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ESOL, Libya & UCU – 2011

ESOL, Libya & UCU: On the morning of Thursday 24th March 2011 hundreds of students and teachers portested against cuts to English lnaguage courses for speakers of other languages. Then at lunchtime Libyans came to Downing Street to thank David Cameron for air strikes against Gaddaffi’s forces in Libya. Finally in the afternoon I photographed a march to Parliament by University and college lecturers from the London region protesting over pensions, jobs and pay,

ESOL Day of Action

Old Palace Yard & Downing St

ESOL, Libya & UCU - 2011 — *ESOL students and tutors crowd outside Downing St*

Several hundred ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) students and tutors from colleges across London, including Lambeth, Hackney, Barnet, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich came to a rally opposite Parliament as a part of a nationwide day of protest against government cuts in these courses.

There were similar protests taking place in Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Halifax, Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, Rochdale, Sheffield and Warwickshire.

ESOL courses provide an essential service for “many asylum seekers and refugees. ESOL is essential for integrating refugees into the community here and enabling them to contribute fully to British society.”

The cuts were expected to mean that around 70% of current students would be unable to complete their courses and roughly the same proportion of classes across the country would close. The closure would particularly impact women who were the majority of students.

Cuts in ESOL funding have continued since 2011, making it now difficult or impossible for many recent migrants to access courses. Some Reform UK-led local authorities are now cutting these course completely.

More on My London Diary at ESOL Day of Action.

Libyans Congratulate Cameron Over No-Fly Zone

Downing St

*Libyans chant praise for Cameron prodding the UN into action*

It was highly unusual for a protest to come to Downing Street to praise the Prime Minister for his actions, but around 500 Libyans were there to give thanks to David Cameron for the air strikes against Gadaffi’s forces and his leadership in establishing a ‘no-fly’ zone.

Gadaffi was of course a highly controversial figure in Libya. Supporters praised him for “combating homelessness, ensuring access to food and safe drinking water, and to dramatic improvements in education” and great improvements in medical care including a free and universal medical system. He had also done much to improve the status of women, though keeping the “sexes as “separate but equal”.’

But there was also a considerable downside, with the persecution of non-Arab Libyans, and human rights abuses. He alienated many by largely eliminating private businesses and imposed censorship. Under him Libya had no free press and no trade unions. And under him the system was highly corrupt and unemployment was high.

His brutal clampdown on protests inspired by the Arab Spring led to an uprising and the formation of the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council which this protest was supporting. Two weeks before this event France had recognised this as the “legitimate representative of the Libyan people” and Britain together with France was urging Europe to do so.

The UN had already suspended “Libya from the UN Human Rights Council, implementing sanctions and calling for an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into the killing of unarmed civilians” the previous month and had declared a “no-fly zone to protect the civilian population from aerial bombardment”.

*One lone protester called for an end to attacks on Libya*

NATO went further and as well as enforcing this also carried out air strikes. Its actions are thought to have enabled the enabled the NTC – whose forces like Gadaffi’s also “disregarded the laws of war, committing human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial executions, and revenge attacks” – to defeat Gadaffi.

More at Libyans Praise Cameron Over No-Fly Zone.

University And College Lecturers March

LSE to Parliament

University and college lecturers had received derisive pay offers in 2010 and 2011 meaning a cut in real wages allowing for inflation of 8-10%, and those from colleges in and around London marched to Parliament to protest over pay, job cuts and pensions.

Government was threatening cuts of up to 40,000 jobs in higher education and lecturers were worried that there might be large increases in student course fees that would deter many students.

They were also angered by government claims that their pensions were ‘gold plated’ – they are actually much less generous than the government’s lies – and proposed changes to the system.

Statistics also show that lecturers are paid much less than those with similar qualifications working in private industry. And they criticise the perception encouraged by our billionaire-owned press that they enjoy lengthy holidays as college terms are short.

Lecturers around the country were taking part in a one-day strike and the march by UCU London Region was one of many events around the country.

More at University And College Lectu r ers March.

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Youth March For Jobs – 2009

Youth March For Jobs: Searching this morning for what to post I came across a piece I had written at the time about the Youth March for Jobs in London on Saturday 28th November 2009 and had forgotten about – and thought it worth sharing with you again.

This march was a national demonstration called by’Youth Fight For Jobs‘, an organisation founded earlier in that year “backed by 7 national British trade unions, the PCS, RMT, the CWU, Unite, UCU, TSSA and BECTU, as well as individual trade union branches, student unions and labour movement figures” to raise awareness and campaign for action over youth unemployment. I reproduce the text here (with just a few spelling corrections) along with a few of the many pictures I took at the event – you can find more on My London Diary.

Youth March For Jobs

Central London. Saturday November 28, 2009

I walked away from the Youth March for Jobs with a Polish man of around my age who had been watching the march as it came over Lambeth Bridge. “These people“, he told me, “do not understand what they are asking for.” I disagreed and we walked along the road talking. “I grew up under socialism, and there was no freedom. I couldn’t travel, couldn’t say what I thought…” he continued. We talked some more. He told me: “You weren’t allowed not to work; if a policeman saw you on the street not working he would order you top go to the job centre the following morning, and they would send you to a job.” We agreed that although we were against such compulsion, at least there was work for everyone, unlike here.

We talked more. About how terrible it was that there were so many young people that wanted to work, that were leaving school and university with qualifications but could not find a job. That the system here was all determined by money with no thought of the social consequences. That under socialism, culture had flourished, with arts centres and music supported by the state at a local level in a way that has never happened here, where Arts Council funding is directed at elites.

We went our different ways before I had a chance to tell him that the free education that these young people were demanding was something that my generation, born after the war, had taken for granted – along with the rest of the then new welfare state that our governments over the last 30 or more years have been cutting back on. Coming from a background that was economically scraping the barrel in a way perhaps hard to imagine today (but rich in some other respects) I would never have been able to attend university unless the state had paid for my fees and living expenses.

What we needed, we agreed before parting, was a system that combined both the freedom of thought and action we enjoy with full employment and a state that shows a real responsibility to support everyone, particular its poorest members. Actually something that many of the slogans chanted on the march were calling for.

A little under a thousand came to the start of the march outside the University of London Union in Malet St. Some were from around London, but there were also banners from Hull, Huddersfield, Birmingham and elsewhere. Many were students and most but not all were young. Many of the slogans chanted as they made their way through the crowded streets of Central London represented a disillusion with both the Government and politics generally:

Labour Cronies
Tory Snobs
Fight their cuts
Fight for jobs

but others were aimed specifically at Labour

Mandelson's a Tory
He wears a Tory Hat
And when he saw our top up fees
He said I'll double that!

Some contrasted the billions made available to rescue the failed bankers with the stringencies being imposed on students and the poor:

Gordon Brown, stop the rot
Give us what the bankers got,

Bail out the workers
Not the bankers!

The billions wasted on ill-conceived and probably illegal wars – currently the subject of yet another enquiry expected to state the clearly obvious – also came in for noisy and enthusIastic criticism.

What the marchers want is the right to education rather than it becoming a privilege for the wealthy, and for decent jobs. They oppose privatisation, which has so often led to lower standards, replacing a pride in work and a social responsibility by cost-cutting, minimum standards (often not achieved) and a loss of security for the workers with part-time working, short term employment and loss of rights and pensions.

The march halted for a few minutes outside Downing St, where, after a speech that only a few could hear as restrictive laws prohibit the use of megaphones in the area, a small delegation went to take a large petition to the Prime Minister, before continuing past the Houses of Parliament. I left the marchers as they crossed over the Thames on Lambeth Bridge on their way to their final rally.

More pictures at Youth March For Jobs.

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Cuba, Guantanamo and Iran

On Saturday 7th January 2012 I photographed three events in London. Two were associated with Cuba, one celebrating the Cuban revolution and the second calling for the closure of US Guantanamo Bay torture camp there. The third was a protest in solidarity with the mothers of political prisoners and those murdered by the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979. Now there will be many more of these human rights abuses as Iran clamps down on the current ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ protests there.

53 Years Of Cuban Revolution – Angel, Islington

Although Cuba celebrates 26 July 1953 as the ‘Día de la Revolución’ (Day of the Revolution), this was the start of the movement with an unsuccessful armed attack on the Cuban military’s Moncada Barracks which resulted in the leaders being captured and jailed. It was not until 31 December 1958 that the rebels finally ousted Batista and Fidel Castro came to power, leading the country as prime minister from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008.

53 years and one week later a street rally at the Angel Islington organised for Rock around the Blockade by Fight Racism Fight Imperialism celebrated the Cuban revolution’s building of a socialist country despite the blockade by its powerful neighbour USA, and demanded justice for the Cuban Five.

The Cuban 5 were arrested in 1998 in Miami for spying on groups of Cuban refugees who were planning illegal acts against Cuba. Their treatment in US courts has been criticised as unfair by the UN Commission on Human Rights and by Amnesty International, who also condemned their treatment in jail as “unnecessarily punitive.”

Among many internationally calling for their release were Eight Nobel prize winners from around the world including Nadine Gordimer, Desmond Tutu, Wole Soyinka and Gunter Grass. A panel of US judges had overturned their convictions in 2005, but this was overruled by the full court and the US Supreme Court declined to review their case. One of the Cuban 5 was released in 2011 having served 13 years in prison, but at the time of this rally four remained in jail. The others were later released in December 2014 in a prisoner swap for a US spy captured in Cuba.

The rally stressed the remarkable changes the revolution had made in Cuba which in 1958 was a poor and corruptly governed country, its natural resources exploited by foreign companies, its people largely living in poverty with low educational standards and life expectancy. Now it has probably the best health service in the world, low infant mortality and a life expectancy better than many parts of the UK. Free education is provided for all, and soon most will follow it to graduate level.

Cuba has also been generous in providing free medical training for students from many African and South American countries, and also has sent many doctors and nurses to work in them, making a major contribution to controlling AIDS in Africa. Although there some criticise it for a lack of freedom, it has shown that there is a real alternative to capitalism, and that has provided a healthy and dignified life for its people, improving their condition over more than 50 years. And it has done all this despite US blockade and sanctions and continuing US support for counter-revolutionary groups – including the failed Bay of Pigs military invasion in 1961.

Speakers also condemned the continuing US occupation of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, there since 1903 when the US was given a permanent lease on 45 square miles of Cuba. The lease clearly limits US activities there to those to fit the needs of a coaling and naval station and prohibits the setting up of any commercial or other enterprise in the area. The setting up of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp would appear to be a breach of these terms. The Cuban government claim that the lease was “imposed on Cuba by force” and is “illegal under international law” and have refused to accept US payments for it since 1960.

53 Years Of Cuban Revolution

Shut Guantánamo – End 10 Years of Shame – Trafalgar Square

A rally marking the 10th anniversary of the setting up of the illegal US prison camp at in the US military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba on 11 January 2002 called for its closure and in particular the release of the two remaining prisoners with UK links held there.

Although President Obama came into office pledging to close the camp down and end the discredited military trials there, he has failed to do so, authorising the continued regime of arbitrary detention without charge or trial. 171 prisoners were still detained there at the start of January 2012.

Several hundred came to the protest and listed to speeches by Lib Dem Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, solicitor Louise Christian, Lindsey German of Stop the War, Kate Hudson of CND, journalist Victoria Brittain and others, including student representatives, trade unionists and other activists.

A group of activists wore orange jumpsuits and black hoods as used at Guantanamo, and some were also in chains. They marched in line holding up the prison numbers of the 177 prisoners still in Guantanamo, and their numbers were called and their names read out. Among those taking part and wearing ‘V’ for Vendetta Guy Fawkes masks were ‘Anonymous’ protesters who had come from the Occupy London protest camp at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian national who had a residence permit and lived in Bournemouth from 1999 to 2001 while claiming asyluk was cleared for release in 2007 and 2009. In 2009 he was sentenced in absentia in Algeria to 20 years for membership of a foreign terrorist group abroad – though no evidence was given at his trial. It appears that the US intervened on his behalf in Algeria and he was finally released and returned to his family in 2014.

Shaker Aamer was similarly cleared for release in 2007 and 2009, but was thought to still be detained as his revelations of torture over his ten years of imprisonment by the US authorities (and on one occasion in the presence of a British intelligence agent) would be embarrassing to the US and UK governments. I was pleased to be able to photograph him at a rally at the US Embassy in London in January 2016 after his release at the end of October 2015.

Shut Guantánamo: End 10 Years of Shame.

London Mourning Mothers of Iran – Trafalgar Square

Also in Trafalgar Square were The London Mourning Mothers of Iran who had been coming there every first Saturday of the month to show solidarity with the mothers of political prisoners and those murdered by the Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979.

The Mothers of Laleh Park (formerly known as the Mourning Mothers of Iran), women whose children or husbands were killed or imprisoned after the 2009 Iranian election, come regularly to Laleh Park in central Tehran and other locations on Saturdays and stand together to bring attention to these injustices.

Iranian security agents often come and attack the mothers. On January 9, 2010 over 30 of them were attacked and arrested and held in jail for several days, and leading members have received long prison sentences. The call for the release of political prisoners, the abolition of the death sentence and the trial of those who have ordered the killings of the last 30 years.

London Mourning Mothers of Iran.

Socialism is Survival

In 2008 Richard Wilkinson wrote an opinion in The Guardian, ‘Follow Cuba’s emissions standard‘ in which he states:

“According to the WWF, Cuba is the only country that has managed to combine an environmentally sustainable footprint per head of population with an acceptably high quality of life as measured by the UN Human Development Index. And if Cuba can do that without the latest and most economical technology, how much easier should it be for us?”
‘Follow Cuba’s emissions standard‘

Part of the reason for this is, as he also states, that resources in Cuba, though relatively limited are shared much more equally than in market-led democracies such as the UK and the US. He makes the point that material differences between people are destructive, reducing well-being and quality of life and leading to many social problems, and that wealthy societies such as our should be concentrating on reducing inequalities rather than pursuing economic growth.

To put it simply, we already have enough, and the important thing is now that everyone gets a decent share. We don’t need exact equality, but we do need to avoid the kind of indecent excess we now see, with the rich with more money than they can ever sensibly spend and the poor unable to afford decent food and safe housing, with too many sleeping on the streets or in overcrowded properties, often with little or no security of tenure and too many in jobs on less than a living wage and often zero hours contracts.

The biggest challenge we face as a world and as a nation is of course not the largely irrelevant matter of Brexit but climate change, and inequality also drives that – both directly by the senseless consumption of the ultra-rich and the poor quality environment of the poor, and indirectly by the encouragement to consume of living in the same society as those who feature most largely in our advertising and media coverage. We are going to have to make huge changes to survive, cutting down our footprint on the world’s resources to perhaps a quarter of the current UK levels, a change that it is hard to see a market-led capitalist system adapting to. And while Wilkinson suggests it should be easier for us, I think our current wealth and political system probably make it impossible. At least without a real revolution.

The Revolutionary Communist Group put it more starkly and simply than Wilkinson: “Capitalism is Extinction – Socialism is Survival’ but also base their conclusion on the closest we have in the world to a socialist state, Cuba. Despite punitive economic sanctions imposed by the USA (and perhaps sometimes as a result of them) Cuba under communism has made enormous strides in some areas, producing universal literacy and one of the leading health services in the world – and its medical services are one of the country’s main sources of foreign income. Increased life expectancy – to values similar to much rich countries such as the USA and UK – in a roughly static population is now presenting familiar problems. Energy use has remained relatively low with per-capita consumption only around a quarter of that in the UK.

Of course that isn’t the whole story, though it is perhaps difficult to know exactly what is, as all sources of information about the country reflect considerable bias. Many in the RCG have been to Cuba and seen the country at first hand, but what and who they saw will to some extent be affected by their own political affiliations and those of their hosts. Much of the more commonly spread information in the media comes from émigrés who left the country because of their dissatisfaction with the situation and the regime, or from anti-communist individuals and and capitalist organisations.

Castro and his guerrilla band took the country back from one of the worst and most corrupt governments in history, a dictator who had seized power in a military coup in 1952, but haven’t managed to eliminate corruption – though it is now said to be is the 60 least corrupt nation out of 180 countries by Transparency International. It would be hard not to admire a country which has withstood the sanctions and intrigues of the USA for so many years. Castro himself was apparently the target of over 600 assassination attempts by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency but died of natural causes in 2016.

You can read more about the protest and rolling picket outside various temples of consumerism on Oxford St at Cuba leads on climate say RCG.

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