Finally,today i got around to going through some of the piles of accumulated paper i have to admit i hoard and live with.The pile i waded through is mainly miscellaneous papers and documents accumulated through years of working in the criminal justice system.No-one should get excited at reading this,there is nothing incriminating or compromising of me or anyone else.Its all much more banal than that.A lot is simply the flotsam and jetsam associated with work and career.Indeed much of it,is th sort of stuff i set aside to read or at least glance at some other time-but never did,not even now.Some of it might be of more interest:notes on challenging issues,informatin about this campaign or that,how to complete particular forms or reports,data entry.It all,i suppose amounts to the stuff that
keeps the wheels going for me as a worker in a particular trade or profession.But then back in January 2012 that career came to a halt with retirement frm it.Its not that i've lost interest in criminal justice or social work-i definitely have not,but whilst i should never say"never",i don't think its likely to return to my profession or anything approaching it,although i suppose the threat of"austerity"and what it might come to mean looms like a spectre(or hobgoblin!).Otherwise,no 42 years or so is enough-i would not commit to it as a career again.
I return to going through the papers,and realise that suddenly,what one was not just imbued but saturated with meaning is now empty,like a shell or a husk.How strange that it,and how quickly it happens because i suspect,that had i rummaged the day after my retirement might have been very similar.
And yet i admit there are fleeting,occassional moments when it is painfully different.i suppose that is because sometimes something on the paper touches a memory and i am transported,usually to a melancholy place.
And in that there is a clue to something else,even more melancholy.When my dad died,my mother was there and with whom i went through some of the grieving process.Only two years or so later my mother died,and whilst i was with my sister through a lot of the experience,including returning from the USA to live in my parents last house,somehow it was different,in that we ourselves had to dispose of a lot of the objects of their daily lives,inclduding indeed their little house.
What struck me was how some objects suddenly possessed an apparent power,probably of memory and evocation,so that i would have to stand still for a few moments or more drawn back into memory and reverie.Then there was another response to other things,where suddenly all meaning had drained out of all kinds of things.And even if i think back now,my fond memories are for particular situations,moments,even light but not actual objects.To make the point,i sometimes think back to a paricular place in the hallway of ur family home,where a yellow-orange carpet of autumn like colours,took on a particular tone in spring or autumn light,made even more powerful in relaity and memory by the combined impact of say the copper kettle,a slightly tinted mirror.i also remember some small orange and brown glass.i hold the memory but not the desire for the actual objects in the memory.
I am reminded of something else.Since my retirement,i have been able to become more active in my trades union,and so i can actually attend its branch meetings.Only a few months ago,i attended a particular meeting in which the main focus of discussion was the latest round of redundancies made by"our"employer,in part of its handover of some of its activities to another,private company....
i have no wish to appear arrogant,but i do have some experience as a socialist and as a trades unionist over over 43 years.unfortunately i am all too familiar with recessions,redundancies,cuts...but i am NOT inured to the impact of such events.So in the discussion of these redundancies,i found myself caught up in the shock and devestating pain of brothers and sisters who had,they had only haerdwithin the last few days,and not even"properly"that they would be made redundant.It is a bewildering experience,and it can be so much worse when procedures have not been followed and workers get letters as in this case which begin with the words"you have been deleted".i suggested that all letters and emails going from our trades union from then on,should contain a strap line along the lines of"solidarity with the deleted".....i was so angry and distressed that i wrote a little post on facebook about it-though i know my distress can have nothing on the impact on those who were actually"deleted".i am grateful for the comment of an old friend and comrade who commented on the brutal honesty of employers.whilst i was initially taken aback-that comment set methinking further.
i noted firts of all in my own thinking and i suspect in others too that whilst we intelectually know one thing,our hopes or perhaps our(individula)psychologies are not neccessarrilly entirely synchronised with that understanding.In this case i admit i had the hope that a public sector employer who employs people like me to"help"others might actually behave differently.But no it does not!
It took longer to reach a second point in my thinking and to go beyond it.I realised that there is acertain sense in which my friend was right,although i wonder if any"institution"can have any feelings or understanding-which is rather in the heads of those making the decisions.Then i thought that the very collective responsibility for such decisions might actually have some kind of absolving aspect to it.It also reinforced a view i already hold that context is if not everything,then it is much.I imagined the board or some other agglomeration of senior management,making the decision.Whilst some might(i hope this at least)feel"awkward"i think they might be sustained by the environment in which the decision was made-i imagine in some kind of boardroom which however"pressured"is not the same pressure at all,as that in which my brothers and sisters work every day beset not only by the pressures of the job itself and the self expectation that mostly workers,despite our alienation,still give it the best we can-but also the not so background anxieties associated with our own lives in such a period as this.i dont know about interesting-but i do know it is austere and that times are very hard.
It made me think too that the expression"you have been deleted"is actually absolutely serious.i have begun to think more.harder,deeper about how atually those in their class or associated with it,who act as its minions,might actually think that in"deleting"workers form their jobs,might actually end,negate,empty the problem.I think that THEY now really DO think they have emptied the problem-it no longer exists.But that reflects their vision of the world in which we are merely here as lbour to be bought and sold.We know we are something much else,much other......
In a world in which THEIR view of us is the dominant one,it is easy to think we are not much at all,and to believe that when they"delete"us in any way,somehow we might go away.But then we dont,and indeed in turning around to resist and to struggle we begin to form a class consciousness of ourselves that reasserts that it IS our labour that makes the world.All of it..It is our talent and skill and imagination that might imagine it otherwise.That perhaps their world really is empty of meaning,and content and that actually it is our world that we can make and fill with something else-a commonwaelth,to be shared and lived in together.i like to think that what they fail us in is the barbarism,and that our vision is a socialism,something completly other,new,exciting,challenging.
in the meantime,i am reminded again of the words of William Blake in his poem"What is the Price of Experience?"
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/23579-what-is-the-price-of-experience-do-men-buy-it
Monday 12 November 2012
Saturday 13 October 2012
Not So Much A Wake-More The Struggle Continues
Over recent weeks the SOS Brent Libraries has been not just a contested issue,but so is its continuation.
I'm just one of the "footsoldiers" in the Save Preston Library camapiagn which in turn is just one of now 7 camapignsthat make up this loose coalition.
Several of the campaigns have gone down the road of establishing community libraries run by volunteers as Brent Council have it appears broken their"good intentions",to put it no higher,to estanlish a new relationships with the community.Within afew days of Cllr.butt being elected leader of the Labour Group/leader of the council he expressed some sort of desire for this new relationship with the community.He made some kindof commitment that nothing else would be changed or moved until a meeting had taken place with the community(ies).Within less than a further a raid took place on Kensal Rise library under police gard when at soemthing like 3am the boosk were removed by council staff/security company,which included the removal of the plaque marking the opening of the librray in the 1880s by Mark Twain,and the 1930s murals from the internal walls.Cllr.But may have been caught our by this.It may be an aelement of his"row"with the ex council chief executive.I do not know whether actually he was complicet.
Since then the Council have handed 2 sets of library buildings back to the Oxfor University Colleges who own the freeholds,both of which make explicit that the buildings must remain libraries.The council may be making some realtively small savings onrents and leaseholds but it cannot gain any other income from the buildings by other use or sale.This has given away 2 libraries which it is now difficult to see reopened unless the respective community campaigns opt for some community library model.
The Preston Park area library is to be remodeelled as an overflow school for the next few years.Its future beyond that is unsure but i would suggest that getting it back as a library,now it is not one,will be more difficult than had it remained open on some basis or event empty.There is a lot of resistanec to clousre,there is almost as much resistance to it being aschool but a schoolis better than sale and resisting a school is quite difficult to campaign around.This especially the case where much of the community,in any of the areas might assume that it might have looked to the labour Party,Labour Group,Labour Council for support,advice,guidance leta loen a defene of publicly fned libraries.That has been impossible where the Labur Party in whatever guise has not shown a single sign of fighting back or resisting cuts.Is it surprising that many feel they have no choice but to campaign for a community library or to be left with nothing.This in turn has not been helped when members of the Labour Party who might be dissidents from the cuts have walked away from the campaigns rather than stand and fight,even as a minorit,even a s a losing minority in some of the campaigns.
Let me make clear my own position here.When the campaign locally was launched I became involved when the 1st public meeeting was organised in February 2011.to its credit the local committee did a lot of reasearch and presented a critique of local authority plans and considered a number of other alternatives,some of which presents variant cut options.I was one amongst a nmber fo speakers from the floor which included other local residents and members of other campaigns in the group,who oppossed ALL and ANY options that simply passed the cuts elsewhere.This was the view taken in the Preston Park area.when a journalist approached me for an interview I indicated that I was happy to be quoted but that any quote shoudl not be attributed to me,as I was away fro work on lig term sickness at the time and that such direct quotation might either complucate or make my situatin more difficult.Due to the complexities of my particular sitauion as well as il health itself,i took a back seat but supported the campaign as best i could and "fed in"my opinion and acted as a sounding board for other activists,particularly my partner who has been a member of the committe of the SPLC through most of its life.
The campaign continued.In February 2012 i made a similar,militant contribution to the debate inthe pubic meeting,but remained a supporter of the camapaign.I was however lucky enough to be given an opportunity by Chris of BNCTV(or is it BCNTV?)to be intervied as a campaign supporter,specificaly for my militant position.I wa shappy to do it,was encouraged to be forthright in my marxist,revolutionary outlook of the situation and indeed have some pride in the work i did with Chris.I subsequently inroduced him to other stories...
However,when at a Brent FightBack Meeting about the NHS campaign i argued that SOS Brent Libraries,as a community based campaign fighting the cuts should have speaker on the platform,both i and the campaign was charicatured as lib.dems,opposed to state funding,anarchists and as untrustworthy on a variety of bases.It was like being talked about along the lines of"does he take sugar?"and I'm afraid i lay some of the blame for the situatiin at the feet of those who walk away from campaigns when those campaigns won't embrace particular advocated positions,especially when it is the Labour Party/Council making the cuts!
The plan to convert the library to a school wsa suppossed to take 3 months.Six months on the work has finally begun.About 10 days ago the library building was barricaaded in preparatin for that conversion and refurbishment to begun.Going past the library these last few days has been for me and many others a very sad experience,as the building looks more an more like avacant uncaed for fortress awaiting execution to mix metaphors badly.
Last night i wrote a short valedictory piece of Brent Tusc,Counihan Battlebus and my own timeline on facebook,caling on support for todays Torch of learning event,linking 6 of the closed libraries and ending with a wake at the local hostelry tonight.I called on comrades in other campaigns and organisations to"come rally!",that this was a turning point and that the situation was MAYDAY,MAYDAY!
Then this evening Jimmy Mac,effectivey the convenor and certainly leading activist in the Counihan Sanchez family campaign drove me home after campaigning with them,in the battlebus,we passed Preston Park Library.On the fence thatbguards it were flowers,posters and banners both advertising the event,and calling agin for OUR librray to be re-opened.There were also a number of black flag flying.Although these are funereal rather tha symbols of Anarchy(ah!Anarchy!)-and thisis the nearest certain labour party members will find of anarchy in this locality-more the pity-at least it indicates we stiil have hope and still love our library....
Th truggle continues.Jim drpped me at the Windermere Pub.i entered the wake where there were some subtle surprisse and interesting cntradictions,but the struggle DOES continue!
Lotta Continua!
(to be continued)
I'm just one of the "footsoldiers" in the Save Preston Library camapiagn which in turn is just one of now 7 camapignsthat make up this loose coalition.
Several of the campaigns have gone down the road of establishing community libraries run by volunteers as Brent Council have it appears broken their"good intentions",to put it no higher,to estanlish a new relationships with the community.Within afew days of Cllr.butt being elected leader of the Labour Group/leader of the council he expressed some sort of desire for this new relationship with the community.He made some kindof commitment that nothing else would be changed or moved until a meeting had taken place with the community(ies).Within less than a further a raid took place on Kensal Rise library under police gard when at soemthing like 3am the boosk were removed by council staff/security company,which included the removal of the plaque marking the opening of the librray in the 1880s by Mark Twain,and the 1930s murals from the internal walls.Cllr.But may have been caught our by this.It may be an aelement of his"row"with the ex council chief executive.I do not know whether actually he was complicet.
Since then the Council have handed 2 sets of library buildings back to the Oxfor University Colleges who own the freeholds,both of which make explicit that the buildings must remain libraries.The council may be making some realtively small savings onrents and leaseholds but it cannot gain any other income from the buildings by other use or sale.This has given away 2 libraries which it is now difficult to see reopened unless the respective community campaigns opt for some community library model.
The Preston Park area library is to be remodeelled as an overflow school for the next few years.Its future beyond that is unsure but i would suggest that getting it back as a library,now it is not one,will be more difficult than had it remained open on some basis or event empty.There is a lot of resistanec to clousre,there is almost as much resistance to it being aschool but a schoolis better than sale and resisting a school is quite difficult to campaign around.This especially the case where much of the community,in any of the areas might assume that it might have looked to the labour Party,Labour Group,Labour Council for support,advice,guidance leta loen a defene of publicly fned libraries.That has been impossible where the Labur Party in whatever guise has not shown a single sign of fighting back or resisting cuts.Is it surprising that many feel they have no choice but to campaign for a community library or to be left with nothing.This in turn has not been helped when members of the Labour Party who might be dissidents from the cuts have walked away from the campaigns rather than stand and fight,even as a minorit,even a s a losing minority in some of the campaigns.
Let me make clear my own position here.When the campaign locally was launched I became involved when the 1st public meeeting was organised in February 2011.to its credit the local committee did a lot of reasearch and presented a critique of local authority plans and considered a number of other alternatives,some of which presents variant cut options.I was one amongst a nmber fo speakers from the floor which included other local residents and members of other campaigns in the group,who oppossed ALL and ANY options that simply passed the cuts elsewhere.This was the view taken in the Preston Park area.when a journalist approached me for an interview I indicated that I was happy to be quoted but that any quote shoudl not be attributed to me,as I was away fro work on lig term sickness at the time and that such direct quotation might either complucate or make my situatin more difficult.Due to the complexities of my particular sitauion as well as il health itself,i took a back seat but supported the campaign as best i could and "fed in"my opinion and acted as a sounding board for other activists,particularly my partner who has been a member of the committe of the SPLC through most of its life.
The campaign continued.In February 2012 i made a similar,militant contribution to the debate inthe pubic meeting,but remained a supporter of the camapaign.I was however lucky enough to be given an opportunity by Chris of BNCTV(or is it BCNTV?)to be intervied as a campaign supporter,specificaly for my militant position.I wa shappy to do it,was encouraged to be forthright in my marxist,revolutionary outlook of the situation and indeed have some pride in the work i did with Chris.I subsequently inroduced him to other stories...
However,when at a Brent FightBack Meeting about the NHS campaign i argued that SOS Brent Libraries,as a community based campaign fighting the cuts should have speaker on the platform,both i and the campaign was charicatured as lib.dems,opposed to state funding,anarchists and as untrustworthy on a variety of bases.It was like being talked about along the lines of"does he take sugar?"and I'm afraid i lay some of the blame for the situatiin at the feet of those who walk away from campaigns when those campaigns won't embrace particular advocated positions,especially when it is the Labour Party/Council making the cuts!
The plan to convert the library to a school wsa suppossed to take 3 months.Six months on the work has finally begun.About 10 days ago the library building was barricaaded in preparatin for that conversion and refurbishment to begun.Going past the library these last few days has been for me and many others a very sad experience,as the building looks more an more like avacant uncaed for fortress awaiting execution to mix metaphors badly.
Last night i wrote a short valedictory piece of Brent Tusc,Counihan Battlebus and my own timeline on facebook,caling on support for todays Torch of learning event,linking 6 of the closed libraries and ending with a wake at the local hostelry tonight.I called on comrades in other campaigns and organisations to"come rally!",that this was a turning point and that the situation was MAYDAY,MAYDAY!
Then this evening Jimmy Mac,effectivey the convenor and certainly leading activist in the Counihan Sanchez family campaign drove me home after campaigning with them,in the battlebus,we passed Preston Park Library.On the fence thatbguards it were flowers,posters and banners both advertising the event,and calling agin for OUR librray to be re-opened.There were also a number of black flag flying.Although these are funereal rather tha symbols of Anarchy(ah!Anarchy!)-and thisis the nearest certain labour party members will find of anarchy in this locality-more the pity-at least it indicates we stiil have hope and still love our library....
Th truggle continues.Jim drpped me at the Windermere Pub.i entered the wake where there were some subtle surprisse and interesting cntradictions,but the struggle DOES continue!
Lotta Continua!
(to be continued)
Tuesday 9 October 2012
The Counihan-Sanchez Family Campaign Takes A Giant Step
Within only a few weeks of its foundation on 14th August,the Counihan Sanchez Family Campaign got into an unfaltering and self confident stride.I don't know who originated the idea for a demonstration.It will undoubtedly have been one of the women who play such a strong and leading part in this campaign,although actually it does not matter much because so much of this campaign does genuinely seem to be collaborative and co-operative.
The idea took off and bearing in mind other important actions planned in this community,we settled n and worked hard for the demonstration that took place last Saturday,6th October 2012.
Arranging it was not straightforward but we let nothing stand in our wayWhen the Metropolitan Police and the intransigent local authority sought to put major obstacles in our way-that we would have to pay £1200 for policing and that we would be restricted to marching on the pavement or be arrested,we simply"stepped back",sought legal advice and went back into the fray.This resulted in an unprecedented letter of apology from the Metropolitan Police that indicated it was entireky reasonable to march in the road,and that we would not be charged financially either,nor arrested for carrying out our legal rights.
We then set about dividing tasks for the day and got on with it.Everyone played their full part,and it paid off on the day.
Saturday 6th October came-a bright autumn day,and it stayed that way meterologically and every other way for us.I think like a lot of us,and despite being a seasoned,experienced activist,i started off the day with acombinatin of excitement and nervousness.
The protest was due to start at 2.30pm with a few speeches and some further organising that can only be done in situ on the day.Some of us agreed to arrive early to assist with preparations.As me and my comrade Sandra arrived just a few minutes in advance of the time agreed,it was clear that people were already gathering.
Indeed it was impressive that the local RCG/Revolutionary Communist Group comrades had moved their own solidarity work with the presidential elections in Venezuela last weekend,to join us in Kilburn Square. Numbers swelled as campaigners,friends of the campaign and aotgers arrived in numbers and often with banners.Already an open,inviting,fraternal and friendly atmosphere was developing.Contingents included Kilburn Against Workfare,Global Womens Network,Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group,whose original initiative had led to the establishment of this campaign arrived.So too did Brent Trades Council and SWAN/Social Work Actin Network.I spent some time introducing various campaigners to others and co-ordinating speakers.Unfortunately we did not have the Brent TUSC/Trade Unions and Socialists Coalition banner-i i suspect it might have been being carried on another demonstration,but otherwise would have been unweildy for us,simply because I was occupied on one set of tasks and Sandra on making a news video of the event which she has psted in avariety fo places.As people gathered,members of the family and the wider campaig made speeches promoting our cause,which served to make links also with other campaigns and issues but also to press hme the pressure on the local council,and particularly its leader,Cllr.Butt who have the power and ability to end the misery of this family now and to begin a fight back against the cuts!Highlights included Carol,a fervent campaign member who has worked particularly hard raising moey for the campaign and in relation to her own trades union,the RMT/Rail,Marine,Transport and Barney of the Revolutionary Communist Group who in making links with Venezuela and Cuba,made clear that the struggle was both interntaional and linked by common concerns about living standards and housing.I stressed the need to link campiagns,with references to localissues and the importance of the Council dealing with bth this family and figthing the cuts now or face an increasingly determined and growing campaign to fight back!Anthony Counhihan focussed on the increasingly heartbreaking situation of his own family,and its efforts with the campaign to fight back.Donna spoke stressing the importance of campaigns rooted in the community and demanding that the local council take resonsibility for both this and other famies and to lead a fightback against cuts.John Tymon made a rousing speech spelling out the attack on the comunity and the class and reinforcing the need to fight back,as well as the unique and courageous contribution to that struggle the counihans and this campaign are making!
Approximately on time the demonstration set off in good order along its route,along ashort stretch of Kilburn High Road,singing its own song,written by one of the campaign members,Alan Wheatley and to the chants also emblazoned on our banner demanding housing for the Counihans,and indeed Housing for all.
I think that somewhat stung by the necessary climbdown of the local police,they made a decision to police our demonstration properly.To their credit,they policed with alight touch,and apart from a vain attempt to suggest we walk on the pavement,they did ensure the safety of the demonstration.They also seemed to respond well to the authoritative and sensitive directions of the chief steward,Nicki Jameson,who made every effort to ensure that the march proceeded at the pace of the slowest-children and those with difficulties at the front.I certainly felt safer than on another local demonstration a few weeks ago.
It was a spirited demonstration of 200-300 people.we made astop at the old address of Nygel Firminger,who comitted suicide following running into difficultes with employment,benefit,increasing debt and again what i have called the"casual indifference"or brutality of institutions and agencies dealing with him,but which offerred no help to him.His best friend Nic,offerred a speech which gave some insight into Nygels life and last hours.We all honoured Nygel who every instinct tells us is"a fallen comrade",with a minutes silence before moving on.Nic told me later that the reverence shown along with its care to him,gave him some closure in what has clearly a painful road for Nic.this again makes clear he indifference of thoes who "ought to have cared,set against the palpable affection in which we and the wider community hold Nygel.We all hope Nygel will rest in peace,but that we should never forget him.Whilst the sstem victimised him,we should also not forget that as amember of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group,he was also a class fighter!
We continued our march,with our song alternating with chants-the slogans of the campaign and also"Who's streets?Our Streets!".I admit when i got to lead the chanting i could not resist the musicality of"What does democracy look like?This is what democracy looks like!"which seems to have its rots in the Wisconsin demnsrations of the winter of 2010.Along the way our comrade,Sandra wh is also a TUSC member made a poignant speech about the impact of cuts an dausterity n the apsirations ofyoung people,facing debt and blighted lives whatever way they turn,and hinting at an alternative vision of how things might be.
Arriving at the rally site,the Peel Precinct at the South Kilburn/Carlton Estate,we rallied to speeches from Sarah Counihan and Isobel Sanchez,daughter and mother,followed by Ted a supporter who came all the way from Milton Keynesand who spoke movingly of his own experience.Speeches also included Jane from London SWAN/Social Work Action Network who pressed home that many social wokers wanted to practice a social work that embodied humanity and humane values,along with a commitment to campaigning with/alongside campaigns precisely like our own..Tracey stressed the importance of people fighting back and the importance of widening and strengthening the campaign.Barney added that whilst Brent does nothing about anything,the Venezuelan government is planning t build 3,000,000 over the 4-5years!I expressed my rage that Cllr.Butt appears again to have broken a commitment to meet with the Counihan Family.whilst it turns out that this may have arisen from a"genuine misunderstanding",it remains the case that Cllr.Butt only responds to pressure and that any concern has not been matched by any contstructive chnage or improvement in famiy circumstances.I indicated that on eof my responses to this is to prepare with the willing co-operation of the family,and"alternative social work report"which might assist us to develop the campaign further and to put more pressure on those council bodies with the power anddiscretion to make a diference.
The day ended on a great high,which was not just built on good feeling.We took a great step forward with our demonstration.We made an impact,and we now have further actions planned,when we will have to step up again and again until we win!
As a committee of a dozen or so from a public meeting of 50,we now have several hundred supporters and several hundred bodily and visually supported us on the dmeonstration.Now there is more to do,and more support to gain.We already impact well above our numbers.Now we need to strike the kind of blows against council complacency to win!Once we win this struggle,it will be time in turn,to generalise and to hone the skills and the"cout"that comes from organised self activity
in our class to win the fights of other families and individuals who are being institutiinaly aused and victimised by the cuts.If and when we roll back one set of cuts around THIS family we can have the confidence to roll bac and to win more!I would urge all those who want to fught cuts and austerity and to to build a socety built on different values and priorites to join us!
For those of us in TUSC/Trade Union and Socialist Coalition key weapons in such a fight a needs led budget,whih requires us all to start by fighting all cuts.Inthe face of the sytematic failure of the Labour Party,locally and natinalky,this begs questions about indpendent working class political representation.That for me is firmly centred on the self-activity of our own people,our own class.It is no longer,if it ever was about anyone doing something for us,but as CJ put it so well"if you won't do it,we won't wait,we will do it ourselves".And the key clause in that sentence is"WE WILL DO IT FOR OURSELVES!"
The idea took off and bearing in mind other important actions planned in this community,we settled n and worked hard for the demonstration that took place last Saturday,6th October 2012.
Arranging it was not straightforward but we let nothing stand in our wayWhen the Metropolitan Police and the intransigent local authority sought to put major obstacles in our way-that we would have to pay £1200 for policing and that we would be restricted to marching on the pavement or be arrested,we simply"stepped back",sought legal advice and went back into the fray.This resulted in an unprecedented letter of apology from the Metropolitan Police that indicated it was entireky reasonable to march in the road,and that we would not be charged financially either,nor arrested for carrying out our legal rights.
We then set about dividing tasks for the day and got on with it.Everyone played their full part,and it paid off on the day.
Saturday 6th October came-a bright autumn day,and it stayed that way meterologically and every other way for us.I think like a lot of us,and despite being a seasoned,experienced activist,i started off the day with acombinatin of excitement and nervousness.
The protest was due to start at 2.30pm with a few speeches and some further organising that can only be done in situ on the day.Some of us agreed to arrive early to assist with preparations.As me and my comrade Sandra arrived just a few minutes in advance of the time agreed,it was clear that people were already gathering.
Indeed it was impressive that the local RCG/Revolutionary Communist Group comrades had moved their own solidarity work with the presidential elections in Venezuela last weekend,to join us in Kilburn Square. Numbers swelled as campaigners,friends of the campaign and aotgers arrived in numbers and often with banners.Already an open,inviting,fraternal and friendly atmosphere was developing.Contingents included Kilburn Against Workfare,Global Womens Network,Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group,whose original initiative had led to the establishment of this campaign arrived.So too did Brent Trades Council and SWAN/Social Work Actin Network.I spent some time introducing various campaigners to others and co-ordinating speakers.Unfortunately we did not have the Brent TUSC/Trade Unions and Socialists Coalition banner-i i suspect it might have been being carried on another demonstration,but otherwise would have been unweildy for us,simply because I was occupied on one set of tasks and Sandra on making a news video of the event which she has psted in avariety fo places.As people gathered,members of the family and the wider campaig made speeches promoting our cause,which served to make links also with other campaigns and issues but also to press hme the pressure on the local council,and particularly its leader,Cllr.Butt who have the power and ability to end the misery of this family now and to begin a fight back against the cuts!Highlights included Carol,a fervent campaign member who has worked particularly hard raising moey for the campaign and in relation to her own trades union,the RMT/Rail,Marine,Transport and Barney of the Revolutionary Communist Group who in making links with Venezuela and Cuba,made clear that the struggle was both interntaional and linked by common concerns about living standards and housing.I stressed the need to link campiagns,with references to localissues and the importance of the Council dealing with bth this family and figthing the cuts now or face an increasingly determined and growing campaign to fight back!Anthony Counhihan focussed on the increasingly heartbreaking situation of his own family,and its efforts with the campaign to fight back.Donna spoke stressing the importance of campaigns rooted in the community and demanding that the local council take resonsibility for both this and other famies and to lead a fightback against cuts.John Tymon made a rousing speech spelling out the attack on the comunity and the class and reinforcing the need to fight back,as well as the unique and courageous contribution to that struggle the counihans and this campaign are making!
Approximately on time the demonstration set off in good order along its route,along ashort stretch of Kilburn High Road,singing its own song,written by one of the campaign members,Alan Wheatley and to the chants also emblazoned on our banner demanding housing for the Counihans,and indeed Housing for all.
I think that somewhat stung by the necessary climbdown of the local police,they made a decision to police our demonstration properly.To their credit,they policed with alight touch,and apart from a vain attempt to suggest we walk on the pavement,they did ensure the safety of the demonstration.They also seemed to respond well to the authoritative and sensitive directions of the chief steward,Nicki Jameson,who made every effort to ensure that the march proceeded at the pace of the slowest-children and those with difficulties at the front.I certainly felt safer than on another local demonstration a few weeks ago.
It was a spirited demonstration of 200-300 people.we made astop at the old address of Nygel Firminger,who comitted suicide following running into difficultes with employment,benefit,increasing debt and again what i have called the"casual indifference"or brutality of institutions and agencies dealing with him,but which offerred no help to him.His best friend Nic,offerred a speech which gave some insight into Nygels life and last hours.We all honoured Nygel who every instinct tells us is"a fallen comrade",with a minutes silence before moving on.Nic told me later that the reverence shown along with its care to him,gave him some closure in what has clearly a painful road for Nic.this again makes clear he indifference of thoes who "ought to have cared,set against the palpable affection in which we and the wider community hold Nygel.We all hope Nygel will rest in peace,but that we should never forget him.Whilst the sstem victimised him,we should also not forget that as amember of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group,he was also a class fighter!
We continued our march,with our song alternating with chants-the slogans of the campaign and also"Who's streets?Our Streets!".I admit when i got to lead the chanting i could not resist the musicality of"What does democracy look like?This is what democracy looks like!"which seems to have its rots in the Wisconsin demnsrations of the winter of 2010.Along the way our comrade,Sandra wh is also a TUSC member made a poignant speech about the impact of cuts an dausterity n the apsirations ofyoung people,facing debt and blighted lives whatever way they turn,and hinting at an alternative vision of how things might be.
Arriving at the rally site,the Peel Precinct at the South Kilburn/Carlton Estate,we rallied to speeches from Sarah Counihan and Isobel Sanchez,daughter and mother,followed by Ted a supporter who came all the way from Milton Keynesand who spoke movingly of his own experience.Speeches also included Jane from London SWAN/Social Work Action Network who pressed home that many social wokers wanted to practice a social work that embodied humanity and humane values,along with a commitment to campaigning with/alongside campaigns precisely like our own..Tracey stressed the importance of people fighting back and the importance of widening and strengthening the campaign.Barney added that whilst Brent does nothing about anything,the Venezuelan government is planning t build 3,000,000 over the 4-5years!I expressed my rage that Cllr.Butt appears again to have broken a commitment to meet with the Counihan Family.whilst it turns out that this may have arisen from a"genuine misunderstanding",it remains the case that Cllr.Butt only responds to pressure and that any concern has not been matched by any contstructive chnage or improvement in famiy circumstances.I indicated that on eof my responses to this is to prepare with the willing co-operation of the family,and"alternative social work report"which might assist us to develop the campaign further and to put more pressure on those council bodies with the power anddiscretion to make a diference.
The day ended on a great high,which was not just built on good feeling.We took a great step forward with our demonstration.We made an impact,and we now have further actions planned,when we will have to step up again and again until we win!
As a committee of a dozen or so from a public meeting of 50,we now have several hundred supporters and several hundred bodily and visually supported us on the dmeonstration.Now there is more to do,and more support to gain.We already impact well above our numbers.Now we need to strike the kind of blows against council complacency to win!Once we win this struggle,it will be time in turn,to generalise and to hone the skills and the"cout"that comes from organised self activity
in our class to win the fights of other families and individuals who are being institutiinaly aused and victimised by the cuts.If and when we roll back one set of cuts around THIS family we can have the confidence to roll bac and to win more!I would urge all those who want to fught cuts and austerity and to to build a socety built on different values and priorites to join us!
For those of us in TUSC/Trade Union and Socialist Coalition key weapons in such a fight a needs led budget,whih requires us all to start by fighting all cuts.Inthe face of the sytematic failure of the Labour Party,locally and natinalky,this begs questions about indpendent working class political representation.That for me is firmly centred on the self-activity of our own people,our own class.It is no longer,if it ever was about anyone doing something for us,but as CJ put it so well"if you won't do it,we won't wait,we will do it ourselves".And the key clause in that sentence is"WE WILL DO IT FOR OURSELVES!"
Wednesday 26 September 2012
Olympics/Paralympics Legacy-Remember Atos
Whilst i dont believe in much of the language of evil,i find it very tempting to speak of Atos as exactly that-evil-because whilst i have an intellectual understanding of at least certain aspects of "the world"that understanding does notinclude accepting that things are neccessarrily what they appear. Other parts of me are still sometimes shocked,even though i gave up being a "reasonable" man many years ago,and announced this publicly quite recently.
By reasonableness,i mean the kind of response that gives everything the benefit of the doubt,accepts the sleight of hand that occurs in public discourse and the"that was then this is now"kind of attitude that cuts off chronology,let alone history in critical discussion and thought.
So i admit i am shocked by the evil of Atos and the hypocisy of a so-called government that allows Atos to sponsor the paralympics whilst continueing under government contracts to effectively hound people with disabilities from claiming or out of their entitlement to disability benefits of any and all kinds.
So i cant really do better than choose a starting point here,than quoting the words of Neil Faulkner from a recent leaflet,in decribing Atos as"a global mega-corporation worth £8.5billion......Atos is paid £100million pa to test 11,000 sick and disabled people a week and judge whether they are"fit for work".Millionaire Tory chancellor George Osbourne's aim is to cut £18 billion in welfare benefits over 5 years.Atos is at the cutting edge of the Tory attack on the poor.
Many of the disabled hounded and persecuted by Atos have already comitted suicide.A 1,000 have died of their illnesses since being deemed"fit for work"
I suggest that advocates of"Legacy"infected by the"feel-good"factor latched onto by commentators and politicians alike need to adjust their focus and take a more hard headed,forensic approach to the issue.
I hope that after the DPAC(DisabledPeople Aagsinst Cuts),UK Uncut,(and CON-Counter Olympics Network) week of action against Atos at the end of the paralympics we can continue to give Atos some hell.What i would certainly claim is that alongside the olympian feats of paralympian athletes,is the achievement of some of us"at the bottom of the pile"who on the Friday,managed to shut down the DWP(Department of Work and Pensions)at least for a few hours!
lost
24/09/12d2
Whilst i dont believe in much of the language of evil,i find it very tempting to speak of Atos as exactly that-evil-because whilst i have an intellectual understanding of at least certain aspects of "the world"that understanding does notinclude accepting that things are neccessarrily what they appear. Other parts of me are still sometimes shocked,even though i gave up being a "reasonable" man many years ago,and announced this publicly quite recently.
By reasonableness,i mean the kind of response that gives everything the benefit of the doubt,accepts the sleight of hand that occurs in public discourse and the"that was then this is now"kind of attitude that cuts off chronology,let alone history in critical discussion and thought.
So i admit i am shocked by the evil of Atos and the hypocisy of a so-called government that allows Atos to sponsor the paralympics whilst continueing under government contracts to effectively hound people with disabilities from claiming or out of their entitlement to disability benefits of any and all kinds.
So i cant really do better than choose a starting point here,than quoting the words of Neil Faulkner from a recent leaflet,in decribing Atos as"a global mega-corporation worth £8.5billion......Atos is paid £100million pa to test 11,000 sick and disabled people a week and judge whether they are"fit for work".Millionaire Tory chancellor George Osbourne's aim is to cut £18 billion in welfare benefits over 5 years.Atos is at the cutting edge of the Tory attack on the poor.
Many of the disabled hounded and persecuted by Atos have already comitted suicide.A 1,000 have died of their illnesses since being deemed"fit for work"
I suggest that advocates of"Legacy"infected by the"feel-good"factor latched onto by commentators and politicians alike need to adjust their focus and take a more hard headed,forensic approach to the issue.
I hope that after the DPAC(DisabledPeople Aagsinst Cuts),UK Uncut,(and CON-Counter Olympics Network) week of action against Atos at the end of the paralympics we can continue to give Atos some hell.What i would certainly claim is that alongside the olympian feats of paralympian athletes,is the achievement of some of us"at the bottom of the pile"who on the Friday,managed to shut down the DWP(Department of Work and Pensions)at least for a few hours!
lost
24/09/12d2
small Thoughts for a BIG World
Time is a strange thing to experience.
Subjectively,it seems to speed up when i am busy,or having fun and certainly as i get older.
I'm led to believe that this has an explanation,at least in part.When we are young everything is new,to us mentally and i guess physically too take in,breathe in,expeience every moment as fully as we are able.We are astonished by it, and it is all new experience.As we get older,we become familiar,perhaps over familiar with it-the world and or own experience of it-our senses take thinsg for granted,and we take in more sensory information,less carefully and at greater speed.I'm told that makes time seem to pass more quickly.
That said,I'm not sure where that all takes me...us except that there are certainly times when events,sensory experience,life itself seems to be teeming around us.And despite getting older,with all that goes with it,experience and time can still be perplexing,exciting,confusing.
Men,apparently,according to cod/pop psychology remain always partly boys.That might be true.What is certainly true for me,is that i still have a reaction to life and the world that i was first conscious of as an adolescent,although im sure it goes back further,before i could identify and name it-that i remain curious about the world,and part of me still responds to things so i can't bear to miss anything!
lost
26/09/12d1
Subjectively,it seems to speed up when i am busy,or having fun and certainly as i get older.
I'm led to believe that this has an explanation,at least in part.When we are young everything is new,to us mentally and i guess physically too take in,breathe in,expeience every moment as fully as we are able.We are astonished by it, and it is all new experience.As we get older,we become familiar,perhaps over familiar with it-the world and or own experience of it-our senses take thinsg for granted,and we take in more sensory information,less carefully and at greater speed.I'm told that makes time seem to pass more quickly.
That said,I'm not sure where that all takes me...us except that there are certainly times when events,sensory experience,life itself seems to be teeming around us.And despite getting older,with all that goes with it,experience and time can still be perplexing,exciting,confusing.
Men,apparently,according to cod/pop psychology remain always partly boys.That might be true.What is certainly true for me,is that i still have a reaction to life and the world that i was first conscious of as an adolescent,although im sure it goes back further,before i could identify and name it-that i remain curious about the world,and part of me still responds to things so i can't bear to miss anything!
lost
26/09/12d1
Monday 24 September 2012
The REAL impact of cuts and austerity on REAL people and REAL lives
On 14th August 2012 Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group(KUWG)scored a major"coup"in calling a public meeting in South Kilburn which was essentially to dscuss the REAL impact of cuts and austerity on REAL people leading ordinary but very REAL lives.
After introductions by us all,about 50 people in all,the chair of the meeting,Robin,a member of KUWG introduced 3 speakers-Anthony Counihan,father of 5 children between 4 and 15,and partner to Isobel Sanchez;then my friend and comrade,CJ spoke briefly about the suicide of Nigel Firminger and Anne,mother of Daniel Roque Hall spoke about the imprisonment of her son.
From Anthony Counihans account,the gist of the Counihan-Sanchez family predicament is this:The family have had a long association with Brent going back many years and on the South Kilburn Estate in particular where they are a well respected family,who not only have support but have always,whatever their own difficulties supported neighbours and others in their community.Some years ago,they returned to Ireland due to Anthony Counihan's fathers illness,giving up their tenancy in Brent.The local authority had at that time failed to advise them properly that they could assist themsleves by subletting to maintain their tenacny for up to a year.When they returned to Brent they were housed in property which it soon became clear was well beyond their income.The family were subsequently deprived of benefits and support entirely when,"too honest for their own good"they declared ownership of waterlogged land inherited from Antony's father on the latters death.This brings in a maximum of £18 pw rent but is virtually unsaleable particulary in the current economic circumstances.rater than apply common sesnse or discretion or simply deduct income from benefits,the family were evicted and presented with a bill for around £56,000 despite the local authoritties denial of any repsnsibility for the family.
Again the family were poorly advised,to sell the land which would have been illegal as they would have been distributing assetts.Now temporarilly rehoused in and by Ealing Council,it seems that both that Council and the local Tory MP have written to Brent advising that they should accept and address its responsibilities. In the meantime,Isabel Sanchez has postponed hip replacement because of the famiy predicament and delivers her 5 children to 5 different schools in Brent everyday.I understand that in the last few days,some"special provison"has been obtained in Brent for Vinny's education,the youngest of their children who is autistic and whose behaviour is so affected by the families distress that months of therapeutic work by therapists and family have been undone in a few weeks over the summer.
It s my and others vew that throughout,this family have been poorly advised and indeed institutionally abused by poor service delivery from social services,housing and benefits departments,who have never excercised proper oversight,applied common sense,discretion or review.Advice and"help from"the local authority has often been bizarre and perverse.It is stretching the point to call it patchy.
Unable to obtain help through"proper channels",a campaign was set up from the public meeting and community political pressure has been applied.
In addition,in that public meeting CJ reported on the suicide of Nigel Firminger, a recent member of KUWG who it seems had been driven to suicide by the insensititvty of a number of government,local authority and third sector agencies,who took no account of the impact of their indiffference on his increased anxiety.This is likely to have led to him accumulating rent arrears as he lost employment and was denied a return to benefits.In the wake of his suicide,some of those agencies are now "falling over themselves" to spout weasel words and to regret their insensitivity to his human needs.
Ann reported that following her son, Daniels own decline in health over several months,he had made the mistake of committing a serious offence but had made admissions from the moment he was apprehended for drug importation when he returned to england from a period abroad. Whilst not denying that the offence was serious,a man in the later stages of a very serious degenerative and debilitating disease was hardly in a position to run away.I do not know what consiederation was given to alternative sentencing,although a judge sentenced him to 3 yaers imprisonment having obtained specific assurances that the prison medical service would be able to meet the health needs of Daniel Roque Hall and to replicate the standards of the NHS(National Health Service).
Within 2 hours of sentencing and incarceration,the absurdity of those promises became cleaer,when he fell from a table to which he had been chained.As Daniel has virtually no control of most of his body,he could neither help himself from falling when he had an involuntary spasmno do anything to call ut or to help himself..He should not have been left alone.As a result he suatined a serious head injury requiring hospitalisation,which was refused.Unable to provide the care he needs in prison,which should include excercise programmes and special equipment,his health is in further constant jeopardy.He is in decline.This amounts to torture.I hear that when eventually hospitalised he was described as being at"deaths door".At a time when no expense is apparently spared for the olympic and paralympic elite, Daniel's experience of casual,institutional brutality could not be much clearer.Prison is no place for such a man.
The public meeting went on to discuss the range of issues raised.Whist appreciating the presence and input of a one of the younger and more junior councillors,the meeting almost unanimously rejected his perspective that the local authorities hands are tied by central government funding and the need for "legality".IT would seem that everyone else views this as the outlook of a spineless,Labour led council which is unwilling to defend its own community/electorate against spinless public sector cuts.Members of the community attending the meeting were highly eloquent in not only refusing that view but proposing an alternative of fighting for a budget which reflects the needs of the community in Brent. At least one person also made reference to George Lansbury who once led an east London council in the 1930s from a prison cell rather than carry out Tory,oppressive laws.There was some discussion about increasing the networking and engagagement across London,regional and wider communities.This came in a clear second to a unamimously agreed proposal to support the Counihan-Sanchez family by establishing a campaign in the community,One activist eloquently pointed out that whilst networking campaigns had not rolled back any cuts anywhere to date, a campaign around one family in need would be emblematic and when victorious would give a very clear demonstration and lead that cuts CAN be rolled back.
From a perssonal point of view i attended the meeting partly on behalf of my comrades in Brent TUSC(Trades Unionists and Socialist Coalition),as a member of the ILN/International Luxemburgist Network(i also write on the Forum/Network website)but not least as an ex-social worker/probation officer.I continue to feel that i can be a "gamekeeper turned poacher"and use my insider knowledge to the benefit of this campaign.I am indeed a member of campaign committee.
Over the approximately 6 weeks thathas elapsed since,the Counihan-Sanchez Family Campaign/Counihan Battlebus has campaigned every saturday at "Kilburn Square"and on the South Kilburn Estate.We have used every possible opprotunity often alongside other issues,campaigns and activist comrades to obtain signatures to the petition and raise wider public awareness.
That has included a lobby of the family's MP,Glenda Jackson,who when originally approached gave only the insensitive advice that"The family could not afford to live in London and should move to Wales." Not only do the family have no connection with Wales,but this sounds like the kind of "social cleansing"advocated by Iain Duncan Smith and Frank Field.At that lobby Ms jackson continued to ignore the family,to treat with them with contempt that fits her hgh handed arrogance and to ignore everyone who wanted to speak about or ask questions about the campaign.Nothing seems to shift this millionaire from her groundless sense of superiority to her electorate.
It is onky simiar lobbies of council meetings and other public events that have mounted a pressure on Cllr.Mo Butts to compel him,the leader of the council to meet with the family,although this has so far produced little oter result.He has however been rattled and dislodged from his previous confidence in his own secure,politicla future which is now much more open to question.Sarah,the 15 year old and oldest daughter in the family has described disruption of such public meetings as only neccessary as a consequence of the famiy being otherwise ignored.
All these people need to realise that if we are to be treated with such complete contempt,then they ned to conider their own fates at the hands of an increasingly class conscious and confident electorate.families like the Counihan-sanchez family and the wider community will no longer accept being treated like a stage army to vote for such careerist,professional politicians.Campaigns like this,along with the SOS Brent Libraries/Save Our Seven Brent Libraries and the emerging education campaigns begin to pose the need for independent political representation based on rejection of all cuts,provision of full services and the restoration of an improved"Welfare State"and a needs led budget.this campaign already has the confidence,courage and persistence to call out these politicians an d to attempt to bring them to account.
Family and campaign members have indicated that tere was a helpful meeting between an allocated
social worker and the family which in my opinion seems at leats to have been some kind of improvement n previous meetings where social workers appeared to use andy and every factor and piece of informatin both against the famiy and to pathologise it.So the childrens understandable anger and hostility,when they felt the social worker was"fishing"forinformation to turn them against their mother was not simply described as "adolscent attitude",which would be bad enough,but was turned on the famiy itself.The parents seem also to hve been accussed of "sharing too much"with their children.In other situatins this would have been praised.I would ask what coice such afamiky have when they are going through such profound difficulties,which are in my and the campaigns opinion oby the local authorities iinstitutional abuse,and revictimisation of them.
Isobel Sanchez was happy to tell me that some new assistanec has been set up to help Vinny,her youngest child who is autistic,although this seems to have emerged from the sensitivity of some staff in aparticular part of the"service"rather than as a result of pressure to resolve the whole burgeoning range of difficuties.Neither the council nor the councilleaderhave"grasped the nettle".Advice from the various parts of the council then,contiue to be perverse,and bizarre and certainly unhelpful.The campaign has evidence that the latest housing advice is that the family move to the waterlogged land in Ireland,which is isolated and without services.implication is that Anthny Counihan should somehow continue to commute from the West of Ireland to Cricklewood Bus Garage to continue to work as a bus driver on almost a daily basis
Whilst the local trades union council umbrella community campaign to defend services and fight cuts has been helpful,it has nevertheless been a little like "pulling teeth",and their seems some over-orientation by Brent Fightback on uncritical relationships with the Labour Party and council leadership.Somehow it seems that although such co-operation makes absolute sense at times,this should not require anyone to remain silent in relation to cuts in general nor urgent need.I form a strong impression that there are times when this body expects community campaigns to come to it almost for validation and approval rather than there being any sense of outreach to pro-actively offer solidarity and support to them.I detect from some,an odd requirment that campaigns demonstrate some kind of ideological uniformity before they are worthy of support and if neccessary critical assistance.Whilst i recognise that this is not Russia in 1917,i cannot help but feel that then the Workers Councils,a much more militant form of organisation that might in some ways be compared with local trades council organisations, rather than demanding that a "struggle" present itself to it,would instead have sent workers(and revolutionary soldiers)and leading activists to support and bolster such battles,and to hammer out positions and strategies to win!
As a member of the campaign committee,i suggested that i amonst others would approach other organisatins and campaigns i am in contact with to seek support.As an ex social worker i had also recently become involved in the SWAN(Social Workers Action Network)particularly in London,where curently i am involved in assisting to organise the SWAN 2013 national Confernec scheduled for 12-13th April 2013.The London grouping,of about 500 on an email list,is part of a wider national network established in 2004.The founders include Michael lavalette who is a preston councillor,a social work educator and a member of the SWP/Socialist Workers Party.
When i took the Counihand_Sanchez family campaign to the last London meeting of SWAN,the contrast with certain other meetings could not have been more striking. whilst no-one revels in the misery of others,I felt when i spoke that i had the full and enthusiastic attention of everyone,about 20 people in all . Everyone was both eager to know more and to help.London SWAN wil mobilise for the campaign dmeonstration in Kilburn on October 6th,and bring its banner.The call for support and further informatin will both go out to all on the London list and it could well be promoted via the SWAN website as a campaign SWAN will suport and take up nationally.London SWAN will be invited to provide aspeaker at the rally on 6th October.
I hope that this article will serve those purposes.As I believe Michael Laveltte is diue to be in London for a meeting with London SWAN on 9th October,i hope he might be available to attend/speak at the Counohan Sanchez campaign ralky on 6th October.I am sure London SWAN will assist the campaign to make other links,such as with the Haringey Travellers Services Team dispute.I am sure that the Campaign will be able to speak and make a presentatin at the SWAN Conference in due course,when i hope that we will be able to present both a victory and further develoments in a wider campaign.
Before i end this article,i want to make 2 more points.One is to observe that although sectarianism on the left and amongst activists is not dead,it is noticeable at least to me that in this and other campaigns i have personal knowledge of recently, there is evidence of a differenet climate and that grous are making some cosiderable efforts to not behave in a sectarian manner.Old habits die hard but i believe the intent really is there and i am finding genuine warmth,comradeship,friendship and greater openness than in the past.I am for example aware that in at numerous of our meetings and activities there have been members of at least 6 differnet grouings/currents who are able to acknowledge the valued contributions we all make as well as to hear and to learn from the many community activities who come from no particular political traditions.It is my firm opinion that we do not need to hide or be silent about our real political differences whikst cntinueing to work effectively togetger to a common and largely shared end. This is very important for me personaly(i am a member of 2 "overlapping"oganisations.We live in times where if we don't"stand together,we will fall apart".Sectarianism is itself an enemy and a luxury in the current political and social climate I would affirm we cannot afford.It is in my opinion better that we fight out the issues openly as they become relevant rather than by shunning each other and other organisations on matters which might have some relevanc at some point but are often too abstruse,abstarct and alienation.I recognise of course that the time of their relevance is itself a key questions,but one which we should remainsensitive and respectful about.
Last but not least,we are aware as acampaign of the dangers of appearing to personalise the issues around one family.ButThat said,the family and the campaign are very well aware that whlst each family and individual need is specal and important,this family are emblematic,and that a victory for one family will in turn enable us to push harder,more quickly and effectively for further change.We will then be in aposition to generalse out from one success.We are already discovering that there is a vast range of need "out there" in our own and oter communities.Most if not all of this is symptomatic not of individual or family pathology but of austerity and crisis compounded by institutional abuse.This in my opinion results from any casually brutal local state machine guided by the demands of capitalism,or indeed anything except a "moral compass"or a commitment to electorate or class.
It is highly relevant to stress that this particular family are not just highly respected but also resilient andstrong.,which facilitates such acampaign.As CJ pointed out in the public meeting,however it remains the case that if"you take away resources,you make people vulnerable".
Past experience as an activist and as a professional social worker for most of my 42 year career,i am aware that there are dangers for activists being dragged into roles as alternative social workers/caseworkers/advisors/service providers. hhaving been involved in seevral discussions over recent months about these issues,i am forming the view that there is aneed to train activists,who in turn would be capable of tarining other in somebasic skills to formulate enough of a"thumbnail"assessment of social need to direct those in need to appropriate services and to monitor those services as provided rather than substitute for them,although this cannot be an absolute and requires sensitivity to the needs of individuals,families and groups.Unfortunatey this is NOT the 1960s-1970s when many"vountary sector"services and campaigns grew up to meet such needs but themselves have either been cut completely over recent decades or have ben reduced to shadows of their former selves,oftenserving radically altered"ends".It seemsto me that now we must seek to develop new alteratives and to demand proper professional and accountable services,rather than to substitute for them.Susbtsitution places those engaged in it at risks-which were not identified in the 1960s-70s,and also defelcets us fom political activism.Activists,i suggest need to maintain an ability to generalise,organise and motivate,whist remaining sensitive to real human need and not to"pass the buck" as too many of the services i/we would criticise,now do.It seems to me that with the focus of the next SWAN conference,and the incresaing demand amongst young social worker-activists to know what radical/transformative social work practice might look like,this camapign and others opens up a rich vein of opportunity to learn and to develop our thinking.Those of us now"outside"employment in such professions and the self-identified radicals and activists within have akey role to play.
I am hearing of similar initiatives to focus on the real impact on real people of cuts and austerity in a number of places including Haringey and Luton.This makes the tasks urgent.They may not need addressing this minute but they do need addressing soon,in the next few months rather than years.I am otimistic that this task can be taken up in the forthcoming SWAN Conference and that i can begin to develo with others some kind of"rolling activist workshop/training in casework skills/issues for activists"
We ought to win this campaign,and whilst the road will be hard for us and for anyone else in anything like similar predicaments,a victory here or anywhere should be maximised,generalised and shared.
I would like to end simply by acknowledgeing the commitment,friendship,comradeship,support,talent,tenacity,endeavour and and courage of many i am working alongside,although I have not named.Mydiscussions with a number of them have contributed to this article.One of the key differences between achievement amongst OUR class and theirs is that we can share and collaborate.We do not need to make stars and celebrities from our shared activity.It does not mean that we should value each other any less. Individual genius is far too overrated.What is important is that we put the efforts of our heads and our hands and hearts together in common endeavour.
lost
24/09/2012d4
After introductions by us all,about 50 people in all,the chair of the meeting,Robin,a member of KUWG introduced 3 speakers-Anthony Counihan,father of 5 children between 4 and 15,and partner to Isobel Sanchez;then my friend and comrade,CJ spoke briefly about the suicide of Nigel Firminger and Anne,mother of Daniel Roque Hall spoke about the imprisonment of her son.
From Anthony Counihans account,the gist of the Counihan-Sanchez family predicament is this:The family have had a long association with Brent going back many years and on the South Kilburn Estate in particular where they are a well respected family,who not only have support but have always,whatever their own difficulties supported neighbours and others in their community.Some years ago,they returned to Ireland due to Anthony Counihan's fathers illness,giving up their tenancy in Brent.The local authority had at that time failed to advise them properly that they could assist themsleves by subletting to maintain their tenacny for up to a year.When they returned to Brent they were housed in property which it soon became clear was well beyond their income.The family were subsequently deprived of benefits and support entirely when,"too honest for their own good"they declared ownership of waterlogged land inherited from Antony's father on the latters death.This brings in a maximum of £18 pw rent but is virtually unsaleable particulary in the current economic circumstances.rater than apply common sesnse or discretion or simply deduct income from benefits,the family were evicted and presented with a bill for around £56,000 despite the local authoritties denial of any repsnsibility for the family.
Again the family were poorly advised,to sell the land which would have been illegal as they would have been distributing assetts.Now temporarilly rehoused in and by Ealing Council,it seems that both that Council and the local Tory MP have written to Brent advising that they should accept and address its responsibilities. In the meantime,Isabel Sanchez has postponed hip replacement because of the famiy predicament and delivers her 5 children to 5 different schools in Brent everyday.I understand that in the last few days,some"special provison"has been obtained in Brent for Vinny's education,the youngest of their children who is autistic and whose behaviour is so affected by the families distress that months of therapeutic work by therapists and family have been undone in a few weeks over the summer.
It s my and others vew that throughout,this family have been poorly advised and indeed institutionally abused by poor service delivery from social services,housing and benefits departments,who have never excercised proper oversight,applied common sense,discretion or review.Advice and"help from"the local authority has often been bizarre and perverse.It is stretching the point to call it patchy.
Unable to obtain help through"proper channels",a campaign was set up from the public meeting and community political pressure has been applied.
In addition,in that public meeting CJ reported on the suicide of Nigel Firminger, a recent member of KUWG who it seems had been driven to suicide by the insensititvty of a number of government,local authority and third sector agencies,who took no account of the impact of their indiffference on his increased anxiety.This is likely to have led to him accumulating rent arrears as he lost employment and was denied a return to benefits.In the wake of his suicide,some of those agencies are now "falling over themselves" to spout weasel words and to regret their insensitivity to his human needs.
Ann reported that following her son, Daniels own decline in health over several months,he had made the mistake of committing a serious offence but had made admissions from the moment he was apprehended for drug importation when he returned to england from a period abroad. Whilst not denying that the offence was serious,a man in the later stages of a very serious degenerative and debilitating disease was hardly in a position to run away.I do not know what consiederation was given to alternative sentencing,although a judge sentenced him to 3 yaers imprisonment having obtained specific assurances that the prison medical service would be able to meet the health needs of Daniel Roque Hall and to replicate the standards of the NHS(National Health Service).
Within 2 hours of sentencing and incarceration,the absurdity of those promises became cleaer,when he fell from a table to which he had been chained.As Daniel has virtually no control of most of his body,he could neither help himself from falling when he had an involuntary spasmno do anything to call ut or to help himself..He should not have been left alone.As a result he suatined a serious head injury requiring hospitalisation,which was refused.Unable to provide the care he needs in prison,which should include excercise programmes and special equipment,his health is in further constant jeopardy.He is in decline.This amounts to torture.I hear that when eventually hospitalised he was described as being at"deaths door".At a time when no expense is apparently spared for the olympic and paralympic elite, Daniel's experience of casual,institutional brutality could not be much clearer.Prison is no place for such a man.
The public meeting went on to discuss the range of issues raised.Whist appreciating the presence and input of a one of the younger and more junior councillors,the meeting almost unanimously rejected his perspective that the local authorities hands are tied by central government funding and the need for "legality".IT would seem that everyone else views this as the outlook of a spineless,Labour led council which is unwilling to defend its own community/electorate against spinless public sector cuts.Members of the community attending the meeting were highly eloquent in not only refusing that view but proposing an alternative of fighting for a budget which reflects the needs of the community in Brent. At least one person also made reference to George Lansbury who once led an east London council in the 1930s from a prison cell rather than carry out Tory,oppressive laws.There was some discussion about increasing the networking and engagagement across London,regional and wider communities.This came in a clear second to a unamimously agreed proposal to support the Counihan-Sanchez family by establishing a campaign in the community,One activist eloquently pointed out that whilst networking campaigns had not rolled back any cuts anywhere to date, a campaign around one family in need would be emblematic and when victorious would give a very clear demonstration and lead that cuts CAN be rolled back.
From a perssonal point of view i attended the meeting partly on behalf of my comrades in Brent TUSC(Trades Unionists and Socialist Coalition),as a member of the ILN/International Luxemburgist Network(i also write on the Forum/Network website)but not least as an ex-social worker/probation officer.I continue to feel that i can be a "gamekeeper turned poacher"and use my insider knowledge to the benefit of this campaign.I am indeed a member of campaign committee.
Over the approximately 6 weeks thathas elapsed since,the Counihan-Sanchez Family Campaign/Counihan Battlebus has campaigned every saturday at "Kilburn Square"and on the South Kilburn Estate.We have used every possible opprotunity often alongside other issues,campaigns and activist comrades to obtain signatures to the petition and raise wider public awareness.
That has included a lobby of the family's MP,Glenda Jackson,who when originally approached gave only the insensitive advice that"The family could not afford to live in London and should move to Wales." Not only do the family have no connection with Wales,but this sounds like the kind of "social cleansing"advocated by Iain Duncan Smith and Frank Field.At that lobby Ms jackson continued to ignore the family,to treat with them with contempt that fits her hgh handed arrogance and to ignore everyone who wanted to speak about or ask questions about the campaign.Nothing seems to shift this millionaire from her groundless sense of superiority to her electorate.
It is onky simiar lobbies of council meetings and other public events that have mounted a pressure on Cllr.Mo Butts to compel him,the leader of the council to meet with the family,although this has so far produced little oter result.He has however been rattled and dislodged from his previous confidence in his own secure,politicla future which is now much more open to question.Sarah,the 15 year old and oldest daughter in the family has described disruption of such public meetings as only neccessary as a consequence of the famiy being otherwise ignored.
All these people need to realise that if we are to be treated with such complete contempt,then they ned to conider their own fates at the hands of an increasingly class conscious and confident electorate.families like the Counihan-sanchez family and the wider community will no longer accept being treated like a stage army to vote for such careerist,professional politicians.Campaigns like this,along with the SOS Brent Libraries/Save Our Seven Brent Libraries and the emerging education campaigns begin to pose the need for independent political representation based on rejection of all cuts,provision of full services and the restoration of an improved"Welfare State"and a needs led budget.this campaign already has the confidence,courage and persistence to call out these politicians an d to attempt to bring them to account.
Family and campaign members have indicated that tere was a helpful meeting between an allocated
social worker and the family which in my opinion seems at leats to have been some kind of improvement n previous meetings where social workers appeared to use andy and every factor and piece of informatin both against the famiy and to pathologise it.So the childrens understandable anger and hostility,when they felt the social worker was"fishing"forinformation to turn them against their mother was not simply described as "adolscent attitude",which would be bad enough,but was turned on the famiy itself.The parents seem also to hve been accussed of "sharing too much"with their children.In other situatins this would have been praised.I would ask what coice such afamiky have when they are going through such profound difficulties,which are in my and the campaigns opinion oby the local authorities iinstitutional abuse,and revictimisation of them.
Isobel Sanchez was happy to tell me that some new assistanec has been set up to help Vinny,her youngest child who is autistic,although this seems to have emerged from the sensitivity of some staff in aparticular part of the"service"rather than as a result of pressure to resolve the whole burgeoning range of difficuties.Neither the council nor the councilleaderhave"grasped the nettle".Advice from the various parts of the council then,contiue to be perverse,and bizarre and certainly unhelpful.The campaign has evidence that the latest housing advice is that the family move to the waterlogged land in Ireland,which is isolated and without services.implication is that Anthny Counihan should somehow continue to commute from the West of Ireland to Cricklewood Bus Garage to continue to work as a bus driver on almost a daily basis
Whilst the local trades union council umbrella community campaign to defend services and fight cuts has been helpful,it has nevertheless been a little like "pulling teeth",and their seems some over-orientation by Brent Fightback on uncritical relationships with the Labour Party and council leadership.Somehow it seems that although such co-operation makes absolute sense at times,this should not require anyone to remain silent in relation to cuts in general nor urgent need.I form a strong impression that there are times when this body expects community campaigns to come to it almost for validation and approval rather than there being any sense of outreach to pro-actively offer solidarity and support to them.I detect from some,an odd requirment that campaigns demonstrate some kind of ideological uniformity before they are worthy of support and if neccessary critical assistance.Whilst i recognise that this is not Russia in 1917,i cannot help but feel that then the Workers Councils,a much more militant form of organisation that might in some ways be compared with local trades council organisations, rather than demanding that a "struggle" present itself to it,would instead have sent workers(and revolutionary soldiers)and leading activists to support and bolster such battles,and to hammer out positions and strategies to win!
As a member of the campaign committee,i suggested that i amonst others would approach other organisatins and campaigns i am in contact with to seek support.As an ex social worker i had also recently become involved in the SWAN(Social Workers Action Network)particularly in London,where curently i am involved in assisting to organise the SWAN 2013 national Confernec scheduled for 12-13th April 2013.The London grouping,of about 500 on an email list,is part of a wider national network established in 2004.The founders include Michael lavalette who is a preston councillor,a social work educator and a member of the SWP/Socialist Workers Party.
When i took the Counihand_Sanchez family campaign to the last London meeting of SWAN,the contrast with certain other meetings could not have been more striking. whilst no-one revels in the misery of others,I felt when i spoke that i had the full and enthusiastic attention of everyone,about 20 people in all . Everyone was both eager to know more and to help.London SWAN wil mobilise for the campaign dmeonstration in Kilburn on October 6th,and bring its banner.The call for support and further informatin will both go out to all on the London list and it could well be promoted via the SWAN website as a campaign SWAN will suport and take up nationally.London SWAN will be invited to provide aspeaker at the rally on 6th October.
I hope that this article will serve those purposes.As I believe Michael Laveltte is diue to be in London for a meeting with London SWAN on 9th October,i hope he might be available to attend/speak at the Counohan Sanchez campaign ralky on 6th October.I am sure London SWAN will assist the campaign to make other links,such as with the Haringey Travellers Services Team dispute.I am sure that the Campaign will be able to speak and make a presentatin at the SWAN Conference in due course,when i hope that we will be able to present both a victory and further develoments in a wider campaign.
Before i end this article,i want to make 2 more points.One is to observe that although sectarianism on the left and amongst activists is not dead,it is noticeable at least to me that in this and other campaigns i have personal knowledge of recently, there is evidence of a differenet climate and that grous are making some cosiderable efforts to not behave in a sectarian manner.Old habits die hard but i believe the intent really is there and i am finding genuine warmth,comradeship,friendship and greater openness than in the past.I am for example aware that in at numerous of our meetings and activities there have been members of at least 6 differnet grouings/currents who are able to acknowledge the valued contributions we all make as well as to hear and to learn from the many community activities who come from no particular political traditions.It is my firm opinion that we do not need to hide or be silent about our real political differences whikst cntinueing to work effectively togetger to a common and largely shared end. This is very important for me personaly(i am a member of 2 "overlapping"oganisations.We live in times where if we don't"stand together,we will fall apart".Sectarianism is itself an enemy and a luxury in the current political and social climate I would affirm we cannot afford.It is in my opinion better that we fight out the issues openly as they become relevant rather than by shunning each other and other organisations on matters which might have some relevanc at some point but are often too abstruse,abstarct and alienation.I recognise of course that the time of their relevance is itself a key questions,but one which we should remainsensitive and respectful about.
Last but not least,we are aware as acampaign of the dangers of appearing to personalise the issues around one family.ButThat said,the family and the campaign are very well aware that whlst each family and individual need is specal and important,this family are emblematic,and that a victory for one family will in turn enable us to push harder,more quickly and effectively for further change.We will then be in aposition to generalse out from one success.We are already discovering that there is a vast range of need "out there" in our own and oter communities.Most if not all of this is symptomatic not of individual or family pathology but of austerity and crisis compounded by institutional abuse.This in my opinion results from any casually brutal local state machine guided by the demands of capitalism,or indeed anything except a "moral compass"or a commitment to electorate or class.
It is highly relevant to stress that this particular family are not just highly respected but also resilient andstrong.,which facilitates such acampaign.As CJ pointed out in the public meeting,however it remains the case that if"you take away resources,you make people vulnerable".
Past experience as an activist and as a professional social worker for most of my 42 year career,i am aware that there are dangers for activists being dragged into roles as alternative social workers/caseworkers/advisors/service providers. hhaving been involved in seevral discussions over recent months about these issues,i am forming the view that there is aneed to train activists,who in turn would be capable of tarining other in somebasic skills to formulate enough of a"thumbnail"assessment of social need to direct those in need to appropriate services and to monitor those services as provided rather than substitute for them,although this cannot be an absolute and requires sensitivity to the needs of individuals,families and groups.Unfortunatey this is NOT the 1960s-1970s when many"vountary sector"services and campaigns grew up to meet such needs but themselves have either been cut completely over recent decades or have ben reduced to shadows of their former selves,oftenserving radically altered"ends".It seemsto me that now we must seek to develop new alteratives and to demand proper professional and accountable services,rather than to substitute for them.Susbtsitution places those engaged in it at risks-which were not identified in the 1960s-70s,and also defelcets us fom political activism.Activists,i suggest need to maintain an ability to generalise,organise and motivate,whist remaining sensitive to real human need and not to"pass the buck" as too many of the services i/we would criticise,now do.It seems to me that with the focus of the next SWAN conference,and the incresaing demand amongst young social worker-activists to know what radical/transformative social work practice might look like,this camapign and others opens up a rich vein of opportunity to learn and to develop our thinking.Those of us now"outside"employment in such professions and the self-identified radicals and activists within have akey role to play.
I am hearing of similar initiatives to focus on the real impact on real people of cuts and austerity in a number of places including Haringey and Luton.This makes the tasks urgent.They may not need addressing this minute but they do need addressing soon,in the next few months rather than years.I am otimistic that this task can be taken up in the forthcoming SWAN Conference and that i can begin to develo with others some kind of"rolling activist workshop/training in casework skills/issues for activists"
We ought to win this campaign,and whilst the road will be hard for us and for anyone else in anything like similar predicaments,a victory here or anywhere should be maximised,generalised and shared.
I would like to end simply by acknowledgeing the commitment,friendship,comradeship,support,talent,tenacity,endeavour and and courage of many i am working alongside,although I have not named.Mydiscussions with a number of them have contributed to this article.One of the key differences between achievement amongst OUR class and theirs is that we can share and collaborate.We do not need to make stars and celebrities from our shared activity.It does not mean that we should value each other any less. Individual genius is far too overrated.What is important is that we put the efforts of our heads and our hands and hearts together in common endeavour.
lost
24/09/2012d4
Saturday 22 September 2012
What Next For CON and ICON?
One of CONs(Counter Olympics Networks) achievements so far in its short life has been the establishment of an Internatonal.This is ICON/International Counter Olympics Network.It would seem obvious that CON should be its secretarait and its british section,as it is highly likely that the bristish section/CON is both the best placed practically and in terms of the historical-political situation at present.
It seems to me that CON is the first long term project relating directly to and critical of the Olympics.Previous campaigns to resist or successfuly reject the "Olympics invasion" have tended to fragment or dissipate once "mission accomplished".
CON has established itself as the first coalition which has gone on to consider developing a long term approach to both international issues alongside a range of issues that might be termed "legacy".In this sense it might be seen as the linchpin,apex or fulcrum of at least a useful experiment and which could potentially develop as an international movement of some significance.It has an opportunity over,i would suggest at least the next 4 or so years,in linking London to Socchi(Winter Games 2014)and Rio De Janeiro(Olympics/Paralympics 2016)as well as collecting the critical experiences of the past-and linking them across both time and space.
It will not be the first time that an international will have started in a small London meeting room and to have grown to much greater,significant stature and influence.Whilst this international,ICON may not attribute to itself a number,it might equally claim to join the fray for a critical approach to and an attempt to change at least one aspect of the world.What has been clear so far,is that CON has established itself as a unique coalition which has drawn together over 50 campaigning organisations and a lot of goodwill,which has enabled it to"punch well above its weight".I hope that the two related organisations will continue to thrive,and that we will also see the development of similar organisations in oter countries well beyond Socchi and Rio.Nothing in this life is predictable,and the future is like the past,a different country.We can but hope and work for that success.
lost
22/09/12d3
It seems to me that CON is the first long term project relating directly to and critical of the Olympics.Previous campaigns to resist or successfuly reject the "Olympics invasion" have tended to fragment or dissipate once "mission accomplished".
CON has established itself as the first coalition which has gone on to consider developing a long term approach to both international issues alongside a range of issues that might be termed "legacy".In this sense it might be seen as the linchpin,apex or fulcrum of at least a useful experiment and which could potentially develop as an international movement of some significance.It has an opportunity over,i would suggest at least the next 4 or so years,in linking London to Socchi(Winter Games 2014)and Rio De Janeiro(Olympics/Paralympics 2016)as well as collecting the critical experiences of the past-and linking them across both time and space.
It will not be the first time that an international will have started in a small London meeting room and to have grown to much greater,significant stature and influence.Whilst this international,ICON may not attribute to itself a number,it might equally claim to join the fray for a critical approach to and an attempt to change at least one aspect of the world.What has been clear so far,is that CON has established itself as a unique coalition which has drawn together over 50 campaigning organisations and a lot of goodwill,which has enabled it to"punch well above its weight".I hope that the two related organisations will continue to thrive,and that we will also see the development of similar organisations in oter countries well beyond Socchi and Rio.Nothing in this life is predictable,and the future is like the past,a different country.We can but hope and work for that success.
lost
22/09/12d3
Friday 21 September 2012
A Future That Works:A Future Worth Fighting For
If October 20th TUC(trades Union Congress)demonstration is about"A Future That Works"then it must also be about"A Future Worth Fighting For",in which we,working people ought not to be just fighting to maintain what is,but also for services,conditions and indeed lives that are"Worth Fighting For",so that society reflects OUR needs,as fully as possible.The demonstration needs to be immense,and to burst any numerical and political limits.It cannot be constrained or restrained.We cannot allow the"usual suspects"to place limits on us and our"movement"
Such a society we seek to build might not be perfect,but it can be better than this one.Whilst i recognise that the struggle to defend what we have and what is might be diffcult enough,when and how else will we get an opportunity to explore an to demand how we would like it to be?If not now,then when?
I do not doubt the Labour Party will make its usual reformist noises,that"we"can't rock the boat,demand too much,...whatever.There will be others who say"wait until after....the election....the revolution"but the reformist road has,i believe come to an end.There will be too many who act like it is possible but i belive that there is no reformist road left-although i do not deny there is always an issue about how our achievements might well fall inevitably short of our ideasl-that need not be quite the same thing.Transition or transitinal might be better words-although i must amdit that ersoanlly,i don't feel that comfortable with those words either(though i'm not rejecting the content).But don't let anyone ever say that i agree to accepting less when there is better to be had.......( i grew to political adulthood in the 60s,when "we wanted it ALL,NOW")
Yes,there is another related issue,that i dont think socilalists have focussed on enough in the past.And that is that in the here and now,in the very acts of campaigning and struggle,we can begin to identify an insight,a window,a living experience of how things might be.And for me at the core of that is the relationships we make with each other.
We may not all like each other,all the time but we can seek to respect and value each other as comrades,as brothers and sisters in at least our class and perhaps,i would hope the vast mass of humanity.This for me is not just an abstraction.
Some time ago,i saw a video on the internet,where a socialist who had been a member of one of the left groups in the 19760-70s(and probably still is active,though in a different organisation)spoke about the luxury of left sectarianism in those times,and its part as a hidden aspect of Stalinism.That thought has stuck with me ever since.If the period of say 1968-1975 was"the fire last time",then perhaps 2010-soonish might be"the fire this time".I'd like to hope and more importantly work so that this time that fire blazes,and leads to genuine,radical social change of the kind i'd like to see-socialism or perhaps to pput it another way a"genuine commonwealth for all to share".
To mix metaphors,the tide appears to be rising.Everything in society now seems to be contested.That leads me to argue the importance of linking every struggle up,and making the connections(i do not ofcourse include fascist and other reactionary struggles,except to turn them in positive/progressive directions).But this is not the 1960s-70s.Then economies,cultures,societies were booming-and workers,particularly the young and students-made demands based on those raised expectations and when tired of boring,dull,grey,repressive societies.Now is very different-in crisis,whne faced with ideaologically motivated attacks based on austerity and where fundamental questions are being asked again,and demands for better made on te back of a threadbare,decadent capitalism.Social and political conditions are different.Sectarianism is it seems to me a dangerous luxury we cannot afford.These really are times in which if we do not"stand together or then we will fall apart!".There is i believe a lot larger space in which to have (principled)disagreements without turning on each other.There is a lot more that ought to hold us together than needs to break us apart,at least,i hope for now and a long time(relative to the wider development of the struggle).If we do not already instinctively know comradeship and solidarity then we need to learn it.In some respects it is difficult to leave old habits behind-so we will also need to be a little thick skinned,and a lot more tolerant.,and to be careful and precise and principled where we see class enemies.
Last but not least,i believe based on my own experience that actually there is a lot of love and friendship and comradeship to be found amongst the people we meet and campaign and struggle with.That actually has been my experience throughout my life,but i have been reminded of it and the lesson has been reinforced for me over the last several years.Unlike our class enemies who seem to have to operate essentially in competition with each other,and to thrive only as businesspeople,stars and celebrities of various kinds,OUR very strength does lie in that we can and do at our best work and live and struggle TOGETHER,and that in order to get the best picture of the world-the one that we want aswell as what we are fighting-we shoudl and do share our knowledge and experience and skills and talent.It really does demonstrate that humankind is(are?)a social being-and that we are best in movement and in finding and making meaning in each other.
IF we can be friends we should be.If we an be comrades we MUST.
Always a"heretic",someone who never quite fits,i admit i have a spiritual life to.two sayings from the tradition i try to follow comes to mind:
One is that"a society that does not have love,has law"and the second and greater one is"never do alone,what you can do with another".
I like to think that this reflects Antonio Gramsci's notion of"good sense"
Lotta continua!
Such a society we seek to build might not be perfect,but it can be better than this one.Whilst i recognise that the struggle to defend what we have and what is might be diffcult enough,when and how else will we get an opportunity to explore an to demand how we would like it to be?If not now,then when?
I do not doubt the Labour Party will make its usual reformist noises,that"we"can't rock the boat,demand too much,...whatever.There will be others who say"wait until after....the election....the revolution"but the reformist road has,i believe come to an end.There will be too many who act like it is possible but i belive that there is no reformist road left-although i do not deny there is always an issue about how our achievements might well fall inevitably short of our ideasl-that need not be quite the same thing.Transition or transitinal might be better words-although i must amdit that ersoanlly,i don't feel that comfortable with those words either(though i'm not rejecting the content).But don't let anyone ever say that i agree to accepting less when there is better to be had.......( i grew to political adulthood in the 60s,when "we wanted it ALL,NOW")
Yes,there is another related issue,that i dont think socilalists have focussed on enough in the past.And that is that in the here and now,in the very acts of campaigning and struggle,we can begin to identify an insight,a window,a living experience of how things might be.And for me at the core of that is the relationships we make with each other.
We may not all like each other,all the time but we can seek to respect and value each other as comrades,as brothers and sisters in at least our class and perhaps,i would hope the vast mass of humanity.This for me is not just an abstraction.
Some time ago,i saw a video on the internet,where a socialist who had been a member of one of the left groups in the 19760-70s(and probably still is active,though in a different organisation)spoke about the luxury of left sectarianism in those times,and its part as a hidden aspect of Stalinism.That thought has stuck with me ever since.If the period of say 1968-1975 was"the fire last time",then perhaps 2010-soonish might be"the fire this time".I'd like to hope and more importantly work so that this time that fire blazes,and leads to genuine,radical social change of the kind i'd like to see-socialism or perhaps to pput it another way a"genuine commonwealth for all to share".
To mix metaphors,the tide appears to be rising.Everything in society now seems to be contested.That leads me to argue the importance of linking every struggle up,and making the connections(i do not ofcourse include fascist and other reactionary struggles,except to turn them in positive/progressive directions).But this is not the 1960s-70s.Then economies,cultures,societies were booming-and workers,particularly the young and students-made demands based on those raised expectations and when tired of boring,dull,grey,repressive societies.Now is very different-in crisis,whne faced with ideaologically motivated attacks based on austerity and where fundamental questions are being asked again,and demands for better made on te back of a threadbare,decadent capitalism.Social and political conditions are different.Sectarianism is it seems to me a dangerous luxury we cannot afford.These really are times in which if we do not"stand together or then we will fall apart!".There is i believe a lot larger space in which to have (principled)disagreements without turning on each other.There is a lot more that ought to hold us together than needs to break us apart,at least,i hope for now and a long time(relative to the wider development of the struggle).If we do not already instinctively know comradeship and solidarity then we need to learn it.In some respects it is difficult to leave old habits behind-so we will also need to be a little thick skinned,and a lot more tolerant.,and to be careful and precise and principled where we see class enemies.
Last but not least,i believe based on my own experience that actually there is a lot of love and friendship and comradeship to be found amongst the people we meet and campaign and struggle with.That actually has been my experience throughout my life,but i have been reminded of it and the lesson has been reinforced for me over the last several years.Unlike our class enemies who seem to have to operate essentially in competition with each other,and to thrive only as businesspeople,stars and celebrities of various kinds,OUR very strength does lie in that we can and do at our best work and live and struggle TOGETHER,and that in order to get the best picture of the world-the one that we want aswell as what we are fighting-we shoudl and do share our knowledge and experience and skills and talent.It really does demonstrate that humankind is(are?)a social being-and that we are best in movement and in finding and making meaning in each other.
IF we can be friends we should be.If we an be comrades we MUST.
Always a"heretic",someone who never quite fits,i admit i have a spiritual life to.two sayings from the tradition i try to follow comes to mind:
One is that"a society that does not have love,has law"and the second and greater one is"never do alone,what you can do with another".
I like to think that this reflects Antonio Gramsci's notion of"good sense"
Lotta continua!
A Future That Works
The next key mobilisation date for the movement,the resistance is the TUC(trades Union Congress) March for a Future hat Works on 20th October 2012.As i write that is less than a calendar month away.I don't have any illusions that this will solve anything by itself but it does provide a hook on which to build.
The TUC flyer for it leaves a lot to be desired but then again the campaigns,the ctruggles,the organisations of trades unionists,socialists,anti-capitalists,anarchists-indeed anyone can produce their own material which could be more inspiring.
The slogan is quite useful and "A Future That Works"sparks off lots of resonances,which are not just about work,employment,wages and ensions-although those issues are important enough.
We live in times when although the regime has some control,it does not and in my opinion has never had legitimacy.I have taken the view from the time of the last election that there is no legitimate government.Given the ballot for these elections are suppossed to be secret(and you can believe that if you like,because i never have)it is difficult to read off any particular"message"from that election.We can only make guesses.My guess is that the electorate were telling politicians that none of them were acceptable,and created a conundrum for them to resolve.Brown and the labour party walked away,which for me is indicative of their attitude ever since-and i never did have much(any?)confidence in them.
The con-dems then conducted negotiations ot come up with an agreement to rule which bore little or no relationship to any manifesto.They then presented themselves as a government.I would say,however,that unlike previous coalitions,this gang have never obtained a mandate from anyone.I'm not aware of any other co-alition which laid out its plans after an election.I may be on my own but i will not acknowledge thatthey have any legitimacy.That said,no-one ever argues the point with me.
Since they "took power",they have done nothing bu break pledges and mount and ideologically driven attack quite openly and blatantly on OUR class.It has no rational justification whatsoever.I feel we need to continuously reject their politics and what passes for their ideas.
We dont just need to fight their cuts;and throw back their crisis and their austerity onto their class,not OURS,but we have to argue and fight for a future that we WANT and that meets our NEEDS.Nothing less is good enough.
Whilst i am aware that the (dominant)ideas in a class-society are those of the dominant class,it is possible to hold different.other ideas.We can have different ideas-but just as it is a struggle to maintain and develop the physical,material conditions that we live in,so there is also a struggle for ideas.Both struggles occur at a variety of levels and it is an uneven and a difficult process.Their class,the class that claim they rulle over us,and impose that rule-for the present-establish circumstances which make it easy for themselves.Sometimes they appear to create fair conditions-the proverbial"even playing field",although rationally,objectively it is not that way.It includes valuations and evaluations that are subtly or not so subtly tilted their way.
And yet......
It is only us that can make"A Future That Works".After all whilst THEY might issue the commands,it is US who not only do the work but make the world,they they always claim is theirs.We need to reclaim our energy,our ideas,our experience,our labour,our imagination-our lives.We indeed,have a new world to build!
http://afuturethatworks.org/
The TUC flyer for it leaves a lot to be desired but then again the campaigns,the ctruggles,the organisations of trades unionists,socialists,anti-capitalists,anarchists-indeed anyone can produce their own material which could be more inspiring.
The slogan is quite useful and "A Future That Works"sparks off lots of resonances,which are not just about work,employment,wages and ensions-although those issues are important enough.
We live in times when although the regime has some control,it does not and in my opinion has never had legitimacy.I have taken the view from the time of the last election that there is no legitimate government.Given the ballot for these elections are suppossed to be secret(and you can believe that if you like,because i never have)it is difficult to read off any particular"message"from that election.We can only make guesses.My guess is that the electorate were telling politicians that none of them were acceptable,and created a conundrum for them to resolve.Brown and the labour party walked away,which for me is indicative of their attitude ever since-and i never did have much(any?)confidence in them.
The con-dems then conducted negotiations ot come up with an agreement to rule which bore little or no relationship to any manifesto.They then presented themselves as a government.I would say,however,that unlike previous coalitions,this gang have never obtained a mandate from anyone.I'm not aware of any other co-alition which laid out its plans after an election.I may be on my own but i will not acknowledge thatthey have any legitimacy.That said,no-one ever argues the point with me.
Since they "took power",they have done nothing bu break pledges and mount and ideologically driven attack quite openly and blatantly on OUR class.It has no rational justification whatsoever.I feel we need to continuously reject their politics and what passes for their ideas.
We dont just need to fight their cuts;and throw back their crisis and their austerity onto their class,not OURS,but we have to argue and fight for a future that we WANT and that meets our NEEDS.Nothing less is good enough.
Whilst i am aware that the (dominant)ideas in a class-society are those of the dominant class,it is possible to hold different.other ideas.We can have different ideas-but just as it is a struggle to maintain and develop the physical,material conditions that we live in,so there is also a struggle for ideas.Both struggles occur at a variety of levels and it is an uneven and a difficult process.Their class,the class that claim they rulle over us,and impose that rule-for the present-establish circumstances which make it easy for themselves.Sometimes they appear to create fair conditions-the proverbial"even playing field",although rationally,objectively it is not that way.It includes valuations and evaluations that are subtly or not so subtly tilted their way.
And yet......
It is only us that can make"A Future That Works".After all whilst THEY might issue the commands,it is US who not only do the work but make the world,they they always claim is theirs.We need to reclaim our energy,our ideas,our experience,our labour,our imagination-our lives.We indeed,have a new world to build!
http://afuturethatworks.org/
Wednesday 19 September 2012
So What Is LEGACY and What Does It Look Like
ON LEGACY:
What follows is my"working paper"for the CON(Counter Olympic Network)"futures"meeting at LARC(London Action Resources Centre)on Saturday 22nd September 3-6pm.Apologies for glitches/editing errors.
.I dont think that there is a clearly articulated view of legacy anywhere.that spells out simply and clearly what it is intended to be.I think the LOGOC(Lodnon Olympic Games Organisng Committee) view is rhetorical and has only begun to be is fleshed out in the face of demand for legacy..I believe a lot of the"promises"are literally empty.Too many promises made so far have already been broken.In turn,I think some commentators along with some of the general public have been swept along in their own understandable euphoria. I suspect that like a soap bubble "Legacy"reflects all the light of peoples hopes but is also empty of content.I also believe that the bubble is highly likely to burst very quickly and at any moment. Much as I would like these ideas to carry substance i suspect that the hopes placed in the booing of politicians,alongside the apparent shift in public attitudes to disability,to foreigness,to a new optimism about"britain"or "britishness" are misplaced.
Emotions are very real but they need to be undeprinned and bolstered by material conditions and real change in order to be sustained.I doubt when measured against a previous outpouring of feelings amongst some sections of the population during the mourning of the "princess diana",that it will last or bear fruit. I do however acknowledge that those were much darker and more negative feelings.History is also against the advocates of legacy.Rational commentary indicates that only in Barcelona was "legacy" marginally significant but that it may actually have had more to do with a wider developmental approach in Catalan/Spanish society at the time than the Olympics themselves.However,even that is now rendered rather irrelevant by the toll of crisis and austerity in spain.
I am not a miserablist or a"Job's comforter",and i would not wish CON to project that outlook.Indeed,i think CON has a strong future in taking popular hopes for"legacy"seriously at face value as a starting point. It can then apply some critical tools to assess the development and the reality of that legacy agenda.CON is by its very nature well placed to take a cool,critical,forensic and demanding look at legacy.So the next section of these notes flesh out an outline of what a critical approach to legacy might look like.These issues might be grouped in the followiing way,although i recognise that these cannot be hard categories and they will inevitably overlap.where possible i indicate examples,a working definition and possible lines of enquiry:-
1.Sport:What will the"transmission belt"for encouraging interest in right through to full participation in olympics and other high level competition?How would programmes be operated and controlled?Need for long term futures,democratic control and innovation.Legacy may need to support"new"sports and initiatives,which would not neccesserally"fit"established ways of doing things:urban golf or free running operate radically differently to more established sports,and might replicate the histories of earlier new sports.
2.Funding and economic issues:This applies to everything.Funding sources,continuity,control.Relationship to and impact on or from the wider economy.
impact on or by the wider economy.Local,and working class initiatives are often"hand to mouth".
3.Social policy issues:impact on housing,community development,local and wider democracy,control and accountability.immigration/racism.implications for employment.impact on health,transport and other services.environmental issues.concern that one policy area should not be held ransom to others.eg clearance of populations,infrastructure,architecture to make way for green issues,road or rail development....leyton marshes.
3.Corporate sponsorship issues-see ICON.These may have specific impacts in the UK or UK experience may have particular impact elsewhere.This is an area where CON and ICON would be drawn particularly close together.
4.Militarisation,security,surveillance,policing:"practics runs",experimentation and testing of policies.
"softening up"of populations.Social and ethnic cleansing.the"no lose/win strategy"-the fact that there was no major incident is used to justify the security issues.had there been an incident,it would be used to justify security etc.The glaring failure of G4S appears to have no consequences for the company,which needs continued exposure!The functionality of failure-eg.even if cases against say CM/critical mass 182 fall and fail,it enabled the police to"demobilise"/control activism and impose surveillance on newly criminalised groups.This has wider impacts on both new and older layers of activists.Our own example would be the impact of police presence on our ability to choose a venue for this meeting.Implications for wider civil liberties.Liason with"defend the right to protest",GBC/green black cross.in this and other contexts-the importance of (re-)skilling communities to represent/defend/act for themselves(i am also involved in "casework skills"for activists in another context-but liaison may be useful here too)-we no longer have access to services/processes which were developed inthe 1970s but have been closed down since.
5.Media and culture:failure of cultural olympics,apart from key opening/closing events.increasing control and development of media and cultural functioning,as social control or"safety valve"-"bread and circuses",distraction,dilution of social responses eg booing of politicians,direction of attitudes to foreigness,disability.The controversy of the cultural aspects.
6.Other,residual and international issues:There is probably lots i have left out.i have intentionally not considered more international issues,which i believe Gail Cheser will address more directly in the context of ICON,elsewhere.
.
Some general points: I suggest as a general approach that we might focus on collecting,publishing,highlighting,researching and writing about these issues from a critical perspective that demands public accountability of those who would seem to think they have unquestioned control(LOGOC and central goverment).I think we need to call and keep them to account at the level of principle,detail and to the letter,NOT the "spirit" of legacy,or else antyhting more elusive will escape our grasp.Vaguaries only serve the interests of those in power,influence,control and"money".We cannot uncritically accept only their own standards and values.Whilst the ideas and values of a society are largely those of the dominant group-we cannot leave this uncontested.I am very well aware that in the scheme of things we are going to be a very small voice but that is no reason to be silent.We can,in our approach attempt to continue to"punch above our weight".
The liaison with the many organisations and campaigns that have constituted CON to date,might be emcouraged to continue to enhance the ongoing work of CON and ICON as well as the constituent parts of the loose coalition that is CON in mutual and cross-support.We should seek to extend such liason,good relationships with,new raltionships with and simply talk to others.This has been a unique feature of CON to date.We might draw onthis unique experience to develop more and wider opportunities from time to time such as real or imagined award ceremonies,commemorative events,flashpoints.We might hold an annual event in relation to either our own or the wider olympics agenda.This could take the form of an annual meting/conference and/or "educational" events.The winter olmypics at Socchi in 2014 and indeed at Rio in 2016 provide obvious opportunities,which might link local to international events,and be placed in some specific relation to those events.eg.linking the fate of Pussy Riot to the Socchi Games to something more local.Im sure we can trawl through a"calendar"imaginatively Other evets will i am sure present themselves for appropriate mobilisations.We can seek to create a variety of press release opprotunities and in working with campaigns/organisations like DPAC and UK Uncut we might stage other public actions/events-which may or may not be mass mobilisations.I am aware that we have made prior commitments to a presence on and activity in or around the TUC Demonstration on 20th October and the student mobilisation in November 212.In addition to physical presence with the banner this might include the publication of a bulletin/newssheet on"Legacy"and indeed other material focussed insome other way.( a collection of material bringing criticism of/resistance to the IOC/olympics(bids)might be valauable to"build our case"intellectually/ideaologically)
Whilst i do not wish to privelege my own idea,i would like to briefly mention the idea which led me to go from critical comment to seeking to find and work with CON myself.allies and assistance.In spring 2011,i began to imagine and propose "Not The Olympics"events.My fantasy was to stage several evensts consisting of say dangerous/alternative/collaborative/non-olympic games/sports ,alongside educational/agit-prop events("tiffin"/afternoon tea:showing say the Ayrton Senna documentary,archive material from 1948,documentary about Mexico 1968) and ending in a rock gig.I even dreamed of a pyramid stage in lee valley olympic park, and beyond.Whilst that came to nought i wondered if it still might be possible to promote such an event or more,perhaps to drawer our achivements together with hopes and plans for the future in some kind of alternative celebration and fund raiser for our and related causes.I am of course aware of issues of"shelf life".
A last throw of the dice:Alongside the formal organisational conection of CON to ICON,in which i believe the latter will concentrate on corporate sponsorship,the IOC and the wider international dimension itself,in addition there might be a useful purpose served in trying to make a very real internationalist connection with both Socci and Rio in 2014 and 2016 respectively.That purpose might be served in sending oberver/solidarity delagations to those places or even organsising some sort of "alternative games"........i will not develop these ideas further here,except to say that they offer further opportunity to raise a critical voice/profile in a manner not entirely determined by the IOC/Olympics movement itself.I am also aware that there are other debates to be had about alternative ways of organising the games,which might even include a permanent home in Greece/Athens/Mount Olympus/Marathon which might actually contribute to the regrowth of the Greek Economy,and might be a real internationalist project?!
The mechanics of it:If during the Olympics period CON has been some kind of movement,then its very loosensess and openness has been amongst its strengths. Its seems to have developed into a unique coalition. I hope it can maintain and strengthen its unsual configuration but i am realistic that it is unlikly to remain a movement,let alone a mass movement- as circumstances simply change.Yet beng realistic does not require CON should shut down.I would recommend that we seek to maintain the strengths of this very special coalition and keep formal strcutures to a bare minimum.Whilst i do not know the ogins of MENA/middle east north africa solidarity which has a very different history,it may be that CON would now emulate it. I also take the view that the time between now and the next Olypmics in 2016 to demonstrate to ourselves that the idea is viable.I would hope that CON can use its unique place at a the apex/fulcrum/crossroads in time and space to self consciously linking the past,present and future alongside making the geo-political link(mexico city,barcelona,athens etc to london to socchi and rio)in building a wider international movement.We cannot uarantee that CON lasts the course.Here i nod to the pessimists and those who adhere to other perspectives.
I think any structure to carry CON forward should be simple and minimal and minimalist.Beyond the basic formal positions,perhaps a small international secretariat makes sense.Otherwise CON should continue to drawer in interested parties as and when it can..We should seek to be visible,active and co-operative with others/partners wherever possible,but otherwise seek to keep meetings to the minimum to be effective and accountable,without requiring disproportionate comitment to organisation over activity.This wil require considerable trust-we seem to have both trust and goodwill.( I would also urge that any international secretariat,likely to orginate in CON as the british section of ICON,should seek to legitimate its role in ICON in order not to simply inhabit a position due to habit,which could lead to other difficulties).A conference of CON/ICON in approximately a years time might also provide a further focus for public actvity,alongside facilitating accountability.I am aware that in addition the international calendar offers further opportunities for raising the CON profile,again independently of the IOC/Olympics agenda.
lost
21/09/12d7
What follows is my"working paper"for the CON(Counter Olympic Network)"futures"meeting at LARC(London Action Resources Centre)on Saturday 22nd September 3-6pm.Apologies for glitches/editing errors.
.I dont think that there is a clearly articulated view of legacy anywhere.that spells out simply and clearly what it is intended to be.I think the LOGOC(Lodnon Olympic Games Organisng Committee) view is rhetorical and has only begun to be is fleshed out in the face of demand for legacy..I believe a lot of the"promises"are literally empty.Too many promises made so far have already been broken.In turn,I think some commentators along with some of the general public have been swept along in their own understandable euphoria. I suspect that like a soap bubble "Legacy"reflects all the light of peoples hopes but is also empty of content.I also believe that the bubble is highly likely to burst very quickly and at any moment. Much as I would like these ideas to carry substance i suspect that the hopes placed in the booing of politicians,alongside the apparent shift in public attitudes to disability,to foreigness,to a new optimism about"britain"or "britishness" are misplaced.
Emotions are very real but they need to be undeprinned and bolstered by material conditions and real change in order to be sustained.I doubt when measured against a previous outpouring of feelings amongst some sections of the population during the mourning of the "princess diana",that it will last or bear fruit. I do however acknowledge that those were much darker and more negative feelings.History is also against the advocates of legacy.Rational commentary indicates that only in Barcelona was "legacy" marginally significant but that it may actually have had more to do with a wider developmental approach in Catalan/Spanish society at the time than the Olympics themselves.However,even that is now rendered rather irrelevant by the toll of crisis and austerity in spain.
I am not a miserablist or a"Job's comforter",and i would not wish CON to project that outlook.Indeed,i think CON has a strong future in taking popular hopes for"legacy"seriously at face value as a starting point. It can then apply some critical tools to assess the development and the reality of that legacy agenda.CON is by its very nature well placed to take a cool,critical,forensic and demanding look at legacy.So the next section of these notes flesh out an outline of what a critical approach to legacy might look like.These issues might be grouped in the followiing way,although i recognise that these cannot be hard categories and they will inevitably overlap.where possible i indicate examples,a working definition and possible lines of enquiry:-
1.Sport:What will the"transmission belt"for encouraging interest in right through to full participation in olympics and other high level competition?How would programmes be operated and controlled?Need for long term futures,democratic control and innovation.Legacy may need to support"new"sports and initiatives,which would not neccesserally"fit"established ways of doing things:urban golf or free running operate radically differently to more established sports,and might replicate the histories of earlier new sports.
2.Funding and economic issues:This applies to everything.Funding sources,continuity,control.Relationship to and impact on or from the wider economy.
impact on or by the wider economy.Local,and working class initiatives are often"hand to mouth".
3.Social policy issues:impact on housing,community development,local and wider democracy,control and accountability.immigration/racism.implications for employment.impact on health,transport and other services.environmental issues.concern that one policy area should not be held ransom to others.eg clearance of populations,infrastructure,architecture to make way for green issues,road or rail development....leyton marshes.
3.Corporate sponsorship issues-see ICON.These may have specific impacts in the UK or UK experience may have particular impact elsewhere.This is an area where CON and ICON would be drawn particularly close together.
4.Militarisation,security,surveillance,policing:"practics runs",experimentation and testing of policies.
"softening up"of populations.Social and ethnic cleansing.the"no lose/win strategy"-the fact that there was no major incident is used to justify the security issues.had there been an incident,it would be used to justify security etc.The glaring failure of G4S appears to have no consequences for the company,which needs continued exposure!The functionality of failure-eg.even if cases against say CM/critical mass 182 fall and fail,it enabled the police to"demobilise"/control activism and impose surveillance on newly criminalised groups.This has wider impacts on both new and older layers of activists.Our own example would be the impact of police presence on our ability to choose a venue for this meeting.Implications for wider civil liberties.Liason with"defend the right to protest",GBC/green black cross.in this and other contexts-the importance of (re-)skilling communities to represent/defend/act for themselves(i am also involved in "casework skills"for activists in another context-but liaison may be useful here too)-we no longer have access to services/processes which were developed inthe 1970s but have been closed down since.
5.Media and culture:failure of cultural olympics,apart from key opening/closing events.increasing control and development of media and cultural functioning,as social control or"safety valve"-"bread and circuses",distraction,dilution of social responses eg booing of politicians,direction of attitudes to foreigness,disability.The controversy of the cultural aspects.
6.Other,residual and international issues:There is probably lots i have left out.i have intentionally not considered more international issues,which i believe Gail Cheser will address more directly in the context of ICON,elsewhere.
.
Some general points: I suggest as a general approach that we might focus on collecting,publishing,highlighting,researching and writing about these issues from a critical perspective that demands public accountability of those who would seem to think they have unquestioned control(LOGOC and central goverment).I think we need to call and keep them to account at the level of principle,detail and to the letter,NOT the "spirit" of legacy,or else antyhting more elusive will escape our grasp.Vaguaries only serve the interests of those in power,influence,control and"money".We cannot uncritically accept only their own standards and values.Whilst the ideas and values of a society are largely those of the dominant group-we cannot leave this uncontested.I am very well aware that in the scheme of things we are going to be a very small voice but that is no reason to be silent.We can,in our approach attempt to continue to"punch above our weight".
The liaison with the many organisations and campaigns that have constituted CON to date,might be emcouraged to continue to enhance the ongoing work of CON and ICON as well as the constituent parts of the loose coalition that is CON in mutual and cross-support.We should seek to extend such liason,good relationships with,new raltionships with and simply talk to others.This has been a unique feature of CON to date.We might draw onthis unique experience to develop more and wider opportunities from time to time such as real or imagined award ceremonies,commemorative events,flashpoints.We might hold an annual event in relation to either our own or the wider olympics agenda.This could take the form of an annual meting/conference and/or "educational" events.The winter olmypics at Socchi in 2014 and indeed at Rio in 2016 provide obvious opportunities,which might link local to international events,and be placed in some specific relation to those events.eg.linking the fate of Pussy Riot to the Socchi Games to something more local.Im sure we can trawl through a"calendar"imaginatively Other evets will i am sure present themselves for appropriate mobilisations.We can seek to create a variety of press release opprotunities and in working with campaigns/organisations like DPAC and UK Uncut we might stage other public actions/events-which may or may not be mass mobilisations.I am aware that we have made prior commitments to a presence on and activity in or around the TUC Demonstration on 20th October and the student mobilisation in November 212.In addition to physical presence with the banner this might include the publication of a bulletin/newssheet on"Legacy"and indeed other material focussed insome other way.( a collection of material bringing criticism of/resistance to the IOC/olympics(bids)might be valauable to"build our case"intellectually/ideaologically)
Whilst i do not wish to privelege my own idea,i would like to briefly mention the idea which led me to go from critical comment to seeking to find and work with CON myself.allies and assistance.In spring 2011,i began to imagine and propose "Not The Olympics"events.My fantasy was to stage several evensts consisting of say dangerous/alternative/collaborative/non-olympic games/sports ,alongside educational/agit-prop events("tiffin"/afternoon tea:showing say the Ayrton Senna documentary,archive material from 1948,documentary about Mexico 1968) and ending in a rock gig.I even dreamed of a pyramid stage in lee valley olympic park, and beyond.Whilst that came to nought i wondered if it still might be possible to promote such an event or more,perhaps to drawer our achivements together with hopes and plans for the future in some kind of alternative celebration and fund raiser for our and related causes.I am of course aware of issues of"shelf life".
A last throw of the dice:Alongside the formal organisational conection of CON to ICON,in which i believe the latter will concentrate on corporate sponsorship,the IOC and the wider international dimension itself,in addition there might be a useful purpose served in trying to make a very real internationalist connection with both Socci and Rio in 2014 and 2016 respectively.That purpose might be served in sending oberver/solidarity delagations to those places or even organsising some sort of "alternative games"........i will not develop these ideas further here,except to say that they offer further opportunity to raise a critical voice/profile in a manner not entirely determined by the IOC/Olympics movement itself.I am also aware that there are other debates to be had about alternative ways of organising the games,which might even include a permanent home in Greece/Athens/Mount Olympus/Marathon which might actually contribute to the regrowth of the Greek Economy,and might be a real internationalist project?!
The mechanics of it:If during the Olympics period CON has been some kind of movement,then its very loosensess and openness has been amongst its strengths. Its seems to have developed into a unique coalition. I hope it can maintain and strengthen its unsual configuration but i am realistic that it is unlikly to remain a movement,let alone a mass movement- as circumstances simply change.Yet beng realistic does not require CON should shut down.I would recommend that we seek to maintain the strengths of this very special coalition and keep formal strcutures to a bare minimum.Whilst i do not know the ogins of MENA/middle east north africa solidarity which has a very different history,it may be that CON would now emulate it. I also take the view that the time between now and the next Olypmics in 2016 to demonstrate to ourselves that the idea is viable.I would hope that CON can use its unique place at a the apex/fulcrum/crossroads in time and space to self consciously linking the past,present and future alongside making the geo-political link(mexico city,barcelona,athens etc to london to socchi and rio)in building a wider international movement.We cannot uarantee that CON lasts the course.Here i nod to the pessimists and those who adhere to other perspectives.
I think any structure to carry CON forward should be simple and minimal and minimalist.Beyond the basic formal positions,perhaps a small international secretariat makes sense.Otherwise CON should continue to drawer in interested parties as and when it can..We should seek to be visible,active and co-operative with others/partners wherever possible,but otherwise seek to keep meetings to the minimum to be effective and accountable,without requiring disproportionate comitment to organisation over activity.This wil require considerable trust-we seem to have both trust and goodwill.( I would also urge that any international secretariat,likely to orginate in CON as the british section of ICON,should seek to legitimate its role in ICON in order not to simply inhabit a position due to habit,which could lead to other difficulties).A conference of CON/ICON in approximately a years time might also provide a further focus for public actvity,alongside facilitating accountability.I am aware that in addition the international calendar offers further opportunities for raising the CON profile,again independently of the IOC/Olympics agenda.
lost
21/09/12d7
Sunday 26 August 2012
some technical questions 1-cleaning up?
does anyone know some useful and understandable technical tricks for tidying and cleaning up my laptop/emails etc of some of its contents.i try to keep some kind of order doing a bit everyday but its slow and endless and banal.ive got better things to do,but having learnt the hadr way the dangers of leaving it this way,i take it more seriously these days,having recently lost 18months"work"...
doing each individual item is timeconsuming and boring but"handing it over"to some"arrange an automatic clean up"will undoubtedly be another corporate led disaster for me.i simpky dont trust them at all about anything.i dont doubt they will invade my privacy,destroy my work and delete what they think is unsafe.i know there is lots of unsafe stuff out there,but its mostly not my friends or associates nor is it left wing campaigns.its the criminals,the malicious and the corporates who repeatedly bow to the demands the state(any and all states),and i suspect because those corporates operating on the internet dont care about anything except their profits.im told microsoft is very secure,not because they care about our safety or security but because they are protecting their profits.facebook and others,which seem t make information theft and hacking easy clearly dont care about anything much either.one day they will find themselves made accountable in a very different way-not to nation states or shareholders but the community of"users"and working people!
meantime we have to do the best we can to help ourselves,so does anyone have any clues?
doing each individual item is timeconsuming and boring but"handing it over"to some"arrange an automatic clean up"will undoubtedly be another corporate led disaster for me.i simpky dont trust them at all about anything.i dont doubt they will invade my privacy,destroy my work and delete what they think is unsafe.i know there is lots of unsafe stuff out there,but its mostly not my friends or associates nor is it left wing campaigns.its the criminals,the malicious and the corporates who repeatedly bow to the demands the state(any and all states),and i suspect because those corporates operating on the internet dont care about anything except their profits.im told microsoft is very secure,not because they care about our safety or security but because they are protecting their profits.facebook and others,which seem t make information theft and hacking easy clearly dont care about anything much either.one day they will find themselves made accountable in a very different way-not to nation states or shareholders but the community of"users"and working people!
meantime we have to do the best we can to help ourselves,so does anyone have any clues?
Wednesday 22 August 2012
on hoarding and downsizing
i guess i am one of the hoarders and collectors:ive got it bad although not that bad.
mm.ill read that later-an item in the post-set it aside.later,it finds itself in apile and stored to be revisited,some time,never.
then theres the paper i store more intentionally-stuff ive written,others have written,something ive been involved in,the stuff of memories and some of its is stuff no-one would ever deny is important.then theres photographs.and magazines,journals and books,including duplicates and multiple copies.and recorded music and other material on vinyl,tape,compact discs.
so what do i do or not do?
there is what i suppose a perfectly legitimate,modern but i think ugly,clunky and jargon-ese style word:downsizing.
for me in this context that has to mean getting rid of,making less,making space.
then comes the difficulty.i think those of us who do hoard make many excuses to ourselves and others,and we procrastinate and we are slow to do anything about it.normally i would not make this kind of generalisation and would instead talk only about myself but at the same time,ive spoken to other hoarders recently,who intentionally or otherwise let slip some of the details of their own habits.one of the half legitimate issues that comes up is about not wasting things,recycling and re-use.....
and then there are the people who do not recognise that they too are hoarders or they cannot admit it to themselves.some are"in denial".another feature i recognise from some buddhist thinking,psychology and social work thery-that we tend to see in others and to project onto them what is actually inside ourselves. one of the primary people in this category for me,has not tidy piles of approximately recognisable material like books but smaller accumulations everywhere,which might include-and here is a family joke-the occassional bacon bookmark somewhere.no,its not that bad,though i did once find a piece of very dried shrivelled bacon as a bookmark in a library book.given the current situation in this community i live in-i will say it was from a brent library i dont look in those piles.of others material but when i have occassion to move them,it is highly likely that a table place mat or a torn envelope with a shopping list written on it will fall out.
this person,is the main person"on my case"who is always eager to throw out MY books or things she deems i should not have but the pile with the place mat never even gets sorted.maybe we should trade off"ill sort mine,if you sort yours"which might be helpful,although its childish stuff really.
all said and done-i am trying to downsize,and i will try to pass on and sometimes sell on some of the items.whilst i dont want to add to the clutter inother peoples homes,it does make it marginally easier if some things"go to good home"where they are needed or used.
so i thought i might keep a list somewhere on here of things id like to pass on.let me know if you are interested in anything.....watch this space.
mm.ill read that later-an item in the post-set it aside.later,it finds itself in apile and stored to be revisited,some time,never.
then theres the paper i store more intentionally-stuff ive written,others have written,something ive been involved in,the stuff of memories and some of its is stuff no-one would ever deny is important.then theres photographs.and magazines,journals and books,including duplicates and multiple copies.and recorded music and other material on vinyl,tape,compact discs.
so what do i do or not do?
there is what i suppose a perfectly legitimate,modern but i think ugly,clunky and jargon-ese style word:downsizing.
for me in this context that has to mean getting rid of,making less,making space.
then comes the difficulty.i think those of us who do hoard make many excuses to ourselves and others,and we procrastinate and we are slow to do anything about it.normally i would not make this kind of generalisation and would instead talk only about myself but at the same time,ive spoken to other hoarders recently,who intentionally or otherwise let slip some of the details of their own habits.one of the half legitimate issues that comes up is about not wasting things,recycling and re-use.....
and then there are the people who do not recognise that they too are hoarders or they cannot admit it to themselves.some are"in denial".another feature i recognise from some buddhist thinking,psychology and social work thery-that we tend to see in others and to project onto them what is actually inside ourselves. one of the primary people in this category for me,has not tidy piles of approximately recognisable material like books but smaller accumulations everywhere,which might include-and here is a family joke-the occassional bacon bookmark somewhere.no,its not that bad,though i did once find a piece of very dried shrivelled bacon as a bookmark in a library book.given the current situation in this community i live in-i will say it was from a brent library i dont look in those piles.of others material but when i have occassion to move them,it is highly likely that a table place mat or a torn envelope with a shopping list written on it will fall out.
this person,is the main person"on my case"who is always eager to throw out MY books or things she deems i should not have but the pile with the place mat never even gets sorted.maybe we should trade off"ill sort mine,if you sort yours"which might be helpful,although its childish stuff really.
all said and done-i am trying to downsize,and i will try to pass on and sometimes sell on some of the items.whilst i dont want to add to the clutter inother peoples homes,it does make it marginally easier if some things"go to good home"where they are needed or used.
so i thought i might keep a list somewhere on here of things id like to pass on.let me know if you are interested in anything.....watch this space.
Tuesday 21 August 2012
thinking musically-the collection-1a-this is me
this is essentially a footnote
i said this recording is essentially me-i meant the whole album,so i hpoe it comes up so anyone here can listen to it in full.
im content with the order the tracks are in.
reordering in say favourites would be hard.if you forced me it would go
1.track 2-slightly all the time-or track 4
2.track 4-out bloody rageous-or track 2
3.moon in june-only track with a vocal
4.facelift-this is the main track where i still discover things after 42 years
its impossible.i would still have to have the whole album.i simply cannot do without it.
im sure this wont be my last word about it either
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNgt7U9QrFQ
i said this recording is essentially me-i meant the whole album,so i hpoe it comes up so anyone here can listen to it in full.
im content with the order the tracks are in.
reordering in say favourites would be hard.if you forced me it would go
1.track 2-slightly all the time-or track 4
2.track 4-out bloody rageous-or track 2
3.moon in june-only track with a vocal
4.facelift-this is the main track where i still discover things after 42 years
its impossible.i would still have to have the whole album.i simply cannot do without it.
im sure this wont be my last word about it either
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNgt7U9QrFQ
i dont do science and technology......much
if richard dawkins and others like him had their way science would be at the top of the tree of knowledge or the tip of the pyramid hierarchy of knowledge,and what they could not make subservient they would destroy,obliterate and render as impossible as they could.
at the risk of being unfair to him,after all i dont know him-but frankly would not want to do so because i would find him unaproachable and he would i am certain treat me as his mortal enemy,i think he wants to replace the pope/patriarch/archbishop(head of various christian churches),dalai lama(buddhism)and head of islam-not simply by abolishing theology,religious(and spiritual?)thought and all related institutions not with simple abolition but by putting himself at the head of science,therby to rule us all,much in the way of the 9 and 1 rings in"lord of the rings".i have heard esotericist friends say that he was an inquisitor in a previous existence/life.i dont think i believe in reincarnation-transmigration of sould might be abetter idea but im not sure i understand its greater subtleties or superiority.but the viewpoint i think makes the point.
professor dawkins seems to think the bible/christians/anyone of religious bent is responsible for child abuse.im certain he thinks that religious education is itself child abuse!somehow he does not apply his own stern,unrelenting and dare i say un-humane scientific logic to his own thoughts.
released by this failure from any similar responsibility,i am certainly of the view that neither religion nor spirituality had ANYTHING to do with hiroshima or nagasaki or the ongoing nuclear theat,which may not be as dark or as imminent as at some times in the recent past,since say 1945 when the damned things were inveneted,but the threat as"dirty",terrorist bombings or rogue states is still there.
i dont doubt such scientists would want to apply their peculiar forensic logic again here to evad their responsibility on what im afraid they weould view as"technicalities",which magically exonerate themfrom responsibility.
i would want to aks questions about other evets like bhopal,chernobyl,3 mile island,flixborough,fukuyama...the list could go on.
at the very least it begs questions about the relationship of science to technology-the applications of science to social and machine applications.beyond that it begs questions about the relationship to the state and the wider economic system-the class order/society that is capitalism.
i tend therefore to refer to science as scientism,with its unresolved relations and theories about science and society,state,capitalism.
as i say,i dont do science and technology much
professor dawkins says that a scientific approach to knowledge and the world ens up its wonders,rather than cloaking them in the ignorance of religion.sorry but he is simply not applying a histrians approach to knowledge and epistemology.my main experience of science was at school and my main memory was of being taught technique and method which whilst valuable in themselves reduced scientific knowledge to abstractions and those very methods.the world was reduved to away of writing down experiments-it did not enable me to make an imaginative led alone any other conection between what i was writing down,the various coloured powders and liquids and out there in the world.i found it boring and alienating,although my science teachers were great when they make jokes,explosions,accidents or indeed set an essay about the links between smoking and cigarretes which encouraged me to ask alot of questions about the social context of scientific method and knowledge.
so i did like the soiology of science and the philosophy of science which i formally sudied later.please note professor dawkins,that was philosophy of science,not science of philosophy.if there is such a things it would be inferor in every way to the philosophy.
and as i say,i dont do science and technology much.
as a student i also came across In The Making,Undercurrents and BSSRS/british society for social responsiblity in science,most of which sadly seems to have passed into history.what indeed did becme of bssrs?i had respect for allthose initiatives and found i could talk to and understand them.
at one time professor dawkins held a key lectureship in the"public understanding of science".i was excited by that idea.perhaps it might result in things in the community that might flower and feed my imagination and curiosity for what science claims to study.but then,oops,im sorry i used that word imagination again.im sure that is not allowed in this version of science.what i experienced was a batterring over the head with religion awful(yes its me personally that caused the holocaust and the abuse of all chidren ever)science good-and dont dare to disagree.it led me to trun away from science and to treat it as suspect,at al times.after all it is according to the advertisements science that is behind everything we are supposed to need.
i do wonder why professor dawkins does not see a connection between his activity in science,in its paublic understanding and bssrs/british society for social responsibility in science or any of its international dan often more significant and prestigious variants.i think of steven and hilary rose or steven jay gould for example?
so,i dont do science and technology much.
i have equal difficulties with technology too.
some of it seems to be about age and generation.at 58 some,though not all of my generatin are the subsance and butt of a stereotype in which we cant be dealing with computers and mobile phones,and all kinds of other tech.stuff.
i do mange some of it,some of the time.im not god at it,but then im not as"rubbish"at it as my last boss used to think.gven my own time,and control and choice of it(3 things that the aleination of workers under capitalism do not allow)i fare better.my failure at work of course had NOTHING to do with the fact that capitalist markets and competiton work so badly that they DONT guarantee andy quality,genuine quality of anything at any time.nor do they explain that too many neterprises,including my employer of over 20 years want"rolls royce quality at bicycle prices".at one time they could pay £5,000 and more for a reapair call out but not the money to check let alone replace faulty technology.
the evidence,the facts point in adifferenet direction.remember the gross over anxiety and over engineering of solutions to the great date changeover from 31/12/1999 to 01/01/2000 all because capitalism pushes development towards cheap,quick and short-sighted solutions.recall the waste of multi-milllions if not now billions as the british state tried to by overarchingcomputer systems that did EVERYTHING,especially watching us-but failed on numerous occassions,in immigration,benefits,criminal justice and undoubtedly more.at one point last year 2011,in arranging i think major data migration or yet another system or server,they were reduced to instructing staff that if they worked one side of the thames they could use computers in the morning/AM and n the other side of the thames,in the afternoon/PM.
since i retired ive purchased computers which actually work for me most of the time.hacking has been a major headache but i got through it.i also bought an all singing and dancing mobile and can use it to do what i need to do.and i dont do things that bore me sick and eesmto have no purpose either!i will not have to complete the equivalent of 42 page computerised assessment when ive written this.when i give a friend or comrade an answer or advise similarly i do not have to go through several levels of computer bureaucracy.
im also very lucky in having several good friends and comrades who have helped me out,and sometimes ive paid for help and got it.i want to acknowledge here the staff of the computer manfacturer and advice lines for patience and forbearance that was not always available when i was employed.how for example could i send an email explaining to IT that i had a fault,when i could not understand it,when the comouter had broken dwn and when it was against prtotocols to ask another colleague foruse of their computer(im not even clear whether it was actually ok to ask another to email on my behalf though it was the only pragmatic option.in turn if they are"out to get you"thats the kind of ambguity on which i could get"hung"-fired)
what i continue to find really galling with alot of this technology though is that the information someone like me is NOT in the handbook,not findable easily,if at all,not comprehensible when found,always couched in computer-ese and there is no guarantee that its in the fAQs either.often the illustrated instructions do not match what is on the screen,or the apparently simple step by step instructions leave out a key,alwys simple step but that leave me completely stumped even if a computer whizz knows the answer.
as i say i dont do much science or technology.....
and ive written all that,and repeated the statement a good few times
all in order to get to this.........
that i thought id also use my blog to as those daft/technical questions in search of some answers..
im genuinely interested to see if it is possible to get answers that make sense and are understandable
i do know for example that sometimes.maybe often things are just complex and difficult,but wonder if its still possible to make understanding easier.
i can only comment from my own discipline in socal sciences and marxism.....
i have been genuinely impressed that during the period i regularly read capital and class journal it went in format and writing style from being dense and difficult however well intended to accessible,attractive,usable,readable
likewise historical materialism journal deals with difficut stuff but also makes it readable and usable.
i havve learned much form both.i used to learn from in the making and undercurrents but both have gone and i dont find the same help on the internet.if i have a problem with say emailing to unsubscive=be from some websites i have to wade through pages of very attracive LOOKING material but which actually does not tell me anything nor enabke me to change anything.without the help of friends"in the know"i would be comletely.......well lost
so why do you think i call myself and write as lost
but credit where it is due-thanks to nizam,margaret,steve an sandra for the help they have given to me with these issues,and in gettting me here
unfortunately,i think it will always be the case.....that i dont do science or technology.....much
at the risk of being unfair to him,after all i dont know him-but frankly would not want to do so because i would find him unaproachable and he would i am certain treat me as his mortal enemy,i think he wants to replace the pope/patriarch/archbishop(head of various christian churches),dalai lama(buddhism)and head of islam-not simply by abolishing theology,religious(and spiritual?)thought and all related institutions not with simple abolition but by putting himself at the head of science,therby to rule us all,much in the way of the 9 and 1 rings in"lord of the rings".i have heard esotericist friends say that he was an inquisitor in a previous existence/life.i dont think i believe in reincarnation-transmigration of sould might be abetter idea but im not sure i understand its greater subtleties or superiority.but the viewpoint i think makes the point.
professor dawkins seems to think the bible/christians/anyone of religious bent is responsible for child abuse.im certain he thinks that religious education is itself child abuse!somehow he does not apply his own stern,unrelenting and dare i say un-humane scientific logic to his own thoughts.
released by this failure from any similar responsibility,i am certainly of the view that neither religion nor spirituality had ANYTHING to do with hiroshima or nagasaki or the ongoing nuclear theat,which may not be as dark or as imminent as at some times in the recent past,since say 1945 when the damned things were inveneted,but the threat as"dirty",terrorist bombings or rogue states is still there.
i dont doubt such scientists would want to apply their peculiar forensic logic again here to evad their responsibility on what im afraid they weould view as"technicalities",which magically exonerate themfrom responsibility.
i would want to aks questions about other evets like bhopal,chernobyl,3 mile island,flixborough,fukuyama...the list could go on.
at the very least it begs questions about the relationship of science to technology-the applications of science to social and machine applications.beyond that it begs questions about the relationship to the state and the wider economic system-the class order/society that is capitalism.
i tend therefore to refer to science as scientism,with its unresolved relations and theories about science and society,state,capitalism.
as i say,i dont do science and technology much
professor dawkins says that a scientific approach to knowledge and the world ens up its wonders,rather than cloaking them in the ignorance of religion.sorry but he is simply not applying a histrians approach to knowledge and epistemology.my main experience of science was at school and my main memory was of being taught technique and method which whilst valuable in themselves reduced scientific knowledge to abstractions and those very methods.the world was reduved to away of writing down experiments-it did not enable me to make an imaginative led alone any other conection between what i was writing down,the various coloured powders and liquids and out there in the world.i found it boring and alienating,although my science teachers were great when they make jokes,explosions,accidents or indeed set an essay about the links between smoking and cigarretes which encouraged me to ask alot of questions about the social context of scientific method and knowledge.
so i did like the soiology of science and the philosophy of science which i formally sudied later.please note professor dawkins,that was philosophy of science,not science of philosophy.if there is such a things it would be inferor in every way to the philosophy.
and as i say,i dont do science and technology much.
as a student i also came across In The Making,Undercurrents and BSSRS/british society for social responsiblity in science,most of which sadly seems to have passed into history.what indeed did becme of bssrs?i had respect for allthose initiatives and found i could talk to and understand them.
at one time professor dawkins held a key lectureship in the"public understanding of science".i was excited by that idea.perhaps it might result in things in the community that might flower and feed my imagination and curiosity for what science claims to study.but then,oops,im sorry i used that word imagination again.im sure that is not allowed in this version of science.what i experienced was a batterring over the head with religion awful(yes its me personally that caused the holocaust and the abuse of all chidren ever)science good-and dont dare to disagree.it led me to trun away from science and to treat it as suspect,at al times.after all it is according to the advertisements science that is behind everything we are supposed to need.
i do wonder why professor dawkins does not see a connection between his activity in science,in its paublic understanding and bssrs/british society for social responsibility in science or any of its international dan often more significant and prestigious variants.i think of steven and hilary rose or steven jay gould for example?
so,i dont do science and technology much.
i have equal difficulties with technology too.
some of it seems to be about age and generation.at 58 some,though not all of my generatin are the subsance and butt of a stereotype in which we cant be dealing with computers and mobile phones,and all kinds of other tech.stuff.
i do mange some of it,some of the time.im not god at it,but then im not as"rubbish"at it as my last boss used to think.gven my own time,and control and choice of it(3 things that the aleination of workers under capitalism do not allow)i fare better.my failure at work of course had NOTHING to do with the fact that capitalist markets and competiton work so badly that they DONT guarantee andy quality,genuine quality of anything at any time.nor do they explain that too many neterprises,including my employer of over 20 years want"rolls royce quality at bicycle prices".at one time they could pay £5,000 and more for a reapair call out but not the money to check let alone replace faulty technology.
the evidence,the facts point in adifferenet direction.remember the gross over anxiety and over engineering of solutions to the great date changeover from 31/12/1999 to 01/01/2000 all because capitalism pushes development towards cheap,quick and short-sighted solutions.recall the waste of multi-milllions if not now billions as the british state tried to by overarchingcomputer systems that did EVERYTHING,especially watching us-but failed on numerous occassions,in immigration,benefits,criminal justice and undoubtedly more.at one point last year 2011,in arranging i think major data migration or yet another system or server,they were reduced to instructing staff that if they worked one side of the thames they could use computers in the morning/AM and n the other side of the thames,in the afternoon/PM.
since i retired ive purchased computers which actually work for me most of the time.hacking has been a major headache but i got through it.i also bought an all singing and dancing mobile and can use it to do what i need to do.and i dont do things that bore me sick and eesmto have no purpose either!i will not have to complete the equivalent of 42 page computerised assessment when ive written this.when i give a friend or comrade an answer or advise similarly i do not have to go through several levels of computer bureaucracy.
im also very lucky in having several good friends and comrades who have helped me out,and sometimes ive paid for help and got it.i want to acknowledge here the staff of the computer manfacturer and advice lines for patience and forbearance that was not always available when i was employed.how for example could i send an email explaining to IT that i had a fault,when i could not understand it,when the comouter had broken dwn and when it was against prtotocols to ask another colleague foruse of their computer(im not even clear whether it was actually ok to ask another to email on my behalf though it was the only pragmatic option.in turn if they are"out to get you"thats the kind of ambguity on which i could get"hung"-fired)
what i continue to find really galling with alot of this technology though is that the information someone like me is NOT in the handbook,not findable easily,if at all,not comprehensible when found,always couched in computer-ese and there is no guarantee that its in the fAQs either.often the illustrated instructions do not match what is on the screen,or the apparently simple step by step instructions leave out a key,alwys simple step but that leave me completely stumped even if a computer whizz knows the answer.
as i say i dont do much science or technology.....
and ive written all that,and repeated the statement a good few times
all in order to get to this.........
that i thought id also use my blog to as those daft/technical questions in search of some answers..
im genuinely interested to see if it is possible to get answers that make sense and are understandable
i do know for example that sometimes.maybe often things are just complex and difficult,but wonder if its still possible to make understanding easier.
i can only comment from my own discipline in socal sciences and marxism.....
i have been genuinely impressed that during the period i regularly read capital and class journal it went in format and writing style from being dense and difficult however well intended to accessible,attractive,usable,readable
likewise historical materialism journal deals with difficut stuff but also makes it readable and usable.
i havve learned much form both.i used to learn from in the making and undercurrents but both have gone and i dont find the same help on the internet.if i have a problem with say emailing to unsubscive=be from some websites i have to wade through pages of very attracive LOOKING material but which actually does not tell me anything nor enabke me to change anything.without the help of friends"in the know"i would be comletely.......well lost
so why do you think i call myself and write as lost
but credit where it is due-thanks to nizam,margaret,steve an sandra for the help they have given to me with these issues,and in gettting me here
unfortunately,i think it will always be the case.....that i dont do science or technology.....much
Monday 20 August 2012
thinking musically-the collection-1-this is me
i heard the band"soft machine's""third"played by john peel on his staurday afternoon bbc radio 1 show"top gear"one summer day in 1970.it was always regarded as the graveyard slot in that 2-5pm on a saturday everyone would be doing something else-football,shopping or in my case mostly hanging out with friends in the market square,as another song says"avoiding skinheads and the law"
that day i stayed at home to listen tothe whole of"third",and then for the only time in my life ive ever done this,i charged aroundthe house to find every single penny i could find(pre-decimal)and with 33/-(33 shillings)shot down the market to buy the album.
its now 42 years old.i play it a great deal still.i still find new things in it,and it is my most teasured recording.if i lost all my other music,this is the one i would want to keep,to find,to buy again.
there IS BETTER music,but this holds the key for me.it would be my one treasure on any"desert island".id lie the whole deal-all 4 tunes across a double album,but if i had to choose only on eit would be "out bloody rageous"(this)or "slightly all the time".
why?
the whole album is just so beautiful-to me.it is so rich.beyond that i dont know much,excet that as im not a musician-ony steeped in music-its as if it was not just written for me,but it feels like it is me.i could not explain myself.id just give whoever asked,a copy of third to play.....and walk away as enigmatic as i think this music is.
yes,it is me.....
that day i stayed at home to listen tothe whole of"third",and then for the only time in my life ive ever done this,i charged aroundthe house to find every single penny i could find(pre-decimal)and with 33/-(33 shillings)shot down the market to buy the album.
its now 42 years old.i play it a great deal still.i still find new things in it,and it is my most teasured recording.if i lost all my other music,this is the one i would want to keep,to find,to buy again.
there IS BETTER music,but this holds the key for me.it would be my one treasure on any"desert island".id lie the whole deal-all 4 tunes across a double album,but if i had to choose only on eit would be "out bloody rageous"(this)or "slightly all the time".
why?
the whole album is just so beautiful-to me.it is so rich.beyond that i dont know much,excet that as im not a musician-ony steeped in music-its as if it was not just written for me,but it feels like it is me.i could not explain myself.id just give whoever asked,a copy of third to play.....and walk away as enigmatic as i think this music is.
yes,it is me.....
thinking musically-new discoveries-1-for S.it is S.
i will only know if this has worked ,if it works.i guess we mostly learn by trial and error.
and on that score whilst richard branson does not particularly impress me,he did say"if you dont make mistake,you dont make anything"
i think of myself as aerson who amongst other ways of thinking,thinks musically.i seem to be able to associate most things,peole,memories with pieces of music.music is certainly the sountrack of my life.
so i thought id do two things here,on this bit o my blog-write and make links to my own musical experience,and that includes my own collection,but secondly post up links to pieces i discover that i dont have in my collection or are just entirely new to me.
the day my friend set my blog up for me-it was mostly her effort-when i got home,i found this piece of music.its pablo"do what you gotta do".i think i made the connection,the mental link because i found it on the same day,that the blog started.but then hearing it multiple times since,i think its a good description of my friend.it drives and she is driven,it has energy,fire-thats her too.the speed and rhythms and complexities make me feel ecstatic and i was that day too.its on fire and she has fire in her sole.i think the few words i can hear,and are repeated soundlike"flagship rider"which seems apposite too.the music is very there and present,and so is she.i dont know whether she realises it,but she is all that too-a sophisticated force,thats knows where she wants to get to.i just wanted to celebrate knowing her,and her friendship and comradeship.she will know who she is.
turn the volume up and dont stand back!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8KMvoa1EuI
Sunday 19 August 2012
there is social in socialism
i know that we live in times that are very different to those i grew up in.even in the late 1960s i remember passing bombsites on my way from my home town,into and through london.it felt like that until the arrival of hippie culture and a lot that went with it,london,and probably even more the industrial conurbations of england were damp,grey,boring,banal with nothing to do and very limited prospects.then the new left,from about 1956 ad later the hippies arrived.those were times of prosperity and optimism and with a growingself confidence our class and certainly the youth cultures and new left demanded more and better,articulating that what we were being handed out was not enough,and was not good enough.
i myself began to come to political and social conscience from about 1968 when i was 14.i grew up seeing the evidence of my own eyes earlier,and with strong moral values but it was influenced mostly i admit by tv coverage of events across the world in 1968 which led me to think that if people of 18 or so could challenge,be confident,seek to change the world or to stop its excesses,then maybe soon i could join them........
whilst there were plenty of negatives,these were not neccessarilly by themselves entirely daunting.they did not get in the way of independent thought.they did not stop me before i had started,although i did make plenty of mistakes and several false starts along the way.but then dont we all,and actually it is through our mistakes that we learn.we do not neccessarilly realise what we have learned if we simply get things right,becase there is nothing that makes us reflect on it.
the world was apparently divided into 2 major imperialist blocks.i make no apologies for coming to the view that there were 2 imperialist blocks.one of them may have been different once,but that victory had been largely if not fundamentally lost,certainly in its key features.
the cold war got colder and bleaker,so that at various times and for different people and groups there were certainly times when"we"thought that nuclear war/holocaust was imminent.i guess the worst times were the 1980s,for me and the US/UK bombing of tripoli was a personal low point,to which i might well return on another on occassion.
even in britain,this could result in a not just intense commitment to"organised socialism"but a distorted,somewhat monastic outlook,in which everyone was expected to make a commitmet to making revolution which postponed a whole number of issues,and qualities of life to the other side of the revolution.this,i acknowledge could never be matched in lived reality.
at the same time,it seems to me,alongside the collapse of a large part of "stalinism"with the coming down of"the wall"and the collapse of the soviet union,its satellites and the further transformation of china and subsequent isolatiin of north korea,cuba,and some other "distorted"regimes there remains another kind of residual or ghost or shadow of stalinism.
i think that might be called sectarianism.in the 1960s that was a kind of luxury in the context of optimism about other things,but it was still damaging,to all kinds of "things",campaigns,organisations and people.it led to jokes about certain political currents that,say 2 followers of a particular set of ideas would form a party,3 would lead to a split,and in its more hysterical form that amongst 3 members there would be at least 4 opinions.
whilst it WAS and remains the case that some political differences could lead to life threatening or fatal consequencesi,it was equally possible to overestate this.i admit that at some level i enjoyed the occassional "row"with comrades in other political currents about the precise nature of the soviet union and the"eastern bloc"but it was mostly so esoteric that it could do nothing but put off ourselves and others from organising on the many very real issues that came up day by week by month.personally i felt sometimes that those very debates brought comrades into contact with each other in order to conduct the dispute but that at the same time,it would often place an unneccessarry distance between comrades,or more simply me and her or him.it got plain daft at times.i remember being sent off to comrades in other groups for tortured dscussions before returning with an agreemnt almost like munich 1938 and then agreeing to argue together for a simple practical step in the here and now about for example,the literal next step in say a student occupation.at a personal level,i felt it made for difficulties at the simple level of frendship,to my regret.
i do however also recognise that sometimes having agreed to work together in say a "united front"that its possible to become too comfortable with those we meet within a room to organise something on an ongoing basis.we can get too comfortable.we relate to each other and begin to think as if the circumstances in the room are the same as the conditions in our communities,on the streets,in worplaces.whilst it is possible to overtheorise,it seems to me that we ought to be able to conduct our relations with other people,with comrades in the wider movement in a way where we can both work together,act fraternally or soriorally and yet agree to disagree without falling silent over real differences.it does at one level seem absurd that we can argue to the point of anger,rather than passion over krondstadt 1921 or whether the russian/bolshevik revolution was lost at a particular date,when the reality is we still dont know and we have neither established nor agrred facts.in a time of austerity,crisis,cuts and vicious class attack by their class on ours everywhere and all the time,we really do need "stand together,or fall apart".
we ought to focus on learning and teaching ourselves and each other better ways to be-which will always be works in progress,rather than replicating/accepting the psychology that capitalism silently imposes on us all,or the brand mentality of the capitalist market,in which"our party is better /bigger than yours..
for me,there are a few rules of thumb;that friendship and comradeship are a key to our struggles.that in a time when increasingy everything is contested,then each struggle is important and needs to be linked up.and that our models of organising should not be stuck in some"magical mystical"date from the past but that our class(not just the"professional revolutionaries")continue to learn,innovate and create.
it was not me but a friend,and comrade who pointed out that the word "socalism"has the word"social"in it.and a fundamental point made by marx and and many others is that we are social beings.we cannot live or have meaning without each other,and in fact we cannot grow to our full human potential in any way without a mother,without nurturing,and yes without rubbing along in our friendships.
i myself began to come to political and social conscience from about 1968 when i was 14.i grew up seeing the evidence of my own eyes earlier,and with strong moral values but it was influenced mostly i admit by tv coverage of events across the world in 1968 which led me to think that if people of 18 or so could challenge,be confident,seek to change the world or to stop its excesses,then maybe soon i could join them........
whilst there were plenty of negatives,these were not neccessarilly by themselves entirely daunting.they did not get in the way of independent thought.they did not stop me before i had started,although i did make plenty of mistakes and several false starts along the way.but then dont we all,and actually it is through our mistakes that we learn.we do not neccessarilly realise what we have learned if we simply get things right,becase there is nothing that makes us reflect on it.
the world was apparently divided into 2 major imperialist blocks.i make no apologies for coming to the view that there were 2 imperialist blocks.one of them may have been different once,but that victory had been largely if not fundamentally lost,certainly in its key features.
the cold war got colder and bleaker,so that at various times and for different people and groups there were certainly times when"we"thought that nuclear war/holocaust was imminent.i guess the worst times were the 1980s,for me and the US/UK bombing of tripoli was a personal low point,to which i might well return on another on occassion.
even in britain,this could result in a not just intense commitment to"organised socialism"but a distorted,somewhat monastic outlook,in which everyone was expected to make a commitmet to making revolution which postponed a whole number of issues,and qualities of life to the other side of the revolution.this,i acknowledge could never be matched in lived reality.
at the same time,it seems to me,alongside the collapse of a large part of "stalinism"with the coming down of"the wall"and the collapse of the soviet union,its satellites and the further transformation of china and subsequent isolatiin of north korea,cuba,and some other "distorted"regimes there remains another kind of residual or ghost or shadow of stalinism.
i think that might be called sectarianism.in the 1960s that was a kind of luxury in the context of optimism about other things,but it was still damaging,to all kinds of "things",campaigns,organisations and people.it led to jokes about certain political currents that,say 2 followers of a particular set of ideas would form a party,3 would lead to a split,and in its more hysterical form that amongst 3 members there would be at least 4 opinions.
whilst it WAS and remains the case that some political differences could lead to life threatening or fatal consequencesi,it was equally possible to overestate this.i admit that at some level i enjoyed the occassional "row"with comrades in other political currents about the precise nature of the soviet union and the"eastern bloc"but it was mostly so esoteric that it could do nothing but put off ourselves and others from organising on the many very real issues that came up day by week by month.personally i felt sometimes that those very debates brought comrades into contact with each other in order to conduct the dispute but that at the same time,it would often place an unneccessarry distance between comrades,or more simply me and her or him.it got plain daft at times.i remember being sent off to comrades in other groups for tortured dscussions before returning with an agreemnt almost like munich 1938 and then agreeing to argue together for a simple practical step in the here and now about for example,the literal next step in say a student occupation.at a personal level,i felt it made for difficulties at the simple level of frendship,to my regret.
i do however also recognise that sometimes having agreed to work together in say a "united front"that its possible to become too comfortable with those we meet within a room to organise something on an ongoing basis.we can get too comfortable.we relate to each other and begin to think as if the circumstances in the room are the same as the conditions in our communities,on the streets,in worplaces.whilst it is possible to overtheorise,it seems to me that we ought to be able to conduct our relations with other people,with comrades in the wider movement in a way where we can both work together,act fraternally or soriorally and yet agree to disagree without falling silent over real differences.it does at one level seem absurd that we can argue to the point of anger,rather than passion over krondstadt 1921 or whether the russian/bolshevik revolution was lost at a particular date,when the reality is we still dont know and we have neither established nor agrred facts.in a time of austerity,crisis,cuts and vicious class attack by their class on ours everywhere and all the time,we really do need "stand together,or fall apart".
we ought to focus on learning and teaching ourselves and each other better ways to be-which will always be works in progress,rather than replicating/accepting the psychology that capitalism silently imposes on us all,or the brand mentality of the capitalist market,in which"our party is better /bigger than yours..
for me,there are a few rules of thumb;that friendship and comradeship are a key to our struggles.that in a time when increasingy everything is contested,then each struggle is important and needs to be linked up.and that our models of organising should not be stuck in some"magical mystical"date from the past but that our class(not just the"professional revolutionaries")continue to learn,innovate and create.
it was not me but a friend,and comrade who pointed out that the word "socalism"has the word"social"in it.and a fundamental point made by marx and and many others is that we are social beings.we cannot live or have meaning without each other,and in fact we cannot grow to our full human potential in any way without a mother,without nurturing,and yes without rubbing along in our friendships.
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