Edinburgh Anarchists

Quick-quiz: How many of you out there think that “non-executive” means the same as “doesn’t do anything”? As in “non-executive director”?

I thought that being a NED meant to turn up to the meeting, eat the biscuits, read the minutes, send texts to your mistress and nod through pay rises. Their performance at scrutinising RBS, among others, says I’m right.

But maybe I’m wrong. They must be working awfy hard, because according to this story, they’ve been given a payrise of more than 5% across big companies. Meanwhile, workers are seeing pay freezes (always a cut in real-terms, remember) if they’ve not been put on short hours to “save” their jobs.

What happened to “fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay?” Seems like that was only ever meant to work one way. Fuck the wages system.

Anyone on the average salary (that’s £25,000, more than most people globally could dream of) knows that buying a home to live in has become virtually impossible. This isn’t the story usually told in newspapers (who have very profitable property supplements), where rises in house prices are prayed for as fervently as visions of the Madonna in Ireland, with just as much basis in reality.

If you had a house before prices went crazy, you have a huge amount of pretend money. If you didn’t, you won’t. Ever. A house no longer costs 3-4 times your salary, it’s 7 or 8.

Now some minor government functionary says: fugged abaht it. You ain’t getting one. Rent forever. Raise kids in a place where you can be turfed out at the whim of one of the Propertied Classes. Don’t decorate. Don’t even put posters up. No you can’t insulate better, pay the ever-increasing heating bill instead.

Which we knew anyway. What’s the solution?

Here’s one. Since there’s a drought of nice, secure council / social housing since the introduction of the Right to Buy in the 1980s, why don’t we level the playing field a bit?

Let’s not abandon the Right to Buy, let’s extend it to privately-owned homes. If I’ve lived in a place for a certain number of years, it is mine, treat it the same as if it were a mortgage. Landlord’s got their money back several times over.

It takes the sound principle of ownership by use, the proven popularity of right-to-buy and it’s a win in terms of increasing equality.

What do you think?

EDL reveal their Scots roots by pissing on English Heritage

We owe the English Scottish Defence League an apology. We thought that they were just a bunch of racist football hooligans who wanted to see some rain and hills, so transplanted their wannabe-race war to Glasgow last month.

We thought the fact that their SDL hoodies have the English St Georges Cross on them was proof that they had no links here.

However. The photo here proves us wrong. It shows “English” patriots pissing against the historic and very English Nottingham Castle.

Clearly there’s only one explanation. The English Defence League are all secretly Scottish. Having got a taste for bamming up English cops in Manchester last year, a paramilitary branch of the Tartan Army set up the EDL using “dirty war” tactics learned in Northern Ireland.

Now their secret is out, claims that the Scottish Defence League are an attempt to franchise dumbfuck English Nationalism can be shown up for what they are.

I hope so. Rope is cheaper than bullets, after all…

Schnews report on Scottish & Southern Electricity’s attempted use of a Terrorism Act against a blacklisted electrician:

A judge has dismissed a power company’s attempts to prevent a one-man picket with an injunction under the Terrorism Act as “fanciful and bordering on paranoia”. Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) attempted to suggest that the picket represented a “threat to national security”.

Electrician Steve Acheson was dismissed from from his job at the Fiddlers Ferry power station project in December 2008. Although he was technically made redundant, at the time of his dismissal the firm took on another 300 workers. Since then he’s maintained a regular picket outside the construction site with a banner saying “STOP VICTIMISING UNION WORKERS – END THE BLACKLISTING NOW”

Although the judge in this case called SSE out on their nonsense, the attempt itself shows that companies are ready to take this Act to places where they’ve succesfully used the Prevention of Harrassment Act. If a single picket can be branded a threat to “national security”, what about a whole group of them occupying their factory?

The “blacklisting” referred to is the one run by sleazy voyeur Ian Kerr of “the Consulting Agency” who maintained, illegally and at great profit, a database of more than 3000 workers suspected of union activity. This he sold to every large contractor you could name. Net result: workers reduced to poverty, and an insultingly token fine of £5000 for the spy.

A good source of information on this: The Blacklist Support Group.

A message for Adam Crozier

Post workers in the UK are taking 2 days of strike action next week. It’s apparent that, with less than a year left in government, the Labour Party is determined to make this its last mark. A document setting out the hardline stance to be taken by Royal Mail bosses refers to having the full “buy-in” of “the shareholder”, i.e. the government. Now we learn that part of this strategy is the hiring of 30,000 scabs.

Privatisation of the RM has been a goal for the 12 years of New Labour government, only prevented by the long-standing militancy of the post workers. Nevermind that no-one wants the post privatised except those set to profit from it. They can’t privatise the post until they break the workers’ organisation. They refuse to make good the pension deficit until they do so. In that time we’ve seen:

• the workers’ pension fund deliberately run down
• operating surpluses (i.e. profits) creamed off by the Treasury instead of reinvested
• the easy, profitable parts of the work (e.g. City of London) opened up to private companies (not “competition”, as they have no Universal Service Obligation)
• multiple provocations responded to by wildcat strikes
• an increase in parcel volumes through internet shopping, also hived off to private companies
• lies about “decreased volumes” – are you getting more or less junk mail?

With the release of the strike strategy, it’s clear that this has been as long in the planning for New Labour as the Miners Strike was by Thatcher.

• Essential reading: Letter from a Postman at Libcom library.
• Not related at all to Peter Mandelson or Adam Crozier: New Scientist – Bosses use aggression to cover their stupidity.

Did you think that it’d been a while since there was some ill-informed attempts to smear anarchism on your TV? Your wait is over, apparently, with a Channel 4 documentary spuriously linking contemporary Islamist terrorism with 19th century propaganda-by-the-deed-ism.

The Anarchist Federation are quick off the mark with knocking down the strawman with a statement here. Key points:

this is not just a case of setting the historical record straight. We have been expecting the state and the media to find new ways to attack anarchism now that the process of creating a culture of resistance and a mass revolutionary movement is underway, and people all over the world are rejecting capitalism and the state as never before. There are three further, very serious points to make about the current media slandering of our movement.First, this Channel Four documentary follows on the heels of some incredibly poor research linking Islamic extremism to anarchist ideas, taken up by The Economist and aljazeera.net in 2005. Essentially, whilst this is the sort of story journalists wet their pants over, the media is being sloppy, lazy and misleading in implying that there survives a residual and sinister undercurrent in anarchism when it is long dead and buried.

Second, we are the enemies of what gets termed ‘radical’ or ‘extremist’ Islamic groups. Their doctrine holds the revolution back. Whilst we are aware that Muslims too have been the victims of media vilification, there is indeed a justification of indiscriminate terror on the part of some groups. Whilst we know that support for these ideas has been the result of the actions of the state, not least its wars, we oppose disaffected Muslims who take up these ideas. The beliefs of the likes of al-Qaeda and the groups they support are revolting, and reactionary, and hold back a culture of genuine resistance. Our enemy’s enemy is NOT our friend. We have nothing in common with these people and their authoritarian, misogynist and anti-Semitic ideals. Furthermore, any use some of them may make of century-old ideas as a basis for their activity, instead of critiquing the present system originally and on its own terms, is sad, frankly. Bakunin and Kropotkin must be turning in their graves at such stupidity. Recent academic texts are rightly being criticised for connecting historical anarchism and modern day terrorism when the ideas behind them are incompatible.

Finally, this sort of misinformation about anarchism has serious consequences for real people criticising the state, obviously, because it can be used by governments to justify our repression. This is happening right now in Serbia, where six anarchists are currently incarcerated on the flimsiest pretext link. A petrol bomb was thrown at the wall of the Greek embassy in Belgrade. It was by a protest group that the six have no connection to. But, because anarchists supposedly throw bombs, the bomb must have been thrown by an anarchist, say the Serbian government. This kind of illogical reasoning, justifying the imprisoning of working class activists, is the result of the kind of ill-informed journalism in the Economist and on Channel 4 tonight. On their consciences be it.

Getting chubby around the face, Dave

David Cameron’s giving his speech to the Tory party conference today.

Clearly, after a government attacking the working class while sucking up to plutocratic media tycoons, lead by a money-grabbing ex-private school boy all about image instead of policy, we need a change!

It’s time for attacks on the working class from a friend of hardworking newspaper barons, who’s wife’s so rich he doesn’t have  to pick up a £100 note from the pavement, who went to the best private school and who used to work in PR.

…and they wonder why anarchists don’t believe in voting. The only way to beat the rich’s attempt to make us pay for their crisis is to fight against every attack on our pay & conditions and to support the struggles near you.

PS: Isn’t David Cameron looking heavy round the face. He better not squint in case he’s mistaken for Nick Griffin.

Further to recent post. I really don’t want this to fall into Bell-Pottinger’s memory hole. The multi-million-profit oil trading business is getting away with “compensation” worth less than the cost of medications. Justice is too important to be left to lawyers.

The local contractor, the bottom end of the Trafigura poisoning-for-profit venture? He got 20 years jail. Probably deserved. But not as richly as the traders deserve it. Instead they get time to apply their “creative” techniques to molecular biochemistry:

It also denies that the waste – gasoline residues mixed with caustic washings – could have led to the serious illnesses the residents claim, which include skin burns, bleeding and breathing problems

This, folks, is why science is good. They’re putting forward a bold new theory, we now need to carry out a simple, controlled experiment to see whether this is actually the case:

1. Mix petrol and quicklime
2. Apply to skin
3. Observe effect

All we need are some volunteers to test the hypothesis. Perhaps Tim Bell, Peter Carter-Ruck and Claude Dauphin would oblige? After all there’s no proof…

Oil traders, seeking the most profitable way to turn around a cargo of sulphur-contaminated fuel realise that “Claude [Dauphin] owns a waste disposal company” and that they could get rid of their caustic wash slurry in a “creative” way. Disappointingly, the best they could come up with was to dump it in Ivory Coast and give it to a local contractor with “no experience, or facilities. [but] For a very low price his hired tanker-trucks took away the black slurry.”

That’s not creative. The Neapolitan mafia do this too; though to be fair they probably don’t make “7m!!” (James McNicol) on each cargo.

The result:

In the following weeks at least 95,000 people in the port city sought hospital treatment. Thousands of families were forced to leave their homes. Dao, 39, closed his business for a month. “I can still feel the effect after it rains,” he said late last year. “I have pain in my chest.”

In Vridi, an industrial area near the port, at least one tanker load was dumped into shallow sewerage canals inside the Cap Logistics factory, opposite a baby food manufacturer. The canals are exposed on several locations along the main street, where informal restaurants cater for the thousands of factory workers in the area.

Isabelle N’gbe, who heads the 4,500-strong Vridi Workers Toxic Waste Victims Association, said a street vendor, Kara Tounzon, 47, died soon after the dumping while thousands fell ill.

“The government advised workers within one kilometre of the dumping site to stay away but people had to come to work to get money,” said N’gbe.

Realising their mistake, the traders at Trafigura held their hands up, apologised and began to pay compensation to theit victims Trafigura hired the scrupulously ethical libel law firm of Carter-Ruck and the equally fragant PR agency Bell Pottinger (80s tories following DuranDuran on the comeback trail). In keeping with their high moral standing, Bell Pottinger said they were “appalled”.

…by a UN report into the incident. Cynical but still highly profitable traders have made a “no liability” compensation offer and there’s been no word of criminal proceedings into their fatal actions. Graham Sharp, Claude Dauphin, Lord Strathclyde, Eric de Turckheim are just 4 of them who aren’t worried about a knock on the door.

Meanwhile in Leeds, where binworkers are engaged in industrial action v similar to that in Edinburgh

West Yorkshire Police were continuing to question six people arrested in connection with an attack on the home of Leeds City Council leader Richard Brett, the man who has become the public face of opposition to the workers’ demands.

An attack? Disgraceful. What, like broken windows? Er, no.

Supporters of the Leeds refuse collection strike, dumped several bags of rubbish on the doorstep of council leader Richard Brett this morning.

I understand there were no mercaptans, oil products or hydrogen sulphide released from those bags…

These 2 stories illustrate so many of the points that anarchists know well: laws work for the rich; environmental burdens fall hardest on the poor; the profit motive and capitalist system are enemies of our health and our environment.

They also illustrate why we have to keep fighting for the twin goals of a world free of exploitation and environmental degradation. The law won’t do it for us and we can’t let these crimes be forgotten.