Despite nearly 15 years of new legislation, the results of a new survey reveal that disabled people in the UK are facing rising levels of poverty and discrimination. Yet many disabled people believe things are getting better. What explains the contradiction? Disabled people are twice as likely to live in poverty as non-disabled people. Leonard Cheshire Disability's report Disability Review 2009, published this week, shows that the economic picture for disabled people has deteriorated over the past three years. Almost half (42%) of respondents were struggling to live on their present income, a rise of nearly 10% since 2007. Discrimination at work had been experienced by 52%, another 10% increase, and 9% stated they had been the victim of hate crime. Worrying news indeed, particularly given that the Disability Discrimination Act is now well over a decade old. It will also be of concern to policymakers who have sought to make the promotion of equality a central part of their social policy agenda.
Alongside the disturbing trends in disability poverty and discrimination revealed by our survey, many of the disabled people reported improvements in their experiences. Paradoxically, increasing discrimination in the workplace and in access to goods and services – and unacceptable levels of disability hate crime – were coupled with a sense that, when it comes to discrimination, things are simply "not as bad as they used to be". This could just be the knock-on effect of progress made in other areas, such as transport accessibility. An alternative explanation might be that developments in the law have triggered a shift in the way disabled people conceptualise equality and social justice issues. If disabled people have an enhanced awareness of rights and increased expectations of them, then they might be more willing to challenge prejudice and discrimination. At the same time, a better grasp of our legal and civil rights might give people the overall impression that things are improving, irrespective of reality. This offers an interesting twist on more straightforward notions of achieving social change through legal reform – food for thought for those of us in the disability sector and beyond.
Whatever the reasons for this paradox, however, it is clear that disability poverty in the UK remains a massive social justice issue. Engendering a sense of empowerment and optimism among one of the poorest and most vulnerable groups in society is clearly not an undesirable end in itself. Unless the government takes urgent action to ensure that the dislocation between perception and reality is bridged, their pledge to eradicate disability inequality by 2025 will remain illusory. Perhaps the battle for hearts and minds is beginning to be won. Now the real work must commence.
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
The long march to May elections
Over the years, Margaret Thatcher was wrong about a lot of things. One thing she got right, however, was the length of British general election campaigns. "Three weeks is long enough," she pronounced in 1997. That was the year in which, trailing in the polls but optimistic that the election could somehow be turned around, John Major began January by exposing the nation to something called "the long campaign". Immediately after the Christmas lights were off, Mr Major threw himself into a series of presidential press conferences and midweek regional campaign visits and, amid speculation about a possible March election, made an unusually early announcement that the vote would after all be held in May. His purpose, he explained to groans, was to put his youthful rival under pressure and to expose the opposition's policies to scrutiny. When the votes were eventually counted many weeks later, it had all achieved precisely nothing. In theory, though, Mr Major had a case, just as, in theory, Gordon Brown has one today, as he makes an eerily similar throw of the new year dice on behalf of Labour 13 years on. In an ideal republic, sure, the more political debate the better for us all. In principle, a long campaign offers the public more information about policies, more chance to weigh the talents of the rival leaders and to digest their prospectuses, as well as more time to make the richly informed and well-balanced decisions that beleaguered incumbent prime ministers always hope will save their parties at the last from the ungrateful rejection which the opinion polls predict.
In practice, the world simply does not work that way. An election campaign does not start at some artificial year zero moment, least of all at one of the politicians' own devising. It arrives swaddled in its own past, not actively sought but recognised as a necessary catharsis, with a cast of familiar characters and with the parties' individual and collective baggage prominently in tow. That is especially true when so much of that baggage, in expenses-tarnished 2010 just as in sleazy cash-for-questions 1997, is strewn indiscriminately across the political stage. For all the thought and energy that the politicians invest in it, the campaign all too often changes little and inspires less. It can easily outstay its often grudging welcome. Mrs Thatcher's instinct was better than Mr Major's or Mr Brown's. Perhaps that partly explains why she was better at winning elections. Mr Brown nevertheless feels that a long campaign offers rewards. He may believe it protects him from internal challenge, while David Cameron, confident that Mr Brown is a Tory asset, is happy to play along. Both leaders, however, have started the new year with appearances that provoke as many questions as answers. Having spent much of the latter part of 2009 promising an age of austerity and cuts, Mr Cameron moved yesterday to promise extra emphasis on public health and the less well-off. Mr Brown, meanwhile, has toned down the class war and instead gone to war to the classroom, using a promise about one-to-one tuition as an attempt to frame the election as a contest between Labour investment and Tory cuts. In truth, neither party has yet found a consistent and convincing message. Nick Clegg, suddenly love-bombed by both of them after years of disdain, is right to keep his distance from such inconstant suitors.
Believable debates may eventually emerge from this effortful flailing. For the moment, though, it remains a phoney war rather than the real deal. The Commons returns today with some proper business to attend to – from financial services, the Copenhagen debacle and airline security through to parliamentary reform and Labour's shabby attempt to disenfranchise NW Leicestershire by denying it a by-election. There is a few months' political meat left on the parliamentary bone. Stick with it. The election campaign will be with us soon enough.
In practice, the world simply does not work that way. An election campaign does not start at some artificial year zero moment, least of all at one of the politicians' own devising. It arrives swaddled in its own past, not actively sought but recognised as a necessary catharsis, with a cast of familiar characters and with the parties' individual and collective baggage prominently in tow. That is especially true when so much of that baggage, in expenses-tarnished 2010 just as in sleazy cash-for-questions 1997, is strewn indiscriminately across the political stage. For all the thought and energy that the politicians invest in it, the campaign all too often changes little and inspires less. It can easily outstay its often grudging welcome. Mrs Thatcher's instinct was better than Mr Major's or Mr Brown's. Perhaps that partly explains why she was better at winning elections. Mr Brown nevertheless feels that a long campaign offers rewards. He may believe it protects him from internal challenge, while David Cameron, confident that Mr Brown is a Tory asset, is happy to play along. Both leaders, however, have started the new year with appearances that provoke as many questions as answers. Having spent much of the latter part of 2009 promising an age of austerity and cuts, Mr Cameron moved yesterday to promise extra emphasis on public health and the less well-off. Mr Brown, meanwhile, has toned down the class war and instead gone to war to the classroom, using a promise about one-to-one tuition as an attempt to frame the election as a contest between Labour investment and Tory cuts. In truth, neither party has yet found a consistent and convincing message. Nick Clegg, suddenly love-bombed by both of them after years of disdain, is right to keep his distance from such inconstant suitors.
Believable debates may eventually emerge from this effortful flailing. For the moment, though, it remains a phoney war rather than the real deal. The Commons returns today with some proper business to attend to – from financial services, the Copenhagen debacle and airline security through to parliamentary reform and Labour's shabby attempt to disenfranchise NW Leicestershire by denying it a by-election. There is a few months' political meat left on the parliamentary bone. Stick with it. The election campaign will be with us soon enough.
Bring on the militant atheists!
As every middlebrow with a newspaper column or Radio 4 slot to fill agrees, a vulgar "new atheism" is sweeping Britain. The readers of Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman and Christopher Hitchens are, they tell us, crass because they do not appreciate the mystery of religion, the consolations of ritual and all the rest of it, and also dangerous because they are as fundamentalist in their criticisms of religion as the religious fanatics they criticise. I could waste your time by pointing out that "new atheists" are not so different from old atheists – we still don't believe in God, for instance – and add that the charge of moral equivalence would be easier to substantiate if atheists planted bombs on the underground. But space is short and the depressing truth about "new atheists" no one dwells on is that if they exist outside the imaginations of religious writers, they are never there when you need them. For if we had a vibrant atheist or secularist movement in Britain, it would now be tearing into this government for once again trying to ride the Islamist tiger. In November, John Denham, the communities secretary, announced: "Anyone wanting to build a more progressive society would ignore the powerful role of faith at their peril. We should continually seek ways of encouraging and enhancing the contribution faith communities make on the central issues of our time."
As the week wore on, it became clear what type of "faith communities" Labour wanted to put at the centre of its "progressive society". Denham is forcing out of his department Azhar Ali, an adviser from the heart of the Labour movement (he was once the Labour leader of Pendle council). Ali's crime was that he opposed Islamism while advising Tony Blair, Ruth Kelly and Hazel Blears. After Daud Abdullah, the deputy general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, signed a declaration advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if Gordon Brown sent ships to impose an arms blockade on Gaza, Ali told his comrades to cut all links. He might have said that a centre-left party should never have had links with the MCB in the first place. It contains supporters of the Arab Muslim Brotherhood and the south Asian Jamaat-e-Islami. Arab liberals know the Brotherhood to be the enemy of every enlightened value they hold, while their Bangladeshi equivalents regard Jamaat in the same way most decent citizens regard the BNP, only worse because Jamaat murderers collaborated in the Pakistani army's crimes during the Bangladeshi war of independence.
That brief moment of principled politics is over. There's talk of the government giving the MCB's Sir Iqbal "death perhaps is a bit too easy for Salman Rushdie" Sacranie a peerage. Meanwhile, ministers are about to cut financial support for Sufi Muslims who, like the majority of Britain's Muslims, Sunni or Shia, are not represented by the MCB. The fix is in and Islamists are all over Whitehall again. Denham is entertaining Inayat Bunglawala of the MCB, who gave a taste of the "progressive" policies Labour is encouraging when he wrote an article defending Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a preacher who recommends wife-beating, genital mutilation of girls and the murder of apostates and homosexuals. Earlier this year, the sheikh said of Adolf Hitler's massacre's of the Jews: "This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers." Astute outsiders look at people who were on the 20th-century left and notice that they have gone from calling themselves "socialists" to "social democrats" to "third wayers" to "progressives" in rapid succession. They might have wondered what the new "progressive" label means. Now they know.
Over at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls is as keen on appeasing the churches as Denham is on appeasing radical Islam. Last week, the National Secular Society (of which I am a patron) described how Labour allowed faith schools to reject applications from non-religious teachers solely on the grounds that they doubted the presence of supernatural beings or worshipped the wrong supernatural being. The rebuttal Balls's department issued was so vituperative and inaccurate that civil servants had to take the virtually unheard-of step of withdrawing it and thus tacitly acknowledge the truth of the secularists' claim that the only people New Labour allowed employers to discriminate against were atheists and sceptics. You don't need to be a political tactician to understand Labour's dog-whistle politics. Balls is playing both sides by alleging that the Tories would bring creationism to the classroom while doing nothing to restrict religious control of schools. At the Department for Communities, real power does not rest with the ineffective John Denham, but Shahid Malik, his deputy, who perhaps hopes that appeasing Jamaat and the Brotherhood will help him keep the core vote in his Dewsbury seat and enable a few other desperate Labour MPs to survive a potential Tory landslide as well.
No minister, though, imagines that they will pay a political price as hundreds of thousands of "new atheists" walk away in disgust. Which is not to say that a price will not be paid, just that it will come in a coinage nobody should want to accept. Communalist politics do not always generate a liberal backlash; more often, communalism merely produces heightened communal tension. Sufis are now promising to tell Dewsbury Muslims not to vote for Malik, which is no more than he deserves. More seriously, a revival of the left's affair with Islamism can only help the BNP by convincing the white working class that their rulers hypocritically denounce racial conspiracy theories, misogyny and homophobia when they come from the followers of Nick Griffin, but not when they come from the friends of Yusuf al-Qaradawi. It is a dismal way to imagine Britain's longest period of left-wing rule ending, but perhaps it will take the BNP winning a parliamentary contest or so splitting the Labour vote that the Tories come through the middle in "safe" seats for the party to realise you cannot be a fairweather anti-fascist or part-time leftist without your "progressive society" turning to dust.
As the week wore on, it became clear what type of "faith communities" Labour wanted to put at the centre of its "progressive society". Denham is forcing out of his department Azhar Ali, an adviser from the heart of the Labour movement (he was once the Labour leader of Pendle council). Ali's crime was that he opposed Islamism while advising Tony Blair, Ruth Kelly and Hazel Blears. After Daud Abdullah, the deputy general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, signed a declaration advocating attacks on the Royal Navy if Gordon Brown sent ships to impose an arms blockade on Gaza, Ali told his comrades to cut all links. He might have said that a centre-left party should never have had links with the MCB in the first place. It contains supporters of the Arab Muslim Brotherhood and the south Asian Jamaat-e-Islami. Arab liberals know the Brotherhood to be the enemy of every enlightened value they hold, while their Bangladeshi equivalents regard Jamaat in the same way most decent citizens regard the BNP, only worse because Jamaat murderers collaborated in the Pakistani army's crimes during the Bangladeshi war of independence.
That brief moment of principled politics is over. There's talk of the government giving the MCB's Sir Iqbal "death perhaps is a bit too easy for Salman Rushdie" Sacranie a peerage. Meanwhile, ministers are about to cut financial support for Sufi Muslims who, like the majority of Britain's Muslims, Sunni or Shia, are not represented by the MCB. The fix is in and Islamists are all over Whitehall again. Denham is entertaining Inayat Bunglawala of the MCB, who gave a taste of the "progressive" policies Labour is encouraging when he wrote an article defending Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a preacher who recommends wife-beating, genital mutilation of girls and the murder of apostates and homosexuals. Earlier this year, the sheikh said of Adolf Hitler's massacre's of the Jews: "This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers." Astute outsiders look at people who were on the 20th-century left and notice that they have gone from calling themselves "socialists" to "social democrats" to "third wayers" to "progressives" in rapid succession. They might have wondered what the new "progressive" label means. Now they know.
Over at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls is as keen on appeasing the churches as Denham is on appeasing radical Islam. Last week, the National Secular Society (of which I am a patron) described how Labour allowed faith schools to reject applications from non-religious teachers solely on the grounds that they doubted the presence of supernatural beings or worshipped the wrong supernatural being. The rebuttal Balls's department issued was so vituperative and inaccurate that civil servants had to take the virtually unheard-of step of withdrawing it and thus tacitly acknowledge the truth of the secularists' claim that the only people New Labour allowed employers to discriminate against were atheists and sceptics. You don't need to be a political tactician to understand Labour's dog-whistle politics. Balls is playing both sides by alleging that the Tories would bring creationism to the classroom while doing nothing to restrict religious control of schools. At the Department for Communities, real power does not rest with the ineffective John Denham, but Shahid Malik, his deputy, who perhaps hopes that appeasing Jamaat and the Brotherhood will help him keep the core vote in his Dewsbury seat and enable a few other desperate Labour MPs to survive a potential Tory landslide as well.
No minister, though, imagines that they will pay a political price as hundreds of thousands of "new atheists" walk away in disgust. Which is not to say that a price will not be paid, just that it will come in a coinage nobody should want to accept. Communalist politics do not always generate a liberal backlash; more often, communalism merely produces heightened communal tension. Sufis are now promising to tell Dewsbury Muslims not to vote for Malik, which is no more than he deserves. More seriously, a revival of the left's affair with Islamism can only help the BNP by convincing the white working class that their rulers hypocritically denounce racial conspiracy theories, misogyny and homophobia when they come from the followers of Nick Griffin, but not when they come from the friends of Yusuf al-Qaradawi. It is a dismal way to imagine Britain's longest period of left-wing rule ending, but perhaps it will take the BNP winning a parliamentary contest or so splitting the Labour vote that the Tories come through the middle in "safe" seats for the party to realise you cannot be a fairweather anti-fascist or part-time leftist without your "progressive society" turning to dust.
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Stop the slaughter of jobs & services
The pre-budget report marked the beginning of the 2010 general election campaign. Never before has a government tried to win an election by offering such a relentless diet of pain for the majority of the population. As the Financial Times put it on 10 December 2009: "Not in the past 40 years has Britain experienced such a sustained squeeze on public spending than that planned by this government. The International Monetary Fund in the 1970s, Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and John Major in the 1990s were mice compared with the lions of Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling in the desire to curtail the role of the state in the years ahead." New Labour tried to the disguise pain for the majority behind some very mild attempts to trim the fingernails of the City by announcing plans to levy an immediate 50% 'super tax' on banks' bonus pay-outs over £25,000. Such is the anger with the bankers that even the Tories could not oppose these measures, which have also been welcomed by the governments of France and Germany. In fact, Treasury officials estimate that the new levy will apply to little more than half the bonus pools being set aside for the new year.
It will apply only to discretionary awards, not those written into bankers' contracts. The measure is expected to raise £550 million, a tiny fraction of the £6 billion the City will get in bonuses this year. The very limited nature of the tax did not stop Price Waterhouse Cooper and other City firms squealing in outrage and threatening to move abroad. Despite Darling's feeble attempts to curb the excesses of the City of London, it remains one of the most deregulated finance centres in the world. However, taxes can never be low enough or deregulation complete enough to satisfy the profit lust of the financiers. The only effective answer to the City blackmailers is clear: nationalise the banks and the giants of the finance sector. The trade unions and organisations of the working class should demand nationalisation of all the major financial institutions, with compensation paid only to small shareholders and depositors on the basis of proven need. This should be just a first step to the unification of all the banks into one democratically controlled financial system and the introduction of a state monopoly of foreign trade.
Instead of being run by and for the profiteers, a nationalised finance sector could be run by and for the mass of the population with majority representation at all levels of these banks, drawn from workers, including from the unions in the banking industry and the wider working class and labour movement, with the government also represented. New Labour, however, acts not in the interests of the majority, but in the interests of the capitalist markets. The markets demand that working and middle class people pay for the crisis, and New Labour rushes to obey - hence a 'pre-election report' where the main tax rises were not aimed at the bankers or the billionaires, but at all but the lowest paid workers. VAT will return to 17.5% from January. The 0.5% rise in national insurance contributions for all those earning more than £20,000 allowed Tory Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne to claim: "Now we know what Labour's class war means - a tax on anyone earning over £20,000". Osborne, however, did not make a commitment to repeal that tax.
Darling hopes to convince workers that New Labour will wield the axe more gently than a Tory government would. For example, whereas New Labour is proposing a maximum 1% pay increase for all public sector workers for two years or more from 2011, the Tories are proposing to freeze pay for 80% of public sector workers. Both are in effect pay cuts - but the Tories is the larger. No doubt some workers will, through gritted teeth, vote for New Labour in order to try and prevent the nightmare of a return to Tory government. Others, including some 'traditional' Labour voters, are so understandably angry that they cannot bring themselves to vote for New Labour again. There are no fundamental differences between the plans of New Labour and those of the Tories. In reality the pre-budget report demonstrated this. It declared that public sector pensions are to be 'brought into line' with private sector pensions, in other words face draconian cuts. Far from having cushy pensions, the average pension in local government is already only £4,000 a year, and less than £2,000 for women, but the government plans to cut back even these modest sums.
Darling outlined horrendous cuts of between 10-15%, over three years from 2011, for all public services except health, schools and the police. Public services are already over-stretched and under-funded. These cuts would bring them to the point of complete collapse. Even those sectors that are 'ring-fenced' will face cuts. The NHS Confederation estimates that the health service will have to find £15-20 billion of 'efficiency savings' over the next five years. Brutal as were the cuts outlined by Darling, the worst is yet to come. The economic crisis and the bailout of the banks mean that government borrowing will rise to £178 billion this year and the government estimates it will be £176 billion next year. This year's borrowing exceeds 12% of national income in 2009-10, the worst British deficit ever in peacetime. Any government which accepts the logic of the market also accepts that it is necessary to cut the size of the public deficit at some point.
The arbiters of the logic of the market, such as Moody's Ratings Agency (the same people who gave sub-prime mortgage firms AAA ratings!), have declared that Britain's "affordability is stretched to the limits of what is consistent with a top rating", and are threatening that Britain, like Greece, will face its debt being downgraded at some point in the future if cuts are not made fast enough. Already insurance premium for lending to Britain is higher than that charged for lending to Slovakia. New Labour, Liberals and Tories all agree that the only way out is to present the working class with the bill for their system's crisis and launch an onslaught on the public sector. Darling has set the target of halving the deficit, as a share of national income, by 2013-14; although to achieve this would require far larger cuts than he has already outlined. In addition it is unlikely that Darling's projections for the growth of the British economy will prove to be accurate.
Britain, alone of the G20 countries, was still officially in recession in the third quarter of this year, though Darling predicts that GDP will fall by 4.75% in the current financial year, but then grow by 1-1.5% next year, accelerating to 3.5% in following years. The latter figure is highly optimistic. It is all too possible that the end of the government's quantitative easing programme, combined with the start of attacks on the public sector, will create a 'double-dip' recession. The working class needs to prepare to oppose the onslaught it will face from the next government - whether Tory, Labour or a hung parliament. So brutal was the pre-budget report that even the most pro-New Labour trade union leaders have been forced to criticise it. Dave Prentis, general secretary of UNISON, said: "I am not going to sign up to this. I know how our members feel: they feel angry and betrayed. It is just not on to make nurses, social workers, dinner ladies, cleaners and hospital porters pay the price for the folly of the bankers." Even Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, said that, "public sector workers - many of whom are low paid - should not have to pay the price for a crash they did nothing to cause."
I agree, but words are merely not enough. The trade union movement needs to be preparing now for a militant and determined fight back against the onslaught we are facing instead of witch-hunting trade union fighters, as is unfortunately the case with the current leadership of UNISON. The first step should be a massive national demonstration in the first part of next year under the slogans: 'We won't pay for their crisis', and 'No cuts - defend all jobs and services'. This would send a warning to the next government that the trade union movement will not accept cuts in workers' pay, conditions or pensions, or cuts in public services. The next step in the struggle to defeat the cuts programme of the next government would be a 24-hour public sector general strike, as step towards a complete 24-hour general strike. An industrial fight back is crucial, but a political alternative is also needed. Unfortunately, the majority of the national trade union leaders continue to cling to the trouser legs of Darling and Brown, even as they launch an onslaught on their members.
But a never-ending choice between two different anti-working class, pro-big business parties is no choice at all. The trade unions need to urgently stop funding New Labour and begin to build a new mass party that stands in workers' interests. The Socialist Party is taking part in discussions with others, including leading members of the railway workers' union - the RMT - about forming a socialist and trade union coalition for the general election. Such a coalition would be an important step towards the foundation of a mass party - with a socialist programme - which would act to politically arm the working class in the mighty struggles it faces beyond the general election.
It will apply only to discretionary awards, not those written into bankers' contracts. The measure is expected to raise £550 million, a tiny fraction of the £6 billion the City will get in bonuses this year. The very limited nature of the tax did not stop Price Waterhouse Cooper and other City firms squealing in outrage and threatening to move abroad. Despite Darling's feeble attempts to curb the excesses of the City of London, it remains one of the most deregulated finance centres in the world. However, taxes can never be low enough or deregulation complete enough to satisfy the profit lust of the financiers. The only effective answer to the City blackmailers is clear: nationalise the banks and the giants of the finance sector. The trade unions and organisations of the working class should demand nationalisation of all the major financial institutions, with compensation paid only to small shareholders and depositors on the basis of proven need. This should be just a first step to the unification of all the banks into one democratically controlled financial system and the introduction of a state monopoly of foreign trade.
Instead of being run by and for the profiteers, a nationalised finance sector could be run by and for the mass of the population with majority representation at all levels of these banks, drawn from workers, including from the unions in the banking industry and the wider working class and labour movement, with the government also represented. New Labour, however, acts not in the interests of the majority, but in the interests of the capitalist markets. The markets demand that working and middle class people pay for the crisis, and New Labour rushes to obey - hence a 'pre-election report' where the main tax rises were not aimed at the bankers or the billionaires, but at all but the lowest paid workers. VAT will return to 17.5% from January. The 0.5% rise in national insurance contributions for all those earning more than £20,000 allowed Tory Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne to claim: "Now we know what Labour's class war means - a tax on anyone earning over £20,000". Osborne, however, did not make a commitment to repeal that tax.
Darling hopes to convince workers that New Labour will wield the axe more gently than a Tory government would. For example, whereas New Labour is proposing a maximum 1% pay increase for all public sector workers for two years or more from 2011, the Tories are proposing to freeze pay for 80% of public sector workers. Both are in effect pay cuts - but the Tories is the larger. No doubt some workers will, through gritted teeth, vote for New Labour in order to try and prevent the nightmare of a return to Tory government. Others, including some 'traditional' Labour voters, are so understandably angry that they cannot bring themselves to vote for New Labour again. There are no fundamental differences between the plans of New Labour and those of the Tories. In reality the pre-budget report demonstrated this. It declared that public sector pensions are to be 'brought into line' with private sector pensions, in other words face draconian cuts. Far from having cushy pensions, the average pension in local government is already only £4,000 a year, and less than £2,000 for women, but the government plans to cut back even these modest sums.
Darling outlined horrendous cuts of between 10-15%, over three years from 2011, for all public services except health, schools and the police. Public services are already over-stretched and under-funded. These cuts would bring them to the point of complete collapse. Even those sectors that are 'ring-fenced' will face cuts. The NHS Confederation estimates that the health service will have to find £15-20 billion of 'efficiency savings' over the next five years. Brutal as were the cuts outlined by Darling, the worst is yet to come. The economic crisis and the bailout of the banks mean that government borrowing will rise to £178 billion this year and the government estimates it will be £176 billion next year. This year's borrowing exceeds 12% of national income in 2009-10, the worst British deficit ever in peacetime. Any government which accepts the logic of the market also accepts that it is necessary to cut the size of the public deficit at some point.
The arbiters of the logic of the market, such as Moody's Ratings Agency (the same people who gave sub-prime mortgage firms AAA ratings!), have declared that Britain's "affordability is stretched to the limits of what is consistent with a top rating", and are threatening that Britain, like Greece, will face its debt being downgraded at some point in the future if cuts are not made fast enough. Already insurance premium for lending to Britain is higher than that charged for lending to Slovakia. New Labour, Liberals and Tories all agree that the only way out is to present the working class with the bill for their system's crisis and launch an onslaught on the public sector. Darling has set the target of halving the deficit, as a share of national income, by 2013-14; although to achieve this would require far larger cuts than he has already outlined. In addition it is unlikely that Darling's projections for the growth of the British economy will prove to be accurate.
Britain, alone of the G20 countries, was still officially in recession in the third quarter of this year, though Darling predicts that GDP will fall by 4.75% in the current financial year, but then grow by 1-1.5% next year, accelerating to 3.5% in following years. The latter figure is highly optimistic. It is all too possible that the end of the government's quantitative easing programme, combined with the start of attacks on the public sector, will create a 'double-dip' recession. The working class needs to prepare to oppose the onslaught it will face from the next government - whether Tory, Labour or a hung parliament. So brutal was the pre-budget report that even the most pro-New Labour trade union leaders have been forced to criticise it. Dave Prentis, general secretary of UNISON, said: "I am not going to sign up to this. I know how our members feel: they feel angry and betrayed. It is just not on to make nurses, social workers, dinner ladies, cleaners and hospital porters pay the price for the folly of the bankers." Even Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, said that, "public sector workers - many of whom are low paid - should not have to pay the price for a crash they did nothing to cause."
I agree, but words are merely not enough. The trade union movement needs to be preparing now for a militant and determined fight back against the onslaught we are facing instead of witch-hunting trade union fighters, as is unfortunately the case with the current leadership of UNISON. The first step should be a massive national demonstration in the first part of next year under the slogans: 'We won't pay for their crisis', and 'No cuts - defend all jobs and services'. This would send a warning to the next government that the trade union movement will not accept cuts in workers' pay, conditions or pensions, or cuts in public services. The next step in the struggle to defeat the cuts programme of the next government would be a 24-hour public sector general strike, as step towards a complete 24-hour general strike. An industrial fight back is crucial, but a political alternative is also needed. Unfortunately, the majority of the national trade union leaders continue to cling to the trouser legs of Darling and Brown, even as they launch an onslaught on their members.
But a never-ending choice between two different anti-working class, pro-big business parties is no choice at all. The trade unions need to urgently stop funding New Labour and begin to build a new mass party that stands in workers' interests. The Socialist Party is taking part in discussions with others, including leading members of the railway workers' union - the RMT - about forming a socialist and trade union coalition for the general election. Such a coalition would be an important step towards the foundation of a mass party - with a socialist programme - which would act to politically arm the working class in the mighty struggles it faces beyond the general election.
Friday, 1 January 2010
Afghanistan: Obama’s war
"I WOULD say this about defining success in Afghanistan and Pakistan… We’ll know it when we see it", said Richard Holbrooke, US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Jim McGovern, Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts put it another way: "I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that we’re getting sucked into an endless war here". Whatever way you put it the eight-year war in Afghanistan is a nightmare. The death toll of Afghani people has already topped 1,000 last year. Forty-four US soldiers died in July, 45 in August – more than any other months in the war to date – while 79 British troops have died in 2009 up to 16 September. What are these people dying for? That is the question being asked with ever greater urgency. US president, Barack Obama, seemed sure during his election campaign. In contrast to George W Bush’s needless "war of choice" in Iraq, he said, Afghanistan is "a necessary war": to destroy al-Qaeda, make the US safe, bring democracy, fight against corruption, promote women’s rights and stamp out opium production. He promised to increase troop numbers to 68,000 this year – all but 4,000 are in place. There are now 100,000 US and Nato troops there – 9,000 from Britain.
What was called a presidential election took place on 20 August. The extent of the rigging and violence was breathtaking. In president Hamid Karzai’s home province, Kandahar, where his younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, chairs the provincial council, over 350,000 votes were recorded. Western officials estimate that only 25,000 people actually voted. Around 800 fake polling stations were set up by supporters of Karzai, who also took over a further 800 legitimate polling centres to stuff the boxes with votes. For what it’s worth, the preliminary totals gave Karzai just over three million votes (54.6%), with second placed Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, on 1.6 million (27.8%). Just after the election, Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan hailed the vote as "a bad day for the Taliban and a good day for the people of Afghanistan". Obama called it the most important event in Afghanistan this year. He may be right, of course, but not for the reasons he meant. The massive vote rigging and growing public scepticism have compelled the UN-sponsored Electoral Complaints Commission, which has to ratify the result, to order a recount of 10% of the vote. If a recount brings Karzai’s total down to 50% or below this would trigger a run-off between him and Abdullah. Phillippe Morillon, head of the EU observer team, said that 1.5 million votes (27%) were suspect – 1.1 million for Karzai, 300,000 for Abdullah, the rest for other candidates.
Recounting could months; with winter settled, a second round could be delayed until April 2010, leaving the prospect of months of increased political volatility and uncertainty. It would further undermine the case made by the Obama, Brown, Merkel and Sarkozy administrations for the military intervention. Effectively, the election authorities have a month to sort something out: call a destabilising, divisive (and rigged) run-off, stitch up a deal between Karzai and Abdullah, or announce that Karzai won after all. Whatever happens will be dirty politics, with the western powers up to their necks in the filth. Karzai was installed as president by the US in 2001. He won the inaugural presidential election in 2004 and was feted the world over. He now resides in a palatial fortress in the centre of Kabul, presiding over what The Economist calls the "spread of narco-corruption". He keeps some scary company. General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord, arrived back in Afghanistan a week before the election to back Karzai. It is said that he was responsible for killing 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war in 2001 and executed people by crushing them under bulldozers.
Karzai did deals with Marshal Mohammad Fahim, a Tajik warlord heavily implicated in drug trafficking, and Abdul Karim Khalili and Mohammad Mohaqeq, two Haraza warlords. Ironically, Karzai’s campaign adviser was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Islamist who welcomed Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan in 1996! The election has exposed the Afghan political system as completely rotten. What none of the heads of states with troops in Afghanistan are prepared to admit – from their comfortable offices and homes – is that the presence of foreign armies is the main source of tension and conflict. The systematic use of air power to minimise Nato casualties exacerbates this because it causes massive Afghani civilian deaths. US and Nato supremo, General Stanley McChrystal, says this strategy has changed. A few days after making that claim, however, a US air raid against two fuel tankers taken by the Taliban – called in by German forces – led to 125 deaths, the majority of them civilians. A UN official asked the pointed question: "One day you are building a bridge and the next day you call in an airstrike that kills civilians. What kind of message does that send?"
The political establishment and mass media deal in simplistic caricatures. The right-wing commentator, Nicholas Kristof, is basically correct when he points out: "Some Taliban are hardcore ideologues, but many join the fight because friends or elders suggest it, because they are avenging the deaths of relatives in previous fighting, because it’s a way to earn money, or because they want to expel the infidels from their land – particularly because the foreigners haven’t brought the roads, bridges and irrigation projects that had been anticipated". In other words, it is not the simple good-versus-evil formula rammed down our throats. In contrast to the rampant corruption of the regime, Admiral Mike Mullen, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, even wrote that, despite its brutality, the Taliban "allow people to file formal complaints against local Talib leaders". Time is running out for Obama with 61% saying the conflict is going badly and 51% that the war is not worth fighting – up to 70% among Democrats. Increasingly, Obama has to rely on backing from the Republicans, dangerous when he faces such strong opposition over his healthcare plans and economic policy.
In Britain, Eric Joyce resigned as parliamentary private secretary to Bob Ainsworth, defence secretary, on 3 September, saying that he could no longer justify the growing casualties by saying the war helps prevent terrorism. Even this staunch New Labour loyalist could stomach the lie no longer. There is mounting anger at the rising death toll of young soldiers, at the neglect of injured soldiers and their struggle for financial assistance, as well as the substandard equipment they are sent into battle with. And for what? To prop up a completely corrupt regime. As for the people of Afghanistan, they are caught between the Nato occupation, Taliban insurgents, warlords and drug-trafficking gangsters, in one of the world’s poorest countries, almost two-thirds of which is too dangerous for aid agencies to reach. It would be naïve to believe that the withdrawal of troops would immediately bring peace to Afghanistan. But they have to be pulled out. They are foreign fighters in occupation. The more troops that are sent in – the logic of Obama’s position and the demand of McChrystal – the greater the resistance. By all the criteria set by Obama, Afghanistan is a failure. Al-Qaeda has not been destroyed. It has moved to Pakistan, a potentially greater source of instability in the region. Corruption and drug trafficking is endemic, funding the Taliban as well as many in and around Karzai’s palace. Women’s rights are crushed by all the warlords, Islamists and insurgent forces.
Afghanistan has been ripped apart by 30 years of war and intervention by major world powers. US-backed mujaheddin fighting against Russian forces became the Taliban regime. Today, we are eight years into the Nato occupation. Given that terrible legacy, developing a free, united country is a long-term goal, a dream even. Tragically, the people of Afghanistan – and the troops sent there, too – are living in a nightmare conjured up by capitalism. We must do all we can to hasten the withdrawal of troops and make links with the workers and poor of Afghanistan, struggling in socialist solidarity to rid the region of imperialist intervention.
What was called a presidential election took place on 20 August. The extent of the rigging and violence was breathtaking. In president Hamid Karzai’s home province, Kandahar, where his younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, chairs the provincial council, over 350,000 votes were recorded. Western officials estimate that only 25,000 people actually voted. Around 800 fake polling stations were set up by supporters of Karzai, who also took over a further 800 legitimate polling centres to stuff the boxes with votes. For what it’s worth, the preliminary totals gave Karzai just over three million votes (54.6%), with second placed Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister, on 1.6 million (27.8%). Just after the election, Britain’s ambassador to Afghanistan hailed the vote as "a bad day for the Taliban and a good day for the people of Afghanistan". Obama called it the most important event in Afghanistan this year. He may be right, of course, but not for the reasons he meant. The massive vote rigging and growing public scepticism have compelled the UN-sponsored Electoral Complaints Commission, which has to ratify the result, to order a recount of 10% of the vote. If a recount brings Karzai’s total down to 50% or below this would trigger a run-off between him and Abdullah. Phillippe Morillon, head of the EU observer team, said that 1.5 million votes (27%) were suspect – 1.1 million for Karzai, 300,000 for Abdullah, the rest for other candidates.
Recounting could months; with winter settled, a second round could be delayed until April 2010, leaving the prospect of months of increased political volatility and uncertainty. It would further undermine the case made by the Obama, Brown, Merkel and Sarkozy administrations for the military intervention. Effectively, the election authorities have a month to sort something out: call a destabilising, divisive (and rigged) run-off, stitch up a deal between Karzai and Abdullah, or announce that Karzai won after all. Whatever happens will be dirty politics, with the western powers up to their necks in the filth. Karzai was installed as president by the US in 2001. He won the inaugural presidential election in 2004 and was feted the world over. He now resides in a palatial fortress in the centre of Kabul, presiding over what The Economist calls the "spread of narco-corruption". He keeps some scary company. General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord, arrived back in Afghanistan a week before the election to back Karzai. It is said that he was responsible for killing 2,000 Taliban prisoners of war in 2001 and executed people by crushing them under bulldozers.
Karzai did deals with Marshal Mohammad Fahim, a Tajik warlord heavily implicated in drug trafficking, and Abdul Karim Khalili and Mohammad Mohaqeq, two Haraza warlords. Ironically, Karzai’s campaign adviser was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Islamist who welcomed Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan in 1996! The election has exposed the Afghan political system as completely rotten. What none of the heads of states with troops in Afghanistan are prepared to admit – from their comfortable offices and homes – is that the presence of foreign armies is the main source of tension and conflict. The systematic use of air power to minimise Nato casualties exacerbates this because it causes massive Afghani civilian deaths. US and Nato supremo, General Stanley McChrystal, says this strategy has changed. A few days after making that claim, however, a US air raid against two fuel tankers taken by the Taliban – called in by German forces – led to 125 deaths, the majority of them civilians. A UN official asked the pointed question: "One day you are building a bridge and the next day you call in an airstrike that kills civilians. What kind of message does that send?"
The political establishment and mass media deal in simplistic caricatures. The right-wing commentator, Nicholas Kristof, is basically correct when he points out: "Some Taliban are hardcore ideologues, but many join the fight because friends or elders suggest it, because they are avenging the deaths of relatives in previous fighting, because it’s a way to earn money, or because they want to expel the infidels from their land – particularly because the foreigners haven’t brought the roads, bridges and irrigation projects that had been anticipated". In other words, it is not the simple good-versus-evil formula rammed down our throats. In contrast to the rampant corruption of the regime, Admiral Mike Mullen, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, even wrote that, despite its brutality, the Taliban "allow people to file formal complaints against local Talib leaders". Time is running out for Obama with 61% saying the conflict is going badly and 51% that the war is not worth fighting – up to 70% among Democrats. Increasingly, Obama has to rely on backing from the Republicans, dangerous when he faces such strong opposition over his healthcare plans and economic policy.
In Britain, Eric Joyce resigned as parliamentary private secretary to Bob Ainsworth, defence secretary, on 3 September, saying that he could no longer justify the growing casualties by saying the war helps prevent terrorism. Even this staunch New Labour loyalist could stomach the lie no longer. There is mounting anger at the rising death toll of young soldiers, at the neglect of injured soldiers and their struggle for financial assistance, as well as the substandard equipment they are sent into battle with. And for what? To prop up a completely corrupt regime. As for the people of Afghanistan, they are caught between the Nato occupation, Taliban insurgents, warlords and drug-trafficking gangsters, in one of the world’s poorest countries, almost two-thirds of which is too dangerous for aid agencies to reach. It would be naïve to believe that the withdrawal of troops would immediately bring peace to Afghanistan. But they have to be pulled out. They are foreign fighters in occupation. The more troops that are sent in – the logic of Obama’s position and the demand of McChrystal – the greater the resistance. By all the criteria set by Obama, Afghanistan is a failure. Al-Qaeda has not been destroyed. It has moved to Pakistan, a potentially greater source of instability in the region. Corruption and drug trafficking is endemic, funding the Taliban as well as many in and around Karzai’s palace. Women’s rights are crushed by all the warlords, Islamists and insurgent forces.
Afghanistan has been ripped apart by 30 years of war and intervention by major world powers. US-backed mujaheddin fighting against Russian forces became the Taliban regime. Today, we are eight years into the Nato occupation. Given that terrible legacy, developing a free, united country is a long-term goal, a dream even. Tragically, the people of Afghanistan – and the troops sent there, too – are living in a nightmare conjured up by capitalism. We must do all we can to hasten the withdrawal of troops and make links with the workers and poor of Afghanistan, struggling in socialist solidarity to rid the region of imperialist intervention.
Tories go back to medieval basics
After stressing endlessly that the Conservative Party, it seems David Conman and his Tory peers are attempting to rob us of our civil liberties. In new adverts they openly attack our National Health Service (they probably despise the thought of those in poverty being able to access free healthcare) the Tory toffs have shown their true colours time and again; and now they have mucked up big time with probably the most outrageous gaffe yet - teaming up with Polish far-right Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS). Not only are they anti-semitic deniers of the Holocaust, but they apparently want a crackdown on homosexuality as it "breeds unnatural pervesion and paedophilia" in their rotten minds. Of course even in the Thatcherite times they were known to conspire with fascist groups such as the infamous National Front. They've even made their hardline immigration stance clear - though Thatcher ironically didn't mind white, European immigrants coming through our borders whilst closing to everyone else.
To this end, they emphasise the country's Anglican heritage, oppose any transfer of power away from the United Kingdom—either downwards to the nations and regions or upwards to the European Union—and seek to place greater emphasis on traditional family structures to repair what they perceive as a broken society in Britain. They are strong advocates of marriage and believe the Conservative Party should back the institution with tax breaks and have opposed Labour's alleged assault on both traditional family structures and 'fatherhood'. Most oppose high levels of immigration and support the lowering of the current 24 week abortion limit. They have been credited with securing a last minute u-turn by the Government who were planning to further liberalise the UK's abortion laws, when in 2008 to the surprise of many MPs the Leader of the House announced plans to shelve these proposals. Some members in the past have expressed support for capital punishment. Prominent MPs from this wing of the party include Andrew Rosindell, Nadine Dorries, Ann Widdecombe and Edward Leigh—the last two prominent Roman Catholics, notable in a faction marked out by its support for the established Church of England. The conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton is a representative of the intellectual wing of the Cornerstone group: his writings rarely touch on economics and instead focus on conservative perspectives concerning political, social, cultural and moral issues.
The party's reputation for economic stewardship was dealt a blow by Black Wednesday in 1992, in which billions of pounds were spent in an effort to keep the pound within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) system at an overvalued rate. Combined with the recession of the early 1990s 'Black Wednesday' allowed Tony Blair and then-Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to promise greater economic competence. One concrete economic policy of recent years has been opposition to the European single currency. Anticipating the growing Euroscepticism within his party, John Major negotiated a British opt-out from the single currency in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, although several members of Major's cabinet, such as Kenneth Clarke, were personally supportive of EMU participation. In recent years, 'modernisers' in the party have claimed that the association between social conservatism and the Conservatives (manifest in policies such as tax incentives for married couples, the removal of the link between pensions and earnings, and criticism of public financial support for those who do not work) have played a role in the electoral decline of the party in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since 1997 a debate has continued within the party between 'modernisers' such as Michael Portillo, who believe that the Conservatives should modify their public stances on social issues, and 'traditionalists' such as Boris Johnson, William Hague, and David Davis, who believe that the party should remain faithful to its traditional conservative platform. This may have resulted in William Hague's and Michael Howard's pre-election swings to the right in 2001 and 2005,[citation needed] as well as the election of the stop-Kenneth Clarke candidate Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. Iain Duncan Smith, however, remains influential. It has been argued by analysts that his Centre for Social Justice has forced Cameron to the right on many issues, particularly crime and social welfare. The Conservative Party has said that if it gets into power in the next election, it will increase the cost of attending university and cut pay rises in the public sector; the retirement age will be raised to 66 for women, which one must admit sounds like a mysoginistic blow to women's rights.
As a political force Britain’s Tory Party has rarely been weaker. Consistently well below New Labour in the opinion polls, recently the main role the Tories have been playing is as a comedy sideshow in the media, distracting attention from the real political debates in Britain. Can the Tories recover? The ‘modernisers’, with whom Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith appeared to side at their recent conference, are looking for a ‘defining issue’ they can use to stake their claim to the party in the same way as Blair did when he won the battle to delete the Labour Party’s socialist clause four from its constitution. But in fact this search shows how little even the more far-sighted and flexible Tories understand the roots of their own crisis. Blair fought successfully to complete the transformation of Labour into a centre-right party representing the interests of big business. The scrapping of clause four was a powerful symbol of the huge ideological shift between Labour and ‘New Labour’.
There is no major ideological difference, however, between the different wings of the Tory Party. The arguments between the ‘modernisers’ and the ‘traditionalists’ are a struggle between pragmatic and cynical career politicians who will do or say anything to get back into power, and the unwillingness of many Tory activists and MPs to give up their pet prejudices, or at least pretend to, in order to do so. There is no substantial ideological difference between the Tory Party and New Labour either. New Labour’s success in stealing and re-packaging Thatcherism is the real root cause of the Tories’ crisis. The unpleasant truth for the Tories is that New Labour is much better at implementing the Tories’ policies than the Tory Party themselves. This situation has created the current crisis in the Tory Party. Membership is down from 1.5 million in 1975 to around 300,000 today. The average age of Tory Party members is 67 (two thirds of Tory Party member are retired) and half the membership think that the party has no clear direction, according to a recent survey. Last year the Tories attracted their lowest vote for decades (8.4 million). There is a clear prospect that Iain Duncan Smith could be challenged as party leader if the Tories lose more than 100 council seats in the local elections next May.
At the recent Tory Party conference, Duncan Smith and members of the Tory shadow cabinet unveiled their plan for a new ‘compassionate Conservatism’. Oliver Letwin, shadow home secretary, attacked his Labour counter-part David Blunkett for "giving ground to the extremists" and "fanning the flames" of far-right politicians with his stance on asylum: "he is playing with fire… how do you explain the fact that at the last election we [the Tories] had the strongest language on asylum in this generation and very strong language on Europe and we were annihilated". Letwin added: "We are not going to talk that way. We are not going to demonise asylum-seekers". David Willetts, Tory shadow secretary for work and pensions, announced that "we are concentrating our attention on how we can best help vulnerable people… the Tory war on lone parents is over… too often [lone parents] are struggling in a hostile environment. When they are not being ignored, they are being blamed". At the same time, though, he threw a crust to the Tory old guard by emphasising that he thought the evidence that children did better when brought up by their two parents in a stable marriage was ‘overwhelming’.
Ironically, while Duncan Smith and his shadow cabinet were trying to establish their new credentials as campaigners for social justice, the Tory leader was also pledging to continue the ‘unfinished Thatcher revolution’ that consistently attacked single parents, asylum-seekers, the welfare state and everything else that the Tories now ‘care’ about so deeply. The Tory leader is desperately trying to hold his party together. The ‘modernisers’ hope to achieve a symbolic sacrifice – whether this is the feverishly-discussed idea of expelling the former Thatcher cabinet member, Norman Tebbit, or disciplinary action against a slightly lower-profile Tory supporter (such as Jim Davidson, the ‘comedian’, who joked at a Tory fund-raising dinner that he hoped the East European waiters had not had too far to walk from the Channel tunnel). But this type of ‘defining issue’, while it wouldn’t have the impact of the scrapping of clause four, would risk a split in the Tory Party. If the ‘modernisers’ – the ones prepared to say anything to get closer to power – are to succeed in their attempts to ‘re-brand’ then a split may be necessary. But at the moment they still appear to be clinging to the idea that they can recreate the Tory Party of the past and this ties them to the ‘traditionalists’.
In some areas Tory candidates have got good election results by rejecting traditional Tory ideas and running an unashamedly populist campaign, like Stephen Norris in the 2000 election for the London mayor. His campaign openly criticised ‘party politics’, cashing in on the cynicism towards the main three parties, praised the multicultural nature of London, and supported gay rights. In the current fragmented political scene, where traditional voter allegiances are breaking down, this type of campaign can gain an echo. The Tories have shown some glimmers of a new populist approach that could tap some of the discontent against New Labour. Their attack on Labour’s proposal to limit council tenants’ ‘right to buy’ their homes in London and the South East, for example, were effectively done. Labour, who have been forcing through the selling off of remaining council housing stocks to housing associations and trying to introduce ‘market rents’ into social housing have suddenly found a form of privatisation they oppose: one where working class people can buy their homes at affordable prices, instead of public funds being used to subsidise the profits of private companies.
While the Tories’ plans (to open up the right to buy for more housing association tenants) are not any kind of solution to the housing crisis, these type of criticisms can strike a chord with a layer. The Tories succeeded for a few moments in posing as the champions of ordinary people in a way that they haven’t managed for a long time. Even anti-corporate rhetoric has made a brief appearance, though tinged with nationalism. In an article in The Spectator John Hayes, Tory shadow agriculture minister, attacked "soulless and rootless big businesses [which] demonstrate little loyalty to local producers and only the minimum necessary commitment to consumers. The ubiquity fostered by multinationals is an aesthetic disaster". But is the Tory Party nationally capable of adapting into a new populist opposition to New Labour? The chances are very slim. Most of the Tory activists are too attached to their outdated world-view to connect to the discontent many people feel under New Labour, particularly among younger voters of whom only 18% are prepared to vote Tory.
Most of the 25 new policies unveiled with much fuss at Tory Party conference are open attempts to subsidise the private sector in health and education at the expense of public services. The idea of government ‘contributions’ towards the cost of private operations, for example, only serves as a reminder of the Tories’ privatisation policies. The class hatred felt towards the Tories is still an extremely strong obstacle to their recovery and these policies won’t help. There are two likely directions in which the Tory Party could develop: the populist (socially liberal but economically pro-capitalist) approach outlined above; or by moving further right and appealing to ‘Little Englander’ nationalism, racism and other reactionary moods, competing with the far-right for votes. But unless they split it will be virtually impossible for one wing within the Tory Party to silence the other. Until the Tories resign themselves to their reduced importance within the establishment in Britain and split, the suppressed civil war within their party is likely to continue to tear them to bits in public.
To this end, they emphasise the country's Anglican heritage, oppose any transfer of power away from the United Kingdom—either downwards to the nations and regions or upwards to the European Union—and seek to place greater emphasis on traditional family structures to repair what they perceive as a broken society in Britain. They are strong advocates of marriage and believe the Conservative Party should back the institution with tax breaks and have opposed Labour's alleged assault on both traditional family structures and 'fatherhood'. Most oppose high levels of immigration and support the lowering of the current 24 week abortion limit. They have been credited with securing a last minute u-turn by the Government who were planning to further liberalise the UK's abortion laws, when in 2008 to the surprise of many MPs the Leader of the House announced plans to shelve these proposals. Some members in the past have expressed support for capital punishment. Prominent MPs from this wing of the party include Andrew Rosindell, Nadine Dorries, Ann Widdecombe and Edward Leigh—the last two prominent Roman Catholics, notable in a faction marked out by its support for the established Church of England. The conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton is a representative of the intellectual wing of the Cornerstone group: his writings rarely touch on economics and instead focus on conservative perspectives concerning political, social, cultural and moral issues.
The party's reputation for economic stewardship was dealt a blow by Black Wednesday in 1992, in which billions of pounds were spent in an effort to keep the pound within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) system at an overvalued rate. Combined with the recession of the early 1990s 'Black Wednesday' allowed Tony Blair and then-Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to promise greater economic competence. One concrete economic policy of recent years has been opposition to the European single currency. Anticipating the growing Euroscepticism within his party, John Major negotiated a British opt-out from the single currency in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, although several members of Major's cabinet, such as Kenneth Clarke, were personally supportive of EMU participation. In recent years, 'modernisers' in the party have claimed that the association between social conservatism and the Conservatives (manifest in policies such as tax incentives for married couples, the removal of the link between pensions and earnings, and criticism of public financial support for those who do not work) have played a role in the electoral decline of the party in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since 1997 a debate has continued within the party between 'modernisers' such as Michael Portillo, who believe that the Conservatives should modify their public stances on social issues, and 'traditionalists' such as Boris Johnson, William Hague, and David Davis, who believe that the party should remain faithful to its traditional conservative platform. This may have resulted in William Hague's and Michael Howard's pre-election swings to the right in 2001 and 2005,[citation needed] as well as the election of the stop-Kenneth Clarke candidate Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. Iain Duncan Smith, however, remains influential. It has been argued by analysts that his Centre for Social Justice has forced Cameron to the right on many issues, particularly crime and social welfare. The Conservative Party has said that if it gets into power in the next election, it will increase the cost of attending university and cut pay rises in the public sector; the retirement age will be raised to 66 for women, which one must admit sounds like a mysoginistic blow to women's rights.
As a political force Britain’s Tory Party has rarely been weaker. Consistently well below New Labour in the opinion polls, recently the main role the Tories have been playing is as a comedy sideshow in the media, distracting attention from the real political debates in Britain. Can the Tories recover? The ‘modernisers’, with whom Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith appeared to side at their recent conference, are looking for a ‘defining issue’ they can use to stake their claim to the party in the same way as Blair did when he won the battle to delete the Labour Party’s socialist clause four from its constitution. But in fact this search shows how little even the more far-sighted and flexible Tories understand the roots of their own crisis. Blair fought successfully to complete the transformation of Labour into a centre-right party representing the interests of big business. The scrapping of clause four was a powerful symbol of the huge ideological shift between Labour and ‘New Labour’.
There is no major ideological difference, however, between the different wings of the Tory Party. The arguments between the ‘modernisers’ and the ‘traditionalists’ are a struggle between pragmatic and cynical career politicians who will do or say anything to get back into power, and the unwillingness of many Tory activists and MPs to give up their pet prejudices, or at least pretend to, in order to do so. There is no substantial ideological difference between the Tory Party and New Labour either. New Labour’s success in stealing and re-packaging Thatcherism is the real root cause of the Tories’ crisis. The unpleasant truth for the Tories is that New Labour is much better at implementing the Tories’ policies than the Tory Party themselves. This situation has created the current crisis in the Tory Party. Membership is down from 1.5 million in 1975 to around 300,000 today. The average age of Tory Party members is 67 (two thirds of Tory Party member are retired) and half the membership think that the party has no clear direction, according to a recent survey. Last year the Tories attracted their lowest vote for decades (8.4 million). There is a clear prospect that Iain Duncan Smith could be challenged as party leader if the Tories lose more than 100 council seats in the local elections next May.
At the recent Tory Party conference, Duncan Smith and members of the Tory shadow cabinet unveiled their plan for a new ‘compassionate Conservatism’. Oliver Letwin, shadow home secretary, attacked his Labour counter-part David Blunkett for "giving ground to the extremists" and "fanning the flames" of far-right politicians with his stance on asylum: "he is playing with fire… how do you explain the fact that at the last election we [the Tories] had the strongest language on asylum in this generation and very strong language on Europe and we were annihilated". Letwin added: "We are not going to talk that way. We are not going to demonise asylum-seekers". David Willetts, Tory shadow secretary for work and pensions, announced that "we are concentrating our attention on how we can best help vulnerable people… the Tory war on lone parents is over… too often [lone parents] are struggling in a hostile environment. When they are not being ignored, they are being blamed". At the same time, though, he threw a crust to the Tory old guard by emphasising that he thought the evidence that children did better when brought up by their two parents in a stable marriage was ‘overwhelming’.
Ironically, while Duncan Smith and his shadow cabinet were trying to establish their new credentials as campaigners for social justice, the Tory leader was also pledging to continue the ‘unfinished Thatcher revolution’ that consistently attacked single parents, asylum-seekers, the welfare state and everything else that the Tories now ‘care’ about so deeply. The Tory leader is desperately trying to hold his party together. The ‘modernisers’ hope to achieve a symbolic sacrifice – whether this is the feverishly-discussed idea of expelling the former Thatcher cabinet member, Norman Tebbit, or disciplinary action against a slightly lower-profile Tory supporter (such as Jim Davidson, the ‘comedian’, who joked at a Tory fund-raising dinner that he hoped the East European waiters had not had too far to walk from the Channel tunnel). But this type of ‘defining issue’, while it wouldn’t have the impact of the scrapping of clause four, would risk a split in the Tory Party. If the ‘modernisers’ – the ones prepared to say anything to get closer to power – are to succeed in their attempts to ‘re-brand’ then a split may be necessary. But at the moment they still appear to be clinging to the idea that they can recreate the Tory Party of the past and this ties them to the ‘traditionalists’.
In some areas Tory candidates have got good election results by rejecting traditional Tory ideas and running an unashamedly populist campaign, like Stephen Norris in the 2000 election for the London mayor. His campaign openly criticised ‘party politics’, cashing in on the cynicism towards the main three parties, praised the multicultural nature of London, and supported gay rights. In the current fragmented political scene, where traditional voter allegiances are breaking down, this type of campaign can gain an echo. The Tories have shown some glimmers of a new populist approach that could tap some of the discontent against New Labour. Their attack on Labour’s proposal to limit council tenants’ ‘right to buy’ their homes in London and the South East, for example, were effectively done. Labour, who have been forcing through the selling off of remaining council housing stocks to housing associations and trying to introduce ‘market rents’ into social housing have suddenly found a form of privatisation they oppose: one where working class people can buy their homes at affordable prices, instead of public funds being used to subsidise the profits of private companies.
While the Tories’ plans (to open up the right to buy for more housing association tenants) are not any kind of solution to the housing crisis, these type of criticisms can strike a chord with a layer. The Tories succeeded for a few moments in posing as the champions of ordinary people in a way that they haven’t managed for a long time. Even anti-corporate rhetoric has made a brief appearance, though tinged with nationalism. In an article in The Spectator John Hayes, Tory shadow agriculture minister, attacked "soulless and rootless big businesses [which] demonstrate little loyalty to local producers and only the minimum necessary commitment to consumers. The ubiquity fostered by multinationals is an aesthetic disaster". But is the Tory Party nationally capable of adapting into a new populist opposition to New Labour? The chances are very slim. Most of the Tory activists are too attached to their outdated world-view to connect to the discontent many people feel under New Labour, particularly among younger voters of whom only 18% are prepared to vote Tory.
Most of the 25 new policies unveiled with much fuss at Tory Party conference are open attempts to subsidise the private sector in health and education at the expense of public services. The idea of government ‘contributions’ towards the cost of private operations, for example, only serves as a reminder of the Tories’ privatisation policies. The class hatred felt towards the Tories is still an extremely strong obstacle to their recovery and these policies won’t help. There are two likely directions in which the Tory Party could develop: the populist (socially liberal but economically pro-capitalist) approach outlined above; or by moving further right and appealing to ‘Little Englander’ nationalism, racism and other reactionary moods, competing with the far-right for votes. But unless they split it will be virtually impossible for one wing within the Tory Party to silence the other. Until the Tories resign themselves to their reduced importance within the establishment in Britain and split, the suppressed civil war within their party is likely to continue to tear them to bits in public.
The far-right's web of hate
Alec McFadden was dozing in his armchair when a loud bang on his front door brought him to his senses with a jolt. Looking out of the window of his Wallasey home, he saw a young man half slumped in the driveway. "I couldn't see his face but he looked like he was in some sort of trouble, like he needed help," says McFadden. "I opened the door just a bit to ask if he was OK and he threw himself at me and started hitting me around the head." What McFadden did not realise at the time was that he was not being punched but stabbed. "I think it went on for a couple of minutes before I managed to get the door closed. I turned round and my daughter was screaming. It was only then, as I put my hand to my face and felt the blood, that I realised what had happened." The attack, which left the long-time union activist with serious injuries, was the latest and most violent incident in a campaign of intimidation that has been waged against opponents of the far right in the UK over the past five years.
Like hundreds of people who have spoken out against the rise of the British National Party and other extremist groups, McFadden's picture and home address have been collected by far right activists and posted on a website called Redwatch. The site, which has links with the neo-Nazi organisations such as the National Front & Combat 18 and a host of European fascist organisations, is hosted in the US but registered and run from the UK. It lists the personal details and shows the photographs of anti-racists - many taken during protests against the British National Party - alongside the slogan: "Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes." This month a delegation of MPs and union activists will visit the Home Office to call for the site to be closed down. It is a familiar refrain and in the past officials have argued that because the site is hosted abroad, there is nothing they can do. However, Redwatch's sister site in Poland, which was also hosted in the US, was recently closed down after collaboration between authorities in the the two countries, and Home Office minister Vernon Coaker has agreed to champion the campaign within government.
Redwatch was launched in 2001 and takes its name from a Combat 18 newsletter produced in London in the 1990s. For the first few years it was just another online talking shop for hardline racists and fascists, offensive and unpleasant but apparently not dangerous. However, in April 2003, those behind the site signalled that Redwatch meant business. Leeds school teachers Sally Kincaid and Steve Johnson had been involved in local campaigns against the BNP and other far-right groups for years. Then their personal details appeared on Redwatch following a demonstration they had attended in the Pudsey area of the city. A couple of weeks later they suffered a fire-bomb attack at their home, which left their car burned out. The incident was a turning point. Those featured on Redwatch were no longer being subjected to threats and harassment but to physical attacks. In the months that followed, journalists, politicians and local anti-racist activists were listed on the website. Among those targeted was Peter Lazenby, a journalist on the Yorkshire Evening Post, whose picture now adorns the front page of the site. He has been a long-time opponent of the far right, and has won awards for his reports on the BNP, which gained its first councillor in Leeds in May.
"In some ways being on Redwatch is recognition that as a journalist you must be doing something right," says Lazenby. "But my overriding feeling is one of anger and resentment that these people feel free to try and intimidate me and my colleagues and threaten us with violence. There is a personal impact on your life. When it first happened, I didn't take much notice - I'd been getting threats of one kind or another from far right groups since I started reporting on them in the 1970s. But then they got hold of an old address of mine and I thought that wasn't fair on the people who had moved in, so I warned them and contacted the police." West Yorkshire officers took the threats seriously and advised Lazenby to improve his personal security, telling him to vary his route home from work. "I have been on that site since it started and, apart from verbal attacks in the street, nothing has happened to me yet. But every time you hear of an attack it really makes you think. A young man whose details went up after he was spotted delivering anti-fascist leaflets was badly beaten. Then there was the stabbing [of McFadden] over on Merseyside, and there are plenty of other cases that don't make the papers. Each time an attack happens, it pulls you up. But you can't let it influence your work, you have to keep going."
The threat to reporters has grown steadily since Redwatch was launched. In most cases it follows a similar pattern. A newspaper reports on the activities of the BNP or other far right groups, then journalists' details appear on the site, and threats and intimidation follow. According to the National Union of Journalists, reporters who have published "fair, accurate and professional stories" on the BNP and other far right organisations have been targeted in Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Sunderland, Birmingham and Cardiff. The website even has a new section dedicated to "red journalists". Campaigns of intimidation are also being waged against local anti-racist activists. "We sometimes find that, although a lot of people are worried about the far right in their area, they don't want to get involved because they are concerned about intimidation," says Nick Lowles of anti-fascist organisation Searchlight, "and that is due in part to Redwatch and the threats and violence that come with it." The racist, homophobic fascists behind Redwatch are not deterred by the campaign to close the site. A notice on the homepage reads: "Due to a hysterical campaign by Marxist moaners against Redwatch, we use several domain names and multiple servers for this site." It adds: "While it is time to be legal we must stolidly endure whatever the puppets of the capitalist state see fit to inflict upon us, and when it is time to revolt we must be prepared to unleash all the furies of hell."
Sympathisers claim Redwatch is little more than an act of self-defence, insisting that they are only doing what anti-fascist campaigners who monitor the activities of rightwingers have been doing for years. But Lowles says this is a dangerous myth: "This is absolute rubbish. There is no anti-racist equivalent to this site. There is nothing that lists home details of fascists and certainly nothing that encourages attacks on them. Redwatch is not an act of revenge but something altogether more sinister. It is designed to intimidate and harass anti-racists and anti-fascists to the point where the individuals targeted no longer campaign against fascist groups. It is political intimidation and classic fascism." The British National Party, under its leader Nick Griffin, has tried to distance itself from Redwatch - the blatant intimidation and violence sits uncomfortably with its attempt to portray itself as a mainstream, democratic party. But despite official denials, some anti-racist activists say their pictures have been taken by members of the BNP only to appear on Redwatch a few days later. "I was campaigning against the BNP before the local elections," says Carl Morphett from Kirklees in West Yorkshire, which now has three BNP councillors. "We were photographed by two BNP members in Yorkshire and a day later we appeared on Redwatch. There is no doubt that the BNP uses this site to try and intimidate people - to suggest anything else is ludicrous."
Six months after the attack on the Leeds schoolteachers, an investigation by the Guardian and Searchlight shed light on the true nature of Redwatch, uncovering a secret hitlist of targets, including social workers, journalists and politicians. Only a handful of known neo-Nazis had access to the secure email network that listed the names and addresses of targets as well as plans for attacks on anti-racists in their homes or during public meetings. One subscriber, who called himself Mole Intelligence Bureau, wrote: "Redwatch has accumulated many names and addresses, along with pictures of the targets, many of whom have had nothing done to them. Now's the time to start a proper campaign of violence and intimidation towards those who seek to see us silenced or imprisoned for our beliefs." One of the targets was Lazenby and numerous addresses were posted on the site for members to "check out". One message read: "We need to find this reporter fast. If we can scare this cunt off, then we might get an easier time instead of being slagged off and made to look a bunch of muppets." In another message, posted by a BNP supporter from Batley, the people behind Redwatch are asked if they will be attending an anti-racist meeting in Dewsbury in June. The event, which was addressed by Leon Greenman, a Holocaust survivor, was described as a "Holohoax meeting". One respondent advised: "The best place to attack the reds [is] just after the meeting finishes as they are walking to catch their buses or going for their cars."
The network listed dozens of people "for further research", including the divisional police commanders for Dewsbury and Huddersfield, the chief executive of Kirklees Council, the director of a West Yorkshire health authority and housing officers. For many anti-fascists this was final proof that Redwatch represented a serious threat. Known neo-Nazis with violent criminal pasts were planning to step up their campaign of intimidation and were planning attacks against specific targets. The evidence was passed to the then Home Secretary David Blunkett and officials declared that action was imminent. But after examining the details, the Home Office again said that because the site was hosted in the US there was little they could do - listing public information online is not a crime and the website is full of disclaimers. Following an initial meeting in August with a delegation of MPs, trade unionists and anti-racists, Coaker agreed to champion the cause. According to Home Office officials, he is in discussion with senior police officers, and contact has also been made with the US authorities to see if it is possible to take joint action. That appeared to come a step closer recently when it emerged that a new legal opinion published in the US argues that the site is not protected under the first amendment. In a separate development, anti-racist campaigners say they have identified the main Redwatch organiser and have passed his details to the police.
But while the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic "look again", the intimidation goes on. Since the knife attack, McFadden has received a letter and a phone call warning him that if Redwatch is closed down his children will be shot. Liverpool Liberal Democrat councillor and anti-racist campaigner Robbie Quinn received death threats against him and his family after his details were posted on the site, as did singer Alun Parry, who has been targeted for performing at a refugee benefit concert. Angela Eagle, who is the MP for Wallasey, McFadden's home constituency, and whose photograph also appears on the front page of Redwatch, argues that the website represents an unacceptable threat to people's democratic right to free speech. "The powers are available to take action against this site. What we desperately need now is the political will." Lazenby says there is growing frustration that Redwatch is still up and running. "I feel a degree of anger against the authorities that they have done nothing about this site. They have said repeatedly that there is nothing that can be done, but I simply don't believe them. We have quite rightly managed to close down paedophile sites and others that are deemed unacceptable, and I am sure that if Redwatch was targeting the richest 100 people in the country, it would be swiftly dealt with".
Like hundreds of people who have spoken out against the rise of the British National Party and other extremist groups, McFadden's picture and home address have been collected by far right activists and posted on a website called Redwatch. The site, which has links with the neo-Nazi organisations such as the National Front & Combat 18 and a host of European fascist organisations, is hosted in the US but registered and run from the UK. It lists the personal details and shows the photographs of anti-racists - many taken during protests against the British National Party - alongside the slogan: "Remember places, traitors' faces, they'll all pay for their crimes." This month a delegation of MPs and union activists will visit the Home Office to call for the site to be closed down. It is a familiar refrain and in the past officials have argued that because the site is hosted abroad, there is nothing they can do. However, Redwatch's sister site in Poland, which was also hosted in the US, was recently closed down after collaboration between authorities in the the two countries, and Home Office minister Vernon Coaker has agreed to champion the campaign within government.
Redwatch was launched in 2001 and takes its name from a Combat 18 newsletter produced in London in the 1990s. For the first few years it was just another online talking shop for hardline racists and fascists, offensive and unpleasant but apparently not dangerous. However, in April 2003, those behind the site signalled that Redwatch meant business. Leeds school teachers Sally Kincaid and Steve Johnson had been involved in local campaigns against the BNP and other far-right groups for years. Then their personal details appeared on Redwatch following a demonstration they had attended in the Pudsey area of the city. A couple of weeks later they suffered a fire-bomb attack at their home, which left their car burned out. The incident was a turning point. Those featured on Redwatch were no longer being subjected to threats and harassment but to physical attacks. In the months that followed, journalists, politicians and local anti-racist activists were listed on the website. Among those targeted was Peter Lazenby, a journalist on the Yorkshire Evening Post, whose picture now adorns the front page of the site. He has been a long-time opponent of the far right, and has won awards for his reports on the BNP, which gained its first councillor in Leeds in May.
"In some ways being on Redwatch is recognition that as a journalist you must be doing something right," says Lazenby. "But my overriding feeling is one of anger and resentment that these people feel free to try and intimidate me and my colleagues and threaten us with violence. There is a personal impact on your life. When it first happened, I didn't take much notice - I'd been getting threats of one kind or another from far right groups since I started reporting on them in the 1970s. But then they got hold of an old address of mine and I thought that wasn't fair on the people who had moved in, so I warned them and contacted the police." West Yorkshire officers took the threats seriously and advised Lazenby to improve his personal security, telling him to vary his route home from work. "I have been on that site since it started and, apart from verbal attacks in the street, nothing has happened to me yet. But every time you hear of an attack it really makes you think. A young man whose details went up after he was spotted delivering anti-fascist leaflets was badly beaten. Then there was the stabbing [of McFadden] over on Merseyside, and there are plenty of other cases that don't make the papers. Each time an attack happens, it pulls you up. But you can't let it influence your work, you have to keep going."
The threat to reporters has grown steadily since Redwatch was launched. In most cases it follows a similar pattern. A newspaper reports on the activities of the BNP or other far right groups, then journalists' details appear on the site, and threats and intimidation follow. According to the National Union of Journalists, reporters who have published "fair, accurate and professional stories" on the BNP and other far right organisations have been targeted in Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Sunderland, Birmingham and Cardiff. The website even has a new section dedicated to "red journalists". Campaigns of intimidation are also being waged against local anti-racist activists. "We sometimes find that, although a lot of people are worried about the far right in their area, they don't want to get involved because they are concerned about intimidation," says Nick Lowles of anti-fascist organisation Searchlight, "and that is due in part to Redwatch and the threats and violence that come with it." The racist, homophobic fascists behind Redwatch are not deterred by the campaign to close the site. A notice on the homepage reads: "Due to a hysterical campaign by Marxist moaners against Redwatch, we use several domain names and multiple servers for this site." It adds: "While it is time to be legal we must stolidly endure whatever the puppets of the capitalist state see fit to inflict upon us, and when it is time to revolt we must be prepared to unleash all the furies of hell."
Sympathisers claim Redwatch is little more than an act of self-defence, insisting that they are only doing what anti-fascist campaigners who monitor the activities of rightwingers have been doing for years. But Lowles says this is a dangerous myth: "This is absolute rubbish. There is no anti-racist equivalent to this site. There is nothing that lists home details of fascists and certainly nothing that encourages attacks on them. Redwatch is not an act of revenge but something altogether more sinister. It is designed to intimidate and harass anti-racists and anti-fascists to the point where the individuals targeted no longer campaign against fascist groups. It is political intimidation and classic fascism." The British National Party, under its leader Nick Griffin, has tried to distance itself from Redwatch - the blatant intimidation and violence sits uncomfortably with its attempt to portray itself as a mainstream, democratic party. But despite official denials, some anti-racist activists say their pictures have been taken by members of the BNP only to appear on Redwatch a few days later. "I was campaigning against the BNP before the local elections," says Carl Morphett from Kirklees in West Yorkshire, which now has three BNP councillors. "We were photographed by two BNP members in Yorkshire and a day later we appeared on Redwatch. There is no doubt that the BNP uses this site to try and intimidate people - to suggest anything else is ludicrous."
Six months after the attack on the Leeds schoolteachers, an investigation by the Guardian and Searchlight shed light on the true nature of Redwatch, uncovering a secret hitlist of targets, including social workers, journalists and politicians. Only a handful of known neo-Nazis had access to the secure email network that listed the names and addresses of targets as well as plans for attacks on anti-racists in their homes or during public meetings. One subscriber, who called himself Mole Intelligence Bureau, wrote: "Redwatch has accumulated many names and addresses, along with pictures of the targets, many of whom have had nothing done to them. Now's the time to start a proper campaign of violence and intimidation towards those who seek to see us silenced or imprisoned for our beliefs." One of the targets was Lazenby and numerous addresses were posted on the site for members to "check out". One message read: "We need to find this reporter fast. If we can scare this cunt off, then we might get an easier time instead of being slagged off and made to look a bunch of muppets." In another message, posted by a BNP supporter from Batley, the people behind Redwatch are asked if they will be attending an anti-racist meeting in Dewsbury in June. The event, which was addressed by Leon Greenman, a Holocaust survivor, was described as a "Holohoax meeting". One respondent advised: "The best place to attack the reds [is] just after the meeting finishes as they are walking to catch their buses or going for their cars."
The network listed dozens of people "for further research", including the divisional police commanders for Dewsbury and Huddersfield, the chief executive of Kirklees Council, the director of a West Yorkshire health authority and housing officers. For many anti-fascists this was final proof that Redwatch represented a serious threat. Known neo-Nazis with violent criminal pasts were planning to step up their campaign of intimidation and were planning attacks against specific targets. The evidence was passed to the then Home Secretary David Blunkett and officials declared that action was imminent. But after examining the details, the Home Office again said that because the site was hosted in the US there was little they could do - listing public information online is not a crime and the website is full of disclaimers. Following an initial meeting in August with a delegation of MPs, trade unionists and anti-racists, Coaker agreed to champion the cause. According to Home Office officials, he is in discussion with senior police officers, and contact has also been made with the US authorities to see if it is possible to take joint action. That appeared to come a step closer recently when it emerged that a new legal opinion published in the US argues that the site is not protected under the first amendment. In a separate development, anti-racist campaigners say they have identified the main Redwatch organiser and have passed his details to the police.
But while the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic "look again", the intimidation goes on. Since the knife attack, McFadden has received a letter and a phone call warning him that if Redwatch is closed down his children will be shot. Liverpool Liberal Democrat councillor and anti-racist campaigner Robbie Quinn received death threats against him and his family after his details were posted on the site, as did singer Alun Parry, who has been targeted for performing at a refugee benefit concert. Angela Eagle, who is the MP for Wallasey, McFadden's home constituency, and whose photograph also appears on the front page of Redwatch, argues that the website represents an unacceptable threat to people's democratic right to free speech. "The powers are available to take action against this site. What we desperately need now is the political will." Lazenby says there is growing frustration that Redwatch is still up and running. "I feel a degree of anger against the authorities that they have done nothing about this site. They have said repeatedly that there is nothing that can be done, but I simply don't believe them. We have quite rightly managed to close down paedophile sites and others that are deemed unacceptable, and I am sure that if Redwatch was targeting the richest 100 people in the country, it would be swiftly dealt with".
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