21st century slavery in the uk

None of us like to think of ourselves as slave owners. It has become unsavoury to have house slaves so we squirrel them away out of sight in places like East Asian sweatshops. With the advent of workfare, it has come a step closer to home.

Unemployed people are forced to work for private companies to get work experience. Except that they are given the most basic unskilled work with no chance of an actual job. When their placement is up they are simply replaced.

Major retailers like Argos and Tesco didn't need to take on Christmas staff, the government simply sent them free workers. In return, the government gets to lower the unemployment figures as these jobless people do not count as unemployed. On many of the schemes, benefit claimants who refuse to participate get 'sanctioned' -  they have their benefits stopped for months, even years.

Whilst many of the deprivations that the government are subjecting its electorate to are Tory inventions, others are not. Workfare is a Labour initiative, and if you're one of the 90%+ of people who voted Tory, Labour, LibDem or UKIP, you gave it the mandate.

The negative connotations on the words 'forced labour' are shied away from. When it was announced in 2008 the Telegraph reported

the unemployed will be forced to undertake voluntary work including picking up litter and cleaning graffiti

Quite how anyone can be compelled to do a voluntary activity is not so much a matter for journalists and politicians, it's more a koan for zen masters. But this idea is persisting.

The government petitions website has produced several interesting results. The 100,000 signature threshold that triggers parliamentary debate has helped advance justice for Hillsborough. At 10,000 signatures the government has to respond. Their comments on the petition to end workfare are perplexing, yet illuminating.

We do not have Work for Your Benefit or Workfare schemes in this country. Workfare is an American term used to describe employment programmes which force all jobseekers to work at a certain point of their claim in order to continue to receive benefit...

Mandatory Work Activity gives extra support to a small number of Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants who would benefit from a short period of activity.

The minimum sanction period for someone refusing Mandatory Work Activity is three months, a 'third offence' gets three years. They hold your family hostage threatening to starve them if you don't comply.

The clue is in the name. If it is not forced labour, how is it Mandatory Work Activity? In denying what we are doing to the impoverished we signal our inner squeamishness. If we don't think forced labour is tolerable as an idea, we shouldn't try to mask it with a false name. Instead we should exclaim the outrage that our consciences know it to be.

we live in a turnip republic

A senior United Nations official has slammed UK policing of protest, with especially scathing condemnation of the undercover police scandal.

The UN commissions human rights experts called Special Rapporteurs to investigate how countries comply with their human rights obligations. Maina Kiai, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, has been in the UK for a week.

Having met government officials, human rights organisations and those concerned with protest, yesterday he presented his preliminary findings, pending a full report in May.

He reserved his strongest words for the undercover police scandal - both the infiltration and the subsequent efforts by those responsible to avoid accountability and smother justice.

Speaking of the "trail of victims and survivors in its wake", and making a sideswipe at the judgement last week that took guidance from James Bond, he said

This is not a James Bond-type movie issue. I therefore call on the authorities to undertake a judge-led public inquiry into the Mark Kennedy matter, and other related cases, with a view to giving voice to victims, especially women, who were deliberately deceived by their own Government, and paving the way for reparations.

Kiai, a global expert on human rights, spoke unequivocally about the breaches involved.

It is a clear violation of basic rights protected under the Human Rights Act, and more generally under international law, such as the right to privacy.

But he is clear that this is not just about those directly affected. It is a grave matter of justice.

This is a national issue and I think it's important to the United Kingdom. Because of the trauma, because of the chilling effect that this has on association and freedom of assembly, that this be done publicly, in a public judge-led enquiry.

The state has, instead, been setting up a raft of tiny limited enquiries where the police pick one small aspect of the affair and investigate themselves. It is an approach widely derided by the victims, as activist/researcher Eveline Lubbers made plain in her open letter response to the police this week. Kiai is clear that such tactics are a whitewash and are an insult to those who want the truth, most especially those directly targeted.

There's been absolutely no regard, no attention given for the victims of this, and the victims are a lot of people. People have formed relationships, friendships, and I think that when the state is perpetuating that it's a public matter. I think that we should remember that there are victims in this, it is not a victimless issue... children were born, relationships happened. The British government has to take on their responsibilities.

The Home Office limply responded with their standard line.

The use of undercover officers remains an important investigative tool for the police in preventing and detecting serious and violent crime.

"Serious and violent crime"? Kiai's prepared statement did make the curious - well, clearly untrue - assertion that

The case of Mark Kennedy and other undercover officers is shocking as the groups in question were not engaged in criminal activities.

But answering questions at the press conference he clarified

Every police force needs a way of gathering intelligence, however that is reserved, and should be reserved, for serious criminal activities such as drug trafficking, anti-terror work. When you target a group that are involved in peaceful actions, many of which are lawful, and you do it as Mark Kennedy did, then there's a problem, as potentially the state is paying to infiltrate you for simply doing what you should be doing.

He pointed out that the government decided the phone hacking scandal warranted a full public inquiry, yet refuses to consider doing the same for this scandal that is of - at least - similar proportions. It is, as Jonathan Freedland said this week, the hacking of people's lives.

Kiai then moved on to compare the police's approach to dealing with other organisations that contain some criminal plotters.

Civil society exercising their rights must not be treated differently simply for doing so. Marks and Spencer or BAE don't have police spies sent in to look for white-collar crimes.

The police he met had engaged in open and frank discussions on all issues except this one, where he said he was confronted with "a wall of silence". He is plainly outraged at the reaction, and continued

You simply can't go ahead and pay people to go off and have relationships and families with people and then disappear. That to me is unacceptable - completely. That is what you see in a banana republic.

One case doesn't define the character of a nation's ruling culture. But given that the same tactics have been used to undermine a wide variety of campaigns, unions and pressure groups for decades, allied to the even wider response of state obstruction of justice familiar to us from Hillsborough, phone hacking, Stephen Lawrence and any other number of scandals, it doesn't feel like an exaggeration. Though in northern Europe we might more bioregionally be defined as a turnip republic.

AND ANOTHER THING

The "indiscriminate and disproportionate nature" of kettling was singled out as an assault on the right to protest, and despite the UK courts finding the practice is legal, on this too he was unequivocal.

I think there's absolutely no justification for kettling. If you need to keep people away, there are ways in which you can put people aside and move them out. Holding people for as long as we've seen here is wrong, and I think is a contravention of human rights law.

Kiai also - on the day the No Dash For Gas protesters who occupied a power station were charged with it - singled out the crime of Aggravated Trespass as "very problematic", criticised the use of anti-stalking injunctions being used by corporations to prevent protest, and attacked not just the practice of union blacklisting but the paltry sentences given to its perpetrators. A construction industry blacklister was given a £5000 fine whilst the clients - including most of the major firms - were let off with a warning.

I was appalled to hear about the existence of a blacklist of union members in the construction industry, with no sanctions allegedly taken against those who benefited from the list. It is crucial that strong actions be taken against the making and using of such lists as a deterrence.

His full report is due out in May. It will be interesting to see not only what it contains, but how the state defends itself against so august a critic.

judgement day

A judge has ruled that a group of women suing the police for sending undercover police officers to deceive them into committed long term relationships will not have their human rights case heard in open court.

It will instead be heard in a Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal. The police can make up whatever evidence they like (and omit whatever incriminates them). The complainants do not get to see the evidence, do not get to be in the court, do not get given the reasons for the verdict, and have no right of appeal.

Whilst Twitter lit up with outrage that the case had been thrown out, The Guardian saw it as a 50/50 thing with a subheader saying

Judge rules half of the women's cases can be heard in open court but half must be first heard by secret tribunal

Neither is true. I'll try to explain what, to the best of my understanding, today's judgement is, and also what it isn't.

Firstly, it's not just about one group of women, and not just one neat case. There are two main elements to the claims.

1 - Human rights. The right to privacy and the right to freedom from degrading and inhumane treatment have been ours since the European Convention on Human Rights was signed in the early 1950s. Enforcing them, however, was another matter. It took a long and expensive case at a court in Strasbourg. In 1998 the Human Rights Act made them enforcable in UK law. The guff against the Act in the Tory press is a decoy; it granted no new rights, just extended their effectiveness so that rights weren't just for the rich.

Though the dozen people suing the police had similar experiences, only the six people whose relationships occurred after the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force have a human rights claim in the UK courts. The other six were not part of today's judgement.

2 - Common law. There is quite a list of these claims including assault, deceit, negligence and misfeasance in public office. All the claimants are suing for these. Those cases will (hopefully) be heard in the High Court at a later date.

First bit clear? Right.

When the Human Rights Act came into force the government invented Investigatory Powers Tribunals. These were designed to hear any cases involving surveillance and espionage. They realised that spying intrudes into people's lives, and that revealing details of spy missions and methods may jeopardise future work of that kind and possibly place those involved in serious danger.

The police argued that the entire undercover cop case should be struck out, and if not then it should be entirely heard in such a Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal. The idea that these activists may unleash deadly carnage if they find out the details of what happened to them is laughable. But even that is not quite as absurd as the idea that the police need to protect their secrecy in case we find out that Mark Kennedy, Marco Jacobs and all the others were undercover officers.

The claimants say that the relationships were unlawful, and that the proper place to hear the evidence and weigh it up would be in a place where all evidence can be heard by both sides, such as the High Court.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act has clear rules about authorising most aspects of surveillance, yet says nothing about authorising long-term intimate relationships. Where do we turn for legal instructions?

Displaying all the grasp of reality you'd expect from someone at the unquestioned top of a hierarchy, today's judge, Mr Justice Tugendhat, decided that fiction should guide us in deciding whether events in real life are normal and justified.

James Bond is the most famous fictional example of a member of the intelligence services who used relationships with women to obtain information, or access to persons or property. Since he was writing a light entertainment, Ian Fleming did not dwell on the extent to which his hero used deception, still less upon the psychological harm he might have done to the women concerned.

But fictional accounts (and there are others) lend credence to the view that the intelligence and police services have for many years deployed both men and women officers to form personal relationships of an intimate sexual nature (whether or not they were physical relationships) in order to obtain information or access.

Presumably this means the complainants should watch Mission Impossible to find out what happens next in their case. Perhaps when Marsellus Wallace's boys get medieval on that cop's ass it is, by virtue of its fictional depiction, giving us permission to do the same with other police officers. Or perhaps Star Wars lends credence to the view that a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away justice was meted out with light sabres.

Anyway, among such ramblings the judge made three important rulings today.

1 - The common law claims should not be heard in a Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal, they should be heard at the High Court. This is good.

2 - The human rights aspects of the claim should be heard in the Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal.

3 - Crucially, the Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal goes first. It alone gets to rule on whether relationships breached the claimants' human rights, and they will also decide whether the relationships were lawful or not.

Even though it's just a court-shaped glove puppet on the police's hand, the Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal's verdict could well influence the High Court's decision on the remainder of the case. It may even persuade them to strike out the case entirely.

As the adage says, justice must not merely be done, it must be seen to be done. The fact that a Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal can make a decision for reasons that claimants don't even get told, let alone get to question or confront, means what it delivers cannot be justice. It has no place in the pantheon of the judiciary.

What it decides will cast a shadow over the rest of the case. So, contrary to what the Guardian suggest, it's not half and half. And contrary to what Meatloaf asserts, two out of three actually are bad. The playing field just got tilted today and it remains to be seen how many of the players roll to one end.

new lang syne

The MPs expenses scandal is still with us. George Osborne is a Chelsea fan (who else?). He just happens to have a meeting arranged with German official that lets him be in Munich to see Chelsea win the Champions League and witness John Terry's thuggish racist little hands hoist the trophy. That way Osborne had the trip paid for by the taxpayer instead of out of his inherited millions.

He also flogged his second home that we paid for and made a personal profit of £450,000. Items on expenses must be 'wholly, necessarily and exclusively' used in the job. Why is it 'necessary' to have a house worth a million pounds? With a fucking paddock for horses?

If the Tories really want to end the 'something for nothing culture' then let's have a 100% Inheritance Tax and administer it retroactively so it removes the fortunes that Osborne, Cameron, and Iain Duncan Smith are living off.

They aggressively portray benefit claimants as scroungers who get that 'something for nothing' at the expense of 'hard working families'. Iain Duncan Smith said that benefits have risen faster than private sector wages. Well yes, they have as long as you do some nimble footwork and only start measuring wages from where they slump in the credit crunch and recession.

But more to the point, it's not about competing with private sector wages. It's about ensuring that nobody goes hungry, cold or homeless. With food prices rising faster than either benefits or wages, and fuel costs rising faster still, the level of benefits has effectively plummeted. Families are choosing between food and warmth. People are, entirely predictably, being made homeless.

The millionaire government and the millionaire-owned media have flooded us with stories of the feckless poor. And it has worked. A YouGov poll found this week that on average people think that 41 per cent of the entire welfare budget goes on benefits to unemployed people, while the true figure is 3 per cent. They also found that, on average, people think that 27 per cent of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently, while the government's own figure is 0.7 per cent.

Of the people polled, those with the least accurate picture of what the benefit regime is actually like were the ones with the most anti-claimant view.

The fact is that the jobless outnumber vacancies by more than 5:1. There are over two million people for whom there is no job. The demonisation of the jobless is a problem in itself. But having successfully done that, the government then turns on the same 'hard working families' with swingeing cuts to Housing Benefit (where 93% of new claimants are in work) and Tax Credits (100% in work). That time Iain Duncan Smith didn't even cherry pick his figures, he simply made them up.

The pared down Housing Benefit comes into effect in April on the same day that there's a tax cut for those earning over £150,000 a year. We can't afford housing for the poor and disabled they say, whilst ruling out a Mansion Tax. The Daily Mail hailed that as helping 'hard-pressed middle-class families'. Owning a property worth over £2,000,000? What the fuck is that the 'middle' of? The Tory front bench?

THERE IS ANOTHER WAY

In Scotland, they consistently vote against the Tories. As the UK suffers an accelerating runaway Tory train of devastation, forcing people into poverty and on to the streets, in Scotland they've extended the rights of homeless people to be housed.

Whilst the Tories strip the NHS, in Scotland - like Wales and Northern Ireland - they extend it with free prescriptions for all.

As the Tories hand out UK public services to corrupt profiteers and slash workers rights, in Scotland there's a law on the table to ban construction firms from getting public contracts if they've been involved in blacklisting workers (a widespread illegal practice to keep unions out).

As the increasing spectre of student debt forces young people from poorer families to opt out of university, in Scotland they have reinstated free higher education. Labour have criticised the move as 'regressive'. Mind you, Labour's response to attacks on the unemployed is to propose their own punitive regime. That's unsurprising given that the comprehensively derided workfare scheme was actually designed by the last Labour government.

Whilst the Tories resurrect zombie road schemes triggering a new rash of 90s-style road protests, and start a new generation of fossil burning that will shatter our carbon reduction targets, the Scots generate 35% of their electricity renewably, well ahead of their target to get them to the equivalent of 100% renewable by 2020.

Come independence, I think I'll be seeking political asylum there.

institutional corruption

A Metropolitan police officer says that black people aren't evolved and 'live in mud huts in Africa'. PC Kevin Hughes also told a black colleague that she was 'going home to cook bananas'. She was insulted and he was prosecuted. He told the court that it was 'upsetting' that anyone might think he was racist. The court found that actually he hadn't insulted anyone and acquitted him along with a colleague who had made similar comments.

It comes barely a month after another Metropolitan police officer was cleared of racist abuse after arresting a black man, strangling him, calling him a cunt and saying 'your problem is you'll always be a n*gger'. Mauro Demetrio managed to record the abuse on his phone, leading to a court case. PC Alex MacFarlane argued that he was trying to help Demetrio with low self-esteem. The court believed him.

If you're a well built white man with training in physical restraint, go out and try that on a young black man. Have it recorded so you can't deny it. See if you get cleared as well.

Police officers get acquittals or minimised sentences when the rest of us would be sent to jail. Judges often cite their record of service and their loss of career as mitigating factors. In fact they should be treated as exacerbating factors. They are in a position of authority, entrusted with special powers that require a higher standard of behaviour than the average citizen.

If a teacher uses racist insults against a pupil in their class it is worse than if it came from another child in the playground. By the same token, intimidation and coercion should be more unacceptable from the police officer whose every word is subtexted 'and you have to obey me because I can put you in a cell on a whim, and nobody will believe your word against mine'.

Yet the establishment identifies with them and pities them. A fortnight ago a New Jersey police officer was sentenced after the court heard he raped an informant. He admitted the assault and yet judge Thomas F Scully did not send him to jail, saying

You are not going to jail, as we traditionally know the concept of jail, today. But with many respects, given what your childhood dream was, you’re going to be in jail the rest of your life. You’re going to have to live with this the rest of your life.

It echoes the words of Justice Hooper who decided not to imprison the officers primarily responsible for the Hillsborough disaster even before the trial began. The Crown Prosecution Service had decided not to take action against David Duckenfield his deputy superintendent Bernard Murray, so the families of the victims brought a private proseuction. Judge Hooper was appointed even though he had been an advisor to the CPS about Hillsborough.

As the court convened Hooper declared he was

making it clear that the two defendants will not immediately lose their liberty should they be convicted.

He explained - smearing the justice campaign as a bunch of vigilantes and openly siding with the defendants - that

neither the defendants or members of their family have given evidence but I have no difficulty in inferring that they must be suffering a considerable amount of strain...

these two defendants, if sentenced to prison for the manslaughter of, in effect, 96 people would necessarily be at considerable risk of serious injury if not death at the hands of those who feel very strongly about Hillsborough.

By this logic, we shouldn't be sending anyone accused of paedophilia to jail.

Why is it that a ruined career and a presumed troubled conscience are enough punishment for a police officer yet not for anyone else who responsible for mass killing or rape?

The privilege given to those in power inevitably leads to a sense that they're entitled to that privilege. Others who are similarly entrusted will always give them the benefit of the doubt. This leads to impunity which leads in turn to widespread and casual abuse and violence.

So we don't just see this commonplace corruption with periodic cases of clearly racist and killer cops walking free, or Hillsborough's trial and two judge-led inquiries utterly failing. We also get the cynical protection of that privilege, from everyday false statements to horrific covers-ups, all of it persecuting those they were supposed to protect.

When South Yorkshire police were accused of the responsibility and cover up for Hillsborough, they were investigated by West Midlands police. Their objectivity can be judged by the way the lead officer told witnesses to say they had seen Liverpool fans forcing their way in to the stadium. When the witnesses insisted that was not true their interviewing officers threatened them, alleged they hadn't even been at Hillsborough, and marked their statement 'witnessed unauthorised entry' anyway.

And in an echo of last month's New Jersey case, another West Midlands Hillsborough investigator used his position to sexually harass a traumatised survivor, grabbing her and saying 'my wife will never know'. She felt unable to accuse a man of such authority until this year.

The spread of corruption to the rest of the establishment is underlined by other contemporaneous West Midlands police activities. Their Serious Crime Squad tortured and framed suspects and was disbanded for corruption. Dozens of convictions have been subsequently quashed. We know who those officers are and where they live, we are still paying their pensions. Yet not one of them has faced any charges, let alone a conviction.

This week's report into the killing of Pat Finucane was dismissed as a whitewash by the family. Whilst I don't doubt their position, nonetheless the report has the British government clearly admitting that a civilian lawyer was murdered by loyalist terrorists with the help of British police, who also gave identifying details to enable other murders.

Again, don't try this at home. What would happen if you went and provided key information to people planning a string of assassinations? And yet will any officers see the inside of a jail cell for collusion in the murder of Pat Finucane?

Today we have the newly elected Police and Crime Commissioner for the Northumbria area, Vera Baird, saying that as a barrister during the miners strike she saw swathes of

invented allegations, copied notebooks and allegations from officers that weren't even at the scene

You can count the number of convicted officers on the fingers of one leg. 

How many examples do we need before it is generally accepted that this is institutional corruption underpinned by a supportive network of judiciary, government and other arms of state? 

The root problem is the concentration of power. This is why devolving and decentralising are preferable, but wherever power occurs it needs proportionally increased accountability to, and greater scrutiny by, those it purports to serve. Yet self-serving denials are their response because they see their main task as maintaining their power. 

Eveline Lubbers' book Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark recounts how, in the aftermath of the McLibel case, a Freedom of Information request was lodged asking for Special Branch records on people with alleged affiliations to London Greenpeace. The police information manager responded in October 2006, readily admitting that records existed and it 'would contribute to the quality and accuracy of public debate' to release them. However they refused to do it as it was 'not in the public interest'.

They explained – and get ready to have to read this twice to believe it - 'The Public Interest is not what interests the public, but what will be of greater good if released to the community as a whole.' Disclosure is not in the public interest because it could 'undermine their goodwill and confidence in the Metropolitan Police and could result in a lack of engagement with the MPS' and may 'endanger the health and safety of our officers'. 

In other words, if you really knew what we were doing to you, you'd lynch us.

the perpetrator is not the victim

Former police infiltrator Mark Kennedy is suing his police bosses for the trauma he suffered working undercover, and for them failing to prevent him having a long-term relationship with one of the activists he targeted.

He filed his papers last month but only sold his story to the Daily Mail this week, presumably as a distraction from unsavoury details about him in this week's run of news about his victims also suing the same police bosses.

I wonder if Max Clifford, Kennedy's publicity agent, actually stipulated in the contract that the Mail would only get the story on condition it included the line, "he is as much a victim as the women are".

If I get drunk and drive my car at 90mph along a pavement, the resulting carnage will traumatise me and I will be disfigured from smashing into a lamp post at the end. But to say that I am just as much a victim as the people I run over would be the sick insult of someone unable to understand that other people are as human as me.

How this metaphor extends if I spend seven years choosing to get paid to drive drunk along pavements between making reports about it and spending time with my family even as I rob other people of theirs, well, I leave that for you to work out.

STILL STABBING BACKS FOR MONEY

Kennedy, always up for stabbing any back within reach if there's money in it for him, sold his story to the Mail with new pictures of himself, ones he previously took of activists as well as a picture of his wife.

When the collapse of the Ratcliffe power station trial made the Kennedy story break in the news last year, the defendants worked hard to ensure that Kennedy's personal victims were kept out of it. This wasn't just his girlfriends but also any mention of his wife and family. Whatever you think he may deserve, his family were innocent in this.

Yet in protecting them the activists financially helped Kennedy - it meant that his personal story had more juicy details to be included and could be sold to the tabloids for an even higher sum. Sure enough the first person to name his son in the press was Kennedy himself in a Mail interview. He said, 'my son has been crying and says he never wants to see me again,' yet cruelly compounded the damage by pulling the distressed adolescent's identity into the tabloid spotlight.

He says, 'if I hadn't had sex they would have rumbled me as an informant'. This is nonsense. We know other undercover officers managed to stay for years among activists without having sex - let alone a long-term, co-habiting, integrated-families relationship - and leave without ever being suspected. Beyond that there are, of course, many activists who don't have sexual relationships with other activists yet are not denounced as police spies. 

He now says they police knew all along about his relationships, which contradicts his earlier version where he said that the relationships were never discussed. Still, his story has changed with every retelling and, as he also claimed to have spied in 22 countries when it was actually half that, he is clearly not averse to aggrandisement. As would happen to any of us who spent years having our entire life be a tapestry of lies, it seems that the concept of truth has dissolved within him

IT'S NOT THE INDIVIDUAL, IT'S THE INSTITUTION

At least there is some small mercy in the fact that - unlike at least three of his predecessors - Kennedy didn't leave a woman raising his child when he left. How common is that amongst undercover officers? Of the officers exposed so far a quarter fathered children with women they were sent to spy on. Is that a representative sample?

Whatever the final figures, it is clear that the Metropolitan Police's official line that Kennedy was an off-mission rogue agent is a lie. Not only is he not the victim, he is not the issue. There is nothing Mark Kennedy did as an undercover officer that wasn't also done by most of the swathe who came before him. It is clearly the modus operandi of the department. Their methods and choice of targets were - probably still are - utterly indefensible.

It is as black and white as an issue can be. Not one person anywhere, including the senior officers who ran these operations, will say that what happened to the victims was good and justified.

It's extraordinary that phone hacking can, rightly, have caused such a furore yet this monumentally greater invasion of privacy gets almost nothing in the way of high profile support. Then again the police are not the central characters in the hacking scandal. It seems that for private wrongdoing the outrage is there, but for the state then - as Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough and now hopefully the related case of Orgreave demonstrate -  public figures believe we should wait decades for a chance of justice.

THE BRITISH STASI STILL AT WORK

Ten women and one man are suing the police for the intrusion into their lives after undercover officers formed long-term, committed life-partner relationships with people they were spying on. Whilst Kennedy's claim is to be heard in the High Court, the group of eleven suing the police are waiting for a judge to decide if they will go to open court or to an Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

The police are trying to cover up what they have done by having the case heard in one of these bizarre secret courts. They are a Kafkaesque institution that beggars belief in a nation where the right to a fair trial is supposed to be inalienable. The police can present any made up evidence they like; the complainants do not get to see the evidence, do not get to be present, and only get told the result without any reasons why it was reached. They then have no right to appeal. Over 99% of cases in these courts find in favour of the government.

As the brilliant activist infiltration researcher Eveline Lubbers described from the court last week, it is absurd to argue that a case as well publicised and documented from all sides as Kennedy's has any claim to need secrecy. It is simply an obstructive ruse to avoid accountability.

HOW MANY MORE?

Beyond the eleven people bringing the action against the police, there may well be others who cannot face a gruelling court case that binds you to prolonged forensic examination of the worst part of your life instead of letting you move on. We can be certain that all of them are far outnumbered by others whose lives have been shattered by inexplicably disappearing partners, still unaware that they were the victims of the British Stasi.

It is this - the other officers, and methods that the court case may expose - that holds the most value for society in letting us know what was done and letting other victims find the truth and perhaps thereby some peace.

It also holds the most fear for those who perpetrated the operations as, beyond the moral exposure, a court case would also lay them open to claims for damages from dozens of traumatised ex-partners and maintenance payments for single parents raising children who were only born to enhance a police officer's cover story. What is clear to everyone except the man himself is that Mark Kennedy is not the real victim in this.

everything costs the police 200k

The No Dash For Gas power station protest continues to occupy the tops of chimneys at the new West Burton power station and looks set to last a full week as intended.

Paul Broadbent, Nottinghamshire police's assistant chief constable, said

That is already proving a drain on police resources – and if the current staffing levels are maintained day and night for the next week, that will cost in the region of £200,000 – excluding petrol, overtime payments, and other factors.

This is for a week's operation leading to 17 arrests.

The same constabulary dealt with the 2009 Ratcliffe on Soar power station protest - a six month run-up to deploying over 200 officers to make 114 arrests - yet that cost £208,000.

In these straitened times the police need to make cuts and increase efficiency, so how odd that they spend over seven times as much per arrest these days. Unless they're blatantly lying to discredit the protesters and detract from the politics of the situation.

no dash for gas

In the early hours of Monday morning around 30 activists invaded West Burton power station on the Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire border. Although a massive coal fired power station has been there since the 1960s and was blazing away, the protest is aimed at a different target.

European laws restricting sulphur dioxide emissions to reduce acid rain come into effect in 2015. Rather than face the vast expense of retrofitting coal fired power stations that breach the new rules, many will simply close. A new swathe of electricity generation is going to be built in the coming years. Whatever we choose will be in service for decades to come. Essentially, we are choosing our childrens' power sources.

This is exactly the time to switch to renewables. As the redoubtable Danny Chivers explains, the arguments against doing so are pushable over with a feather. With technologies that are here today we could readily be producing most of our electricity renewably. Britain's geography gives us vast potential for offshore wind, wave and tidal generation and there are credible, detailed sources saying we could be Zero Carbon Britain by 2030. So the government is committed to building two dozen new gas fired power stations instead.

Gas is cheaper than renewables today, and the fossil burning corporations have friends, lobbyists and board members in high places that the renewables sector can't even dream of. But it's a short term vision that passes on the true cost to those yet to come. If I were building a house next door to you it might be cheaper to put my sewage outflow into your garage. It would not be fair.

Gas is lower carbon than coal, but that's shifting. Rather like unconventional oil such as tar sands is way more carbon intensive, so we're starting to buy what is, in its way, unconventional gas. Gas is extracted in Qatar, cooled to minus 162 degrees C, with all the carbon cost you'd imagine. It is then kept at that temperature as it is shipped round to us.

This isn't just about climate change, it's about national independence and social justice.We will be subject to price hikes dictated by our suppliers, notably Russia, as they get control and more customers compete. Energy prices will rocket, pushing more and more people into fuel poverty. instead, we could be producing electricity with minimal environmental cost and no greedy suppliers with their hands on the taps.

The 'dash for gas' is a new target for environmental and social justice campaigners. In an audacious opening salvo they got 17 of them up two chimneys at West Burton, where the second of the new stations is being built, right alongside one of the condemned coal ones. Thirty or so people organising in secrecy and pulling it off, a great bounceback from the Kennedy-hobbled climate action of previous years.

They've taken enough supplies to last a week and, at the time of writing, have been up there for nearly four days. They've got a solar panel with them to keep their phones charged and are tweeting some pretty spectacular pictures as well as eloquently explaining their position to the media. You can follow them @nodashforgas and check their website here. Here's hoping this is just the start.

jettison bettison

Sir Norman Bettison is Chief Constable of West Yorkshire police, but not for much longer. Despite having a £225k paypacket and a contract due to run until 2015, he's stepping down next March.

This is because in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster he was one of the senior South Yorkshire officers who ran the horrific dirty tricks campaign against the Liverpool fans. They were accused of robbing the dead and dying and attacking brave police trying to save victims (much the same way as G20 protesters were supposedly pelting police who were trying to save the heart-attack victim Ian Tomlinson).

As the recent Hillsborough Independent Panel proved beyond any doubt, it was a cold calculated lie designed to deflect blame from an institution who knew itself to be primarily responsible for the deaths.

In the days after the report was published and the release of thousands of official documents supporting it, Bettison carefully said he never personally altered any officers' statements nor asked for them to be altered. He was silent on the fact that he was part of team that dealt with the doctoring. 

Despite the Panel's definitive findings that completely exonerate Liverpool fans, Bettison issued an apology but in it he tried to clear himself saying that the Liverpool fans had obstructed police efforts. This was disproven at the Taylor Inquiry in 1989, let alone by the Panel. Within hours Bettison was forced into the bizarre position of issuing an apology for his apology.

His credibility dissolved, with protests outside Leeds' main police station calling for him to resign, his position looked tenuous. But this isn't the reason he's resigned. With the Independent Police Complaints Commission now looking into whether disciplinary charges should be brought against officers, possibly even criminal charges, Bettison's resignation is a pragmatic move to avoid accountability.

By retiring you scupper any pending disciplinary charges, so avoid any sanction, and keep your full pension. The tactic is so common in the police that I'm willing to bet they have a name for it.

It is what the officers primarily responsible for the Hillsborough disaster did. Like Bettison today, in 1991 the man most responsible for the Hillsborough disater, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, had disciplinary charges pending against him. So he too simply retired and the charges had to be dropped leaving this retired man - still in his 40s - with his full pension. He has still suffered no penalty of any kind for what he did.

As the response to Hillsborough so starkly illustrates, the police will do anything to avoid accountability. Four days after the disaster Deputy Chief Constable Peter Hayes was discussing with insurers how to avoid blame. Identifying the senior officers who'd ordered the gate open, Duckenfield and his deputy Bernard Murray, as 'in an exposed position,' Hayes suggested coming up with a junior officer who could be said to have panicked and opened the gate on their own initiative. He said this knowing that he'd have to produce such a scapegoated officer to sacrifice.

South Yorkshire officers still want to silence criticism. Last Saturday Hull City played against Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough. Hull fans chanted 'justice for the 96' and 'murderers' at South Yorkshire officers who responded by baton charging them.

It is not just about Hillsborough. The officers responsible for the death of Christopher Alder - standing round the unconscious black man laughing and making monkey noises while he slowly choked to death on his own blood and vomit on a police station floor - took early retirement to avoid charges too, even though some were only in their 30s.

Bettison - still only 56 today - retired in 2005, leaving his position as Chief Constable of Merseyside to work in the private sector for two years. So technically the current West Yorkshire job is a post-retirement position. That being so, his pension will be paid by the Council Tax from the area he first retired from - Merseyside.

The Hillsborough victims' friends and families in Liverpool will be contributing to the £88k pension of the man who was at the heart of the cruel, vicious plot to deny them justice, what Michael Mansfield QC has called 'the biggest cover-up in British history'.

The Hillsborough families are livid, calling for him to be sacked before he resigns, calling for the IPCC to report before his resignation date of next March so disciplinary charges may be brought against him, and for him to be stripped of his knighthood.

Were he to end up being convicted of any criminal offence there is a power to strip him of up to two thirds of his pension, leaving him with a mere £30k a year. But it's notoriously hard to get convictions of police officers. 

Ian Tomlinson's inquest jury found he had been unlawfully killed by PC Simon Harwood's baton strike. Yet Harwood's trial jury found his baton strike had not significantly contributed to Tomlinson's death. Both worked to the same standard of proof - beyond a reasonable doubt - so one of them is simply wrong.

Like Duckenfield and Murray after their private prosecution by Hillsborough families, like the officers who let Christopher Alder die and so many more, Harwood simply walked free from court, pension intact.

Many more officers never see the dock. West Midlands Police's Serious Crime Squad was riddled with corruption, it falsified evidence, tortured suspects, and was disbanded. Dozens of convictions have been overturned. Not one officer has been charged.

West Midlands, incidentally, were the force who looked into whether there should be any criminal prosecutions over Hillsborough in 1990. With their expertise in falsifying statements, it's not surprising that found nothing wrong in South Yorkshire altering hundreds of witness statements to remove anything that blamed the police for the disaster. 

Once they had told various people to change their evidence to be more generous to the police, West Midlands submitted a report that led to the Crown Prosecution Service deciding not to bring any charges against South Yorkshire police or anybody else. The Hillsborough football ground did not have a valid safety certificate, yet West Midlands decided this didn't amount to negligence by either the club or the body reponsible for issuing them, Sheffield City Council. Total fucking whitewash.

It is clear that we cannot depend on the legal system that has so monstrously failed the Hillsborrugh families to deliver justice in this case. As has been proven with over two decades of fruitless judge-led inquiries and rigged inquests, one arm of state power does not readily hold another to account. It only happens on the rare occasions when the clamour for justice is so persistent that the truth is less of an irritant than the continuing campaign.

On the assumption Norman Bettison's retirement goes ahead as planned, the campaign should not stop. Council Tax bills give the payer a breakdown of their charge. Liverpool families with a thirst for justice should withold the proportion for policing for as long as it contributes to the enrichment of their vilifier and tormentor. 

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UPDATE: There is a government epetition to postpone Bettison's retirement. Most petitions are a waste of time but these ones, especially on this issue, are different.Once these petitions get over 100,000 signatures they have to be considered for parliamentary debate. Two Hillsborough ones have done it and, thanks to long-term campaigning MPs such as Maria Eagle and Andy Burnham, the debates yielded real results such as the government agreeing to give full unredacted copies of the relevant Cabinet minutes. We've already got further down the road to accountability and justice than most of us dreamed was possible. Let's keep going.  

So please, if you're a British resident, take a minute to add your name and pass it on to your friends. It's here.

then they came for the cyclists

Secretary of State for Transport Patrick McLoughlin told this week's Conservative Party Conference that cyclists have to 'do their bit' for road safety. It got loud applause despite not having any detail about what it actually meant.

Cars privatise road space. As a privately owned vehicle - the most expensive thing you buy apart from your house, an item sold to you harder than any other product - they give the driver a sense of entitlement. They also isolate the driver from other road users. Drivers will unironically complain about the problem of traffic without thinking that they are who every other driver is blaming.

Having other road users appear in your space, especially ones slower than you, feels like having someone dawdle in to your living room off the street and stand in front of your telly.

Being seriously conditioned by the adverts of motoring liberty - wide open roads and freedom, nipping through traffic and getting where you want when you want, yet finding themselves perpetually stuck in traffic - drivers find cyclists a psychological irritant. Bikes really are the quickest way around the city, zipping to the front at junctions and have free parking at - or even in - every building they go to. Also, the bike is much cheaper than the car. Spending money should buy privilege so why am I being constrained by traffic they simply pour through?

Obviously the motorist cannot admit jealousy so they must find a rationalisation, however ill-founded. They declare cyclists dangerous and demand they be taken in hand.

The truth shows the opposite; it is motorists who pose the risk to cyclists. Transport for London found that the cyclist's law-breaking is at fault in 6% of cases where cyclists are killed or seriously injured. In the clear majority of cases it was caused by a motoring offence.

For national figures a Department for Transport study found that, where cyclists were seriously injured in collisions, police said that the rider disobeyed a stop sign or traffic light in just 2% of cases. Wearing dark clothing at night was seen as a potential cause in about 2.5% of cases, and failure to use lights was mentioned 2% of the time.

The figures were slightly higher when the cyclist was killed. But even then, when we only have the driver's word for what happened, police found the driver solely responsible in about 60%-75% of all cases.

And actually, cyclists breaking certain laws may protect them. Our traffic systems have been designed to favour motor vehicles and ignore other road users. Those who push to the front and then jump the red light put themselves ahead of the traffic, in sight but out of range.

A 2007 report by Transport for London's road safety unit found that 86% of the women cyclists killed in London between 1999 and 2004 collided with a lorry, whilst lorries killed less than half of male cyclists.The report plainly said

Women may be over-represented in (collisions with goods vehicles) because they are less likely than men to disobey red lights

Obviously Transport for London couldn't be seen to encourage unlawful road use even if it saved lives, so they decided not to publish the report.

The Secretary of State for Transport, were he inclined to be proportionate, would have given his speech ten times the emphasis on dangerous motoring as to cycling. But he did not. The overarching ideology of this government is how best to provide for the rich. The rest of his speech included other projects for the wealthy such as the environmentally disastrous carbon nightmare of rich-only high-speed trains and proposing a new airport for the South East of England. They are not interested in what's fair or right, nor even what's sensible or has any credible supporting evidence.

So instead of looking at the facts of who's to blame between cars and bikes, ask only 'who is richest?'. The car costs more therefore the car is right. It's War on the Poor. Again.