A GREEN RESPONSE TO THE RIOTS

 

At a meeting in Tottenham on August 16th, organised by a Caribbean-community local radio station, Jenny Jones took a welcome stand against the use of water cannon and plastic or rubber bullets. Greens should certainly campaign for these weapons never to be used on unarmed civilians, for they cause horrendous injuries.

 

Jenny rightly acknowledged the role of excessive and discriminatory stop and search policies as one contributory factor in the riots. She noted that the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) on which she sits plays an important role in monitoring the use of stop and search and holding the police to account. But evidently not enough.

 

Surprisingly, however, Jenny said little about the future of the police force. The MPA is to be abolished this autumn. Government plans for elected local police chiefs promise a form of elected dictatorship which favours populist pressures for tougher policing whilst removing present forms of ongoing scrutiny. We need to press for greater democratic control of the police at local and regional level. Some debate is needed within the Green Party about how this can be achieved, and how minority ethnic communities can have a say in the governance of the police.

 

Another urgent demand, which Jenny didn’t mention, is to reverse the cuts in legal aid. Many local law centres have been closed, and enormous pressure will be placed on the few solicitors’ firms available to defend those accused of riot offences.

 

The Green Party’s largely white middle class support places us at risk of being perceived as ‘outsiders’ by communities facing the aftermath of the riots. Our social justice agenda – jobs, housing, attacking inequality, restoring the public education system – was never more needed. But some parts of this agenda are missing or under-developed –we need to fight cuts in the local voluntary sector, and to press for less conditionality in the benefits system. However, this may be a battle within the party, since some supporters are unfortunately distant from inner city concerns. I recently got an e-mail from a senior Welsh Green suggesting that ‘boot camp’ treatment of the unemployed is sometimes desirable ! Tragically, much of what unemployed and disabled people perceive as job centre harassment will extend even to those who have lost homes, vehicles and livelihoods in the riots. The ‘citizen’s income’ vision is not an adequate answer to the short term need for a major rise in JSA and an end to the punitive conditions for claiming it, which help to drive youth into the underground economy.

Anne Gray is an activist in Haringey

 

FALL-OUT FROM FUKUSHIMA

 the nuclear power crisis

Radioactivity still leaks from the stricken Japanese nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, almost six months after the humanitarian disaster of the massive earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. It will be at least January 2012 before the leaks can be stopped. The scrapped nuclear reactors, still highly radioactive and toxic, will take many years and vast expense to decontaminate, monuments to the folly of power generation from nuclear fission.

The Tokyo nuclear power company held back vital information, and failed to divulge failures in safety standards. Japanese public opinion has turned decisively against nuclear power. On 6 August, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan marked the 66th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing * in 1945 by declaring that ‘I will reduce Japan’s reliance on nuclear power, aiming at creating a society that will not rely on atomic power generation.’ Before the Fukushima disaster Japan had planned to raise nuclear generation from about 30% to 53% by 2030.

After mass anti-nuclear protests across Germany, all German nuclear power plants will be phased-out by 2022.

In the UK, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority announced in early August the closure of the Mox plutonium recycling plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, due to events in Japan. This business depended on the shipment of weapons-usable material from Japan, always a crazy concept open to piracy and terrorism long before Fukushima.

 

The nuclear-convert environmentalist Mark Lynas spent two years researching a book **, published in July, praising nuclear power, ridiculing greens who oppose nuclear, implying that even Chernobyl was hardly more than a harmless picnic. Inconveniently for Lynas, the Fukushima nuclear disaster struck a few months before his book publication date. Unfazed, Lynas hastily included his anodyne assessment that Fukushima changed nothing; a gratuitous evidence-free conclusion made long before any rigorous scientific analysis is available.

Continuing to invest in nuclear power is totally irresponsible.

* ‘Children of the Ashes’, Robert Jungk, Pelican 1963

 

** ‘The God Species’, Mark Lynas, Fourth Estate 2011

 

Malcolm Bailey is a former Nuclear Physicist  

 

Coalition of Resistance – Fighting the cuts

 

At the recent COR conference I was elected as Green Left’s representative on the National Council and have been on the Steering Committee of COR since its foundation a year ago. The National Council will meet in October to elect a new Steering Committee and I will be standing for re-election. Romayne Phoenix, former National Campaigns Coordinator on GPEx, and a leading member of both Green Left and the Green Party Trade Union Group has been the Chair of COR since its first conference last November and many other Greens have also been involved.

 

Recently following the riots in England’s cities COR held a very successful event in London called ‘Riots, Recession and Resistance’ which was addressed by among others, John Mc Donnell MP, Lee Jasper (Black Activists Rising against the Cuts) Symeon Browne (Tottenham Youth Worker) Zita Holbourne (PCS National Executive) and others. This was attended by many activists from communities affected by the riots, together with trade unionists and others. COR are organising a whole series of meetings nationally to address the issues around the recent unrest, not the least of which is cuts to public services and income inequality.

 

Here is the COR website with information on what is happening nationally.

 

http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/

 

COR is also calling on the TUC (who are organising demonstrations at both the Lib Dem and Tory conferences) to ensure that the demonstrations are large and well organised and are doing everything possible to support them.

 

The same cuts and austerity programme which we are seeing in Britain is also widespread across Europe. COR is organising a Pan European Anti-Austerity Conference on October 1^st in London which is being widely supported by a variety of social movements, trade unions and political groups across Europe, including Caroline Lucas. We want as many Greens as possible to attend the conference, which will also have a session on the G8 Summit taking place in Nice in November, where COR hopes to help organise a Counter Summit to challenge the prevailing economic orthodoxy in Europe.

 

Further information on the COR European Anti-Austerity website

 

http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/2011/07/european-conference-against-austerity-cuts-and-privatisation/

 

Dr Joseph Healy is on the CoR steering committee

 

THE FIGHT AGAINST FREE SCHOOLS

 

The results of applications to set up Free Schools are due to be announced in September. Although the Green Party is opposed to academies and free schools some local parties have sometimes found themselves in difficulty when faced with concrete proposals.

 

This is sometimes the case because the proposals come from a genuine grassroots community group that are dissatisfied with their local schools. In Brent we were faced with a proposal to set up such a school by Black parents and teachers who felt local schools were failing their children and because the local authority had refused to build a much needed new secondary school in their area. In other places free schools have been proposed because of a shortage of primary school places, with some children having to stay at home or travel long distances. ‘Safety Valve’ money is available for councils to fund ‘bulge’ classes (an extra class in a particular age group) or expand the forms of entry in existing schools but there is seldom enough to build a whole new school. In addition the Coalition government is operating on the basis that any new schools should be academies or free schools. This means that local authorities seeking to preserve their community school network will look at other alternatives first, even those they might not be ideal. In Brent this has mean a series of ad-hoc solutions including bulge classes and expansion but also large secondary schools opening primary departments and consideration of primary schools of five forms of entry (1050 pupils).

 

All the above present practical political problems in policy and campaigning terms. However there is a further dimension which comes from within the Green Party itself. We have a critique of the state system in terms of its centralisation, a rigid curriculum, SATS testing, large sized instititutions etc so the concept of ‘free schools’ where we can set up a school prefiguring what a Green government would do is enticing. The possibility of setting up a small all-through school with a green curriculum and ethos appears exciting and achievable because government funding is available. If these proposals are made against the background of the introduction of mega-primaries the case is reinforced.

 

I see a real danger in such an approach because we will be using reactionary policies (aimed at undermining democratic accountability and local authorities and introducing privatisation by the backdoor) for progressive ends.

Martin Francis is a retired Headteacher

 

ONE MILLION CLIMATE JOBS

At the moment, Britain and many other states seem to be facing two crises, ecological and economic. When riots , social disorder, strikes and other protests flare up against Government spending cuts; it is sometimes possible to forget that the failure to stop global over-use and reliance on fossil fuels continues unchecked, threatening disastrous climate change.

There is a solution. The creation of a low carbon economy of the type which can help to combat climate change. It entails large scale projects to reform the economic infrastructure through such things as switching to renewable sources of energy, an energy efficiency revolution; including insulating the existing housing stock, a higher standard of insulation for new build and a radical upgrading of public transport

 

If government and the major political parties lack the intelligence and foresight to initiate such a revolution then they must be pressured into doing this. Instead of following a short term policy of putting people out of work and denying opportunity to young people through spending cuts.

The campaign against climate change (with support from Public and Commercial Services Union, the University and College Union, theCommunication Workers Union and the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association.) has published two pamphlets to campaign for this and is collecting signatures for a petition for One Million Jobs http://www.campaigncc.org/greenjobs(contactkenmontague@msn.com).

 

GROWING THE GLOBAL GREEN LEFT

 

Temperatures are rising, species are disappearing and the basic life support systems of our planet are under threat.  Such devastation is a product of our wasteful and destructive economic system.  If we work harder, produce more, consume more and waste more, profits flow in.

 

However infinite economic growth on a finite planet is impossible.  It would be easier to conclude that a little more renewable energy generation, better conservation and some other mild reforms would make the future possible.  This however is unrealistic the present system is hostile to life.

 

Its also as we have seen with financial crisis, rising inequality and debt socially destructive and economically unstable.  Over production and imbalances in the economy have led to renewed measures to cut government spending and privatise.  The cuts programme is not about living in balance with the rest of nature, its about grinding down the welfare state and destroying unions, so that pay can be slashed and workers made to work long hours with fewer rights.

 

Ecosocialism is a simple alternative to the chaos.  We have a democratically owned economy rather than one controlled by and for a tiny number of the hyper rich and we have an economy that generates prosperity without ecological destruction.  Goods can be made to last longer, library systems can be extended, work can be shared, we can live better with less impact on the environment. Think permaculture, wikis and workers control.

 

Ecosocialist ideas and action are advancing fast.  In 2009 Elinor Ostrom was the first women to win the Nobel Prize for her work on the commons, a cornerstone of ecosocialism.  The TUC have adopted the demand for one million climate jobs, green trade union action is growing.  In Latin America countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba and Venezuela, political leaders like Evo Morales are explicitlly arguing for ecosocialism and real climate action.  Indigenous ecosocialist movements most significantly in the Peruvian Amazon are winning victories.

 

We have to organise for ecosocialist ideas and action, the alternative is to see a decaying capitalism kill our planet and while it maims our society in the process.

 

 

 

You can find out more:

 

http://www.ecosocialistsunite.com/

 

http://thewatermelon.wordpress.com/

 

http://www.stateofnature.org/ecosocialismForASociety.html

Dr Derek Wall is an expert in economics and has published several books including; ‘The Rise of the Green Left’.

 

Autumn/Winter 2011 Newsletter

 

 

Autumn/Winter Watermelon newsletter 2011.