Feral Capitalism Hits the Streets by David Harvey 11 August 2011

“Nihilistic and feral teenagers” the Daily Mail called them: the crazy youths from all walks of life who raced around the streets mindlessly and desperately hurling bricks, stones and bottles at the cops while looting here and setting bonfires there, leading the authorities on a merry chase of catch-as-catch-can as they tweeted their way from one strategic target to another.


The word “feral” pulled me up short. It reminded me of how the communards in Paris in 1871 were depicted as wild animals, as hyenas, that deserved to be (and often were) summarily executed in the name of the sanctity of private property, morality, religion, and the family. But then the word conjured up another association: Tony Blair attacking the “feral media,” having for so long been comfortably lodged in the left pocket of Rupert Murdoch only later to be substituted as Murdoch reached into his right pocket to pluck out David Cameron.


There will of course be the usual hysterical debate between those prone to view the riots as a matter of pure, unbridled and inexcusable criminality, and those anxious to contextualize events against a background of bad policing; continuing racism and unjustified persecution of youths and minorities; mass unemployment of the young; burgeoning social deprivation; and a mindless politics of austerity that has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with the perpetuation and consolidation of personal wealth and power. Some may even get around to condemning the meaningless and alienating qualities of so many jobs and so much of daily life in the midst of immense but unevenly distributed potentiality for human flourishing.


If we are lucky, we will have commissions and reports to say all over again what was said of Brixton and Toxteth in the Thatcher years. I say ‘lucky’ because the feral instincts of the current Prime Minister seem more attuned to turn on the water cannons, to call in the tear gas brigade and use the rubber bullets while pontificating unctuously about the loss of moral compass, the decline of civility and the sad deterioration of family values and discipline among errant youths.


But the problem is that we live in a society where capitalism itself has become rampantly feral. Feral politicians cheat on their expenses, feral bankers plunder the public purse for all its worth, CEOs, hedge fund operators and private equity geniuses loot the world of wealth, telephone and credit card companies load mysterious charges on everyone’s bills, shopkeepers price gouge, and, at the drop of a hat swindlers and scam artists get to practice three-card monte right up into the highest echelons of the corporate and political world.


A political economy of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery, particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected, has become the order of the day. Does anyone believe it is possible to find an honest capitalist, an honest banker, an honest politician, an honest shopkeeper or an honest police commisioner any more? Yes, they do exist. But only as a minority that everyone else regards as stupid. Get smart. Get Easy Profits. Defraud and steal! The odds of getting caught are low. And in any case there are plenty of ways to shield personal wealth from the costs of corporate malfeasance.


What I say may sound shocking. Most of us don’t see it because we don’t want to. Certainly no politician dare say it and the press would only print it to heap scorn upon the sayer. But my guess is that every street rioter knows exactly what I mean. They are only doing what everyone else is doing, though in a different way – more blatently and visibly in the streets. Thatcherism unchained the feral instincts of capitalism (the “animal spirits” of the entreprenuer they coyly named it) and nothing has transpired to curb them since. Slash and burn is now openly the motto of the ruling classes pretty much everywhere.


This is the new normal in which we live. This is what the next grand commission of enquiry should address. Everyone, not just the rioters, should be held to account. Feral capitalism should be put on trial for crimes against humanity as well as for crimes against nature.


Sadly, this is what these mindless rioters cannot see or demand. Everything conspires to prevent us from seeing and demanding it also. This is why political power so hastily dons the robes of superior morality and unctuous reason so that no one might see it as so nakedly corrupt and stupidly irrational.


But there are various glimmers of hope and Light around the world. The indignados movements in Spain and Greece, the revolutionary impulses in Latin America, the peasant movements in Asia, are all beginning to see through the vast scam that a predatory and feral global capitalism has unleashed upon the world. What will it take for the rest of us to see and act upon it? How can we begin all over again? What direction should we take? The answers are not easy. But one thing we do know for certain: we can only get to the right answers by asking the right questions.


—
David Harvey is Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His latest book is The Enigma of Capital, and the Crises of Capitalism.
Aricle originally posted at http://davidharvey.org/2011/08/feral-capitalism-hits-the-streets/#more-962

Unison will challenge its Plymouth derecognition

by Tom Walker

The Tories want to break the Unison union at Plymouth council—but workers say they won’t let them get away with it.

Bosses derecognised Unison last week after the union refused to sign up to job and pay cuts.

Unison branch secretary Darren Turner said, “Unison’s position is, and always will be, to defend and improve the pay and conditions of our members.

“They do not join because they want us to sign away hard-earned benefits at the first sign of pressure from the  employer.”

The bosses want to force out the union so that they can push through new contracts.

The Unite and GMB unions at the council have made a formal protest over the derecognition.

“Selective derecognition threatens the future of collective bargaining across the country,” Unison branch chair Jeremy Guise told Socialist Worker.

“If the employers are allowed to get away with this kind of divide-and-rule there will be a significant weakening of trade union power and influence in all multi-union workplaces.

“That’s why we have to come together to fight it.”

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said the union “will not be pressured into signing an agreement that discriminates against some groups of staff”.

The council withdrew all facility time for Unison branch officials and kicked them out of their union offices.

But the union’s members are keeping up the fight.

Ballot

white

On Wednesday Unison members will hold a union general meeting to consider a ballot for industrial action.

This must be turned into a reality. Activists must go all-out to win support for action across all three council unions.

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Workers were set to join a solidarity rally outside the council’s offices on the same day, called by Plymouth trades council.

There was also to be a public solidarity meeting that evening.

Tony Staunton, secretary of the trades council and chair of the council Unite branch, said the derecognition fight is “of national significance”.

“We’re calling for full support for the Unison branch,” he added.

The branch has been flooded with messages of support from other unions.

PCS civil service workers’ union general secretary Mark Serwotka said, “PCS and, I’m sure, the whole labour movement is 100 percent behind Unison members in Plymouth as they fight to win back their union rights.”

Send messages of support to office@unisonplymouth.net and dturner@unisonplymouth.net

Article from Socialist Worker 27^th August 2011

Tony Dyer: Confessions of a failed Bristol rioter

By Tony Dyer

Aug 15, 2011 from bristol24/7 http://www.bristol247.com/2011/08/15/tony-dyer-confessions-of-a-failed-bristol-rioter-33879/

I grew up on the Hartcliffe council estate which is where I was on April 2, 1980 when news came through of rioting in St Paul’s. Unlike my parents, who were shocked, their 15-year-old son’s reaction was somewhat different. My sympathies were with the youths throwing bricks at the police.


My friends felt the same way. Our view of the police was a negative one. In our experience, their main objective appeared to be simply to harass us on the apparent assumption that because we were young and from relatively under-privileged backgrounds we must be up to no good.


We felt that the police simply didn’t like us – and we felt the same way about them.


In addition those of my friends who had left school were either signing on or worked for companies that were cutting their workforce. The Thatcher government had been elected the previous year, helped by an advertising campaign that showed a line of unemployed signing on and the slogan “Labour isn’t working” – but under the Tories the dole queue was getting even longer.


Our futures looked bleak – even our parents with their years of experience were losing their jobs, and struggling to find new ones. We had no experience and few, if any, qualifications. Who’d employ us?
We felt that the rest of the country didn’t care about us – so why should we care about the rest of the country?


So when it was suggested that we pile down to St Paul’s and join in the rioting nobody objected. As a result, we made our way to the city centre. For most of us, including myself, this simply turned into a game of cat and mouse as we tried to join in the rioting – only to be blocked off by the police at every turn.
In my own case I returned to a grilling from my parents about where I had been that evening and a warning that if I ever got involved in the sort of events that were now being shown on the TV, I would get the hiding of my life.


Fast forward a decade. It’s July 1992, and another riot erupts in Bristol. This time however it is not in St Paul’s but Hartcliffe.


In the intervening years, my circumstances have changed completely. The 1980 riot in St Paul’s had been followed by a copycat riot in Southmead and a series of riots the following year across the whole country, as the UK entered into full-blown recession.

In the immediate aftermath, some additional funding had been made available for deprived areas and my father, increasingly worried about the direction his son was taking, got me on to a computer training programme.


By 1992, I was married and living in Portishead and had recently been recruited by one of the largest computer companies in the world. Despite the country once again being in recession, my own economic and personal situation was an almost complete contrast to 1980.


The dichotomy is that if I had been arrested for rioting in 1980, it is unlikely that my future would have been so successful, but if those same riots had not taken place it is just as unlikely that the training programme that kick-started my change in fortune would have been available to me.


Meanwhile back in Hartcliffe, that same programme that had helped me start a successful career had been the victim of cuts. In addition it was clear from talking to my young cousins that their relationship with the police was as bad as ours had been in 1980, and that, if anything, job opportunities were even worse as another recession began to bite with youth unemployment already high. In hindsight, the ingredients for a riot were all there, all that was needed was a spark.


My own involvement was brief. I received a phone call from my mum asking me if I would drive over to Hartcliffe and pick up my cousin and her two young children from their flat above the shops in Symes Avenue. A crowd of youths had set fire to some of the shops below and she was in a state of panic. Thankfully, by the time I got to Hartcliffe, my brother had already picked her up and taken her to my parents.


I was angry. A close relative of mine and her two young children had been scared out of their wits and their lives put in danger by a bunch of “mindless thugs” who had decided to set fire to property and throw bricks at the police.


I then realised what a hypocrite I was.


Because if the same riot had broken out in Hartcliffe in 1980, my 15-year-old version would have been among those throwing bricks. I might tell myself that I would not have set fire to property but I had also seen plenty of evidence close up of how recklessly individuals can behave within a mob situation with no thought of the possible consequences.


Once again, when the riots were over, and the usual sound-bite of politicians had had their say, public funding was made available for the sort of programmes and initiatives that had changed my own life.


By 2011, yet again many of those programmes had been cut largely due to a financial crisis not of the making of those most affected by the cuts. Instead, those responsible either fiddled their expenses, or pocketed their bonuses, as they told us we were all in this together. Once again jobs are in short supply, and this time it is my nephews and nieces who see little future for themselves.


So when I watched the news coverage of the riots in recent weeks, I found myself experiencing contrasting feelings; anger at the destruction of people’s livelihoods, and disgust at the loss of life.


But underlying it all there was intense anger that we, as a society, appear to have learned almost nothing over the last 30 years and continue to make the same mistakes – and that as a result it is only a matter of time until the next outbreak of violence.

So what is Plan B? *( An article on local government and cuts by Sean Thompson )

In an interview in the August edition of Environmental Health News, Bill Randall, Leader of Brighton Council, said that while the Green Party in Brighton won with a manifesto that promised to resists the cuts to the greatest possible extent, the council cannot actually stop them. He said he is not going to defy the government, adding ‘I am not going to be a George Lansbury.’

Of course, he was referring to the 1921 Poplar Rates Revolt - the refusal of Poplar councillors, led by George Lansbury, to collect a precept for the LCC and other London wide bodies in protest against the unfair burden the then rating system placed on a desperately poor borough like Poplar. The majority of the borough’s councillors were committed to prison for contempt, but after six weeks, in the face of huge public support for the councillors and other councils starting to threaten to take the same action, the Government backed down, releasing the councillors and rushing a Bill through parliament which effectively equalised the burden of rates between rich and poor boroughs.

‘I think times have changed a bit since George Lansbury’ said Bill and of course he is right. Up to a point. The situation is different in two significant ways. First, subsequent to the failed rebellion by various Labour councils against the 1984  Rates Act, the law has been changed to make such another such rebellion physically impossible. Chief Finance Officers effectively have a power of veto on council budgets and are, legally, ultimately accountable to central government rather than local councillors. Councillors might set a deficit budget but would be completely unable to put it into action and would rapidly be suspended from office by the Standards Board for England for even attempting it. Second, although popular opposition to the cuts is growing, it is - as yet - largely at the level of unfocussed resentment.  Willingness to take on the government is very patchy among trade unionists and within local communities organised opposition is still focussed on saving specific services rather than more generalised resistance to the cuts.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that councillors shouldn’t ever consider open defiance as a tactic; but that’s what it is - a tactic, rather than the only correct strategy. For example, when Poplar councillors defied the Tory Government (and the leadership of the Labour Party) on the issue of rate equalisation they knew that they had huge support that extended well beyond the boundaries of Poplar.  While Lansbury and his comrades were undoubtedly brave and principled, they were not just striking a heroic pose when they marched to the High Court led by flying banners and a brass band. They knew that the rebellion was likely to spread if they were prepared to be bold, and that the government was on shaky ground and could be forced to retreat. However, the other issue of dispute with national government was Poplar’s policy of paying a minimum wage of £4 a week to its workers. When this was finally ruled unlawful in 1925 the Council, realising that it could not mobilise any support among other councils to spread the dispute and that the unions were not going to take on the government on the issue, gave in and cut wages. But that was not a betrayal of principle, it was a tactical retreat.

Now, I happen to think that as cuts start to really hurt in the coming year there will be a need for some local authorities to take a lead in challenging the Government. The role of the union leaderships is obviously critical, but they will only, at best, take up a defensive posture (and I still doubt the resolve of many of them to do anything at all). Local campaigns are likely to remain fragmented - and it any case, by and large, don’t have much leverage (unlike the poll tax campaign) beyond occupations and similar militant protests. In this context, councils moving into open defiance and challenging the Government to close them down if it dares could provide a dramatic focus of opposition an already slightly shaky Coalition.

However, it is tactically quite legitimate for Green councillors in Brighton and those Labour councillors elsewhere who genuinely want to fight the cuts (and there are some of them) to respond by saying that one local authority can’t defeat the Government.  And, of course if that was all that was happening, they would be right.

But I think that it is tactically quite legitimate to respond by asking ‘so what is Plan B? How best, then, can we set about organising popular opposition in order to defeat this Government’s plans to ravage public services?’ My fundamental criticism of all Labour councils and Labour councillors (and, I fear, most Green councillors I have talked to) is not that they are too cautious in their tactics for fighting the Government but they do not have a strategy of fighting the government at all. They don’t have a Plan B; their strategy is simply to manage things as best they can and minimise the damage that the cuts they are forced to impose are causing.

I have no wish to put our comrades in Brighton on the spot and certainly not to criticise what they have been doing in their first few months in office - they seem to be doing an good job in difficult circumstances and are proving to be a breath of fresh air in the musty corridors of municipal administration - but history has put them, as the first Green Council - on the spot. The municipal Labour Left, if it exists at all, has completely failed to develop a strategy for taking on the Government (or rather, it has a strategy of not taking on the Government). So that leaves us in Brighton.

I would suggest a twin track approach over the coming months. First, in Brighton itself, our Councillors could engage in a genuinely joint budget setting process with the unions and local community organisations based on two pledges; first, to have a genuinely open books policy, with all financial information open to the unions and the community (senior officers will fight this tooth and nail), and second, not to implement a budget until there is a broad consensus on it with the unions and local community organisations. If such a consensus budget proved to be unnacceptable to the Government through its proxy, the Chief Finance Officer, it would mean that if the Green Councillors were forced towards confrontation they would do so not isolated, but at the head of a wave of both local and national support.

Second, on a national basis, the Green group could attempt to organise a national conference aimed at establishing an alliance of all local authorities who want to find viable ways of subverting, sabotaging or out and out defying the Governments plans. Such a conference could also aim to drag in the leaderships of the main unions involved - Unison, Unite, GMB and the teaching unions in order to develop a united front with a common programme of action. Such a programme would most likely be very cautious, but it would be a start in establishing the idea that local authorities can and must start to fight back rather than just acting as the Coalition’s (reluctant) local agents.

No local council can, on its own, take on and defeat the Government.  And the Green Party, on its own, can’t mobilise a mass movement which can bring the government down. But  the Green Party in Brighton, and nationally, is in a position to play a key role in establishing a real opposition to the Government that can stop it in its tracks. It is a responsibility that we just can’t shirk.

"Diggers' Festival"

Wigan's first "Diggers' Festival" will take place at The Old Pear Tree, Frog Lane on Saturday 10th September 2011.


The festival aims to celebrate the life, ideas and actions of the Wigan born and bred Diggers' leader Gerrard Winstanley who died on 10th September 1676.


Issued by Stephen Hall on behalf of the Festival Organising Committee

01942 886645/07724 139278

39 Spa Road, Atherton, Manchester M46 9NR.

Riots, Recession and resistance; CoR/BARAC meeting ULU London 11/8/11

Introduction by Romayne Phoenix



Symeon Brown, Tottenham Youth Worker



Clare Solomon (ed Springtime, the new student rebellion)



Andrew Murray (Unite and STW)



Josie Fraser (mother of Demetre Fraser death in custody)



Merlin Emmanuel (Smiley Culture)



Zita Holbourne (PCS and Barac)



James Meadway (chief economist New Economics Foundation (personal capacity))



Lee Jasper (BARAC)



John McDonnell MP



Questions and discussion

CAMP FRACK 17th-18th September

Campaign against Climate Change www.campaigncc.org
CAMP FRACK


Weekend of 17th-18th September

Join the resistance to the “fracking” invasion! Stop the imminent expansion of shale gas extraction all around the UK! We need renewables - sacrificing our countryside for every last drop of of fossil fuel is crazy!


Camp Frack will be in the Blackpool/North Lancashire area near the ongoing exploratory drilling activities.


It will involve workshops on shale gas, and on planning the campaign against it. It will involve raising local awareness about the problems with shale gas and an action day of peaceful protest against the drilling activities currently in progress in the Blackpool area.
Register your interest by filling in the form at www.campaigncc.org/campfrack. We will send you more information as soon as it is available.


If you are interested in getting a coach from London then please tick the box. This will give us an idea of numbers and help us plan transport.


If you are able to spare a bit of time to help the camp run smoothly, tick the corresponding box and we will get in touch.


Camp Frack has already amassed interest from the media, including The Guardian and the Blackpool Gazette.

See our shale gas page here and download a PDF flier for the camp here.

Listen to the recording of our London Public Meeting on 19th July with Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall° Centre, Caroline Lucas MP, Michael Meacher MP and local Blackpool campaigner, Phil Mitchell.


Put this date in your diary – more info to come soon.

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