Mon
04-Jun-2007

2nd june rally

We all gathered in central London on Saturday for The World Can't Wait rally, bringing to an end many months of hard work. The weather suddenly turned all glorious and sunny, and the event had a great positive atmosphere. Really good fun.

Check out some pictures and videos from the day here.

A highlight for me was the fact that I got Alex to paint his face blue and wear this big globe and he spent most of the day posing with celebrities, or with mad people in pants, and getting on the news, or waving from a boat. Here he is with Midge Ure and Annie Lennox...

Tue
15-May-2007

Get international development on Gordon Brown's agenda this week...

It's one of the four "what should this website talk about this week?" voting options at www.gordonbrownforbritain.com. Take two seconds to click on "international development" on the voting menu on the left and get it up the list! We've been pushing for the last couple of days and we're equal with the NHS now!

While the NHS is important, the moral outrage of global poverty is more so. In the lead-up to the G8 Summit in three weeks it's vital that there's lots of noise around about the importance of these issues.

Thu
15-Mar-2007

trident replacement

Andy and I went along to the CND emergency rally outside Parliament last night to protest as the MPs were having their critical vote on replacing Trident. Good to make as much noise as possible, though obviously the Labour leadership teamed up with the Tories to push through the renewal.

As Andy said, "I can't believe we even have to demonstrate against this one." There is nothing sane or rational about it.

The British decision to pursue new nuclear weapons, against our nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations to disarm, is another blow to global efforts to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Even though nuclear weapons are irrelevant against the threat of terrorism or the even greater threat of climate change, even though the threat of invasion or war in Europe is negligible, we’ve decided we can’t live without these costly weapons, which it has been estimated will cost £76bn over their lifetime. This is one of those areas where you suddenly see clearly the raw configuration of global power between North and South, and the hollowness of the UK government’s otherwise quite progressive international development policies.

Sat
17-Feb-2007

child welfare in the UK

The UNICEF report on Britain’s appalling record of child poverty and welfare is sobering reading, very February, very depressing. But I find a lot of the commentary around it over-complicated at times and focusing too much on the last ten years of Labour rule.

I think it’s useful to step back a bit and put our recent social history in context. A lot of it can be blamed on Thatcher. There were 18 years of Tory rule – with their social destruction, cultivation of selfish individualism and systematic under-investment in the welfare state – and we are still living in a right-wing era. Labour’s reconstruction and reinvestment in a collective social system is incomplete and qualified by lots of problems.

The Tory social model has not yet been fundamentally challenged. One letter to the Guardian pointed out today that Britain and the Netherlands, which are at opposite ends of UNICEF’s child wellbeing scale, also have opposite profiles of inequality. Inequality in the UK rose from being the lowest in Europe in 1979 to almost the highest in the early noughties. No matter what tinkering we do round the edges, child and adult welfare will not improve in this country until we tackle inequality head on.

Once again, we know what the answer is... tax and spend!

Thu
18-Jan-2007

political philosophy reading group: john stuart mill

I met up with Abbie, Kate, James G and his friend Billy for our second political philosophy reading group session, in the Island Queen pub near the Wenlock Basin area.

We'd been reading John Stuart Mill's On Liberty , which I really enjoyed. The principle of liberty is an important one, I think, and I like Mill's insistence on raising "a strong barrier of moral conviction" against the incroachment of society upon the liberty of the individual. His vital warning is that the individual's liberty will be increasingly exposed to invasion by government, since it is people's natural disposition to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others wherever they can.

His philosophy is quite narrow though, and it does not feel as useful a guide to action the more you start thinking about issues of equality, or the redistribution of power and wealth...

Wed
10-Jan-2007

god or gay?

Well, I'm really glad that the bid to block legislation prohibiting discrimination against gay people in provision of goods and services in Northern Ireland failed yesterday, rejected in the House of Lords by 199 to 68. Similar legislation is due to take effect in the remainder of the UK from April.

But what was rather depressing about the whole thing was that a cross-faith alliance of religious bigots got together outside the House of Commons for a torch-lit protest in favour of the amendment to allow those of a religious bent to be exempt from the equality act. I've been very positive about organised religion recently, particularly in the context of economic justice campaigning work, working with the churches last year during our Global Month of Action in the autumn and with Muslim organisations in other contexts. Yet for all that, it feels like the one issue that will get Muslims, Jews and Christians up in arms and rallying outside the House of Commons is good old-fashioned homophobia.

Polly Toynbee outlines some of the lies these people have told in trying to think up extreme examples to justify neutering this legislation. She is keen to point out the dangers of allowing these people to run services like schools and hospitals, as is increasingly the case. Pro-life Catholic hospitals? Wahey. Homophobic schools. Brilliant. Between 12 and 15 children kill themselves every year because of homophobic bullying.

Overall, I can see that this doesn't alter the fact that many religious people are genuinely committed to progressive social change and fighting injustice. But it also happens that faiths are lightning rods for some of the most gross intolerance and bigotry as well. You need to tread carefully when it comes to god…

Wed
15-Nov-2006

mass lone protest

Just got back from Westminster Square for one of the monthly mass lone protests. This action is supposed to highlight the anti-democratic absurdity of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) 2005 which bans all protest within a kilometre of the Houses of Parliament unless you get prior police authorisation. The idea is that each person fills out a separate form for permission to protest, creating lots of paperwork for the police at Charing Cross station and generally showing how silly the whole setup is. I filled out forms for two separate protests: one "against simplistic slogans for complex problems" and one "for the right to wear bright orange footwear".

I met some nice people there, lots of chat about climate change and George Monbiot's book...

Thu
04-May-2006

universal human rights?

I've just come across Michael Walzer, and in particular Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (1994). He takes Clifford Geertz's idea of "thickness" which emphasises the context-laden, local provenance of all cultural symbols and applies it to morality and human rights. Unlike the common philosophical point of view that human rights constitute a "thin" universal abstract core underlying all human society, Walzer argues from an anthropological perspective that morality is always local, resonant, culturally integrated and "thick".

I've always found the idea of universal human rights a bit of a headache. What do we do when we want to stick up for the rights of women in Kabul to be educated and go to work and find ourselves arguing for these "universal human rights", so easily understood as Western moral liberal priorities sweeping through the world through brute economic dominance and military force? Walzer's idea is that there is no "thick" universal moral discourse, but that universal human rights can only be "thin" distillates from local, culturally rich, "thick" moral narratives. Universal human rights cannot constitute a freestanding cultural framework, they are nothing more than glimpses of recognition across the boundaries of locally contextualised cultural moralities. The "truth" and "justice" that we talk about in our cosmopolitan transborder international NGO coalitions is a "thin" stripped down version of the "thick" moral frameworks of our own home cultures.

This really makes sense to me. The local context is the only substantive morality that we have available as a reference – we do not discover international solidarity in "thick" core abstract values, but in "thin" recognitions of references to our own local contexts. In the case of the women in Kabul, they do not have to be defended in terms of some flimsy structure of universal human rights, their rights can be argued for in terms of local cultural rights, their right to live their lives according to recently historically established urban practice, in opposition to other rural and religious conventions of female behaviour.

Fri
17-Mar-2006

against policy

What is the point of 'policy' as a political and administrative process? Is it the fundamental instrument of modern power, because of the way it masks what is political under the cloak of objective neutrality?

My little manifesto against policy: policy takes social problems out of the realm of political discourse and recasts them in a legal, rational idiom or in the language of science, deploying 'expert' knowledge to persuade ordinary people to relinquish democratic control over the process. Policy is a form of defeat, submission to government, a tool to regulate from the top down.

I have some doubts though. Perhaps policy is a broader and more contested organising principle: a cultural text, a rhetorical commentary, a charter for identity and action. But it is still worth fighting it...

Thu
01-Sep-2005

climate change campaign

Stop Climate Chaos was launched today. Visit the website!

Thu
25-Aug-2005

changealuia!

At midday today I joined Richard H at the Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church to meet with a group of about twenty or thirty people for a retail intervention against Starbucks. This was really enjoyable and I'm so glad I went.

The action was being led by the marvellous Reverend Billy who is over from New York, and was called Shop Lift! and what we did was all head into the Starbucks in groups of two or three, until in time we had filled up the store. Then we each chose an object around the store - whether a coffee stirrer, a table, a cup, newspaper, bag of coffee beans - and tried to fall in love with it. We slowly lifted these things high above our heads, while chanting out loud the stories behind them. The idea was to travel back in time and space, to the boxes in which these objects were packed, the lorries that drove them to the store, the ships from which they were disembarked, across the oceans from whence they came, to the ports, cities, mountains, farms and plantations where these things were made. We all created our own narratives, it was easier to do with our eyes closed, and gradually we recontexualised these transnational objects that had been stripped of their painful histories, we remembered the children and families that had died to pick the coffee beans in Guatemala, considered the fossil fuels laid down over millions of years and dug up to create the plastic lids on the cups, tried to move closer to our fellow human beings in the sweatshops and toxic fields on the other side of the world.

Finally, when we had raised the objects as high above us as possible, we were reaching back into the beginning, to the forests, to the soil, to the implacable immensity and mystery of life. Then Rev Billy gave a short sermon in the store, condemning the hypocritical, transnational devil of Starbucks and its rampaging drive to create corporate monopolies till everything looks the same, as we all cheered and called out "Changealuia!" Then we put everything back where we'd found it and left the stores with glad hearts, as bemused shoppers and coffee sippers reacted in various ways around us.

It was a very rewarding and fulfilling piece of activist drama. The journey into the visions locked away in the objects were particularly beautiful. I remember just standing there in the first Starbucks we went into on Tottenham Court Road, my arms stretched up, my eyes closed, sanguine in my final vision of the sun winking down through the tall trees of some primaeval forest.

Mon
04-Jul-2005

stopping wars up in scotland

Everyone departed for London, leaving me and Jim still in Edinburgh. Steve's friend Claire had kindly agreed to have us for a night so we took our stuff there and then headed into town to work out what we wanted to do over the next few days. On the way into town we bumped into the Stop the War march, joining it as it wound its way along Princes Street and then up Calton Hill. At the top of the hill, with its stunning views of the city, we all sat down in front of the grandiose and rather magnificent nineteenth century monuments at the summit for a sombre 'Naming the Dead' event. In front of the great columns of the National Monument, built in honour of Scotland's dead in the Napoleonic Wars, various speakers read out lists of people killed in the illegal war and occupation of Iraq. It was very moving at times.

After this, we headed into town to investigate at an internet café what we might do the next day, and discovered details of a protest at Faslane, home of the largest military base in Scotland and home port for all four British Trident nuclear armed submarines. The protest was called by CND, who have argued that issues of war and militarism cannot be divorced from issues of global poverty and sustainability. As Thomas Friedman - that prophet of neoliberalism - once wrote: "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist."

Unfortunately, in order to strike out against the military-industrial complex, Jim and I had to commit to getting up at 3am in order to catch a coach leaving from Waterloo Place at 4am. Surely any respectable anarchist does not rise till noon? But we managed it anyway, and trudged blearily on to the coach which then took us to Faslane where around 1000 protesters gathered to shut down the base.

Monday turned out to be a lovely day though - the sun shone and we strolled around merrily blockading various entrances to the base as dozens and dozens of police lined up around us trying to look sombre. We had substantial contingents of stalwart CND old women with us who took to being pleasant to the nice young policemen, the power of the police looking quite broken in the face of polite old age.

There was also a performance from the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, the first of several appearances through the week. The Clown Army are the probably the most inspiring practitioners of the art of direct action that I have ever encountered. They are dressed as clowns but take a highly organised, affinity group style approach to clowning. Their anarchist approach to protest means that they have reconciled their means and their ends to the point where the two are indistinguishable - they seem to follow the route that their means dictate, to be in a state of constant rebellion, questioning authority and hierarchy at all times, be it on the side of the police or the protesters. They operate mainly, as Jim succinctly pointed out, through the reliable weapons of base sarcasm and constantly talking in silly high-pitched voices.

I lay down for a bit in the road to sleep, but by late afternoon we were both very knackered indeed. We headed back into Edinburgh, arriving just in time to bump into the last stages of the Carnival of Full Enjoyment

Sat
02-Jul-2005

2 july rally

Today was the day of the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY Rally. It was a marvellous and enjoyable occasion. The sun shone and something like 250,000 people came all the way to Edinburgh to demonstrate for the demands of the mobilisation. Most of them were wearing white, making the crowds look even brighter and glorious, and the diversity of people there was lovely to see, with all kinds of ages, colours and classes involved. It felt like the coming together of a broad movement and despite my ongoing unhappiness about the celebrity-dominated approach of the mobilisation over the last six months, I felt really glad that day that MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY has attempted to pitch itself as a mass movement, appealing to as wide a cross-section of society as possible without excessively compromising its aims.

There was a problem with the march around Edinburgh itself, as there was an unnecessary bottleneck at the start of the march where it left the Meadows that held people up. We were waiting for around an hour and a half, champing to leave, but once we were marching around the city our annoyance evaporated and we enjoyed the weather and chatted about things like trade, debt and beer as we strolled along.

Abbie, Steve, Jim, Kal, James and Alex sneaked off to the pub near the end of the march, but Charles, Graham, Matt, Harry and I went all the way round to the Meadows. We listened to Billy Bragg give an inspirational little speech at the main stage, and then headed over to see the others in the pub, drinking a number of pints of the fine beer they had on tap, including Cairngorm's glorious Tradewinds. Alex got chatting to a lovely woman who was by all accounts Hunter S Thompson's neice - she had noticed the elegy to Gonzo journalism on the back of his famous alpaca t-shirt. Charles, Alex and I rushed back to the Meadows for the Rally finale of the biggest reel dance ever on the field by the second stage, which was fun, before we all went to get takeaway curry and to trash Steve's old flat.

Fri
06-May-2005

election night special '05

We gathered at Kal and Andy's place for election night and stayed up till 8am gloating over New Labour's minor defeat...

Sun
06-Mar-2005

sexual diversity

Much discussion at Dan's party centered around sexual diversity, since many of us in the room had been reading about it recently. For me, I've really shifted in my views away from a very socially constructionist standpoint on issues of gender and sexuality. Research into sexual diveristy has become a lot more subtle in the last few years, and it's fascinating the degree to which it seems the sexualisation of the brain happens very early during embryonic life. This makes the actions of doctors particularly dangerous when they assign the sex of intersexual babies arbitrarily, particularly when they operate on them to make them one gender or another. The need for people to be allowed to determine their own gender is really important, and the definition of gender from a legal standpoint should not impede individual freedom. It's good that intersexuals have finally been recognised in a medical sense - check out the Intersex Society of North America for some interesting information.

Mon
21-Feb-2005

we are, after all, professionals

Goodbye Hunter.

Tue
28-Sep-2004

first amendment

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping have been getting people to assemble every week in New York to recite the first amendment of the US Bill of Rights that guarantees the right of free speech and peaceable assembly. I've been reading updates on it every week, and the sentence is really growing on me. Though its phrasing and diction seem archaic at first, its power is evident when it enters everyday life in this fashion. These first amendment mobilisations have found it particularly potent against the heavy handed post-9/11 police forces, who have found it hard to resist the sentence's very real talismanic and legislative power as they try to move the protesters on.

Congress shall make no law, respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assembly, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Wed
30-Jun-2004

political parties

Excitingly, I am now a member of not one, but two political parties. I am a member of the Green Party and of Kongra-Gel, the People's Congress of Kurdistan. This was recently listed by the EU as a terrorist organisation, despite being a mainstream, peaceful organisation working to defend the democratic rights of Kurds in Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. They are hoping to make the EU's designation unworkable by having as many people join the party as possible. Do contact estella24[at]tiscali.co.uk if you would like to join.

Tue
25-May-2004

clare short lecture

Went to a Clare Short lecture at SOAS today. She argued not uncontroversally that the war on terror is making the world a more dangerous and bitterly divided place, distracting energy from the most serious threat to the future safety and security of the world, namely poverty and environmental degradation. She had very strong opinions, if not particularly subtle or well thought out from an academic perspective. She was very funny though, and good at handling the audience.

Fri
13-Feb-2004

peace tax campaign

The Peace Tax Campaign lobbies for conscientious objectors to have the right to opt out of military funding and has urged people to offer support to Robin Brookes who is being charged in court for refusing to pay 10 per cent of his tax bill. This simple, direct campaign provides a Peace Tax Return Form which you can send to the Inland Revenue to demand that the tenth of your tax bill going to the military is spent on peace-building initiatives instead. It's a lovely simple thing to do, and I'm certainly doing it.