Edinburgh Anarchists

Much handwringing in the news this week over an apparent “epidemic of middle class shoplifting”. Turns out we’re the best in Europe at it, and look at what’s happening:

Hundreds of retailers said shoplifting surged as goods were taken for personal use and not for re-sale by organised criminal gangs.[...]

employee theft is also rising. Branded “silent shoplifters” in the trade, employee thieves are more prolific and steal goods worth £1,585.

First off, these aren’t separate groups of people. “Middle class” is a cultural category, but these are workers as much as the ones in the stockroom. (If you have to go to work, you’re working class, whether that’s as a teacher or a mechanic.)

I think that people are waking up to the fact that they’ve been sold down the river. Their pensions are under attack, their wages are being cut, their jobs are under threat. Our electricity bills rise at the same time as massive profiteering by the privatised utilities (Scottish & Southern Energy also called one of their workers a terrorist). And at the same time, our services are being cut to pay for a deficit caused by an economic crisis we had no part in creating. And yet there’s literal billions of our money thrown at the banks.

They’ve been taking the piss and maybe, just maybe this is a sign of more of us waking up to the lies.

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.