Brighton Green Councillors and the Cuts

What really happened in Brighton on Feb 23rd

Many Greens are clearly dismayed that Brighton Green councillors decided not to resign from the leadership of the city and voted for a ‘cuts’ budget.

Let’s be clear what happened - 22 out of 23 of them voted to accept the budget after Labour and Tories combined on an amendment to reject the Green proposal to raise Council tax by 3.5% in order to avoid cuts. The thinking behind this rise was that Eric Pickles’ ‘bribe’ to induce councils not to raise tax is only for one year, so that much bigger increases will be needed later to avoid major cuts from April 2013 onwards. However the amendment put the Green group between a rock and a hard place. Several, according to one report 12, Green councillors had said 48 hours earlier that they would vote against the amended budget and local Green MP Caroline Lucas also said publicly that voting to accept it was a mistake.

The effect of the amended budget with no tax rise is; £1.2 million cuts THIS year (to make up for the lack of extra tax revenue despite the Pickles money) and £3.6 or £3.7 million NEXT year – that’s compared to the budget the Greens wanted. In terms of costs per Brighton household, the tax increase would have been 57p per tax bill per week – not a fortune, unless you’re on benefits when you shouldn’t be paying it anyway. ((see http://www.jasonkitcat.com/tag/brighton/, Nov. 7 entry)
The Brighton Green group (see press release at www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=c1261195...med and media coverage at http://newsfrombrighton.co.uk/brighton-hove-city-council/live-brighton-hove-budget-setting-meeting/ ) can still claim credit for having, so far at least, avoided compulsory redundancies and mainly preserved frontline services, though with some casualties due to the no-tax-rise amendment. Jason Kitcat, Green group leader, says on www.jasonkitcat.com that the amendment ‘slashed funding for our sustainability team, cut funding for training staff, reduced council communications with residents, cut funding for bringing private empty homes back into use whilst adding an additional £3.6m cut to next year’s budget’
Apparently the cuts also include some music teaching in schools. Green Left people at conference doubted whether redundancies could now be avoided, though no clear details have so far emerged.

What does this mean for the Green Party and anti-cuts campaigning ?

Those within the Green Party who have been backing a ‘no cuts’ line within the national Coalition of Resistance, and taken a prominent role in that organisation, are outraged and embarrassed by what they consider a betrayal of principle. They ask, can the Green Party hold up its head now in the anti-austerity movement ? And in Haringey, what can we say to the HAPs (local cuts campaign) people who will wonder what we are up to ?

Firstly, many Greens, including locally in Haringey, never did say ‘no cuts at all’. We wanted a creative and service-protective, job-protective local response to central government’s cuts. This might include energy saving, transport saving, and spending from reserves, as well as cutting wasteful expenditure where we can find some. In most councils there is scope for energy saving and in many, including Haringey, there are spendable reserves. Brighton apparently has little reserves and have probably done what they can on the energy front.

What Greens can do now – in Brighton

Secondly, Brighton has a chance to do things which are NOT in the annual budget – they can in principle institute certain changes at any time – and to work for creative solutions for next year when they need to find much more money to avoid cuts than they do this year. These might include, I would suggest:-

• Raising parking charges for tourists, with exemptions for residents’ vehicles showing a ‘cheap parking’ badge that they could send out withe the council tax demand. (Westminster can decide to sting visitors at any time – why not Brighton?). Offended hotels could be given a chance to buy cheap tickets for their guests. Ask the railway companies, who will make extra from these measures, to provide free advertising and funds for signage.
• Set up a community trust to support services for vulnerable people and children which are at risk, and ask both residents to contribute what they would have paid if the Council tax increase had gone ahead. According to a local Tory survey, over a third of the population DID support the tax rise.
• Establish a local lottery to support vulnerable people’s services and local schools – the Isle of Wight (see http://www.isleofwightlottery.com/about-us/ ) did this years ago and made a lot of money to support local jobs

What Greens can do now - nationally

Howard Thorpe, in a valuable piece on http://capitalism-creates-poverty.blogspot.com/2012/02/green-party-must-not-repeat-mistakes-of.html
(thanks Howard!) makes some further good suggestions to Brighton Greens and to the national party:-

1. host a national anti-cuts conference be to explore alternatives to austerity , inviting as many councils and groups as possible.

2. explore every avenue possible for a radical party to alleviate the damage done by the cuts and raise revenue to fund services. This could include issuing local bonds and setting up a local currency

3. hold a referendum in the autumn for a greater than 3.5% council tax rise and explain to the people of Brighton that this is necessary because of the cynical actions of Labour and the Tories, and essential to help maintain services, and resign if they lose it


Haste makes bad decisions

Within the Green Party, the issue became very emotive at the conference that finishes today in Liverpool, and some were further outraged that conference refused to discuss the Green Left emergency motion criticising Brighton Green councillors. Speculation is rife about why the conference floor voted not to debate it. Personally, I think that if that debate had taken place, it would have been poorly informed and even more divisive. Brighton Council met on Thursday evening 23 February; conference began the following day and most participants had little knowledge of what had happened – people pay little attention to the media when they are travelling and debating non-stop, and in any case the details only began to come out on web sites over the weekend. A well-attended and highly charged Green Left-organised session on Saturday evening heard Alex Phillips, the only Green councillor who voted against the amended budget, describe how rushed and difficult the decision itself had been, with the opposition amendments only known at 5.30pm on Tuesday. Surely the Brighton group needs time to think and a bit of creative advice from their friends. Jon Essex (Surrey) called for creative forms of resistence – like asking the banks to bail out Brighton. It’s Bank of Ideas time and with the bulk of the problem – the £3.7million cuts needed in 2012/13 – falling next year, there IS a space to think.

Released from Israeli jail

Well I spent yesterday trying to chill out after a rather expensive long weekend in an Israeli jail. I guess most people already heard that from the media reports - if not check out http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk (see item; welcome-to-palestine-israel-arrests-jails-and-expels-internationals-en-route-to-bethlehem)

The plan originally was to spend a week with various Palestinian NGOs as part of a deliberate challenge to the Israelis' constant attempts to prevent people visiting the West Bank for any kind of political or cultural dialogue with Palestinian people. If people say they are Christian pilgrims or that they have come as 'innocent' tourists with a hotel booking, the border authorities will probably let them through passport control. But if you're on a human rights fact-finding tour, or a town twinning visit, let alone any kind of volunteering mission, you are very likely to waste your air fare unless you conceal the real motives for your trip. I did this twice. The first time in 1989, when this 'tourist' visited the West Bank talking to prisoners' support groups, advice centres, and so on with a group of (mainly Jewish) lawyers who later founded Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights. The second time I was a volunteer English teacher for a few weeks, after a visit to my former art teacher now living in Jordan, and again presented myself at the Allenby Bridge as a 'tourist'. The third time, July 8 2011 at about 3.45pm, I had the following interesting conversation with passport control:-


First passport official; why have you come to Israel ?
Anne: to go to Bethlehem to visit Palestinian friends.
Official; Are you going to the conference ?
Anne; What conference is that ?
Official; stand aside.
Second official; Where are you going?
Anne; Bethlehem
Second official: where will you stay and what will you do ?
Anne: I have an invitation to visit the Al Rowwad arts centre - it's a theatre, arts and educational centre,with various children’s projects. They will arrange accommodation.
Second official (indicating waiting room);go in there please .

That was enough to get me four days in jail, and as I learnt only after being put on a plane back to Luton, an 'access denied' stamp in my passport.

After an hour, there was another bigger waiting room, EXCLUSIVELY for the 40-50 people (many French) who had arrived that afternoon to join the Bethlehem trip organised by several Palestinian NGOs (see http://www.palestinejn.org). There was no further questioning at all, not like they usually do if they are seriously considering your request for an entry visa. Just waiting, until after about two hours the border police boss said he wanted to take us to a 'hotel' one by one. I instantly had a feeling that this would be more like Harmondsworth than the Hilton. Our passports were visible in a pile, each with some kind of dossier attached. But we weren't getting them back, and if we wanted to go to the toilet, it was with a police escort. Eventually 23 uniformed men, some army, entered the room and grabbed the first person to drag him out - a French guy who looked of Algerian parentage. We linked arms to protect each other and stay upright. But several people didn't and got bruised as people, hard chairs and luggage all fell about in chaos. Eventually we all filed out and were led downstairs to the toilets, hand luggage searched, patted down, chivvied out to a waiting vehicle. No explanation at all. No chance to say anything. Some people, mainly men, got handcuffed - starting with a brave Scot who shouted, as one of the soldiers got up on a desk with a video camera; 'this is all a put-up job so they can show the media WE are being violent'. Which we certainly weren't! It was all them.

The vehicle might be called the Black Hole of Ben Gurion. We sat in it from shortly after sunset -maybe 8.30 at the latest? - until well after 11. It was all metal and had been sitting in the sun with the fan off, at least 30 celsius inside. Twenty eight women in 23 hard metal seats. The men, and the last four women, were in little box-like compartments, some handcuffed - see photo on
http://www.swanseapalestine.org , look for 'more uk citizens to be released tonight'. After an hour, they turned the fan on intermittently, but kept turning it off as it was clearly linked to the cattle-truck battery. A bit later we banged on the doors and shouted for water. They brought 2 litres for 28 women. (We might have had the odd bottle in our hand luggage but they had taken that away.)

Dehydrated and very hungry, we finally got to the Giv'on prison after midnight. Another couple of hours of waiting with hardly any access to our hand baggage. We could see it in a corner with a guard standing over it. They brought a water urn, a box of apples and a few take-away-like containers of rice and chicken, enough for only one between 2 or 3 women. We were searched again and phones, cameras, money, belts and so forth confiscated for the prison safe. Finally to bed in cells with 6 bunks each, a stinking squat toilet cubicle and filthy floor, and lock down till the British consul arrived to see us at 9 am.

Well treated, claimed the Israeli press releases. Well if you call it that, with about 3 hours in the exercise yard over 4 days, and locked in the cells (so that we couldn't even move around the corridor)for about 16-17 hours each day. I'll grant the Israelis could teach HM Prisons (whose catering I fortunately never suffered) a thing or two about food - with raw peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, apples and yoghourt even a fussy veggie like me didn't complain. Though by 10 am Saturday, having had a few spoons of rice and two apples since landing, I was like a wolf and barely wanted to say hello to my French cellmate till I had eaten breakfast. Horrifying what jail does to life's small courtesies - I kept thinking of a certain Primo Levi novel.

The legal (or any other basis) for our detention remained a mystery. Our consul reckoned at first we would get a deportation notice, our Palestinian lawyer (working pro bono for I think the Red Crescent)said there was a right of appeal, but it rarely got anywhere. Later the story was we were 'in another dimension' as one prison official put it, or 'in transit' as the consul was told. So we didn't have the rights even of immigration detainees pending deportation - who according to the notice in the corridor, could have cellphones and money with them, and a right to a court hearing. We clamoured for permission to make one phone call, but got it only by Monday.

The men's block was incommunicado from us until 4pm Monday, when all the UK citizens met with a British consular representative. Only then did we learn from the men about three important developments:
1. On Monday morning the men had started a hunger strike, demanding an explanation for why they were detained -- though they never received an official explanation.
2. On Sunday evening they had been told they would be allowed to make phone calls on Monday morning, but then this offer was restricted to those who would eat -- i.e. break the hunger strike.
3. On Saturday afternoon a couple Israeli border officials visited the prison to offer that the over-55s could go to Bethlehem if they signed a document saying they would not approach zones where there was conflict with the Army -- e.g. Bi'lin, Silwan, Jayous, etc. After much discussion, the older men agreed to accept the travel restrictions -- if the offer was extended to all the men, regardless of age. They made that proposal to the border officials, who gave no response.

Why the age limit? It was probably a proxy for 'We do not want these young Arabs in our country on any terms', since most of the French and Belgian youths were of North African descent. By analogy, in 2009 Israeli ruled that only the under-15s and the over-50s males could go pray in Al Aqsa during Ramadhan and for a few weeks afterwards. Insidiously, age was being used as a marker for ethnicity. The border officials' offer aimed to instrumentalise the older men to isolate and stigmatise the younger ones.
On Tuesday we were locked in cells most of the time and called out in twos and threes to get ready for the airport. The Luton flight was the last - all accepted it except for four brave Welsh women who wanted to have a go at an appeal, but they never got it. They are now back - see http://www.swanseapalestine.org/2011/07/bbc-welsh-palestinian-activists-put-on.html for their story.

And a wonderful welcome at Luton from several of my friends and local Green party people who had come out at midnight to meet us. Thanks everybody!

Was it worth it ? The Palestinians who had invited us thought so. It's highlighted how impossible is the cultural and political future of a country where if you leave, you may not be allowed back in, and if you have visitors, they may be arrested. Rather like a giant prison, in fact. Activities that would support any peace process like educational and cultural exchanges, town twinning visits, aid and human rights work are all made far more difficult by these kind of restrictive immigration practices. Since the Israelis won't say if they will let you in till you get to the airport, they're not even really immigration 'rules'.

Should people feel sorry for us ? Probably the people to feel sorry for are the Palestinians themselves. When they go to jail, it's often for weeks, months or years of arbitary detention with no trial, or a perfunctory military court, and quite a few beatings attached. And all over the West Bank, there are constant attacks on unarmed civilians with tear gas, rubber and plastic bullets and sometimes live ammo, sometimes against people who throw stones but very often against people who have done nothing violent at all. Even during the time we were in jail, some horrendous things were going on; see for example
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14134711

The Palestinian academic who coordinated the 8th July 'Welcome to Palestine' week, Mazyn Qumsiyeh, is sure that non-violent resistence is the key to advancing the Palestinian cause. Look at the web site, http://www.qumsiyeh.org/
and do read his books. They will inspire you, as they did me.

An unfair election - we need PR!

Our broken ‘first past the post’ system has failed to deliver the Parliament people dared to hope for.

The breakdown:
Tories 36% of vote, 47% of the seats.
Labour 29%of vote, 40 % of the seats.
Lib Dem; 23% of vote, 9% of the seats.
Greens – 8.7% of the vote when it’s PR like in the Euro elections, only 1% in the general election 2010, and only one MP out of 650!




See http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/05/07/low-hanging-fruit-2/
for a great article about the need to campaign now for proportional representation, by George Monbiot. Now is the time!


See http://www.power2010.org.uk/page/s/powerpledge and sign the petition for a fair voting system!

You can also print out a window poster to replace the green, red, or yellow one you're about to put in the bin.

See http://fightpastthepost.co.uk/#posters for a downloadable poster demanding voting reform.

If you want a slightly different 'editable' version just copy and paste the following and change the words and typeface as you wish:-

DEMAND ELECTORAL REFORM NOW

WE WANT PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION – DEMOCRACY
NOT A HORSE RACE!

After the election, what next ?

For those of you who haven’t heard already, the Green Party’s success in getting its first MP (Caroline Lucas, who won Brighton Pavilion from Labour) was matched by a battering elsewhere. It was just not an election for smaller parties, with most people who are not Cameron supporters desperate to keep the Tories out. The huge turnout favoured either red or blue and meant Greens found it much harder to meet the 5% threshold needed to keep our deposits. In Tottenham, Lammy’s Labour majority increased substantially and I got a mere 980 votes, compared to the 2035 needed to make 5%. The previous Green candidate, Pete McAskie, got 1457 votes in 2005 when (because of lower turnout) only 1583 votes would have been needed to keep the deposit. There were similar falls in the Green vote in Hornsey and Wood Green, and almost everywhere except Brighton, so that in seven London constituencies where we kept the deposit in 2005, we lost it this time. So at £500 a time this is going to be an expensive election for the Greens!

The count was dramatic and exhausting – it went on all night at Alexandra Palace. The Parliamentary result was anounced at about 6.30am, and the local elections even later. It was the first time a Parliamentary election had been held on the same day as a local one, and the huge turnout - so high there were big queues at some polling stations - meant far more votes to count than usual. You have to hand it to the team of over well over a hundred Council workers who sat sorting and counting ballot papers from before 11pm till the next morning. They had only one snack break and in some cases they had already worked all day at the polling stations. So if you wanted some Council service today Friday and didn’t get much joy from the telephone lines, it was probably because a lot of staff had gone home to sleep. But the manual counting system is so much better than the voting machines used in the USA and elsewhere – there is no chance of invisible machine error, the counting teams are extremely thorough and careful, and the candidates can walk around and see exactly what is going on.

The unforgiveable thing is that some people in Hackney and in northern cities couldn’t vote because the queues were still waiting when the polling stations closed at 10pm. And very sad too that over 200 people lost their vote because they spoilt their ballot paper – mostly because they confused the two kinds of election and the two different ballot papers. They voted for three people on the Parliament paper, instead of one. They didn’t realise the ‘choose three candidates’ system was for the local Council paper. Having two ballot papers with different systems both on the same day might have been confusing enough for people who have always lived here – but for the many Tottenham voters who grew up in other countries with quite different electoral systems, it was especially confusing. It suggests that both officials and parties need to do a lot more to explain to people how the voting system works.

It was a big disappointment that we still have no Green councillors in Haringey, after Green supporters had put in so much work over the last few months.

However, one of the most important things about the election campaign is that it brought people together in the community and got them talking, got ‘political’ and ‘non-political’ people to talk to each other in ways which rarely happen between times. There is a lot more to say about the experiences and lessons of the last few weeks, and the discussions that now need to carry on. I’ll blog some more about that in a day or two when I’ve caught up on sleep!

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who voted Green and helped with the campaign.

Why's nobody talking about war ?

Watching the ‘leaders’ debate’ on TV this week, I was struck by four yawning gaps in the agenda. Worse, they were the things I most care about. One, Britain is at war, and nobody in the programme seemed to be talking about that except for a question about army equipment – reasonable enough to ask if soldiers have the right equipment to stay alive, but ducking the bigger question of whether British occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan is justified. Two, the world’s leaders miserably failed to get a decent treaty to restrict climate change in Copenhagen, and did anyone on the programme care or even mention it ? Three, nothing about the erosion of civil liberties during the ‘war on terror’ or the steady crumbling of democracy under New Labour. Four, there are almost two and a half million unemployed in the UK and nobody seemed to care about them. I’ll say more about each of these issues in the next few days, but let’s start with number one, Blair’s wars.

In Afghanistan, around 7000 to 9000 civilians have been killed by NATO forces. President Karzai has repeatedly complained of the cruel and indiscriminate nature of these military operations. Several military commanders have questioned whether the ‘mission’ serves any real purpose. Its original target, Bin Laden, may not even be in Afghanistan any more. Did anyone in the leaders’ debate show any signs they really cared about what our country is doing to Afghans ?

In Iraq, civilian casualties due to the occupation run to dozens of thousands; the economy and infrastructure has been wrecked, civil society torn apart and a legacy of disease, poverty and mental trauma will haunt the country for decades. It’s a sure sign of the poverty of democracy in this country that the Blair government carried on with its aggression after a million or was it two million of us came onto the streets to tell them NO.

And whilst potential future prime ministers bicker interminably about a small rise in National Insurance, these wars are STILL costing the UK taxpayer billions of pounds a year.

Blair always denied that 7/7 had anything to do with his foreign policy. All the evidence was to the contrary. A society that engages in this sort of aggression and destruction degrades itself, its reputation and whatever capacity it had to unite around democratic values. There are some striking parallels between British militarism under Blair and American militarism in Vietnam, and who better to comment on that than Martin Luther King. Here are some extracts from a speech he gave in 1967:-

They must see Americans as strange liberators. ….They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one “Vietcong”-inflicted injury. …

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. ….We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators?

I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken…This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

“Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. . .

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.”…. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

The Green Party manifesto is pretty strong on getting out of Afghanistan, leaving NATO, and downsizing military budgets. As well as putting forward an international perspective on fair trade, more aid and cancellation of poor countries’ debt. So if that’s what you want, don’t say there’s nobody sensible to vote for. Give us a chance.

Introducing Anne Gray (amg65amg@googlemail.com)

Preface....this is the post I started with before the 2010 election. This blog will be updated with new posts soon about my forthcoming travels...watch this space.

Having lived in Tottenham since 1983, I am shortly to stand for the Green Party in the general election. So it won't be the last time you see this woolly hat in the next while. Recognise the lady I'm with on the right ? Jean Lambert, our Green MEP - it was at the recent Newroz celebration in Finsbury Park.

I support the Green Party because it stands up for social justice. Getting something done about climate change is an important part of that, because the floods, droughts and storms associated with climate disruption hit the poor hardest, from New Orleans to Bangladesh and in flooded British towns as well. But the Green Party’s policies are about much more than the environment – it’s the party that stands for taxing the rich to sort out the national budget crisis, rather than slashing services for the poor, and it’s the party which opposes handing over parts of our precious public services to be run by big companies for profit.

Before I retired in 2008, I spent several years in social policy research, at London South Bank University and before that in research consultancy. (See below for some examples of my writing) Giving up paid work has offered me time to do many other things. Locally I’m active in Sustainable Haringey and I was co-founder of the Tottenham Food Coop. I also help to run a big allotment site at Tottenham Hale. I’ve also been working with the local campaigns against health cuts - to save the Whittington Hospital A&E and challenge health service privatisation.

For several years I have also been active in the struggle to preserve civil liberties, opposing ‘stop and search’ practices and the various forms of punishment without trial associated with anti-terrorism measures.

International solidarity has always been a big thing for me, ever since I spent much time at university collecting funds for War on Want. I worked as a ‘cooperante’ in Mozambique for three years, in the early 1980s when a post-independence skills shortage hit their civil service. Last year I spent a few weeks helping out with English classes at a community centre in the West Bank.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting here comments on current political issues and events. Keep an eye on this site and don't forget to use your vote - both in the local and the national elections!

By the way you can e-mail me at amg65amg@googlemail.com

(Some examples of my publications; see
http://www.plutobooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9780745320328& or http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=278655 , or
http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/3/gray.html )