Canadian Elections- Plus Ca Change!

(Hat-tip: Vive Le Canada).

Well, Canada's Federal Election on Tuesday was very much like the one in 2006. Stephen Harper's Conservatives increased their percentage of the vote & number of seats in Parliament, but fell short of an overall majority. I thought that, rather than trying to repeat/rehash similar points to last time, I'd repeat what I said after the last Federal Election:

Wednesday, January 25, 2006 Canadian election aftermath

Well, I would advocate UDI for Victoria/Vancouver, but apart from that...

It could have been a lot lot worse! For a start, the Cons are far short of an overall majority. They will need support from other parties, which will basically mean the Bloc Quebecois & Liberals. Stephen Harper, although a sandwich or two short of a full picnic (evangelical Christian and all that), will have to hold back the crazies further out than him (first rule of politics- there are always crazies further out than yourself!) or his government will fall, and I'm sure no-one wants to go to polls for a few years yet. So Harper is pretty much boxed in (I could say "straight jacketed" but that would be a cheap shot!).

Furthermore, they only got 36% of the vote ie almost 2/3rds of the voters didn't vote Con. That suggests to me the vast majority of people in Canada are pretty liberal. Blame the first past the post electoral system. It really is a travesty of democracy. Back in May last year Tony Blair got an overall majority of 66 in the House of Commons over here on just 36% of the vote, so count your blessings Stephen Harper didn't get the same!

In addition, I'd be encouraged by the NDP & Greens increasing their shares of the vote. Neither are perfect (this from a recently joined member of the Green Party over here) but having pressure from "the left" (I try not using such meaningless phrases) might force the Liberals to sharpen up their act.

You may also have heard the phrase coined by one-time Labour PM Harold Wilson: "A week is a long time in politics." I was in despair in 1992, when the Tories scraped in for a fourth successive overall majority (I remember staying up watching the election coverage on tv with the Sex Pistols blaring on my headphones- songs like "Anarchy in the UK", "God Save The Queen", "Liar", "Problems", "No Feelings" & "Holidays In The Sun" ["I want to go to the new Belsen..."] seemed to make a lot of sense in the circumstances). The general consensus was that the Tories would stay in power for ever. Within 6 months they were broken (£ leaving the ERM after billions were wasted on the foreign currency markets; plans to shut down our remaining coal mines caused mass protests), went on to lose the 97 election (best night of tv ever!) and only seem to be coming out of a coma in the last few months. One-time Tory PM Harold MacMillan when once asked what he feared most was "Events, dear boy, events". So wait for "events"- even Stephen Harper praying to The Lord 10 times a day can't prevent them!

However, there are positive things to do apart from waiting for the Cons to collapse. This is from Naomi Klein's website from over 5 years ago, but her proposals suggest that not a lot has happened in Canadian politics since then!

Unlabelled the Left by Naomi Klein December 20 2000

Where do we go from here? There's a big space in the political landscape for a new party, one that looks at the calls for localization and doesn't see a dire threat to national unity.

There is a very simple reason to have a left-wing alternative to the Liberal Party: People are suffering. Despite all the wealth created by deregulated markets, many Canadians are seeing no part of it.

In fishing communities from coast to coast, on family farms, on the streets of large cities, Liberal Canada's recipe for economic growth has meant people being thrown into the global market without a net.

In response, we have seen a wave of political organizing and militant protests. Students blockade trade meetings where politicians are bargaining their futures away in exchange for foreign investment. In First Nations communities, from Vancouver Island to Burnt Church, there is growing support for seizing back control of the forests and fisheries—people are tired of waiting for Ottawa to grant permission that the courts have already affirmed. In Toronto, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty is occupying buildings and demanding the shelter that is the right of all Canadians.

There is no shortage of principled, radical organizing taking place, yet it is almost completely disconnected from the major political voice of the left, the NDP. Listen to the people excluded from the Liberal mainstream and you hear ideas entirely absent from the NDP platform: the deep distrust of state powers, immigration crackdowns, police harassment, punitive welfare offices, and mismanagement of community affairs.

Surveying the rage directed at Ottawa from across the country, the NDP's only response has been an action plan for better central management. In its policy book, there is no problem that can't be fixed with a stronger, top-down government.

By consistently failing to speak to the hunger for local control, or to the well-deserved skepticism of centralized power, the NDP has yielded the entire anti-Ottawa vote to the right. The Alliance is the party that offers Canadians outside Quebec the opportunity to "send a message to Ottawa"—even if it is only by demanding a refund for poor service in the form of a tax cut.

A national party of the left could articulate a different vision, one founded on local democracy and sustainable economic development. But before that can happen, the left needs to come to grips with how Canadians see government. It needs to listen to the voices on native reserves and in non-native resource communities where the common ground is a rage at government—federal and provincial—for culpably mismanaging the land and the oceans from urban offices.

Government programs designed to "develop" the regions are deeply discredited across the country. Federal initiatives to get fishermen into eco-tourism, for instance, or farmers into information technologies are regarded as make-work projects, unresponsive and, at times, destructive to the real needs of communities.

Frustration with botched central planning is not just an issue in rural Canada. Urban centres across the country are being turned into mega-cities against their will, just as hospitals where cutting-edge programs once thrived are being amalgamated into inefficient medical factories. And if you listen to the teachers having standardized testing rammed down their throats, you hear the same resentment at centralized power, the same calls for local control and real democracy.

All these local battles are, at their root, about people watching power shift to points further and further away from where they live and work: to the WTO, to unaccountable multinationals, but also to more centralized national and provincial governments. What people really want are the tools, both financial and democratic, to control their destinies, to build diverse economies that are genuinely sustainable. And they have plenty of ideas.

On the west coast of Vancouver Island, they are calling for community fish-licence banks, bodies that would keep fishing rights in the community rather than selling them back to Ottawa or to corporate fleets. Native and non-native fishermen, meanwhile, are doing end runs around the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to try to save the salmon fishery by rehabilitating spawning grounds and protecting hatcheries. In other parts of British Columbia, they talk of community forest licences: taking away Crown land from multinational forestry companies that are interested in volume-based logging, and placing sustainable forest management in the hands of local communities.

Even in Newfoundland, long written off by Ottawa as Canada's welfare case, there was talk this election of renegotiating federalism to regain control over the province's rich energy reserves and what's left of the fishery. It's the same message from Inuit leaders determined to ensure that, as the oil and gas prospectors move into their territories once again, the benefits go toward regional development rather than simply enriching multinational corporations.

In many ways, these calls for sustainable economic development are the antithesis of the free-trade model pushed by the Liberals, which insists that increased foreign investment is the key to all of our prosperity, even if it means trading away democratic powers in the process. These communities want the opposite: beefed-up local control, so they can do more with less.

This is also contrary to the Alliance model of regional resentment and tax cuts—though for many, those aren't bad consolation prizes. But there is clearly a deep desire in this country to continue to act collectively, to pool resources and knowledge and build something better than any of us is capable of building as individuals.

This presents a tremendous opportunity for a left-wing party, an opportunity that has been entirely wasted by the NDP. There is a wide-open space in the political landscape for a new party, one that looks at the calls for localization and doesn't see a dire threat to national unity, but the building blocks for a unified—but diverse—nation. In these calls for self-determination, grassroots democracy, and ecological sustainability are the pieces of a national party platform, a coherent vision that includes many Canadians who have never before been represented by the so-called left.

Right now, we have federal parties that try to hold this country together against its will, and regional parties that pit the country against itself at its peril. A new party could do something else: show the country not the differences but the connections among these struggles for localization and articulate the progressive principles of economic sustainability, self-determination and participatory democracy. Rather than fighting localization, we need to spend national resources in a way that would systematically encourage creative, local solutions, making respect for the local the centrepiece of our national project.

What is needed is a federal party that would relentlessly champion the reinvention of local democracy with the same enthusiasm that the Alliance champions tax cuts. That doesn't mean abandoning strong national standards—and stable, equitable funding—for health care, education, affordable housing, and environmental protections.

But it does mean that the mantra of a political party of the left should change from "increase funding" to "empower the grassroots"—in towns, on native reserves, at schools, in resource communities, in workplaces. This project doesn't mean less government, just a different kind of government.

Its slogan: "Protect the Local, Nationally."


Although they hardly registered on the electoral map, I think the Canadian Action Party have some good ideas, at the national level anyway. Perhaps if I was Canadian I wouldn't have voted for them this time around, but if they got involved with the NDP and Greens they may be the catalyst for challenging the two main parties over the question of true patriotism and what it means to be Canadian.

Top Ten Reasons to Vote For CAP on January 23!

1-Freedom for all in a sovereign strong nation. Despite no taxpayer funding, CAP is the only party exposing the unaccountable, unelected rulers of Canada(that is the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, former government officials, business leaders, and academics). MP's are irrelevant, emasculated, and subject to corruption so long as they submit to that influence. As such they are no good to the citizenry.

2-Put your Money to work for You-Reinstate full use of the Bank of Canada-fund infrastructure and enable universal healthcare, education, environmental protection, full employment, and an end to the GST

3-Restore our civil rights and liberty-rescind all liberty stripping legislation including the anti-terrorism law, Public Safety and Preparedness Act. Prevent new laws that spy on law abiding citizens, such as surveillance legislation, tracking devices, biometric identifiers. Remove legislation that imprisons law abiding citizens in our own country, such as no fly lists, no passport lists, security certificates.

4-Restore Canada's Military Peace-Keeping role-Canada to stay out of Northcom, Star Wars, and to withdraw from the Binational Military Planning Group

5-Take Canada out of international agreements that are anti-Canadian, anti-democratic, anti-free trade, anti-environment, anti-universal healthcare-cancel NAFTA, FTA, the Smart Border Declaration,(signed in December 2001 by John Manley Deputy Prime Minister of Canada and Tom Ridge, Director of the United States Homeland Security Department); Withdraw from the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreement, signed in March 2005 by Fox, Martin, Bush.

6-Electoral Reform-Restore democracy-revoke Section 550 of the Canada Election Act, that prohibits election promises to be accountable to the electorate-bring in proportional representation, recall legislation, direct democracy, all to provide transparent accountability to the people of Canada

7-Reinstate and enforce the four pillars of the Canada Health Act-including universality, portability, accessibility, fully funded public health programs with a ban on private healthcare(Bank of Canada)

8-Universal access to publicly funded education from pre-school through post-secondary including low interest student loans (Bank of Canada)

9-Providing and investing in alternative energy, research and development (Bank of Canada)

10-strong Voice of opposition- standing for peace, not WAR, and promoting real security and prosperity for the people not for corporate exploitation


Finally, some advice to the NDP in BC from Larry Gambone. I'm not sure when this was written but as BC is currently run by Liberals at Provincial level it must have some applicability! I'm sure it would be of use to NDPers/Greens/CAPers etc elsewhere in Canada as well.

BC, A LAND OF MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

The recent events in BC with the Liberal government are only the latest events in a 120 year history of mis-management, corruption and downright stupidity. One might well say that the present cut-backs are the fruit of this sordid mess. We, or more correctly they, since I languish in Siberian exile, did have 3 (or was it 4?) NDP governments and the situation could have been turned around. But the NDP didn’t. Now it shouldn’t be up to me to lay out a political program for social democrats, after all, I ain’t one ’o them, but the fact that an outsider can show them a thing or two, only points out what a bunch of unimaginative losers they must be.

What can a po’ provincial govt. do? Now we might bitch a lot about Ottawa and all its powers, and rightly so, BUT, the provinces do have a lot of power – at least 75% of the powers of an independent state. Look at Quebec. These are residual powers granted to each province by the British North America Act of 1867 and expanded on since. What are these residual powers? First off, the province can organize the lower level of government as it sees fit – as we have seen to our great displeasure here in Quebec with forced municipal mergers. Secondly, the provincial government itself, as long as it remains within the tradition of parliamentary democracy and does not overstep its constitutional limits visa-vis the Feds, can also organize itself as it pleases. A provincial police force, provincial pension fund and provincial banks are also constitutional. Once again, check-out them there Queebecers. Now you’d think wouldn’t ya, that anyone with an IQ a bit larger than their shoe size, could do a lot with all these powers – a lot of things to make life in BC pleasant.

If I must, I’ll spell it out simply. Government in BC is highly centralized, more so than in the East. Government is also highly undemocratic, virtually every govt. is a govt. supported by a minority, not a majority. Once in power, a party can do what it wants. Centralization and lack of democracy means less control by the people. Less control by the people means the government is free to reward its friends from public lands and taxes, ignore the environment, grab your property, impose expensive and useless mega projects, etc., etc. and etc. Furthermore, a govt. can introduce a reform, but the next party in power can undo it. What Our Lord the State giveth, Our Lord the State can also taketh away.

What COULD have been done is this: BC could be given a proper level of local government – counties and municipalities – which would be largely autonomous. These govts. would be based on real existing communities and not be artificial creations like at present. Much of what the prov. govt. does could be handed over to these local govts. Hospitals and schools could be de-nationalized (more correctly de-provincialized) and become the property of the community. Development, provincial lands and environment could also be the right of the community. Rather than govt. revenue being concentrated in the hands of the province – and therefore much of it getting wasted by bureaucracy and pet projects – it would be disbursed immediately to the lower levels of govt. to pay – at least in part – for the hospitals, schools, streets etc.

In order to minimize corruption at the lower levels of govt., the provincial govt. would maximize democracy at these levels. Small communities would replace the mayor and council with New England style direct democracy. All issues deemed controversial – by a simple petition of say 10% of eligible voters – would require a referendum which would need 66% of all eligible voters to pass. Large cities would be broken up into Neighborhood Councils, based on real neighborhoods, and elected locally. The Neighborhood Council would elect a recallable DELEGATE to the City Council. The position of Mayor would be abolished, instead a rotating Spokesperson. The Referendum Law would also apply at the Neighborhood Council and City Council levels.

The provincial govt. would undergo the following changes: A limited proportional ballot would be introduced. Any party with more than 5% of the vote would be given a seat. However, the vast majority would represent communities. These would no longer be artificial electoral districts (or ridings as they are quaintly referred to in Canada) but would be based upon real existing municipalities and counties. Each of these – as close as possible to rep by pop. - would elect a recallable DELEGATE to Victoria. Once again, the Referendum Law would apply. A Cabinet would be elected from the Legislature and the position of Premier stripped of any powers. The Premier would become an annually rotated spokesperson. The Prov. Govt. would engage in only those areas that the lower levels of govt. desired, such as collecting and disbursing revenue, provincial parks, highways, ferries, and the maintenance of standards, health and water inspection etc. (*)

These changes in government would be incorporated within a Provincial Constitution. To tie the hands of any future government who might try to destroy these freedoms any changes to the Constitution would require the approval of BOTH 90% of the lower governments and 90% of the eligible voters.

BC would withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan and set up its own Plan like Quebec. Within no time this would become the largest investor in the province. A Ministry of Cooperative Affairs would be set up to encourage mutual aid, cooperatives and the general social economy. Rather than introducing private health care and privatizing auto insurance and BC Hydro, they would be mutualized, i.e., turned into client-owned and controlled cooperatives. With the Pension Fund, mutualism and community ownership, each person would come to own a share in the economy. In time, the bulk of the economy would be in the hands of the ordinary person.

The results? Government would be cheaper and more efficient. The environment would be better protected – who want’s to dirty their own nest? There would be less dissension since government would actually reflect the will of the people and not a minority. The economy would thrive since it would be owned by those who work it. Community would be re-inforced and rebuilt, resulting in less alienation and therefore less social problems. Voluntarism and mutualism would thrive as large, centralized institutions got broken down to human scale.

Like I said before, I’m not a social democrat, if any of you reading this are, well here’s your program. Take it, it’s yours. You don’t even need mention my name. In fact, please don’t or I’ll be forced to turn in my anarchist membership card. Claim it as your idea, for all I care.

*) Anybody thinking that I must be smoking something when writing this should be aware that a place governed on similar lines exists – It’s called Switzerland and happens to be the wealthiest nation on earth.


For what it's worth, if I was Canadian I would have voted either Green or NDP, not least as they are both opposed to the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the stepping stone from NAFTA to North American Union.

Elections v. v.quick update- First Highgate, then the world...

Well, Boris won the Mayoral Election. The best thing you can say for him is that he is opposed to ID cards.

Furthermore, the BNP got a seat in the GLA.

On the plus side, the Greens took the 3rd seat in Highgate ward. Lab came second and the Cons third. The Greens took two seats on the GLA (same as in 04)and Sian Berry (who I found out on Wed night drinks bitter, after an evening getting soaked leafletting letter boxes in Archway) came fourth in the first round of the Mayoral contest. Furthermore, the Greens did pretty well in most of the constituency contests.

Respect (apart from 15% in City and East) and Left Luggage, sorry Left List, did extremely badly. It seems the last hope of the English Left is the Green Party. However, how more disasters it will take for the message to get home to all those wanting to re-stage Sergei Eisenstein's October?

Will blog more Sunday night/Monday morning here. I saw Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine going dirt cheap in a bookshop yesterday so I'm going to splash out and read it in the park this afternoon, either trying to get a suntan or rust...

Update: Early Hours of Monday 5th: Just finished Shock Doctrine. It is even better than No Logo. The book it complements is Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse (I need to look hard in the footnotes to see if NK cites him). I want to review it at length, or at least use it as a starting point for other posts. For instance, surely there is a viable political way between grovelling to Corporate Capitalism on one side and pandering to RORO (Racially Or Religiously Obsessed) types on the other? I'm tired and I digress...

There has been talk over the weekend that there may be a challenge to Gordon Brown's leadership of the Labour Party at some point in the coming months if things don't impove. There seems to be hopes on the Labour Left that NuLab can be defeated at last, but I'm pretty sure NuLab will find someone else to lead them all on the Forward Path to Reform and Modernisation if GB fails. The Tories seem to think the next General Election is all over bar the shooting, sorry shouting, but I still think we will have a hung Parliament in 2009-10 and a National Government of "Reformers" and "Modernisers" will form in the aftermath. We will see...

London Election latest and stuff

I spent yesterday morning leafleting a housing estate up in Highgate (next to the cemetery with Karl Marx in it)for the Greens. There is a Camden Council bye-election on May 1st, the same day as the London-wide elections, and as the Greens have two out of the three councillors in the ward, they are hoping to take the third off the Tories.

I think the Greens have a reasonable chance of taking the ward. On the estate (I managed 275 or so letter boxes in 90 mins) the only political posters in windows were Green ones. I think there was someone else delivering stuff (or it could have been just someone delivering leaflets for pizza). It could well have been the Lib Dems as I saw someone delivering Lib Dem Focus leaflets on my way back to Gospel Oak train station. It was a cold, grey, damp morning so there weren't many people about but those I did say morning to were friendly, so that it is a good sign. All other things being equal, I should be able to get up Highgate again the day before the election for one more leafletting blitz.

Two Tuesdays ago I did turn up at the Friends Meeting House over in Euston for a meeting organised by NO2ID. It was about the surveillance state in London. Ken Livingstone didn't turn up (he was represented by a full-size cardboard cut-out!), but Boris Johnson, Brian Paddick, Jenny Jones (for the Greens), Lindsey German for Left Luggage (sorry, Left List) and Gerard Batten for UKIP were there. The BNP candidate for Mayor Richard "one suit" Barnbrook turned up, but as the BNP aren't represented in Westminster, the European Parliament or the GLA (yet) he wasn't invited onto the platform and was given a ticking off by security. (You might ask, why was Lindsey G allowed on the platform when Left List have no electoral representation in London? Apparently she was asked to speak when she was still Respect's Mayoral candidate...).

There was quite a consensus amongst the platform speakers: opposition to ID cards and fears about where surveillance of London and Londoners is heading. The big arguments were between Jenny Jones and Brian Paddick (over whether crime in London was going up or down) and Lindsey German and Gerard Batten (over immigration). I must say Boris Johnson was quite impressive, but the format of the meeting (I left 8.30ish as I was nodding off and I had a night of work ahead of me)aided him. Each of the 5 speakers was given 3 mins to do their spiel, then the chairwoman (apols, I didn't catch her name) read out 4 issues NO2ID wanted the speakers to address. Each of the speakers were given 3 mins (or so) to give their view. Then it was questions from the audience (you had to fill a piece of paper in- I split before that started). I have been reading that Boris Johnson has been taught to stick to the point, otherwise his minders think he'll go off topic and alienate audiences. So three mins to reel his spiel off was ideal for him, and to his credit he is genuinely anti-ID cards, so he was reasonably impressive.

I still think I'll force myself to vote for Ken as my 2nd choice for Mayor, but I have no enthusiasm for him at all. Having said that, a few Conservative contacts of mine are not too keen on Boris either. I suppose it will all depend on where the Lib Dem votes go after Brian Paddick is eliminated. At the hustings he was very pro- civil liberties and vehemently anti-racist. However, I have been reading that he is quite pro-City of London and has accused Ken of wanting to make London "a socialist republic" (do me a favour!).

Anyway, before I started dropping off into the land of nod, I wrote down a few facts and figures mentioned in the meeting:

Later this year non-European Economic Area foreign nationals (that is, anyone who desn't come from the EU, Iceland, Norway or Lietchenstein)in the UK will be compelled to register for an ID card and be fingerprinted in the process. I can't see this going down well with people from outside the EEA living in London, including all those non-doms...

Those who have ID cards will have to give the authorities information about 50 categories (not just 50 items) of personal information. These can be added to via Government regulation (ie sod Parliamentary scrutiny).

In London there are around 10,000 CCTV cameras on the roads and 8,000 on the Tube. I feel safer already... There are 4.2m CCTV cameras in the UK as a whole.

There are 700,000 DNA samples on the Metropolitan Police database, with around 90,000 new samples being added to every year. I feel safer than ever...

At long bloody last!!

Big apologies are in order for the lack of blogging in recent weeks (months?). Without trying to sound like too much of a whinger, I have not been well recently. I've had various ailments, underpinned by a chill that never really went away, combined with extreme tiredness. Give me somewhere to lie down and I could win a medal at the 2012 Olympic Games for the demonstration sport of Crashing Out Bigtime. I've felt really washed out all too often. It's not like I've been not being looking after myself or been eating poorly either (I've consumed plenty of fruit, veg, muesli, brown bread, lots of fruit juice and water). I think the long grind of winter has a lot to do with it. Combine that with the fact that we didn't really have a proper summer last year (all I remember much of is a couple of weeks in Vancouver and the August Bank Holiday weekend being good) and it's all got me down.

I think as well I've suffered some existential angst about blogging. Unless you are an unthinking clone of The Party Line, if you are a "political" blogger I think you will be prone to wondering at some point whether what you do is of any use or worth. I think it's the same with political commentators in the so-called Mainstream Media too, and the politically active as well, unless you are a fanatic, ideologue or careerist on the make. Sometimes it is good to doubt yourself. I think that's what happened to me a bit.

Anyway...without any further ado. A bit of a run through about what I've been thinking and even what I've been doing.

The Big One?



Is this the final denouement of global capitalism? Call me an ageing cynical sell-out, but I've lived through several periods when it seemed The End was on the cards and the system kept going. However, the least that can be said is that it looks like the latest "British economic miracle" is looking decidedly dodgy. I'm unsure how much this will affect the "neo-liberal" consensus (which is not particularly new or really that liberal)in Westminster. Although I've read and heard economics commentators talk about something that could be as bad as the 1929 Wall Street Crash and its aftermath, in those days there were positive, reasonably worked-out alternatives to casino capitalism being offered worldwide: Keynesian economics and Five Year Plans. Now what is there? To assume that an economic downturn will automatically lead to political radicalisation here or elsewhere in the West is naive beyond belief. In fact, I fear the people who will gain politically in a new slump are the RoRos: the Racially Or Religiously Obsessed.

Rejoining the Greens



I think the need for a positive alternative that isn't all RoRo in the face of economic uncertainty is one big reason why I've rejoined the Greens (well I've sent my cheque off, so I hope my membership etc is in the post!). I joined them back in early 2006, but various personal stuff got in the way of participating fully, and so I dropped out. There was also political stuff too stopping me being a Green. Those who've been reading my blog for a while or have perused through my posts over the last few years may have come across my hope that an English Mutualist Party or a worthwhile Democratic Socialist Party that I could join and support would appear by the time of the next General Election.

I now realise the Greens are going to be the closest approximation to my hope this side of the next General Election and quite possibly a long time afterwards too! It seems that if mutualist, co-operative bottom-up economics which is neither Labourist or Leninist in inspiration is to have a home in English politics it seems the Greens is the best place to nurture it. As for the Democratic Socialism...

Back in September I joined a (Lib Dem-inspired, if my memory is correct) group on Facebook whose name was something along the lines of "Gordon Brown, call a General Election now!" I wanted a General Election last Autumn and a solid Labour majority as I thought it would flush out a lot on the British Left. It would force a major re-alignment, with the Labour Left (At Long F**kin' Last) realising there was no point staying there and the Left outside Labour getting a second chance to build a modest but viable alternative to Labour, along the lines of the Socialist Alliance circa 2000(RIP). I also saw the Greens playing an important role in such a realignment along with other Left-field groups I have time for, including the IWCA and Socialist Party (anyone who can build local pockets of support in working class areas and elect councillors on the back of that deserves serious respect).

Well, we didn't have a General Election, but we did see a certain re-alignment. That is, the SWP and George Galloway wings of Respect went to war with each other. Now we have the SWP's "Left List" (which will get nowhere in the forthcoming London Elections, before the SWP retreats back to its natural home: selling "Socialist Worker" outside student unions) and George's "Respect Renewal" (which will do nothing outside of areas with large Muslim areas). There is a lot of bad blood flowing from this and I can't see Humpty Dumpty getting back together for a long time, if at all. The Labour Left are still there, a triumph of hope over experience. So I've going to stick with the Greens, as the re-alignment will come some point after the next General Election, or we will all hang separately.

Before then...

The London Elections




Pretty obviously I'll vote Green on the constituency and list votes for the GLA and Sian Berry (above) as first choice for Mayor. I plan to spend some of April delivering GP leaflets and literature to the populace.

As for my second choice...I will probably grit my teeth and vote for Ken Livingstone. I voted for Ken in 2000 (when I was in the London Socialist Alliance) but didn't in 2004 (Laura Reid of the IWCA was my number 1, Darren Johnson of the Greens number 2). This time round I was going to leave my second choice blank, but Boris Bloody Johnson as Mayor? I'd rather have Steve Norris, the Tory Mayoral candidate in 00 and 04, as Mayor as at least he had some basic competence. Same with Ken: he ran the GLC from 81 to 86, and has run London for the last 8 years without the place falling apart. Johnson could not run a bath (except as a publicity stunt) to save his life. His life is one big publicity stunt to be frank. If you think Ken embarrasses London, wait until Boris is running the show...



I had thought of having Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem candidate, as my second choice, but I decided that he's too good for them, after their ridiculous behaviour vis a vis...

The European Union



The Lisbon Treaty is basically the same as the EU Constitution which we were promised a referendum on a few years back and which the Dutch and French voted down in 2005. (Please visit the Democracy Movement's website for more details about the Treaty and other EU stuff.) However, we're not to get a referendum, short of a political earthquake. This is in spite of overwhelming public support for such a referendum. No wonder people cannot be bothered to vote any more if their elected representatives ignore their own manifesto pledges!

There were votes in the Commons on a referendum but the Lib Dem official line was to abstain. There was that walk-out of Lib Dem MPs as their new (latest?) leader Nick Clegg (former MEP) demanded a straight Yes or No vote to staying in the EU. This reminds me of Trotskyites demanding a referendum on a "United Socialist States of Europe" and refusing to take a stance on any other vote. I think the Lib Dems will pay heavily for this at the next General Election, particularly in naturally Conservative seats they hold with narrow majorities (particularly in the South West). Purely on narrow electoral grounds it was stupid, as even the most mindlessly pro-EU Lib Dem voters tend to want votes on everything. How this move was supposed to attract Tory voters to the Lib Dems is beyond me. Of course, with "My EU right or wrong" types like Cleggy, the EU should be protected from public scorn.

However, after that anti-Lib Dem rant (and the Government hardly covered themselves in glory. As for the Tories, if you think David Cameron will pull the UK out of the EU, you've got another thing coming) at least Clegg says he would rather go to jail than carry an ID card (although it does somehow remind me of trade union leaders back in the 80s saying they'd rather go to jail than obey the Tories' employment laws- none did!).


ID Cards



After all the thefts and losses of personal details by Government and other official bodies in recent months, and the general consensus that the cost of implementing ID cards will be much more than first estimated by the Government (quelle surprise!), you'd think the Government would want to get shut of the idea ASAP. However, this waste of tax-payers' money will, it seems, be implemented come hell or high water. It seems that it will be foreign nationals and students who will be forced to get ID cards first. I wish I could trust the Tories and Lib Dems when they say they would junk ID card if they took office. Otherwise it will be have to be mass civil disobedience. If you are angry, or merely quietly concerned, about this move towards a police state, please visit No2ID's website. I just wish events by Camden NO2ID group and my free time coincided more!

England Again.



I am trying to write a piece about "What England Means To Me". 800 words or so. The problem is there is potentially so much to say...so that's my excuse Gareth! (who runs the Little Man in a Tocque blog, and who asked me to write this too long ago...)

Anyway, I hope that's made up a bit for lost time. I won't be so tardy from now on!

Piece on the IWCA

As Respect implodes into civil war between its pro-George Galloway and pro-SWP factions (one needs a heart of stone not to laugh), other more deserving of success currents on "the left" will, hopefully, get their chance. One I would like to see get somewhere is the Independent Working Class Association, who I've mentioned before in this blog. The article below I found on their website. I was encouraged that they are prepared to work with the Greens, as I see both parties having a role to play when (not if!) a new realignment of progressive political forces takes place here in the next years. I also noted the quote from a member of Oxford Trades Council on the IWCA:

‘They are not very visible. They don’t come to any trades council meetings. They have a crappy newsletter and haven’t stood up for normal socialist things.’

Perhaps that's the reason the IWCA might get somewhere!

However, with no further ado...


‘Take note of the IWCA’, 2 November 2007
An interesting analysis of the IWCA from independent radical left magazine Red Pepper.

A class act in Oxford: A small left party, pro-working class and anti-multiculturalism, has been winning council seats on Britain’s largest council estate. Zoe Jewell reports.

A giant cheque for £15,000 is proudly propped up against the wall of the Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) councillors’ office at the Oxford City Council town hall. It is a prized libel payment from the Oxford East Labour Party after Labour posted defamatory leaflets to residents in last year’s election campaign. Under the headline ‘Watch out for extremist group’, Bill Baker – Labour’s deputy city council leader – claimed that the IWCA had links to Irish Republicans and violent extremists.

In the otherwise bare office, Stuart Craft and Clare Kent, two of the four IWCA councillors on Oxford City Council, still talk about it now with disbelief. ‘We’ve been called vigilantes, racists, fascists, communist boot boys, everything you could think of,’ says Craft.

The IWCA is a political party that mixes community campaigning with traditional class politics – an interesting combination of far-left ideology and Liberal Focus Team pavement pounding. The white working class, ridiculed as ‘chavs’ by a self-satisfied, middle-class media and whose voice has been largely lost from mainstream politics, need representation – and on a council estate in Oxford, they are getting it.

The IWCA work on the issues that concern local people most –particularly drugs, anti-social behaviour, housing and youth provision. Their innovative answer to anti-social behaviour is community restorative justice, a programme that uses local volunteers to resolve conflict and prevent low-level crime, particularly in areas where the police have lost trust.

They believe youth provision is key to preventing anti-social behaviour. In Oxford, the IWCA councillors have campaigned especially hard against budget cuts to children’s play areas and had motions passed to ensure that money saved from cuts in youth provision is still channelled into the most socially deprived areas.

Breakthrough

Stuart Craft describes the IWCA as ‘a national party with just four local councillors’. But these four Oxford councillors have had considerable impact and illustrate the potential for a leftist version of community politics with an electoral expression. Craft, the leader of the IWCA councillors, was the first to be elected in 2002, [and] was joined two years later by Clare Kent and Lee Cole, and in 2006 by Jane Lacey.

They all represent wards in Blackbird Leys, one of the largest and most socially
depressed council estates in Europe, and the neighbouring estate, Churchill. It is an impressive breakthrough for a party that had no candidates in Oxford before the 2002 election.

According to Craft, what changed in 2002 was merely that ‘a genuine pro-working class party stood. People had the choice. There was nobody representing the working class anymore. If you’re in an area like Blackbird Leys and you see the whole place going to rack and ruin and it’s a result of the action of the political parties, then either you can sit back and be an armchair critic or you can try to do something about it.’ And that’s just what Craft did. He insists that he is merely the leader of a collective party, but his undiluted class politics clearly bolstered the IWCA when he won his seat in 2002.

Craft came to the IWCA from Anti-Fascist Action, but the other three councillors have no organised political background – left or right – whatsoever. The softly spoken Clare Kent explains what inspired her to get involved.

‘I was always a Labour voter up until my children started haranguing me in 2000 about them having nothing to do. So we did a petition. I was invited by the local MP, Andrew Smith, to join the tenants’ association and the area committees. I could not believe how our local Labour councillor would say one thing to the committee and then go and say another thing in the council. Anyway, I phoned up the MP, Andrew Smith, and said, “You’ve got to get rid of this councillor,” and he said, “Oh no, he’s a wonderful councillor.” That finished me with the Labour Party.

At the time, I didn’t know anything about the IWCA, but a friend of mine in Blackbird Leys said I should get in touch with Stuart Craft.’ After a short period of involvement, Kent stood as an IWCA council candidate and was elected. Highly localised and practical politics is what makes the IWCA so effective. ‘We do a lot more ward time on our estates than the other parties, because that’s our reason for existing. Attending council meetings is just the necessary evil really,’ explains Craft. Success in the wards is vital because, in the end, that is what will get them re-elected.

Yet the IWCA are highly principled. Their aim is securing a decent future for the people of their wards and it matters more than anything else to them. Clare Kent describes what she has achieved since 2004. ‘We’ve got play schemes running, the return of the youth club to the estate, and a sports centre is being built.’ But she is also well aware that there is still plenty to do.

Tackling drugs Stuart Craft talks earnestly about the continuing need to tackle drug
dealing on Blackbird Leys. ‘We’ve done everything from community patrols to picketing drug dealers’ doors alongside the residents. The local community centre bar was run by a couple who were harbouring drug dealers. Within months of us campaigning, we forced the closure of the bar and the crack house closed down.

Today, of course, there’s still drug dealing. We haven’t the power to affect national policies, and the drugs are going to be there until the government change their drugs strategy. All we can do is manage the problem.’

‘Recently, the police put out a press release stating that people in Blackbird Leys have said that the quality of life has gone up and they don’t perceive crime as a big problem anymore,’ Craft continues. ‘We attribute that to being directly linked to our efforts.’ The isolation of drug dealers by the community is one of the IWCA policy objectives on drugs.

The IWCA supports the decriminalisation of cannabis, but says that managing the problems of drug use is also of paramount importance. Its manifesto lists among its policy objectives ‘the proper provision of locally based detox centres, the establishment of a social contract with users for the proper disposal of needles, and GPs to be allowed to prescribe heroin in order to administer dosages safely’.

But the IWCA has no real national profile. They aren’t seen on London demos carrying banners and placards – something that most left parties regard as important. Instead they concentrate on their successes in Oxford, seeking to turn them into successes elsewhere.

There have been the signs of a breakthrough in other areas. In Bunhill, a socially deprived ward in Islington, the IWCA claimed 22 per cent of the vote. In May, they contested an election in Thurrock, where the BNP is also looking to win protest votes. Dave Amis, who stood in Thurrock, is upbeat about the vote they achieved, although they only contested one out of the 16 wards and gained 7 per cent. ‘It was the first time round, so quite hard work, but we got a very good base.’

Stuart Craft believes that ‘with a standing start, the IWCA could beat the BNP in working-class areas every time.’ If they could, this would be a significant reversal for the BNP, but as yet neither the IWCA nor the other larger parties to the left of Labour are seriously competing against the BNP at the ballot box.

Against multiculturalism

In defeating the BNP in council elections, Craft identifies the issue of multiculturalism as central. In diverse communities like Thurrock and Blackbird Leys, this would appear the obvious alternative and positive policy. But the IWCA controversially does not take the traditional left position. Instead it argues that any initiatives that privilege one religious or ethnic group over another are unfair and divide the working class.

In Oxford, Labour has branded the IWCA as racist. Craft vehemently denies this and instead claims, ‘I think we’re the only anti-racist organisation on this council.’ This notion is evident in the IWCA manifesto too, which argues that ‘the state funding of social projects purely on the grounds of race can only foster an ‘us and them’ scenario, with the result that instead of being united by anti-racism, the working class can just as easily be divided by it.’

When Craft first became a councillor, he proposed a motion against multicultural youth facility programmes, which he claimed benefited one group above another. ‘The limited resources we’ve got should be spent on facilities that are open to all and nobody should be barred for the colour of their skin. The council didn’t even debate the motion. It’s amazing. Everybody was against it, but nobody could actually explain why.’

Clare Kent adds, ‘On my estate all the young people are talking about this issue and people wonder why we’ve got a British National Party! Nobody’s willing to address this issue.’ Craft is equally incredulous. ‘It’s hardly rocket science, but in the council chamber when we raise this it’s like we’ve come from another planet.

The IWCA and the left

Craft is convinced that the ICWA’s approach will win it votes over the BNP. And he is scathing about other left parties. ‘We see the white working class as our constituency, though not just the white working class. The rest of the left see the white working class as the BNP’s constituency. I think the left drive working-class people into the arms of the fascists, whereas we’re there to coax people the other way.’

For a party that has recorded such a success in Oxford, with the same number of councillors as the far larger Socialist Party and not so many less than George Galloway’s Respect, the rest of the left does seem to wilfully ignore the IWCA.

Pete McClaren, of the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party, admits he knows very little about the IWCA. ‘We have worked with them a bit, but they’re not forthcoming and don’t tend to advertise themselves. They are a bit of a mystery to me.’ Sue Tibbles, a member of the Oxford trades council, is similarly dismissive. ‘They are not very visible. They don’t come to any trades council meetings. They have a crappy newsletter and haven’t stood up for normal socialist things.’

The Oxford IWCA and the local Green Party have had a prickly relationship during their five years on the council together, with the Greens holding eight seats in wards very different demographically to the council estates of Blackbird Leys and Churchill. Matt Sellwood, Oxford Green councillor, admits their tensions were ‘mostly around class. The IWCA assumed that all Greens were middle class and therefore untrustworthy, but now they have come to understand that when we take a progressive stand, we tend to mean it.’

Stuart Craft agrees. ‘The Greens are the only party that are motivated for the right reasons. I’d say, whether we agree with them or not on a policy, they are genuine people and they’re in it because they want to change things.’ The two parties worked together recently on a council motion supporting striking postal workers, but they have nothing like a coalition.

It’s not so much that the IWCA are localists. What really marks them out is that they have given up on the rest of the left. The IWCA was originally founded in 1995 by Red Action, a splinter group from the SWP, but after ten years they have founded their own political positions and style of organisation largely divorced from this background. Craft describes the journey:

‘The Left might turn up on a demonstration, go home and then do nothing for six months. We don’t dance to that leftist tune anymore. We set our own agenda and if we decide that a demonstration we’re holding that day against a prolific drug dealer on the estate is more important than turning up on some march organised in London then that’s our business, isn’t it? I’ve never apologised for that.

‘We don’t really recognise the term left anymore, because looking around I don’t see any of the people that profess to be left or socialist as actually pro-working class. I think it wouldn’t be very clever to hitch up in the short term with a load of groups that don’t actually stand for the working class just to boost our numbers. We’d rather grow slowly, picking up decent members, genuine people.’

It’s a politics of the long haul, which will only work if they can turn small successes into bigger ones. There’s a fierce pride among IWCA members in what they’ve achieved so far on Blackbird Leys, with meagre
resources and absolute commitment.

The terrain of British politics isn’t about to be shaken by an IWCA earthquake, but the IWCA’s success in Oxford at least deserves serious comparison with the relative lack of success by much bigger left challenges to Labour from Respect and the Socialist Party. As the Westminster parties cluster ever closer together, there’s a rumble in the margins from left and right, which has all the signs of getting louder and more troublesome. Take note of the IWCA – it is as good a place as any to start thinking about possible outcomes.

Original article at: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article635.html

Umming and arring over Green stuff.

I have been thinking about rejoining the Greens. However, I read this article by Bjorn Lomborg, the well-known Danish "sceptical environmentalist" and my doubts return. It could well be the case that humanity has passed the point of no return, but if we haven't...?? Perhaps the onset of global warming is to green thought what the collapse of the global capitalism is to socialist thought. It can happen, and perhaps it will, but is it inevitable? What if it doesn't happen?

I procrastinate. I shop at supermarkets, fly aeroplanes and eat meat. I don't want to be a fraud and a hypocrite in the politics I advocate. I wish I had proper answers to all this. Anyway, here's BL's piece..

Sucked dry: While we're misled on the effects of climate change, costly plans to cut emissions are hampering cheaper, effective solutions to problems we face now
Bjorn Lomborg, The Guardian,Wednesday October 17 2007

Nets and medication would have a bigger, faster impact on malaria than implementing the Kyoto protocol for the rest of this century.

We hear a lot from people who argue that we are heading for catastrophe. We also hear from those who maintain climate change is a hoax. Neither of these extremes is right. The Earth is warming, and we are causing it, but that is not the whole story. Predictions of impending disaster don't stack up.

We have become fixated on solving climate change through cuts in carbon emissions and, as a result, we are losing sight of the real problem, ignoring more effective solutions.

The climate models show that the Kyoto protocol would have postponed the effects of global warming by seven days by the end of the century. Even if the US and Australia had signed on and everyone stuck to Kyoto for this entire century, we would postpone the effects of global warming by only five years.

Although there are no certain predictions of climate change's effects, I believe it is best to employ the most widely accepted estimates - those created by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC finds that ocean levels will rise between 0.5ft and 2ft over this century, with the best expectation being about 1ft. That's similar to what the world experienced in the last 150 years.

A 1ft rise in sea level isn't a catastrophe, though it will pose a problem, particularly for small island nations. But very little land was lost when sea levels rose last century, and it costs relatively little to protect the land from rising tides. We can drain wetlands, build levees and divert waterways.

Some individuals and environmental organisations scoff that the IPCC has severely underestimated the melting of glaciers, especially in Greenland. But delegations tend to fly first to the Kangerlussuaq glacier, then change planes to fly to the fastest-moving glacier, Ilulissat, where they declare that they see climate change unfolding before their eyes. They don't stay in Kangerlussuaq, where the glacier is growing, and they don't mention that temperatures in Greenland were higher in 1941 than today.

There are other ways we only hear one side of the story. We are told climate change will cause more heatwaves and therefore more heat-related deaths. That is true. But rising temperatures will also reduce the number of cold spells. This is important because the cold is a much bigger killer than the heat. Globally, it's estimated that by 2050, global warming will cause almost 400,000 more heat-related deaths each year, but 1.8 million fewer people will die from cold.

Drastic cuts

The Kyoto protocol, with its drastic emissions cuts, is not a sensible way to stop people from dying in future heatwaves. If the US and Australia had committed to the pact, it would have set us all back by $180bn each year. At a much lower cost, urban designers and politicians could lower temperatures more effectively by planting trees, adding water features and reducing the amount of asphalt in at-risk cities. Estimates show that this could reduce the peak temperatures in cities by more than 10C.

We also hear a lot about how global warming will increase infectious diseases. It is true that higher temperatures will probably cause about 3% more malaria by the end of the century. But, according to scientific models, implementing the Kyoto protocol for the rest of this century would reduce the malaria risk by just 0.2%.

On the other hand, we could spend $3bn annually - 2% of the protocol's cost - on mosquito nets and medication and cut malaria incidence almost in half within a decade. For every dollar we spend saving one person through climate policies, we could save 36,000 through direct intervention.

Since awareness of global warming started rising, it seems nearly every "extreme weather event" has been blamed on the changing climate. Flooding is probably weakly related to global warming. We should expect more precipitation, but increasing rain does not necessarily increase flooding. Rises happen mostly during autumn when there is generally a much lower flow and little risk of flooding, and rarely in spring, with high flows.

Using the Kyoto protocol, at best we can postpone warming - and flood damage - by five years by the end of the century.

We have other options. We could limit or reduce people and wealth on floodplains, although this would be politically hard. We could inform people better about flood risks, cancel public subsidies to settlements in floodplains, have more stringent public planning, use levees more sparingly, and allow some floodplains to provide buffers for the remaining areas. We could return some areas back to wetlands, which would both decrease flooding and improve environmental quality.

For every pound of UK flood damage we would save through climate change policies, the same resources spent on direct flood policies could save £1,300. If we care about the future victims of flooding, shouldn't we choose to use flood policies first?

Wherever you look, the conclusion is the same: reducing carbon emissions is not the best way to help the world. We do need to fix global warming in the long run. But I'm frustrated at our blinkered focus on policies that won't achieve it.

I think we need to find a smarter way than spending enormous sums of money doing very little good for the planet a hundred years from now.

Focusing resources

The first step is to start focusing our resources on making carbon emissions cuts much easier. The typical cost of cutting a tonne of CO2 is about $20. Yet, according to a wealth of scientific literature, the damage from a tonne of carbon in the atmosphere is about $2. We need to reduce the cost of cutting emissions from $20 a tonne to, say, $2.

The way to achieve this is to dramatically increase spending on research and development of low-carbon energy. Ideally, every nation should commit to spending 0.05% of its gross domestic production exploring non-carbon-emitting energy technologies - be they wind, wave or solar power - or capturing CO2 emissions from power plants. This spending could add up to about $25bn a year, but it would still be seven times cheaper than the Kyoto protocol, yet increase global research and development tenfold. All nations would be involved, but the richer ones would pay the larger share.

Climate change is not the only challenge of the 21st century, and for many other global problems we have low-cost, durable solutions. I formed the Copenhagen Consensus in 2004 so some of the world's top economists could come together to ask not only where we can do good but at what cost, and to rank the best things for the world to do first. The top priorities are dealing with infectious diseases, malnutrition, agricultural research, and first-world access to third-word agriculture. For less than a fifth of Kyoto's price tag, we could tackle all these issues.

Obviously, we should also work on a long-term solution to climate change. If we invest in research and development, we'll do some real good in the long run, rather than just making ourselves feel good today. But embracing the best response to global warming is difficult when sensible dialogue is shut out. So first, we need to cool our debate.

Bjorn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School, is the author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, published by Marshall Cavendish/Cyan (£19.99). To order a copy for £18.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875