A man known only as G will be marking the 10th anniversary this week of being detained without trial by the British state.
"I’ve been here 10 years now, no trial, no charge, no evidence produced to challenge. Me, my wife and children don’t know how long it will take to attain justice and freedom," said G.
G and another man are the only two who remain of the 13 originally picked up in December 2001, following the passing into law of the Anti-terror Crime and Security Act (ATCSA).
The men, mainly Algerian, were taken to Belmarsh Prison, where they were detained. “I was put together with the other detainees. We were kept a minimum of 22 hours in the cell and never saw the sky. I did not see my wife for six months,” recalled G.
In 2004 there was the House of Lords ruling that the ATCSA was unlawful under the Human Rights Act. This resulted in the regime, known as control orders being developed. Detainees were restricted to a house or flat, with stipulations about where they could move in the local geographical location and at what times. Access to phones and the internet were banned. They had to ring the tagging company regularly.
The process that has kept G and others incarcerated over recent years has been overseen by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC). This body operates under immigration law, dealing with cases where national security is in question. It operates with special advocates representing the detainee.
Lawyers for the detainees are not able to see all the material relating to why they are being held. The accused have never been told of what they are accused.
The government has been prevented from deporting the individuals concerned due to the danger that they may face torture or worse in the countries from which they fled. Some though have returned due to the mental torture being imposed by indefinite detention in the UK.
Two men who returned to Algeria were subsequently imprisoned in that country after receiving assurances before they left England.
Another Algerian man, Mustafa Taleb, was originally one of eight people accused of involvement in what became known as the ricin trial, where no ricin was ever found. Arrested in 2003, the case came to court in 2005 when all eight accused were cleared.
Then came the London bombings. A number of the acquitted men were picked up, including Mustafa Taleb, as well as G. They were served with deportation notices on the basis of being national security threats. Since that time these men have been held either in prison or under the house arrest style conditions.
Mustafa Taleb now lives alone, allowed out at set times and only able to move within a restricted area.
One person who has regularly visited him over recent years has been Bruce Kent, who has been appalled at what he has seen. “He has the marks on his body to this day from the torture and the British government want to send him back to the torturers,” said Mr Kent. “It is disgraceful and against British law to go on detaining people without knowing of what they are accused.”
Solicitor Gareth Peirce, who represents a number of the men and formerly represented the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four, sees parallels with the treatment of the Muslims today and the Irish. She claims the lessons of the Troubles have not been learned.
Mrs Peirce believes the Muslim men held in detention have been treated as guinea pigs by the British government to see how far it can push things. “The continuing experiment is dangerous and insidious in more than one way. It has become very clear that when one challenge is overcome the goalposts are moved and a new system comes in,” said Mrs Peirce.
The Troubles provides an important link, suggesting that the whole process of cutting rights at the behest of maintaining security under the aegis of anti-terror law has been a work in process for the past 40 years.
So the Prevention of Terrorism Act was introduced in 1974 following the Birmingham pub bombings. Described as “draconian” by its author, then Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, the PTA brought in seven day detention without charge. This was renewed annually.
Then as the peace process took hold at the close of the century and prior to 9/11, the Terrorism Act 2000 was introduced bringing in 14 day pre-charge detention.
After 9/11, the ATCSA was brought in bringing about the regime of internment with few limits. This has been refined since, with control orders and their successor the terrorism, prevention and investigation measures (Tpims)
The level of pre-charge detention went up to 28 days in 2005 after the Labour Government was defeated over its efforts to get 90 days passed.
So the plight of those individuals who remain detained without trial after ten years remains part of a work in progress. The last decade has simply been an extension of what went before in the Irish context, with the gradual extension of a security state that is accountable to no one. It has grown up in the shadows and Mrs Peirce is right those unfortunate individuals like G, Mustafa Taleb and others have become the guinea pigs for this process. And with the threat of civil unrest on the horizon, with the worsening economic situation, there can be little doubt that the security state will find more willing accomplices in government prepared to extend its powers still further. The big question for the rest of us is when will we say enough and insist that the rule of law is restored for all citizens of this country and that there will be no further detention without trial?
Friday, 23 December 2011
Sunday, 4 December 2011
A fitting tribute to Bishop John Jukes would be to restore the World of Work Committee
The funeral of Bishop John Jukes brought together people from across the church and labour worlds.
An auxiliary bishop in Southwark, Bishop John always kept working people and the social teachings of the Church at the heart of his mission.
Reading the obituaries, it was interesting to hear how he first worked in the civil service, taking on the role as representative at the Inland Revenue Staff Federation National Conference. He then decided to study agriculture at university, which led to him spending a year working on Romney Marsh. It is believed that at this time he became in contact with the Franciscans in Rye, which eventually led to his joining that order.
Later in life, he became chair of the World of Work at the Bishops Conference of England and Wales, where he served for 20 years from 1980.
Bishop John believed that Catholic Social Teaching had much to contribute to the world of work, going back to Rerum Novarum (1891). Indeed, he helped organise a centenary conference in Liverpool to mark this encyclical in 1991.
Each year at the TUC Congress, Bishop John celebrated mass for delegates. In his sermon at St Mary Magdalene's Priory, Brighton, in 1999 he urged Catholics to put gospel values into practice by becoming active members of trade unions. And he urged the TUC to promote ethical values to counter some of the negative effects of globalisation.
Bishop John was prophetic, predicting the injustice for workers of much of what has flowed from globalisation and unregulated markets. The loss of job security; degradation of the human being, individuals or groups forced to work in inhuman conditions.
Reading about how Bishop John shared a platform at a TUC rally in Hyde Park, with National Union of Mineworkers President Arthur Scargill, brings one up short. How far things have slipped since those days?
Earlier this year there was no Catholic Church representation on the platform for the 500,000 strong TUC rally in Hyde Park against the cuts and for an alternative way forward.
The decision of the Bishops Conference of England and Wales to do away with the World of Work committee in 2001 was one of the worst it has made in recent times. The thinking can only have been due to neo-liberal managerialist voices being given too much sway in the decision making process. By this time Bishop John had retired, moving to serve a parish in Scotland.
Those crucial links that Bishop John and those who worked with him at the Bishops Conference had built up with trade unions and business have long since elapsed. As a result the Church was totally caught out when it came to the present economic crisis which is actually all about the world of work.
Had the World of Work Committee still been in place much of the evidence based research would have been there regarding the state of the jobs market, growth, globalisation and the injustice of neo liberal development model.
The bishops would not have been cobbling together committees made up of theologians, MPs and others to get a handle on how it was going to respond to the government’s Big Society agenda.
There would have been a ready voice on subjects like cuts to benefits, the living wage, migrant labour, the trade unions, pensions and worker's rights. The response would have been one based on justice, not a charitable response to help plug the gaps being created by an ongoing voracious neo-liberal market system.
Had Bishop John still been in post he would certainly have had something to say about the wholly unjust attempts of employer organisations to claim they can only be competitive if given even greater freedom to sack people.
The Church desperately needs to restore the function of the World of Work committee, so that it has the authority to speak out on matters in the workplace. Given that most people spend a huge amount of their lives in the workplace, surely the Church should have a credible view on this aspect of life?
If the Bishops Conference of England and Wales wants to mark the passing of Bishop John, then the best thing that could be done is to restore this function of the World of Work to which he gave so much of his life. His passing provides a timely reminder of the expertise that used to reside in this area. The Church needs this expertise in order that it can speak out on all work related matters, after all, are we not all workers in God’s vineyard?
An auxiliary bishop in Southwark, Bishop John always kept working people and the social teachings of the Church at the heart of his mission.
Reading the obituaries, it was interesting to hear how he first worked in the civil service, taking on the role as representative at the Inland Revenue Staff Federation National Conference. He then decided to study agriculture at university, which led to him spending a year working on Romney Marsh. It is believed that at this time he became in contact with the Franciscans in Rye, which eventually led to his joining that order.
Later in life, he became chair of the World of Work at the Bishops Conference of England and Wales, where he served for 20 years from 1980.
Bishop John believed that Catholic Social Teaching had much to contribute to the world of work, going back to Rerum Novarum (1891). Indeed, he helped organise a centenary conference in Liverpool to mark this encyclical in 1991.
Each year at the TUC Congress, Bishop John celebrated mass for delegates. In his sermon at St Mary Magdalene's Priory, Brighton, in 1999 he urged Catholics to put gospel values into practice by becoming active members of trade unions. And he urged the TUC to promote ethical values to counter some of the negative effects of globalisation.
Bishop John was prophetic, predicting the injustice for workers of much of what has flowed from globalisation and unregulated markets. The loss of job security; degradation of the human being, individuals or groups forced to work in inhuman conditions.
Reading about how Bishop John shared a platform at a TUC rally in Hyde Park, with National Union of Mineworkers President Arthur Scargill, brings one up short. How far things have slipped since those days?
Earlier this year there was no Catholic Church representation on the platform for the 500,000 strong TUC rally in Hyde Park against the cuts and for an alternative way forward.
The decision of the Bishops Conference of England and Wales to do away with the World of Work committee in 2001 was one of the worst it has made in recent times. The thinking can only have been due to neo-liberal managerialist voices being given too much sway in the decision making process. By this time Bishop John had retired, moving to serve a parish in Scotland.
Those crucial links that Bishop John and those who worked with him at the Bishops Conference had built up with trade unions and business have long since elapsed. As a result the Church was totally caught out when it came to the present economic crisis which is actually all about the world of work.
Had the World of Work Committee still been in place much of the evidence based research would have been there regarding the state of the jobs market, growth, globalisation and the injustice of neo liberal development model.
The bishops would not have been cobbling together committees made up of theologians, MPs and others to get a handle on how it was going to respond to the government’s Big Society agenda.
There would have been a ready voice on subjects like cuts to benefits, the living wage, migrant labour, the trade unions, pensions and worker's rights. The response would have been one based on justice, not a charitable response to help plug the gaps being created by an ongoing voracious neo-liberal market system.
Had Bishop John still been in post he would certainly have had something to say about the wholly unjust attempts of employer organisations to claim they can only be competitive if given even greater freedom to sack people.
The Church desperately needs to restore the function of the World of Work committee, so that it has the authority to speak out on matters in the workplace. Given that most people spend a huge amount of their lives in the workplace, surely the Church should have a credible view on this aspect of life?
If the Bishops Conference of England and Wales wants to mark the passing of Bishop John, then the best thing that could be done is to restore this function of the World of Work to which he gave so much of his life. His passing provides a timely reminder of the expertise that used to reside in this area. The Church needs this expertise in order that it can speak out on all work related matters, after all, are we not all workers in God’s vineyard?
Coalition Government's attack on working people must be resisted
The extraordinary attack of the Coalition Government on the lives of working people in the UK continues apace. There seems no need to bring in technocrats in the UK to perform to the will of the markets, as has been the case in Italy and Greece, given that the Coalition Government appears to act simply as the slave of capital with almost every move it makes.The first lie to nail is the one that says that the present crisis is all down to the last Labour Government. The myth cultivated by the Coalition Government - with the help of the right wing media. The truth is that the present economic situation is the result of the banking crisis of recent years. The frustration of people is that instead of making the bankers pay for their recklessness, they have instead been bailed out and told to get on with things pretty much as before. As the economy bombs with demand for goods disappearing the Coalition Government continues to bail out the banks. The latest contribution being in the form of £75 billion of quantative easing. This money was handed to the banks to further shore up their balance sheets, when it should have been handed out to the public with stipulations about spending inside a set period of time.While the present crisis in capitalism lurches on with no end in sight, those who own capital have seen the opportunity to dump the cost of the crisis on the workers. The Occupy London Stock Exchange camp outside St Pauls and its counterpart in the US have become so unpopular with the ruling class because they have refocused the agenda on the real cause of the crisis, namely capital and more specifically the banks.At a popular level, particularly in the media, there has been an effort to distract from this central theme by seeking to blame individuals for the crisis. So there has been a focus on benefit cheats, these lest we forget are those fraudulently claiming the likes of disability and unemployment benefits, rather than bankers trousering billions. The complicit role of the media in peddling this stuff can be seen from one simple fact, namely that £20 billion of benefits go unclaimed every year, compared to £1.2 billion lost due to fraud. Who would believe that was the case from the way the benefits issue has been covered over the past couple of years?Another myth we are fed is that everyone is living longer, so pensions have to be changed with workers retiring later and paying more. First, there is the question whether everyone will be living longer. The pre and post war baby boomer generation have lived long lives, due to good diets and the welfare support network put in place by successive Labour and Conservative Governments in the post war period. A major contributor to this improvement was the NHS.Today, some 60 per cent of the population are obese. The welfare support network is rapidly being dismantled to the point where services will only soon once again be available for those able to pay. Given this vista of development, the claim that the present generation will be living longer appears doubtful. Ironically, it will only be if the post 1945 settlement is defended and maintained that people will continue to live longer.There is also ofcourse the massive fiddling of figures that goes on with pensions. The fourth biggest economy in the world can afford to pay pensions. There is a huge surplus of over £50 billion in the National Pension Fund. The argument over public sector pensions also needs recalibrating with a focus on bringing private sector pension provision up to public sector levels, not dragging the latter down to a level that often amounts to virtually nothing. A properly funded state pension is the answers in the long term, not making workers pay more for less.Another area where there has been an effort to make the best out of a good crisis by capital is on the question of removing regulations. This lest anyone forget happened in the banking sector leading onto the crisis. But leaving that blip aside, capital insists for companies to be competitive there must be less protection for workers. It should be easier to sack them and more difficult for workers to access employment tribunals with grievances. What has been amazing is to witness the way so much of the media simply go along with this argument. Whenever there is a discussion on a programme like Newsnight or Question Time, where is the trade union voice? It is usually a combination of government ministers, business voices and then someone from a think tank. This results in a ridiculous circular argument concerning how for instance there can be a reduction in the 240,000 cases that go to employment tribunals every year. The one scenario never discussed is just maybe the employers ought to stop breaking the law and infringing workers basic rights. Maybe it is the employer’s unfitness for their role that should be the focus, rather than how much easier it can be made to exploit workers. This simple explanation rarely enters the media lexicon.This overall assault on working people needs to be exposed. As mentioned earlier the Occupy London has helped focus attention on some of these issues but more needs to be done. The unions were right to strike to protect pensions, it put down a marker that working people are not going to continue picking up the tab for rich people’s avarice. More resistance is needed, particularly if the government moves to legislate to restrict the right to strike even further.Although it seems unlikely that working people would accept such a scenario, if the economic crisis bites deeper and given the one sided nature of most the media then the mood music of fear could be created to legislate away these hard won rights. For an example of a similar work in progress – where liberties were taken away on the basis of a largely unsubstantiated crisis - look no further than anti-terror law and the war on terror. Once the mood music of crisis was worked up to a pitch the populace seemed willing to accept any nonsense no matter how flimsily justified.The present situation represents a real challenge to working people, with a government seemingly totally committed to the interests of capital to the exclusion of all else. The present programme of “reform” amounts to the dismantling of the whole of the post war settlement, including the welfare state, pensions and NHS, that created a better chance for the mass of people. The onslaught can be defeated with a new more just society being established with the common good becoming the binding mantra but there is still a long way to go if such a victory is to be won.
Inspiring women in the struggle
I recently visited Elizabeth Rendall as she lived out her final days at a nursing home in South Woodford.
Elizabeth was propped up in bed with the sun streaming in through the window. She was as full of verve as ever, despite being heavily dosed with morphine due to the pain being caused by the cancer.
She spoke of the work, the need to move onward in striving for justice in the world.
This was typical of Elizabeth, always concerned to work for a better world in line with gospel values right up to her dying day.
I only knew Elizabeth for the past 20 years of her life but she certainly served God fully throughout her time on this earth.
Educated by the Ursuline sisters at St Angela’s in Forest Gate, east London, Elizabeth joined the order when she was 18. She then became a teacher at the nearby Ilford Ursuline school. Finally, she went on to Wimbledon where she was head for nine years.
It was whilst at Ilford Ursuline that Elizabeth taught Kathy Piper, who went on to work for the Catholic Institute for International Relations and later become chair of the Brentwood Justice and Peace Commission. “It was Elizabeth, as my teacher, who taught me to care about social justice as part of faith commitment, at the age of 14. I wonder now how many other people she inspired down the years to become involved,” said Mrs Piper.
Elizabeth then left teaching, working as a sister in a Welsh parish before she decided to leave the Ursulines and take up a role in education and research at CAFOD.
Elizabeth worked for 10 years for CAFOD particularly on its Renewing the Earth campaign. The environment was her real passion, with the destruction being caused by global warming a constant concern to her.
She worked on the environment at local, diocesan and national levels. Elizabeth also worked across faiths, involved with Christian Ecology Link and Operation Noah.
This commitment to the environment was lived out at her funeral which she insisted be conducted by a Columban priest due to that orders work for justice and creation around the world. The mass took place at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in east London, adorned with greenery.
Beyond the environment though Elizabeth was always there supporting the work. She marched against the various wars and supported the multi-faith group Peace and Justice in East London with its work for peace. She also supported the group’s work with the families of those being detained without trial in the UK.
It was in this work that Elizabeth came into contact with another remarkable Catholic woman Sarah Hipperson.
Sarah campaigned against detention without trial but before that she was part of the Greenham Common camp. It was back in the 1980s that Sarah upped and left the leafy London suburb of Wanstead to campaign against nuclear missiles being sited at Greenham Common in Berkshire.
Sarah eventually spent the best part of the next 18 years at Greenham Common, endeavouring to prevent a nuclear armageddon occurring. Then she helped establish a peace garden at the site in order that this particular struggle was not forgotten.
A former justice of the peace Sarah ended up serving several prison sentences for her direct peaceful actions in seeking the removal of the US missiles.
Now in her 1980s, Sarah has returned to Wanstead, where she continues the work for justice.
Another person doing work for justice is Sister Catherine Reily, who has been quietly supporting the Travellers at Dale Farm for the past eight years. She visits the site on a regular basis, supporting the families and helping out where she can. A quiet supporter but another steady witness to gospel values.
Sister Pat Robb has worked for years on behalf of refugees, standing up for human rights. Whenever I see Sister Robb, she always has a cause, some injustice that she wants taken up. A family in trouble a person being mistreated who has already suffered the effects of torture.
These fantastic women should be an inspiration to all in the Church, they’ve worked away really putting gospel values into action.
The institutional church has rarely been supportative of much of the work that these women have done but it is these witnesses to truth and justice that really live out gospel values. They are the true prophets and disciples of Christ in this modern age.
It is the witness of the likes of Elizabeth, Sarah, Catherine and Pat together with many others that sustain the rest of us at difficult times in a Church struggling to find its way in the modern world. These and others continue to battle away in the margins for social justice.
Surely, adopting a more inclusive approach to these and many other women would offer a real way forward for the Church in the 21st century.
Elizabeth was propped up in bed with the sun streaming in through the window. She was as full of verve as ever, despite being heavily dosed with morphine due to the pain being caused by the cancer.
She spoke of the work, the need to move onward in striving for justice in the world.
This was typical of Elizabeth, always concerned to work for a better world in line with gospel values right up to her dying day.
I only knew Elizabeth for the past 20 years of her life but she certainly served God fully throughout her time on this earth.
Educated by the Ursuline sisters at St Angela’s in Forest Gate, east London, Elizabeth joined the order when she was 18. She then became a teacher at the nearby Ilford Ursuline school. Finally, she went on to Wimbledon where she was head for nine years.
It was whilst at Ilford Ursuline that Elizabeth taught Kathy Piper, who went on to work for the Catholic Institute for International Relations and later become chair of the Brentwood Justice and Peace Commission. “It was Elizabeth, as my teacher, who taught me to care about social justice as part of faith commitment, at the age of 14. I wonder now how many other people she inspired down the years to become involved,” said Mrs Piper.
Elizabeth then left teaching, working as a sister in a Welsh parish before she decided to leave the Ursulines and take up a role in education and research at CAFOD.
Elizabeth worked for 10 years for CAFOD particularly on its Renewing the Earth campaign. The environment was her real passion, with the destruction being caused by global warming a constant concern to her.
She worked on the environment at local, diocesan and national levels. Elizabeth also worked across faiths, involved with Christian Ecology Link and Operation Noah.
This commitment to the environment was lived out at her funeral which she insisted be conducted by a Columban priest due to that orders work for justice and creation around the world. The mass took place at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in east London, adorned with greenery.
Beyond the environment though Elizabeth was always there supporting the work. She marched against the various wars and supported the multi-faith group Peace and Justice in East London with its work for peace. She also supported the group’s work with the families of those being detained without trial in the UK.
It was in this work that Elizabeth came into contact with another remarkable Catholic woman Sarah Hipperson.
Sarah campaigned against detention without trial but before that she was part of the Greenham Common camp. It was back in the 1980s that Sarah upped and left the leafy London suburb of Wanstead to campaign against nuclear missiles being sited at Greenham Common in Berkshire.
Sarah eventually spent the best part of the next 18 years at Greenham Common, endeavouring to prevent a nuclear armageddon occurring. Then she helped establish a peace garden at the site in order that this particular struggle was not forgotten.
A former justice of the peace Sarah ended up serving several prison sentences for her direct peaceful actions in seeking the removal of the US missiles.
Now in her 1980s, Sarah has returned to Wanstead, where she continues the work for justice.
Another person doing work for justice is Sister Catherine Reily, who has been quietly supporting the Travellers at Dale Farm for the past eight years. She visits the site on a regular basis, supporting the families and helping out where she can. A quiet supporter but another steady witness to gospel values.
Sister Pat Robb has worked for years on behalf of refugees, standing up for human rights. Whenever I see Sister Robb, she always has a cause, some injustice that she wants taken up. A family in trouble a person being mistreated who has already suffered the effects of torture.
These fantastic women should be an inspiration to all in the Church, they’ve worked away really putting gospel values into action.
The institutional church has rarely been supportative of much of the work that these women have done but it is these witnesses to truth and justice that really live out gospel values. They are the true prophets and disciples of Christ in this modern age.
It is the witness of the likes of Elizabeth, Sarah, Catherine and Pat together with many others that sustain the rest of us at difficult times in a Church struggling to find its way in the modern world. These and others continue to battle away in the margins for social justice.
Surely, adopting a more inclusive approach to these and many other women would offer a real way forward for the Church in the 21st century.
Friday, 18 November 2011
Occupy London protest is symptomatic of a wider call for real change
The protest of the Occupy London activists camped outside St Pauls Cathedral for the past view weeks has focused attention on a central demand for economic justice in the world.
Much of the media attention was drawn initially by the ongoing discourse between the church and the protesters. The cathedral authorities seemed to do a complete 360 degree turn when it comes to the protest.
There was initially some sympathy from the likes of Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser, then closure of the cathedral on some fairly nebulous health and safety grounds. Much was made of the £20,000 a day the cathedral was losing in receipts from the public.
Then the cathedral re-opened but the Church lined up with the Corporation in seeking a High Court order to remove the protesters from the area. Fraser resigned. Then the dean of the Cathedral Graeme Knowles resigned and the church withdrew from any court actions. It then went further practically uniting with the protesters demands by setting up an inquiry headed by investment banker Ken Costa to look at reconnecting the financial with the ethical.
The protest though had it not been for this ongoing disagreement would not have held the attention of the media for anything like the amount of time it did. Those who said the issue of corporate greed and injustice was getting lost, amid the disagreements between cathedral and protesters were wrong. The issues stayed at the top of the news for two weeks because of the dispute and the background international machinations around the Eurozone.
The media coverage made the whole encampment seem far bigger than it actually is. In reality there are around 100 tents taking a relatively small area around the side and partially the front of the cathedral. There is no problem for the general public to walk through the area or go up the cathedral steps.
Another media claim was of the damage being done to nearby shops. Well, there are five shops bordering the encampment: Starbucks, a Marks & Spencers - Simply Food, a camping shop called Blacks and a Natwest Bank. This is also an office entrance. Most of these shops will be profiting from the encampment, not losing trade. The nearby paternoster square, where the Stock Exchange resides, is cordoned off by the police, so the shops there may be losing trade but that is not really down to the protesters.
Another media criticism voiced by Evening Standard columnist Simon Jenkins is that it won’t achieve anything. Well, who knows Mr Jenkins, for some protesting is the only way to have a say.
To date, the failure to protest has seen governments everywhere simply shovelling tax payers money into the coffers of the banks with very little in return. Indeed for the most part the bankers have said thanks very much and continued paying themselves huge bonuses.
The wider question though is do these type of protests work? Visiting the St Pauls site there are the usual suspects, seen at road, anti war and environmental protests over the years.
There is a bohemian atmosphere around, with signs reflecting a national and global outlook. So there are “Greetings for the landless of India and Ektu Parishad” alongside “Sex Workers denied decriminalisation and safety rights” and “Giving to the poor is not enough – restructure so there is no poverty.”
The site is well organised with a clear programme of events, listed at what is called “tent university.” On a day I visited there were campaigners Global Witness on “the dictator and offshore paper trails, monetary justice and the need for effective protest and a session on the history of St Pauls with cathedral guide Ernest Woolmer. In the evening there was a film Battlefield on the Bolivian revolt at La Paz. The group run a paper with a 2,000 print run called the Occupied Times. The latest edition covered what had been going on with the cathedral authorities but included a number of interesting articles on the likes of faith and finance, the end of atomism, feeding the masses and what would Jesus do? Indeed this final call is resonant throughout the protest as it puts the situation of economic injustice today into a Church context.
The Church has been challenged to engage with the issue of ongoing economic injustice, where the mass of hardworking people are being made to pay for the largesse of bankers. So far the Anglican Church appears to have taken the challenge on and reacted positively.
Those who question whether protest works often quote the march of more than one million people against the Iraq war in 2003. This huge turnout they argue was ignored. At face value this was true but that march and a succession of others around the time did have a lasting impact together with other factors on the political system. There have been other protests since, such as in favour of combating climate change, for the living wage and regulation of undocumented workers, against the government’s cuts and the policy of privatising the forests.
The latter very successful campaign was largely carried out on the internet via mass email protest. There are now many different ways to protest, physically on the street or via cyberspace. The importance of peaceful direct action should never be forgotten, with actions like those of Plane Stupid with their occupations of the likes of the roof of the Houses of Parliament in protest at ongoing aviation expansion and resulting pollution.
What the elected politicians need to remember is that over the years all of these protests have been bringing in people from different races, classes and backgrounds. Overall there must be a growing mass of people dissatisfied with how society is being run today.
This amorphous mass at present lacks representation in party political form. All three of the main political parties sit largely on the side of capital and the minority of people who hold most of the wealth. This needs to change, the parties must come to reflect the feelings of this growing mass of discontent.
Failure to respond will result in violence. While the political class did its best to blame the riots in August on individual criminality, they were in reality another form of protest. What started as a peaceful protest about the death in police custody of another black man, grew into something far bigger and more dangerous. Mob rule took over. What politicians should have looked at is why the riots took hold so easily, the tinder ground that once tapped into so easily exploded around people. Whilst much of the rioting was straight mob violence, it was also a response to a polarised society that preaches consumerism and greed as virtues. The rioters had seen bankers, politicians, the police and the media with their noses in the trough, so thought why not the rest of us?
There have been other instances over the years where failure to respond to popular protest has resulted in it taking on other forms and ultimately come to violence. The war in the north of Ireland is one of the best examples, with peaceful protest in the form of the civil rights marches repelled in violent fashion. This in turn led to violence over many years becoming the only way of expressing dissent. In the end, talks began and the peace process is now underway in earnest but there were many lives lost as a result of a totally unnecessary conflict.
It will be interesting to see how those in power in this country respond to the growing protests from groups like Occupy London to the climate change activists to the trade unions striking over cuts to pensions. It is simply not good enough to just bleat out platitudes like we’re all in it together, there needs to be a real rebalancing of society in favour of the common good of all. Until this happens the protests will continue to come thick and fast, with violence more commonplace if those in power continue to cock a deaf ear to their pleas.
Much of the media attention was drawn initially by the ongoing discourse between the church and the protesters. The cathedral authorities seemed to do a complete 360 degree turn when it comes to the protest.
There was initially some sympathy from the likes of Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser, then closure of the cathedral on some fairly nebulous health and safety grounds. Much was made of the £20,000 a day the cathedral was losing in receipts from the public.
Then the cathedral re-opened but the Church lined up with the Corporation in seeking a High Court order to remove the protesters from the area. Fraser resigned. Then the dean of the Cathedral Graeme Knowles resigned and the church withdrew from any court actions. It then went further practically uniting with the protesters demands by setting up an inquiry headed by investment banker Ken Costa to look at reconnecting the financial with the ethical.
The protest though had it not been for this ongoing disagreement would not have held the attention of the media for anything like the amount of time it did. Those who said the issue of corporate greed and injustice was getting lost, amid the disagreements between cathedral and protesters were wrong. The issues stayed at the top of the news for two weeks because of the dispute and the background international machinations around the Eurozone.
The media coverage made the whole encampment seem far bigger than it actually is. In reality there are around 100 tents taking a relatively small area around the side and partially the front of the cathedral. There is no problem for the general public to walk through the area or go up the cathedral steps.
Another media claim was of the damage being done to nearby shops. Well, there are five shops bordering the encampment: Starbucks, a Marks & Spencers - Simply Food, a camping shop called Blacks and a Natwest Bank. This is also an office entrance. Most of these shops will be profiting from the encampment, not losing trade. The nearby paternoster square, where the Stock Exchange resides, is cordoned off by the police, so the shops there may be losing trade but that is not really down to the protesters.
Another media criticism voiced by Evening Standard columnist Simon Jenkins is that it won’t achieve anything. Well, who knows Mr Jenkins, for some protesting is the only way to have a say.
To date, the failure to protest has seen governments everywhere simply shovelling tax payers money into the coffers of the banks with very little in return. Indeed for the most part the bankers have said thanks very much and continued paying themselves huge bonuses.
The wider question though is do these type of protests work? Visiting the St Pauls site there are the usual suspects, seen at road, anti war and environmental protests over the years.
There is a bohemian atmosphere around, with signs reflecting a national and global outlook. So there are “Greetings for the landless of India and Ektu Parishad” alongside “Sex Workers denied decriminalisation and safety rights” and “Giving to the poor is not enough – restructure so there is no poverty.”
The site is well organised with a clear programme of events, listed at what is called “tent university.” On a day I visited there were campaigners Global Witness on “the dictator and offshore paper trails, monetary justice and the need for effective protest and a session on the history of St Pauls with cathedral guide Ernest Woolmer. In the evening there was a film Battlefield on the Bolivian revolt at La Paz. The group run a paper with a 2,000 print run called the Occupied Times. The latest edition covered what had been going on with the cathedral authorities but included a number of interesting articles on the likes of faith and finance, the end of atomism, feeding the masses and what would Jesus do? Indeed this final call is resonant throughout the protest as it puts the situation of economic injustice today into a Church context.
The Church has been challenged to engage with the issue of ongoing economic injustice, where the mass of hardworking people are being made to pay for the largesse of bankers. So far the Anglican Church appears to have taken the challenge on and reacted positively.
Those who question whether protest works often quote the march of more than one million people against the Iraq war in 2003. This huge turnout they argue was ignored. At face value this was true but that march and a succession of others around the time did have a lasting impact together with other factors on the political system. There have been other protests since, such as in favour of combating climate change, for the living wage and regulation of undocumented workers, against the government’s cuts and the policy of privatising the forests.
The latter very successful campaign was largely carried out on the internet via mass email protest. There are now many different ways to protest, physically on the street or via cyberspace. The importance of peaceful direct action should never be forgotten, with actions like those of Plane Stupid with their occupations of the likes of the roof of the Houses of Parliament in protest at ongoing aviation expansion and resulting pollution.
What the elected politicians need to remember is that over the years all of these protests have been bringing in people from different races, classes and backgrounds. Overall there must be a growing mass of people dissatisfied with how society is being run today.
This amorphous mass at present lacks representation in party political form. All three of the main political parties sit largely on the side of capital and the minority of people who hold most of the wealth. This needs to change, the parties must come to reflect the feelings of this growing mass of discontent.
Failure to respond will result in violence. While the political class did its best to blame the riots in August on individual criminality, they were in reality another form of protest. What started as a peaceful protest about the death in police custody of another black man, grew into something far bigger and more dangerous. Mob rule took over. What politicians should have looked at is why the riots took hold so easily, the tinder ground that once tapped into so easily exploded around people. Whilst much of the rioting was straight mob violence, it was also a response to a polarised society that preaches consumerism and greed as virtues. The rioters had seen bankers, politicians, the police and the media with their noses in the trough, so thought why not the rest of us?
There have been other instances over the years where failure to respond to popular protest has resulted in it taking on other forms and ultimately come to violence. The war in the north of Ireland is one of the best examples, with peaceful protest in the form of the civil rights marches repelled in violent fashion. This in turn led to violence over many years becoming the only way of expressing dissent. In the end, talks began and the peace process is now underway in earnest but there were many lives lost as a result of a totally unnecessary conflict.
It will be interesting to see how those in power in this country respond to the growing protests from groups like Occupy London to the climate change activists to the trade unions striking over cuts to pensions. It is simply not good enough to just bleat out platitudes like we’re all in it together, there needs to be a real rebalancing of society in favour of the common good of all. Until this happens the protests will continue to come thick and fast, with violence more commonplace if those in power continue to cock a deaf ear to their pleas.
Treatment of Dale Farm travellers shows an intolerant society getting worse
The site where the Irish Travellers lived at Dale Farm in Essex now has the look of a desolate battlefield.
On a recent day when I visited JVC diggers were completing the devastation, destroying further pathways to what had been a thriving community.
The cleared area has been dug up with huge coffin shaped ditches and deep gullies, supposedly to stop any Travellers getting back on the site. The area is littered with disconnected cables where the electricity supply has been cut off.
The deep religious conviction of the Travellers is in evidence everywhere, as wrecked statues stand piled up in the corner. A small shrine, where the ashes of one Traveller lay buried exists marooned amid a sea of mud.
In the midst of this chaos there are three dwellings still existing. The caravan of a woman with two deaf children and a man with cancer remain.
The Travellers have struggled to get generators from Basildon Council to get supplies back up and running. “The electricity was cut off for three days when the eviction took place,” said mother of four Michelle Sheridan, who confirms that the post is the latest service to be cut off.
Most of the travellers from the illegal site have parked up on the pitches of those living on the adjacent permanent legal site. There are 32 parked in this way.
“The council are now saying we are overcrowding this (legal) site, we need to get out and move on,” said Mrs Sheridan, who tells how the whole area is regularly scanned by a helicopter.
“We are living in muck,” said Mrs Sheridan, who tells how she had so far spent more than £100 going to the launderette in Basildon to clean clothes, now that the facilities for cleaning at the site have been discontinued.
Visiting the Dale Farm site now it appears as though since the media focus moved away the local council no longer feel under any obligation to even give a semblance of treating the Travellers with any respect.
“This is all about getting people off the site, they are doing what they like to people without any respect for human life,” said Sister Catherine Reilly, who has been a regular visitor to the site for the past eight years.
Local resident, Jo Campbell said she was “shocked and horrified that anyone could be left in such conditions.”
“The feeling among the travelling community of total rejection is palpable,” said Mrs Campbell. “I cannot get out of my mind that this is going on where I live.”
Another interesting aside on the day that I visited Dale Farm was the news that Kathleen McCarthy had accepted substantial undisclosed damages over a false claim made in the Sunday People newspaper that she was facing a police investigation over allegations of slavery.
The allegation arose around the time of the Dale Farm eviction, but concerned activities at Toddbury Farm, Bedfordshire, where Mrs McCarthy has relatives, The claims were found to be totally untrue.
A number of people noted the strange timing that saw the story about slavery at the Bedford site surface in the media at the time that Dale Farm eviction was about to take place.
The depressing lesson from events at Dale Farm and elsewhere is the way in which the public order solution has become so easily adopted as the only way forward. And in these cash strapped times, it appears that the cost is no problem.
The estimated cost of clearing the Dale Farm site was put at £18 million. What has this achieved? A number of lives have been destroyed and the problem has literally been shifted onto the adjacent legal site.
The insistence of a number of public figures, including the Catholic Bishop of Brentwood and the Anglican Bishop of Chelmsford, that sites needed to be found for the Travellers to move to before the eviction took place were ignored.
Would the £18 million not have been better spent providing the sites required for not only Dale Farm but other Travellers around the country?
The key to this whole situation resides in restoring the statutory obligation on local councils to provide sites for Travellers. This duty was removed in the mid 1990s.
The removal of the duty resulted in a return to the criminal justice solution. The Travellers moved around the country in a state of perpetual motion. There was no motivation for any local council to provide sites, because to do so when others were not merely made that authority a magnet for all Travellers.
The last Labour Government was moving to resolve the situation, asking local councils to identify potential sites and then move to provide provision. This however has all been reversed by the Coalition Government which appears to have returned to the public order fits all solution.
The public order solution is not limited to the Travellers world. Moves to make it illegal to squat in unoccupied buildings and drive the homeless off the streets is proof of an overall effort to criminalise increasing numbers of the poor.
The efforts to make protest more difficult are further proof of authoritarian tendencies in government.
Those who rely for their world view on the right wing media, which calls for protest to be curtailed and the jack boot of repressive forces to be given ever greater freedom would do well to revisit the 1930s comments of Pastor Martin Niemoller.
Speaking as the Nazis picked off one group after another Niemoller said: “First they came for the communists and I didn’t speak out because I was not a communist, then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak out because I was not a trade unionist, then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me,”
So who now is left to speak for the Dale Farm Travellers and others being picked off by this increasingly authoritarian society?
On a recent day when I visited JVC diggers were completing the devastation, destroying further pathways to what had been a thriving community.
The cleared area has been dug up with huge coffin shaped ditches and deep gullies, supposedly to stop any Travellers getting back on the site. The area is littered with disconnected cables where the electricity supply has been cut off.
The deep religious conviction of the Travellers is in evidence everywhere, as wrecked statues stand piled up in the corner. A small shrine, where the ashes of one Traveller lay buried exists marooned amid a sea of mud.
In the midst of this chaos there are three dwellings still existing. The caravan of a woman with two deaf children and a man with cancer remain.
The Travellers have struggled to get generators from Basildon Council to get supplies back up and running. “The electricity was cut off for three days when the eviction took place,” said mother of four Michelle Sheridan, who confirms that the post is the latest service to be cut off.
Most of the travellers from the illegal site have parked up on the pitches of those living on the adjacent permanent legal site. There are 32 parked in this way.
“The council are now saying we are overcrowding this (legal) site, we need to get out and move on,” said Mrs Sheridan, who tells how the whole area is regularly scanned by a helicopter.
“We are living in muck,” said Mrs Sheridan, who tells how she had so far spent more than £100 going to the launderette in Basildon to clean clothes, now that the facilities for cleaning at the site have been discontinued.
Visiting the Dale Farm site now it appears as though since the media focus moved away the local council no longer feel under any obligation to even give a semblance of treating the Travellers with any respect.
“This is all about getting people off the site, they are doing what they like to people without any respect for human life,” said Sister Catherine Reilly, who has been a regular visitor to the site for the past eight years.
Local resident, Jo Campbell said she was “shocked and horrified that anyone could be left in such conditions.”
“The feeling among the travelling community of total rejection is palpable,” said Mrs Campbell. “I cannot get out of my mind that this is going on where I live.”
Another interesting aside on the day that I visited Dale Farm was the news that Kathleen McCarthy had accepted substantial undisclosed damages over a false claim made in the Sunday People newspaper that she was facing a police investigation over allegations of slavery.
The allegation arose around the time of the Dale Farm eviction, but concerned activities at Toddbury Farm, Bedfordshire, where Mrs McCarthy has relatives, The claims were found to be totally untrue.
A number of people noted the strange timing that saw the story about slavery at the Bedford site surface in the media at the time that Dale Farm eviction was about to take place.
The depressing lesson from events at Dale Farm and elsewhere is the way in which the public order solution has become so easily adopted as the only way forward. And in these cash strapped times, it appears that the cost is no problem.
The estimated cost of clearing the Dale Farm site was put at £18 million. What has this achieved? A number of lives have been destroyed and the problem has literally been shifted onto the adjacent legal site.
The insistence of a number of public figures, including the Catholic Bishop of Brentwood and the Anglican Bishop of Chelmsford, that sites needed to be found for the Travellers to move to before the eviction took place were ignored.
Would the £18 million not have been better spent providing the sites required for not only Dale Farm but other Travellers around the country?
The key to this whole situation resides in restoring the statutory obligation on local councils to provide sites for Travellers. This duty was removed in the mid 1990s.
The removal of the duty resulted in a return to the criminal justice solution. The Travellers moved around the country in a state of perpetual motion. There was no motivation for any local council to provide sites, because to do so when others were not merely made that authority a magnet for all Travellers.
The last Labour Government was moving to resolve the situation, asking local councils to identify potential sites and then move to provide provision. This however has all been reversed by the Coalition Government which appears to have returned to the public order fits all solution.
The public order solution is not limited to the Travellers world. Moves to make it illegal to squat in unoccupied buildings and drive the homeless off the streets is proof of an overall effort to criminalise increasing numbers of the poor.
The efforts to make protest more difficult are further proof of authoritarian tendencies in government.
Those who rely for their world view on the right wing media, which calls for protest to be curtailed and the jack boot of repressive forces to be given ever greater freedom would do well to revisit the 1930s comments of Pastor Martin Niemoller.
Speaking as the Nazis picked off one group after another Niemoller said: “First they came for the communists and I didn’t speak out because I was not a communist, then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak out because I was not a trade unionist, then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me,”
So who now is left to speak for the Dale Farm Travellers and others being picked off by this increasingly authoritarian society?
Sunday, 23 October 2011
Time for Irish community to punch its political weight
The success of the campaign to save the Irish Post showed the power of the Irish community once mobilised into action.
Following the summary closure of the title in August by then owners Thomas Crosbie Holdings, staff and contributors joined together with supporters from the Federation of Irish Societies (FIS) and MPs.
An Early Day Motion was put down in Parliament by stalwart supporter Chris Ruane MP. This quickly gathered over 60 signatures across parties showing the strength of support in Parliament. There were 76 signatures in the end.
A meeting was held in Parliament to launch the Save the Irish Post campaign. The new owner Elgin Loan attended that meeting and must have been impressed with what he saw in terms of the passion and support shown for the paper. The liquidator then took control of the paper and Mr Loan bought it.
Mr Ruane is taking things on further in Parliament, seeking to bring together some media owners with MPs in a new initiative but there are real lessons for the Irish community in this campaign to save the Post.
It has long been a cry of some in the community that it does not punch its weight when it comes to the political stage. A few years ago Labour MP John McDonnell called for all the different organisations working in the Irish community to come together with others to effectively create a slate of political demands. Mr McDonnell compared the piecemeal approach of the community in Britain with the power of the Irish caucus in America, where for example no serious Presidential candidate would run for office without listening closely to what the Irish had to say.
These plans though never really materialised, indeed Mr McDonnell’s suggestions seemed at the time to rather annoy those then running the FIS, who may be considered they were already fulfilling such a role.
The terrain though has now significantly changed. There are massive demands that need to be articulated at political level. The economic downturn is hitting everyone hard but the Irish community has a high number among the most vulnerable groups.
The Irish community has been ageing, so cuts to the NHS, transport provision and pensions will all hit particularly hard. What of fuel poverty and lack of provision for dementia sufferers and carers.
The lack of affordable housing is another factor effecting members of the Irish community here and those coming over for work. The lull in the construction industry itself is hitting Irish employers and workers alike.
Then there are the longstanding needs of representation for Irish prisoners and the travelling community. The Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas and the Irish Traveller Movement have both done excellent work in these respective areas.
Finally, in this quick summary, there are the new emigrants flowing in every day from Ireland once again. This group will have other needs that may not even be recognised yet but need to be met.
So the community has many needs that must be heard at the top political tables up and down the land. What the campaign to save the Irish Post shows is that the community has the potential to develop a louder voice in the political arena.
The FIS has become a much more voluble body since the excellent Jennie McShannon took over as chief executive. It proved its advocacy credentials earlier this year with the effective census campaign to get Irish people registering their ethnicity.
Previously, there had been mobilisation to oppose proposals being put forward by Lord Peter Goldsmith that would have detrimentally effected Irish people’s rights to citizenship.
In Parliament, the mantle of leading the Irish caucus seems to be being taken on by Mr Ruane, who is part of the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly.
So there is a momentum gathering toward getting Irish issues heard more clearly in the political arena. There may though need to be some changes of approach in political tactics.
The Irish have traditionally been the bedrock of the Labour Party. Irish people have remained loyal through both thick and thin during the parties periods both in and out of government. The Labour Party has been good for the community. As the EDM to save the Irish Post proved there is strong Irish representation among MPs, but is there not a danger of the community being taken for granted by the Labour Party? Surely, links need to be strengthened with the other parties, particularly at this time when Labour is out of government at so many different levels across the country. Again the support for the Post campaign proved that not all of the other parties are hostile to all things Irish.
Then there is Ireland itself, maybe sometimes the Diaspora in Britain might look to parties like Sinn Fein for a little support in attaining some of its own demands, rather than it being a one way street. This is not ofcourse to downplay the historical context of Britain’s role as the partitoner of Ireland and occupying power.
These are all things for consideration in a wider debate in the community about how best its demands can be taken forward in the political sphere. The campaign to save the Irish Post is the latest in a proud tradition of the Irish community standing up for its rights, from the miscarriage of justice campaigns to the more recent census initiative. What these campaigns prove is just how effective a political player the community can be once mobilised. The challenge now in moving forward is how we build on these excellent roots
Following the summary closure of the title in August by then owners Thomas Crosbie Holdings, staff and contributors joined together with supporters from the Federation of Irish Societies (FIS) and MPs.
An Early Day Motion was put down in Parliament by stalwart supporter Chris Ruane MP. This quickly gathered over 60 signatures across parties showing the strength of support in Parliament. There were 76 signatures in the end.
A meeting was held in Parliament to launch the Save the Irish Post campaign. The new owner Elgin Loan attended that meeting and must have been impressed with what he saw in terms of the passion and support shown for the paper. The liquidator then took control of the paper and Mr Loan bought it.
Mr Ruane is taking things on further in Parliament, seeking to bring together some media owners with MPs in a new initiative but there are real lessons for the Irish community in this campaign to save the Post.
It has long been a cry of some in the community that it does not punch its weight when it comes to the political stage. A few years ago Labour MP John McDonnell called for all the different organisations working in the Irish community to come together with others to effectively create a slate of political demands. Mr McDonnell compared the piecemeal approach of the community in Britain with the power of the Irish caucus in America, where for example no serious Presidential candidate would run for office without listening closely to what the Irish had to say.
These plans though never really materialised, indeed Mr McDonnell’s suggestions seemed at the time to rather annoy those then running the FIS, who may be considered they were already fulfilling such a role.
The terrain though has now significantly changed. There are massive demands that need to be articulated at political level. The economic downturn is hitting everyone hard but the Irish community has a high number among the most vulnerable groups.
The Irish community has been ageing, so cuts to the NHS, transport provision and pensions will all hit particularly hard. What of fuel poverty and lack of provision for dementia sufferers and carers.
The lack of affordable housing is another factor effecting members of the Irish community here and those coming over for work. The lull in the construction industry itself is hitting Irish employers and workers alike.
Then there are the longstanding needs of representation for Irish prisoners and the travelling community. The Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas and the Irish Traveller Movement have both done excellent work in these respective areas.
Finally, in this quick summary, there are the new emigrants flowing in every day from Ireland once again. This group will have other needs that may not even be recognised yet but need to be met.
So the community has many needs that must be heard at the top political tables up and down the land. What the campaign to save the Irish Post shows is that the community has the potential to develop a louder voice in the political arena.
The FIS has become a much more voluble body since the excellent Jennie McShannon took over as chief executive. It proved its advocacy credentials earlier this year with the effective census campaign to get Irish people registering their ethnicity.
Previously, there had been mobilisation to oppose proposals being put forward by Lord Peter Goldsmith that would have detrimentally effected Irish people’s rights to citizenship.
In Parliament, the mantle of leading the Irish caucus seems to be being taken on by Mr Ruane, who is part of the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly.
So there is a momentum gathering toward getting Irish issues heard more clearly in the political arena. There may though need to be some changes of approach in political tactics.
The Irish have traditionally been the bedrock of the Labour Party. Irish people have remained loyal through both thick and thin during the parties periods both in and out of government. The Labour Party has been good for the community. As the EDM to save the Irish Post proved there is strong Irish representation among MPs, but is there not a danger of the community being taken for granted by the Labour Party? Surely, links need to be strengthened with the other parties, particularly at this time when Labour is out of government at so many different levels across the country. Again the support for the Post campaign proved that not all of the other parties are hostile to all things Irish.
Then there is Ireland itself, maybe sometimes the Diaspora in Britain might look to parties like Sinn Fein for a little support in attaining some of its own demands, rather than it being a one way street. This is not ofcourse to downplay the historical context of Britain’s role as the partitoner of Ireland and occupying power.
These are all things for consideration in a wider debate in the community about how best its demands can be taken forward in the political sphere. The campaign to save the Irish Post is the latest in a proud tradition of the Irish community standing up for its rights, from the miscarriage of justice campaigns to the more recent census initiative. What these campaigns prove is just how effective a political player the community can be once mobilised. The challenge now in moving forward is how we build on these excellent roots
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