Sic Transit

"Power resides where men believe it resides. It's a trick, a shadow on the wall, and a very small man can cast a very large shadow." - Varis, from George RR Martin's Game of Thrones.


Reflecting on the passing of Margaret Thatcher, it is interesting how much emotion and comment it has generated.

She is credited with "saving" the nation, transforming it, helping to win the Cold War, and breaking break union power. She is cursed for destroying entire industries, shattering communities, and breaking union power. She left office twenty plus years ago, and has not spoken in public for half a dozen years, yet the hold she has on our imagination - on my imagination - seems very strong.

For my part, I would say the country she claimed to want - with a smaller state, opportunities for everyone who works hard and plays by the rules, and a modernised economy - does not exist. Public spending and, arguably, the reach of the state and the power of vested interests is as great as it ever was. Social mobility is lower than it was: the idea of a grammar- or comprehensive- school educated man or woman reaching Downing Street again seems as far away as ever. The much vaunted replacement of heavy industries and mining with high tech manufacturing, services and banking sectors has not been successful. Starting a small business remains much harder than it should be, both for financial and regulatory reasons, and because profitable markets are hard to find.

The reasons for her failures were in part the nature of the time. The country was fighting big wars - at home with the IRA, and abroad in the Cold War. These were ferocious, expensive, dirty wars whose costs we are still counting. The sales of public assets and North Sea oil revenues were needed to fund these conflicts, as well as to pay for keeping the lid on very serious social dislocation. This dislocation has been covered over, but has not gone away: witness high levels of unemployment and disability in some regions, and the 2011 rioting. The lies told during the Thatcher era continued to feed into the New Labour period, and beyond it: that the public sector was inefficient and bad (except the foreign affairs and war-fighting bit of it, it seems), that private economy was an unalloyed good, that war as an instrument of foreign policy led to success.

And here we are. A still broken financial system. Public spending still out of control, new laws coming to create secret courts, warrantless email and phone monitoring. An underperforming economy  (though doing very well in some places). A decade of expensive foreign wars. A Government and an Opposition seemingly out of touch with the everyday reality of the rest of us, that seem determined to replicate the failures of the Thatcher and Major eras, as well as those of the "new" Labour government that followed.

It's a time for ideas which have been so far on the margins. It's a time when we genuinely need to address the structural problems of our economy and use the borrowing power of the Government to do it, knowing that as an enterprising, smart nation we can surely pay this back with interest. Transport, communications, energy all need economic investment. Restructuring the finance system needs to be completed in a way that serves the wider economy. Support for new, efficient service and manufacturing businesses needs to be upped. The good news is that we know, as a nation, how to do this.

Yet improving economic performance will not be enough: prosperity without social justice or which pollutes the environment is not prosperity worth having. It is surely time for the deep thinking that exists in the peace movement, in the equalities movements, in the environmental and animal ethics movements, to find its way closer to the mainstream. We need to question our investments in arms, in oil, in casino banking, in animal agriculture, and find other ways of earning our living. 

More than twenty years after she left office, it is time to move out of the shadow of Margaret Thatcher.

Freedom, dignity and well being

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” ― Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like many in the Party, I watched the Channel 4 item, "Lib Dems: allegations of sexual impropriety" with dismay.

We live in a society where sexual harassment of women is endemic. One of the strategies that those responsible for such outrages and their allies use is to attempt to discredit their accusers, while at the same time encouraging others to say nothing, and thereby defend themselves with silence. There is always "a big mission to be accomplished", or "important work to be done". 

At such times, I believe it is important to speak up for those who are taking a stand for justice.

I do not know what happened: I was not there, I did not see it for myself. But I do know some of the women involved, I believe they are people of high integrity and I believe their allegations need to be taken very seriously indeed. They are current and former activists and employees of the Party, our friends, and in any event, have the right to be properly heard.

Liberal Democrats promise to champion "the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full."  

Not just for our own workers, but for everyone.

If we are to deliver on the promise of our own constitution, and remake our country, we need a swift and speedy resolution to this affair.

For my part, I will be in Eastleigh much of the coming week, campaigning for our excellent candidate Mike Thornton. The people of Eastleigh need someone who will work hard for local people, and we all need another voice in Parliament who will champion the rights of everyone to freedom, dignity and well-being.

Just marriage

Mariann Sullivan & Jasmin Singer who married this week in New York. Photo via ourhenhouse, used with permission.


"Darling I'm leaving you", ran the joke doing the rounds this week, a husband talking to his wife: "it's because of the gays."

One of the criticisms of equal marriage, voted through this week in the UK Parliament, has been that if people of the same sex get married, it devalues marriage between a man and a woman.  The response from equality campaigners has been, "if you don't like the idea of gay people marrying, don't marry one".

Both responses point at some underlying dynamics.

We live in a society that favours some lives over others. Men are favoured over women, straight over gay, white over black, abled over disabled. 

Campaigners such as Carol Adams or Greta Gaard believe that this creation of binaries, and the resulting "othering" or exclusion of those in the less favoured element of the pair is a key part of how the oppression works. These pairs themselves are artificial: what we know about gender, sexuality, race, capability is that these are complex, ranging along multiple dimensions of the genetic, physical, cultural and psychological. Drawing a line in the middle is inevitably arbitrary. 

But, much like the imperialists of past centuries, who divided countries via straight lines on maps, we go ahead without much thought, and spark the conflicts of our time.

And there is so much conflict:

• Half a million people who identify as women are raped or sexually assaulted every year in the UK, four in ten young women having experienced street harassment in the last year.

• There are similarly around 450,000 incidents targeted at oppressing people who identify as gay, trans or bisexual  according to a 2008 Stonewall study, with the rate of physical attack doubling for those also identifying as black or minority ethnic.

• Racial violence statistics across all communities are harder to get but around 55,000 incidents are reported to Police every year, with some five people dying every year as a result of racist attacks

• Statistics for hate crimes against those identifying as disabled are likewise harder to obtain, but probably run at some 65,000 per year.

Speaking personally, I am for peace. The vote for equal marriage marked the end of an arbitrary distinction made by the state that institutionalised oppression and legitimised the thinking of the street thug. That some churches, religious groups and Members of Parliament chose to side with the oppressor against the oppressed, either by actively opposing change or by sitting on their hands is regrettable. 

For my part, with the vote this week being pretty much locked,  I was working on the next thing. The war against those identified as women, gay, trans, disabled, black or minority ethnic is ongoing. It is part of a wider process of destruction involving both ourselves, the other animals we share the world with, and nature itself. Those who receive justification and support for their acts of violence do not stop, and neither should we who oppose them.

Still, soon, in this country there will be no such thing as "gay marriage". There will just be "marriage", and that I think is worth celebrating.

Council tax benefit

Yesterday evening I questioned Labour-run Reading Council's Cabinet about Council Tax benefit.

To this point, people on low incomes have not had to pay Council Tax. For the least well-off, the charge has been 100% offset by Council Tax benefit, which was funded by the Government in Westminster.

From next year, Councils themselves will become responsible for Council Tax benefit. The money has been transferred to them (or in Reading's case, the Council gets to keep more of the business rates it collects), less 10 percent, which for Reading amounts to about £1.2m which the Council needs to find.

Councils are going to be responsible for their own schemes. Many Councils are not going to pass on any charge to their lowest income residents: these authorities are of all parties including Labour (e.g. Bury, Lewisham), Lib Dems (many/most including Richmond, Kingston, Eastleigh), and Conservative.

By contrast Reading Council is going to ask some 12,000 people in Reading, who currently pay nothing to pay typically £150 a year. These figures are estimates and quite rough (the report from the Council was not that clear). So the questions I asked were to clarify the figures and also to break it down for single parents, the disabled and adult carers (mentioned in the Council's consultation, which had 188 responses).

The deeper question, which I also asked is why on a gross budget of some £500m, the Council decided not to find the money for this, when it was able to find the money for so many other priorities (for example free green waste collections), and when other Councils were doing the right thing.

Unfortunately, the response I received was frankly abusive (I'll post it when I get an electronic copy). and more importantly it was also missing the information requested. So, I today submitted a Freedom of Information request for the data.

I'm going to keep asking questions. £150 is alot of money to find, and I'd estimate that for many people it could be as much as twice that; add in the fees that come if you go into arrears and it becomes a debt of as much as £400. These are terrifying numbers for people on benefits. Because (with some noble exceptions) so few Labour councillors live in the areas they represent, they have perhaps lost touch with the communities they purport to serve and so don't quite understand what they're doing.

The Council is eventually going to have to provide answers. The budget savings to cover this cost were entirely predictable, and Labour should have been planning for them all along. The Labour leadership need to be honest and open about this: they should now do the right thing, stop blaming everyone else now they are in charge, and commit to find the money to support our poorest residents.

They should not let the worry this is going to cause so many families fester over Christmas.

Policing matters

Today is Police Memorial Day, which is a particular day on which police officers fallen in the line of duty are remembered. It's especially poignant given the deaths of PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes in Manchester this month, and a reminder of the risks officers take when they are on duty.

My father was a Police officer during the troubled times of the late sixties through to the mid seventies, in London and in New Zealand, where he was a Police marksman. As a small child, I had no real inkling of the risks he faced in the job, but I do recall some nights where he would come in very late and just sit with my sister and me while we slept (or, sometimes, while we pretended to). As an adult, one can imagine why. So the families and loved ones of those injured or killed on duty are especially in my thoughts today.

We ask a great deal of the Police: to keep us safe, to find murderers and kidnapped children, to pick up the pieces from social fragmentation, while all the while remaining polite and controlled. Sometimes they fail us: I remain critical of the way they handle dissent and protest groups, and their record on deaths in custody is indefensible. On many other occasions, often unremarked, they demonstrate  heroism and kindness. During the riots last year, I thought many officers showed remarkable courage and forbearance: those journalists and politicians who criticised them have, I suggest, not been near violent street actions.

There are elections coming up for Police and Crime Commissioners in a couple of months time, which will choose people who will shape the Police service in our areas. Issues of civil liberties, safety, policing priorities, budgets will be front and centre. Please consider the issues, and get to know the candidates from whatever Party: what happens in Policing matters, and so does your vote. Make  it count.

Find out more about the candidates here: http://www.policecrimecommissioner.co.uk/TVP
The Lib Dem candidate is Prof. John Howson whose bio can be found from that site.

One day: personal notes on IDAHO

Today is the International Day Against Homo-and Transphobia, so I thought I would give some personal thoughts.

I recently watched We Were Here, a film about the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco.  Based on interviews with those who were there and survived, it tells the story of how a mysterious disease appeared, which then (as we know now) went on to infect and then kill so many. It is the story of their lives and loss. But it also tells the story of those who fought for the civil rights of AIDS sufferers, those who set up caring and outreach organisations, and those who took direct action until a treatment that worked was found. It was not just disease that needed to be fought, but intolerance and indifference.

When HIV reached the UK, the story was much the same. In the late eighties, and early nineties, I was good friends with a woman named Tina, who lived in Chester and was an active supporter of the Terence Higgins trust. We socialised alot together, she took me under her wing, and for several years her social circle was my social circle. Many of Tina’s friends-my friends -died, and then Tina died too.

Although the deaths during that time were terrible enough, what I most remember was the airbrushing of lives. One friend had a funeral half the size it should have been because “how could we explain how he knew so many queers”. Hard core drag queens known for being one-woman riots, ciggy in one hand, champagne in the other, PVC boots up to their backside were buried as “Dave, who loved computers”

When Tina died, we read an extract from Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City at her memorial service. People may have found the story of roller skating queer nuns inappropriate but you know what? She was proud of her queer friends and they were proud of her.

So if you are marking this day, please remember all those we have lost to disease, and those lost at their own hands and at the hands of others. Remember those whose lives were airbrushed out by those with good intentions. Remember that attitudes don’t change themselves: they change because people stand up and said, “we were here, we are here, we’re queer and we are proud of who we are”

Remember.

Photo: QR at the Dyke March, Mar 2012, Angella~Dee Sherriffe, used with permission

The centre will hold

And so the elections of 2012 are over. Thankyou to everyone who supported all our campaigns across Reading: you were, as ever, amazing.

The news, though, is that Labour has once again regained full control of Reading Borough Council. The balance is now Labour 26, Conservative 12, Lib Dem 4, Green 3, Independent 1. (For those who don't live here, we have two Tory MPs for Reading, noting that the boundaries for these seats include other towns like Woodley, Pangbourne and Theale).

We won (held) our seat in Tilehurst, where our brilliant new Councillor Meri O'Connell is already making a big difference.

Unfortunately we lost a seat in each of Redlands and Katesgrove, which despite excellent candidates James Moore and Janel Blattler and solid campaigns, fell to Labour this time. Nevertheless, Cllrs Daisy Benson and Rebecca Rye continue to represent residents in those areas, and the Lib Dems will keep being a strong voice for residents on the Council.

Reading politics will be dealing from the fallout of these elections for a little while.

There's been alot of stuff said between the Tories and Labour in Church Ward about what was considered by many to be a "dog whistling" Labour leaflet. Labour's response was to deny everything, admit nothing and make counter-accusations, which is what people do when publicly accused of a hate crime. Still, folks I've discussed it with, all the way from Tories to SWP members (I have a wide circle of friends..) have been universally disturbed by it.

Similarly there were significant fall-outs from internal Conservative Party disputes (and then Tory vs. Independent battles) with accusations and counter-accusations of racism and homophobia. For the record, I'd say neither of the Peppard independents worry me in any way on these grounds, but I was taken aback by what I was hearing.

I hope in all these cases, now the pressure of an imminent election is off, that the good sense that comes from talking with and working for residents will lead these other parties to move forward with regard to matters of equalities.

And so where do we as the Lib Dems go from here?

At the national level, I think it's fair to say that the politics of the population of the UK has been shaped by the narratives of groups like UK Uncut and Occupy, perhaps more so than by the traditional left (the unions and the like). So, it has moved leftwards, but the feeling that the system itself is broken and that the parties themselves are part of that system has created disillusionment.

Still this has provided an opportunity for Labour to turn out left wing voters (at least, those who have forgotten the Iraq war and the growth in inequality during the last Labour government).

For us as Lib Dems, our job remains to hold to the centre ground of British politics. If the Conservatives at their best are seen as the party of aspiration, and Labour at its best is seen as the party of equality, we have always been the party of freedom and fairness. Unlike the other parties, we don't see aspiration and equality as mutually incompatible opposites: in fact, we as Lib Dems know that these can be mutually reinforcing.

We have been called inconsistent because when spending was too low, we wanted to raise it and when taxes became too high for the economy, we wanted to lower them. Well, OK.

We should keep putting what matters to residents at the top of our priority list. Right now, the number one item is getting the economy right. I'd say round here, number two is housing and number three is changes to welfare. Close behind come a lack of school places and problems with the road system. Outside of Labour stirring, the NHS is not an issue yet, but it may become so as the demands on the service grow due to an ageing population.

These are big problems with a long history, and anyone looking to the Tories or Labour to solve them is going to be woefully disappointed.

But if we are to solve these issues, we as Lib Dems are going to have to build on our support. We don't have the big money of the unions or millionaire donors: we are residents of the town using our own resources to help make a difference. We therefore need to keep working to find ways to get as many people as possible involved in our campaigns and to keep expanding our activist base.

My expectation is that Reading Labour will follow the playbook they always have, locking the Council down and using the resources of the trades unions and campaigning groups in Reading to try and get MPs elected in several years time. The discipline and ruthlessness of the controlling minds of their party remains formidable. They will have the knives out.

As for the Conservatives, well, I wouldn't count them out either. Though perhaps not the force they were, with two MPs and a dozen councillors, they cannot be ignored. They will remain advocates for centre right positions that while provoking antipathy in liberals with a small "L", will resonate with sections of our communities. We will need to respond with better solutions.

Against the forces arrayed against us, it will be a significant battle. There may be more casualties. But we can not stand back and let the gains made by liberalism be rolled back by people for whom freedom and democracy are convenient punchlines. For my part, I will say this: the centre will hold.