Oxford Left Alternative

Oxford Radical Forum 2011

2011-05-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

TIMETABLE: 19/20/21/22 May

HO CHI MINH QUAD
WADHAM COLLEGE

JESUS COLLEGE

(DIRECTIONS AND ROOM INFORMATION WILL BE AVAILABLE ON-SITE)

:::::::::::::::::::::provisional timetable::::::::::::::::::::::::

:THURSDAY:

What are we selling and what’s for sale? The IUSW and ECP discuss sex work THUR 17:30 WADHAM

Open Source Culture: radical notes on the Internet THUR 19:30 WADHAM

:FRIDAY:

‘Nothing about us without us: disability rights and inclusive activism’ FRI 19:00 WADHAM

:SATURDAY:

‘Radical migrant support work; why we need to overhaul the dominant paradigm of refugee support’ – Sophie Roumat, SAT, 11:00 WADHAM

‘Walter Benjamin, Time and Money’ – with Prof. Esther Leslie, Birkbeck, SAT 15:00 WADHAM

“OXFORD RADICAL NIGHT” AT BABYLOVE – LATE

:SUNDAY:

’100 days since the Arab revolutions’ with Marwa Daoudi, Abed Takrity, Sami Hermez. SUN 11:00 WADHAM

Libya: revolution betrayed? with Simon Assaf and Mohammed Mahdi SUN 13:00 WADHAM

Antiquity, Marxism and Radical History – with Peter Thonemann SUN 15:00 WADHAM

With Bin Laden’s death, end of the war on terror? with John Rees SUN 19:00 WADHAM

FILM SCREENING ‘Maedchen in Uniform’ (Leontine Sagan 1931) SUN 20:00 JESUS COLL.

Revolution in the Arab world, controversies over nuclear power, neoliberal cuts across the globe, and uprisings from Wisconsin to Westminster set the scene for this year’s Oxford Radical Forum. Once again Wadham College – and other venues – will play host to a broad range of critical debates and discussions on the radical left, with leading speakers, commentators, activists and academics.

http://oxfordradicalforum.wordpress.com/

Million Climate Jobs University Meeting

2011-02-28T15:29:00.000-08:00

One Million Climate Jobs -

Solving the Ecological and Environmental Crises.

Halford Mackinder Lecture Theatre, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, OX1 3QY (01865 275 848)

7pm - 9.30 pm, Friday 4th March 2011

The Campaign against Climate Change, working with academics, climate activists, the TUC and several UK trade unions has produced the report One Million Climate Jobs. The report calls for the government to create one million green, climate jobs in the face of rising unemployment and the need for urgent investment into renewable energy.

Speakers:

Dave Elliot (Professor of Technology Policy, Open University)

John Vidal (Guardian jouralist) [tbc]

Jonathan Neale (Author, Stop Global Warming, Change the World)

Plus student and climate worker panelists

To preview the report, see: http://www.climate-change-jobs.org/about

Mike’s Letter from America: Cairo, Manama, Madison

2011-02-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

Mike’s Letter from America: Wisconsin rising.

The ruler has given himself powers described by his critics as ‘dictatorial’. He is attempting to virtually outlaw government workers’ unions, and threatens to use troops against strikers. Opposition leaders have fled across the border and gone into hiding. Tens of thousands of protesters are camped out in the capital city.

No, this is not a Middle Eastern despotism. This is Wisconsin, in America’s Midwest. The ‘dictator’ is not Mubarak, Bin Ali, or Sheikh al-Khalifa – it is Republican governor Scott Walker. This week, he announced big increases in public employees’ pension and health insurance contributions (equivalent to a 7% pay cut), and proposed legislation that would ban collective bargaining for most state workers on anything but base pay. In other words, all but the most minimal right to unionize would be stripped away. To top it all, he has threatened to deploy the National Guard (the state militia) if public sector workers go on strike.

To be poor, a leftist, a trade unionist, woman or a minority is to feel like a punch-bag right now, as a vengeful hard-right Republican Party pushes its pet projects in Congress and the state legislatures. Fortunately, the people of Wisconsin do not share the pessimism and feeling of powerlessness that afflicts much of the American left. Day after day, thousands of union members and their supporters have poured into Wisconsin’s capital, Madison, and laid siege to the Republican-controlled state legislature as it has tried to push through the anti-union law. As of Wednesday (Feb 16), 30,000 people were in or outside the Capital building. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivYnS6DcFUA&feature=youtu.be; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/us/17wisconsin.html?_r=1. Responding to the pressure put on them by the protestors, Democrats in the state senate walked out, denying the Republicans the quorum needed to pass the law. Then events took a surreal turn, as the Democratic senators left the state for ‘a secure, undisclosed location’ to avoid being tracked down by state police and ordered to return to the senate.

Parallels with the revolution in Egypt have not been lost on anybody. Republican congressman Paul Ryan called the peaceful protest a ‘riot’ and complained that ‘Cairo has moved to Madison’. Protesters have carried Egyptian flags, sung ‘march like an Egyptian’ and called for the overthrow of ‘Hosni Walker’. Reports on TV and social media reflect the sense of excitement and self-empowerment among the protestors. Teachers in Madison, defying threats of the sack, phoned in ‘sick’ and descended on the Capitol, forcing the city’s schools to close. Hundreds of school and university students have also walked out. Members of unions unaffected by the ban – notably the fire fighters – have joined the protests regardless, understanding that this is an attack on all unions. Another echo of Cairo can be seen in the totally peaceful nature of the protests, and the impressive level of solidarity and self-organization. Websites and social media pages representing the protesters are full of requests for – and more importantly, offers of – support, food, water, blankets, warm clothes etc. While the protesters have stopped short of storming the senate chamber, they are essentially in occupation of the Capitol.

The backdrop to these events is an all-out Republican assault on anything even vaguely progressive. The Mid-term elections saw a landslide - albeit on a very low turnout – for the Republicans, not only in Congress, but also in state legislatures and governors’ mansions. The recession has left both the federal and state governments with huge debts, and the Republicans – now dominated by the far right– are using this as an excuse to attack everything that smacks even vaguely of socialism, from Public Broadcasting (funding threated with the axe) via Planned Parenthood (funding cut off) to the unions.

Walker’s actions in Wisconsin expose the lie that this is about balancing the books. The anti-union law is being promoted as part of a budgetary measure, but the state’s deficit of around $130 million is almost identical to the amount ($140 million) given away last month in tax cuts for business. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/wisconsin-gov-walker-ginned-up-budget-shortfall-to-undercut-worker-rights.php

The pattern is repeated across the country – in my home state of Michigan, the new Republican governor just announced $180 million in cuts in public sector pay, just after commissioning a rigged survey that claimed (wrongly) that public employees are better paid than workers in the private sector. The assault on public-sector workers is not just (or even mainly) about cutting spending, it is an attack on a highly unionized part of the workforce.

The Wisconsin protesters have dubbed Madison ‘Ground Zero for the labor movement’, and they are not exaggerating – the stakes are that high. If Walker succeeds, this will be a massive blow to the basic human right to organize unions. However, the huge and rapid groundswell of opposition was clearly the last thing the governor expected. The Republican union-busters have been completely wrong-footed, and the Democrats who have been happy to accept union support while offering nothing in return have been forced to find a backbone. Events in Madison have captured the imagination of the whole movement across the United States, as the deadening feeling of pessimism that has hung over the left since the Reagan era is lifting like fog on a sunny morning. Maybe we are being too optimistic, maybe this is just a last, glorious, defiant gesture. But I don’t think so - it looks and feels like a turning point. The fight-back starts here – the American working class is back.

Million Climate Jobs Meeting Report

2011-02-13T05:17:00.000-08:00

Report from Oxford Campaign Against Climate Change

Just under 60 people came to the recent Oxford launch meeting for the One Million Climate Jobs booklet, including local climate activists, Green and Labour councillors and trade unionists. The meeting linked up the economic argument for creating jobs and the devastating cuts proposed in local youth service provision and discussed ways to further spread the climate jobs message. The meeting recieved radio air time and has struck a chord with several local union branches who have ordered copies of the booklet. A film about the campaign is being sponsored by the local UNITE branch and will be available shortly.

An activist meeting will be held this Tuesday 7.30pm at the Town Hall to discus next steps and arrange speakers for local groups who have requested them. All welcome

Mikes Letter from America- MuBarack, the President and the Fox

2011-02-05T02:29:00.000-08:00

MuBarack, the President and the Fox

You would think they’d be delighted; in the tenth year of the ‘War on Terror’ (a war which Barack Obama continues to wage, even if he never calls it by that name) democracy, as promised by the neo-con ideologues, just might be spreading throughout the Middle East. However, the uprising in Egypt has been greeted by American politicians and media at best with ambivalence, at worst with condemnation.

The Egyptian Revolution is world news, and has (I hope!) been adequately covered by the British media, so I am not going to spend a lot of time explaining what is probably obvious – that democracy promotion and ’regime change’ from below was never part of America’s plan, and that Egyptian dictator Mubarak is a key-pin of the whole US strategy in the Middle East – a strongman who has kept leftists and Islamists under his thumb, and who has played a crucial role in enforcing the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Instead, I want to focus on the reaction of the media and politicians here in the US, to show just how wrong footed they have been by events in Egypt.

First, take Glenn Beck - please! (This joke was stolen from a papyrus found in an Egyptian pyramid). This Fox News host has become the unofficial mouthpiece of the Tea Party movement, and by extension of the Republican right. His angle is to hysterically proclaim the Obama administration a threat to freedom, and to accuse opponents of being communists or Nazis (or usually both). So faced with an actual dictator, you would think he would be delighted at the prospect of his removal by people power? Not a bit of it; he explained to fellow Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly that the movement in Egypt was being run by Islamists and communists. (Communism, in the Stalinist sense of the word, today only exists in two places – North Korea and Glenn Beck’s imagination). According to Beck the ‘radical left’ in the US and ‘Islamic radicals’ are plotting nothing less than ‘the destruction of the Western world.’ I had no idea the American left was so powerful.

Given their Islamophobia, it is perhaps not surprising that Beck, O’Reilly and co should cheer on somebody who is killing Arabs, even if that person is an Arab himself. In the more mainstream news media, the tone has been less pro-Mubarak, and more ‘what’s in it for us?’ Never mind the Egyptians dying at the hands of Mubarak’s thugs; how will this affect oil prices? So-called foreign policy experts have reminded us that Mubarak has been a source of stability, a friend of Israel, and a bulwark against radical Islam. The strategic significance of the Suez Canal has been mentioned so often you would think it’s 1956.

More importantly, Obama and his administration were less than enthusiastic about the outbreak of democracy in the Middle East. We don’t know what deals are being cut right now between Obama and Mubarak, but it appears that, now they see which way the tide is flowing, the US government wants to ease Mubarak out (preferably in favour of his former intelligence chief, Vice President Omar Suleiman. The Americans know him well from his cooperation with CIA’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ torture program).Their initial response was very different, however; Vice-President Joe Biden said “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things… I would not refer to him as a dictator.” Hillary Clinton also saw stability as more important than democracy; she made the curious statement that the US had backed democracy in Egypt for over thirty years (the same thirty years that Mubarak has been in power), and has talked only of an ‘orderly transition’ in power. As for vacillator-in-chief Barack Obama, while he has begun gently suggesting Mubarak should go, he has done his best not to put any real pressure on him (such as threatening to cut off the 1 billion-per-year military aid he receives from the US). Maybe he is keeping quiet for fear of drawing too much attention to his and previous US presidents’ friendship with the Egyptian dictator? Type ‘Obama Mubarak’ into a Google images search and you will get over 85 million results.

Finally, one important fact has been missed by nearly all the US media; the upheavals in the Arab world are as much about bread as they are about democracy. When Hillary Clinton talked of the people of the Middle East wanting ‘economic freedom’, she forgot that it has been economic ‘freedom’ in the form of neo-liberal policies that sparked the rebellion in Tunisia, which began with the suicide of an unemployed man. This is the same economic philosophy that has been destroying the livelihoods of American workers for the last thirty years. Compare Egypt with the USA; one is a sham democracy dominated by a corrupt wealthy elite, with growing poverty, inequality and social divisions. The other has pyramids.

New Oxfordshire Anti Cuts Alliance Web Site

2011-01-21T00:46:00.000-08:00

A new website has been launched for the Oxfordshire Anti Cuts Alliance

Million Climate Jobs Public Meeting, Oxford Town Hall, 25th Jan 2011

2010-12-25T01:15:00.000-08:00

One Million Climate Jobs
Solving the economic and environmental crises

We face an economic crisis and an environmental crisis in Britain and across the world. We need solutions to both beginning now. Climate activists, and several national trade unions, are launching a campaign to make the government create one million green climate jobs. The Campaign Against Climate Change has produced a pamphlet that explains how we can do that and why we must. It will be followed up in early 2011 by a book, presenting the case in greater detail.
To find solutions to the climate crisis and the recession, we need more public spending, the opposite of current government policy. We have people who need jobs and work that needs to be done. A million climate jobs in the UK will not solve all the economy's problems. But it will take a million human beings off the dole and put them to work saving the future.
http://www.climate-change-jobs.org/

Oxford Public Meeting
One Million Climate Jobs
Solving the economic and environmental crises
Council Chamber, Oxford Town Hall,
7:30 pm, Tuesday, 25th January
with
Mark Bergfeld – National Union of Students Executive
Jonathan Neale – Editor, One Million Climate Jobs
David Ricketts – UNITE Community & Youth Workers Union
Craig Simmons – Oxford Green Party

Called by the Campaign against Climate Change and
Oxfordshire Anti-Cuts Alliance

One Million Climate Jobs
In 2009, the Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group – working with academics, climate activists, the TUC and several UK trade unions including the CWU, PCS, TSSA, UCU and UNITE – decided to fight to make the government create one million green ‘climate’ jobs. We produced a report ‘One Million Climate Jobs NOW!’

Thousands of copies of this report have been sold around the world. There are now over two and a half million unemployed people in Britain. We have people who need jobs, and work that must be done.

This latest report sets out how, and why, the government must create one million climate jobs – in renewable energy, refitting buildings, public transport, industry and education – if we are to solve the economic crisis and avoid environmental catastrophe.

The report details a scientifically sound, do-able and inspiring alternative to the present government’s vicious and unwarranted programme of public service cuts.

One Million Climate Jobs Report
Published by the Campaign against Climate Change.
Available from Bookmarks, 1 Bloomsbury St., London, WC1B 3QE (0207 637 1848)
£2.50 or £18 for 10 copies

In Oxford, contact Nancy Lindisfarne 07981607107
Nanstarr44@hotmail.com

Carbon cuts not job cuts
Green jobs- Where the main political parties stand
Labour Party
"Labour’s policy anticipated that an additional 400,000 jobs in the low carbon sector would be created by 2015, taking the total figure to well over 1.2 million" (Ed Milliband July 2010)

Liberal Democrat Party
The Liberal Democrat manifesto pledge is to create 57,000 jobs by investing £400 million upgrading disused shipyards to enable the production of off-shore wind turbines.

Conservative Party

"The Government believes that climate change is one of the gravest threats we face, and that urgent action at home and abroad is required. We need to use a wide range of levers to cut carbon emissions, decarbonise the economy and support the creation of new green jobs and technologies" (No target given)

Green Party Policy

"Our major and immediate priority is the creation of an extra million jobs and training places. An immediate £44bn package of measures would include workforce training, investment in renewables, public transport, insulation, social housing and waste management "

Oxford Anti Cuts Calendar

2010-12-19T01:41:00.000-08:00

Oxfordshire Anti Cuts Alliance calendar:

21st Dec - Lobby Full Council 2pm County Hall (OACA)

9th Jan - CWU rally demonstration against privatisation and cuts Assemble 11am Church Green, Witney

Jan - Public Meeting against library service cuts - Town Hall, St Aldates (date and time tbc )

Jan - Public Meeting against youth service cuts - Town Hall, St Aldates (date and time tbc)

12th February - Local Demonstration against public service cuts - Assemble Manzil Way and march to Bonn Square (time tbc)

15th February - Lobby Council on day budget is set - 9am County Hall

26th March - TUC demonstration against cuts

For more info see facebook page: here

Youth Centre closures in Oxford

2010-12-10T11:54:00.001-08:00

Police intimidate 12 year old for involvement with a protest against Youth Club closures planned by the Tory led County Council.

The story has been reported by the Guardian

For details of the protest see Oxford Right to Work Facebook Group

Week of activity

2010-12-08T01:49:00.000-08:00

This coming week will be a week of protests against government cuts. Both locally and nationally, people are taking to the streets to oppose tuition fee increases, abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance, cuts to higher and further education and the closure of 20 local youth centres.

These are key campaigns which, if they are successful, will lead the way to further victories in the fight to defend public services.

On Wednesday, UCU and NUS have called a day of local action against education cuts and tuition fee increases. There will be a lunchtime protest at Oxford and Cherwell Valley College, Oxpens Road (12.45pm-1.15pm) called by OCVC UCU and an evening rally in Bonn Square (5pm) called by Ruskin UCU and supported by Oxfordshire Anti-Cuts Alliance.

On Thursday, there will be a national demonstration called by London Region UCU and University of London Students Union. Oxfordshire Unison Health, Oxford UCU and Right to Work have booked coaches leaving 9.30am from outlide the Taylorian Institute, St Giles. To book places, call 07890081211.

On Friday, Save Our Youth Services have called a demonstration at 5pm outside David Cameron's Office, High Street Witney, against the closure of 20 local youth centres.

Next Monday, there will be lunchtime protests against cutting Education Maintenance Allowance, which supports 16-19 year olds to continue in education. Further details will be sent later in the week.

Further ahead, we are calling a lobby outside the County Council Cabinet meeting 2pm on 21stDecember. This will be an opportunity to draw together all our concerns about local and national cuts and demand that our local political representatives act on them.

This coming week will be crucial in terms of showing the strength of feeling against government cuts and also people's willingness to fight them. Please make every effort to get involved in as many events as you can.

Oxfordshire Anti-Cuts Alliance

Protest against Fees Dec 9th

2010-12-04T10:37:00.000-08:00

Join Oxford Right to Work Facebook Group

2010-12-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

Join Oxford Right to Work Facebook Group here

Oxford RTW is affiliated to the Oxfordshire Anti Cuts Alliance, join OACA Facebook Group here

Head of Tory Council in Web Rant

2010-12-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

The Tory County Council leader Keith Mitchell, responsible for pushing through perhaps 1,000 job losses in Oxfordshire, has posted the following rant on his blog:

"Student rabble invade County Hall Reflecting on the acts of trespass and vandalism when a scruffy rabble invaded County Hall, it seems that a good number of these oiks were school children rather than college or university students. This raises two questions in my mind:

First, locally, in Oxfordshire, how did all these teenagers bunk off their studies? What are the truancy records for Oxford schools on the afternoon of 30 November? I hope school teachers were not complicit in encouraging these children to bunk off school?

Secondly, given that there were similar example of lawlessness across the country, what is driving this national outbreak of unlawful behaviour? I suspect the hard left are working up a campaign to make such lawlessness appear to be the norm and therefore to become acceptable."

Day X 2

2010-11-29T12:12:00.000-08:00

Education Activist Network

Nov 27th 500 march against cuts in Oxford

2010-11-28T03:17:00.000-08:00

Oxford mail report: here

Join the Anti Cuts Alliance Facebook Group: here

Oxford University Occupation

2010-11-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Hundreds of Oxford University students with Ruskin students and 6th form college students have occupied the Radcliffe camera in protest against the plans to raise tuition fees pricing many out of an education or making them start life with a huge debt. There is also the issue of the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance which support further education students attending college. Please send messages of support from trade unions and community organisations c/o 07986572812 or 07747840661

Occupation statement

November 24th, 2010

University of Oxford Radcliffe Camera Occupation Statement:

We – students and residents of Oxford from a range of institutions and backgrounds – are occupying the Radcliffe Camera because we oppose all public sector cuts. We stand in solidarity with those who are affected by the cuts and those who are resisting them.

We believe that education should be public and free for all. To this end we demand that the University of Oxford reiterate its opposition to education cuts and commit to not increasing fees for any courses. We also demand that the University pledge never to privatise.

These demands are non-negotiable. We will only accept a response from the University in the form of a public statement by the Vice Chancellor to the national media.

The University should not pursue or support any action taken against those involved in this legitimate and peaceful form of protest.

We call upon other education institutions in Oxford and nationwide to publicly support these principles and demands.

This library is now open to all members of the public and we invite you to join us.

Note

Today, students went into occupation of the Radcliffe Camera in central Oxford in protest at government cuts to education. Messages of support have been sent by Oxfordshire Anti-Cuts Alliance and Oxford & District Trades Council.

Oxfordshire Anti-Cuts Alliance gives its full support to those students who have occupied university buildings in protest at government education cuts. They are expressing their right to protest against cuts which will do lasting damage to our economy for generations. Ideologically motivated cuts to public services will wreck lives and destroy the services on which we all rely. We call on people to support the occupation and to join us on Saturday from 11.30am in Manzil Way . We will be marching to a rally in Bonn Square to show the strength of public feeling on this issue and to help build a movement which can force a change of government policy.

-- ._,_.___

Oxford Anti Cuts Campaign Builds Momentum

2010-11-14T05:28:00.000-08:00

Public Meeting

How we can challenge the cuts locally?
16th November 2010
7.30pm, Oxford Town Hall Guest Speakers: Jeremy Dear (Gen. Sec. NUJ) Alex Gordon (President RMT)

Demonstrate Sat 27th November
Assemble 11.30 am. Mazil Way, Cowley Road March to rally in Bonn Square

Oxford Anti-Cuts Alliance is supported by: Oxford & District Trades Council, Unite BMW SE625, Oxfordshire NUT, Oxfordshire NASUWT, Unison Oxfordshire County branch, Unison Oxford City branch, Unison Oxfordshire Health, PCS Oxon & Bucks DWP, Oxford NUJ, UCU Oxford & Cherwell Valley College, UCU Ruskin College, Ruskin College Student’s Union, Oxford Keep Our NHS Public, Oxford People’s Charter Campaign, Oxford Save Our Services, Oxford Right to Work, Oxford Coalition of Resistance, Oxford for Peace and Justice, Oxford CND, Oxford Stop the War, New Internationalist.

To get involved, contact us on 07967392229 / g.little@odtuc.org.uk

Student Protest Facebook Group

2010-11-13T10:26:00.000-08:00

We need unity to break the Con-Dems’ attacks. Stand with the protesters against victimisation.

Wednesday’s national NUS/UCU 50,000 strong national demonstration was a magnificent show of strength against the Con Dems’ savage attacks on education. The Tories want to make swingeing cuts, introduce £9,000 tuition fees and cut EMA. These attacks will close the doors to higher education and further education for a generation of young people.

During the demonstration over 5,000 students showed their determination to defend the future of education by occupying the Tory party HQ and its courtyards for several hours. The mood was good-spirited, with chants, singing and flares.

Yet at least 32 people have now been arrested, and the police and media appear to be launching a witch-hunt condemning peaceful protesters as “criminals” and violent.

A great deal is being made of a few windows smashed during the protest, but the real vandals are those waging a war on our education system.

We reject any attempt to characterise the Millbank protest as small, “extremist” or unrepresentative of our movement.

We celebrate the fact that thousands of students were willing to send a message to the Tories that we will fight to win. Occupations are a long established tradition in the student movement that should be defended. It is this kind of action in France and Greece that has been an inspiration to many workers and students in Britain faced with such a huge assault on jobs, benefits, housing and the public sector.

We stand with the protesters, and anyone who is victimised as a result of the protest.

Initial signatories include (all in a personal capacity):
Mark Bergfeld, NUS NEC
Ashok Kumar, Vice-President Education LSE
Vicki Baars, NUS LGBT Officer women’s place
Sean Rillo Raczka, Birkbeck SU Chair and NUS NEC (Mature Students’ Rep)
Nathan Bolton, Campaigns Officer Essex SU
James Haywood, Campaigns Officer Goldsmiths College SU
Steve Hedley, London regional organiser RMT
Wanda Canton, Women’s Officer QMUL
Michael Chessum, Education and Campaigns Officer UCL SU
Jade Baker, Education Officer Westminster Uni SU
Dan Swain, Essex Uni SU Postgrad Officer

To add your name or organisation email teneleventen@gmail.com

Join our facebook page here

From the site: http://teneleventen.wordpress.com/

Mike's Letter from America No20

2010-11-13T02:17:00.000-08:00

Mid-term Elections: Why the Democrats lost (and why the Tea Party haven’t won)

The opinion polls before the recent midterm elections reported that the Republicans and Democrats were neck-and-neck. They also predicted – correctly - that the Democrats were about to lose.

Confused? Well, it all comes down to what the media dubbed the ‘enthusiasm gap’. If you ask the electorate as a whole, they rate the Democrats, and Obama in particular, in the high-40s%. But polls of people who said they are definitely going to vote gave the Republicans a clear lead. In other words, there are more apathetic Democrat than Republican voters. Come November 2nd, the GOP was able to get out its vote, while Democrats stayed at home. We are now faced with strong Republican majority in the House of Representatives, and a reduced Democratic majority in the Senate, which means that Obama is seriously weakened for the last two years of his term.

Why did this happen? Well, apparently it’s all our fault. According to the White House it is all because moaning leftists are carping unfairly about the greatest president since FDR. To White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs, we are a bunch of ingrates with unrealistic expectations, while Vice-President Biden told liberals to stop ‘whining’ about the administration. The argument goes that Obama has been saddled with a huge deficit and two wars that he inherited from Bush (true) and an obstructive Republican congressional minority that filibusters everything in sight (also true). Therefore we should all have stopped moaning and worked for his reelection. If we do not muster the same enthusiasm for Democrats as the Tea Party and other assorted crazies do for the Republicans, we will have nobody but ourselves to blame if [insert name of far-right conservative bogeyman here] is in the White House come 2013.

To borrow a memorable phrase from Blackadder, there’s only one thing wrong with this argument: it’s bollocks. The Democrats have given their supporters plenty to be unenthusiastic about. Obama has not just continued but escalated the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He got out of Iraq, but only by declaring that the 50,000 troops still there are not combat troops. The much trumpeted healthcare reform (which Democrat candidates seemed curiously unwilling to defend in their election campaigns) is so timid and peace-meal that even the good things about it have largely not yet come into effect. And it’s not the case that the Democrats could not get things done if they wanted – the anti-gay ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, which fell victim to yet another Republican filibuster in the Senate, would be gone by now had Obama’s own Department of Justice not appealed when it was struck down in the courts.

The best example of the Democrats’ apparent unwillingness to do anything, even to save their own skins, is the issue of tax cuts. Passed back in the early days of George W’s presidency, these had an expiry date attached to them by Congress at the time, and are about to run out. On the eve of the elections, the Democrats hit on the idea of extending them except for people earning over $250,000 a year. This would have undermined the Republicans’ claim that Democrats are the party of high taxes, won them popularity among 98% of the population, and only alienated the top 2% who mainly vote Republican anyway. But instead of doing something both progressive and popular the Dems decided to postpone any vote on the tax cuts until after the elections. With those elections now lost, they are talking of ‘compromise’ on the issue – although having already agreed with 98% of the Bush tax cuts, it’s hard to see how they can compromise any further.

While November 2nd was undoubtedly a bad day for the Democrats, it would be wrong to buy into the media idea that it represents an historic shift to the right. To begin with, less than 40% of the eligible population voted, so the swing of 7% to the Republicans compared to Obama’s victory in 2008 translates in reality to only 3% of the electorate. Many more – some 40 million people compared to 2008 – simply stayed away, disgusted with both parties. Far from being a seismic shift, this was just a typical midterm election, in which voters – rather like British voters in by-elections - cast a protest vote against whoever is in office at the time.

If the Democrats were losers, so were the much-hyped ‘Tea Party’. The majority of Republican Tea Party candidates were beaten, and when they ran against ‘moderate’ Republicans they usually did badly (with the notable exception of Marco Rubio in the Florida senate race, who beat both a Democrat and the ex-Republican governor running as an independent). In Sarah Palin’s Alaska, the official Republican senate candidate – Joe Miller, a Tea Partier – looks set to lose to a fellow Republican who wasn’t even on the ballot. The USA allows ‘write-in’ votes, and Miller’s political fate right now rests on whether the voters were able to spell the name of his rival, Lisa Murkowski. In Colorado, anti-immigrant Republican Tom Tancredo ran as an independent for governor, and while he beat the official Republican candidate, he lost by a humiliating 14% margin to the Democrat.

In straight Democrat vs Republican races, the Tea Party did little better. The most high-profile of Sarah Palin’s ‘Momma Grizzlies’, Christine ‘masturbation is a sin’ O’Donnell, lost heavily in Delaware, as was expected. More seriously for the Republicans, in Nevada Tea Partier Sharron Angle, who was touted to beat the Democrats’ unpopular senate leader Harry Reid, lost by a clear 5% margin. Results like this ensured that the Democrats held on to the Senate more comfortably than any of the pollsters had predicted.

So America is not moving to the right, but do the Democrats get this? Of course not. In those three-way races with Republican ‘independents’ running, the Dems’ leadership often stabbed their own candidates in the back. Florida’s Kendrick Meek was pressured to withdraw by Bill Clinton, no less, while in the election for governor of Rhode Island, Obama failed to endorse the official Democratic candidate – who, to his credit, told the president he could ‘shove it’.

As with all elections, especially the close ones, enormous pressure was placed on the left to back whoever was most likely to beat the Republicans, no matter how right-wing they were. The folly of this strategy was shown most clearly in West Virginia, where Jesse Johnson was running a credible campaign for the Mountain Party, the local affiliate of the Greens. Johnson was never going to win the election for senator, but he was polling well, and getting good media coverage. Come election day, however, voters closed ranks behind right-wing Democrat Joe Manchin, who is in the pocket of the coal companies, and was filmed in one campaign ad shooting a copy of the proposed ‘Cap and Trade’ anti-climate change legislation. Manchin won, and has rewarded the Democratic Party for its loyalty by hinting he may cross over to the Republicans anyway.

The next two years, with Republicans in control of half of Congress, will certainly not be easy. But it is important not to buy into the idea that the country has moved decisively to the right, or the equally dangerous idea that we have to loyally fall in line behind Obama. Left candidates who gain even a half-respectable vote are very rare, but they exist. West Virginia’s Jesse Johnson made inroads because he is an activist, who linked his campaign to workers’ struggles and the fight against the environmental degradation of his state by big coal companies. Those are the kinds of struggles that will stop the Republicans in their tracks.

Oxford protest against Vodaphone tax dodge

2010-10-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

The Vodaphone shop in Oxford was shut down by protestors today as part of a growing nationwide campaign against major tax avoidance by the firm. More info on the protest at Indymedia and Socialist Worker web sites.

Oxford Students protest against tuition fees

2010-10-29T10:52:00.001-07:00

Over 1,500 students took part in a protest against tuition fees yesterday. More footage and information here

Oxford UAF coach tickets to Nov 6th

2010-10-24T02:06:00.000-07:00

Buy Oxford coach tickets to national demonstration against Islamaphobia, racism and fascism on Nov 6th on line here

Budget Protest this Weds 20th October Bonn Square 5.30pm

2010-10-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday 12th October, representatives from trades unions, campaigns and community groups representing thousands of people across Oxfordshire came together to express their opposition to cuts in public services, jobs, pay and pensions which they say will damage Oxfordshire's economy irreparably.

16 different organisations, representing people from all walks of life signed up to the following statement and agreed to form a united campaign, Oxfordshire Anti-Cuts Alliance, to build resistance to the cuts:

"We believe that the savage spending cuts proposed by the coalition government will wreck millions of people's lives. They will decimate public services, cut jobs, pay and pensions, and risk plunging the British economy into further difficulties.

"We believe there is an alternative. We could raise revenue through progressive taxation, plugging tax loopholes, cancelling Trident and adopting a green approach to public spending - investing in renewable energy and public transport to create a million jobs. We call on our elected representatives to oppose all cuts in jobs and public services."

The alliance has also called on people to join an Oxfordshire Day of Action Against Cuts on the 20th October when people from across the county will demonstrate their anger against the cuts at various events, including an evening rally in Bonn Square. The group will be running an information stall during the day on Cornmarket Street, central Oxford, which will provide analysis of the Comprehensive Spendng Review as it is released, showing the impact on local people.

From 5.30pm, people will gather together in Bonn Square to demonstrate opposition to the cuts and hear from various campaigns and trades unions working to oppose them.

Groups at the meeting included Right to Work, Peoples Charter and Save Our Services.

2010-10-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

Right to Work pamphlet - Defending the welfare state

Cameron’s Con-Dem government is set to launch the biggest attack on working people since the 1920s. A financial crisis caused by the greed of bankers is being used as an excuse to dismantle the welfare state.

Workers are being made to pay for a mess they didn’t create. The price they will pay is the destruction of public services, a drive to push down wages and the loss of well over a million jobs across the public and private sectors.

We are faced with the spectre of mass unemployment with the threat that a generation of young people will be lost to the dole queue.

But none of this is necessary. The cuts are being made while big business and the rich fail to pay billions in taxes and while billions more are squandered on illegal wars and a new generation of nuclear weapons.

This pamphlet argues that Cameron’s cuts are completely unnecessary. It seeks to arm activists with the arguments they need to use at work or college.

The money is there to pay for decent public services for all. We have to resist the Tory assault on our way of life and build a movement capable of opposing the cuts and fighting for a better world.

Order from:http://sites.google.com/site/righttoworkconference/home/resources/righttoworkpamphlet-defendingthewelfarestate

Right to Work protest at Tory Conference

2010-10-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

7000 marched against Tory cuts in Birminghamlast Sunday!!

See photos here: http://sites.google.com/site/righttoworkconference/home/tory-conference-demonstration/picturesfromthedemonstration

Activists prepare for protests on Wednesday 20^thOctober.

The day of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

In locations all over the U.K., including Oxford!!

Other locations:

http://sites.google.com/site/righttoworkconference/home/future-events-1/protestsagainstthecondemspendingreview

Last Sunday

We came in our thousands, defying pouring rain, to tell David Cameron and the Tories we won't pay for a crisis we did not create.

A physically impaired contingent led the way, expressing their anger over attacks on benefits, and behind them came a sea of trade union banners. Large contingents of trade unionists were joined by campaign bodies, students, pensioners and the unemployed.

There were people from the Labour Party, the Green Party, the Socialist Workers Party and no party.

The chief steward, Chris Bambery, said 7000 marched, not to be outdone the PCS general secretary quoted a figure of 10,000.

As one civil servant said, 'with this rain everyone whose marching is here to be counted.'

MPs Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were joined at the pre-march rally with a diverse range of speakers - reflecting all those who will be targeted by George Osborne on 20 October.

After the march some 300 people crammed into a lively meeting on "Building the Resistance in Europe to Cuts & Austerity" with Jorge Costa, a Portuguese Left Bloc MP, Greek trade unionist Dina Garane and Chris Bambery of Right to Work.

Sunday's protest exceeded organisers expectations. This has been the biggest protest against the Con-Dem cuts but as Paul Brandon, chair of Right to Work, said this was just the firing of the starting pistol.

We need to use Sunday to build the protests on 19, 20 and 23 October; to build for the TUC national demonstration next march and to argue the need for a French, Greek and Spanish style general strike.

The alliances we need locally and nationally need to reflect Sunday's unity. It requires co-operation not competition. A national anti-cuts movement needs to grow organically, not to be imposed by one group.

Right to Work wants to talk to all those pledged to build the resistance in that spirit.

On Sunday 5 December we will host a national meeting on how to fight the cuts. We do not intend to launch another campaign but instead to provide a forum where can learn from each other and work together.

In the mean time we wish to extend and deepen local Right to Work groups to help create strong and vibrant networks of resistance.

--

Sabotaging the War Machine 9th Oct

2010-09-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

-----------------------------------------------------------
Sabotaging the war machine
-----------------------------------------------------------
An evening of discussion and short films,
featuring the 'EDO decommissioners'.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sat 9th Oct - 7pm
East Oxford Community Centre,
Princes St / Cowley Rd
http://tiny.cc/eoccmap
-----------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------
On 17th Jan 2009, Israeli bombs had been falling on Gaza
for 3 weeks. Around 1400 people had been killed,
including 300 children. Large, passionate demos and
pickets had taken place in cities across the world and had
largely been ignored.

That night, in response, six people broke into the
weapons manufacturer EDO in Brighton, which supplies
arms to Israel. They caused £300,000 damage, stopping
work for several weeks.

In June 2010 they were found not guilty by a jury
who agreed that their attempt to prevent war crimes
was justified.

This is a rare opportunity to hear them speak
about their experiences and learn more about
the inspiring (ongoing) campaign against EDO.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Mike's Letter from America No19

2010-09-22T11:33:00.001-07:00

Storm in a Tea Cup?

So, what’s the story with the Tea Party? The US media talks about little else in this year’s mid-term election season, amid stories of incumbent Republican senators and congressmen being overturned in primary elections by candidates from the ultra-conservative Right. If the more alarmist predictions are to be believed, the USA today is somewhere near where Germany was in 1932.

The latest story that has caught the media’s attention is the victory of Christine O’Donnell in the Republican primary elections for the Delaware senate race. O’Donnell is the craziest of crazies, who believes that creationism should be taught in schools, masturbation is a sin, and that genetic engineering has produced ‘mice with fully-functioning human brains’.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li5nMsXg1Lk The likes of O’Donnell provide comic relief, and she has given the satirists the kind of material not seen since Sarah Palin’s run for vice-president. But her victory comes in the wake of more serious mobilizations such as the Islamophobic campaign against the Park51 community centre in New York, and the ‘Restoring Honor’ rally in Washington DC organized by Palin and the increasingly-unhinged Fox News pundit Glenn Beck.

So what is the ‘Tea Party’, and is it a serious threat? It began in April last year as a series of rallies against (imaginary) Obama tax rises, in which participants were invited to send tea bags to their congressmen in imitation of the Boston Tea Party. (Of course, had these people been around in the 1770s, they would probably have condemned the original Tea Party as an act of wanton destruction of private property by a bunch of terrorists). Since then, having dropped the original, embarrassing title of ‘teabaggers’, the movement has formed itself into a large, rather unfocussed, but undeniably real presence. It embraces criticisms of federal government taxes and spending, a visceral dislike of Obama that borders on (and usually crosses into) racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, Islamophobia, and an exaggerated fear of ’socialism’. Although some of their leaders would deny it, the Tea Party usually embraces right-wing conspiracy theories that Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim, or that climate change is a hoax. It would be easy to dismiss them as kooks, but they have successfully overthrown more moderate Republicans, their ideas are promoted to a mass audience by Fox News, and they influence more traditional conservatives such as former Republican House Leader Newt Gingrich, who gleefully whipped up the racist frenzy against the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’.

But beneath the media hype the Tea Party is not all it seems. Far from being a popular mass movement, it receives massive corporate funding, especially from the oil-billionaire Koch brothers, who have an obvious personal interest in low taxes, weak regulation of industry, and continuing reliance on fossil fuels. The average Tea Partier is over 40, of above-average income, white and male, a demographic that is increasingly unrepresentative of the USA. Polls suggest that only about 25% of the population support the Tea Party and even more worryingly for them, 50% have not even heard of them. A movement that has failed to even enter the consciousness of half the population is hardly on the verge of seizing power. They have also exposed cracks within their own movement and within the Republican Party as a whole. ‘Mouse-brain’ O’Donnell was roundly attacked on Fox News by ‘Bush’s Brain’ Karl Rove, and there was talk of the official Republican Party denying her support or funds. In Alaska and Florida there are ‘moderate’ Republicans running as independents against the official party candidate. The Tea Party itself is an amorphous mishmash of ideas and prejudices, and the libertarian (pro-free market, but also pro-civil liberties and anti-war) section of the movement is not an easy ally for ultra-conservative homophobic religious fanatics such as O’Donnell.

It would be wrong, however, to dismiss the threat from the Tea Party entirely. As we have seen with the BNP in Britain and the Front National in France, a minority far-right movement may not be able to gain power, but it can still poison the well by pulling the whole political spectrum to the right. If, as everyone expects, the Democrats lose control of the House of Representatives in November, it will be to a Republican Party which is farther to the right than ever before. Laws such as Arizona’s racist SC1070 (which allows the police to question anyone they even suspect is an illegal immigrant) are a taste of what could happen at a federal level. The Tea Party may not be fascists, but sections of this new Right movement talk and act in a fascistic way. The campaign against Park51 was the classic example of racist divide-and-rule at a time of economic recession, and its leaders have links to the EDL and Dutch racist politician Geert Wilders, who spoke at their 9/11 hatefest in New York. Glenn Beck, who is so quick to accuse Obama of being Hitler, uses some of the same rhetorical devices as the Fuehrer – appealing to the lower-middle classes’ sense of alienation, presenting his white gentile audience as victims of conspiracies by non-Christians (Muslims, this time), while presenting himself as a messianic deliverer who will ‘restore honor’ to his country.

One other ingredient is necessary for the far-right to thrive – a lack of opposition. The Democrats’ timidity has allowed the Tea Partiers to flaunt their prejudices almost unopposed, but the USA’s small socialist left was central to the inspiring opposition to the racists’ anti-mosque and Qur’an-burning antics on September 11^th. The prospect of a conservative victory in the elections is depressing, but it will not be a disaster so long as there is resistance from outside the walls of the Capitol.

Protest at Tory Party Conference

2010-09-17T01:47:00.000-07:00

Oxford Right to Work

Tory Cuts Wreck Lives-

Don’t let the Tories slash essential public services!
It’s time to raise your voice against the cuts!

Protest at the Conservative Party Conference

Birmingham

Sunday October 3rd 2010

Oxford subsidised coach leaves St Giles 9.30am
Tickets £10 waged £5 unwaged
To book phone 07947857906

BUY OXFORD COACH TICKETS ONLINE HERE

Supported/sponsored by Oxford Right to Work, Oxford UNISON Health Branch, Oxfordshire National Union of Teachers, South Central No1 CWU and Oxford and District TUC

More info at RTW National website

Mike's Letter from America No18

2010-08-25T15:14:00.001-07:00

It's not a Mosque and it's not a Ground Zero

You know it's an election year when politicians start whipping up fear against minorities.

First gay marriage (legalized in California, then banned, unbanned, and now in legal limbo) was supposed to undermine American society. Then Arizona passed a racist law allowing the police to demand to see the papers of anyone they think is an illegal immigrant (that is, anyone who looks Latino). Now, however, the Republicans think they have found the trump card to winning the mid-term elections in November: The 'Ground Zero Mosque'.

Firstly, we need to get one thing clear – the 'Ground Zero Mosque' is not at Ground Zero and is not a Mosque. A Muslim group called the Cordoba Initiative plans to build a 13-story interfaith community centre, and were given the OK by New York City two weeks ago. Of these thirteen floors, only two will be devoted to prayer space. Far from being 'at Ground Zero', the building will be two blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center. So it would more accurate to call it the 'Half a Mile from Ground Zero Building that's 15.3% Mosque'.

Until recently, this project was wholly uncontroversial. However, a concerted campaign starting in the far-right blogosphere has whipped up an Islamophobic attack against building a mosque on 'hallowed ground' amid claims that the building – established by a moderate Sufi group that stresses interfaith outreach – will be a terrorist recruiting center.

It's not hard to unpick the hypocrisy and warped thinking of these people. Apparently a mosque offends the 'hallowed ground' status of the area, but a Burger King, the 'New York Dolls' strip club, and countless stalls selling 9/11 tourist kitsch are entirely in keeping with the solemnity of the site. Of course, the feelings of 9/11 victims' families have been used to attack the project (even though many families publicly support it), but the fact that Ground Zero is a grave for hundreds of people has not stopped plans to build the new 'Freedom Tower' as prime real estate on it. Tenants are already being lined up for this new office space, including a Chinese company that will set up a 'China Center' in the tower. In another era, the right would have complained about 'godless Chinese Communists' setting up shop on 'hallowed ground' – but that was yesterday's scapegoat, yesterday's bogeyman.

The campaign against Park51 (to give the centre its proper name) could be dismissed as yet another publicity stunt by the borderline-insane world of far-right bloggers, as it is being peddled by the same sort of people who claim to have located President Obama's Kenyan birth certificate. Pamela Geller, the blogger who started the whole frenzy, believes Obama is the secret illegitimate son of Malcolm X, and that the Nazis were inspired by Muslim ideas! http://www.loonwatch.com/2009/08/pamela-geller-the-looniest-blogger-ever/ However, the moment Obama himself made some moderate comments in support of Park51, the mainstream Republicans seized upon the issue, promising to make it a cornerstone of their election campaign.

This is a classic 'wedge issue' – a distraction cynically designed to win votes for the right by whipping up fear and playing on people's emotions. Some Republicans are quite open about this – one congressman admitted that opposing gay marriage wasn't going to work as an issue for them, but that the 'Ground Zero Mosque' was. They were aided by the president's clumsy intervention, doing the familiar Obama two-step of taking a principled stand (his speech defending Park51) then spoiling it by losing his nerve and back-peddling (saying that he supported the right of New York's Muslims to build the centre, but wouldn't support them actually do it). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C23mCQvJ8I4 With Obama dithering, the Republicans scented blood, pinning the issue on the president (who, according to a recent poll, 46% of Republican supporters believe is a Muslim).

Many top Democrats followed Obama's unprincipled lead. New York governor David Paterson has talked of 'compromise' and offered a site for the 'mosque' further from Ground Zero – as if allowing the center to be driven up-town by an Islamophobic hate campaign is somehow a liberal act. Democratic senate leader Harry Reid (involved in a close reelection race in Nevada) was equally bad, echoing Paterson's view that Park51 should be built somewhere else. Even former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, something of a hero to the left of the party, has backed this line of 'compromise' with racists. Far from being ashamed of their cowardice, the Democrats have had the chutzpah to attack the left. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs complained of Obama's critics on the left that 'they will [only] be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we've eliminated the Pentagon'. Both sound good to me, Robert.

The Republicans' rhetorical attacks on Muslims are bad enough, but they will only fuel the very real attacks faced by America's Muslim community. The facebook page 'say no to the Mosque at Ground Zero' is full of racist abuse and even direct threats of violence. In Jacksonville, Florida, a bomb exploded outside a mosque, fortunately killing nobody. In Tennessee, a mosque was burned to the ground. In Florida, a church plans to mark the 9/11 anniversary with a 'Koran Burning'. This is the sort of atmosphere that could lead to Muslims being attacked or even killed, and the Republicans are pouring fuel on the fire while the Democrats remain silent.

Fortunately, there is resistance. A challenge by a conservative Christian group to building a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee sparked off a big, multi-faith campaign in defence of the Muslim community. http://socialistworker.org/2010/07/20/challenging-islamophobia Movements such as this point the way to challenging the racists, but we also need to build a principled alternative to the Democratic Party.

P.S.
If you've ever wondered where the term 'Ground Zero' comes from, it originally meant the center point of a nuclear explosion. At the 'real' Ground Zero in Hiroshima, the Japanese built not a lucrative office development but a Peace Memorial Park. In 1996, UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site – over the objections of the USA. Still, America honours the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in its own way – check out these cool atom bomb earrings! http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/14624

Oxford Budget Day Protest on YouTube

2010-06-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

Oxford Budget Day Protest 5pm Cornmarket

2010-06-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

George Osborne will announce his emergency budget at 12.30pm on Tuesday 22 June . Right to Work will be now be holding a demonstration outside

Downing Street from 11am onwards to greet George Osborne as he leaves to present his austerity day budget. Later in the evening local protests will be taking place nationwide.

Oxford Right to Work Protest

5pm Cornmarket (Outside HSBC)
Confirmed speakers so far include : Oxfordshire Unison Health branch, Ruskin Students Union, Oxford & District TUC, Save Temple Cowley Pools & Fitness centre campaign, Oxford Unite Against Fascism, The Peoples's Charter, Oxfordshire NUT, plus Mizz Lyrikal from Oxford Love Music Hate Racism

http://sites.google.com/site/righttoworkconference/

Free Joe Glenton Meeting June 10th

2010-05-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

Group: Oxford Stop the War
Event: Public Meeting - Free Joe glenton!
Details: SPEAKER: JOHN TIPPLE (CASE WORKER FOR PRIVATE JOE GLENTON)
Date: 10th JUNE
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: TOWN HALL, ST ALDATES, OXFORD
Email: oxfordstopthewar@hotmail.com

Oxford Stop the War Coalition Question Time

2010-03-27T05:24:00.000-07:00

Oxford Stop the War Coalition invites you to a

General Election Question Time

Tuesday 20th April 7.30pm

Oxford Town Hall, St Aldates

Featuring local General Election candidates.

Confirmed so far candidates from Labour, Liberal Democrats, Green Party and Ukip. Also invited- the candidate from the Conservative Party.

The panel with be joined by Sami Ramadami from the Stop the War Coalition.

All welcome. Please come and put your questions to the panel.

oxfordstopthewar@hotmail.com

Letter from America No 18

2010-03-07T03:13:00.000-08:00

One Year of Obama

Barack Obama has now been in office for over a year, and, given the heightened expectations around his ‘Hope and Change’ rhetoric, it is not surprising to find his presidency falling short of expectations. I’m going to leave aside the hysterical criticism of Obama from the rabid right – these people think anybody to the left of Ronald Reagan is a socialist, and just cannot get over the fact that a Black Democrat is president. No, there are more realistic reasons for opposing Obama than those offered by right-wing conspiracy theorists.

Obama’s commitment to sending more troops to Afghanistan was a blow to those on the left who had faith in him. It was, however, hardly a betrayal, as he had constantly said he would do so during his election campaign. Although Obama seems to have genuinely opposed the Iraq war from the beginning (unlike most of the Democrats in Congress, who voted for it at the time), in his debates with John McCain he criticised it not on principle, but because it was the ‘wrong war,’ distracting the US from what, presumably, is the ‘right war’ in Afghanistan. What is more worrying is the depth of Obama’s commitment to the ‘right war’. The 30,000 troops he committed late last year was the MAXIMUM number recommended by the generals. In other words, Obama is almost more militaristic than the military. Since Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last October, the US military presence Afghanistan has become bigger than that in Iraq.

Obama is also moving to the right on the economy. The recession forced him to break long-standing free-market taboos by pumping money into the economy, which was a welcome step. However, in his State of the Union address in January he promised a spending freeze and was positively Thatcheresque in his praise of small businesses as the key to job creation.

Obama’s biggest failure, however, is in healthcare reform. Despite the claims made by Republicans that they are a Trojan Horse for socialism, Obama’s proposals are incredibly modest, focusing on reform of the private health insurance companies, rather than the creation of an NHS-style comprehensive public system. Even these cautious reforms have been watered down by conservative Democrats in Congress; the House of Representatives passed an amendment effectively banning abortion from being paid for by health insurance, while the Senate removed the idea of the ‘public option’, a government-run scheme that would compete with (but not replace) private health insurance. What is left of the ‘reforms’ might even make the system worse, as the 40 million Americans currently uninsured will be mandated to buy insurance through the very private companies that are the cause of the whole mess that is U.S. health ‘care’.

Obama and the Democrats have proceeding with amazing caution for a party that controls the presidency and has huge majorities in both houses of Congress. From day one, Obama has preached ‘bipartisanship’, despite the fact that the Republicans have vowed to do everything they can to disrupt his agenda. Their tactics of using delaying measures in Congress alongside corporate-funded, fake-grass-roots demonstrations have been remarkably effective. Rather than respond by mobilizing their own supporters, the Democrats have obsessed about parliamentary procedure, and attempt to smooth-talk the mythical ‘moderate’ Republicans into voting for reform by removing any measures that might offend the big insurance companies.

It need not have been this way. Obama swept to victory in 2008 on a wave of enthusiasm and the hard work put in by a movement of new, young activists. Some people, such as Michael Moore and err… me, wrongly believed that this movement might take on its own momentum, and push Obama to the left despite himself. What we underestimated was how far ‘Obama the movement’ was a top-down affair with the sole aim of getting Obama elected. It was demobilized as soon as he was in the White House, apart from the odd mass email from HQ urging supporters to write to their congressman. Also demobilized was any kind of independent movement that might have held Obama’s feet to the fire. The anti-war movement, already divided, was undermined when the pro-Democrat section decided to pack up for the duration of the election and put all its hopes in an Obama presidency. This strategy has been repaid in drone attacks and civilian deaths in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As has been the case throughout U.S. history, the real movements for change are coming from outside the Democratic Party. Last year’s massive march in Washington for same-sex marriage rights was mobilized by a coalition of grassroots organizations, including socialists, and was opposed by Democratic politicians and even the mainstream gay rights organizations until they realized they could not stop it. And it had Lady Gaga as a speaker, which is something the Christian Right will never have.

Oxford Radical Forum

2010-02-27T09:29:00.000-08:00

http://oxfordradicalforum.wordpress.com/

OXFORD RADICAL FORUM 2010!

Comrades and travellers,

We are excited to announce the current programme for the Oxford Radical Forum 2010, which will be taking place Friday – Sunday, 5 – 7 March.

Once again Wadham College will play host to a broad range of critical debates and discussions on the radical left, with leading speakers, commentars, activists and academics. As always the event is entirely FREEand we are also pleased to announce a Forum dinner on the Friday night, and an evening social on the Saturday night.

We hope to see many of you at Wadham over the course of the Forum and hope that you will join us in making this another successful and fruitful event.

oxfordradicalforum@googlemail.com

Getting to Wadham College: http://www.wadham.ox.ac.uk/images/files/wadhmaprev.pdf

<< We view re-energising popular discussion and action on the left a necessity. Our belief in the need for an event in Oxford bringing together progressive politics stems both from a conviction in the continued and critical relevancy of Marxist and leftist ideas and theory and from the sad and persistent weakness of focused or organised progressive political organisation locally and nationally, despite such pressing conditions of political and economic crisis, and despite the very many who would under more favourable circumstances participate in such interventions. Therefore we are hosting again this forum which will continue to address these issues and draw in individuals from the two universities in Oxford, the city and beyond to consider critically ideas about social progress and transformation. Ultimately ORF seeks to contribute to a critical culture of left debate, theory and action, as well as to cement political and intellectual links between individuals and groups who will have a basis upon which to work in the future. >>

CURRENT TIMETABLE

(NB: All venues will be around the Ho Chi Minh Quad in Wadham College. The exact room will be clearly inidcated on the day.)

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

FRI

2:30 – 3:45

:: DIRECT ACTION WORKSHOP

With the ‘Seeds For Change’ collective.

4:30 – 6:00

:: ENGLAND’S POSTIMPERIAL MELANCHOLIA

Paul Gilroy (author, There Aint no Black in the Union Jack; Anthony Giddens Prof., London School of Economics).

6:45 – 8:15

:: THE BLACK AND THE RED: MARXISM & ANARCHISM TODAY

Paul Blackledge (author, Reflections on the Marxist Theory of History; Leeds Metropolitan University); Ruth Kinna (author, William Morris: The Art of Socialism; editor, Anarchist Studies; Loughborough University).

8:30-…

:: FORUM DINNER

All Forum attendees welcome…

2010-02-22T11:12:00.000-08:00

Be part of building a network of activists to fight for jobs, solidarity and public services!!

Oxford Right To Work Campaign meeting

Thursday 4^th March 7.30 pm,

Friends Meeting House, St Giles, Oxford

Speakers:

Tracey Rogers, PCS

Shao Dow, Love Music Hate Racism

Dave McGrath, CWU

Plus speakers from: FBU, UCU, student activist from Sussex

Oxford Right to Work Meeting 4th March

2010-02-14T03:04:00.001-08:00

Unite to fight job and public service cuts!! Fight racism, defend the planet!!

Oxford Right To Work Campaign public meeting. Activist speakers from public and private sector unions, students and anti-racists, Peoples Charter etc...

Thursday 4th March 7.30

Friends Meeting House, St Giles, Oxford

Come along and help build a network of activists to fight the cuts. We need to fight the cuts, whoever wins the next election.

Right to Work Conference

2009-12-26T03:38:00.000-08:00

A conference of resistance and solidarity
Saturday 30 January, Central Hall, Oldham Street, Manchester 11.30am-5pm

Fight for every job
Organise to stop the cuts
Defend services and pensions
Unite the public and private sectors
Demand a million green jobs
Jobs not bombs
Defend migrant workers – jobs for all

Speakers include:
Mark Serwotka (PCS), Sally Hunt (UCU), Tony Kearns (CWU), Jeremy Dear (NUJ), Jerry Hicks (Unite), Mark Smith (former Vestas worker), Paul Brandon (Unite bus worker), Nahella Ashraf (chair, Greater Manchester Stop the War), Dave Chapple (Chair National Shop Stewards Network), Clara Osagiede (RMT cleaners’ secretary), Kevin Courtney (NUT national executive, personal capacity), Dot Gibson (General Secretary, National Pensioners Convention) and speakers from the Fujitsu strike, Royal Mail dispute, Brighton bins dispute, BA cabin crew, Superdrug… and many more.

Supported by UCU nationally and over 55 union branches so far.

There’s a deep economic crisis – and the bosses and the politicians want us to pay for it. It’s bad now, and an avalanche of cuts is coming after the election. But there’s also a fightback, and we need more of that.
Whenever there’s resistance, then we need solidarity. Many working people rallied round the postal workers’ national fight. And many have also backed the Leeds bins workers, the BA workers, the Superdrug workers and other groups who have taken action. This conference is designed to bring together those networks of resistance and to make them stronger.

This is a brilliant chance to learn from one another and spread the lessons of the fightback.

It’s not just for trade unionists, and it won’t just be about workplace struggle. We are having speakers and workshops on issues like the war in Afghanistan, anti-racist battles, decent housing, and so on. We want students, unemployed workers, anti-war activists, pensioners, campaigners for green jobs, housing activists and anti-racist activists to come.

It won’t be a talking shop. We want to organise initiatives from the conference. For example, some people have suggested a day of action around welfare ‘reform’ or a coordinated push to unionise in specific areas, or action to defend and organise migrant workers.

We want to people to bring their own ideas to the conference and to go away with stronger organisation.

Workshops include:
How can we stop the jobs massacre?
Fighting privatisation, defending public services
Don’t let them rob our pensions!
Jobs not bombs
After Copenhagen, how can we win a million climate jobs?
“The lost generation”? – students and young workers fighting back
Against racism and the scapegoating of migrant workers
How can workers get a real political voice?
Defying the anti-union laws
The welfare reform agenda – fighting for our rights

http://sites.google.com/site/righttoworkconference/

The Wave

2009-11-21T02:18:00.000-08:00

Stop Climate Change Demonstration

Oxford Stop Climate Chaos Coalition is running subsidised coaches to the demonstration to get as many people there as possible. Coaches leave St Giles at 10a.m. Tickets Cost £10 waged and £8 unwaged. There is also a special price of £3 for members of Oxfordshire UNISON health branch.

Tickets can be bought online below http://web.bethere.co.uk/OSCC/ or email OSCC@bethere.co.uk or call 07985056089.

Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity and the world’s ecosystems. We have fewer than 100 months to reverse the growth in global carbon emissions, otherwise global warming will almost certainly exceed the danger threshold of 2 degrees C.

The UN Climate Change negotiations in Copenhagen this December are the most important international talks in the history of humankind. They must deliver a fair global deal to keep us all safe from dangerous and irreversible climate chaos.

We are urging as many people to come to London with us to make it clear to world leaders we want immediate effective action.

Letter from America # 17

2009-11-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

America Ys Guns

The recent shootings at Fort Hood army base in Texas have shocked the nation, and given rise to hours and pages of agonized media coverage. There is speculation about the shooter’s motives, his Muslim identity, and whether the crime should be classified as terrorism (as if this makes any difference to the families of the victims). As usual, the right-wing media has used the incident to engage in virulent Islamophobia. As usual, the media coverage misses the point.

Nidal Hasan’s Islamic beliefs may be relevant, as there are reports that he was increasingly influenced by radical Islam in the months leading to his rampage. There are, however, also reports that his communications with a ‘radical Imam’ were for the purpose of legitimate research. His actions may have been equally the result of his horror at the Iraq War, his fear of being sent to a war zone, his suffering from Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism, and his day-to-day experience in his job as a military psychologist listening to the horror-stories told by returning veterans. His being influenced by radical interpretations of Islam might be the trigger, but probably not the underlying cause, of his actions.

Also irrelevant is the debate that usually follows such events about the Second Amendment, which supposedly guarantees the right to bear arms. (It actually calls for a ‘well-regulated militia’, not for every right-wing gun-nut to be allowed to tote an AK-47.) Liberals usually call for more gun control after the latest shooting, and it’s understandable that the left should wish to oppose right wing militias such as the Minuteman, who exercise their Second Amendment rights by intimidating immigrants along the Mexican border. But, as Michael Moore pointed out in Bowling for Columbine, gun ownership is just as high in Canada as in the US, but Canada does not experience the same kind of gun-crime problems. Here in central Michigan, every second family seems to own a rifle for hunting during the deer season in the autumn. It does not make our area a hotbed of gun violence.

But of course, the usual gun-control vs gun-rights debate did not take place after the Fort Hood shooting, as the shooter belonged to the biggest, most heavily armed group of killers on the planet – the US armed forces. Any discussion of ending killing by taking the guns out of the hands of potential killers would of course come into head-on collision with official America’s love affair with the military.

The military in the US is bigger and more visible than in the UK – a larger proportion of the population is in the armed services, has been posted to Iraq, or has been killed or wounded there or in Afghanistan. Nobody is more than a few degrees of separation from an Iraq veteran (I have taught two of them in my classes). The understandable desire of people to support veterans is twisted and exploited into an orgy of militarism and patriotism, as we are constantly invited by bumper stickers or ads on TV to ‘support our troops’. Harley-Davison saw fit to ‘salute those who defend freedom’ with a youtube ad featuring scantily-clad women draping themselves over motorbikes. Presumably, the US forces in Iraq are fighting to defend soft porn and greenhouse gas emissions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6CHqSN7O-o We are not, however, invited to empathize with the troops beyond a superficial call to ‘honor their sacrifice’. We are not invited to ask why veterans are more likely to be unemployed, mentally ill, to commit suicide, or to go to prison.

The other question not being asked is why so many shooting sprees are committed by people linked to the far right. If Hasan’s crime was motivated by Islamism, then he’s in a minority – American ultra-conservatism and neo-fascism are behind more acts of violence in the USA than radical Islam. Before 9/11, the biggest act of domestic terrorism was Tim McVeigh’s bombing of the Federal Building at Oklahoma City. McVeigh was a military veteran, motivated by a peculiarly American brand of right-wing politics that stresses racism, suspicion of the federal government (except when it’s fighting wars), and worship of the gun. More recently, the last year has seen the murder of George Tiller, a doctor in Kansas who performed abortions; the assault on a Unitarian church in Tennessee by a shooter who hated its members’ ‘liberal views’; and the killing of a security guard at the national Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC by a neo-Nazi. All these stories were well reported at the time, but all seemed to disappear from media discussion of gun-crime, as they do not fit the stereotype of mass-shootings being committed by (a) Muslim terrorists or (b) lone gunmen who ‘go postal’ for crazed, personal reasons. I’m not saying these killings were linked in an organizational sense, but they share a common ideology.

This ideology cannot be dismissed as the belief system of a few extremists – it shades into that of the more mainstream right. Before his murder, Dr Tiller was repeatedly labeled ‘Tiller the Baby-Killer’ by Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Fair and Balanced’ Fox News. His murderer was linked to the anti-abortion group ‘Operation Rescue.’ Right-wing protestors against healthcare reform have turned up outside meetings held by Democratic members of Congress, and even one of Obama’s speeches, openly carrying assault rifles. At election rallies held by McCain and Palin last year, members of the audience were heard shouting ‘traitor’ and ‘kill him’ at the mention of Obama.

I’m not saying the USA is about to face a fascist coup, or that the Republican Party are in league with neo-Nazis. My point is that there is – to use the old cliché – a ‘violence inherent in the system’ of the US. Fort Hood was, after all, named after a Civil War general in the armies of the slave-owning South. When a country has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, when it has military bases in over 100 foreign countries, when it occupies two countries, and funds the Israeli occupation of a third, when it has the world’s biggest arms industry, when it imprisons more young Black men than it sends to college, when it was built on the dispossession of one people and the enslavement of a second – when, in short, American capitalism polices the globe and its own people with naked violence – it is not surprising when that violence sometimes emerges in unexpected and shocking ways. As Malcolm X put it, commentating on the assassination of JFK – the chickens have come home to roost.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign Meeting

2009-11-02T05:51:00.000-08:00

Palestinian Child Prisoners

Public Meeting on Thursday 5th November 7-9pm
Oxford Town Hall, St Aldate's

Chair: Victoria Brittain
Guests: Danny Freidman and Karma Nabulsi

Mike's Letter from America No 16

2009-10-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

Kick me out of the Ball Game

There’s lots to write about in U.S. politics at the moment; Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize (which the USA celebrated by launching a missile at the moon); the continuing health care debate, which looks set to deliver a bill so watered down that it can hardly be called ‘reform’; and an increasingly hysterical right-wing campaign against Obama, with public meetings called by Democratic congressmen invaded by mobs orchestrated by Fox News and right-wing pressure groups. But instead, I will write about a lighter subject; baseball.

‘America’s Pastime’, as it is sometimes called, is reaching its season’s climax this month. October is traditionally the time for the post-season play-offs, ending in the World Series. Baseball is a microcosm for much that is good and bad about America. It is traditionally a working class sport, and despite an early history of racial segregation, is very multi-cultural. Today’s professional teams include large numbers of players from Latin America, U. S. players of all racial backgrounds, and, increasingly, the top players from Japan and Korea are playing in America’s major leagues. It also contradicts some of the clichés about American sports fans who supposedly don’t take to cricket or football (‘soccer’) because they are too slow-moving and low-scoring. Baseball games can last three hours or more; last week’s game that saw my local team (Detroit Tigers) eliminated lasted 4 ½ hours, and was totally gripping. It is a game that requires (but repays) patience from the spectator, it is subtle, and highly tactical – everything that is opposite to the stereotype of Americas liking entertainment that is flashy and quick. And the teams do not wear sponsors’ names or logos on their shirts.

On the negative side, baseball also reflects the least savory aspects of American society – capitalism and nationalism. All professional sports are big business, but baseball pioneered some of the worst aspects of sport-as-capitalism. It was the first sport to move teams lock, stock and barrel across the country to access richer markets, which began with the migration of two clubs from New York to California in the 1950s. Team owners in the early days of the game treated their players like serfs, a practice which lives on in a punishing 162-game fixture list. Today, the players are millionaires, but the pressure to perform to earn their vast wages has created an endemic culture of performance-enhancing drugs.

Alongside increasing commercialism is rising nationalism. It has long been a joke to non-Americans that the ‘World Series’ only includes teams from the USA and Canada. The ritual of playing the national anthem before sporting events is an alienating one to me, as both a foreigner and a socialist, but something that you get used to. In recent years, however, the enforced patriotism has been ramped up, and combined with militarism. I first noticed this in 2006, when I was following the Detroit Tigers in the World Series via Channel 5 in the UK. In one game, the commentators read an email from a viewer in the US armed forces, who was watching from Iraq. One of them then said ‘those boys are fighting so that we can have the freedom to enjoy occasions like this’, which was news to me, as I had been previously unaware of Saddam Hussein’s evil plan to destroy Major League Baseball. Now when you go to a game the tannoy announcer asks you not only to stand for the national anthem, but to do so in honor of the armed forces. At one minor league game I went to this year, the flag was escorted onto the field by an honor-guard of flag-waving boy scouts. The pre-game rituals of baseball feel increasingly like the ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’ scene in Cabaret, where an angelic-looking boy singer turns out to be a Hitler Youth member.

The worst aspect of all this is the damage done to the beloved ‘Seventh Inning Stretch’. This is a pleasantly silly ritual where the crowd are able to stand, stretch their legs, and sing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ a hokey song about the joys of watching baseball. Today, ‘Take Me Out’ is often replaced by ‘God Bless America’ or some other patriotic song – as if the national anthem were not enough. Maybe they fear our patriotism has faded in the previous 6 ½ innings, and needs a top-up? I’m sad to say that last year one America-hating subversive in New York tried to use this time to go to the toilet, only to be thrown out for disrespecting ‘God Bless America’. I repeat – not just told to sit down, but thrown out and roughed up by two cops. http://wcbstv.com/local/yankees.bathroom.ejection.2.804859.html

So will understand my mixed feelings about attending a baseball game in the USA during the ‘War on Terror’. But on the plus side, baseball is still an enjoyable game, and the right to burn the American flag is still protected by the Constitution. Now, where are my matches?

Troops Out of Afghanistan- Protest 24th October Oxford coach details

2009-10-03T06:26:00.000-07:00

National Demonstration: LondonTroops Out of Afghanistan Now
Saturday 24 October Central London
Called by Stop the War Coalition, CND and British Muslim Initiative

The majority of people in Britain want the troops out of Afghanistan now. They know this war is unwinnable and unjustifiable. The demonstration on Saturday 24 October will give voice to that majority who say the troops must come home now.

Oxford Coach Details:
Subsidised transport to London from Oxford will leave St. Giles at 9.30 pm.
Coach tickets are £11 waged/£7 unwaged can be boughtonline at www.oxfordactivists.co.uk/

10 reasons to get the troops out of Afghanistan...

Pull the Plug on Nazi Griffin

2009-10-03T06:16:00.000-07:00

Demonstrate
Unite Against Fascism will be protesting at the BBC headquartersPicket from 9am. BECTU is supporting BBC workers refusing to work.
There will be a national and local demonstrations from 5pm, Thursday 22 October

LONDON Wood Lane, London W12 7RJ (White City or Wood Lane tube)
OXFORD 269 Banbury Road, Summertown

Shame the BBC for inviting Nazi BNP leader Nick Griffin onto Question TimeThe BBC has invited Nick Griffin, leader of the fascist BNP and a man with a criminal conviction for denying Hitler’s Holocaust, onto its flagship Question Time programme on Thursday 22 October in London.

The BBC says the BNP should be treated as if it were a democratic party. But there is nothing democratic about the BNP. It is a racist and fascist organisation dedicated to kicking every single black and Asian person out of this country. Griffin himself wrote: “When the crunch comes power is the product of force and will, not of rational debate.” He isn’t interested in impressing people with his arguments – he wants to back up the BNP’s slogans with “well-directed boots and fists”.

The BBC does not have to give Griffin a platform to spout his doctrine of race hate. It has chosen to roll out the red carpet to racists and fascists. And by doing so, it has chosen to treat black and Asian people with contempt. More airtime for the BNP will lead to more racist attacks on the streets.If you’re disgusted by Nick Griffin and appalled by the BBC’s decision to host him, come join our demonstrations outside the BBC on Thursday 22 October.No platform for Nazis • Stop racist attacks • Unite to stop the BNPLeaflet can be downloaded here.

We urgently need funds to produce leaflets, posters and placards etc to keep up the fight against the BNP. Donations can be made c/o http://www.uaf.org.uk/

Oxford Troops Out of Afghanistan Meeting- Monday 12th October

2009-09-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

Oxford Stop the War Coalition Public Meeting

Monday 12th October 7.30pm

Oxford Town Hall St Aldates

Speakers: Tariq Ali and Jeremy Corbyn MP

Ten reasons to get the troops out:

The death rate is rising on both sides. The number of British troops who have died is now higher than those killed in 6 years in Iraq. Fifteen soldiers died in the first two weeks of July alone. No one keeps track of the number of Afghan dead but it numbers tens of thousands since 2001. In May more than 140 Afghans, mainly women and children, were killed in one air strike.

This is an unwinnable war. The Taliban was defeated in 2001 but is now growing in strength. Osama bin Laden has not been captured. The war is supposedly about defending the Karzai government. But his government is one of the most corrupt in the world. Neither he nor the occupation forces have brought any real improvements for the Afghan

Gordon Brown claims the war is about combating terrorism. But there was no terrorist threat to Britain before the war in Afghanistan, or before the war in Iraq in 2003. It is those wars and their consequences that have made Britain a target. Even MI5 told the government the Iraq occupation was likely to increase not decrease terrorism.

We are told this may have to be our ’30 years war’. We have fought for eight years and the situation is getting worse. Children as yet unborn will be dying if this war is not stopped.

The war is spreading to Pakistan, which is a nuclear state, opening up the prospect of an even more terrible conflict.

Life is getting worse for most Afghans under occupation. There is a huge refugee problem. Corruption is rife. While Tony Blair promised in 2001 ‘we will not walk away’ Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world. According to the United Nations life expectancy has fallen for Afghans since 2003. Far more is spent on the war and the military than is spent on reconstruction. Aid meant to help the Afghans is not getting through to those who need it.

Britain has spent £4.6 billion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq every year – enough money to create 200,000 graduate jobs annually. We should be funding these jobs, not wasting more money on war. Unemployment must not become a recruiting sergeant for the army.

More troops or helicopters won’t help. The NATO forces are not losing because they don’t have the equipment but because they are in Afghanistan.

We were told that the war in Afghanistan was to liberate women. But women’s lives have not improved. Death in childbirth is rising. The Karzai government even tried to pass a law allowing rape in marriage. Despite all the talk about troops helping girls to go to school, less than a third of Afghan girls are in school and less than 10% can read and write, 7 years after the fall of the Taliban.

The majority of Afghans do not want the war and occupation. The majority of British people think the troops should come home by Xmas at the latest. In two recent polls 56% (BBC and Guardian) and 59% (ITN) want the troops out.

Rage Against Labour September 27th

2009-09-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

Jobs, Education, Peace! Demand a new direction
Lobby and Demonstration @ Labour Party Conference, Brighton12.30pm, 27th September 2009
Coach leaves Central Oxford 9am
Contact: 07967392229 / gawainlittle@yahoo.co.uk

A coalition of trade unions and pressure groups have teamed up to lobby the Labour Party Conference and call for a change in direction over proposals to cut public expenditure.The government have announced that public spending growth will be cut from 1.1%next year to 0.7% from 2011-12. Alongside this real term spending cut, the government also announced further ‘efficiency savings’ of £9 billion across the public sector in addition to the £5 billion announced in November. Past so-called ‘efficiency programmes’ have had a disastrous impact on all public services.It is against this backdrop that the media and some politicians are trying to create a division between the public and private sectors. Divisive myths about job security, pay and pensions in civil and public services have been voiced in an attempt to portray the public sector as ‘having it easy’ compared to the private sector.We oppose false divisions between public and private sector workers. The real issue is the injustice of making the low paid, wherever they work, pay for a crisis not of their making. We call on the government to defend both public and private sector jobs, and invest in public services, not cut them.

Called by: UCU, NUT, PCS, NUJ, CWU, StWC, UAF, Right to Work.Transport organised by: Oxford & District Trades Council, Oxford CWU, Oxford UCU, Oxfordshire NUT.

More Info: http://www.righttowork.org.uk/

Mike's Letter from America No 15

2009-08-01T03:58:00.000-07:00

The Worst of Health

Yesterday, I went to have some blood samples taken. The first thing I was asked when I got to the clinic was ‘could I see your insurance card?’ This is always the first thing an American resident is asked when going for the first time to a doctor, dentist, or even a hospital – except in the direst of emergencies, no insurance = no treatment.

The irony of this is that, if you believe the Republicans and their allies in the media, in Britain or other countries that have a public health system ‘government bureaucrats come between you and your doctor’. Yet in 39 years under the care of the NHS, I never had to see a bureaucrat, government or otherwise. When I lived in Oxford, the NHS medical centre was literally across the road - the only thing ‘between me and my doctor’ was a street. In the US, however, the private bureaucracy of the insurance companies always stands between a patient and his or her physician.

Another example of my experience of the US healthcare system: soon after arrival in America, I went to the pharmacy for a prescribed nasal spray. When told it would cost me $40 (about £26), I asked whether they had remembered to deduct the portion paid by the insurance. They told me that yes, they had, and that the full price for the medicine was more like $400! Now, I know for a fact that this medicine sold for a market rate of about £8 in the UK, where it is obtainable over the counter. With a prescription, of course, it costs even less (and is free in Scotland or Wales).

As shown by Michael Moore’s movie Sicko, the US healthcare system regularly fails those who need it most. Over 47 million Americans (nearly 20% of the population) have no health insurance and, as Moore demonstrated, even those who are covered constantly find that their insurers fail to pay up. Whole armies of bureaucrats are employed by the insurance companies to investigate their clients to find loopholes that will allow them not to pay for their treatment. In 1993, when health care reform was proposed by the Clinton administration, the insurers paid out 95c for every $1 they collected in premiums; now, the figure is only 80c. Meanwhile, their profits have increased by over 400%.

Fortunately, Obama has a plan. To listen to the Republicans and the pundits on Fox News, you’d think he was going to bring in a fully-funded public health-care system, paid for by expropriating the bourgeoisie while strangling some particularly adorable puppies. In fact, Obama’s plans are incredibly moderate, consisting mainly of a public insurance scheme to compete with the private insurers, and making it compulsory for employers to offer health coverage to their workers. His administration has been very careful to reassure the health insurance industry that their profits will be left intact. A few weeks ago, Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was on the radio telling listeners that the government-sponsored public insurance scheme would not undercut the private insurers – to which my reaction as ‘why the hell not?’

The other plank of the healthcare scam is the pharmaceutical companies. My $400 nasal spray incident was made possible by the fact that the in insurers are essentially in cahoots with the drugs companies to maximize their profits. Pharmaceutical companies can charge what they like, knowing insurers will (grudgingly) pay up; insurers can charge what they like, knowing that the public have no other choice but to pay their premiums. Yet the Obama plan leaves the big pharmaceutical companies untouched. Recently, Harry and Louise, the adorable white middle-class couple who famously appeared in ads opposing Clinton’s health reform proposals (paid for, of course, by the health insurance industry), have been on our screens again. This time, however, they are supporting Obama’s plan. And who is paying for the ads? The lobby representing the drugs companies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOr17a4ZOIU You may think any healthcare reform that is backed by big pharma is not a reform worthy of the name – and you’d be right.

Still, Obama’s plan is a tiny step in the right direction. It ought to be very popular – polls show that 72% of Americans want some kind of public health insurance. Yet the barrage of lies and scare tactics against ‘socialized medicine’ seem to be having an effect, with some polls showing Obama losing popularity over the healthcare issue. The ‘Blue Dogs’ (right-wing Democrats who would not be out of place in David Cameron’s Tory Party) are getting cold feet, and Democrat senators are trying to cobble together a deal with the Republicans to remove even the tiny, weak public insurance scheme proposed by the president.

Ironically, public health care already exists in the USA. Medicare/Medicaid, which covers the poorest and the elderly, has been in place since the 1960s, and is incredibly popular. More to the point, members of Congress benefit from a health insurance scheme of the sort that they would deny the rest of us. The military also have publically-funded health insurance, and John Stewart on the Daily Show managed to get neo-con Bill Krystol to admit that (a) it is better than private health care and (b) that the rest of us don’t deserve the same. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa69puS7J0Q

If health care reform is scuppered again, as it was under Clinton, it will show where true power lies in US society. The Democrats have the presidency, both houses of Congress (including a supposedly unassailable 60-40 majority in the Senate), and the backing of 72% of the population. But the private health industry has the $500 million it paid last year on lobbying and campaign contributions to politicians. It will take a mass campaign from outside the halls of Congress to counter that, and make sure Democratic congressmen vote with their electors, not with the lobbyists.

Vestas workers take on climate change minister in Oxford

2009-07-28T13:13:00.000-07:00

Vestas workers challenged Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband at a packed public meeting of 600 people at Oxford Town Hall on Monday evening.
Protesters supporting the Vestas workers heckled Miliband earlier in the day when he met the public at Oxford train station. Local trade unionists and environmentalists forced him to agree to an impromptu personal meeting with one of the Vestas workers.

Later, local campaigners gathered signatures from the public as they entered the public meeting, calling for a Vestas worker to be allowed to address the meeting from the platform. Just as Miliband was about to speak it was announced, to much applause, that “due to popular demand” the meeting agenda would be rearranged to allow a Vestas worker to speak to the meeting.

Vestas worker Dave Hughes addressed the meeting. He explained what had happened and why the workers were occupying the factory – to save their jobs and to show the government that they have the skills to make wind turbine blades for the UK market. He asked Miliband, “Why has the government stood back and allowed 600 workers to be fired?” and said that if the government was serious about tackling climate change it should save Vestas.

Miliband replied that Vestas management had told him that government money would not save the plant and that the biggest problem was UK planning laws – laws that he said the government was going to change. Several Vestas workers and others challenged Miliband from the floor. They asked why, if the government could find billions to nationalise the banks, they could not nationalise Vestas to save jobs and help save the environment. Miliband argued that, “If I nationalise I don't think it will encourage others to come here and invest”. A speaker from People and Planet lambasted the government’s new energy white paper saying it was “incoherent and does not have a long term strategy behind it”. To much laughter people pointed out that, while the government claims to be a global leader on carbon reduction, it now owns the Royal Bank of Scotland—the biggest funder of fossil fuels in Britain. Miliband urged us all to “suspend our pre-existing views” to find ways to deal with climate change. Yet when challenged again from the floor as to why the government won't step in and save Vestas he replied, “It’s not about the amount of money from us – to nationalise will do more harm than good”.

New Labour is clearly not prepared to drop its ideological belief that the free market is the answer to solving climate change and creating much needed new green jobs during the biggest recession the country has faced since the 1930s.
Many people left the meeting unconvinced by Miliband’s lukewarm response – but inspired by the Vestas workers’ action.

A collection for the Vestas workers raised £200

More info at: http://savevestas.wordpress.com/

Pictures from http://www.flickr.com/photos/energyclimatechange/with/3765226602/

Unite Against Fascism- Oxford coach for 15th August

2009-07-21T12:58:00.000-07:00

A national demonstration will take place against the Red, White & Blue fascist “festival” organised by the BNP in Derbyshire on Saturday 15 August

Despite significant local opposition, the BNP are going ahead with their Nazi rally in the Derbyshire countryside.

In previous years, BNP members were secretly taped by BBC documentary makers singing Nazi marching songs at the event.

In the wake of the election of two fascist BNP members to the European Parliament, we must ensure that the BNP does not use its electoral foothold to promote their bigotry and hatred on our streets.

Unite Against Fascism is calling on every organisation and individual opposed to the BNP to join the national protest and rally against the Red White and Blue “festival of hate” in Codnor, Derbyshire. We want to bring enough protesters to Codnor to “kettle” the BNP rally by encircling it with anti-fascists. This action will symbolise the fact that the vast majority of people in this country reject the BNP’s Nazi politics.

This action is supported by local Unite Against Fascism and Love Music Hate Racism groups.

Seats on the coach from Oxford can be booked online c/o http://web.bethere.co.uk/OxfordUAF/ or email OxfordUAF@bethere.co.uk. Alternatively ring 07790532513. Please talk to your friends, work mates and members of your organisations about supporting this demonstration.

Message from the Campaign Against Climate Change

2009-07-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

Save Vestas - Defend Jobs, Save the Planet - Support the Occupation

Workers at the Vestas Wind Turbine factory on the Isle of Wight have
JUST NOW occupied their factory. They are fighting for 600 jobs and
the future of the planet. They need help now.

PLEASE TEXT AND CALL EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

There is a large picket of support starting outside the factory. This
will be crucial in giving people confidence inside. We want hundreds
of people by morning.
If you are not working, come now, by car, bus or train.
If you are on the South Coast and working, come for the night and go
to work exhausted and proud.

If you can’t come, call up friends and offer to pay the fare or petrol
money for someone else to come down. Or part of the fare.
Don’t just call the environmental and union activists you know. Call
your friends and ask them who they know. Call your brother’s friends=2 0
or your children’s friends. Text everyone. Get your friends calling
and texting.

WE WANT HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE NOW.
SAVE THE JOBS - SAVE THE PLANET.

The workers want Gordon Brown to step in as if it was a troubled bank
and save the jobs and keep making wind turbine blades. They gave the
bankers trillions. They say they care about climate change. He has
talked about creating 40,000 "Green Jobs", the first step should be
protecting these 600.

The workers will need solidarity - donations of money, food and other
assistance. In the first instance please send messages of solidarity
to savevestas@gmail. com

We will suggest other forms of solidarity soon. Do this now. Reach for
your phone.

Why we should get the Troops Out of Afghanistan

2009-07-11T04:33:00.000-07:00

INTERVENTION AND RESISTANCE IN AFGHANISTAN
Why has one of the poorest countries in the world been soaked in blood for over 150 years, as three major powers have sought to control it? Stop the War officer John Rees presents a short video history of imperialist intervention and local resistance in Afghanistan.The 20 minute film can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/13TEmJIt is part of the Timeline series produced by the Islam Channel (http://bit.ly/4jCqQ).

Mike's Letter from America No 14

2009-06-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

Factories Close, Guantanamo Stays Open

‘Do you approve of President Obama?’ asks a quiz on Facebook. Polls are always pretty unreliable, especially online ones, which tend to be self-selecting. But the more scientific polls reveal that, while some of the initial euphoria about Obama’s election has worn off, his approval ratings have been consistently over 60%. Gordon Brown (assuming he’s still PM by the time I finish writing this) could only dream of such ratings. The problem with the poll, of course, is that it begs the question ‘approve of what?’ Do I approve of the fact that Obama, not John McCain, is president? Well, yes, but there is a lot to disapprove of about the Obama administration.

The biggest question facing the US at the moment is, of course, the economy. To be fair to Obama, he has carried out some vaguely social-democratic polices, but more by accident than design, as he has been forced to take measures (like FDR in the Great Depression) to save capitalism from itself. Most striking has been Obama’s behavior toward General Motors (GM). First, the president insisted on sacking the company’s CEO after GM received a government bail-out – a small step perhaps, but an astonishing breach of the free-market taboo against state intervention that has dominated politics for the last 30 years. Now, following GM’s bankruptcy, the federal government has taken a 60% share of the company. Nobody will say the word, but this is in effect nationalization. Something apparently even more radical occurred in Chrysler, where a trust controlled by the auto workers’ union the UAW received a controlling share of the company

The auto industry is a subject close to the hearts of us in Michigan, home to the so-called ‘Big Three’ car manufacturers (Ford, Chrysler, and GM) all of which are in various degrees of distress. Given that Michigan already has the worst economy of any of the 50 states, with unemployment in double figures, the crisis in the car industry could send the state into economic meltdown. So have Obama and the UAW ridden to the rescue, implementing a socialist utopia of nationalization under workers’ control?

Not so fast. The government intervention is designed to stabilize GM and manage its bankruptcy. No jobs are being saved, on the contrary, the government and the union are there to manage the redundancies, which continue almost daily. (This morning, GM announced another 400 redundancies in Flint, Michigan, a city whose plight was explored in Michael Moore’s documentary Roger and Me.) The Democrats were quick to reassure big business that Congress would not be running GM (which begs the question, why nationalize a company if you’re going to leave its running to the executives who drove it to bankruptcy?). For its part, UAW bureaucracy, which has led the way in selling pay cuts and the loss of pensions to its members, is acting to smooth the process of bankruptcy and redundancies. As for Chrysler, the UAW is using its share to finance its members’ pensions (which, until the union sold out, had been paid for by the employers anyway), and has stated it will not control management of the company.

Let us leave the depressing prospect of the devastated economy of Michigan to consider more positive matters. Isn’t Obama closing down Guantanamo? Well, no, not really, as he is only closing it down in order to move the inmates to other prisons. The whole regime of detention without charge or trial is to continue, and the administration’s lawyers even came up with a new, updated definition of ‘illegal combatants’ to justify their continued detention. But even the plan to move the deckchairs on this ethical Titanic was too much for the Democrats in Congress. Following a hysterical fear-campaign by the Republicans, invoking images of dangerous terrorist running free in small-town America, Democratic senators crumbled, and the measure to close Guantanamo was defeated by an astonishing margin of 90 to 6, in a senate that contains only 40 Republicans.

Surely, at least in foreign policy Obama is progressive? Part of his continuing appeal is that he has changed the tone compared to Bush. In place of confrontation and a contemptuous dismissal of other cultures and nations, Obama is very good at making the right noises about peace and cooperation. His speech in Cairo was a great example of his approach, dotted with references to Islam and Arabic culture that won over his audience. He even mildly criticized Israel, but the substance of his speech left little of comfort for the Palestinians, who were told they had no right to armed resistance, and must accept whatever crumbs are handed them from the negotiating table. Meanwhile, Obama is moving more troops to Afghanistan, and Afghan and Pakistani civilians are dying in the continuation of Bush’s ‘War on Terror.’

It is too early to see if any alternative to the left of Obama is going to emerge, and most liberals seem prepared to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, especially as he is about to launch long-awaited health care reforms. But the optimistic opinion polls disguise growing unease over the economy and torture, and (unlike the depressing scenario in the European elections) the Republicans are ill-placed to take advantage of it. When the right organized a series of ‘tea-bagging’ demonstrations (don’t ask!) against wholly-imaginary Obama tax increases, the turn out in most places was pathetic, and the notion of ‘tea-bagging’ received widespread ridicule. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLsKt4O4Yw8 More good news is that the wretched bureaucratic leadership of the UAW is not the whole story when it comes to the labor movement in the US. Union membership is growing rapidly in the service sector, and in 2007 union membership figures increased nationally for the first time in 25 years. As I’ve written before, the gay rights movement is growing in reaction to California’s ban on same-sex marriage, and the conservatives have been forced onto the back foot over this issue. Finally, despite the Republicans attempts to (ludicrously) scare people by labeling Obama a socialist, opinion polls show that half the population actually think socialism is a good idea. Maybe we should believe those polls after all?

Tom Woodcock result in Cambridge Council Elections shows scope for Left Alternative

2009-06-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

Tom Woodcock stood in the recent County Council elections in Cambridge under the slogan 'make the bankers pay – defend jobs, public services and the environment'.
Kilian Bourke (Lib Dem) 34.4% 829
Chris Freeman (Labour) 20.46% 493
Tom Woodcock (Independent) 17.63 % 425
Phil Richards (Green) 12.32% 297
Sam Barker (Conservative) 11.2% 270
Marjorie Barr ((UKIP) 3.98% 96

Oxford Working Class Book Fair

2009-05-17T15:35:00.000-07:00

Saturday, 2 May 2009

1ST Oxford Working Class Bookfair!

Saturday 20 June, 11 am - 6 pm
Ruskin College, Walton Street, Oxford

OWCB cordially invite YOU to visit the 1st everOXFORD WORKING CLASS BOOKFAIR!There will be books, talks, workshops, short films and more books and magazines . . .

We plan to recover/reclaim some of thehidden history of Oxford, with its gallery ofrogues, rebels and revolutionaries, to touch upon some topics of contemporary relevance to the man & woman on the street today, provide quality entertainment, discuss the big issues past and present & hopefully have a real good time to boot! - All in a relaxed and warm atmosphere!

http://oxfordworkingclassbookfair.blogspot.com/2009/05/1st-oxford-working-class-bookfair.html

The Liberal Defence of Murder

2009-05-09T01:30:00.000-07:00

Richard Seymour, the blogger of Lenin's Tomb fame and author of 'The Liberal Defence of Murder' will be speaking at Wadham College SWSS meeting this Thursday 14th May at 7.30pm (will be signed from front).

Richard's Blog: http://leninology.blogspot.com/

New Statesman Review:

http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2008/12/liberal-defence-seymour-murder

Climate Emergency Parliament

2009-05-09T01:28:00.000-07:00

Campaign against Climate Change

Climate Emergency Parliament

Parliament Square, Wednesday 15^th July at 6.00 pm

Our current parliament is failing to respond the Climate Emergency.

We will convene an alternative parliament to respond with the degree of urgency required.

The Bills before Parliament will include measures for

10% reductions in UK Greenhouse gases by the end of 2010

A million Green Jobs and emergency insulation program

Banning all domestic flights by the end of 2010

A 55 mph national speed limit

Halfing (on average) the cost of public transport and terminating the roads program

Come to the Peoples’ Parliament ! All are welcome – just turn up and take your seat ( er….on the pavement)

Hear what we could be doing in the UK now to avert climate catastrophe and bring your own ideas !

The gap between what the science demands and what the politicians are offering is vast – whilst there are signs of faltering political progress (and much greenwash), the updated science gets more scary day by day… See for instance http://climatesafety.org/

Add your voice to the demand for radical action now – we should not just be on the defensive saying ‘no’ to airports, new coal, road building etc.. etc.. we should be pushing forward our own positive agenda for real solutions to the climate crisis !

We in the UK cannot deal with this problem on our own but our best chance of influencing the critical international Climate Talks in Copenhagen at the end of the year is by committing to really radical measures here in the UK in order to lead in the only effective way we can :by example. And the time to do that is RIGHT NOW

Updates will be at www.campaigncc.org

Oxford Trade Union May Day Rally Sat 2nd May

2009-04-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

May Day Rally in Oxford: Defend jobs and public services!
Bonn Square 1-3pm Saturday 2nd May

With 4,000 jobs lost in Oxfordshire over recent months, the trade union movement is calling for an alternative solution to the economic crisis: one which protects your jobs and your public services. Together we can make a difference.

Bring along campaigning and union banners, stalls, music from 1pm, speeches start at 2pm.
Speakers from Unite (car workers union), CWU (postal workers union), Unison (health workers union) and Cuba Solidarity Campaign.
Music from Love Music Hate Racism.

http://www.odtuc.org.uk/

Mike's Letter from America #13

2009-03-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

Letter from America #13

An Indecent Proposition

The election of Barack Obama signified many things, and one of these was the apparent failure of the Right’s ‘culture wars’ strategy. This concept had its roots in the 1960s, when Nixon’s Republicans sought to mobilize the ‘silent majority’ (who they believed to be innately conservative) against 60s radicalism. It worked in 1968, when a year usually remembered for is revolutionary potential saw Nixon reelected, with some southern states voting even further to the right for the racist segregationist George Wallace. The idea that the working class vote could be split by appealing to conservative ‘values’ seemed to work again for Reagan in the 1980s and for George W Bush in the 2000s.

The idea that the Democrats lost in these decades because they alienated white working class people through the adoption of radical ideas is deeply flawed. It is difficult, for example, to see what was radical about John Kerry’s campaign in 2004. But it is true, however, that the Democrats’ failure to put forward economic arguments that would appeal to the working class, or, in 2004, to make a clear anti-war argument, made it easier for the Republicans to push their ‘values’ agenda. For the Republicans of course, ‘values’ include homophobia, opposition to affirmative action, denial of women’s right to choose, and so on.

Obama’s election marked a shift away from that. Not because Obama is a radical, but because the logic of the disastrous economic implosion, and the hugely unpopular war in Iraq, forced him to place these issues at center stage. And the electorate responded, ignoring Obama’s ethnicity, his Muslim background, or his supposed links to terrorists to elect the country’s first Black president, and the first Democrat to win over 50% of the popular vote since Carter in 1976.

There is, however, one area where the ‘culture wars’ still seem to be raging, and that is the question of same-sex marriage. On election night last year, amid the celebrations of Obama’s victory, liberals in California were lamenting the passage of Proposition 8, which amended the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Less well publicized was the success of similar votes in Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas. This week, the California Supreme Court heard an appeal from Proposition 8’s opponents, arguing that the ban is unconstitutional – the court’s decision is yet to be announced.

We on the left used to take a rather stand-offish position on this issue, arguing that, while of course same-sex couples should have the right to marry, it was hardly the central issue of the struggle. The desire for LGBT people to emulate the bourgeois nuclear family, with all the tensions, lies and hypocrisy that went with that institution, wasn’t something that struck us as particularly liberating. Such as position would be unthinkable today, as the issue of ‘gay marriage’ has become a symbol of the entire argument over the rights of LGBT people. When the Right go to the effort of organizing referendums to change state constitutions, for the sole purpose of interfering in people’s personal lives, it’s obvious that this is a human rights issue which the left cannot ignore.

Although the California vote received the most attention, the sheer bigotry of gay marriage opponents is best illustrated by the ‘Unmarried Couple Adoption Ban’, which does exactly what it says on the tin – denies unmarried couples, whether gay or straight, the right to adopt children. In other words, Arkansas’s self-proclaimed defenders of the family would rather deny children a family than have them brought up by people living in the ‘wrong’ kind of relationship. Just for good measure, Florida voted to end benefits for unmarried couples, including straight couples. In these circumstances, the idea that an attack on minorities is an attack on all us ceases to be mere rhetoric, as the gay-bashers seek to impose their narrow definition of ‘family’ on everyone.

The activists fighting to overturn Proposition 8 in the courts are absolutely right to do so. But they need to win the argument with those working class people (including many African-Americans) who voted for Obama but also voted for Proposition 8. The right-wing media gleefully seized on the fact that the number of Black Californians voting for the gay-marriage ban was about equal to the proposition’s margin of victory. This of course blatantly ignores just how many white people also voted for it, but it shows the potential for the Right to use divide-and-rule tactics among minorities. Clearly, homophobia has to be challenged not just directly (although Californian activists report that they are winning the argument with many former ‘yes’ voters), but indirectly, in the context of building mass movements that unite people across boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality. As the economy plunges deeper into crisis, there is clearly a danger that working class people will be encouraged to take out their frustrations on minorities.

Which brings me to the good news. There are signs of resistance amid the gloom. Back before Christmas, there was a lot of publicity about the struggle of the workers of Republic Windows and Doors. These mainly Latino workers in Chicago were laid off without the severance pay to which they were legally entitled. After a lot of media publicity, most of it favorable, their story was lost in the saga of Rod Blagojevich, corrupt governor of Illinois. What the media neglected to tell us is that the Republic workers won! They demonstrated that workers can fight back even in a recession, and in doing so can unite people of different backgrounds. We’re going to need a lot of that kind of spirit in the months and years ahead.

Details of this years Oxford Radical Forum 2009

2009-02-22T09:06:00.001-08:00

http://oxfordradicalforum.wordpress.com/::

OXFORD RADICAL FORUM – 2009 :::: WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD :::: 6 – 8 MARCH ::

The second Oxford Radical Forum will be taking place from Friday to Sunday, 6 -8 March, 2009, in Wadham College, Oxford. Building on the success of last year's conference, and a conviction in the continued necessity of leftist theory and politics, the weekend will see some of the brightest and most engaged people from the radical left coming to Oxford in order to contribute towards the reconstruction of an alternative, critical politics – a politics that stands for a real transformation of society in favour of social justice and equality and against war and poverty. We invite you all to join and participate in open and challenging debates in talks, workshops and seminars on war and imperialism, women's liberation, socialism and ecology and many other issues, with some of the key thinkers and activists of our day.There will also be bookstalls and daily socials (including a dinner and a clubnight) over the weekend, making the event a unique opportunity to bring together not just the left in Oxford (and beyond!) but also all those who are interested in seriously discussing profound political questions in an open and critical atmosphere.

The action will be centred around Wadham College's 'Ho Chi Minh Quad' from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening. All talks and debates will be free of charge and no registration is necessary, though we welcome people to show their interest on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/editevent.php?info&eid=52663902886#/event.php?eid=52663902886

A choice selection of confirmed sessions include:::
ALEX CALLINICOS on Imperialism Today – What it is and how we resist itAlex Callinicos is Professor of European Studies at Kings College London and author of many acclaimed books on social and political theory, as well as being involved in the European and World Social Forums, and the British anti-war movement.::

DEBORAH CAMERON on 'The Myths of Mars and Venus'Deborah Cameron's popularly received book, 'The Myths of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Another Language?', explodes popular misconceptions about the differences between men and women.::

EYAL WEIZMAN on Israel's Architecture of OccupationIsraeli architect Eyal Weizman (Goldsmiths College) analyses the nature of the Israeli use of architecture and space in that state's ongoing oppression of the Palestinians, while criticising the silence of his own profession.::

DEREK WALL on the Red and the GreenProspective MEP candidate for the Green Party and leading figure in Green Left, the Green Party's eco-socialist, anti-capitalist faction, will be discussing the necessary interrelationship between ecology and socialism.::

ALBERTO TOSCANO on Italy, politics and the Right todayPolitical philosophy researcher at Goldsmiths, Alberto Toscano will be talking about the contradictory and ambiguous political situation in Italy, particulary considering the rise of the far right.... and many more!We will be sending out a confirmed timetable within the next few days.

With all best wishes from the Organising Committee of the OXFORD RADICAL FORUM - we hope to see as many of you as possible, 6 - 8 March.[PS! Could all those willing to help promote the event in Oxford please get in touch on http://uk.mc274.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=oxfordradicalforum@googlemail.com!]

BMW jobs meeting this Tuesday

2009-02-21T10:35:00.001-08:00

Following the 850 job losses at BMW Oxford & District Trades Union Council has agreed to organise a " Jobs and justice: Put people first!" public meeting next Tuesday 24th Feb - 7pm - Assembly Room - Town Hall. The public meeting will be the first of a series of activities building towards the G20 TUC national demonstration for Jobs, Justice & Climate on March 28th.

After BMW jobs massacre join the march for Jobs

2009-02-17T11:40:00.000-08:00

On 28th March thousands will march through London as part of a global campaign to challenge the G20, ahead of their 2nd April summit on the global financial crisis.

Even before the banking collapse, the world suffered poverty, inequality and the threat of climate chaos. The world has followed a financial model that has created an economy fuelled by ever-increasing debt, both financial and environmental.

Our future depends on creating an economy based on fair distribution of wealth, decent jobs for all and a low carbon future.

There can be no going back to business as usual.

People from all over the country will join the march on March 28.

Be one of them.

Coaches from Oxford for London march depart St Giles at 9 am Saturday 28th March - book your seat now.

People can buy coach tickets online at http://web.bethere.co.uk/PutpeopleFirst/

Terry Eagleton to speak in Oxford this Wednesday

2009-02-02T13:18:00.000-08:00

The famous radical literary critic Terry Eagleton, and others, will be speaking this wednesday at 6 p.m. on fighting against neo-liberalism in our universities and rebuilding a radical students movement.

The event is being organised jointly by the OXFORD RADICAL FORUM and new national campaign Another Education Is Possible (http://www.anothereducationispossible.org.uk/). Details follow:

---------------------------------------------------------------

Another Education is Possible is teaming up with the Oxford Radical Forum to present an evening discussion on the threat of Neo-Liberalism to our universities and the right to education, and what we can do to resist it and reclaim our universities.

:: ANOTHER EDUCATION IS POSSIBLE ::

18:00, Wednesday, 4 Feb. (3rd Week)
Wadham College, Moser Theatre (tbc.)

Speakers:

Terry Eagleton ('Britain's best-known academic rebel' - The Guardian)

Kostas Todoulos (Athens University Occupation)

Rob Owen (NUS National Executive Committee - personal capacity)

As the economic crisis deepens, the government and powerful business will be more than ever seeking to make cuts in higher and further education, threatening the quality of ours and future generations' education, and in the process damaging one of society's most crucial social goods. We believe that education is a right - not a privilege - and affirm the benefit it has on society as a whole.

Another Education Is Possible is a new national campaign aspiring to focus campaigns up and down the country that oppose neo-liberalism and attacks on education, and intergrate those struggles. With the nationwide explosion in radical campaigning connected with the occupation movement in solidarity with Gaza, we have the real potential for a new students' movement that can fight and win.

So come on Wednesday to hear about these struggles with Terry Eagleton and Kostas Todoulos - fresh from the occupation movement in Greece, and prepare for a national demo against attacks on education 25 February, in Central London.

Mike's Letter from America #12

2009-01-28T04:24:00.000-08:00

Inauguration Day

I wasn’t with the crowds who thronged the National Mall in Washington for Obama’s inauguration, but I managed to capture some of the feeling of being squeezed tightly together while trying to catch a glimpse of a distant TV screen. I was teaching at the time, but decided to end my class early, and my students and I gathered around a public TV screen in a crowded corridor to catch the ‘historic occasion’ (copyright: all of the media).

As with all things Obama-related, it is hard to cut through the media hype to understand the true significance of the occasion. The inauguration of the USA’s first African-American president, coming immediately after Martin Luther King Day, was certainly an inspiring reminder of just how far the country has come since the days of segregation and ‘Jim Crow’. But listening to the self-congratulation in the media, you would think that electing a Black president had ended racism and exonerated the USA for over 200 years of systematic oppression of African-Americans.

Despite the hype, there were many genuinely moving moments, mostly related to the presence in the vast crowds in Washington of veteran civil rights activists. Five of the ‘Little Rock 9’ (the black students who integrated an all-white high school in Arkansas 50 years ago, in the face of angry racist mobs) were there, as was a 105-year-old African-American woman who braved the sub-zero temperatures against all the well-meaning advice of her doctors and carers. The record attendance of over 2 million people at the ceremony shows that there is a genuine public mood behind the rhetoric of change.

There are some hopeful signs that Obama does mean what he says about ‘change’, such as his pledge to close Guantanamo, and to roll back Bush’s attacks on abortion rights, as well as a refreshing willingness to proclaim the need for state intervention in the economy. Yet there is a gulf between the expectations placed on Obama and the reality of what his administration is likely to achieve. Partly, this is because of the mess he has been left by Bush – a looming depression and two wars. Partly, too, it is inevitable that any reformist leader will fail to match the hopes of the left – after all, the man is not, nor has he ever been, a socialist (despite what the right wing media pundits claim). But many of Obama’s picks for his team suggest the he is intentionally moving to the right. They include:

· Homophobic preacher Rick Warren, chosen to give the benediction at the Inauguration.

· White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel, son of a member of the right-wing Zionist terrorist organisation Irgun, and, like many Democratic politicians, an uncritical supporter of Israel. Emanuel even volunteered to work with the Israeli military during the 1991 Gulf War.

· Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – Obama’s foreign policy will be in the hands of somebody who has threatened to ‘obliterate’ Iran

· Susan Rice, Ambassador to the UN, and the person you are most likely to hear from if Obama plans a ‘humanitarian’ invasion to end genocide in Darfur. Unfortunately for her humanitarian credentials, during her stint as secretary for African affairs in Bill Clinton’s state department she gave the green light to the Rwandan invasion of the Congo, sparking a civil war that has left 4 million dead.

· Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary. Voted most likely to get us out of the recession, perhaps because he helped get us into it, during his time with the Federal Reserve (the US equivalent of the Bank of England), where he was a major instigator of the bail-out of Wall Street.

· Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who knows all about military affairs from his time as a lobbyist for arms manufacturer Raytheon.

Finally, Obama himself has been sounding very hawkish recently. He advocates withdrawal from Iraq, but largely in order to send more troops to Afghanistan. His inauguration speech sounded at times like a challenge to a fight, albeit in more poetic terms then Bush would have managed. Take the phrases “our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred”, or “our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.” These could have come from the Bush ‘War on Terror’ lexicon.

Obama today, like Blair in 1997, is actually to the right of the popular mood that swept him to power. Our best hope is that this mood pushes the new president in directions that he doesn’t want to go. There is, for example, growing pressure on Obama to put members of the Bush administration on trial for their use of torture. http://washingtonindependent.com/26162/obama-may-be-required-to-prosecute-bush-officials-for-war-crimes When the cable news station MSBNC presented its pre-inauguration coverage from what appeared to be a fish-tank on the National Mall, the crowds outside could be seen holding posters with slogans such as ‘try Bush for war crimes’.

One incident from Tuesday seems to sum up the tensions and contradictions within Obama’s base. In the run-up to the inauguration, tickets for the event were as sought-after as golden tickets to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, with many changing hands for hundreds of dollars on ebay. Yet, as our local university newspaper reported, many holders of the coveted tickets never made it to their seats, as “a large number of people chanting ‘yes we can’ broke through a police barricade at the main entrance on Independence Avenue.”

Will Obama stand with the people with the golden tickets, or will he be made to listen to the millions standing outside in the cold? That is the question that will define American politics for the next four years.

Two Sides, One Story - Cageprisoners National Tour

2009-01-28T04:19:00.000-08:00

From Cageprisoners:

TWO SIDES - ONE STORY:
GUANTANAMO FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE WIRE

A national tour to mark seven years of unlawful detention, abuse and torture

January 11th 2009 - 4th February 2009

SAMI AL HAJ (Ex Guantanamo Detainee and Aljazeera Journalist)

CHRISTOPHER ARENDT (Ex-Guantanamo Guard)

MOAZZAM BEGG (Ex-Guantanamo Detainee, Spokesman for Cageprisoners)

Guantanamo Bay stands as one of the most potent symbols of unlawful detention in the world today. The detention of suspected terrorists as the prison camps has evoked emotion from those seeking its closure and continuance.

Cageprisoners presents Two Sides – One Story , a tour of the UK that brings those on opposite sides of wire at Guantanamo together for the first time.

Chris Arendt, a former guard at the base has agreed to speak about his experiences in detaining suspected terrorists and bring new insights into the way the US administration carried out policies against them.

Also for the first time the detained Al Jazeera journalist Sami El Haj will be speaking withMoazzam Begg as they both reflect on life at the prison on the opposite to Chris.

This unique tour is a historic moment in the continued War on Terror and will be launched on 11th January 2009, exactly seven years after the first transfers to Guantanamo Bay.

Visit Guantanamo Voices, http://www.guantanamovoices.org/ the new blog by Sarah Mirk, a reporter based in Portland, Oregon. Sarah is travelling around the UK with Cageprisoners as part of our UK tour.

02/02 - Oxford Meeting
Supported by the Oxford Union and the Oxford University Islamic Society
8pm
The Oxford Union
Frewin Court
Oxford
OX1 3JB

For further information:
07973-264-197
contact@cageprisoners.com
www.cageprisoners.com/tour

Students occupy Clarendon building over Gaza

2009-01-23T02:03:00.000-08:00

Visit the occupation blog:

http://occupiedoxford.wordpress.com/

Hundreds march for Gaza in Oxford Saturday 17th Jan 2009

2009-01-17T03:19:00.001-08:00

Branch meeting

2009-01-17T03:19:00.000-08:00

OLA branch meeting this Weds 20th, 7.30pm Oxford Town Hall

Gaza protest

2009-01-17T03:18:00.000-08:00

Info from Oxford PSC:

The death toll in Gaza currently stands at 1,033 - A third are children and this number continues to rise.

Come and show this Saturday that you condemn the horror in Gaza and call on our government to put pressure on Israel and stop the attack!
Bring placards, flags, banners etc. - but most importantly yourself!

Saturday 17th January 2009
Assemble 1:00pm Broad Street, Oxford
There will be a short march to Bonn Square where there will be a rally with speakers

We are calling for:

- An end to Israel's military assault on Gaza
- An immediate end to the blockade and siege of Gaza
- An end to Israel's violations of international law
- An end to Israeli occupation

End The Massacres! Israel out of Gaza!

Speakers include Karma Nabulsi, Avi Shlaim, Councillor John Tanner, members of the Palestinian Community and organisations in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Protest against the bombing

2009-01-06T13:21:00.000-08:00

Left Alternative activists joined thousands of protesters from across the country in London last weekend to demand that Israel stops bombing Gaza.

Further protests are planned for this Thursday (Oxford) and Saturday (London)

Oxford Stop the War Coalition has called a vigil to protest against Israel's ongoing attack on Gaza. It will be Thursday evening (Jan 8) from 5:00 to 7:00 PM at the Carfax end of Cornmarket Street.

Please make every effort to join us in condemning Israel's barbaric actions and calling on the British government to exert all possible pressures on Israel to stop attacking Gaza. Bring banners, signs, candles, and friends and family.

The Stop the War Coalition and Palestine Solidarity Campaign have called another national demonstration in London for this Saturday, January 10th. We will march to the Israeli Embassy, High Street, Kensington, to demand a stop to the carnage being inflicted in Gaza by Israel. For more information about the national demonstration and the daily protests outside the Israeli Embassy go to www.stopwar.org.uk or http://www.palestinecampaign.org.

Gaza

2008-12-28T01:32:00.000-08:00

From Oxford Stop the War Coalition

Following the massive attack Israel launched on Gaza today, Oxford Stop the War Coalition has organised a protest at Carfax 6pm to 7pm today (Sunday). Please come along and bring candles and placards.So far the sudden attack on Gaza has killed over 200 people and injured a further 300.

The violence is continuing. Beginning without warning, the attacks began by targeting police stations in order to undermine the internal security of the Gaza Strip. Over 50 of the dead were reportedly killed when the Gaza security headquarters was hit with a missile. Images coming out of Gaza City and other areas show dozens of men in police uniforms, dead or horribly injured, lying in the street as other civilians rush to bring the wounded to local hospitals. Timed when Children are leaving school.This attack comes after more than a year of strangulating sanctions which has left hospitals without basic materials or medicines to treat the mass-casualties. Israel has said this is "just the beginning" and has been threatening a massive strike on Gaza after a new ceasefire could not be negotiated and the previous 6-month ceasefire between Hamas and Israel expired last week. The previous ceasefire was negotiated on the basis that Israel would open the crossings into Gaza, allowing desperately- needed food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs in. Israel never kept up their end of the agreement, keeping the crossings closed except for a few, token openings letting in less than 25% of the needed supplies.

There are also national protests organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Return Centre, British Muslim Initiative, Friends of Al Aqsa, Muslim Association of Britain, Respect and the Islamic Human Rights Commission.These are taking place opposite the Israeli Embassy, Kensington High Street (nearest tube is High Street Kensington) as follows:Sunday 28 December 2.00 pm - 4.00 pm and Monday 29 December 4.00pm - 6.00pm.

Oxford Left Alternative activists petition inside Cowley Woolworths

2008-12-13T10:30:00.000-08:00

Oxford Mini, MFI, Woolworths, City Council, Oxfam, Oxford Archaeology…

Stop the jobs massacre- why no bail out for workers?

With £13 billion handed out in London city bonuses in 2008 alone it is an outrage that thousands of people are being left to face redundancy and repossession without more government support.

Support for Woolworths Staff

Left Alternative supporters have been petitioning inside Cowley centre Woolworth's at the tills in the last few days. Activists Ian and Julie report…

“We made a brief announcement and then 6 of us petitioned the queues across the store. We said that the Local Labour MP and the government should be doing more about the collapse of Woolies and potentially the loss of 30,000 jobs. EVERYBODY AGREED. We talked about the need for a generalised fight back over jobs, pointing out if the government can bail out the bankers they can keep people in work. 200 people signed the petition during our visits on Friday and Saturday, pretty much everybody we asked in the time we spent in the store. Staff took leaflets to hand out to their workmates. People were not only sympathetic about the Woolworth workers but also want action on growing unemployment, with one person already having lost their printing job and home as a result of the crisis. Others faced fights to get benefits for disabled children and worried about their jobs. Our first signer was the wife of ex-post worker who took the opportunity to add to our announcement the fact the Oxford post workers are also fighting for their jobs.”
To support the petition e-mail oxfordrespect@yahoo.co.uk

Proposed Immigration Removal Centre at Bullingdon

2008-12-12T10:34:00.000-08:00

Information below from CABIRC...

In May 2008, the UK government announced plans to increase immigration detention

capacity in the UK. An 800-place centre is to be built across the road from Bullingdon

Prison.

The ‘Accommodation Centre’ all over again?

You may recall Home Office efforts to build an Accommodation Centre in 2002.

Planning permission was unanimously refused by Cherwell District Council, whose

decision was upheld at public inquiry. The application went to judicial review, and,

finally, to the Court of Appeal. Work began on the site in 2005. But objections to the

planning proposals continued. In June 2005, government plans were abandoned. An

estimated £29.1 million of public money was wasted on this aborted project.

Local popular opposition was the key to this success. It is the

key to challenging the new detention centre.

Coalition against Bullingdon Immigration Removal Centre

A local campaign group, known as ‘CABIRC’, has been established to oppose the new

centre on grounds that:

• indefinite detention is inhumane and an abuse of human rights

• expansion of detention is unnecessary given the falling number of asylum

applications

• the centre would be an enormous and ill-affordable public expense, costing

an annual estimated £32 million to run

• there are planning and environmental objections to the proposal, as there

were to the Accommodation Centre.

What can you do?

The planning application was received by Cherwell District Council on 8 December. A

decision is likely to be recommended at the meeting of the South Area Planning

Committee on either 19 February or 12 March 2009.

Residents are encouraged to:

• study the planning application (ref. no. 08/02511/F), available online via the

planning portal, http://cherweb.cherwell-

dc.gov.uk/publicaccess/tdc/DcApplication/weeklylist_searchform.aspx

• write to oppose it, to your district councillors, and to Cherwell District Council

(Planning), Bodicote House, White Post Road, Bodicote, Banbury OX15 4AA

• write to Tony Baldry MP, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

• write a letter to the local press: bicesteradvertiser.letters@nqo.com;

letters@oxfordtimes.co.uk

• join CABIRC to campaign against the centre, or make a donation.

Reasons to oppose the application

• unnecessary: there are already two designated prisons for foreign national

prisoners; and the number of asylum seekers is a quarter of the number in 2000

• a rural location, not identified as a site for employment growth – development

here undermines local planning policy

• a large unsustainable site, with poor public transport: unacceptable increases in

traffic congestion; a danger to pedestrians

• a brightly-lit and noisy site causing light and noise pollution in a rural area

• environmental impact: including harm to the countryside, wildlife habitats, water

supply and disposal in an area with existing water problems

• human rights and safety considerations: the history of nearby Campsfield IRC

shows that protests by detainees, fires and escapes are to be expected.

For further information, please see www.cabirc.org.uk, or email info@cabirc.org.uk.

OLA Winter ‘Grassroots’ newsletter out now

2008-12-07T05:20:00.000-08:00

The latest edition of the OLA Grassroots newsletter is out now in 2 and 8 page format. To order a copy e-mail oxfordrespect@yahoo.co.uk

Oxford activists support climate march

2008-12-07T05:05:00.000-08:00

There was a good turnout from Oxford on the London Climate march on December 6th। In addition to a coach organised by the Campaign against Climate change (to be featured on French TV Channel 4), many people made their way down to London under their own steam. The march was very lively this year with a clear focus on four issues 1) No new Coal power stations 2) No to expansion of agro-fuels 3) No third runway 4) Yes to investment in Green jobs.

BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7768867.stm

The CaCC urgently needs funds to build on the work it has done, please visit: http://www.campaigncc.org/ for more info

Close Campsfield (15th Anniversary Demonstration)

2008-12-07T04:56:00.000-08:00

Around 100 people joined a protest last Saturday to mark the 15th anniversary of the opening on the Campsfield detention centre।

Over 2,600 people, nearly all of them asylum seekers, are locked up indetention camps and prisons in Britain, without trial and without timelimit and with no automatic right to bail. The government is building newdetention centres with a target capacity of 4000. The asylum seekingprocess is arbitrary and punishes innocent refugees not for anything theyhave done, but in the hope of deterring others from exercising their rightunder the Geneva Convention to claim asylum in Britain
For more information सी:
- Campaign to Close Campsfield - http://www.closecampsfield.org.uk/- Barbed Wire Britain - http://www.barbedwirebritain.org.uk/

Climate March 2008 local details

2008-11-30T06:35:00.000-08:00

London protest December 6th 2008

Oxford coach tickets £7 and £10 from Inner Bookshop, Magdalen Street and Quaker Meeting House, St Giles. Coach leaves 10am from St Giles.

Part of a Global Day of Action - see www.globalclimatecampaign.org
- last year 70+ countries were involved !

The march this year goes to Parliament Square to demand that the government act now on climate. The march will now start at Grosvenor Square (5 mins from Speakers Corner, Hyde Park - Bond Street or Marble Arch tube.Apologies for any confusion over starting point see more here) - assemble 12 noon. Full schedule here

Speakers will include Nick Clegg (leader Liberal Democrat Party), Caroline Lucas (leader, Green party), Michael Meacher (ex-Environment Minister) andGeorge Monbiot (Honorary President, Campaign against Climate Change).

The march will be preceeded by a climate protest bike ride starting from Lincoln's Inn Fields at 10.30 am: see more here.

There will be a Climate Change Service at Hinde Street church at 11.30 am - worshippers will join the march afterwards. See more here.

There will be an After-Party in the Synergy Centre from 5.00 pm till late.

For info about coaches or other transport from around the country to the march click here.
For a "Coach organiser's guide" see here.

To download leaflet for the National March click here

The March on Parliament has four main themes -
1) NO to a 3rd runway at Heathrow and the runaway expansion in aviation expansion.
2) NO new coal - no new coal-fired power stations as planned at eg Kingsnorth in Kent
3) NO to the expansion of agrofuels - with negative impacts on forests, the climate and world food supply.
4) YES to a renewable energy revolution and green jobs - a "Green new Deal"
Come with your own banners, costumes etc on one of these themes (if you fancy !) and join up with others pushing that theme......

The March on Parliament for the Climate marks the Saturday midway through the UN Climate Talks in Poznan, Poland and we make our demands on the UK government in solidarity with the world's poorest and most vulnerable communities that will suffer worst and most immediately from climate change caused overwhelmingly by the rich long-industrialised countries.

We need the government to act now on climate, to stop building coal-fired power stations and new runways - and to begin the renewable energy revolution. We need a tidal wave of people outside parliament to make them act to stop climate catastrophe now ! Be part of that tidal wave, be there ! Next year may be too late.
Why so critical now ? See here.

OLA Public Meeting

2008-11-14T08:25:00.000-08:00

Oxford Left Alternative Public Meeting
Tuesday 18th Nov, 7.30pm Town Hall, St Aldates
Speaker: Pete Dwyer (Economics Tutor at Ruskin (personal capacity))

The financial crisis and the Left

All welcome

Mike’s Letter from America #11

2008-11-05T15:25:00.000-08:00

Why Obama Won

So he did it! At 11 pm Eastern Standard Time, Barrack Obama was confirmed as the first African-American to be elected president of the United States. The sheer historic nature of this achievement, less than fifty years after the Civil Rights movement was struggling to end segregation and Jim Crow, makes it hard just yet to put it in perspective, and what follows is my own attempt to draw some instant conclusions. Reactions to Obama’s win range from a belief among his supporters that anything is possible, to the warning of TV pundits that he has to ‘govern from the centre’, and that we must downplay our expectations. There will be plenty of time in the future to consider if, when, how, and why Obama will let down those high hopes, but right now the dominant mood is one of celebration at the end of 8 years of neoconservative rule. 160,000 people gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park to hear Obama’s victory speech, and there are reports of spontaneous celebrations in the streets up and down the country. Obama may not be a radical (despite what McCain says), but this certainly doesn’t feel like any old election.

The feeling of history being made is not just down to Obama being African-American, there is also a real feeling of change in the air. Young people came out to vote in unprecedented numbers, and the votes of first-time electors went about 2-1 in favour of Obama. But Obama won across the board, increasing the Democratic vote among all sectors, including white workers, who are so often written off as ignorant conservative rednecks. McCain’s patronizing attempts to laud ‘Joe the Plumber’ (a reactionary tax-dodging petty-bourgeois wannabee who had 5 minutes of fame interrogating Obama on his tax plans) as a working class hero spectacularly failed in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Joe’s native Ohio. The reason?

The economy.

Or, as Bill Clinton used to say, ‘the economy, stupid’. 63% of voters said the economy was their main concern, and the Wall Street crash of 2 months ago really sealed McCain and the Republicans’ fate, as working people rightly blamed years of free market policies and corporate deregulation for their plight. But even before that moment, home repossessions and rising unemployment meant that the economy was already the leading issue among voters.

But the move toward Obama is more than simply a case of booting out an unpopular government when times are bad. It represents a move to the left, despite the best efforts of the Democratic Party hierarchy to be ‘moderate’. In a mild, filtered, and very American way, Obama was forced to talk about class. Whereas before he had stressed his plans to cut tax for the bottom 95%, in a speech that I heard on TV on Monday he was talking up the same policy as an INCREASE in taxes on the rich, and attacking the record profits of the oil companies. Whether he does it is another matter, but the fact that he was saying it was significant of a political shift. So too is the constant stress on the ‘middle class’ in the speeches of Obama and Biden. The concept of the middle class in the US is rather different from in Europe, as Americans like to deny that this country has a working class. In the sense that Obama used it, referring to the people who are losing their jobs and homes, it meant the working class.

Further proof that Obama’s win symbolizes a shift to the left is the question of Iraq. On the face of it, this was not the big issue that it might have been. Only 10% of voters said it was their main concern. However, with the economy dominating the election campaign, that still left the war as the second biggest issue among voters. It’s true that Obama hardly emphasized his anti-war credentials in the debates, as he stressed his support for escalation in Afghanistan, and seemed unable to challenge McCain’s claim that ‘the surge is working’ in Iraq. Nevertheless, Obama is the first person ever to win a U.S. presidential election while opposing a war that’s still in progress.

Finally, Obama’s win was sealed on the ground by an amazing volunteer army of enthusiastic, and usually young, supporters. To take an example close to home (literally) my teenage step-daughter and a group of her friends, all of them too young to vote, formed a pro-Obama group at high school, and have been out at least twice every week for the last two months knocking on doors, making phone calls, and putting together campaign materials. I cannot think of any like this happening in my memory around electoral politics, only in mass movements such as Stop the War and the Anti-Nazi League.

That’s why the election of Obama feels different from Blair’s election in 1997. Yes, there was a similar sense of euphoria and history around Blair. Yes, Obama is also a centrist like Blair, and even now there is speculation about which former Republicans will be asked to join his cabinet. But there is the making of a mass movement behind Obama, and it’s to that movement, rather than to Obama himself, that we must look for real ‘change you can believe in.’

PCS Strike- Oxford

2008-11-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

Civil Servants to strike over pay- Press Release

PCS (Public and Commercial Services Union) members are set to stage a Civil Service wide strike on the 10th November over the Government's 2% public sector pay cap.

The union has urged the government to come to the negotiating table to avoid the action and review it's pay cap, which is resulting in pay cuts and pay freezes for some of the lowest paid in the public sector. If there is no movement from the government then industrial action will begin with a one day UK wide strike on 10th November, hitting passports, Jobcentresm, Tax Credits, immigration and customs, as well as driving licenses, coastguards, driving tests and museums.

The one day strike will be followed by an overtime ban and further targeted industrial action that would stretch into the new year in the different sectors of the civil service.

With one in five in the civil service earning less than £15,000 abd thousands earning just above the minimum wage, the government's policy of capping public sector pay has hit some of the lowest paid in the public sector the hardest.

Commenting, Mark serwotka, PCS general secretary, said "The everyday things we take for granted from passports and getting back into work, through to tax credits, coastguards and securing our borders are delivered by hardworking civil and public servants. Giving these people pay rises that take their wages to just 13 or 25 pence above the national minimum wage is unsustainable when you face double digit rises in food, fuel and housing costs."

Kate Douglas, joint branch secretary of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Department of Work and Pensions, said "The government wants us to think there is no money for our pay, but billions can be found to bail out the bankers; pay in the private sector is increasing at 1% higher than the public sector and the most senior civil servants can get as much as £40,000 in bonuses. We are told by the government to tighten our belts when we have nothing left to tighten."

Tina Watts, who works in Oxford Jobcentre, said "The government claims that low paid public sector workers cause inflation. However, no serious economist has suggested that giving us fair wage rises would cause inflation. With food and energy costs rising, far from being the cause of inflation, we are the victims."

Lorna Merry, HMRC Branch Secretary, said 'The pay cap hits civil servants harder than other public sector workers as we're limited to the same % increase but it has to fund pay progression as well as general increases. 2008 rises for workers in the two largest departments show just how unfairly this works in practice. The DWP is using it's remit to fund progression awards this year, so the 40% paid the rate for the job get nothing this year. HMRC have scrapped progression this year to fund an across the board rise for all staff that's half of the rate of inflation, leaving newer recruits stranded on pay that's hundreds of pounds less than longer serving colleagues doing the same job. A key part of our campaign is to seperate pay progression from pay rises so that future pay offers don't result in this sort of unfairness in future.'

There will be picket lines outside most civil service offices, including the jobcentre in Oxford.

US attacks Syria- Oxford protest

2008-10-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

Message from Oxford Stop the War Coalition

US Special Forces, claiming to be targeting Al Qaida fighers, has
launched an aggressive raid on civilian targets in the Syrian town
of Al Sukkariya, close to the Iraqi border. The attack killed at
least 8 people and wounded 14 others. Two children were amongst the
victims.

This attack follows strikes on Pakistan earlier this months and it
looks as though George Bush is determined to escalate violence in
the Middle East before he steps down from the US Presidency.

The attack also demonstrates why the US is determined to hang on to
Iraq and use it as a strategic launchpad undermining stability in
the region.

The Syrian government has condemned the attack as an act of
terrorist aggression.

In response Oxford Stop the War Coalition is organising an emergency
protest at 6.00pm at Cornmarket (Carfax end) tomorrow evening,
Tuesday 28 October. Please come along and also let other people know
about it.

Caroline, on behalf of Oxford Stop the War Coalition

Mikes letter from America #10

2008-10-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

Republicans: racist, crazy, and losing

Amid the wreckage of the U.S. economy, John McCain’s election hopes also seem to be collapsing into rubble. It seems hard now to believe that, just over a month ago, McCain was ahead in the polls, boosted by the selection of a dynamic younger running-mate in Sarah Palin (not that it’s hard to be younger or more dynamic than John McCain). Now, it’s true that McCain was barely ahead, and that the ‘Palin bounce’ soon disappeared when people realized she was ultra-conservative and crazy as hell. But what has really done for McCain and the Republicans is the economy’s latest lurch into the abyss. Try as they might to spread the blame (e.g., by accusing the Democrats of making it too easy for poor people and minorities to get mortgages) the Republicans cannot avoid the fact that it was their policies of deregulating the banking system, rewarding Wall Street, and pushing wages down so low that working people had to go into debt to survive, that got us into this mess. What was once a razor’s-edge contest now looks like a potential landslide, with Obama’s poll lead into double digits. Of course, the Republicans will try to steal the election by forcing African Americans off the electoral register, but they will be hard pressed to overturn a deficit of up to 14%. Worse news yet for the Republicans is that Obama leads not only in crucial swing states, but also in states such as Virginia which the Democrats have not won in over 40 years.

In this situation, the McCain camp are desperately trying to distract voters from the economy by resorting to personal smears against Obama, often voiced by Palin, who plays the role of attack-dog while leaving McCain to appear decent and reasonable. So Palin unearthed an old non-story about Obama’s supposed ‘terrorist’ links to an aging 60s radical in Chicago. Bill Ayers, a former member of the ‘Weather Underground’, was involved in bombing the Pentagon in 1972, in protest against the Vietnam War. His two-pound bomb killed nobody, while millions were killed in the war which Ayers opposed. Decades later, having renounced armed actions, he became a well-respected campaigner for school reform, and briefly sat on the same education committee as Obama. Palin defines this as Obama ‘palling around with terrorists.’ But of course, such nuances are not the point – the point is to get the words ‘Obama’ and ‘terrorist’ into the same sentence, preferably including Obama’s middle name Hussein, add the comment that ‘he’s not one of us’, and let the audience take away the message ‘Obama = Muslim = terrorist = Black.’ The real danger of this kind of rhetoric is shown by the kinds of comments shouted by McCain-Palin supporters at rallies when Obama’s name is mentioned: ‘terrorist’, ‘treason’ and even ‘kill him.’ At one of McCain’s cozy ‘town hall meetings’, the Republican candidate was embarrassed when a woman questioner said she didn’t trust Obama because ‘he’s an Arab.’

None of these tactics are working, however, as the economy dominates every political discussion. Ironically, Obama is benefiting from a real sense of class anger that the Democrats have done nothing to encourage. In fact, Obama and the Democratic leadership (along with McCain and the Republican leaders) in Congress supported the highly unpopular ‘bail-out’ plan, which the public rightly viewed as rewarding Wall Street’s irresponsible behaviour by giving the bankers hundreds of billions of dollars of tax-payers’ money. When the initial version of the bail-out was defeated in Congress, the opposition was written off by political pundits as an extremist alliance of right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats, bolstered by the ignorant public’s failure to see just what a good thing the bail-out package really was. In fact, both sides of the house were reacting to public pressure, as millions of voters bombarded their congressmen with angry phone calls and emails. There were also small but highly significant demonstrations by unions, in Washington, in New York (where trade unionists marched down Wall Street) and in towns across the country. The victory was temporary, as Congress passed a revamped version of the bill the following week, but it shows what can be achieved. As for Wall Street, it celebrated its salvation by suffering record losses.

There are tough times ahead, as the credit crisis turns into a global crisis of capital. Obama’s support for the bail-out is a warning that the Democrats still broadly accept the priorities of the free market. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that nobody believes the free market works anymore, but neither major party will come out and say it. There is a consensus among the leaders of both parties that the best way to get out of the crisis is to hand over billions to those who got us into it. If Obama wins we should (if I may paraphrase Churchill on a socialist blog!) ‘allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing’, but then go down to our local union or community organization and knuckle down to the hard work of resisting those who want to make us pay for their crisis.

OLA Branch Meeting

2008-10-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

The next meeting of Oxford Left Alternative will be Tuesday 21st October, 7.30pm in the Town Hall.

The Economic Crisis

2008-10-04T06:31:00.000-07:00

Champion of free enterprise in the US and around the world, George Bush said last week that "the market is not functioning properly," arguing for the $700 billion bail-out of the banking system. The controversial deal looks set to go through in the next couple of days, amidst protests among ordinary Americans.

Closer to home, the £40 billion mortgage lending portfolio of Bradford and Bingley has been nationalised, while its other assets are to be sold off to Spanish company Santander. Last week HSBC said it was cutting 1,100 jobs, most of which are in London, because of "market conditions" and a cautious outlook for next year.

Neither the government nor the bankers know what will happen, or what the solution is. The figure of $700 billion was not based on a complex calculation designed to put the markets back on track. A US Treasury spokeswoman said last week that "we just wanted to choose a really large number." The bail-out could be up to a trillion dollars.

As confidence in the market declines and the banks still do not know exactly how much bad debt they hold, and are therefore reluctant to lend to businesses, consumers and each other, the global economy looks set to get worse.

There are, however, a few things we do know. The first is that working people are being asked to pay, through higher taxes, for the mess created by the bankers, who have made many millions in salaries and bonuses. Working people should not pay for this crisis.

The second is that the idea of the free market as the way forward has been thrown into question. It has become clear that unregulated market forces are not able to provide general economic stability and more fundamentally, employment for all and social provision for those who need it. State control in some sectors, like public services such as health, education and transport, is necessary.

With the anxiety over the economy combined with rising costs in food, fuel, gas and electricity, many people are acutely aware that life will become more difficult in the coming months and years. And who knows how long this crisis will last?

But there are things we can do. We can respond to the economic crisis by insisting that energy companies pay a windfall tax; that companies that provide public services be nationalised; and that public sector workers should have pay offers at least at the level of inflation. This is an opportunity to reassess how we want to run our society. Left Alternative says put people before profit, and instead of socialism for the rich, let's have socialist policies for working people.

Oxford Campaign against Climate Change Info

2008-10-04T06:17:00.000-07:00

Global Climate March 08 Saturday December 6th

^{(The Saturday midway through the UNFCCC Climate Talks (COP 14/MOP 4), in Poznan, Poland)}

^{London Protest 1pm. Coach leaves St Giles (siding between Ashmolean and Quaker Centre) at 9.30am, returns from London at 4pm.}

^{Tickets £10 and £6 (concessions) from Dave 07985056089 or from November onwards at Uhuru Foods (Cowley Road), Inner Bookshop (Maudlin Street) or The Quaker Shop (St Giles}

Co-ordinated demonstrations are planned around the world on Saturday December 6th 2008 to coincide with the United Nations Climate Talks(COP13/MOP3) in Poznan, Poland, December 1st to 12th 2008. - to call on world leaders to take urgent action on climate change. The 'Call to Action' for these demonstrations is as follows :

“We demand that world leaders take the urgent and resolute action that is needed to prevent the catastrophic destabilisation of global climate, so that the entire world can move as rapidly as possible to a stronger emissions reductions treaty which is both equitable and effective in minimising dangerous climate change. We demand that the long-industrialised countries that have emitted most greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere take responsibility for climate change mitigation by immediately reducing their own emissions as well as investing in a clean energy revolution in the developing world. Developed countries must take their fair share of the responsibility to pay for the adaptive measures that have to be taken, especially by low-emitting countries with limited economic resources. Climate change will hit the poorest first and hardest. All who have the economic means to act, must therefore urgently and decisively do so.

We belive that there is an overwhelming need to create a groundswell of global opinion to push for the urgent and radical action on climate change, without which we risk a global catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. Please join us. For more information visit: www.campaigncc.org

Mike’s Letter from America # 9

2008-09-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

Got the T-Shirt?

Sometimes Wikipedia gets it right. A few weeks ago the much-maligned on-line encyclopedia described Sarah Palin as the Republican nominee for vice-president, several hours before the official announcement was made. Ironically at the same time I was telling my students about the dangers of trusting Wikipedia as a reliable source. As I drove home from class, BBC World Service on my car radio was announcing that, indeed the governor of Alaska was to be John McCain’s running-mate.

Needless to say, there is nothing good about Palin’s nomination, despite her being only the second woman to run for the vice-presidency on a major-party ticket, and despite some of her critics comparing her to Hugo Chavez! (http://www.adn.com/front/story/442702.html) Palin ticks most of the Christian-conservative boxes: anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-environment, pro-war, pro-creationism. She is on record as saying that the Iraq War was ‘God’s task’ for Americans. It goes without saying that, as a Republican from oil-rich Alaska, she is in favor in drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and doesn’t believe that climate change is human-made. An opponent of abortion (even in cases of rape), she also advocates ‘abstinence only’ sex-education in schools. Soon after her candidacy was announced, it was revealed that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter was pregnant, suggesting that abstinence hadn’t been entirely successful in the case of her own family. As mayor of the small town of Wasilla, Alaska, she insisted on rape victims paying $1200 for the cost of the ‘rape kit’ used by the police to obtain forensic evidence. As governor, she attempted to fire her sister’s ex-husband from his job as a state policeman, and then sacked the state official who refused to go along with it. Just for good measure, she is now refusing to cooperate with the official investigation into the affair.

Palin is a curious choice given the Republicans’ criticism of Obama as too inexperienced, as before she became governor less than two years ago her highest political office was mayor of a city with fewer than 9000 inhabitants. But of course, this isn’t about Palin’s abilities (or lack of them), it’s a cynical ploy by the Republicans to embarrass the Democrats in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s narrow failure to win the presidential nomination, and to win over women voters. This always seemed unlikely, given Palin’s views on rape and abortion, and the latest polls show a 21% swing to the Democrats among women voters.

Palin’s reputation (such as it is) rests on the bogus claim that she is an outspoken anti-establishment figure – much like McCain, but even more conservative. At the Republican convention she claimed, to loud cheers, to have stopped the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’. This was a notorious example of what are euphemistically known as ‘earmarks’ (and less politely, as ‘pork’); spending measures added to bills in Congress by representatives keen to see federal money spent on their home states. What she failed to mention was that she initially campaigned for the bridge, and (unless it’s been removed by now) Wikipedia shows a picture of her wearing a T-shirt supporting the project. It’s true that, as governor, she cancelled the bridge - but she still kept the money. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge

All of this confirms what we already know – that the Republican right are a bunch of bigoted right-wing Christian fruit loops in hock to Big Oil. But what’s happening in the Democratic camp? As I reported last time, Obama is moving to the right to court ‘mainstream’ America, but that hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm his supporters feel. Right now, my 14-year-old step-daughter has just returned from an Obama rally (“it was AWESOME”) which gives you some indication of Obama’s appeal to idealistic young people.

The gulf between the suspicions that we on the left may have of Obama, and the excitement felt about his candidacy among many Americans, was brought home to me when I attended the Detroit Jazz Festival during the Labor Day weekend, just after the Democratic convention where Obama officially accepted his party’s nomination. Detroit is one of the Blackest cities in the northern states, and arguably one of the most working-class. At its height, the now-devastated automobile industry of ‘Motor City’ attracted hundreds of thousands of African-American workers to Michigan, escaping poverty and segregation in the South. I was struck by how many people – and, in particular, how many African-American people – were wearing Obama T-shirts. And they weren’t official T-shirts from the Obama campaign, but an exuberant array of different (no doubt unofficial) designs, including a particularly fetching image of Obama’s face picked out in sequins. But perhaps the most revealing shirt (politically revealing, that is) showed a picture of Obama’s face morphed with that of Martin Luther King, above the words ‘I was there when history was made’ along with the date and the name of a local cinema. The shirt was, of course, worn by an African-American man. In other words, Obama’s acceptance speech was not only viewed by millions of people on their TVs at home – it was an event that working-class Black people went out to bars, theatres, and cinemas to watch together, so that they could share a moment of history.

There lies the contradiction of Obama – a very mainstream candidate in terms of his policies, he has nonetheless become for millions an inspiration and a symbol of hope. Given the choice between ‘Obama the movement’ (to use Michael Moore’s phrase) and a Republican ticket that has just unambiguously identified itself with the most reactionary and loopy elements of the Christian right, it’s increasingly difficult for socialists to argue the ‘they’re as bad each other’ line. Somehow, the left in the U.S.A. has to find a way of identifying with ‘Obama the movement’ while arguing the case for an anti-capitalist third party.

1st edition of Grassroots newsletter delivered.

2008-09-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

The first edition of Oxford Left Alternative's new quarterly newsletter 'Grassroots' has been delivered around Florence Park/Cowley. The summer edition featured articles on the campaign to re-instate the No 10 bus service to Florence Park, Asylum Rights and local Post Office Closures. Two and four page versions of the newsletter are available on request to Oxford residents (e-mail Oxfordrespect@yahoo.co.uk).

Work has now begun on the Autumn edition. If you would like to contribute an article on a local issue or campaign please e-mail Dave at the above address.

Message from Oxford Stop the War Coalition

2008-08-08T02:33:00.000-07:00

August may be a month when everyone goes on holiday and nothing happens but the anti-war movement's struggle against imperialist interventions carries on regardless.

The situation in Iraq and Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. British casualties in Afghanistan continue to climb, fatalities have now reached 114, and no figures are available for Afghani casualties because they are not counted. As far as the occupying forces are concerned, Afghani lives are less important than British or American ones! A recent survey derived from conversations with inhabitants of Kandahar and Helmand provinces revealed that one in three people have had family members killed by the indiscriminate British and American air strikes or ground assaults by the occupying forces. The rhetoric against Iran continues to be pumped out by London and Washington and Israel holds provocative "excercises" which seem likely to be precursors to an assault on that country.

Discussions are taking place and plans are being developed with groups locally to respond to the rapidly growing threats against Iran and any attack, in whatever form that may take. We will of course keep you informed as soon as we have concrete information. At home, civil liberties continue to suffer with the plans to increase detention without trial to 42 days going through Parliament and increasing obstacles to the right to peaceful protest. The recent attempt by the Metropolitan Police to ban the Protest against the visit of George W Bush in London followed by the unprovoked and brutal attack by the police on protesters (after they very begrudgingly "permitted" it) and this weeks atack by police on the climate camp in Kent both graphically illustrate the challenges we now face.

There are also a number of local events taking place in the near future that are of note and need your support:

Saturday, August 9th. Nagasaki Day To commemorate victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Lantern floating, 7PM onwards at Donnington Bridge. Music, reflection, and speakers. Bring lanterns and a picnic to share. The Mayor launches first lantern at 9PM. Organised by Oxford CND and Christian CND. Saturday,

September 20th. National Demonstration at the Labour Party conference in Manchester Troops Out of Iraq and Afghanistan! Assemble 12:30, All Saints, Cavendish Street, Manchester. Called by Manchester Stop the War Coalition and CND.

Saturday, October 4th. Demonstrate at RAF (USAF!) Croughton. Part of Keep Space For Peace Week. Further details 07967 392229. Called by Oxon Peace Campaign and supported by Oxford Stop the War Coalition. Next meeting of Oxford Stop the War Coalition: Thursday, September 11, 7:30PM, Oxford Town Hall.

Respect goes west- Mike's Letter from America #8

2008-08-02T02:01:00.000-07:00

Obama Turns Right

Sorry to go on about Barack Obama again, but he is still the biggest story in U.S. politics, and his recent European tour means that you on the other side of the pond have just had your share of Obamania. I’ve written before that it is hard to entirely dislike someone who Fox News accuses of being a being a secret Muslim terrorist communist. His ability to mobilize the people who are traditionally disengaged from mainstream politics is exciting and significant. Yet as the presidential campaign begins to swing into action, Obama is sounding increasingly like the timid, conservative, party-machine candidates who turned those people off the Democrats in the first place.

It’s true that Obama was never that left-wing in the first place; he is worryingly close to Wall Street, and supports the war in Afghanistan. But in the last few weeks, he has swung further to the right. Take his heavily-reported speech in Berlin: as one of the commentators on the news channel MSNBC put it, “John McCain could have given that speech”. It was full of nostalgic references to the Cold War and appeals to Europe to help get the U.S. out of the hole it has dug for itself in Afghanistan. No doubt Fox News will take Obama’s admission that the USA isn't perfect as a sign of his treasonous Islamo-Bolshevik tendencies. Otherwise, however, the speech was a hawkish appeal for a transatlantic alliance in the ‘War on Terror’.

The Berlin speech was only the latest in a series of right-wing moves by Obama. In 1968, when French student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit was accused of being ‘A German Jew who thinks he’s Karl Marx’, the students responded with the slogan ‘we are ALL German Jews’. When ‘accused’ of being a Muslim, Obama’s response was not to say ‘supposing I am Muslim, what of it? In America we enjoy freedom of religion’. Instead, he strenuously denied that he was a Muslim and went to great lengths to stress his Christianity.

This could be written off as an unfortunate but necessary move to reassure an Islamophobic American electorate. (If so, it isn’t working, as the conservative media still pepper their comments with references to ‘Barack HUSSEIN Obama’, and ‘Barack Osama’). Sadly, it wasn’t an isolated incident. In the last few weeks, Obama has supported extending the death penalty to crimes other than murder; called for the extension of George Bush’s farming out of public services to ‘faith-based’ groups; offered unconditional support for Israel, and – in defiance of international law and the UN – supported the continued occupation of Palestinian East Jerusalem; and taken on a team of pro-corporate economic advisers.

Obama’s apologists argue that this is the inevitable logic of electoral politics – a candidate has to appeal to the centre ground to get elected, so must drop the more ‘extreme’ policies that appeal to the party base. This of course was the argument used to defend Blair in 1997 – and we all know the result of that. But it simply isn’t true that candidates have to move to the centre. The Republican John McCain certainly hasn’t – in fact, since clinching the nomination he has moved to the right, ditching his reputation as a centrist to embrace the failed politics of George W. Bush. None of this makes sense in terms of electoral arithmetic – Bush’s policies are hugely unpopular, and the polls show that the vast majority of Americans want withdrawal from Iraq, and blame the Republicans for the disastrous state of the economy, all of which would play into the hands of Obama if he were to stick to the simple message of attacking the Iraq War and the free-market economy.

So why do both candidates embrace unpopular policies? As Obama’s courting of Wall Street suggests, it’s because real power rests not with the voters, but with corporate America. The Republicans are clear what base they represent; they are the party of big business, and reliably pursue pro-business policies. If in doubt, they swing to the right, even if it doesn’t make sense in electoral terms. The Democrats, however, do not have a similarly strong base among the poor or the working class, as they too are a pro-business party. As American socialist Mike Davis wrote at the time of Kerry’s defeat in 2004, “the great achievement of the Clinton era was to realign the Democrats as the party of the 'new economy', of the bicoastal knowledge industries and high-tech exporters. Instead of an economic rescue package for the heartland as demanded by the industrial unions, Clinton rammed through the job-exporting North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).” http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=9148

So the Dems cannot easily counter the Republicans with a strong anti-corporate message. Now, I’m not suggesting that, in the unlikely event that they reinvented themselves as a socialist party, the Democrats would sweep to victory. However, it’s not so hard in the present climate to at least imagine them routing the Republicans on a populist platform of opposition to the war and to corporate greed. But they won’t, for fear of alienating their rich backers. So by conceding the ground on arguments of social class and economics, they allow the Republicans to make inroads into the white working-class vote by appealing to fear of foreigners, gays, and the ‘liberal elite’.

The need for a third party based on anti-corporate politics is as clear as ever. This election is not the ideal time for such a challenge, as the desire to end 8 years of Republican rule, added to Obama’s bogus-radical credentials, looks set to turn the strong mood for change into a vote for the Democrats. On top of this, the progressive vote will be split between Ralph Nader (running as an independent) and the Green candidate Cynthia McKinney, an African-American ex-Democratic congresswoman with a proud anti-war record. But a left alternative is necessary, and if activists can tap into the idealism of Obama’s supporters, the growing trade unions in the ‘new economy’, and the mass movements against the war and in support of immigrants, building such an alternative might not be a pipe-dream.

Keep Oxford Mail Centre Open

2008-07-19T00:50:00.000-07:00

The Oxford Royal Mail sorting office at Cowley is under threat of closure with plans to ship mail to a 'super hub' at Swindon. If the plans go ahead the result will be the loss of hundreds of local jobs and a worsening service with later dilivery times and earlier collections.

For more information please visit: http://www.oxfordmailcentre.com/

A message from Oxford Love Music Hate Racism

2008-06-22T01:13:00.000-07:00

Lethal Bizzle helped build the national march and carnival on 21st June by meeting with local MC's and rappers including Mr ShaoDow, Provokal, n-zyme, MC Muzzy Blax and some DJ's from OX4fm.

Our music is living testimony to the fact that cultures can and do mix. It unites us and gives us strength, and offers a vibrant celebration of our multicultural and multiracial society. Racism seeks only to divide and weaken us. Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) was set up in 2002 in response to rising levels of racism and electoral successes for the Nazi British National Party (BNP).

We use the energy of our music scene to celebrate diversity and involve people in anti-racist and anti-fascist activity – as well as to urge people to vote against fascist candidates in elections. LMHR has helped to mobilise against further BNP election victories, in the tradition of the Rock Against Racism (RAR) movement of the late 1970s.

There have been now been over 400 LMHR events, from large outdoor festivals to local gigs and club nights. Top artists who’ve performed at LMHR events include Ms Dynamite, Hard -Fi, Babyshambles, Akala, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Estelle, The View, Lethal Bizzle, Roll Deep and Basement Jaxx. Just as important are the up-and-coming bands, DJs, MCs and their fans who have performed at or organised their own local LMHR nights.

We want to create a national movement against racism and fascism through music, so it’s vital everyone gets involved however they can.

Dozens of bands and DJs from across Oxfordshire have already helped us raise funds for the national carnival and to spread the message.

Over 60 people went on the LMHR subsidised coach to the 100,000 strong carnival to celebrate diversity and to oppose racism. Photos of the carnival can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/lovemusichateracism/

The fascist British National Party’s London fuhrer, Richard Barnbrook, has managed to con a small minority of Londoners into voting for him, to scrape onto the London Assembly via the cross-London party list - largely through votes won in outer London boroughs like Barking & Dagenham and Havering & Redbridge . Without the anti-fascist campaigning prior to the election, and particularly the 100,000 strong Love Music Hate Racism Carnival, the BNP would undoubtedly have gained more seats in London. The Carnival showed the mass audience opposed to racism and fascism which can build the bigger united anti-fascist movement that can stop the Nazis. The BNP gained a further ten seats nationally, though this is far less than their target thanks to consistent campaigning against them.

The BNP represent the politics of hate and division. BNP members like David Copeland have been involved in planting bombs in London. Only last month BNP Nick Eriksen one of the BNP candidates in London was forced to withdraw his candidacy, after he was exposed for writing sexist, racist and offensive comments on a blog in which he uses the name “Sir John Bull” visit www.uaf.org.uk for quotes from his blog.

Barnbrook must not be allowed to settle comfortably into his ill-gotten office, but must be resisted at every turn. Our aim must be to prevent the BNP from turning their assembly win into a respectable platform for spreading racist poison in London.

Weyman Bennett from Unite Against Fascism said: “Several members of BNP have convictions for racial hatred this includes the leader of the BNP Nick Griffin. In the past other fascists leaders have use the democratic freedoms in order to destroy everybody rights and freedom of speech. ”

Drew McConnell, of leading LMHR-supporting band Babyshambles, said: “Multicultural Britain should be celebrated. Immigration is not to blame for unemployment or housing problems, and does not negatively affect the economy, but the BNP tell us this is actually the case. We want them to know they’re not fooling us. Everyone knows the BNP are a Nazi organization, and they can’t hide behind their suits forever.”

We still need artists to join us and play gigs in Oxfordshire to help us raise funds and spread the word. We also need volunteers to put up posters and handout leaflets at gigs. Contact us if you can help

Contact: LMHROxford@bethere.co.uk

Respect goes West- Mike's Letter from America #7

2008-06-22T01:03:00.000-07:00

What ‘liberal media?’

Those of you nursing bruises from last Sunday’s demonstration against Bush’s visit to the UK will be surprised to hear that it never happened. I know this thanks to National Public Radio’s ‘White House Correspondent’ Don Gonyieh, who assured us that there was ‘not a single protestor’ on the streets of London. The fact that (a) this was not true and (b) that if had been, it was only because the march had been banned, seemed to have been totally lost on Gonyieh. Clicking on the BBC website left me little the wiser (no change there). Eventually, thanks to the English-language news on Germany’s Deutsche Welle TV (which we get thanks to basic cable) I was finally able to see footage of non-existent policemen whacking non-existent demonstrators with non-existent truncheons.

The U.S. media is notorious for its insularity – the first time I visited America, I watched CNN’s ‘World News Hour’ in the hope of finding out what was going on outside the 50 states. It turned out that the main item of ‘world’ news was American troops being sent off to some foreign country (I think it was Bosnia that week). But you would expect better of National Public Radio (NPR). This is, roughly speaking, the equivalent of BBC Radio 4, but with a far smaller budget. NPR and its TV equivalent PBS are publicly funded through a mixture tax dollars from Congress, and listener or viewer fund-raising drives. This gives it an editorial independence lacking in the corporate networks, and most of the time, NPR is excellent in a ‘BBC circa 1950’ sort of way. It has more overseas correspondents than any other network; it has in-depth news coverage that goes beyond sound-bites; it caters for those Americans who do not think music starts and ends with soft-rock; it hosts quirky shows which would never see the light of day on bottom-line-driven networks.

All of this means that NPR and PBS are targets for inevitable accusations of liberalism and elitism from the Right, and clearly public broadcasting should be defended unconditionally from those who would like to cut off its (pitifully small) funding. However, its supposed liberalism is debatable. When I first came to the US, my initial reaction was ‘thank God, something intelligent on the radio’. However, over the weeks I began to notice how, like the BBC back home, NPR’s ‘balanced’ news reflects the orthodoxies of US politics. So coverage of Venezuela always focus on Chavez’s ‘grandiose’ gestures, not on the substance of the country’s politics, while coverage of Iraq too often sounds like warmed over Pentagon press releases. I’ve no desire to defend Vladimir Putin, but why was his last speech as president described as ‘typically bombastic’, when NPR would never dream of calling one of Bush’s speeches ‘typically rambling and incoherent’?

Of course, NPR is way ahead of Rupert Murdoch’s cretinous Fox News, which quite unashamedly peddles conservative propaganda under the laughable banner ‘Fair and Balanced’. I occasionally turn on Fox News just to see how long I can stand it before switching to another channel; (record so far – about 15 seconds). It would take hundreds of blog entries to catalogue all the shocking, offensive, or just plain daft examples of Fox’s pushing the Republican agenda – check out the film documentary Outfoxed http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418038/ or all Al Franken’s book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them http://www.bookmarks.uk.com/cgi/store/bookmark.cgi. To take just the most recent example, one Fox news anchor claimed that a fist-punch gesture made by Barrack Obama and his wife was a ‘terrorist fist jab.’ Fox News is an extreme example, but networks such as CNN paved the way for it by focusing on style above substance, trivia before real news. Readers who are my age will probably remember CNN’s reporters at the start of the 1991 Gulf War crowing that Baghdad was ‘lit up like a Christmas tree’ by allied bombing. It is one of the ironies of the modern media that we have 24-hour news networks, but less real news reporting.

Despite all this, the right constantly cry ‘liberal bias’ against the media – a rather ridiculous accusation in the circumstances. The writer Eric Alterman rightly chose the title What Liberal Media? for his book on right-wing bias in the news. For that matter the ‘liberals’ in the media aren’t even particularly left-wing – for example, Al Franken’s book is a great read, as he rips into the lies of right-wing commentators while also being funny, but at times it reads like a hymn of praise for the Bill Clinton administration, including its armed interventions in Haiti and the Balkans.

So are there any rays of hope? As in the UK, there are plenty of left-wing periodicals, blogs, and indymedia sites, but in the mainstream media, the popularity (especially among younger people) of satirical shows such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report shows that there is a big audience for political programming that lays into Bush and his cronies. Both shows use humour to make serious points about politics and the media, and it’s significant that a poll showed that viewers of the Daily Show (which bills itself as ‘fake news’) were better informed about the news than those who watch the ‘real’ news on Fox.

I’m not sure whether that is encouraging or depressing…

Respect goes West- Mikes letter from America #6

2008-05-19T13:45:00.000-07:00

Letter from America #6 – Obama the Marxist?

They think it’s all over ... possibly… Last week’s Indiana and North Carolina primaries saw Barack Obama finally begin to emerge as the likely Democratic presidential nominee. Hillary Clinton has vowed to fight on, but her ‘victory’ speech in Indianapolis last week was full of conciliatory comments about the need to unite against the Republicans, suggesting she’s a candidate who knows her days are numbered.

Why has it taken so long to reach this point? In part, it’s down to the closeness of the race – most campaigns for the presidential nomination are over by now, with one candidate emerging as front runner, while those trailing drop out, nursing their wounds and their bank balances. But the arcane nature of the Democrats’ system for choosing a presidential candidate is the main reason that the issue is still undecided, and could remain so until the convention in August. The primaries and caucuses that have been contested so bitterly over the last four months elect only about 80% of the delegates to the party convention. The remaining 20% are so-called ‘super-delegates’, party officials or professional politicians who do not need to go through the tiresome business of being elected. To put it in the language of the British Labour Party – these are the block votes that protect the party leadership from too much internal democracy. As neither candidate can realistically gain a majority of elected delegates, this month’s primaries are as much about impressing the super-delegates as they are about winning votes. By winning big in North Carolina, and losing by only the narrowest of margins in Indiana, Obama sent a message to the party hierarchy that he is able to beat John McCain in November.

It is hard not to warm to Barack Obama, as he has been subjected to a witch-hunt in the media, which, disgracefully, Clinton was happy to pander to. Obama was slammed for old comments made by his pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who was filmed giving a sermon attacking the USA’s record of oppressing African Americans, ending with a cry of ‘God Bless America? No, God Damn America!’ Then Obama was taped making comments at a private meeting in which he described small-town working-class Americans as ‘bitter’, who ‘cling to their guns and religion’.

Hillary Clinton leapt on these comments, and tried to turn herself into the champion of poor white America. Obama’s comments on ‘bitter’ blue-collar workers were, when read in context, quite perceptive – he was actually sympathizing with white working-class people, and urging liberals not to write them off, but to understand why they turn to ‘guns and religion’ in reaction to an economic system that sees them as dispensable. Clinton, however, attacked him as an ‘elitist’, leading to the nauseating spectacle of the Ivy-League-educated millionaire wife of a former president presenting herself as a woman of the people.

Does this mean the left should support Obama? Compared to Clinton, who recently threatened to ‘obliterate’ Iran if it attacked Israel, or to McCain, who would like to stay in Iraq for 100 years if necessary, the junior senator for Illinois certainly seems preferable. After all, anybody whom Fox News dubs a ‘Marxist’ can’t be all bad. Obama not only opposed the Iraq War, but spoke at a public rally against it in 2003, when Clinton and most of the Democrats in Congress were voting to authorize it. However, the Iraq War aside, there is very little that separates Obama and Clinton. Obama is less gung-ho on the ‘War on Terror’, but still supports it in principle – one of his criticisms of the Iraq War is that it distracts from the war in Afghanistan, which he supports. He is also in favour of keeping US bases in Iraq after ‘withdrawal’, and of using the US military there to fight ‘Al-Qaida’ – which makes for an odd kind of withdrawal. His economic and social policies are little different from Clinton’s. Obama talks a good game on the looming recession, but has said nothing to suggest he will seek a solution from outside the current free-market orthodoxies.

The film-maker Michael Moore put forward one of the more sophisticated arguments for why the left should back Obama. His argument is to vote not for Obama the man, but for ‘Obama the movement’. Yes, Moore argues, Obama is another mainstream politician, but he has enthused and energized hundreds of thousands of young people and first-time voters, and has succeeded in mobilizing the anti-war vote. Therefore there will be a movement in place to hold Obama to account if he is elected president. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=225

There’s nothing wrong with Moore’s logic, but I think he comes to the wrong conclusion. He is spot-on when he argues that the left should approach electoral politics in terms of how it connects to the wider movement. That is why Respect was launched in the UK – not because we believe we will win a majority in parliament any time soon, but because the party can articulate the voice of the anti-war movement. That, too, is why much of the US left supported the Green Party’s Ralph Nader in 2000 – not because he could win, but because his campaign was linked to the emerging anti-capitalist movement. But Moore’s error is in seeing Obama as part of such a movement; Yes, Obama deserves credit for opposing the Iraq War when it was unpopular to do so, but his speech at that rally in Chicago in 2003 was the last time (to my knowledge) that he spoke at any public event of the anti-war movement. In fact, enrolling the anti-war movement into campaigning for Obama (or for the Democrats in general) would only weaken it. The tail-ending of the pro-war Democrats has been the biggest weakness the US anti-war movement. According to the US Green Party, many anti-war organizations have even decided to scale back their campaigns in the run-up to the elections, for fear of embarrassing the Democratic Party. http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=18 In these circumstances, the last thing the movement needs is closer links to a Democratic politician.

Yet, despite all I’ve written, I would argue against taking an ultra-left or sectarian attitude to Obama’s supporters. The fact that somebody who vocally and publicly opposed the invasion of Iraq looks set to beat a member of the Democratic establishment who wants to nuke Iran is significant of a change of mood among the American people. So is the fact that, for the first time, an African-American has a real chance of being elected president. After all, the older black voters who supported Obama in North Carolina will remember a time when it was impossible for an African-American to even vote in the South. We should not have any illusions in Obama as an agent of change, but should welcome the changes that make his election possible.

Ofsted critical of Peers academy process

2008-05-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

Academy Watch Press Release

OFSTED Report Critical of the Academy

An OFSTED Report that followed a monitoring visit at Peers School has found that only the professionalism of the current staff at the school has shielded the students from the turbulence caused by the Academy Plans.

The reports praises the staff at Peers for consolidating and improving on the progress already achieved since the school came out of Special Measures, but while reminding everybody that there is still some distance to go, it blames the Academy for throwing spanners in the works:

first of all, Plans for the development of the academy are at a relatively embryonic stage and are not as advanced as they need to be. It is unclear on what grounds the Academy plan was approved, given that even at this late stage, with the Academy due to open is September, Ofsted defines the plan as embryonic;
the fast-tracking of the plans have produced staffing turbulence, since September, [which] has had a detrimental impact on the overall quality of teaching and learning.
students are bearing the brunt of the lack of clarity about the plans: Guidance is good, on the whole, but the Year 11 students have been inadequately advised about their options for next year, partly because the academy's sixth-form options were unknown.
Unsurprisingly, the lack of plans has resulted in poor communication: Students, staff and governors do not feel that they are well informed about the proposed changes and developments. Inevitable uncertainties have caused much anxiety amongst staff, many of whom perceive that their skills and experience are not valued or wanted by the academy, even when they have a right to transfer to the new school.
The sponsors dont seem to have been prepared for the disruption they were causing: Uncertainties about the academy and the future of individual staff have had an unsettling effect. Although morale has been low, the professionalism of the staff has meant that the students have not been unduly affected.
The lack of support at the so-called consultation stage is confirmed by the decreasing number of students: The number on roll has declined since the last inspection. Applications for the academy are low, with just over 100 Year 7 students expected in September.

For the full report see

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/reports/pdf/?inspectionNumber=323010&providerCategoryID=8192&fileName=\\school\\123\\scc_123242_20080422.pdf

Cowley Result and branch meeting

2008-05-05T04:15:00.000-07:00

Paul won 6.5% of the vote in the Cowley in the context of a large swing back to Labour in the ward, against the national trend. Well done to Paul and everybody who helped with the campaign. It was noticeable that canvassing returns were at least as good at last time and there was widespread sympathy and agreement with our message (even from most of the Labour activists) but in this instance we could not compete with a tightly organised local Labour Party machine and a wider swing back to Labour in the city.

We will be discussing the results and the way forward in

Oxford at the next branch meeting 7.30pm Tuesday 20^th May at the Oxford Town Hall. Please come along and find out more.