Category: Political Issues

I wrote briefly about the disturbing case of the Chagos Islanders in May 2007, having met them at the May Day March in London. They were turfed off their homeland in the late 1960s by the Wilson government so we could give the US the island of Diego Garcia to build a huge military base. (The picture of them is in the middle of this page if you don’t want to look at the rest of the pictures from May Day.)

Earlier this year they were picketing the House of Lords where an appeal was being heard on their case. Our Labour government, having lost over the fundamental justice of their case, and lost an appeal in the High Court, had decided to take the matter to the final stage possible in this country, appealing to the House of Lords.

Today’s judgement, reported on the BBC web site, appears to be a matter of politics and pragmatism rather than justice.

It’s hard not to agree with John Pilger, quoted by the BBC, who described it as a political decision which upheld an “immoral and illegal” act. The case seems likely to go to the European Court of Human Rights, where perhaps justice will prevail over politics.

The problems facing the Roma in Italy were highlighted in July this year when media published pictures of holiday makers sunbathing on a beach near Naples ignoring the bodies of two drowned Roma teenagers.

In May 2008, the right-wing Italian government led by Berlusconi introduced a whole range of repressive measures to deal with what they describe as the “gypsy problem“. The measures remind many of the fascist policies under Mussolini – when Italian Roma were stripped of their citizenship and many died in concentration camps. They include dismantling all Roma camps and fingerprinting all Roma – children as well as adults.  Almost all of the Roma are actually Italian citizens. There have since been more or less daily reports of arrests, evictions and other attacks on the community, both by police and by criminals inspired by the government campaign.

Several camps have been burnt to the ground after Molotov cocktails where thrown into them, and many Roma have been left homeless. Forcible evictions from the camps by police have started and many Roma have been arrested.

There are around 150,000 Roma in Italy, less than 0.3% of the Italian population – a lower proportion than in many other European countries. Most of them live in desperately poor conditions in squatted camps around major cities.

Sentiment against Roma has also been hardened by the Italian population’s confusion between them and the mostly non-Roma Romanian migrants who continue to arrrive in Italy and the Roma are scape-goated for crimes committed by these often desperate Romanian refugees – another problem the rigth-wing government has exacerbated rather than attempting to solve.

Around 20 people, many of them Roma, met at the gates of the Italian Embassy in London at Friday lunchtime (17 Oct) to protest against the human rights abuses in Italy which constitute ethnic cleanisng of the Roma. A deputation of four, including Peter Mercer, MBE, the Chair of the National Federation of Gypsy Liaison Groups were allowed into the Embassy to give their views.

Catherine Beard of the UK Association of Gypsy Women and European Forum delegate had brought back a distinctive ‘Against Ethnic Profiling‘ t-shirt from Europe.

After the vigil outside the embassy, a number of the protesters went on to a meeting at the House of Lords.

A few more pictures from the event on My London Diary.

I’m not an economist. Nor a rich man, because I’ve never thought it worth my time thinking about money.

When I grew up we had none. At least that was simple, although my mother kept careful accounts of every penny in a small red bock, balancing her accounts carefully each week to avoid getting into debt. Penny-pinching all the time, making do and mending.  But my early years were years of austerity and rationing for the whole nation, and being poor like we were wasn’t very different from being almost as poor as the rest of the people down the street.

Even on a student grant I was better off, and my first full-time job earned me more than my father ever had but I’ve never got into the habits of spending (except on cameras) and waste that most people seem to take for granted, so I’ve never had to really count the pennies.

Banks have changed dramatically since I opened my first account to handle my student grant cheque. Rather than computers there was a man in the corner sitting with a big black-covered book and when you presented a cheque the cashier would go over to him and check that your account had the funds to pay.

Now it seems they have all been busy trading with borrowed money, betting on bets in ways that no-one had thought to regulate, making huge profits for their shareholders and massive bonuses for themselves in the good times. Which have now come to an end and the taxpayers are having to pick up their massive losses.

The failure of the banks doesn’t give me any pleasure, not least because it also has resulted in a fairly dramatic fall in the value of my own investments towards a pension, which I thought (and had been assured) were reasonably safe. Oh well, its only money.

But I certainly had considerable sympathy for the protesters who organised the March on the City with the slogan ‘We Won’t Bail out the Bankers’. As usual, more details and pictures on My London Diary.

Women dressed as suffragettes, including Tamsin Osmond (center left) rush toward the entrance of the Houses of Parliament in London, Oct 13, 2008

Exactly 100 years ago, more than 40 women were arrested in the ‘Suffragete Rush‘ as they attempted to enter The Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London. To mark this centenary, young women concerned with the lack of political action to tackle climate change organised and led a ‘Climate Rush‘ rally in Parliament Square, calling for “men and women alike” to stand together and support three key demands:

• No airport expansion.
• No new coal-fired power stations.
• The creation of policy in line with the most recent climate science and research.

It turned out – as expected – to be an interesting evening, although unlike 100 years ago none of the women managed to get into parliament and disrupt the proceedings there.  You can read more about it – and see rather a lot of pictures – on My London Diary.

Inside the building, the upper house was debating one of our more repressive pieces of proposed legislation, the Counter-Terrorism Bill 2007-08, and threw out by a large majority to proposal to allow suspects to be detained for 42 days before charge. However this is only one of several extremely suspect provisions, and we can only hope that their Lord and Ladyships will also throw out the proposals for secret inquests and look very carefully at the other provisions of the bill when they return to it in the next few days.

I must admit that until last week I had no idea that Lytchett Matravers even existed, let alone where it is. Nor for that matter its neighbouring village, Lytchett Minster.  And I think that is exactly how the people who live in these Dorset villages a few miles from Poole would like to keep it.

The government has other plans, intending in its Regional Spatial Strategy to include a new town of 2750 houses in the Green belt next to it.  This private development was rejected by the regional authority who drew up the draft plans, the local authorities in the region and bodies including Natural England, the Dorset Wildlife Trust, RSPB and CPRE, but somehow found itself in the final version of the draft currently waiting approval by Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

They had a big demonstration in Bournemouth to oppose the plans, and on Thursday some of them came to London to deliver a petition to the Prime Minister in Downing St.

In my lecture in Brasilia I talked about the need for a Green Belt that came about with the growth of car culture, and you can read a little about this in my post Under the Car which looks at my reaction to car culture. In Green Belt Protest Rally on My London Diary you can see my pictures and thoughts on last Thursday’s demo from Dorset. I wrote about another related event earlier in the year  here in Time Running Out.

I’ve had a busy few days, and they started on October 9 which was the anniversary of Ugandan independence.

For gay Ugandans in particular there is little to celebrate.  Around 50 people met in a demonstration sponsored by the NUS outside the Ugandan Embassy in Trafalgar Square at noon on Ugandan Independence Day, Oct 9, to protest against human rights abuses in Uganda.

Peter Tatchell of Outrage! and Davis Makyala of Changing Attitudes
You can see more pictures and a longer comment on the event on My London Diary