An Open Letter to David Jones

Hi David,

Bizarrely, despite you being the Welsh Secretary, and me being Welsh I hadn’t really seen anything you’ve done since assuming office hit the news. Until, today that is when you decided an unprovoked attack on gay families and carers was within your remit, as Welsh Secretary. You said in a TV interview that gay couples “clearly” could not provide a “warm and safe environment” to raise children. It’d be interesting to know where this “clear” evidence you came from. Academic research that has hitherto been hidden from public view? Or just deep-seated prejudicial views you hold about people whose lives don’t affect yours?

From the age of 13, I was brought up by my grandmother and her partner, and contrary to your claims, they provided me with a warm and safe environment when neither my mother or father could. They were able to do this because they are human, and contrary to what some in your party may believe, concepts such as empathy and love are not predicated on who you share a bed with, they’re basic human concepts that most of us are capable of. Being gay isn’t a neurological dysfunction, as much as you might like to paint it, with dog whistle claims that placing children in the care of a gay couple is not “warm” or “safe”.

So, being brought up by a gay couple did provide me with a warm and safe environment. I didn’t join the Tory party for a start, and have learnt such concepts as tolerance, and respect, so maybe I’ve benefited? But, call me cynical – I doubt you just misspoke. As well as attacks on gay couples, the Tories seem keen on attacking any family that is non-traditional. Gay couples. Large families. Single parent families. Poor families. Families are messy because human lives are messy. What you need to raise children is love and support from the community, your family and friends, and the state. Not to have your lifestyle and identity rubbished to make a cheap political point.

The Rise and Rise of Greece’s Neo-Nazis

Originally published on New Left Project

As summer draws to a close in Greece, the latest opinion poll shows falling support for every party in Parliament. Except one that is – the neo-nazi Golden Dawn. From 6.9% in June’s legislative election, a Pulse poll for Pontiki newspaper puts the Greek fascists on 10.5% of the popular vote, 2.5% ahead of the centre-left PASOK, who previously polled 43.92% in Greece’s 2009 elections before watching their support collapse in the wake of the Eurozone crisis.

Golden Dawn’s signature mix of militaristic violence and public “goodwill” has been fully on display this summer. Though keen to downplay the apparent role of some of their members in the Srebrenica massacre (as noted here), the  party still trades on its thuggish image, with party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos invariably flanked by skinheads in his public appearances. In the Peloponnese, Golden Dawn have called upon young men to join their “security brigades”, with their uniforms including black shirts, naturally. After the torture of an Egyptian migrant there, the communist KKE party condemned the government’s policies and actions on immigration for ramping up racial hatred, and fuelling the climate in which Golden Dawn’s brand of racially motivated violence has prospered. Human Rights Watch have compiled a report on the escalating Rates of attacks on migrants, documented and undocumented. The appointment of an MP from an anti-semitic punk band, whose lyrics included “Fuck Anne Frank” and “I want to piss on the wailing wall”, gives a sense of the mindset that accompanies this violent behaviour.

As for the purported acts of goodwill, these are little more than a thin veneer which, if anything, merely confirms the party’s true character. The attempt to open blood banks, but for Greeks only, is one example. Another is the setting up of food banks in Syntagma Square where before being fed, citizens had to show ID to prove they were “ethnically Greek”. Disturbingly, their identification details were then recorded by the party. Another part of the public service peformed by Golden Dawn has been the spreading of inflammatory disinformation about the Greek border agencies. All this from a party growing increasingly adept at using social media to promote its message.

More troubling still is the fact that Greece’s neo-nazis do not find themselves isolated or  out on the fringe. Victims of racist attacks have told of pressure by police to drop charges, deny Golden Dawn members were the perpetrators, and even to claim other migrants attacked them. In a way, this is unsurprising. The militaristic ultra-nationalism pedalled by the party constitutes a direct rhetorical and ideological link to the former ruling military junta, which had always treated the police very well. And though the zombie statistic from To Vima that 50% of police officers voted for Golden Dawn in the last election has been shown repeatedly to be false (most deftly here by Theodora Oikonomides) it’s undeniable that support for Golden Dawn amongst the police is far higher than amongst the general populace.

Is Golden Dawn’s increasing success a surprise? Not for anyone following the actions of the New Democracy/PASOK government, which has consistently pandered to, and thus lent credibility to, the fascists’ trademark xenophobia. Over the summer, in a period when many Greeks leave Athens, the police were ordered to stop and search foreigners and detain them while their domicile status was checked. When Golden Dawn threatened to form vigilante squads to, amongst other things, drag migrants and their children from hospitals and kindergartens, they were warned off doing so in parliament: “Raid brigades across the country, who trade upon national symbols, will not be tolerated. Any such phenomenon will be crushed” Public Order minister Nikos Dendias told Golden Dawn spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris in response to an oral question. However, shortly afterwards, as dozens of undocumented migrants were transferred to a disused military base in Corinth, Golden Dawn members were there waiting with baseball bats, stern faces, and flags bearing the swastika homage whorl of their logo. Since the start of the “Xenios Zeus” campaign to crack down on illegal immigration the Greek police have detained over 15,000 and arrested more than 2,000 foreigners who didn’t meet legal conditions. Seeing their own policies enacted, with the added opportunity to portray themselves as protectors of Greece, is a coup for Golden Dawn, and one they can dress up as testament to their lobbying abilities in parliament and the press.

The violence of Golden Dawn is not merely limited to its lay members, however. Despite the new parliament only being sworn in two months ago, already the parliamentary ethics committee have had to convene following a complaint by SYRIZA. Dimitris Koukoutsis, a senior member of the party is accused of attacking three people as they left parliament: SYRIZA MP Vasiliki Katrivanou, ANTARSYA councillor Petros Constantinou and Javiet Aslam, the president of the Pakistani Community in Greece. Similarly, Golden Dawn MP Efstathios Boukouras attacked Corinth Mayor Alekos Pnevmatikos (PASOK) with a military whip during an argument about forest fires in the area.

Meanwhile, Ilias Kasidiaris continues his fight to get immunity from prosecution and the movement restrictions linked to a pending court case against him lifted. Prior to becoming an MP, Kasidiaris was arrested for allegedly providing a getaway car to fellow Golden Dawn members who attacked and fatally stabbed a postgraduate student at Athens Polytechnic in October 2007. Kasidiaris gained worldwide infamy for throwing water in the face of SYRIZA deputy Rena Dourou before repeatedly hitting Communist Party member Liana Kanelli in the face, on live TV. Where is he now? He’s Golden Dawn’s main spokesman as well as an MP, and being primed to take over from Nikolaos Michaloliakos as party leader.

Kasidiaris may be a thug, but he’s no fool. As the Eurozone crisis continues to push Greeks away from PASOK and the mainstream right/centrist parties, he’s positioning Golden Dawn as a legitimate, practical party, and taking full credit for the government crackdown on immigrants across the country.

As Easy As Riding a Bike

Hi @mayoroflondon. So you’re a cyclist! I’m a cyclist too. But I’ve stopped cycling. Why? Because I don’t feel safe on London roads anymore. I think I’m quite good at cycling. That’s not a brag – it’s what I’ve deduced from the facts. In my old job, I’d cycle 30 miles a day, on busy roads. I didn’t find it a trial, though some areas weren’t great. On the whole, it was a good experience. But I got a new job and moved into a new flat on the other side of South London. Now cycling’s horrible. To get to work, I have to cycle over Elephant & Castle which is frankly terrifying. My pedestrian friends find the concept obscene, and my cyclist friends would rather push their bikes through the subways. We shouldn’t have to do that. Then I travel over Blackfriars Bridge. Since you ignored cyclists’ campaigning for a 20mph speed limit, it’s become a rat run. I work shifts, you see. So the Tories’ claim that cars wouldn’t travel over 20mph only works if you travel solely at rush hour. Then I have to battle through to King’s Cross, swerving to avoid taxis constantly. And at King’s Cross, there’s the most awful junction I’ve ever seen, that turns from two to five lanes of traffic. Five lanes of traffic? In the middle of a city? It’s rare that all vehicles know what they’re doing, so I have to constantly be on my guard for cars turning sharply where they shouldn’t. Once the lights go green at the turning for York Way it’s a free for all. I haven’t got enough fingers to count the illegal turns I’ve seen. Four cyclists in five years have been killed there. One would be too many. Four is ridiculous. When I finish work, and think of long slog home in the dark, with the dangerous turns, junctions and bridges, I never feel pleased I’ve cycled.

So I’ve stopped cycling. My incredibly experienced flatmate has too. It’s just so much easier to sit on a train, than it is to risk my life day in day out. It might sound melodramatic, but it really isn’t. I ended up in an ambulance, inhaling gas and air and having my jeans cut off two months ago, after a van that was parked in one of your Cycle Superhighways hit me in Clapham. I really like cycling, but your reluctance to make it safe or enjoyable has ruined that. It’s not enough for you to be photographed looking jolly on a bike. You also need to give a toss about cyclists’ safety. You said in one of your books (you write an awful lot of books. Amazing you have time, what with being a full-time Mayor, and having a column in the Telegraph) that “Every successful bicycle journey should be counted as a triumph over [death]“. It certainly feels as though that’s the case in London.

UK Uncut – A Failure in Civil Policing.

[I’ll skip detail on the beginning of the protest, assuming most readers will be conversant on UK Uncut and its aims, but can add more here if necessary]

UK Uncut protested today at Boots, who avoided a £87m tax bill last year by relocating their head offices to Switzerland. Protesters were today handing out leaflets, and occupying the store since the news of Boots’ tax-dodging comes at the same time as we hear of massive cuts (sorry, restructuring) to the NHS.

The protest was peaceful, and good-natured. Several shoppers joined the demonstration, and once we left the store to hand out leaflets on the street, passers-by were wishing us well and cheering us on. One woman marched up to the manager of Boots and asked “Is this true?” waving a leaflet in his face. He shrugged and told her, unfortunately, it was, but it wasn’t a decision he was involved in. I chatted to a Community Support Officer about his bike (it’s far superior to mine), and we spoke to the manager of Boots as well: there wasn’t any ill-will about.

Then, as I was stood next to the locked automatic doors, I noticed that a police officer was asking a woman to remove a number of leaflets she’d placed in the gap between the door. The woman asked why she was being asked to do so. The policewoman initially said “Littering” then claimed it was criminal damage. At this point the woman objected to being touched on the arm by the policewoman.  A number of people started taking photos of the exchange, then she was arrested by two officers who led her towards a thoroughfare next to Boots.

A number of protesters followed to keep an eye on the situation, chanting “Shame On You”. At this point, one of the officers, CW2440, used CS spray gas on a number of protesters nearby. I decided to film from a distance, rather than follow, as can be seen in the footage below:

I saw at least 7 people who had been sprayed in the eyes including a journalist, with three men particularly badly affected. One protesters had contact lenses in, which reacted with the spray. If you’ve never been tear-gassed before, it’s horrific. You can’t see, you’re in extreme amounts of pain, and massively panicked by the fact that you have no clue where you are, or who is around you. I called an ambulance, who confirmed they’d be there as soon as possible. At this point, three police officers with slightly different uniforms arrived at the scene: Legal Observers later told me they were Diplomatic Police, and definitely had tasers, though may also have been armed. Boots staff were shocked by the scenes, and an optician and first aid team inside offered to help those injured. The ambulance arrived soon afterwards, and took the three worst affected inside, initially thinking they could treat them in the ambulance. After 15 minutes, they confirmed they’d be taking them to hospital. A police officer then started speaking to us, informing us of how to make a complaint, asked us if we had the contact details of those injured then told us the number of the officer who’d used CS spray gas. Another officer later came over to a legal observer I was talking to and confirmed that Officer CW2440 had been the one to use spray gas on the protesters. I’ve never seen police officers offer up this type of information before, though am happy to be corrected.

It was a hugely jarring thing to witness, and I wasn’t affected. The policing was initially calm, and hands-off then suddenly became massively over zealous. That CS spray gas was used on one of the busiest streets in London in response to people simply chanting is terrifying. I’ve often thought criticism of the police can be a little unproductive, but today has made me think otherwise.