denying 1.5 million people the £650 cost of living payment

    The Canary can reveal that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will be denying around 1,520,000 people the upcoming cost of living payment. And to make matters worse, it hasn’t even bothered to look at how badly this could affect these people.

    DWP: cost of living payments for some

    The DWP’s cost of living payments have been all over the news. It is giving eligible claimants a payment of “£650 paid in two lump sums of £326 and £324“. The DWP will start paying around eight million people the first sum from 14 July – but it will give some claimants nothing.

    Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire asked DWP boss Thérèse Coffey on 1 July:

    what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the decision to not provide the cost of living payment to claimants of new-style Employment and Support Allowance [ESA] on those claimants.

    DWP minister David Rutley answered, saying:

    Non-means tested benefits are not eligible benefits for the Cost-of-Living Payment in their own right because people claiming these benefits may have other financial resources available to them.

    The DWP says that claimants it gives the following social security to won’t get the payments:

    New Style Employment and Support Allowance, contributory Employment and Support Allowance, or New Style Jobseeker’s Allowance [JSA], unless you get Universal Credit.

    It also won’t apply to people who are only claiming Housing Benefit and some Carer’s Allowance and Personal Independence Payment (PIP) (therefore also Disability Living Allowance (DLA)) claimants. People solely on the latter two are just getting £150. As Rutley recently said:

    The UK Government is rightly targeting the £650 cost of living payment support at low-income households in receipt of qualifying means-tested benefits.

    So, how many people is this?

    1.5 million people abandoned

    The Canary has crunched the numbers of people who won’t get the payments. Overall, the number of people the DWP is abandoning includes:

    • 433,000 Housing Benefit claimants
    • 523,000 Carer’s Allowance claimants
    • 568,000 PIP/DLA claimants

    It is not possible to work out the number of ESA/JSA claimants not entitled to the payment as the figures aren’t publicly available. So, overall, around 1.5 million social security claimants will not be entitled to cost of living payments. But as Rutley revealed in his answer to Debbonaire, the DWP seems unconcerned by these people’s circumstances.

    DWP minister wrings hands

    Rutley said:

    Many claimants of contributory and new style Employment and Support Allowance are also in receipt of a means tested benefit. For example, as of November 2021 there were around 400,000 claimants getting both income and contributory Employment Support Allowance, and around 100,000 claimants getting Employment Support Allowance and Universal Credit.

    If someone in receipt of a contributory or new style benefit makes a successful claim to an eligible benefit made after the initial qualifying date, they may qualify for the second, £324 cost-of-living payment in the Autumn.

    Contributory and new style Employment and Support Allowance claimants may also benefit from other parts of the Cost-of-Living package of support announced by the Chancellor, including the £400 rebate for domestic energy customers provided through the Energy Bills Support Scheme.

    A shrugging of shoulders

    However, none of this answers Debbonaire’s original question on “what assessment” the DWP had made of the “potential impact” of these claimant’s exclusion from the payments. This could take the form of a regulatory impact assessment (RIA), in which the DWP would look at how the policy would affect all of the people on its watch. It appears that the DWP has not done this.

    The Treasury did perform an “illustrative analysis of the impact” of the cost of living payments. It in part looked at what the financial implications would be for the people the DWP gave them to. But the Treasury did not look at the impact for the 1.5 million plus people who aren’t getting it.

    So, it seems the DWP has not made any assessment of this. Not that Rutland seemed to want to admit that.

    The Canary asked the DWP for comment. We specifically wanted to know if it had done an RIA on the policy. A spokesperson pointed us to Rutland’s answer.

    The DWP: regressive, at best

    For the DWP to give cost of living payments only to some people while ignoring 1.5 million others is highly regressive. Many of the people it is ignoring may well be no financially better off than those who are entitled to the payments. This is contrary to what Rutland claimed. For example, councils only give housing benefit to low-income people. Yet the government is refusing to support the 433,000 people who, for whatever reason, only claim this. For 1.5 million people, it’s regressive DWP policy at best – and intentional toxicity at worst.

    Featured image via Sky News – YouTube and Wikimedia

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • A political prisoner is being punished for speaking out. Could you be next?

    A political prisoner, locked inside the private G4S prison HMP/YOI Parc in Bridgend, South Wales, is facing fresh repression for speaking out to the press about his treatment. Toby Shone is now banned from speaking to his loved ones, as well as his solidarity group, after the prison’s security team removed a number of contacts from his list of permitted phone numbers. This is just one of a series of actions that the state has taken to try to make Toby’s life hell and break his revolutionary and anti-capitalist spirit.

    Brighton Anarchist Black Cross reported:

    This together with interference with his post and emails is an attempt to hold him incommunicado in the jail.

    He was formally notified of this decision…with the following reasons given: giving interviews over the phone, giving detailed information about staff at the prison which has then been published online, and hate speech against some prison staff.

    Treated like a terrorist

    Toby has been imprisoned since October 2021. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) initially tried to prosecute him under terrorism-related charges. The original allegations were that the 325 website – of which Shone was accused of being the editor, and which published reports of direct action – contained material that would be useful to terrorists, and that the site fundraised for terrorist activities. As The Canary reported in May 2022, the terrorism case against Toby fell apart and he was found not guilty of any charges relating to terrorism.

    It will come as little surprise to the radical left in the UK that the state has attempted to throw about the term ‘terrorism’ willy-nilly, much as it has the words ‘domestic extremist’. They are terms that, since 9/11, have been used to generate fear among the public, and to create distrust in anyone who seeks a solution to the capitalist mess we live in. If the state had successfully managed to label Toby as a terrorist, it would have also ensured that he received little sympathy from the wider UK population.

    But the CPS’s terrorism prosecution fell apart, and Toby was imprisoned under a relatively minor drugs-related conviction. However, this hasn’t prevented the state and its corporate servants from treating Toby as if he is guilty of terrorism. In May 2022, Toby’s lawyers went to court to prevent the police’s Counter-Terrorism Division from obtaining a Serious Crime Prevention Order (SCPO) against him. Toby said that the SCPO would have put him under “de facto house arrest”. It would have enabled the state to put most of his movements and communication under surveillance once he was released from prison.

    Extreme conditions

    Even though the state failed in imposing the SCPO against him, it is still doing its utmost to repress him by other means. The probation service now wants to impose harsh, restrictive licence conditions on him when he is released. Toby spoke out to The Canary about this fresh repression, which he said is “much more far-reaching than the SCPO”. He said that he wasn’t aware yet of the full extent of the proposed licence restrictions, but they include:

    No contact with anybody from the movement deemed extremists…this could be anyone; give them access to all internet available devices; no ‘preaching’; all my social relationships monitored; having to reside at an AP [approved premises or bail hostel] for an extended period of time…

    Toby said that the fact that the term ‘preaching’ is being used shows that he is being treated in the same category as religious ‘extremists’. He continued:

    Literally in the probation OASIS report I am quantified as low risk. But the fact that I’m political, and have political opinions, qualifies me as high risk. So they’re saying I’m an extremist, basically. They’re referring to information that they hold against me, which they’re not divulging, or haven’t divulged yet. 

    It could be any of us

    Toby continued:

    It seems like I’ve been designated a threat to national security on the basis that I’m an anarchist. And if they’re able to justify these anti-terrorist, anti-extremist licence restrictions – in my case which is based on information that they [said they] hold against me, but which culminated in a not guilty verdict – then they can apply it to anyone from the radical left or the anarchists that were arrested on a demo, or any kind of direct action, and apply these draconian licence conditions to them, through being able to label them as an extremist or a terrorist.

    This became especially apt after a raft of new laws were passed through parliament. In June 2022, the full Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act finally came into force. Because of the new legislation, we are likely to see far more of these crackdowns on those who protest against government policies, or who take direct action against the corporate destruction of our Earth. And if the government manages to pass its provisions for Serious Disruption Prevention Orders in the Public Order Bill then conditions such as the ones Toby is facing could be used against people who’ve committed no criminal offence.

    In 2021, the government passed the highly dangerous Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) Act, also known as the ‘Spycops Bill’, which has legalised all activity of undercover police officers, at a time when undercover police are supposedly being investigated for abusing women.

    This comes off the back of revelations in 2020, when we found out that the government had issued teachers with a guide to extremist groups as part of their Prevent strategy. Among the groups listed was Extinction Rebellion. This begs two questions: If a dogmatically pacifist group like XR is considered such a threat, then what must the state think of those who are doing more than blocking junctions with a bright-pink boat? And what measures are they taking, both overtly through these new laws and covertly through undercover intelligence, to try to shut them up permanently?

    It would be foolish to believe that Toby Shone is an exception, and that his imprisonment and subsequent repression won’t happen to the rest of us. If you’re deemed a nuisance to the state or to corporate interests, you might well be next.

    Featured image via PXHere

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • DWP has NOT launched a ‘secret inquiry’ into benefit deaths

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has not launched a “secret inquiry” into deaths of social security claimants – contrary to what media reports have said in recent days. It’s doing what it has done for years: investigating deaths behind closed doors with no accountability. One Labour MP has called the situation the “tip of the iceberg“. And as The Canary previously documented, the DWP should be looking at tens of thousands of deaths.

    DWP: “secret inquiry”?

    The Mirror reported that the DWP has launched a:

    Secret inquiry… into deaths of 140 disability claimants under Boris Johnson

    A screengrab of a Mirror article on the DWP

    However, this is not strictly what’s happening. What the DWP is doing should not be considered inquiries; rather, it is carrying out things called ‘internal process reviews’ (IPRs).

    Investigating itself

    IPRs are local DWP investigations which take place when a claimant takes their own life. They also happen when a vulnerable claimant complains to the DWP. John Pring at Disability News Service (DNS) has been investigating IPRs for years. As he co-reported for the Mirror, the DWP has launched 140 IPRs during Johnson’s time as PM:

    The DWP started its secret probes in 2012 – and they are on the rise. The latest three-year figure is higher than the 126 over the previous five years.

    The DWP does not publish the results of IPRs. It even admitted to destroying some of the reports. And while it has launched a Serious Case Review panel to monitor them, so far it has done little. The panel’s most recent minutes show it did not discuss IPRs. Moreover, as The Canary first reported in 2020, the majority of the panel is now made up of civil servants. This raises questions over its independence.

    Regardless, IPRs are very different to the “secret inquiry” that the Mirror‘s headline stated.

    35,000 dead on the DWP’s watch

    IPRs have, since 2012, only looked at a few hundred deaths on the DWP’s watch. Yet as The Canary previously reported, between 2011 and 2018 alone nearly 35,000 DWP claimants died. They died either waiting for the DWP to sort their claims or after it said they were well enough to work or start moving towards work. To put this into context, in one month during that time period, it would mean over 700 people could have died on the DWP’s watch. Also, in 2018 alone there were at least 750 (if not more) people who took their own lives while claiming from the DWP.

    Moreover, the Mirror stated that Labour MP Debbie Abrahams has “now”:

    called for a public inquiry into… [IPRs] over tragedies including suicides.

    But as Abrahams tweeted:

    It is good that the Mirror is working with Pring and reporting on IPRs. But it must also be clear in what it’s saying. The DWP is not holding an inquiry – it is investigating itself. These toothless IPRs will never see the light of day, and effectively absolve the DWP of responsibility. As Abrahams said, and has been saying for years, nothing short of a public inquiry will do.

    Featured image via David Long – Geograph, resized to 770×403 and colour-changed under licence CC BY-SA 2.0, and Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Boris Johnson admits security lapse hours before stepping down

    On 7 July a beleaguered Boris Johnson stood outside 10 Downing Street and grudgingly offered his resignation as prime minister. However, he made it clear he would remain in post until a successor is found.

    The day before Johnson’s reluctant resignation announcement, he faced interrogation by the Commons Liaison Committee on a number of matters. Johnson was forced to admit under questioning to a possible major security lapse involving Russian oligarchs. Subsequent to that admission, a former senior MI6 Russia specialist has called for an investigation into the alleged security failure and its implications.

    Yet this security failure was first reported some three years back, including by The Canary. 

    The admission

    It was during the committee gathering that Johnson was asked if he had met with former KGB (Russian secret service) operative Alexander Lebedev – specifically on 28 April 2018.

    Johnson explained he had indeed met Lebedev on several occasions, including when he was foreign secretary. When pressed further on this, Johnson confirmed that the meeting on the date quoted had taken place in Italy without officials present:

    Security lapse

    The venue for the meeting was the Italian villa of Lebedev’s son Evgeny, whom Johnson subsequently made a peer.

    Investigative journalist John Sweeney claimed in a video that Johnson was a regular guest at the villa, both when he was mayor of London and when foreign secretary. Sweeney also claimed that the villa was regularly used as a venue for ‘bunga-bunga’ (sex) parties. Moreover, that MI6 was aware of these visits and regarded Johnson as a “security risk”. Also, on at least one of these visits Johnson left his Metropolitan police protection officers back in the UK:

    After his stay on 28 March 2018, Johnson was spotted at the San Francesco d’Assisi airport waiting in the departure lounge to board a plane back to the UK. He was apparently more dishevelled than usual.

    According to the Guardian, Johnson also attended parties at the Lebedevs’ villa in 2012, 2014, and 2016, and that:

    One person with knowledge of previous parties in Italy said Lebedev liked to invite people who would “create a spectacle by behaving in an outrageous way … There was always that bacchanalian aspect to those trips … it was all about having very important people reduced to doing very silly things.”

    Since the Commons Liaison Committee interrogation of Johnson, Labour MP Yvette Cooper raised the matter in parliament. She queried whether Johnson’s stay at the villa could have put him in a “compromising position”:

    Call for investigation

    Christopher Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia Desk, also commented on Johnson’s admission to the committee, saying an investigation into the matter was needed:

    In a radio interview Steele called for an “investigation by the secret services” into Johnson’s private meeting with Alexander Lebedev, adding that the meeting raised “significant issues of national security”:

    But the idea that MI6 or MI5 will investigate this security failure by a still-serving prime minister – a Conservative one at that – is fanciful, to say the least. After all, their roles are to protect the established order.

    Moscow-ready Brexit

    In another tweet, posted a week before the Johnson resignation, Steele made it clear that in his view there was definite interference by Russians on the Brexit vote. Moreover, he added that this information was provided to the Intelligence & Security Committee (ISC) for its long-delayed Russia Report:

    As reported by The Canary, there were also allegations that pro-Brexit campaigns were hit by thousands of bot accounts run from a St Petersburg-based ‘troll farm’. Indeed, a study by Swansea University and the University of California, Berkeley, identified Twitter accounts in Russia that “posted 45,000 tweets about Brexit within the space of 48 hours during last year’s [2016] referendum”.

    Yet despite the intelligence Steele provided to the ISC, and reports on Russian bots and donations by oligarchs in The Canary and elsewhere, the Russia Report neglected to report any of this. In other words, as shown in detail by The Canary, there was a cover-up.

    More Russian links

    In November 2019, The Canary reported that a US House intelligence committee hearing raised questions about Johnson’s links to a “Russian agent”. Then there’s the matter of gifts of money to the Tories. In July 2020, The Canary reported on some of the many donations by Russia-linked oligarchs to the Conservative Party.

    It’s also believed that Russian Embassy senior diplomat Sergey Nalobin arranged the launch of the Conservative Friends of Russia (later renamed the Westminster Russia Forum). Nalobin, whose father also worked for the KGB, was subsequently ‘expelled‘ from the UK.

    In November 2019, The Canary reported on a claim by Reuters that a “senior Conservative Party member” alleged Ukrainian born oligarch Alexander Temerko was “very much behind the attempt to oust” Theresa May as prime minister. In short, Reuters suggested there was a coup led by “Temerko’s allies” who “are at the helm of Johnson’s campaign”. This reportedly included former defence secretary Gavin Williamson, political strategist Lynton Crosby, and “a group of East European businessmen”.

    Temerko, incidentally, reportedly made his fortune in the sale of arms to Russian Defence. He is known to be a good friend of Johnson and financed the Conservative Party by more than £1m.

    Implications

    Regarding Steele’s call for an investigation, it’s difficult to take that seriously given his links to the propaganda outfit the Integrity Initiative that, for example, ran smears against Jeremy Corbyn. Nevertheless, the implication of Johnson’s admission to the 2018 meeting with the Lebedevs and the circumstances surrounding it, is that a security lapse occurred. Nothing is known about what happened at the villa, or who else was there.

    However, this scandal is only one of many that have plagued the Johnson-led government. He has led a government of sleaze, corruption, and outright deceit. From PartyGate, to the circumstances regarding payment during Johnson’s affair with Jennifer Arcuri, to his alleged attempt to provide a lucrative job to his then girlfriend Carrie Symonds, to the PPE contracts scandal, and many more.

    Or as Led By Donkeys puts it:

    As for the recent government reshuffle, it’s a case of same shit, slightly different toilet.

    Featured image screenshot via YouTube/The Independent

    By Tom Coburg

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Allegations of racist violence by officers against prisoners in isolation at HMP Belmarsh

    Content warning: This article discusses racist violence and abuse.

    Campaigners have been calling out racist harrassment and attacks by officers at HMP Belmarsh.

    Belmarsh is a high-security prison in south east London. It has faced criticism from HM Inspectorate of Prisons for the amount of force used against prisoners, and for the numbers of suicides that have taken place within its walls.

    In the past few weeks, allegations of racism and violence committed by prison officers at HMP Belmarsh have emerged. Several of these incidents reportedly involve the same officer.

    “Blatant racism”

    On 2 July, the campaign group Anti-Carceral Solidarity (ACS) reported an alleged attack by at least five officers against a Black prisoner in HMP Belmarsh’s segregation unit. The prisoner was allegedly left bleeding on the floor, without medical attention.

    ACS told The Canary that a similar alleged assault on a prisoner – involving at least one of the same officers – had occurred the previous week. On that occasion, the police had reportedly been called.

    ACS said that both of the attacks were reported to them after being overheard by another prisoner who is held in the same segregation unit.

    When we reached out to the Ministry of Justice they claimed that the allegations were not true.

    “Harassment”

    The same officer who is alleged to have been involved in the attacks is also accused of harassing and racially abusing long-term prisoner Kevan Thakrar. ACS says that the officer in question:

    has been harassing, and racially abusing Kevan Thakrar in the HMP Belmarsh segregation unit through intentionally depriving him of sleep by shouting racist abuse at him during the night and by being physically aggressive during searches.

    ACS said that the abusive behaviour escalated on 19 June, when the officer:

    tried to provoke Kev into a physical fight by conducting the pat-down search aggressively. When Kev didn’t reply, [the officer] pushed him over and 7 officers rushed into his cell.

    A letter-writing campaign has been organised in support of Kevan:

    When we contacted the MoJ for a response to Kevan’s allegations, they again flatly denied that any of them were true. This isn’t surprising as the MoJ have denied every allegation we have ever put to them. The Canary has regularly been writing about racism and violence inside the prison system since 2020, and all we have ever received is outright denial. It’s easy to brush aside complaints when there are precious few people willing to amplify prisoners’ voices, and when the prison ‘service’ can almost completely control prisoners’ access to the outside world. This culture of impunity is increased exponentially when prisoners are kept in isolation in segregation units, with very few witnesses to speak out against the violence of the officers.

    Closing ranks

    According to ACS, HMP Belmarsh has also denied all of Kevan’s allegations. But this, it says, also comes as no surprise:

    The campaigners say that the complaints process is “nothing more than propaganda”, and ask how prisoners are expected to protect themselves from abuse if their complaints go unheard:

    Allegations of “intentional triggering of PTSD”

    Kevan has suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) since he was attacked by officers in 2010. On that occasion he physically defended himself against the attack. He was later acquitted of assaulting the officers by a jury, on the grounds of self-defence. However – despite the acquittal – the prison service has punished him by keeping him in conditions of extreme isolation ever since.

    These shocking pictures show Kevan’s injuries after the 2010 attack:

    Kevan Thakrar’s injuries after the 2010 attack

    ACS told us that the prison officers’ actions had amounted to what they saw as the intentional triggering of Kevan’s PTSD:

    the prison is well aware that Kevan has severe and complex post traumatic stress and they’re aware of his triggers, because they’re meant to make allowances for them, but obviously they don’t and it really has seemed like – for the last six weeks – that staff have intentionally been triggering his PTSD in the way that they’ve been treating him.

    It said that the kind of abuse that Kevan and the other prisoners have experienced is “regular” in the segregation unit, and that:

    it seems like it’s getting more and more frequent. And officers are always targeting almost exclusively people of colour and Black prisoners. And it’s literally something they know they can get away with, and the governor will back them up

    Segregation: just another name for solitary confinement

    The kind of attacks referred to in ACS’ allegations are routinely enabled by the dehumanisation of prisoners within the UK’s segregation units.

    In 2015, a ruling from the UK’s Supreme Court ruled in favour of Shahid, a prisoner who had appealed against being kept in solitary confinement for five years. The court’s judgement noted that:

    An interim report submitted to the UN General Assembly in August 2011… expressed particular concern about prolonged solitary confinement (or segregation, as it was also termed), which he defined as solitary confinement in excess of 15 days. He noted that after that length of time, “according to the literature surveyed, some of the harmful psychological effects of isolation can become irreversible

    According to ACS:

    “Segregation” is a euphemism for solitary confinement – spending almost 24 hours alone in a cell every day, deprived of all sensory stimulation. Spending over 2 weeks in solitary confinement is reported to cause lasting harm.

    Long-term solitary confinement is a breach of United Nations rules:

    Being held in solitary confinement for more than [15] days is a breach of the UN Mandela Rules on the treatment of prisoners.

    However, prisoners are routinely held in excess of 15 days. In fact, it’s common for UK prisoners to be held in segregation for years. For example, last year The Canary reported that Shaqueille Plummer had spent over a year in segregation at HMP Long Lartin.

    A  2021 Justice Inspectorates report found that prisoners were still being held in segregation for too long.

    Dehumanisation

    The abuse levelled against prisoners held in segregation is enabled by an institutional process of dehumanisation that happens within the prison’s walls. Prisoners are placed in segregation units as a form of punishment, and this – together with the fact that prison officers are seldom held accountable for mistreating prisoners – facilitates and enables an environment in which violence is normalised.

    This dehumanisation is amplified in the case of prisoners who are racialised. Black and Muslim people are already grossly over-represented in the prison system. A 2019 report by the Prison Reform Trust found that Muslims made up 19% of the prison population, but just 5% of the general population. The same report found that 13% of all UK prisoners were Black.

    A 2019 report published by the Barrow Cadbury Trust found that Muslim Prisoners – like Kevan – 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”. Their experiences were more negative in comparison with white prisoners.

    All of this shows the UK prison system for what it is – a rotten, oppressive institution where racialised violence and abuse are endemic. Segregation units are a punitive system which allow for even greater dehumanisation of prisoners and unchecked brutality from officers. This institution cannot be reformed – it must be discarded. Freeing ourselves of this system and its values is an integral part of creating revolutionary change.

    It’s up to us to show solidarity with all of the prisoners who are oppressed by this system. We need to stand up against racism everywhere, especially when it happens behind prison walls.

    Featured image shows an aerial view of HM Prison Isis and a section of HM Prison Belmarsh (on the right) in Thamesmead West, southeast London (cropped to 770x403px), via Wikimedia Commons, Kleon3, CC BY-SA 4.0.

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • DWP has been lying about cruel benefit cap

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been lying about reviewing the controversial benefit cap.

    The Tory/Lib Dem coalition government brought in the benefit cap in 2013. It restricts how much money the DWP gives social security claimants. The cap is currently:

    • “£20,000 per year (or £13,400 for single adults with no children) nationally”.
    • “£23,000 per year (£15,410 for single adults with no children) in Greater London”.

    The DWP is claiming it can only review this cap once per parliament, which is simply not true. On top of this, the cap is affecting nearly 300,000 children, with more set to be living under it by next year.

    The benefit cap

    People have heavily criticised the benefit cap – the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) said of it:

    In April 2022, capped families in London saw the real value of their benefits fall by £2,070 as inflation hit 9 per cent – a 40-year high – and their benefits didn’t increase at all. The ceiling created by the benefit cap hasn’t increased since it was introduced in 2013. In fact it was lowered to its current level in 2016.

    Almost all capped families are in deep poverty, with many at risk of homelessness and falling into debt to pay for essentials even before the recent price increases.

    Now, the DWP has said that it may review the cap. But this is not the full story.

    DWP: “statutory duty”

    In response to a question from Labour about when the DWP last reviewed the benefit cap, DWP minister David Rutley said:

    There is a statutory [legal] duty to review the levels every parliament. The last time the benefit cap was reviewed was November 2016.

    Labour’s question is timely – at the end of June, DWP boss Therese Coffey said she may review the benefit cap levels. This was due to the so-called ‘cost of living crisis’. At the time, Coffey stated that:

    We do have this statutory duty – I think I’ve had some advice because now we no longer have the Fixed-term Parliaments Act on exact timing – I’m slightly concerned as to whether we have a real reflection of life, but I’m getting some advice on that.

    This is similar to what another DWP minister said last year. They stated on record that:

    There is a statutory duty to review the benefit cap levels once in each Parliament, unless an early election is called. As such, the review will happen at the appropriate time, yet to be determined by the Secretary of State, which must currently be by December 2024.

    The law matches this – kind of.

    Legal rules

    Buried in the detail of the law surrounding the benefit cap are rules surrounding when the DWP should review it. The law states that it must be reviewed once each parliament. In theory, this would mean that since 2016 it should have reviewed it at some point between the 2017 and 2019 general elections.

    The DWP has a get-out clause – the law also states that an early general election cancels the benefit cap review. So, that means that the 2017 and 2019 general elections did this; at the time, the Fixed Term Parliaments Act was still in place. This is why the DWP is saying it doesn’t have to review the benefit cap until December 2024.

    But this isn’t strictly true, either – within the law, the DWP has another option.

    The DWP can review the benefit cap when it wants

    The law states that the DWP boss:

    may, at any other time… [they consider] appropriate, review the sums specified in section 96(5A) to determine whether it is appropriate to increase or decrease any one or more of those sums.

    That is, Coffey could review the benefit cap whenever she wants. Plus, the DWP has also said that any changes following the review would be “subordinate legislation” (secondary legislation). This means the government can just do them quickly without a vote in parliament.

    So, Coffey is literally choosing not to review the benefit cap.

    A cruel DWP policy

    Currently, around 120,000 households are affected by the benefit cap. This includes nearly 300,000 children. As The Canary previously reported, it:

    was keeping around 150,000 children in poverty as of 2020.

    Households hit by the cap lose around £50 a week. The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) says another 35,000 families could be subject to it by April 2023.

    For the DWP to pretend it can only review the cap once per parliament is incompetent at best – and at worst, a lie. Of course, the DWP has form on lying – given it did similar over increasing benefits, incorrectly claiming it couldn’t due to its IT systems.

    Coffey should review the cap right now. But even if she did, the policy would still be cruel to the countless people affected.

    Featured image via the Guardian – YouTube and Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Resigning ministers could get huge payouts in severance money

    Resigning ministers will be in line for massive payouts as part of a parliamentary severance scheme, according to reports. The Times says that up to £423,000 in public money will be paid out. This week saw tens of ministers resign in a successful bid to force Boris Johnson out of office.

    The Times wrote:

    Those leaving the government payroll are entitled to a quarter of their annual ministerial salary.

    Shockingly, this may mean a minister who served for less than two days gets a hefty severance payment:

    This includes Michelle Donelan, who was education secretary for less than 36 hours. Despite appearing to be the shortest-serving secretary of state in history, taking a record that has stood for more than two centuries, she is entitled to nearly £17,000.

    In fact, Johnson can claim the special ex-PM allowance of £115k annually. And this would only be reviewed if he took up another public appointment.

    Sceptical

    General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union, Dave Ward, said:

    Needless to say a Boris-fatigued public were not overjoyed:

    And in the Commons, Labour’s Rupa Huq asked if the ministers in question would accept the cash or choose not to reward failure:

    Given many of those who resigned may be returned to their posts after Johnson has gone, some asked whether they would still get the bonuses:

    The Flat

    And, new details of the infamous Downing Street flat conversion have emerged. A leaked copy of the invoice showed some shocking costs.

    Activist Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu pointed out that there’s no cost of living crisis for the Johnsons:

    Questions are also being raised about whether Boris – who plans to stay on as PM for several months – will have a wedding party at Chequers:

    Chequers is a lavish rural manor in Buckinghamshire and serves as the official country residence of the PM. It cost up to £1m a year and has a heated swimming pool, according to The Mirror, which reported Friday that: 

    Two separate sources told the Mirror that Mr and Mrs Johnson were keen to go ahead with the party, to which they have invited many of their family and friends.

    The BBC reported that after “criticism” the wedding party will be held elsewhere.

    Cost-of-living crisis

    While the country deals with inflation and a cost-of-living crisis, we should recall none of the Tory ministers in question are going to go hungry. Yet, much of the media has concerned itself with court gossip about weddings and coups.

    For those who aren’t highly paid politicians, the current crises have tough implications. And that makes the idea of fat severance packages for the people who caused these implications even more grotesque.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/House of Commons/Jessica Taylor/Stephen Pike cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Woman who took to the streets to remember Sarah Everard gets three years in prison

    Charly May Pitman was sentenced to three years in prison on 7 July for her part in last year’s Kill the Bill demonstration in Bristol. On 21 March 2021, thousands of people took to the streets to resist the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill, and in anger at the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Metropolitan Police officer.

    A large crowd of supporters packed out the courtroom and gathered outside the court to give Charly a send off. People chanted “Charly we’re proud of you, you are not alone” and “our passion for freedom is stronger than your prisons”.

    Charly went to the protest because she had been shocked to hear about the brutal rape and murder of Sarah.

    Nerida Harford-Bell – defending Charly – told the court:

    Sarah Everard was a young woman like Ms Pitman, she was walking the streets and she was attacked.

    She said that Charly went to the protest to remember Sarah:

    she went out to pay her respects – and to protect the right of women to be on the streets.

    Sentenced for “simply standing her ground”

    Charly is one of at least 82 people arrested following a succession of protests against the draconian PCSC Bill. During the protests, police hit people over the head with batons, cracked their shields onto activists’ skulls, and set police dogs on them. 62 people reported sustaining injuries from police violence.

    Bristol Anti Repression Campaign (BARC) commented:

    Charly has been sentenced for simply standing her ground near the front of the crowd, in the face of a police line in full riot gear. The evidence against her amounted to a few kicks towards officers, and throwing a small object. Video played in court by the defence clearly shows that – at the time when Charly fought back – the police were using extreme violence against the crowd, bringing their riot shields up above their heads and thrusting them down at protesters (in a practice known as blading), kicking demonstrators while they were on the floor, and striking people on the head with long batons.

    Harford-Bell asked Judge Lambert to give a suspended sentence. But Lambert said that there was “little room for mercy” as the riot charge left “little room for manoeuvre”.

    BARC pointed out that the jury in Charly’s case didn’t reflect the diversity of Bristol. They said:

    The jury in Charly’s case took just over an hour to come back. They couldn’t have properly discussed the evidence in Charly’s case in that time. The jury was majority white, and middle-aged. On the day of the verdict one jury member came to court in a union jack t-shirt. [BARC] stands with Charly, and with all of those who are in prison or going through the court system.

    Devastating repression

    BARC explained the devastating impact of the riot cases:

    So far, 20 people have been sentenced to prison time for their role in Bristol’s 21st March 2021 uprising against police violence, that began outside Bridewell Police station. Five more people will be sentenced this summer, and at least 20 people are still awaiting trial. Two others have been found not guilty of riot.

    Most of the sentences have been for between three and six years, but Ryan Roberts was given a massive 14 year prison sentence last year. We are full of anger at the government which is enacting laws to take away our freedom, and at the police who use violence to brutalise those who speak out.

    BARC expressed anger against the system that has imprisoned its comrades, and reaffirmed its support for those who fought back:

    We are full of rage at the so called ‘justice’ system that helps to hold this system in place.

    We are also full of inspiration at the spirit of rebellion that poured out onto the streets outside Bridewell. We are proud of the rebels of 21st March, we will not forget our comrades who are in prison. Their resistance, and the draconian sentences they are facing, are already inspiring a new generation of people in Bristol to fight.

    The PCSC Act is only the tip of the iceberg

    BARC says that the only way to resist the government’s new legislation is to build up our communities’ capacity to defend ourselves:

    The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act is now law, despite massive public opposition. The government is now enacting new repressive measures, such as the Public Order Bill and the Nationality & Borders Act. These pieces of legislation are a massive assault on all of us, and we must resist them by making ourselves ungovernable. We will do this by building up our communities capabilities to support one another, to defend ourselves, and to fight back.

    The group pointed out that this state legislation is applied unequally, and it disproportionately affects marginalised communities:

    The mainstream media has focused on how the new powers in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act will affect demonstrators. But we know that the police and the ‘justice’ system use their violence disproportionately against working class people and people of colour. This unequal treatment can be clearly seen in the death of Oladeji Omishore, a Black man who drowned in June 2022 whilst trying to escape the violence of the Metropolitan Police.

    The Act also aims to destroy Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) communities’ nomadic lifestyle, and it’s up to us to stand with them as they face the oppression of the state.

    BARC concluded their statement with a message of solidarity for the Kill the Bill defendants, and an invitation to others experiencing state repression to join together in struggle:

    BARC stands with all of the communities experiencing the violence of the police and the court system. We feel absolute love and rage for Charly. We stand with each and every one of the defendants who stood up for us all last year. We hope that we can connect with others who are struggling right now, to support each other, and to fight.

    People in Bristol are trying to raise £60k to support those in prison. You can donate to their crowdfunder here.

    Featured image by Eliza Egret

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The DWP is now targeting unemployed over-50s

    The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has snuck out new funding for social security claimants. It’s also changing part of what the department expects of people over the age of 50. Some of this could include sanctioning claimants if they don’t comply. But, the move is little more than a knee-jerk response to a labour market crisis. The whole thing is likely a mess in the making, partly thanks to the DWP.

    DWP: ‘supporting’ older people via sanctions

    On Monday 4 July the DWP announced it was ‘investing’ £22m to ‘tackle unemployment’ among the over-50s. It said it was spending this on:

    • “More one-to-one support at jobcentres”.
    • Dedicated “50PLUS Champions” to “work with local employers to help them realise how their recruitment could benefit from the talent of older workers”.
    • “Mid-life MOTs… targeting those thinking about retirement… to take stock of their skills and finances, and consider taking jobs that could boost their incomes”.

    It’s important to note that the 50PLUS Champions (formerly called “Older Claimant Champions” and Mid-life MOTs are not new. These were policies the DWP brought in in 2017 and 2019 respectively.

    The DWP is also pushing its Restart Scheme as part of this package. This is where the DWP is contracting private and third sector providers to give 12-month employment support packages for some claimants. But as the Guardian reported, so far it has been an abject failure. 93% of people on the scheme have failed to find work. Yet within this, the DWP is allowed to sanction claimants for non-compliance with the scheme. It would also be able to do this for the over-50s who will receive its increased “one-to-one support at jobcentres”.

    A “huge asset”

    Despite this, employment minister Mims Davis said of the plan for the over-50s:

    Older workers are a huge asset to this country, and there are currently more than 400,000 over 50s in roles than before the pandemic.

    We’re increasing funding and support at every step of their journey up the career ladder, to ensure everyone gets the support they need to get into work, progress and use their experience to boost their earnings and plan for a better future. Helping people find the security of a stable income, through a job they can take pride in, is also one of the best ways for people to support their families during these challenging times.

    Of course, the reality is that the DWP’s new plan is less about supporting people and more about a crisis in the UK labour market.

    A labour market crisis for the government

    Economic inactivity is where a person is neither in work or looking for a job. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found, the rate of this among 50-69-year-olds increased during the pandemic. It also noted that:

    43% of the overall rise in economic inactivity in the UK population since the pandemic began has been driven by changes among 50- to 69-year-olds.

    So, more older people are retired or not working. Also, employment rates are still lower than before the pandemic. So, the government faces a problem – because less people in work means less disposable income and less tax revenue.

    Then, there is the issue of young people’s employment. As a parliament research paper noted, youth unemployment is at its lowest level for decades. But;

    it is worth noting that the total population aged 16-24 increased slightly in the year to February-April 2022, but overall it has been declining in recent years.

    So at one end of the scale you have less young people to work. And at the other end you have more older people not wanting to work. But what of the future?

    Falling birth rates/failing capitalism

    The government is also facing a future working population problem. In 2020, birth rates fell to their lowest level since before WWII. This is a decline that has been ongoing since 2013. But as The Canary reported, the drop isn’t balanced. Between 2013 and 2016, birth rates for the richest people actually increased – while they fell for the poorest people.

    Then, between 2017 and 2019 birth rates across all social grades fell. But the biggest declines were for the poorest people. As The Canary reported, this was coupled with an increase in abortions for the poorest people – most notably those with two or more children. It is possible that all this is directly linked to the DWP’s own two-child limit policy on social security payments.

    The point being overall that the UK is currently an aging population – with the DWP potentially making it worse via its own policies. This in turn is leading to a crisis for capitalism. As Aaron Bastani wrote for Novara Media:

    Capitalism, a system based on permanent growth and profit, can’t sit alongside societies increasingly marked by demographic ageing. Necessary returns on investment require decent-sized working age populations and a ceiling on ‘dependents’.

    DWP: work until you drop

    So, the DWP’s response to this is to try and push more older people into work. Not only is this amoral – given many of these people may be chronically ill, disabled, or thinking they’d be retiring in their 60s – but it’s also a sticking plaster on a broken leg.

    Instead of forcing more people into work to try and plug a systemic leak, politicians should be looking at the way we all work to adapt to our changing population – for example, a four-day working week and a real living wage. But instead, the DWP (whose policies may lead to an even greater crisis in the future) is crudely trying to fix this. As always, it’s the poorest people who will be hit the hardest, due to capitalism’s failings.

    Featured image via The Canary and Wikimedia 

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Johnson’s Downfall Presents Rare Opportunity for Massive Political Reset in UK

    As I began writing this column from London late Wednesday night, Boris Johnson was still the U.K. prime minister. By 9:15 Thursday morning local time, after an extraordinary 36 hours in which dozens of his ministers and Conservative Party officials had resigned, he’d bowed to the inevitable and announced that he would resign, though he tried to fudge the issue by announcing he would remain in power until the autumn. More likely, however, is that he’ll be forced out of office by his own party within days. It is a hard landing for a man who has flown so high for so long.

    Johnson’s demise presents a rare opportunity for a political reset in Britain; for a rejection of the demagoguery, the scapegoating, the corruption and ultimately the sheer ineptitude of his years in office; and for new, less deliberately conflictual thinking on post-Brexit Britain’s relationship to the European Union. It will also remove from the Westminster scene a man who has used his manifest skills to such malign effect over the past decade, building up coalitions, both in Parliament and amongst the electorate at large, based largely around a slew of resentments and misrepresentations of reality.

    Johnson, like Donald Trump, has been a wrecking ball of institutions and of political norms for years now. Having made his name as a sensationalist contrarian journalist and commentator, he went on to become mayor of London. As a mayor, he defied easy political stereotypes. He was conservative, yet he claimed to be an environmentalist and loved being seen riding around on his bike. He was an unabashed nostalgist for empire and traditionalism, yet at the same time supported LGBTQ rights and abortion rights. Throughout his tenure he built his national profile, and, when he entered Parliament, he swiftly rose up the ranks of the Conservative Party and into the cabinet.

    Always nakedly ambitious, Johnson saw a road to power during the Brexit years by opportunistically siding with the Brexiteers, and then sabotaging Theresa May’s government and her leadership by positioning himself as a hard-liner willing to go to (at least rhetorical) war with Europe in order to “get Brexit done.” It worked; in the summer of 2019, he orchestrated a palace coup against May, then, as the party’s new leader, called a snap general election, which the Conservatives, running on populist, nativist themes, won in a landslide.

    Throughout, however, even as his career thrived, he bounced from one scandal to another to another.

    Again, like Trump, Johnson long defied political gravity, essentially bulldozing his way through the opposition and practicing a take-no-prisoners kind of politics that knocked down institutions deemed to stand in the way of his political and personal vision, as well as individuals who didn’t tow the Johnson line enough.

    In June, after months of scandals surrounding lockdown-era booze-filled parties at 10 Downing Street, stories of influence peddling and concomitant declines in the popularity of Johnson as an individual and of the party that he leads, the prime minister survived an internal Conservative Party no-confidence vote in his leadership, organized through the arcane party governing organization known as the 1922 Committee. But he came out of the vote politically mauled, with more than 40 percent of his own MPs having voted against him. Where most political leaders, faced with an internal rebellion of such a magnitude would have either resigned, or at the very least publicly eaten humble pie, Johnson relentlessly ploughed on, declaring his narrow victory to be definitive, and vowing to implement his “mandate” over the coming years.

    This week, however, Johnson’s high-wire act finally came crashing down. The scandal that did him in involves an MP, Chris Pincher, who has a slew of allegations surrounding him regarding the drunken groping of fellow male parliamentarians and others at various Conservative Party functions. Despite knowing of the allegations, Johnson promoted Pincher to deputy chief whip; then, when the allegations became publicly known, he denied he had been aware of them, and corralled his fellow cabinet members to defend him [Johnson]. When it became clear that he was lying to the public, to Parliament and to his own colleagues in the cabinet, Johnson’s already fragile support quickly began to evaporate.

    Over an extraordinary 24-hour period, from Tuesday night through Wednesday evening, nearly 40 ministers, including Johnson’s chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and his health secretary (and former chancellor), Sajid Javid, resigned. By breakfast time on Thursday, another 14 had called it a day.

    Wednesday afternoon, in what must count as one of the most brutal Parliamentary Question Times in U.K. history, Johnson was subjected to hours of unrelenting questions, many of them from members of his own party. Time and again, MPs called on him to resign, and time and again he refused, shouting at, berating, insulting his colleagues and promising — perhaps more to himself than to anyone else — that he would finish the job he had been elected to do. It was a stunningly truculent, albeit entertaining, performance. As he dug in, the questions got angrier. “Was there any circumstance that he could imagine in which he would resign?” one of his Conservative colleagues angrily asked. Johnson, almost visibly wincing, sidestepped the query.

    After Question Time ended, Javid, his longtime friend and colleague, dug in the knife, making a deeply personal appeal to integrity and honor and public service in explaining to the House of Commons why he felt he could no longer stay in Johnson’s cabinet, and publicly appealing to others of good conscience in the cabinet to force Johnson’s hand by resigning en masse.

    Throughout that afternoon and evening, and into Thursday morning, the machinations, the plotting and the counter-plotting continued. Every few minutes, the bottom of the BBC’s television news feed updated the numbers of ministers who had resigned; the number of backbench MPs who were saying they no longer had confidence in Johnson’s leadership; the number of senior cabinet ministers — including his newly appointed chancellor, and his home secretary — who were either publicly or privately telling Johnson he had no choice but to resign.

    And still the resignation didn’t come. Instead, Johnson dug in. Over the phone, he fired Michael Gove, one of his top cabinet ministers and an erstwhile loyalist who late Wednesday afternoon had told the prime minister it was time for him to go; Gove was, “Downing Street sources” told the media, a “snake.” The beleaguered prime minister announced once again that he had a mandate and wouldn’t let himself be removed from office, even as, practically by the minute, more of his erstwhile colleagues resigned.

    Johnson may not literally have grabbed the steering wheel of his Secret Service-driven car, as Trump reportedly did on January 6; he may not have literally cried out, “I’m the fucking prime minister,” in the way that Trump shrieked, “I’m the fucking president” while trying to convince his driver to drive him to the Capitol where his mob was attempting to stop the peaceful transition of power and lynch Vice President Mike Pence. But for all intents and purposes, Johnson’s undignified actions and his refusal to accept that the political jig was up, were similar. This is a man who thinks that he is the sun around which the world revolves. And, even though his power derives from the parliamentary system, and, in particular, from the Conservative MPs who make up his parliamentary majority, he seemed to have decided that, come hell or high water, he wouldn’t leave office simply because he no longer had majority support even within his own party.

    By early Thursday morning, his stubborn clinging to power had become a constitutional crisis. And by the start of the business day, it had become entirely untenable. So many ministers were resigning around him that he no longer had a functional government to preside over. Eventually, begrudgingly, Johnson bowed to the inevitable and announced that he would be leaving Downing Street.

    From Tuesday to Thursday morning, Johnson was, politically speaking, a dead man walking. Now the corpse has finally stopped walking. It’s an extraordinary moment in U.K. politics.

    Will this tale of corruption and malfeasance yield a new era for the U.K.? Does the widespread condemnation of Johnson’s ways open the door for a wildly different — even opposite — set of political priorities? Possibly, but only up to a point. The unique confluence of corruption, demagoguery and charisma that Johnson channeled will no longer hold such sway; but the damage done by his opportunistic methods of governance, the chaos unleashed by a hard Brexit, and the distrust that he promoted of democratic institutions and customs, will likely scar the British political landscape for years to come.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Tories falling apart is all very fun, but they’re still monsters

    Bloodthirsty, hate-filled creatures are unfurling across the land, bent on wanton destruction. No, it’s not the Stranger Things finale. The Tories have deposed their party leader, prime minister Boris Johnson, reminding us that while they hate workers, refugees, women, disabled people and more besides, they also despise each other. Tories, we are reminded, care about one thing: power.

    Those who don’t know better might fall into the old trap: the belief that those who resigned in the run-up to Johnson’s own resignation were acting morally. Some folks on Twitter have applauded this so-called ‘morality’. That’s not really the truth, though. For example, Sajid Javid – one of the first to resign – spent a lot of time talking about integrity, despite evidence that suggests he is a stranger to the idea:

    As another Twitter commenter pointed out, the sudden attack of Tory conscience rather ignores the entirety of Johnson’s time as PM:

    Integrity?

    A bit rich, some said, for Nadhim Zahawi – who took up the chancellor post vacated by Rishi Sunak only to immediately turn on Johnson too – to hold forth on morality:

    Who’s next?

    It must also be said that celebrating Johnson’s political demise is a little rash. Naturally, for some prominent centrists this new round of Tory bloodletting seems to be little more than a game:

    But for anyone with their heads screwed on, there are no good options in terms of Johnson’s replacement. And that is one of the hottest topics now. There are reports that a leadership contest will begin in the coming weeks.

    Naturally, right-wing hacks are already framing the run-off as if it’s a Love Island vote with language like “Team Rishi”.

    It’s actually a bid to find the self-absorbed scumbag who is most palatable to a political party of millionaires, billionaires, and other elites.

    A YouGov poll has Ben Wallace, defence secretary and former army officer, as a favourite. Other names include hardcore Tories like the gaffe-prone Liz Truss, former banker Sajid Javid, and culture warrior Michael Gove:

    Boris Gone-son

    Nobody should shed a tear for the end of Johnson’s premiership. Except possibly his most ardent fan, Nadine Dorries:

    The fact remains that there are plenty more where he came from, and the next Tory leader is unlikely to do anything to resolve any of the issues this country faces. So while all this might be a fun parlour game for well-off centrists and bloodthirsty Tories, it has serious implications for the most vulnerable people in our society.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/No 10 Downing Street, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under Open Government Licence. 

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The Met is in special measures. But more failings are coming to light

    On 28 June, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) placed London’s Metropolitan Police in ‘special measures‘ following a series of scandalous failures.

    Since then, even more police failings have come to light. Public trust in the force is at an all-time low – and with good reason. Now is the time to reconsider the role of the police in our society, and develop new ways of dealing with social issues.

    Special measures comes as no surprise

    Following an HMIC inspection, the watchdog placed the Met – the UK’s largest police force – in special measures. This means that the force is failing to meet the acceptable standards required of a public service.

    According to the Guardian, the unpublished report cites 14 recent “significant failings” in addition to a series of scandals. This comes as no surprise, following several years of disgraceful, immoral, and illegal conduct from Met police officers.

    In March 2021, we saw the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving police officer Wayne Couzens, followed by violent policing of her vigil. This horrific case shone a light on the institutionalised misogyny at large within the force.

    Institutionalised misogynoir – ingrained prejudice against Black women and girls – came to the fore when Met police officers shared selfies with the dead bodies of murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman. This foul treatment came after a bungled investigation in which the sisters’ family was left to discover the remains of their loved ones.

    Meanwhile, stories of the Met’s shameful strip searches of children such as Child Q and Olivia highlight the harm and violence that officers routinely inflict on children and young people. In particular, cases such as these raised concerns about the adultification of Black children.

    Reflecting the force’s institutional homophobia, the 2021 inquests into the murders of four young gay and bisexual men by Stephen Port identified several “missed opportunities” to prevent these deaths.

    And in 2022, a barrage of racist, misogynistic, and homophobic messages shared by officers at Charing Cross police station came to light.

    Tip of the iceberg

    These ghastly cases are just the tip of the iceberg. Since HMIC placed the Met in special measures, further serious failings have come to light.
    On 5 July, the public inquiry into the death of Jermaine Baker concluded that a Met police officer “lawfully killed” the unarmed man. The fact that a police officer can legally shoot and kill an unarmed man at close range shows just how woefully low the bar is for policing standards. And yet the force has failed to meet them. 
    In spite of this disappointing conclusion, the Baker inquiry noted a barrage of damning failures that took place from the outset and throughout the police operation.
    Baker is one of at least 1,823 people who have died in police custody or following police contact in England and Wales since 1990. Black and racially minoritised people are overrepresented in these heartbreaking figures.
    On 6 July, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) revealed the force’s “unacceptable” handling of 19-year-old Richard Okorogheye’s disappearance. This was one of a number of clumsily and incompetently handled recent missing people cases.

    On 29 June, footage emerged revealing that Met police officers lied about the “fighting stance” of a Black social worker they tasered. That same day, the Good Law Project issued legal proceedings against the force over its Partygate investigation. And on 30 June, the College of Policing published a report revealing that officers accused of domestic abuse are escaping accountability and still on duty in law enforcement. The list goes on.

    Defund the police, refund our communities

    According to the Met itself, the force’s purpose is to “to serve and protect the people of London by providing a professional police service”. We don’t need any further evidence that the police do quite the opposite.

    It’s undeniable that the Met is institutionally corrupt, racist, misogynistic, and violent. HMIC’s findings present an opportunity to reconsider the role of police in our society, and to move towards systems and strategies that actually work to make the world a safer place.

    This begins with investment in and the empowerment of communities, not the police. We need strategies that actively prevent harm from occurring, and foster accountability when it does.

    We can get the ball rolling by intervening in every police interaction we come across. In order to reduce the detrimental impact of the police, we must all learn how to intervene in police stops. The next step is joining a local copwatching group. The police can’t keep us or our communities safe. We can.

    Featured image via Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona/Unsplash resized 770 x 403px 

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Mona Seif’s letter: a cry for help for Alaa

    On 7 July 2022, Egyptian Human Rights Defender Mona Seif [https://www.martinennalsaward.org/hrd/mona-seif/] wrote the following letter asking for your help:

    Dear Friends, colleagues and human rights defenders 

    As I write this, I am on day 25 of my hunger strike, and Alaa, my brother, is on day 96 of his.

    Alaa is a British-Egyptian prisoner of conscience and pro-democracy activist imprisoned in Egypt for most of the past decade.I decided to go on this hunger strike right after I last saw my brother in prison, on June 12th. He has lost a lot of weight, there was a very frail air about him, his hands looked thin and so pale that I could see the blue veins, and he was livid with anger. He kept on telling me to get over the notion that he can be rescued, he will never make it out of prison. “Focus on making the political price of my death the highest possible”, he said. It was an incredibly intense visit. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/12/21/alaa-abdel-fattah-and-two-others-receive-heavy-prison-sentences-in-egypt/]

    I stepped out of prison and decided I will join his hunger strike. I was frustrated with how all officials seemed to take his strike lightly. The Egyptian government was blatantly denying his hunger strike on national TV  and all official meetings, while making sure no one sees Alaa but his family, so they blocked his lawyer from visiting, the national council for human rights from seeing him, and they have been blocking his British consular visit for months. On the other hand the British officials while sharing their genuine concern with us as a family in meetings, in their public official communication seemed to tip toe around Alaa’s hunger strike and how critical his situation is. 

    Things have changed over the course of the past weeks. 

    On June 21st the British Foreign Secretary confirmed to parliament that she is “working very hard to secure his release.” On July 4th a letter written by MP David Lammy, my MP and shadow foreign minister to the foreign secretary Liz Truss stressing on the importance of her intervention for Alaa’s release and highlighting his hunger strike. Another letter signed by 35 MPs and Lords was sent to the Egyptian minister for foreign affairs, Sameh Shoukry, on the same day.

    And finally Sameh Shoukry arrived in London this week and my brother’s case was brought up during the bilateral meetings he attended, we are still waiting for an update about these meetings and if any agreement has been reached between both governments with regards to Alaa.

    Accordingly I have decided to put an end to my strike, mostly because I feel I am growing too weak and tired to carry out my most important role right now: advocating for my brother’s life and freedom. But Alaa, being a prisoner, has no way of voicing out his frustration and anger at the continued injustice he is trapped in, except through his body, and depriving himself of the comfort of food. So he continues with his hunger strike, and next Sunday will be his 100th day!

    Things seem to be moving but it worries us that the pace is very slow given how critical and life-threatening Alaa’s situation is.

    So I am writing asking for your help, and asking you to believe that no help is too little. Every small action at this point really helps in building more awareness, sympathy and pressure to help us save my brother and with him the possibility of any happy future for my family. I will share some suggestions but please feel free to reach out, or organize any kind of action you think might help.

    – Write to the Egyptian ambassador in your respective countries, address the urgency of Alaa’s case and situation.

    – Write to your parliament representatives asking them to write to their counterparts in the UK and Egypt discussing Alaa’s case. If they could also issue any solidarity public statements it’d help immensely. Only today the German MP Tobias B. Bacherle published this statement in solidarity

    – With the coming UN Climate conference #COP27 taking place in Egypt this year, all participating governments can influence and help in improving the human rights situation in Egypt prior to their attendance. So accordingly you have a chance to write to your government’s representatives who might be taking part in it and urge them to raise Alaa’s case with their Egyptian counterparts, and stress on how devastating it’d be if they allowed a British/Egyptian activist to die in prison after years of unjust detention. – Statements of solidarity by Human Rights defenders and organizations, and any solidarity vigils are always welcome

    Feel free to share this email with anyone you think could help. For more resources and info regarding Alaa : check https://freealaa.net/, and on twitter @FreedomForAlaa

    I urge you to carry my brother’s case as yours and help me in every possible way. I am exhausted and scared we’d lose him, but I also think this is the first time in years his release seems like an actual possibility not just a dream.

    Much love Mona Seif #FreeAlaa,

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Thailand paves way for countries like the UK to limit disastrous bottom trawling

    This story was produced as part of the 2022 UN Ocean Conference Fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch).

    Thailand announced a moratorium on new licences for vessels that engage in one of the most destructive fishing practices on 1 July. The country revealed that it will permanently ban new licences for bottom trawlers at an event at the UN Ocean Conference.

    Bottom trawling amounts for 26% of all marine fishing around the world, according to a 2021 report by Fauna & Flora International and others. It is widely recognised as being disastrous for wildlife and many small-scale fishers.

    Nonetheless, as marine conservation organisation Blue Ventures‘ head of advocacy Annie Tourette told The Canary at the conference, Thailand’s move isn’t common on the world stage presently. She asserted that it is:

    not something we are seeing in many other countries, including in the EU and the UK.

    Tourette said it would be welcome if other countries followed Thailand’s lead. The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), however, declined to comment on whether it would do so.

    Damaging on many levels

    Bottom trawling is characterised by the use of fishing gear that maintains contact with the ocean floor. It typically involves dragging large weighted nets across the seabed. Some trawling, namely pelagic trawling, consists of towing nets through the water without such seabed contact.

    Bottom trawling is problematic on multiple levels. It can lead to the over-exploitation of the target species, catch many other species unintentionally, and ruin habitats for sealife. Among other issues, it may also contribute to the climate crisis by disturbing carbon stored in the seabed.

    As Alhafiz Atsari – head of international relations for the Indonesian Traditional Fisherfolks Union (KNTI) – has said, the practice is generally problematic for people who rely on small-scale fishing too. Atsari explained that in Indonesia:

    Small-scale fishers are forced to compete with industrial giants in our own waters. The giants are fishing vessels using destructive fishing gear, such as bottom trawlers. They take up so much space, are greedy and reckless, and can destroy everything in the ocean.

    Exclusions and priority access

    Thailand’s director-general of the Department of Fisheries, Chalermchai Suwannarak, announced the moratorium at a conference event that officials from Belize and Madagascar also attended. According to the Transform Bottom Trawling Coalition (TBTC), which Blue Ventures is a part of, the discussion centred around excluding industrial fishing from coastal areas. TBTC said that such exclusions, along with measures that provide preferential access to coastal communities, can help to restore ecosystems and fish communities (often referred to as stocks). They can also assist in securing livelihoods and food for local people.

    Madagascar and Belize have brought in policies to exclude industrial fishing and offer preferential access to small-scale fishers, respectively, in certain areas. Thailand, meanwhile, introduced a Fisheries Act in 2015. Along with other provisions, such as measures to tackle Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, the act restricted the access of industrial vessels to an inshore zone.

    Thai phase-out

    Reports by TBTC member the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) ahead of Thailand’s Fisheries Act illustrated why it was essential. As the organisation wrote in 2015, the country’s heavily industrialised fleet, widespread destructive practices, and the “international demand for cheap seafood” had seen severe environmental degradation in the major sealife trader’s waters.

    As part of its reforms, Thailand froze new licences on industrial vessels from 2016. Its announcement on the moratorium essentially makes this freeze permanent for bottom trawlers, Blue Ventures said. At the event, Suwannarak highlighted that the government is also implementing schemes to buy back and force the decommissioning of fishing vessels in order to reduce the fishing capacity of the domestic fleet.

    In response to the moratorium announcement, EJF’s CEO Steve Trent commented:

    [Thailand is] setting a bold example that should be applauded and followed throughout the region and internationally.

    Bottom trawler heaven

    The UK, where fisheries policy is in large part the responsibility of its devolved governments, is a country that needs to follow Thailand’s example. Marine conservation organisation Oceana released an audit in early 2021 that showed 6 out of 10 fish communities, meaning populations of species, were over-exploited or in a critical state in the UK. Oceana called on the government to prioritise sustainability in its fishing policies and set “catch limits in line with science”. Conservative MPs roundly rejected this notion in 2020, voting against an amendment to the Fisheries Bill – a precursor to a new Fisheries Act – that would have aligned fishing quotas with scientific advice.

    Our country is also awash with bottom trawlers. A TBTC report in 2021 asserted that they are responsible for at least half of the UK’s total catches. As the Guardian reported in May, bottom trawling or dredging took place in over 90% of its marine protected areas (MPAs) in 2021, which are meant to provide better protections for marine species. Some changes are on the horizon, however. These include an upcoming ban on trawling and dredging in four MPAs, and promises of higher protections in areas of Scotland and potentially England.

    Moreover, as the University of Aveiro’s Cristina Pita told The Canary, the definition used by the UK for small-scale fisheries (SSF) includes vessels capable of trawling. Pita, who is also a principle researcher with the International Institute for Environment and Development, said that a vessel “must be under 10 metres in length and operating in inshore waters” to be considered small-scale in the UK. But she explained that:

    some vessels under 10 metres use towed gear, meaning small trawlers can operate in inshore waters. The ingenuity of small boat builders in designing so-called ‘super under 10s’ allows some of these vessels to have catching and storage capacity, even for pots, well in excess of what is expected of SSF.

    Many (nautical) miles apart

    The Canary contacted DEFRA to ask if Thailand’s example is one it is considering following. It declined to comment, instead pointing to the announcements it made during the conference. These include confirming where it would direct funds from an existing commitment made in 2021, namely the Blue Planet Fund. DEFRA revealed that it will invest £154m and £100m from this fund in the restoration of coastal habitats and marine protection, respectively, in developing countries. The Blue Planet Fund is derived from the overseas aid budget.

    The government also joined the US and Canada in launching the IUU Fishing Action Alliance. The alliance has pledged to tackle IUU fishing through the implementation of existing international agreements, effective monitoring, and data transparency.

    However, pointed commitments to reduce bottom trawling in the UK’s own waters were missing from these announcements. Scotland has also taken insufficient action so far. A campaign called Our Seas is calling on the devolved government to introduce similar measures to Thailand, Belize, and Madagascar.

    If the UK is serious about protecting the marine environment, as it claims, it must reduce the destructive fishing practices happening in its waters. Thailand’s example offers a blueprint for how to do so, if only our country would follow its lead.

    Featured image via Oceana Europe / YouTube

    By Tracy Keeling

  • The Lost Art of Looking at Nature

    While David Attenborough’s work rarely gives center stage to climate change, his project has always been to shift how humans relate to nature.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Diane Abbott receives abuse for referring to rumours of the PM ‘assaulting women’

    On Sunday 3 July, Diane Abbott told a BBC radio programme that Boris Johnson is:

    rumoured to be one who likes assaulting women.

    Corporate media, of course, didn’t like this at all. The London Economic called the claim “extraordinary“, and the Daily Express called it a “horrific attack..” Is it though? Let’s take a look at Johnson’s documented treatment of women to see what we can find.

    Chequered past

    In 2019, journalist Charlotte Edwardes claimed that Johnson groped her thigh, and that of another woman seated at their table. As Business Insider wrote, Johnson was Edwardes’ boss when the incident took place. Unfortunately – and unsurprisingly – Edwardes was derided at the time. The Guardian reported that “insiders” called the claim “bollocks.”

    However, Edwardes’ disclosure also led to comedian Shappi Khorsandi saying that Johnson squeezed her hand under the table on BBC Question Time after knowing her for “for roughly 20 seconds“. Khorsandi said:

    It was not assault, and I’m not saying it was a sexual advance. But it was a gesture by a man who is not used to giving women the same respect he grants to a man. He would not, for example, have held Nish Kumar’s hand when he was on Question Time. And in my experience, if a man is that comfortable holding the hand of a woman he doesn’t know, then I believe the other woman who says he grabbed her leg at a party.

    Johnson has also had a number of allegations of misconduct against him. Businessperson Jennifer Arcuri has admitted to having a four-year affair with the now-prime minister. Investigations are ongoing as to whether Johnson abused his position as London mayor in order to benefit Arcuri.

    Look away now

    But wait, there’s more. A few days ago, the New York Times (NYT) ran a story about how the Times had published and then removed an article. According to the NYT, the original article was about Johnson and his then-staffer Carrie Symonds (now his wife):

    The article reported that Prime Minister Boris Johnson, when he was the foreign secretary in 2018, proposed appointing his mistress at the time, Carrie Symonds, as his chief of staff, with a salary of 100,000 pounds ($122,000). Ms. Symonds married Mr. Johnson in 2021, but in 2018, he was still married to his previous wife, Marina.

    Private Eye picked up a lot more than this, though. One social media user shared a screenshot with more details:

    Does all of this add up to a picture of Johnson as somebody who respects women? Or does it sound like someone who sees no problem with using women, and who will abuse his position for power?

    Culture of misogyny

    Many will be familiar with other examples of Johnson’s misogyny. When he said Muslim women wearing niqab looked like “letterboxes”, incidents of Islamophobia rose by 375%. He had to apologise for calling Emily Thornberry “Lady Nugee” in reference to her husband. And Johnson has also claimed that “voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts.”

    Surely, all this would mean that everyone just took Diane Abbott’s comments as fairly reserved, given the context? After all, Johnson’s actions and words speak for themselves. Well, no. We’re not going to bother repeating them here, but instead social media users bombarded Diane Abbott with sexist and racist comments.

    In fact, Abbott has received more abuse than any other MP. Research from Amnesty International showed that almost half of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs during the 2017 election were sent to Abbott. She’s also spoken about getting death and rape threats every day. Yet media hacks and people on social media are more ready to have a go at Abbott for drinking a mixed drink on a train than for anything so mundane as holding Johnson to account:

    Abbott is a dark-skinned Black woman who was the first Black woman ever elected to the House of Commons. She was the first Black Labour leadership candidate. She was the first Black Shadow Home Secretary. And she was the first Black woman to represent her party from the dispatch box during Prime Minister’s Questions.

    Abbott gets more hate and abuse than any other MP because of racism and sexism. Specifically, because of misogynoir. She’s broken barriers for many, and is experienced enough that if she has something to say about Boris Johnson, we would all do well to listen to her.

    Featured image via screenshot YouTube/BBC News

    By Maryam Jameela

  • New bill of ‘rights’ is the Tories’ latest attempt to criminalise dissent

    As The Canary previously reported, justice minister Dominic Raab has introduced a British Bill of Rights (BBR) to replace the Human Rights Act (HRA). The wide-ranging bill will affect deportations, protests, access to justice regarding human rights breaches from overseas military/peacekeeping operations, and much more.

    But the cross-party Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) has identified a number of procedural and other flaws in the bill. The committee has also made it clear that Raab neglected to fulfil the requirement to seek the early consent for the bill by the devolved nations’ legislative bodies.

    Ignoring concerns

    The JCHR has written a letter to Raab accusing him of not addressing a number of concerns about the bill raised by parliamentary committees. The letter says:

    The Government’s Bill of Rights does not reflect what the Government has heard from Parliament’s committees, from its own independent review, nor from its consultation exercise.

    Those committees include the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Justice Select Committee, and the House of Lords Constitution Committee. According to the JCHR, this “calls into question the integrity of the whole consultation process”.

    Provisions affect us all

    The JCHR adds: “Our view is that the Bill would lead to an unfortunate regression in rights protection”. Indeed, the bill affects us all.

    In regard to the European Convention on Human Rights [the Convention], the JCHR says:

    The Bill [of Rights] will repeal section 3 HRA, which requires legislation to be read compatibly with Convention rights so far as it is possible to do so.

    Basically, that would mean the role of the Convention and its articles is weakened in the UK context.

    The JCHR further claims that the repealing of section 3 of the HRA has:

    the potential to affect millions of people in the UK: those in hospitals, in care settings, those dealing with local authorities, in education, in  detention settings or in social matters. Indeed, it will impact upon anyone who deals with public bodies and will likely disproportionately impact those who are the most vulnerable in society.

    UK chief executive of Amnesty International Sacha Deshmukh puts it bluntly:

    Ignore the name of this new legislation. It is a rights removal bill, and it will leave us all the poorer.

    Deportations made easier

    The BBR also makes deportations easier. Specifically, the JCHR says that:

    Clause 20 changes the test for compliance with Article 6 ECHR (right to a fair trial) in a deportation case from “flagrant denial of justice” to “nullification” of the right.

    In other words, the argument that someone should not be deported (or extradited) because they may not receive a fair trial elsewhere would no longer be valid.

    To take one example, currently WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seeking to appeal extradition to the US. It’s possible his appeal would argue that he should not be extradited to the US because he wouldn’t get a fair trial there. If that appeal is heard after the BBR is enacted, it could affect his rights under the Convention’s Article 6.

    UK armed forces above the law

    Furthermore, the JCHR comments on how:

    Clause 14 introduces a total ban on access to justice in respect of human rights breaches arising from overseas military/peacekeeping operations. This would impact on the ability of members of the Armed Forces, their family members, and innocent civilians to seek justice and accountability for human rights violations.

    The Overseas Operations Act also intends to stop investigations into alleged crimes by UK troops. When combined with the BBR, it indicates a downward spiral.

    Back in August 2020, The Canary reported on claims that UK authorities had covered up hundreds of war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. A BBC article revealed evidence of what two former officers described as a “deliberate policy” to kill unarmed civilians.

    But the Overseas Operations Act and the provisions in the BBR will make it difficult, if not impossible, to seek justice for human rights breaches committed elsewhere by UK armed forces.

    More curbs on protests

    Further, the BBR wants to replace “freedom of expression” with “freedom of speech”. The JCHR argues that:

    the commitment to a more restrictive “freedom of speech” rather than to “freedom of expression” appears to be an attempt to deliberately minimise elements of the right protected under Article 10 ECHR – most obviously the right to protest.

    This change in emphasis is important, as it equates to a restriction on protests. That restriction is complemented by more restrictions on protests via the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the Public Order Bill.

    Yet Raab has criticised restrictions on protests elsewhere in the world, such as Belarus and Myanmar, without any regard for the abject hypocrisy of his position.

    Consent of devolved nations required

    Moreover, on procedural matters, the JCHR refers to the Sewel convention and points out that:

    there are two limbs to the Sewel convention which provides that the UK parliament will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly and the Welsh Senedd.

    In this respect, and based on advice from legal experts, the JCHR adds:

    The Government should not proceed [with the bill] without the consent of the devolved legislatures.

    While the Sewel convention is not legally binding, the UK government is expected:

    to consult with the devolved administrations early in the process, to ensure that devolved views are taken into account.

    So once the BBR had been introduced in parliament, the legislatures in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast would need to publish a memorandum of consent. Prior to the final amendment stage, the devolved legislatures would then grant or withhold their consent of the bill in part or whole.

    But by ignoring that convention, Raab has signalled his contempt for the devolved nations.

    Criminalising dissent

    It’s apparent from the letter that the Westminster government has not followed the Sewel convention, despite the likely fallout. There are also many other concerns that appear to render the bill unworkable.

    The JCHR makes it clear that, in its view, the BBR is not fit for purpose, saying:

    we believe the Government has failed to make the case for repealing and replacing the HRA with a Bill of Rights in the form proposed.

    However, the government has a tendency to ignore such criticisms, even if they might be as damning as they are in this case.

    Moreover, the bombardment of recent legislation aimed at massively restricting our rights appears relentless, with the overall aim of criminalising dissent.

    Featured image via YouTube

    By Tom Coburg

  • Troop cuts and spending hikes: a big week for the war pigs

    Troop cuts, defence budget hikes, billions in military aid and the spectre of war with China. It’s been a busy week for warmongers and war profiteers. British foreign secretary Liz Truss addressed the NATO summit in Madrid to lay out the Tory’s foreign policy vision.

    High on the agenda was threatening China. In an interview with Times Radio she said the “free world” had to ensure Taiwan could defend itself:

    This is a thing that we’re discussing with our allies.

    Lessons of Ukraine

    In a keynote speech during the conference, she warned that a miscalculation from China could lead to disaster:

    I do think that with China extending its influence through economic coercion and building a capable military, there is a real risk that they draw the wrong idea that results in a catastrophic miscalculation such as invading Taiwan.

    Truss drew on the example of Ukraine to highlight why she wanted to increase support for Taiwan. China considers Taiwan, a US ally, part of its territory:

    We should have done things earlier. We should have been supplying the defensive weapons into Ukraine earlier.

    She added

    We need to learn that lesson for Taiwan. Every piece of equipment we have sent takes months of training, so the sooner we do it, the better.

    Troop cuts

    Contradictory though it may seem, troops cuts are being talked up alongside a defence budget increase.

    As Liz Truss has it:

    We all need to recognise that warfare now is different to warfare as it was 100 years ago, or 200 years ago.

    The thinking seems to be that a move away from conventional military deployments and towards new technological solutions is what is required:

    We need to make sure that the defence capability we have is fit for purpose for the modern world – and we face all kinds of new threats, whether it’s cyber threats, threats in space, new technology, new weaponry, and what’s important is the overall shape of those forces.

    Unhappy general

    The 10,000 cut to troop numbers was not well-received by the head of the army, general Patrick Sanders. In a recent speech he had hyped the threat of Russia, comparing the current political moment to 1937 and the rise of Hitler.

    Yesterday, The Times reported that Sanders had been disciplined by Boris Johnson for suggesting the cuts were “perverse”.

    The troop cuts row has also come at a time when the UK government has pledged an additional £1bn in military aid to Ukraine. Which, among other things, should be seen as a windfall for arms firms as The Canary has argued previously.

    Speaking at the NATO conference, Johnson said:

    UK weapons, equipment and training are transforming Ukraine’s defences against this onslaught.

    New trends in war

    There is more than an atom of truth in the notion that war has changed forms. Big military deployments are off the menu post-Afghanistan. But it is true of both modes of warfare that there are massive profits to be made.

    It can be safely assumed that a large part of the new £1bn package of military aid will go to defence firms. And the general shift away from boots on ground towards new military technology will also fill the coffers of military corporations.

    What’s missing, as ever, is any discussion of socially and economically just global security models.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Petty Officer Photographer Jay Allen, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under Open Government Licence.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Zara Aleena’s family is holding a vigil to ‘walk her home’ this weekend

    On Sunday 26 June, a man murdered Zara Aleena as she walked home in Ilford, East London. Jordan McSweeney appeared at Thames Magistrates’ Court on 29 June. He was charged with her murder, as well as robbery and attempted rape.

    Aleena’s devastated family shared a moving tribute ahead of a vigil to ‘walk her home’ on Saturday.

    Solidarity and condolences

    A man attacked Aleena near her home in Ilford, East London at 2am as she was on her way home from a night out.

    In a moving tribute to their slain loved one, Aleena’s family shared:

    She walked everywhere. She put her party shoes in a bag and donned her trainers. She walked. Zara believed that a woman should be able to walk home. Now, her dreams of a family are shattered, her future brutally taken.

    Many took to Twitter to share their solidarity and condolences. Deborah Coles – the director of INQUEST, a charity that works to support bereaved families impacted by state violence –  tweeted:

    Zarah Sultana, Labour MP for Coventry South, shared:

    And writer Taj Ali said:

    Not an isolated incident

    In their statement, Aleena’s family said:

    In a savage, sickening, act she was murdered by a stranger. She’s not the only woman who has lost her life like this. In the moment of this tragedy, we extend our deepest sympathy and love to the families of Bibaa Henry; Nicole Smallman; Sarah Everard; Sabina Nessa; Ashling Murphy and many more women.

    They added:

    We must PREVENT and STOP violence against women and girls.

    As The Canary‘s Eliza Egret highlighted following the murder of Sabrina Nessa in September 2021, women are even more at risk of experiencing misogynistic violence in their own homes.

    Reflecting this, feminist campaign group Level Up shared:

    Stop the victim blaming

    Responding to a victim blaming response to Aleena’s murder, journalist Lorraine King shared:

    Underlining that it isn’t women’s responsibility to moderate their behaviour in the face of misogynistic violence, another Twitter user shared:

    Indeed, male violence is the issue here. This systemic issue demands a systemic response. This means a total transformation of our culture and society. Every man has a role to play in this.

    Vigil to ‘walk Zara home’

    Aleena’s family plans to hold a vigil in her memory on Saturday 2 July at 1:30pm to “walk her home”.

    The End Violence Against Women Coalition campaign group tweeted:

    Aleena’s family is inviting members of the public to join them and help to ‘walk her home’. They have asked attendees to wear white, and to maintain a “silent and sombre” atmosphere for the vigil.

    Featured image via Mike Ralph/Unsplash resized 770 x 403px

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Armed cops surrounded two young Black boys in Liverpool

    Armed police stopped two Black boys in Liverpool on Wednesday 28 June while shocked locals looked on. The teens stood calmly as the officers, who were carrying assault weapons, surrounded them in a residential area. The youths were eventually released without charge.

    It was later reported that the young boys were stopped in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. However, the police maintained that the armed stop and search was “justified and appropriate“.

    A man had been reported earlier as being in the area with a gun in the waistband of his trousers.

    Racism

    A local Labour MP said there was a history of racist policing in Liverpool. Kim Johnson told the BBC:

    I do believe that Merseyside Police is institutionally racist.

    She said that the local force had cultural problems:

    It’s not just about the one or two bad apples, it’s about the culture of the organisation and the culture of the organisation has to change. I understand that [Merseyside Police] have a job to do, but it has to be proportionate.

    Local community groups also shared their thoughts on Twitter.

    Granby Somali Women’s Group said the police were typically aggressive:

    Unapologetic

    A local reporter noted the lack of an apology from Merseyside police;

    Another commenter suggested that Liverpool police should be put on special measures like the Metropolitan force was this week. That decision followed a long series of failures and controversies:

    For some, this raised fears that the situation could easily have become violent and led to a tragedy:

    Wild West

    A spokeswoman for the Granby Somali Women’s Group told the BBC:

    This is not a rare occurrence, as Merseyside Police are driving around stopping individuals like it’s the Wild West in the L8 area.

    She added that police behaviour scarred young men and led to mistrust for the police. The police said they had viewed body camera footage and decided they had acted properly – though how well positioned the police are to mark their own homework is likely to be a point of contention once again.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Tony Hisgett, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY 2.0. 

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • CIA And Western Special Ops Commandos Are In Ukraine

    The CIA and special operations forces from NATO members Britain, France, Canada, and Lithuania are physically in Ukraine, helping direct the proxy war on Russia, according to a report in The New York Times.

    These Western forces are on the ground training and advising Ukrainian fighters, overseeing weapons shipments, and managing intelligence.

    At least 20 countries are part of a US Army-led coalition, guiding Ukraine in its fight against Russian troops.

    Some Ukrainian combatants are even using US flag patches on their equipment.

    This is all according to a June 25 report in The New York Times, titled “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say.”

    The Times is a de facto organ of the US government. Although technically private, the paper closely follows the line of the CIA and Pentagon.

    The post CIA And Western Special Ops Commandos Are In Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Your rights are under attack

    The Tories are planning to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace it with their ‘Bill of Rights‘. Curtis Daly explains why this attack on the most vulnerable is an attack against us all.

    By Curtis Daly

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Young people make one vital solution to the ocean crisis crystal clear

    This story was produced as part of the 2022 UN Ocean Conference Fellowship organized by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (UK Branch).

    One of the first events at the UN Ocean Conference taking place in Lisbon, Portugal was an innovathon for young people. As the UN secretary-general António Guterres said during the occasion, young people are inheriting a deeply troubled planet, thanks to their elders. The innovathon essentially tasked them with cleaning up the adults’ mess.

    If the young people at the conference – including those The Canary spoke to – are any kind of example, it appears they stand ready and willing to rise to the task.

    The Ocean Conference’s primary focus is propelling the innovative solutions needed to improve ocean and environmental health. Young peoples’ contributions at the event show that unleashing their potential is a vital solution in itself.

    Oceans in crisis

    The UN Ocean Conference is running between 27 June and 1 July. It’s the second of its kind, with the first ever UN Ocean Conference taking place in 2017.

    The ocean is in dire straits thanks to human-led actions. Guterres said it is the “reception point” of the three environmental crises we’ve created: climate, biodiversity, and pollution. The ocean, for example, is acidifying due to excessive carbon emissions, which is a threat to a great deal of marine life. Moreover, over 90% of the extra heat from global warming ends up in the ocean. This is leading to persistent and extensive warming waters that increase the severity and regularity of marine heatwaves, according to researchers from Universität Hamburg’s Cluster of Excellence “Climate, Climatic Change, and Society” (CLICCS). They recently found one such warming pool, measuring some three million square kilometres, in the northeast Pacific. One of the researchers, atmospheric science expert Dr. Armineh Barkhordarian, explained:

    The sharp increase in average water temperature is pushing ecosystems to their limits

    Many ocean-dwelling species, meanwhile, are also diminished and threatened by pollution, overfishing and the activities of the fossil fuel industry.

    Bright young things

    The innovathon was part of a two-day UN Youth and Innovation Forum ahead of the conference’s official opening. During the 24-hour-long event, 130 youth delegates worked on solutions to the pressing issues for the ocean. According to the UN, their ideas ranged from the study of certain species and their food chains in order to decipher the state of biodiversity, to transforming recovered plastic waste into construction materials.

    One of the UK’s youth delegates, Tom Birbeck, participated in the innovathon. Birbeck is a co-founder of an initiative called Arc Marine and told The Canary that the event provided a good opportunity to meet like-minded people who are developing environmentally-sound ideas for tackling key ocean problems.

    Birbeck started Arc Marine with fellow diver James Doddrell to tackle reef degradation in England. The company has designed an artificial reef, among other things, that can be integrated into construction practices. In particular, Arc Marine set out to produce a “nature inclusive design” for the offshore wind-energy sector. Effectively, the company has built a plastic-free and carbon-neutral alternative foundation for offshore wind farm infrastructure. The industry typically uses environmentally problematic materials for these foundations, Birbeck said. Arc Marine’s alternative doubles as living space for species in dire need of habitats due to reef degradation.

    Get out of the way

    During a session on the first day of the official conference, Henk Rogers explained how young people have been instrumental in facilitating the green energy transition elsewhere too. He founded the Blue Planet Alliance in 2020. It aims to get islands and countries around the world to commit legislatively to being reliant on 100% renewable energy by 2045. Hawaii, where Rogers lives, has already made such a commitment. The Pacific island nation of Palau has gone even further, vowing to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2032.

    In the event on the importance of listening to young people from Large Ocean States, otherwise known as Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Rogers suggested that Hawaii’s commitment wouldn’t have happened without young people mobilising other citizens and politicians. The Blue Planet Alliance founder argued that the younger generation are more than capable of fighting for their own future. He told The Canary that, in his experience, young people don’t necessarily need their elders’ leadership. Older generations should help young people when they ask for assistance, he argued, but otherwise the former “should get out of the way”.

    Conference outcomes

    Birbeck highlighted the sort of assistance that the UK could provide to ensure that renewable offshore infrastructure helps nature restoration. He pointed to the Netherlands, where the government is making some such developments conditional on their enhancement of the marine environment. Birbeck asserted that the UK government should follow suit for all offshore developments in renewable or fossil energy.

    When asked what outcome he would like to see at the UN Ocean Conference, the Arc Marine co-founder said that nature-inclusive design being used as standard across any offshore or coastal construction project would be welcome. This includes projects like ports and harbours, along with energy infrastructure.

    The Sustainable Ocean Alliance’s (SOA) Caribbean representative Khadija Stewart and Kenley Kenneth, who was Palau’s youth coordinator for the seventh Our Ocean Conference in March, both spoke at the Large Ocean States event. They also shared their hopes about the conference with The Canary. Stewart said she would like to see the scaling up of finance schemes for existing ocean solutions. Essentially, rather than just promoting more and more innovation, Stewart suggested that officials need to get serious about financing and scaling up the solutions we already have. Kenneth, meanwhile, said that he would like to see “concrete outcomes” in terms of how officials are going to invest in young people’s work.

    Ready to do everything

    The Canary asked these young people what different outcomes they’d expect if the UN Ocean Conference were led by them and their peers, rather than older people. Their responses again illustrated what the global community has to gain by letting them lead the way.

    Stewart was confident that a youth-led conference would yield diversity in the range of solutions that would be appropriate to the needs and concerns of people in different parts of the world. She suggested that a Global North perspective tends to dominate in such talks at present. Kenneth argued that, currently, there’s also a tendency to involve young people in the conversation about the problems, but not in the implementation of solutions. With young people at the helm, he said, their many ideas would be funded and put into action. Birbeck, meanwhile, said that a conference led by young people would offer radical and swift decisions. Moreover, he asserted that young people wouldn’t pussyfoot around when it came to calling out and ejecting bad actors, such as extractive industries that engage in greenwashing.

    Diversity, decisiveness, speed, action, and radical thinking. These are essential if we are to meaningfully tackle the triple crises Guterres spoke of. It seems that many young people stand ready to try and – in the UN chief’s words – “do everything to reverse” what older generations have done to the ocean and planet.

    The question is, are those who bear political responsibility for the environmental mess we’re in willing get out of their way?

    Featured image via Sustainable Ocean Alliance / YouTube

    By Tracy Keeling

  • The BBC just palmed a government press release off as news

    A recent report on the NHS app was just a government press release that the BBC published as news. But it wasn’t alone in doing this – the Guardian did similar.

    NHS: a digital revolution?

    The NHS app was originally rolled-out in 2018. As GP Online reported, the app was intended to allow people to:

    access their GP record, make appointments, order repeat prescriptions, manage long-term conditions and access 111 services for advice.

    Patients will also be able to set preferences for data sharing, organ donation and end-of-life care.

    Since the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the roll-out of the doomed Test and Trace app, the government has seemed hellbent on digitising healthcare. Now, as the BBC reported, the government is upgrading the original NHS app as part of a “digital revolution” in the NHS.

    The BBC: doing the government’s work for it

    Health secretary Sajid Javid happily shared the BBC story:

    It was unsurprising that he did – the BBC article was almost a cut and paste of the Tory government’s press release. Comparing the two, the BBC:

    • Lifted much of the wording from the government press release.
    • Reiterated government ‘ambitions’ without question.
    • Included the same bullet-pointed claims about what the app will do by March 2023.
    • Used the government’s pre-prepared comments from Javid and Sarah Sweeney from the National Voices charity.

    No counter-arguments

    The BBC also failed to include comment from anyone critical of the NHS app. Then, enter the Guardian to also parrot the government line. It lifted some of its article from the press release, and also – it appears – from a Press Association (PA) report. And like the BBC, the Guardian failed to include counter-arguments about the app.

    If they had bothered, the BBC and Guardian could have said that the problems with the app include:

    Moreover, all of this comes on top of “virtual wards” for coronavirus and the Royal Mail trialling its workers carrying out a “check in” service for vulnerable people as part of its new health division. So, the Tory government’s plans for the NHS app are likely not about what’s good for us. They’re probably more about cost-cutting and farming-out patients from hospitals and to private companies.

    BBC: irresponsible

    The BBC, as a public service broadcaster, has a duty to report all sides of a story. Palming-off Tory government press releases as news is lazy and irresponsible. At best, the BBC‘s failure to tell readers that the story is a press release is bias by omission – at worst, it’s acting like a government mouthpiece.

    Featured image via The Canary

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on The Canary.