From persuasion to coercion...

I wrote about UKUncut, the intimidation of protesters, and what that says about the government's confidence in its own spending plans, in the Independent today. Read it here.

An 'I'm Blogging This' moment.

So there I am at the gates of Downing Street, at around 3pm this afternoon, with a moderately raucous throng of people in purple demanding 'Fair Votes Now.' We're here to hand in a petition as thick as a man's thigh, demanding a referendum on proportional representation.

And it's all got a bit noisy and spontaneous, in a shufflingly British sort of way, and I've managed to end up at the front of the line, just behind all the people with the huge cameras, who are always there at protests in London but don't really count. This is the closest I've ever been to Number Ten and aha, here come the vans.

Three riot vans screech up and police in yellow jackets pour out of the hatches like predatory lymphocytes to sterilise the dissent. They stream into formation and edge us back from the gates, politely for now, but extremely firmly. One young policeperson's face is really close to mine as he shuffles us unseeingly back, and suddenly hey, I bloody know you, officer.

Last time I saw Officer X, he was wearing my underwear and a red velvet corset.

This was about three years ago, at a photoshoot for Genet studio show we were both involved in, in which I played a cross-dressing lesbian hooker in 18th-century Paris and he played, funnily enough, a career sadist. We were all set up in an empty wine bar to do the shoot for the publicity posters, and we decided it'd look great and also be kinda hot if we swapped clothes.

So we did, and then we did the play, and then we left university and went our separate ways in the way that young people do, me to urban squalor, activism and writing, him to be a state t-cell. I recognised him instantly, because he was doing the same flinty, murderous, slightly suggestive gaze into the middle distance that made his character so effective. He's clearly not going to be on the beat for long.

So I say, hey. And he says nothing. And I say, hey, name. And he says, oh- er, hi!

His flak jacket is still all up in my face. We exchange awkward pleasantries. Because he's a copper now, he asks me if there really are another thousand of us coming. Because I'm an activist, I deny any knowledge of anything.

The crowd shifts, surges forward behind me, a shifting sea of quiet human rage. We're losing each other in the swell. The moment of connection is gone, and time rushes back with the noise of the chanting and more vans turning up.

We promise to contact each other on Facebook, and I disappear into the crowd.

Fighting the good fight.

I'm currently jacked up on a great deal of Holland and Barrett's finest ginseng and coffee, frantically and gleefully editing Red Pepper's special section on police violence and popular protest, which is due out in May. Myself and many others have put in a great deal of hard work at the last minute to get this section ready, and it's shaping up really nicely. Coverage of recent events in the mainstream media has been woefully lacking - Red Pepper's attempts to reverse that trend have not come without effort, so I hope some of you will read the issue when it's done.

So far, we've some fine contributions from reporters and witnesses who were in the Bishopsgate kettle, along with an academic digest laying out the precedent of police violence against protestors dating back to the Miners' Strike. Contributions from football supporters and mental health service users demonstrate that it isn't just protestors who are being targeted by inappropriate use of police powers, and we've got independent journalists investigating the effects of Section 44 and Section 27 on popular consciousness. All this, and more - possibly too much to actually fit into the print issue, but any content that doesn't make it into print will be syndicated here and online.

Commissioning this edition has been a lot of fun - it's great to excercise my editorial control freakery somewhere that really matters. If you follow this blog regularly - well, firstly, thank you, and secondly, I'd seriously urge you to consider subscribing to Red Pepper if you can, or to donate online if you're a web reader. The lovely powers that be let me do pretty much what I want with this blog, but I do write additional stuff for the print edition, and it's an all-round awesome publication which deserves a lot more attention than it's getting. In case you're wondering, like most of the Red Pepper team I don't currently get paid for any of the work I do for the magazine.

Right, I can't have any more caffeine or I will damage myself, so I'm off to spend whatever remains of wakefulness cross-referencing and deleting extraneous adverbs. If you've time and volition, please share with me your news, links and amusing pictures of cats in unlikely places, because goodness knows I need the distraction. :)


ETA: John Q Publican has also been fighting the good one, with an excellent and thought-provoking initial analysis of the Climate Camp Legal Team's report. Well worth a read.

No justice, no peace.

This morning, I walked from Bethnal Green to Bank in the rain, and laid flowers at the spot where Ian Tomlinson was attacked. So did hundreds of others. It was a solemn and subdued march, apart from the obnoxious ratty-haired man with a pink radio sellotaped to his head blasting out swing band music (there's always one). I found myself profoundly moved and had to go and have a smoke and a small pathetic sniffle round the side of the bank, out of sight of all the news cameras in the world.

And then something extremely depressing happened.

After the two minutes' silence broken only by the sound of snapping fucking clicking sodding cameras, two brave, calm women from the family of Sean Rigg , who died in police custody and mysterious circumstances seven months ago, stepped forward to make an emotional speech about the importance of proper inquests and how hard it is to get to the truth, expressing her sympathy with the family of the Met's latest victim. Unfortunately, some guys at the back started shouting and swearing about police killers, drowning out Rigg's sister whilst she was making her appeal for justice, and she faltered, and her relative had to take over.

More and more, I'm starting to understand what my female comrades from ethnic minorities mean when they talk about being silenced.

'Bollocks!' yelled one young white guy. 'The police murdered him, and you know it!'

Who the fuck does that? To the sister of a dead man?

The protest leaders, who were dignified throughout as befitted the occasion, tried to rally the mood, but something had broken. That one shouty white guy at the back who had to make his anger more important than everyone else's, he had broken it. I was there. I was in the street. I saw it happen. And it filled my stomach with ice. I am ashamed that a small dickish corner of the British left can still act like this.

It was a strange, tarted up and dampened-down saturday morning's vigil-march. I was there, in the street, whilst they laid the flowers and lit the candles. When the tealights blew out in what seemed to be the icy gust of a hundred closing shutters, I lit them again. And people started taking pictures of the cute girl in black lighting candles, because of course the image, not anything we actually think, is the important thing. But I'm glad I was there, and I'm glad I stayed to the end.

For a few seconds, at the end of the rally, the sister of Sean Rigg got up the courage to speak again, and asked for the megaphone back. 'Who are the murderers?' she asked.

'The police!' we yelled.

'Who are the murderers?'

'The police!'

And there was the emotion again. There was the rage, the bewilderment, the sense of shock at the cruelties of the infrastructure. And not just from us crusties. Because as we set out on the long walk home, having laid our flowers and taken our time for quiet reflection, at the back of the rally one police officer, in a quiet, snuffly sort of way, was weeping.

ETA: I've gacked that image from the Times. That's because it's my damn hand.

*****

In other news, here is an article I wrote for LC and for LabourList, yes, that LabourList, don't ask me, guv, I just write for them. The editors originally stuck on the title 'Labour is a broad church of diverse ideas - let it stay that way!'. I politely emailed to remind them that no, that actually wasn't the point at all. Enjoy.

Fuck.

Oh jesus, they killed him.

The bastard police killed Tomlinson. They killed him in cold blood, without provocation, and then they lied about it.

Here's the footage of them beating him, whilst he has his hands in his pockets, minutes before he collapses and dies.

Oh god. With their horrible dogs. Watch the video. Watch the slowed-down version. Do you see any evidence of police medics trying to help him, and being beaten back by protesters, yknow, the official story, the 'natural causes' story? Do you hell. Fucking liars. Fucking liars.

Ian Tomlinson wasn't protesting. He was walking home from work, wearing civvies like he'd been told to so that the protesters wouldn't target him. I don't want to imagine what his family must be feeling right now.

Men die in London every day. But this death was different. This was unprovoked murder, at police hands, and I didn't know this man in life but I am sitting here in tears, because, you know what?

I genuinely trusted them.

That's what bites: I trusted them. I didn't trust them to behave altogether decently, because I'm a frothing little paranoid Red, but I did actually trust the police not to assault unarmed old men with heart conditions, at least until I had concrete evidence to the contrary. I read the reports and I thought: that's dubious, but it's probably an accident. I mean, we should investigate it and everything, but I'm sure it's going to turn out to have been an accident. A man with a weak heart gets caught in the crowd. Tragic, but not police murder. The police don't target innocents without provocation, they don't beat people to death with sticks, not in my city. Not in this country. We don't do that here, I mean, especially not since that cock-up with De Menezes. The police wouldn't do that, would they? Not in this country.

So help me, I actually believed them. No longer. And, do you know what? Never again.

I am bloody angry. I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. I am also frightened. I am frightened of what the response of the civil authorities will be when they realise, as they must do now, that they can't get away with this anymore. That covert violence is not an option anymore. Not now we have the technology. Not when we had a thousand wired-up reporters in that police kettle, reporting from the frontlines.

There's going to be a vigil for Tomlinson. Details will be posted here as soon as I get my grubby little hands on them, and I hope you'll join me. Right now I'm going to go into the garden and scream.

ETA: A demo has been called, at 11.30am this Saturday, the 11th of April 2009, outside Bethnal Green police station in London (just next to Bethnal Green tube) Protestors will demand a public inquiry into the death of Ian Tomlinson and express their anger over the police brutality involved.

Penny Red's fashion tips pt.1: how to look cool at a protest.

As you know, at this blog I try to keep my finger very much on the sputtering pulse of fashion, and touch base with what the kids are being persuaded to buy today. We're slap bang in the middle of all the major fashion weeks - we've just had London Fashion Week, and Milan Fashion Week is slithering to a close - so I thought I'd offer my own meagre contribution. Enjoy.

What’s hot now for the summer of rage! Ten ways to wow!

1. Go hooded. The sartorial symbol of our surveillance society never really went out of style, and it’s a staple that’ll see you through the entire summer of rage. Wear your hoody long and chunky to conceal problem areas – utility belts or a cheeky little can of mace– or thin and layered in case you end up having to leave your coat in the hands of the filth in the middle of a dubious British summer. Practical, versatile and a reliable staple for understated cool, your hoody is a statement of a sort of class fluidity which doesn’t actually exist in the UK, but is still a really lovely idea, particularly if you’re a Sloane down to play howling mob for the day. It makes it clear which side you’re on.

2. On the London and Milan catwalks, this season’s colours are, predictably, more muted and sober, in keeping with a general atmosphere of brooding dread and, one suspects, a lack of money for strong dyes at the major fashion houses. Work the trend by stepping out in spring’s hottest hues, from the dusky plum of ‘strangled banker’ to the looming grey of ‘policeman’s boot’, or the season’s statement colour, a watery, washed-out red known simply as ‘the ghost of Labour socialism’.

3. Hats. It’s Britain. It’s cold. It generally rains on the just. You need a hat. Yes, even if you have a hoodie. Don’t wear your granddad’s antique topper, not even ironically – it’ll get nicked, and before it gets nicked you’ll look like a wanker. Berets lend that non-committal counter-cultural atmosphere, but this season’s must-have headwear is most certainly the beanie: get it right and you’ll look like a gritty extra from Matrix 2 channelling tha futurist revolution, man-versus-hypercapitalist machine feel that’s so hot right now. Get it wrong and you’ll just look like a person wearing a beanie, and everyone will assume that you were a teenager in the nineties. I hear that’s still chic. Don’t wear a bowler either. If the papers are to be believed, you’ll be lynched by a screaming mob of disaffected workers and unemployed graduates suddenly unable to afford their daily macchiato.

4. Masks. Recent years have seen mask-wearing back on the frontline of demo chic across the world, spearheaded by big protest brands like Anonymous. The iconic mask is, of course, the V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes variety, popularised by the recent film adaptation of Allan Moore’s eponymous graphic novel and initially sold as tie-in merchandise. Pros: it definitely looks creepy. It sends a very distinct message, especially if you’re demonstrating in the UK and especially if you’re going to be within shouting distance of Parliament Square. It’s still zeitgeisty enough to be edgy, and nobody’s yet been papped coming out of Whiskey Mist in a V mask. Cons: it’s a bit of a cliché, someone might think you’re a member of Anonymous, and, most importantly, if you’re going to be on a demo you might as well stand up and be counted. I’m for faces, on both sides. If you really must mask up, think outside the barrel: Thatcher and Reagan masks are a wardrobe staple for any pop activist worth her salt, or you could try customising your own carnival mask, one of the glittery sort stocked by fancy-dress shops, for an eclectic look with that little hint of Venetian debauchery.

5. Kevlar. Forget tweed, forget silk: Kevlar is this season’s fabric. Not only is it versatile and on the cutting edge of mid-nineties grunge revival, it’s stab-proof and tough as a mummy’s nuts. See? Fashionable and practical.

6. The 21st-century activist knows how to accessorise. That old staple, the whistle, has stuck around for a reason, but if you want to make a really big statement, consider a hand-held loudspeaker. Flyers are this season’s equivalent of the pointless-little-clutch, and if you want to blend trends you could always carry them in a pointless-little-clutch, although you might have to drop it if you need to run anywhere. Other old favourites are the water bottle, the rape alarm, the emergency biscuits and the packet of wet-wipes. You will definitely need a packet of wet-wipes. Trust me on this. The biscuits are almost as important, as they double as a way to stoke group solidarity as well as preventing those pesky little sugar crashes. Nobody wants to be seen stopping off at Pret A Manger in the middle of a rally.

7. Heels. Don’t even think about it, not even – and it pains me to say this – not even if you’re a fabulous weekend queer. No, actually, do think about it. Think about walking for several hours across tarmac or grass,wearing stupid little kitten heels. Think about trying to make a run for it and snapping your stiletto. They’re not even useful anymore, since any kind of shoe held in the hand is now officially considered a weapon in bodily harm and assault cases. Nice, stompy practical boots are the way to go, and you can be on-trend in a pair of Dms or nice and dry in some army surplus. But let’s face it. This isn’t Milan. Nobody’s going to be looking at your fucking feet, unless you’re stupid enough to try and kick a copper in the head, in which case you’re drunk or you’re a sociopath, and either way you shouldn’t be on the march.

8. Possibly the most important tip of all: waterproof mascara. Look, the government is getting bloody frightened of us. First sign of trouble, it'll be the tear gas, the pepper spray and the hoses. Whilst you're waving your battered placards in an agony of face-aching chemicals, take comfort in the fact that your make-up, unlike your paycheck, your house and your benefits, isn't going anywhere. Where's that mascara going? Nowhere. You rock that scene, demo-girl!

Forgive me.

National Take a Photo of a Police Officer Day 2009: stand up for citizen journalism!

Set to become law on the 16th of February in the UK, the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 amends the Terrorism Act 2000 regarding offences relating to information about members of armed forces, a member of the intelligence services, or a police officer. Laws are being introduced that allow for the arrest - and fining, and imprisonment for up to ten years - of anyone who takes pictures of officers 'likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism'.

The law is expected to increase the anti-terrorism powers used today by police officers to stop photographers, including press photographers, from taking pictures in public places.

Does anyone else have a problem with this?

Picture, if you will, a protest, demonstration or piece of civil action. These can be inconvenient places for the government. A bunch of riot police wade in with batons, and a shocked bystander takes out her camera to preserve the evidence. The right of citizens to maintain sousveillance over their own police and military systems is vital to any healthy democracy.

So let's take back the gaze, if only for ten more days.

Starting from today, take a picture of a police officer on your phone or your camera and post it to this facebook group or email me at the address on the left. Photos will be collated (with permission) here and at participating blogs - if you don't want your photo to be included there, or if you'd like to remain anonymous, just email me.

To make it even easier for you, photos of police officers still count if the participating copper happens to be your mum, sister, school chum, etc. Standing laws mean that we can't take pictures of these people anywhere where they have 'a reasonable expectation of privacy': we're here to say that we don't think police should be expected to enjoy privacy whilst nominally protecting the peace.

Join in, tell your friends! The revolution will not be televised, but it WILL be on facebook.

Police State economy claims its first casualty

You remember how just before Christmas, they put into force that scary fucking law that gave baliffs the power to use 'reasonable force' against debtors?

You know, the law whereby it's okay to break down old ladies' doors if they have unpaid parking fines but not okay to use similar force on billionaire tax-dodgers on the Isle of Man?

Well, that law has just claimed its first life.

Andy Miller, 78, a retired pub landlord and father who had recently returned from hospital after a stroke, collapsed and died from a heart attack whilst being forced to a cashpoint by baliffs 'under duress'.

The father-of-five collapsed last week on his way to a cash machine in Accrington, while the bailiff parked and waited for the money.

The death is not being treated as suspicious.

Well, actually, I think it's pretty damn suspicious when baliffs are allowed to pursue frail old men to the point of physical collapse, whilst billions of pounds of unclaimed tax is ignored as long as it's the wealthy committing fraud on a massive scale. I think it's suspicious, when the poor and sick are hounded quite literally to death whilst Brown tries to persuade us that the economic crisis is a 'test of character', that we need to need to show 'wartime spirit'. There's a war going on here, that's clear enough now, but I'm not sure who the bad guys are meant to be anymore. I'm furious, and I'm frightened. This isn't the freer and fairer world I was promised in 1997, when my mum told me that everything was going to be alright now that Labour were in power. This is an economic crisis forced on us by the rich, and now the poor are paying the ultimate price.

Is it me, or did it just get colder in here?

Those post-9/11 blues...

In the words of one of the great philosophers of our age, 'fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself'. (c. Albus Dumbledore, 1997).

An entirely legitimate response to atrocity is to look at the semantics. Today is a significant anniversary: seven years ago, members of minority terrorist sects hijacked some planes and flew them into the World Trade Centre, New York, and into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C, killing themselves and 2,975 innocent civilians in the process, and altering the course of human history forever. Because this atrocity occurred on American soil, it is implicity weighted with more significance and solemnity than any of the many, many atrocities that have occurred since. When we say '9/11' rather than 'the world trade centre attacks in 2001', we collude in affording the event and its victims disproportionate significance, significance that starts to justify the atrocities committed in its name. When we say 'Terror' rather than simply 'terrorism', we acknowledge that the word has silently expanded to encompass anything, anything at all, that the West, led by the USA, happens to be frightened of. And that's quite a lot. The struggle of different nations against terrorism -something that the British are more than resigned to, having had the IRA on our doorstep for the past hundred years - is now being treated as something entirely new, in no small part due to the semantic trickery in which the rhetoric of 'post-9/11' is enmeshed..

The plain fact is that nobody - US citizen, British citizen, Iraqi citizen, French, Japanese or Afghani - has any right to feel safe at all times. This world isn't safe, it will never be safe, not while there are buses on our streets and armed police in our capitals. We have no right to safety, none. We merely have a right to take care of ourselves and our neigbours as best we can, and waging war is generally accepted as a poor method of acheiving said objective. In most countries that aren't the USA, people understand this. But some isolated, cosseted individuals are still of the opinion that suddenly not feeling entirely safe and superior any more gives them the right to have a seven-year temper-tantrum costing millions of lives and billions of dollars.

I can already hear the trolls rumbling under my bridge about tastelessness, so I may as well pick a final nit: the use of the American date convention, '9/11/2001' (rather than 11/09/2001, as it would have been reported in the UK and many other nations) increases the tendency of the event to be historicised from a position which entirely privileges the North American reading of its fallout. And the North American reading is the slow finger-tracing of a frightened toddler. But if we're still going to run cackling with the month/date obfuscation, let's at least have some alternatives. May I suggest:

10/12: on the 12th of October, 2001, the USA and its allies invaded Afghanistan, ostensibly to cature You Know Who. Total Bin Ladens captured: none. Total innocent civilian deaths: at least 3,700 and probably closer to 5,000.

3/20: on the 20th of March, 2003, the USA launched 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' along with its allies in the UK and Australia and help and support from a 'coalition of the willing', consisting of over forty other nations. Total weapons of mass destruction discovered: a few really big rocks. Official body counts estimate that since 3/20, there have been 80,419 to 87,834 civilian deaths (that's 9/11 x 30!), although the true number and names of the innocent dead will never be known.

12/ 7 - on the 12th of July, 2006, Israel attacked Lebanon with US-supplied weapons . In 33 days of war, the Associated Press's body count gives us 1,064 civilian deaths.

Today is September the 11th, 2008. Seven years ago today, the towers went down and your world changed forever. Happy anniversary. Everybody do the post-9/11 dance.

Scenes from Turnpike Lane station...

An hour ago, on emerging from the bowels of the Picadilly line as is my wont at half six on a Thursday, I was dismayed to see a wall of armoured police surrounding a pair of electronic weapons-detecting barriers through which the good residents of Wood Green were being made to walk. So I took it upon myself to engage a couple of members of Her Majesty's Constabulary in conversation.

'Why are the scanners up again?'

'It's a deterrent. You know, knife crime. You watch the news, don't you?'

'So what are they for?'

'Well, to see if anyone's carrying a knife.'

'Is it against the law to refuse to go through, then? Say, what would happen if I just walked right round the edge?'

'Well, you're not exactly carrying a knife, are you?!' Sner sner, oi lads look at the sweet little white girl in her cardie trying to be clever.

I tried a different tack. 'So, how do these barriers tell if you're carrying a knife rather than just, say, any old metal?'

'They don't. They're quite neanderthal really. They just flash red when someone's got metal.'

'But hang on. The lights are flashing red for every other person. Why aren't you stopping all those people?'

'Well...' indulgent little police-officer smile turns into get-rid-of-this-member-of-the-public grin 'look, we just use our judgement - say, if someone like your good self set off the buzzers, well,' looks me up and down 'you're clearly not the sort of person to be carrying a knife, are you?'

'So what sort of people would you stop and search, then?'

'Well, you watch the news.'

'Of course I watch the news. What sort of people would you stop?'

'You know, the sort of people who commit crimes. You watch the news.'

'You haven't answered my question.'

'Are you a journalist?'

'Absolutely.'

'My colleagues and I aren't trained for this. Bugger off and call the press office and go through those barriers while you're about it.'

Stunned, I marched through the ancient plastic barriers, the metal buckles on my boots winking.

And the lights flashed red.

And nobody stopped me.