This is from George Monbiot in The Guardian this morning and is too important not to share:
Effectively this means that if I want to continue to write I must not protest, ever, however heinous the issues we face in our society.
My freedom feels very constrained today.
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The last desparate throws of the tories.
Given the probability of Liebore winning the next election – does one hear anything about throwing out these oppressive acts once in office? Nope, nada, zero.
(note when B.liar got in office none of the repressive laws introed by the tories under Underpants in the 1990s man were junked – B.Liar being quite content with them).
The Uk body politic is very sick. What is needed is a constitution that enshrines fundamental rights (of protest). This will not happen as long as we have a two-party state.
I campaigned for Labour in the last election (and provided funding). In the next, a different party will get my funding and support – with the focus on a coalition gov and PR. Followed by a written constitution.
If there were say, 1,000 people like me, with the resources we could deploy, we could make a very big difference. I am sick & tired of seeing and hearing all the old-lags that infest the British body politic with their barmy ideas. Time for a clear out, time for a change.
With past behavior being a reliable guide to present and future behavior the idea of a Labour Party under its present management entering Government and not enthusiastically using and pursuing such policies to even greater draconian levels is naive.
There has been no qualms on the part of those managing the Labour Party at every level in selectively misusing due process to target anyone associated with it, whether members or supporters, who is deemed to be insufficiently on board with the party following Neo-liberal and Neo-Conservative orthodoxy.
From the purge of members; the manufactured accusations of antisemitism even against non-Zionist Jewish people; and manipulation of its own selection and ‘democratic’ processes to the smearing of many of its own support base as detailed even in the watered down Forde Report ; and the revelations from the recent Al Jazerra documentaries.
The available evidence is irrefutable despite the efforts of Corporate Media to bury it.
When a political faction or party has no qualms about cancelling its own members, including sitting MP’s, in such numbers and to such a degree it is no leap of the imagination to realistically anticipate it will have no problem in extending such spiteful malice towards anyone in the general population who steps out of line should that faction/party be elected to govern.
And, sadly, the record of evidence suggests they will be given a free ride to get away with this simply on the spurious grounds of them not being the Tory Party.
Another naive position. As though the political label and the colour of the rosette magically ensures that such behavior cannot happen.
Despite Monbiot’s argument here being soundly evidence based his overall position is disappointingly schizophrenic. It was only a week or two back, in a video about Truss being the Oligarchs Oligarch, that his excellent analysis was completely spoiled by the only alternative offered being the lame hope that somehow, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, the Labour Party can be relied upon to pursue policies, including this one, not totally in line with the existing impractical orthodoxy.
Right now, on issue after issue, the official Labour Party line, designed to signal their fealty to the financiers and war mongers, is that they will enthusiastically go even further than their incompetent and moronic counterparts in maintaining the continuity of the existing unsustainable order.
Mike,
I was horrified when I read George Monbiot’s article. It very cogently and frighteningly encapsulated where we have been dragged to as a nation.
Wholly agree that we need a well-thought through form of proportional representation (PR) and a constitution that – amongst other things – protects the rights of people…including the right to protest.
Unfortunately, we also need political parties that have courage to introduce a more distributive and regenerative approach to the economy as opposed to watered-down Neo-liberal approaches…which is all that is on offer. Librium Liz has (hopefully) succeeded in one thing – proving beyond doubt that the far right wing nonsense espoused in her recent policies and Britannia Unchained are simply economic lunacy.
Followers of Richard’s truly excellent) blog will understand what they could do with money, Moderm Monetrary Theory, etc., so I will not comment further. I can only hope – I am an optimist by nature – that those who enter politics and, in particular the Labour Party, finally recognise that in their roles as public servants they should have the courage to commit to PR and a constitution…and move away from broken neo-liberalism.
This is a response to Alex C & Ron (& anybody else who reads this). I’ll be meeting with somebody involved with one of the other political parties tomorrow. I don’t like them, for a range of reasons. But I will be offering a 5 figure sum to fund candidates at the next election. The aim is to fund seats where there is a chance of either liebore or “the other party” getting in to replace a tory. Funding is conditional on two things & two things only in the event of them getting into a coalition:
a) PR within 1 year of election (a requirement)
b) constitution before end of the parliament (a hope)
If there were 1000 of us – with the same aims – that sort of financial leverage could both help candidates win, keep Liebore from getting a majority and move the Uk to a more sensible political landscape. Those interested know how to get hold of me.
The public have had enough of ER and Stop Oil disrupting peoples lives and are dismayed by the response of the police..they are taking the law into their own hands. For this reason the police need greater authority.
Sir Charles Walker Tory MP, completely eviscerated that argument in the Commons yesterday
“Sir Charles Walker Tory MP, completely eviscerated that argument in the Commons yesterday”
I doubt Sir Charles fully appreciates the mood of the public
But you do?
And you think penal law that breaches human rights should be based on that?
Please don’t call again
https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/the-owen-jones-podcast/id1550331378?l=en&i=1000582879499
This excellent interview with a Stop Oil member explains succinctly that if the public are fed up with their “antics” then that in itself gets the Sheeple talking about climate derangement.
And without the suffragettes struggle and disruption of their times , I , a woman would not have the vote today .
I think that this is where you can see that the Tory Government does not want to actually lose power.
We know that the Neo-liberals don’t like democracy because their forefathers paid lip service to Nazi philosophers like Carl “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” Schmitt.
It’s a smash and grab and as long as Labour are too close to the Tories, people will see no sense in change.
But what people might do instead is take the matter into their own hands and want to demonstrate more. And this proposed act is clearly aimed at cutting that avenue off.
The Tories know what is coming, and their close ties to Russia are beginning to bear fruit. The Russian oligarchs are now the legitimate face of how to do capitalism.
They’ve re-taught the West on how to exercise money-power and how to extract money from State enterprises. It’s all there in how they dealt with Covid etc.
It is being constrained, Richard. What Monbiot describes is fascistic. And supported by certain think-tanks discussed by Led by Donkeys; the support of such organizations as they mentioned could be seen as analogous to such support provided to the Nazis by Krupp-Thyssen, Bayer, BMW, Siemens, and others. What Monbiot is describing may only be the beginning, unless we get rid of them.
Draconian.
I posted on a thread yesterday about the real possibility that the Tories my look to suspend the next election in what they would see as “the national interest”. In reality, they would be doing it to save their own skin from potential electoral wipe out. The two years they have left is not enough time for them to pursue Austerity 2 and have an economic upturn to win back enough voters.
For a start, from next April the vast majority of people will be facing an average energy price rise to around 4 grand a year – with no support. The Tories intend to “target” financial support from then on and I think we all know what that means. On top of that there is the prospect of homeowners facing a doubling or more of the mortgage IR they will be paying when their current deal ends. I read yesterday that this will impact around 100,000 mortgages every month. Then there is everything else that we need to live, (i.e) food prices going up massively. To be blunt about it, against this backdrop the discretionary spending side of the economy will be f-cked. Dead as a dodo. How can it not be now that we have Hunt’s Austerity 2 budget about to hit. Anyone on a salary of less than 20grand a year is being forced into poverty. You couldn’t make it up.
Against this backdrop the Tories are surely finished as an electoral force. We need to be weary of anything they may do to hang on to power and The Public Order bill is just one thing they could potentially use to back up any suspension of democracy.
It reminds me of the apartheid era Banning Order in South Africa. The Banning Order could be signed by the Minister of Justice at any time and would be immediately applied to the person designated. It lasted for two years (renewable) and during the period of being banned you had to remain within your magisterial district (so a suburb of Cape Town, for example). You were not allowed to meet more than two people at any time (other than family living in your home), and you were not allowed to be quoted by or referred to by any media. So in effect you simply disappeared so far as everyone else was concerned. If you broke your banning order then you went to prison.
That’s about it
As I was reading this article, the following email arrived:
Hi Bernard,
“Suspected of being a protester should not be grounds for arrest and incarceration in a democracy,” says Tom Morley. Tom is a drummer, who uses music to run team building workshops for different companies and organisations.
In September 2021, Tom was on his way to a conference in the ExCel Centre in London, where he had booked a stand to showcase his work, when he was stopped and searched by the police. On finding drums and percussion tools, he was handcuffed, arrested “on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance” and detained in Charing Cross Police Station because the police suspected he was on his way to a protest.
Now Tom is taking legal action against the Met Police for his arrest saying that it highlights “the criminalisation of protest” and “the vulnerability of citizens who the police feel able to arrest with impunity for being suspect protestors.”
https://mailchi.mp/crowdjustice/protest
Yes saw the same. The police are out of control and the sanctions against them are quite inadequate. They are no longer “fighting crime” but oppresing Uk serfs – oh er hang on – itsn’t that their point? Oppression and control of the populace?
Incredible!!
The Tories Out Now they’ve fxxxed up big time the worst government ever:
It never ceases to amaze me, goodness knows why, that some of the most rabid and intolerant politicians forever seeking to put us all in chains, are so often found to be casually breaking the rules themselves. Why would a senior cabinet minister use their personal email for official business? Arogance? Stupidity? Or perhaps personal emails aren’t auditable in the same way official one are.
Or perhaps it was a very simple and reasonably safe way to say ‘oh my god, I have broken the ministerial code and, because I am a person of sound moral worth, I must immediately resign, even though other more senior members of the government have not resigned or even properly admitted to mistakes when they should have done so’. Her resignation letter is pure poison. I hadn’t realised she was that clever.
Off thread comment, but after an extraordinary day in politics, it is hard not to surmise that we are in the end-game of the Truss Government, perhaps of any functioning Conservative Government in this Parliament, and even ‘this’ (but probably not ‘the’) Conservative Party itself. I came across this remarkable tweet from the Conservative Danny Kruger MP: “It doesn’t matter who has what job in Government if we don’t face facts about what the matter really is. The matter isn’t good or bad ministers. It’s the slow collapse of the economic and social model that the UK has had for 30 years.” Think about that for a moment.
The content of this proposition is quite another matter, of course.; but the whiff of decay, collapse and revolution in the Conservative ranks is now endemic.
A truly disturbing development, and one word comes to mind-Totalitarianism.
Presumably, the Truss “economic plan” includes the urgent construction of concentration camps in South Yorkshire.
George Orwell must be turning in his grave with a wry smile on his face, whispering “I told you so”.
How about all that noisy jeering and protesting in the HoC? Seems very disruptive to me. I guess another – one law for them, another for the rest of us. Also, the MET – reports for years show it contains many criminal conspiracy subgroups within it. Give them more power – certainly not.