Winter of Discontent: Put away childish things

February 17, 2012 by

Morus

Image

Image © Murdo Macleod

As a political anorak and resident of Edinburgh I dutifully plodded out to St Andrew’s House yesterday afternoon to stand in the cold and catch a glimpse of my Prime Minister greeting my First Minister. Though unaccredited, I was able to wander freely into the press pit and take my post amongst the telescopic lenses and cameras of Scotland’s media. Indeed, security was remarkably lax. Despite NUJ members having been informed that they would have to register their presence in some fashion, this was not enforced. The police presence was remarkable by its scarcity and, though a pair of suited men with prominent earpieces were to be seen presumably discussing security arrangements with a man conspicuously without a tie, the tone of the event was intensely relaxed.

Then, minutes before Mr Cameron was scheduled to arrive, the calm was pierced by a meagre gaggle of protesters who, by their garb and enthusiastic chanting of slogans from the 80s, I suspect represented the best and brightest of Edinburgh’s youth wing of the Socialist Workers Party. They were led by four ageing soldiers of the war against the Tories and the remaining three dozen or so represented their ideological progeny. The quiet afternoon air solidified into a greatest hits of three decade old resentment and anger as faint noises of traffic and the grumblings of bored and cold photographers was replaced by young voices raised in cries of “Tory scum” and “when you say cutback we say fight back.”

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Winter of Discontent: Labour isn’t working

January 4, 2012 by

Dominic Turner

Image © Murdo Macleod

As we enter 2012, we have a Government perceived as out of touch and elitist, ramming through a failing, unpopular, and treacherous economic agenda. The government has been mired in phone hacking scandals, rising unemployment, outbreaks of riots in the capital, and the likely prospect of another recession in the new year. The very least that one expects in the midst of such a storm is that the sails of the opposition might be filled. But as we enter 2012, the Tory Party has once again regained the lead in most opinion polls. Because of the media’s pathetic obsession with the intrigues of party political gamesmanship, this coalition is not judged by the ideal but by the alternative and the established alternative, the Labour Party, is proving woefully feeble at standing up to coalition.

The public remember that 13 years of Labour weren’t substantially different than what came before or after it. People remember Peter Mandelson proclaiming that Labour was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.” They remember Blair and Brown praying at the altar of Rupert Murdoch and the rest of the right wing, corporatist ilk that is laughably called the ‘free press.’ They remember the butchery of Basra, the folly of Afghanistan, and the Prime Minister of this country following a neo-con cowboy into wars of oil and treasure. The killing abroad was coupled with the repression of civil liberties at home, with the government attempting to impose mandatory ID cards on the population, and the eradication of ‘habeas corpus.’ They remember PFI, tuition fees, the introduction of the profit motive into the NHS, all of which lay the groundwork for the Coalition’s malevolent schemes. But most of all, they remember it was a Labour government who increased the gap between the rich and poor and instituted the biggest transfer of wealth from the needy to the greedy with the bank bailout, to be paid off by cuts to public services.

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Winter of Discontent: Arab Winter

December 22, 2011 by

Georgia Lewis

Image © The Advocacy Project

Image © The Advocacy Project

The picture of a woman in Cairo with her abaya torn away by men who do not deserve the respect of a soldier job title has gone global. With her face covered but her blue bra on display, her awful humiliation has gone global largely thanks to Twitter and Facebook, two tools which have played a massive role in disseminating information on the events of the Arab Spring.

She has not been identified but she has become an important symbol of the events in Egypt and the wider Arab world. The role of women, the role of powerful images and the role of social media cannot be underestimated and the blue bra photograph captures all this graphically and shockingly. The photograph also demonstrated that the military is not in any hurry to relinquish power so that the people of Egypt can enjoy a sane and functioning democracy. It also flies in the face of the tired myth that the Arab world is not ready for democracy. Egypt’s military may not be keen to give power to the people but nobody can deny the people want power and are prepared to fight hard for it.  Read more of this post

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Winter of Discontent: Occupy London should demand greater competition

December 19, 2011 by

Five Minute Economist

Image © Andy Roberts

The Occupy London protests are now two months old and still going strong and have established a “Bank of Ideas” in an empty building belonging to UBS. Nice idea. The Occupy protests do have an important message so it is unfortunate that, so far, its main victim has been accidental – the Church of England, which descended into confusion over whether any of the protesters had valid points to make, and if so, did it justify the fact that they were making it difficult to get to the St Paul’s Cathedral gift and coffee shop?

Initial criticism centred around the fact that the protesters’ aims have been vague. According to their website, they are “in agreement that the current system is undemocratic and unjust.” More specific grievances are listed under their “initial statement”, and among other things include: Read more of this post

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Winter of Discontent: “We were meant to start at 5 but we’ve just been outside having coffee and cigarettes since then.” The Free Hetherington: An Epitaph

November 24, 2011 by 1 Comment

Bean Reoch

Image © Francis McKee

After staring at a blank document for what feels, now, like hours, I can only come to one conclusion about the Hetherington Occupation: it was like nothing else I have ever experienced.

Officially, the Free Hetherington (as it became known) was a student occupation of a disused university building, protesting the savage cuts being made to academia and resources at the University of Glasgow. It was a bloody thorn in the side of the Principal Vito-Antonio Muscatelli and his Senior Management Group (SMG) for seven glorious months. It was an occupation with real demands; a social space; a hive of activism, of academia; a stage for a chiaroscuro of events and meetings; and sadly also a target for abuse. The former Postgraduate Research Club was reopened by a group of anti-cuts activists on 1st February 2011 and, by the time I became involved in late March, it had grown into something quite spectacular. From there it continued to grow – and despite its end on 31st August 2011 the ripples it made can still be seen on the loch of activism in Glasgow today. Read more of this post

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Winter of Discontent: A Tale Of Two Protests

November 17, 2011 by

John Lucas

Are the public warming to tents and placards? Image © John Lucas

There are now two weeks until the UK experiences its biggest public-sector strikes in a generation. It is difficult to know how the public will greet them, and whether the inevitable protest marches will pass without incident. But, working as a freelance photographer, I’ve had a chance to witness the development of the anti-cuts protest movement over the last year and my experiences during two protests, almost 8 months apart, suggest public attitudes are changing.

It’s March 26, 2011 and 250,000 people have just completed a peaceful march against public sector cuts. It is the largest such protest march in recent history but just down the road there are more than 60 police officers outside Topshop, protecting it from further assault. Oxford Street’s human traffic shuffles casually between the riot shields and the noisy protesters while the actual traffic is at a standstill. Dozens of buses carrying hundreds of frustrated passengers stand idle as riot police charge down the road. Read more of this post

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Winter of Discontent: The Hetherington Occupation

November 15, 2011 by

Students seize the Hetherington Building at Glasgow University. Image © Hannah TaitHannah Tait

Hannah Tait

From February to August this year, I spent a lot of time inside an ordinary-looking Glasgow townhouse at 13 University Gardens – but the space created within those walls was far from ordinary.
The Hetherington Research Club (formerly the post-graduate club at the University of Glasgow) had shut its doors, depriving the academic community of an important space on campus for socialising and discussion. On the 1st of February 2011 a group of anti-cuts activists entered the disused building through an open fire door, and the Free Hetherington was born. For seven months, the building was occupied 24/7 (with the exception of one eventful day) and became a hub of activism in Glasgow.
But the space that grew within those walls was about more than anti-cuts activism, although that was the core which held disparate opinions together. It was about discussion and debate – I rarely walked through the door without being drawn into an interesting conversation – and it was about trying in our own way to make a safe space and a better world. Of course it was not a utopia; we walk into any space carrying the experiences and the conditioning of the society we inhabit. But it was, more than any other place that I have been, a place where people were prepared to challenge injustice and unacceptable behaviour. We didn’t always get it right, but we always tried. It gave me the courage to stand up for myself and to shout my feminism more loudly. It exposed us all to new ideas and perspectives and it challenged us constantly. Read more of this post

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