"who does the wolf love?"

posted by k

In my brief and ineffectual period of political involvement – back in the 1970s - I learnt some of the rules about elections. I saw how counts were conducted and scrutinised, I discovered that there were limits on party spending in any constituency – and that they started the moment a candidate stopped being called the “prospective party candidate” after his official adoption for the seat, and I learnt the rules on treating.

“Treating” is regarded in electoral law as a form of bribing the electorate. I learnt that the rules were so strict that if I was working in a committee room on election day, I'd have to pay for any coffee and biscuits I consumed, even though the committee room was in the house of a personal friend. If I didn't pay for my mid-morning snack, that could either be regarded as a bribe to vote for the candidate I supported or as payment for my services, in which case it could topple the allowed expenses for the constituency over the permitted maximum.

Things seem to have changed, according to Craig Murray's account of Jack Straw's campaign in Blackburn. Jack Straw, the Secretary of State for Justice, seems happy to invite 700 people for free, sit-down dinners. It sounds like the sort of practice that led to laws against treating. He's been getting away with it for years so, unless the rules have changed, I suppose he's found some way round the law. I wonder what it is.

All politicians offer bribes to voters. The party manifestos are full of them. There are promises to help you if you're poor, rich, old, young, married, officially partnered. There are even bribes for the dead – the Conservative Party's rhetoric talks of a “death tax,” as though people would rather pay more in taxes when still alive. (Nobody seems to have noticed the way the conservatives' proposed marriage allowance deprives the widows and abandoned, whose taxes will rise by £150 a year, as if to punish them for the loss of a partner.)

There's something disturbing about this focus on bribing the electorate. Media stories repeatedly tell voters that it's fine – even praiseworthy – to vote entirely out of self-interest. Self-interest is bound to play a part. I know the world most vividly from my own experience and that is bound to influence my decisions. But there's more to it than that. As citizens in a democracy, we should also be asked to consider the good of the whole. I want to vote for more than “bread and circuses.”

There's nothing indecent in caring for the well-being of others – even people I haven't met. Most people are more generous and unselfish than they realise. If I look around, I see daily acts of kindness and courtesy – cruelty and selfishness are still unusual enough to be shocking. People who can barely afford it give money to charitable appeals. Marathon runners ask for sponsorship – often to help people they don't know – and their friends are happy to sponsor them. People who express hatred or mistrust for a minority group (Muslims, asylum seekers, gay people) rarely live out that hatred in their daily lives but make ever more exceptions for the likeable individuals they encounter.

Away from elections, citizens also care about big political questions and international responsibility. At the lowest estimate, 1 in 50 members of the entire British population made their way to one of the big anti-war demonstrations on 15th February, 2003. They were supported by millions more. This wasn't a selfish impulse but a real political concern which the government chose to attack, misrepresent and finally ignore. Huge numbers of people are concerned about poverty overseas and pollution of the environment. Beside the concerns of the people, the scope of the leaders' debates and media reporting seems rather narrow, as though voters are being encouraged to vote only from self-interest.

Even if we were all to vote from self-interest, we don't have the information we need. The three candidates for chancellor agreed in their debate that cuts would be brutal – harsher than under Thatcher – but none of the leaders is prepared to turn to the voters and explain precisely what they plan for us. The Financial Times on 26th April laid out the kind of cuts we might expect; according to their simulator, using government figures, cuts of £30 – 40 billion, which all parties agree we need, would require the following cuts or their equivalent:

" a 5 per cent cut in public sector pay; freezing benefits for a year; means-testing child benefit; abolishing winter fuel payments and free television licences; reducing prison numbers by a quarter; axing the two planned aircraft carriers; withdrawing free bus passes for pensioners; delaying Crossrail for three years; halving roads maintenance; stopping school building; halving the spending on teaching assistants and NHS dentistry; and cutting funding to Scotland and Wales by 10 per cent."

None of the parties is talking about cuts on this scale – and no-one seems to be addressing the knock-on effect such cuts would have. If large groups of people have less money to spend, a large number of businesses will collapse – and that will lead to more unemployment and, presumably, higher spending on benefits. It's a nasty cycle and no-one is talking about how we shall ever get out of it – or whether we need to adjust our way of life.

This election should have been an opportunity to discuss questions of equality and the distribution of wealth. These are vital questions in a democracy. Wealth buys influence – and that may be the strongest political argument for its more equal distribution. There are also important ways in which the poor are not free.

During this election, the media have encouraged us to see the political parties as purveyors of treats and promises. What they offer sounds more alluring than a cup of instant coffee and a biscuit – or even a plate of curry. But the rewards we're offered may prove insubstantial – and they're a pretty poor substitute for a grown-up and thoughtful political debate.

"the lie of Authority"

posted by k

I hesitated to post about the policing of the G20 protests in London. I wasn't there. But for once it was possible to follow the confusion and complexity of what happened through press reports. The Guardian's live blog, using Twitter, was particularly helpful as it gave brief reports with times as the events happened.


Watching from my laptop, it seemed to me that the policing was sprodaically more violent than it needed to be from the very beginning of the protest. The attack on RBS, initially by a single protestor (against protests from at least one fellow-demonstrator) and then by a small group, was puzzling.

RBS is currently the most unpopular bank in the country because of the arguments about the pension of its previous boss Sir Fred Goodwin (Fred the Shred). There had been an attack on his home and some of his cars and newspapers and journals all over the world were suggesting that banks and bankers were in danger. So why wasn't the RBS building in the city of London boarded up, like all the neighbouring shops and offices, during the G20 demonstrations? It's as though someone wanted a nice, photogenic attack on a bank.

Looking at photos of the event, I'm struck by how few people were involved in the attack on the bank. There's a crowd of demonstrators, press and photographers simply watching and recording what is going on. The attack on the bank was plainly not the action of the majority of demonstrators. It could probably have been stopped by the police at the very beginning - but it wasn't.

Publicity before the event may have suggested there would be violent protests and that bankers would be in danger. The call to "hang the bankers" was plainly understood as a joke and there were similar jokes from city employees. As in previous years, city workers waved bank notes at the protestors.

But everything began to turn nasty. There was a report of a man dying of a heart attack, rescued by heroic police as anti-capitalist demonstrators pelted them with bottles. That report came from the police and it turned out to be a lie. A series of videos showed the man, Ian Tomlinson, being pushed by the police and hit with a baton. He was attacked by a one of a group of police who were masked and had removed their identification numbers. It was a group of demonstrators, including a medical student, who went to his rescue and they were initially told by police to go away. The latest post mortem suggests that the cause of death was the police attack on Ian Tomlinson. As for the thrown bottles, one account suggested that a single plastic bottle might have been thrown before all the demonstrators realised that someone needed urgent help. The Guardian's collection of witness statements gives a better idea of what happened than any single source can provide.

Usually demonstrators aren't taken seriously when they talk about police conduct. When I was held in a pen by the police some years ago (there were 75 of us on an anti-war demo and 200 police), the police initially denied both the numbers involved and the length of time we'd been held. It was a shame for them that they also penned in the editor of a small local paper.

This time, the demonstrators had cameras which recorded events. And, although press photographers were sometimes told to move away and stop filming, they had pictures and video footage too. Again, the Guardian has led the way in assembling video evidence and posting it on the newspaper's website. Other newspapers have also commented on the way the protests were policed and on the death of Ian Tomlinson. This was just as well as the initial reports said that there was no police film and no CCTV footage. The Police Complaints Commission has now admitted that this was untrue.

Although between 1 in 25 and 1 in 50 of the British population took part in demonstrations against the Iraq war, the advance publicity about the G20 demonstrations has led to mistrust of the demonstrators. It's worth reading what they have to say. It's also helpful to look at the film of the Climate Camp to understand what most of the demonstration was like and how the police caused most of the violence. I found the video in the Daily Mail which is emphatically not a left-wing paper nor a supporter of the protests.



The conclusion of the video, in which the police attack the protestors, suggests that the police aren't "out of control," as is often suggested. When I see the police at demonstration or at railways stations on football match days, they are wearing earpieces so that they can receive orders and act in a co-ordinated way. It seems to me that the police are very much "under control" - and that is much more frightening.