Morecombe and the Globe
February 18, 2004
On Sunday St Anne’s Church Soho was packed with local Chinese people and well wishers as well as relatives from Morecombe Bay, and representatives of the Lancashire Police. The horror of the tragedy at Morecombe has shocked the community, as it should shock people far and wide.
Cockle pickers on the shifting sands of Morecombe are at danger at any time. With a language barrier and “employers” who seem to be cavalier in regard to health and safety, the combination becomes lethal.
Tragic as the deaths are they lead to some huge questions, and a distinct lack of answers from those whose must respond. The first and most obvious is why the employers of the victims seemed incapable of preventing the tragedy. It is a sad testimony that one man could phone his home in China and tell his distraught family he was about to drown, but not the emergency services a mile away.
But this then leads to the next question. These people were working for a pittance in incredible danger. Forced to pay their transport money back to the gang who brought them to the UK they had no rights. Their work was actually picking the cockles out of the sand and bagging them, somebody else was later sorting and grading and eventually selling them on. Some, no doubt, to end up in famous sea food restaurants in London’s West End where the cost of one plate would be the equivalent of a day’s pay to the person who picked them.
The news of this tragedy has highlighted many other instances of the horrors of the sub culture of work in the food, clothing and catering industry.
Newspapers last week were full of stories of a “slave” gang employed to pick flowers in the West Country. The harvest season all over Britain is a time when many very vulnerable people are grossly exploited. Minimum Wage and Health and Safety Legislation is of no help or protection to them. None of these workers ever join a Union or are able to protest, for the employer holds all the aces. One call to the Home Office or Police and they are removed, detained/or and usually deported for alleged breaches of Immigration Laws. Indeed attempts over the years to recruit workers in the clothing industry in the East End of London into the Union have met with all the dangers and hostility that workers faced in joining Unions in the 1930s in the USA.
Upton Sinclair’s brilliant account of trying to unionise Detroit in The Flivver King, set in the 1930s, when Union meetings were held in the dark to avoid the prying eyes of the bosses narks, could just us easily apply in modern Europe.
The scenario is not confined to Britain as any journey through the fruit and vegetable poly tunnels of Southern Spain would soon show. The worst jobs for the worst pay and conditions are done by the most vulnerable – people seeking safety and well being from tyranny and poverty.
The gathering in St Anne’s Church also heard from the Transport and General Workers Union, and the local Chinese community who have long campaigned for safe and secure working conditions.
The Community, Min Quang, presented a set of demands, which should be carefully considered. They call for urgent humanitarian actions including identification of the bodies, allowing the families to visit from China and returning the bodies to China, in accordance with the wishes of the relatives of the victims. They also ask that a humanitarian approach be adopted towards the asylum applications of the survivors.
But there are some very important wider issues that are also requested. They include the restoration of benefits to asylum seekers and the granting of legal status to all workers who are here. Crucially, they also demand the enforcement of Health and Safety legislation to all work places and all workers.
On February 25th the House of Commons will debate the Gang masters Licensing Bill, a private members Bill being introduced by Jim Sheridan MP for West Renfrew. This Bill would ensure that illegal employers would be rooted out and that protective laws would be enforced. It has a good chance of becoming law and should be supported.
However, until we face the problem of the poverty and vulnerability of those in Britain with no money or access to benefits because they have no legal right to be here there will be exploitation and tragedy: further Morecombe’s waiting to happen to another group somewhere else. That is why the demands of Min Quan are so important.
The flows of poor and desperate people around the world are created by the huge economic inequalities. The Global Free Market does not close these gaps but exacerbates them.
In London, on Monday of this week Gordon Brown played host to a meeting of the Government, Faith Groups and Charities, to discuss the Millennium Goals on development. In an article penned jointly with World Bank President Jim Wolfensohn, he admits that the first gaol, of girl’s education, will not be met next year. He goes on to say that the aim of universal Primary Education in sub Saharan Africa by 2015 will not be met. At the current rate of progress it would not be met for at least another hundred years. Gordon and his friend in the World Bank are not wrong about the need for economic expansion in the poorest countries; it is just their methods.
Firstly they call for an end to agricultural trade protectionism. If this is a re-run of the food dumping debate that brought the World Trade talks to an end then perhaps they should think again. One hopes that Oxfam, War on Want and the World Development Movement were on hand to advise them on this.
Debt write-off is necessary and welcome; the poorest countries and people have been bled dry by the worlds financial system. The conditional write-off of debt by private financing sounds suspiciously like debt by another name.
They are absolutely right about the need to tackle Malaria, Tb and HIV/Aids; I hope it is with economically priced generic medicines and not a hidden subsidy to wealthy drug companies being called “aid”.
Missing completely from the contribution was any reference to the International Labour Organisation and the crying need for internationally recognised labour conditions. The international role for Trade Unionism has been long recognised. Multinational companies are very adept at transfer pricing and moving production to the cheapest labour source.
Unless we start looking at workers in China, Indonesia and Colombia as fellow workers and human beings, and at their poverty as a problem for all of us, more tragedies like Morecombe will follow.
Colombia
February 11, 2004
This week, President Uribe of Colombia is on a visit to Europe, including an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg where he met protests yesterday. The protests were quite rightly expressing dismay that the President should be afforded this prestigious platform whilst abuses of Human Rights continue in his country. The deaths from Para militaries, and the armed forces actions against the FARC and ELN make the loss of life in Colombia the highest in the world’s conflict zones, save for the Congo.
After his address to the MEPs in Strasbourg he will face questioning from the Foreign Affairs select committee. Their agenda is of loss of human rights, the planned legal changes that reduce defendant’s rights and the loss of life of Trade Union leaders trying to do their job of representing workers in all sectors.
When Uribe meets the Pope in Rome today one hopes that the Vatican will voice the concerns of millions about the deterioration of Human Rights since the election of Uribe Government.
Vital as all this is one should recognise that the dreadful situation in Colombia has not come about in isolation. The biggest market for Colombia’s drugs is the USA, the biggest arms sales come from the USA and those eying up the valuable state assets are the European and US multinationals.
I took part in the latter days of the Justice for Colombia/War on Want delegation to Colombia which has just returned to Britain.
One is struck by three things from the visit.
The contradictions of ordinary life. Northern Bogata is like any western capital’s better off area. Clean streets, bright restaurants and huge levels of conspicuous consumption by wealthy. Yet there is something that is not quite right. The huge Police and Military presence on the streets, and the plethora of security guards everywhere.
Only a few minutes’ drive away the wrecked people who are addicted to crack and other hard drugs live a desperate life in filth and squalor, waiting to rob for their next fix. A little further away are the massive suburbs to the South, home to three million people, many of whom have fled from the war in the countryside. Their homes are precariously built on the unstable shale and rock formations that make up the hills, and are the subject of a huge dispute for influence between the Para Militaries and the FARC. Lacking proper basic facilities, life is very hard for the area where most people are jobless or semi employed. We were told that the Government’s official statistics are more than suspect as they count anyone working at all as being in employment, even a few hours a week as a street vendor.
The sheer bravery of ordinary people in this society is awe inspiring. Our delegation sat though three hours of a meeting of the Agricultural Workers Union. Their one hundred strong meeting was an assembly of delegates from each region of Colombia. In careful detail they described their problems and the constant accusation faced that they are in league with the insurgent groups. The meeting stood in silence in memory of the loss by murder of one of the Union’s vice president’s and his seventeen year old son. After this we heard from the Atlantic coast who simply told us that two of their regional Presidents had been killed, and five others murdered a few months ago. As the meeting went on the litany continued leaving us to constantly ask why.
Gradually a pattern emerges as peasants are forced off their land to make way either for agri-business methods, or to enable mineral exploitation to take place. Constantly it was clear that the State’s forces of Police and Army were unable and unwilling to protect workers representatives.
This meeting of politically aware women and men only asked that Unions around the world condemn the Uribe Government and support them.
One delegate held his hands open and simply said “We think differently from others, and are persecuted”. Another linked the arbitrary detentions to the open market policies of Plan Colombia. They specifically asked us to try and halt arms sales and supplies to Colombia.
Last Friday evening the delegation met the Interior Minister, Defence Minister and Vice President in quick succession. The Interior Minister rather bizarrely told us that Oil Workers’ leader Hernando Hernandez, suffering cancer and under house arrest, was a “friend”, AND was innocent of the charges, but in mitigation, the State had to lock him away because of his brother’s alleged involvement with the ELN guerrilla group! An international campaign to free him will have the double effect of forcing the Government to back down and to boost the campaign against the privatisation of the Oil industry.
We challenged the new Anti Terror laws for the shift of the burden of proof and the draconian nature of them. Quick as a flash the Minister, Pretelt de la Vega, came back and said these had been inspired by the US and UK laws and the global move to draconian law that does so much to undermine civil liberties.
The Vice President, whose family own the main daily newspaper and independent TV channel, met us in his office. A cross between an hacienda courtyard and a roman home. He claimed that “Unions are an important part of Colombian life”, after we had told him that more Trade Union activists are killed annually in Colombia that the rest of the world.
A theme that emerged from his lengthy talk was that the Colombian Government was somehow a victim of big forces and that it deserves our sympathy and support. No doubt President Uribe will be making that case this week, and too many European Government’s are too ready to accept it.
By way of contrast, I spent two hours the next morning listening to testimonies from five women, which we recorded on video, who had suffered at the hands of the paramilitaries. One woman received a phone call from her husband, who had disappeared. He told her of his love, and then she heard his screams down the phone as arms and legs were hacked off. His mutilated body was later found.
The Left have recently had some success. The election of Wilson Borja to the Senate representing Bogata is a huge step forward. His life constantly in danger he has Cuban doctors to thank for recovery from the last assassination attempt. Also the election of Lucho as Mayor of Bogata shows that progressive policies are possible in this dangerous and difficult situation.
Delegations are important, and indeed welcomed by the Unions and human rights groups, but their real effect comes from the understanding and solidarity we can mount here. Our government should not he hosting donor talks for Colombia, and British Companies should not be involved in the privatisation of the nation’s priceless assets.
Colombia and its recent experience is at variance with the trend on other parts of the continent. Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela all represent a growth in social justice consciousness. Not something George Bush understands or welcomes.
Cutting Social Values
February 6, 2004
Anyone who walks along Grenville Road past the Martin Luther King playground, and casts their eyes left they will see a substantial building unused and locked, and very visible signs of neglect and vandalism.
Another walk, along St Johns Way to the Eastgate Building, the remains of London’s biggest Workhouse, will reveal another building barred and bolted on the ground floor.
The first of these was once Ormond Road Workshops; a place that provided opportunities for training and skill development, or for artists and craftspeople to hone their own skills. It was a place used by people with learning difficulties. In short it was a great asset to the Borough and had been for the twenty years and more of its existence. It was closed because the Council cut its (very small) grant. Since then the building has been a waste and all the equipment sold off. The brave souls who ran the project are keeping together to try and re-open elsewhere.
The ground floor of the Eastgate building (my second reference above) was home to the Roger Casement Irish Centre, and this was closed in 2000 thanks to the Council cutting its (small) grant. Since then there have been no luncheon club and no dancing and no place to meet: a once useful and well used space which also acted as an advice bureau is redundant.
Not only were these two decisions made in recent years, a crying shame and waste of resources, they were a denial of the opportunity for ordinary people to do things for themselves. It seems that Council property speculation comes ahead of reason or rationality.
These cuts were part of a package used to finance a small reduction in the Council Tax. But now a new and even bigger threat is on the horizon. As before, it is the small and not so public groups that are under threat.
In Social Services, the Council is planning to cut funding of Pensioners Clubs at Whittington and Claremont – the only place that many isolated elderly can meet others, get help and support and have a reasonable quality of life. Claremont has been around for 100 years so what was good enough in Edwardian England is apparently unaffordable in the twenty first century.
The luncheon club at the Mayville Centre, where I hold one of my weekly Advice Surgeries is also due to be cut, unless charitable funding can be found. I see local elderly people meeting and enjoying a wholesome meal, for which they pay a small amount, and wonder how the Council could even consider taking this away.
To celebrate International Year of the Disabled, two local organisations that provide valuable employment opportunities for people with disabilities, General Welfare for the Blind and Mencap Pathway, are also to be cut. The freedom pass originally provided by the Greater London Council in 1973 is available, on application, for people with disabilities. The Council proposes to ’save’ £100,000 by 2005 on this vital access to public transport, on the strange grounds that Islington apparently provides more than most other London Boroughs. In the briefing document to announce these cuts the Council states that it “will continue its policy of protecting and investing in services for vulnerable people…”
On February 26th, supporters and members of affected groups will be demonstrating outside the Town Hall to try and persuade Councillors that none of this is necessary. The cuts would be damaging to some of the most vulnerable and needy groups in our community. They will also be joined by Play Centre users, as the Council is proposing to double the charges and thus force working parents to either stump up yet more money, or find other arrangements for their children after school, or give up work to be able to care for them, which could mean they then get free places. After-school facilities are vital for children’s safety, and in helping parents to be able to work. Exactly who does this charge benefit?
It is the same kind of short sighted logic which is behind the closing of the Arthur Simpson Library. Everyone welcomes the new library in Blackstock Road in the splendid new City and Islington College building. But why expect the children and adults who use the Hanley Road library to suffer? Is it possible the Council are just planning to sell that site to private developers?
I have been outside the Town Hall many times in support of groups under threat from Council cuts, as I believe that Local Government has a vital role to play in providing direct services, as well as in supporting voluntary organisations who can innovate, support and give so much to all of us. There have been times in the past, particularly during the years of Tory Government, when Council funding from Central Government was cut year after year. That simply is not the case in Islington now.
Last month I tabled a parliamentary motion, supported by Chris Smith and many other colleagues. I pointed out that Islington has had a 5.6 per cent increase in Government grant this year, and after outlining some of the planned cuts, we called on the Council to think again before proceeding. This time, as never before, this Council administration simply must take responsibility for its own actions.
Media-Hutton Inquiry
February 4, 2004
Tonight at 7pm, the House of Commons will be invited to “adjourn” without voting, after a six and a half hour debate on the Hutton Report.
There are so many questions to be raised about the Hutton report that one day’s debate seems insufficient, yet I suspect that despite the news from Downing Street, the Prime Minister has “drawn a line” under the issue in relation to the BBC, it simply will not go away. After all the obvious detail of Lord Hutton’s investigations, and the unprecedented public access to the process, he must have thought his report would be widely accepted, whatever his conclusions.
Essentially, he laboriously went into all the well-known assertions concerning Andrew Gilligan and the now famous 06.07 Radio Four Today Broadcast on May 29th, and from this let loose a floodgate of attacks against the BBC. Despite obviously conflicting evidence about who was or was not present at various meetings which decided to reveal the name of Dr Kelly, nobody was criticised for that. Indeed Dr Kelly was criticised from outside his grave for meeting journalists at all, when it had been made clear at various times that one of his duties was to maintain informal contacts with the media.
Two big issues emerge from all this.
If Tony Blair was telling us the truth from September 2002 onwards, about the existence of the Weapons of Mass Destruction and the threat from Iraq based on the intelligence reports he was given, don’t we deserve an explanation? After UN pressure the team lead by Hans Blix and Mohammed Al Barrady returned to Iraq in late 2002 and were withdrawn in January 2003 on the joint insistence of Britain and the USA. No further inspections were undertaken by the US appointed Iraqi Survey Group until May 2003. Seven months later, after huge efforts and expenditure, nothing has been found and the UN Inspection Team’s head, like Blix before him, at the UN has also resigned.
Etched in the memory of many sceptics is the UN appearance of Colin Powell, accompanied by grainy pictures and ‘facts’ galore, about the Iraqi threat. Not unlike the Adlai Stevenson UN appearance in 1962 concerning missiles and Cuba, or pictures of supposed missiles heading to North Vietnam in 1968.
I recognise that Lord Hutton was appointed to look into the death of Dr David Kelly. Indeed his remit was to examine “all the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly”. During the inquiry he chose to interpret this widely, and thus mountains of evidence was obtained and published on the Inquiry website. Why then did he never suggest that the information the Prime Minister and Ministry of Defence presented to Parliament and the wider world was wrong and that they should at least have asked a few questions about it?
Thus, last Wednesday Tony Blair was cock-a-hoop at the report, and presented it as a vindication of his role in the war. Alastair Campbell, who was the architect of the second (diversionary) front against the BBC at the Commons Select Committee ‘Inquiry’ into the war went even further in his “heads should roll” interview. Later this was memorably described as “less than gracious” by the outgoing BBC head Greg Dyke.
For all the spin by the Government, and the leak to The Sun a day early, it simply has not worked. Opinion polls and phone-ins all give the same message – the Hutton report is simply not credible. Which leads us onto where next?
Last summer there were two Parliamentary attempts on opposition motions to hold an independent judicial inquiry into the war in Iraq and the build up to it. Today is an opportunity to do the same if Parliamentary rules allow it, and this time vote for such a move. The US administration was never very specific on the need for a war in Iraq, beyond Bush wanting “regime change”. However odious or otherwise a regime is, that notion has no basis in international law. Blair on the other hand, was absolutely specific both in Parliament, on television and in numerous small meetings with MP’s, that the WMD’s were the reason for the war. Thus the (now dodgy) dossiers were produced, and he received reluctant Parliamentary approval for the war. MPs might decide to draw the wagons in a circle and protect the Government, but it won’t impress the public.
Regime change has occurred in Iraq. An oppressive regime has been replaced by an occupying power who seem to want only to hand power to those they approve of, after establishing an economic system that resembles the colonialism that the pan Arab parties were formed to oppose over sixty years ago. This strategy has cost thousands of lives; the latest being the tragedy of over fifty dead in Erbil when the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan both suffered bombings. If Parliament will not mount the inquiry demanded then it will fall to the Stop the War Coalition and others to mount such an investigation. Thirty years ago the Russell Tribunals into the Vietnam policy had a profound effect on opinion. A more easily informed and aware world will look with interest on this.
Since the Gilligan affair the BBC is a different place, with the Chair and the Director General gone and former Tory Chief whip Lord Ryder now calling the tunes. But there is something sinister about the attacks on Andrew Gilligan. He dared to ask questions and make suggestions; he dared to stand in the way of the steady stream of ‘information’ that the Ministry of Defence was feeding us. So when Greg Dyke stood on a desk and said “don’t be cowed”, it gives us a glimpse of the kind of pressure the media had been put under.
It also gives us all an inkling of the plans some people have for the BBC. Under Dyke and with the support of former culture Secretary Chris Smith, the licence fee had gone up and the BBC role expanded, much to the chagrin of the commercial stations.
Thus in the debate on the new BBC Charter there are twin pressures of a voracious commercial world wanting to gain the BBC market and a desire by some to have state broadcasting operation, or at least a very timid BBC.
This is a debate of vital importance not just about the BBC, but of broadcast journalism in general. Every journalist is affected by this, and our right to know and hear a range of views and sources. Across the Atlantic the commercial giants succeeded in under-funding and denigrating the role of National Public Radio; the continual pressure to gain new and ever more instant commercial markets has given us Fox news, (the war station), and all the news values it represents. Whatever we might think day to day about the BBC and its coverage, we must defend the principle of public service broadcasting.
