Anthony McIntyre's Blog, page 1191

Flegs

Matt Treacy from Brocaire Books discusses the decision to impose a ban on a large Dubs flag at Hill 16., Croke Park.Yes, the decision to ban the large Dublin flag from Hill 16 smacks of pettiness. Nor is it clear who exactly decided on the issue. At first it was claimed that the Dublin fire authorities had asked for it to be removed for “health and safety” reasons.


That does not seem so certain now. The GAA itself issued a statement  in June saying that only flags of A4 size or smaller be allowed into the stadium. Are we all like 7 or something? Will the stewards or guards be checking to see if we brushed our teeth and wiped our arse?

And does this only apply to Croke Park? Does it only apply to Hill 16 indeed? Because it is obvious to anyone watching other than Dublin games that flags proliferate. And rightly so.

However, if it does only apply to Dublin supporters, does that indicate that (a) Croke Park is more worried about the dangers of Dubs being consumed in an inferno caused by a blazing flag?; or (b) that Hill 16 is infested with aspirant “Pillow Pyro” Orrs itching to have their fellow supporters consigned to the Auto da Fé.

And I say all that as old curmudgeon who grumbles when said flag passes over my aging head. I once even refused to punch one of those large balloons that some Patch Adams character had decided would be a good way to induce bonhomie and good will to all. Listen pal, if I wanted to feel good about myself, or anyone else for that matter, I’d buy a bottle of vodka.

Having said all that, some of the reaction to the fleg ban has been absurd. At first the rival “ultra groups” which have a major social media presence were proposing that Dublin supporters boycott All future games. Such was the negative reaction to that, that they bargained down to a boycott of the quarter final, then to only entering the Hill after 16 minutes. Now it seems, they will be asking people not to buy pints or anything else inside the stadium. One questions their grasp of the Dublin weltanschauung.

But the most surreal aspect of it all is that one of the ultra groups upped the ante by issuing a call for Dublin supporters to turn up for Sunday’s Mayo/Roscommon encounter. Dubs were to come attired in Dublin shirts but to have Roscommon flags. Reason being is that “we” hate Mayo. This is the worldview view of Patch Adams on a bad day.

Well, what happened to the jaysus boycott lads? One moment you are telling people to boycott Croke Park in a way to hit their pocket, the next to urge people to boost the attendance at a match not involving Dublin. Seriously.

Anyway, that suggestion was also mostly greeted with mirth and is unlikely to grow legs.

And so we have an unfortunate clash between officious nanny state bureaucrats, and fan groups who think that following Dublin entails becoming part of some cult in which we all support Hamas, oppose Irish Water, and define ourselves by hating people from other parts of the country.

God help us. And up the Dubs.

Palestinians Have A Legal Right To Armed Struggle

Stanley Cohen writing in Al Jazeera insists that the Palestinians have a legal right to armed struggle against Israeli occupation. Stanley L Cohen is an attorney and human rights activist who has done extensive work in the Middle East and Africa.It's time for Israel to accept that as an occupied people, Palestinians have a right to resist - in every way possible.

Long ago, it was settled that resistance and even armed struggle against a colonial occupation force is not just recognised under international law but specifically endorsed.

In Palestine, international law recognises the fundamental rights to self-determination, freedom and independence for the occupied, writes Cohen [Reuters]In accordance with international humanitarian law, wars of national liberation have been expressly embraced, through the adoption of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (pdf), as a protected and essential right of occupied people everywhere.
Finding evolving vitality in humanitarian law, for decades the General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA) - once described as the collective conscience of the world - has noted the right of peoples to self-determination, independence and human rights.

Indeed, as early as 1974, resolution 3314 of the UNGA prohibited states from "any military occupation, however temporary".

In relevant part, the resolution not only went on to affirm the right "to self-determination, freedom and independence [...] of peoples forcibly deprived of that right,[...] particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of alien domination" but noted the right of the occupied to "struggle ... and to seek and receive support" in that effort.

The term "armed struggle" was implied without precise definition in that resolution and many other early ones that upheld the right of indigenous persons to evict an occupier.

This imprecision was to change on December 3, 1982. At that time UNGA resolution 37/43 removed any doubt or debate over the lawful entitlement of occupied people to resist occupying forces by any and all lawful means. The resolution reaffirmed:

the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.

A palpable illusion

Though Israel has tried, time and time again, to recast the unambiguous intent of this precise resolution - and thus place its now half-century-long occupation in the West Bank and Gaza beyond its application - it is an effort worn thin to the point of palpable illusion by the exacting language of the declaration itself. In relevant part, section 21 of the resolution strongly condemned:

the expansionist activities of Israel in the Middle East and the continual bombing of Palestinian civilians, which constitute a serious obstacle to the realization of the self-determination and independence of the Palestinian people.

Never ones to hesitate in rewriting history, long before the establishment of the United Nations, European Zionists deemed themselves to be an occupied people as they emigrated to Palestine - a land to which any historical connection they had had long since passed through a largely voluntary transit.

Indeed, a full 50 years before the UN spoke of the right of armed struggle as a vehicle of indigenous liberation, European Zionists illegally co-opted the concept as the Irgun, Lehi and other terrorist groups undertook a decade's long reign of deadly mayhem.

During this time, they slaughtered not only thousands of indigenous Palestinians but targeted British police and military personnel that had long maintained a colonial presence there.

A history of Zionist attacks

Perhaps, as Israelis sit down to mourn the loss of two of their soldiers who were shot dead this past week in Jerusalem - in what many consider to be a lawful act of resistance - a visit down memory lane might just place the events in their proper historical context.

Self-determination is a difficult, costly march for the occupied. In Palestine, no matter what the weapon of choice - whether voice, pen or gun - there is a steep price to be paid for its use.

Long ago, describing the British as an occupation force in "their homeland", Zionists targeted British police and military units with ruthless abandon throughout Palestine and elsewhere.

On April 12, 1938, the Irgun murdered two British police officers in a train bombing in Haifa. On August 26, 1939, two British officers were killed by an Irgun landmine in Jerusalem. On February 14, 1944, two British constables were shot dead when they attempted to arrest people for pasting up wall posters in Haifa. On September 27, 1944, more than 100 members of the Irgun attacked four British police stations, injuring hundreds of officers. Two days later a senior British police officer of the Criminal Intelligence Department was assassinated in Jerusalem.

On November 1, 1945, another police officer was killed as five trains were bombed. On December 27, 1945, seven British officers lost their lives in a bombing on police headquarters in Jerusalem. Between November 9 and 13, 1946, Jewish "underground" members launched a series of landmine and suitcase bomb attacks in railway stations, trains, and streetcars, killing 11 British soldiers and policemen and eight Arab constables.

Four more officers were murdered in another attack on a police headquarters on January 12, 1947. Nine months later, four British police were murdered in an Irgun bank robbery and, but three days later, on September 26, 1947, an additional 13 officers were killed in yet another terrorist attack on a British police station.

These are but a few of many attacks directed by Zionist terrorists at British police who were seen, by mostly European Jews, as legitimate targets of a campaign they described as one of liberation against an occupation force.

Throughout this period, Jewish terrorists also undertook countless attacks that spared no part of the British and Palestinian infrastructure. They assaulted British military and police installations, government offices, and ships, often with bombs. They also sabotaged railways, bridges, and oil installations. Dozens of economic targets were attacked, including 20 trains that were damaged or derailed, and five train stations. Numerous attacks were carried out against the oil industry including one, in March 1947, on a Shell oil refinery in Haifa which destroyed some 16,000 tonnes of petroleum.

Zionist terrorists killed British soldiers throughout Palestine, using booby traps, ambushes, snipers, and vehicle blasts.

One attack, in particular, sums up the terrorism of those who, without any force of international law at the time, saw no limitation to their efforts to "liberate" a land that they had, largely, only recently emigrated to.

In 1947, the Irgun kidnapped two British Army Intelligence Corps non-commissioned officers and threathened to hang them if death sentences of three of their own members were carried out. When these three Irgun members were executed by hanging, the two British sergeants were hanged in retaliation and their booby-trapped bodies were left in an eucalyptus grove.

In announcing their execution, the Irgun said that the two British soldiers were hanged following their conviction for "criminal anti-Hebrew activities" which included: illegal entry into the Hebrew homeland and membership in a British criminal terrorist organisation - known as the Army of Occupation - which was "responsible for the torture, murder, deportation, and denying the Hebrew people the right to live". The soldiers were also charged with illegal possession of arms, anti-Jewish spying in civilian clothes, and premeditated hostile designs against the underground (pdf).

Well beyond the territorial confines of Palestine, in late 1946-47 a continuing campaign of terrorism was directed at the British. Acts of sabotage were carried out on British military transportation routes in Germany. The Lehi also tried, unsuccessfully, to drop a bomb on the House of Commons from a chartered plane flown from France and, in October 1946, bombed the British Embassy in Rome. A number of other explosive devices were detonated in and around strategic targets in London. Some 21 letter bombs were addressed, at various times, to senior British political figures. Many were intercepted, while others reached their targets but were discovered before they could go off.

The steep price of self-determination

Self-determination is a difficult, costly march for the occupied. In Palestine, no matter what the weapon of choice - whether voice, pen or gun - there is a steep price to be paid for its use.

Today, "speaking truth to power" has become very much a popular mantra of resistance in neoliberal circles and societies. In Palestine, however, for the occupied and oppressed, it is an all-but-certain path to prison or death. Yet, for generations of Palestinians stripped of the very breath that resonates with the feeling of freedom, history teaches there is simply no other choice.

Silence is surrender. To be silent is to betray all those who have come before and all those yet to follow.

For those who have never felt the constant yoke of oppression, or seen it up close, it is a vision beyond comprehension. Occupation sits heavy on the occupied, every day in every way, limiting who you are and what you may dare to become.

The constant rub of barricades, guns, orders, prison and death are fellow travellers for the occupied, whether infants, teens in the spring of life, the elderly, or those trapped by the artificial confines of borders over which they have no control.

To the families of the two Israeli Druze policemen who lost their lives while trying to control a place that was not theirs to command, I extend my condolences. These young men were, however, not lost to the ring of resistance, but willingly sacrificed by an evil occupation that bears no legitimacy whatsoever.

Ultimately, if there is grieving to be done, it must be for the 11 million occupied, whether in Palestine or outside, as so much stateless refugees, stripped of a meaningful voice and opportunity, as the world makes excuses built largely of a political and economic gift box that bears the Star of David.

Not a day goes by now without the chilling wail of a nation watching over a Palestinian infant wrapped in a burial shroud, stripped of life because electricity or transit have become a perverse privilege which holds millions hostage to the political whims of the few. Be they Israeli, Egyptian or those who claim to carry the mantle of Palestinian political leadership, the responsibility of infanticide in Gaza is theirs and theirs alone.

'If there is no struggle, there is no progress'

The three young men, cousins, who willingly sacrificed their lives in the attack on the two Israeli officers in Jerusalem, did so not as an empty gesture born of desperation, but rather a personal statement of national pride that follows a long line of others who well understood that the price of freedom can, at times, mean all.

For 70 years, not a day has passed without the loss of young Palestinian women and men who, tragically, found greater dignity and freedom in martyrdom than they did in obedient, passive living controlled by those who dared to dictate the parameters of their lives.

Millions of us worldwide dream of a better time and place for Palestinians ... free to spread their wings, to soar, to discover who they are and what they wish to become. Until then, I mourn not for the loss of those who stop their flight. Instead, I applaud those who dare to struggle, dare to win - by any means necessary.

There is no magic to resistance and struggle. They transcend time and place and derive their very meaning and ardour in the natural inclination, indeed, drive, of us all to be free - to be free to determine the role of our own lives.

In Palestine, no such freedom exists. In Palestine, international law recognises the fundamental rights to self-determination, freedom and independence for the occupied. In Palestine, that includes the right to armed struggle, if necessary.

Long ago, the famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave, wrote of struggle. These words resonate no less so today, in Palestine, than they did some one 150 years ago in the heart of the Antebellum South in the United States:

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Wistful Eyes

The Uri Avnery Column focuses on the death penalty debate now taking place in Israel. 

The world watched while the condemned man, Muhammad Abu-Ali of Qalqiliya, waited for his execution.

Abu-Ali was a convicted terrorist. He had bought a knife and killed four members of a family in a nearby Jewish settlement. He had acted alone in a fit of anger, after his beloved cousin, Ahmed, was shot and killed by the Israeli border police during a demonstration.

This is an imaginary case. But it resembles very much what would happen if a real case that is now pending were to take this turn.

There Is no death penalty in Israel. It was abolished during the first years of the state, when the execution of Jewish underground fighters (called "terrorists" by the British) was still fresh in everybody's mind.

It was a solemn and festive occasion. After the vote, in an unplanned outburst of emotion, the entire Knesset rose and stood at attention for a minute. In the Knesset, such expressions of emotion, like applause, are forbidden.

On that day I was proud of my state, the state for which I had spilled my blood.

Before That day, two people had been executed in Israel.

The first was shot during the early days of the state. A Jewish engineer was accused of passing information to the British, who passed it on to Arabs. Three military officers constituted themselves as a military court and condemned him to death. Later it was found that the man was innocent.

The second death sentence was passed on Adolf Eichmann, an Austrian Nazi who in 1944 directed the deportation of Hungarian Jews to the death camps. He was not very high up in the Nazi hierarchy, just a lieutenant-colonel ("Obersturmbannführer") in the SS. But he was the only Nazi officer with whom Jewish leaders came into direct contact. In their minds, he was a monster.

When he was kidnapped in Argentina and brought to Jerusalem, he looked like an average bank clerk, not very impressive and not very intelligent. When he was condemned to death, I wrote an article asking myself whether I was in favor of his execution. I said: "I dare not say yes and I dare not say no." He was hanged.

A Personal confession: I cannot kill a cockroach. I am unable to kill a fly. That is not a conscious aversion. It is almost physical.

It was not always so. When I had just turned 15, I joined a "terrorist" organization, the Irgun ("National Military Organization"), which at the time killed lots of people, including women and children, at Arab markets in retaliation for the killing of Jews in the Arab rebellion.

I was too young to be employed in the actions themselves, but my comrades and I distributed leaflets proudly proclaiming the actions. So I certainly was an accomplice, until I left the organization because I started to disapprove of "terrorism".

But the real change in my character occurred after I was wounded in the 1948 war. For several days and nights I lay in my hospital bed, unable to eat, drink or sleep, just thinking. The result was my inability to take the life of any living being, including humans.

So, naturally, I am a deadly enemy of the death penalty. I greeted with all my heart its abolition by the Knesset (before I became a member of that not-very-august body.)

But a few days ago, somebody remembered that the death penalty was not really quite abolished. An obscure paragraph in the military code has remained in force. Now there is an outcry for its application.

The occasion is the murder of three members of a Jewish family in a settlement. The Arab assailant was wounded but not killed on the spot, as usually happens.

The entire right-wing clique that governs Israel now broke out in a chorus of demands for the death penalty. Binyamin Netanyahu joined the chorus, as did most members of his cabinet.

Netanyahu's attitude can easily be understood. He has no principles. He goes with the majority of his base. At the moment he is deeply involved in a huge corruption affair concerning the acquisition of German-built submarines. His political fate hangs in the balance. No time for moral quibbles.

Putting Aside for the moment, my personal mental disabilities concerning the death penalty, judging the problem on a rational basis shows that it is a huge mistake.

The execution of a person who is considered a patriot by their own people arouses profound anger and a deep desire for revenge. For every person put to death, a dozen others arise to take their place.

I speak from experience. As already mentioned, I joined the Irgun when I was hardly 15. A few weeks before, the British had hanged a young Jew, Shlomo Ben-Yossef, who had shot at an Arab bus full of women and children, without hitting anyone. He was the first Jew in Palestine to be executed.

Later on, after I had already forsworn "terrorism", I still felt emotionally involved whenever the British hanged another Jewish "terrorist". (I take pride in having invented the only scientifically sound definition of "terrorism": "A freedom fighter is on my side, a terrorist is on the other side.")

Another Argument against the death penalty is the one I described at the beginning of this piece: the inherent dramatic effect of this penalty.

From the moment a death sentence is passed, the entire world, not to mention the entire country, gets involved. From Timbuktu to Tokyo, from Paris to Pretoria, millions of people, who have no interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, get aroused. The fate of the condemned man starts to dominate their lives.

Israeli embassies will be deluged by messages from good people. Human rights organizations everywhere will get involved. Street demonstrations will take place in many cities and grow from week to week.

The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people, until then a minor news item in newspapers and on TV news, will be the center of attention. Editors will send special correspondents, pundits will weigh in. Some heads of state will be tempted to approach the president of Israel and plead for clemency.

As the date of execution grows nearer, the pressure will grow. In colleges and in churches, calls to boycott Israel will become shrill. Israeli diplomats will send urgent alarms to the Foreign Office in Jerusalem. Embassies will strengthen anti-terror precautions.

The Israeli government will meet in urgent emergency sessions. Some ministers will advise commuting the sentence. Others will argue that that would show weakness and encourage terror. Netanyahu, as usual, will be unable to decide.

I Know that this line of argument may lead to a wrong conclusion: to kill Arab assailants on the spot.

Indeed, this is a second discussion tearing Israel apart at the moment: the case of Elor Azaria, a soldier and field medic, who shot at close range a wounded Arab assailant lying on the ground and bleeding profusely. A military court sentenced Azaria to a year and half in jail, and the sentence was confirmed on appeal. Many people want him released. Others, including Netanyahu again, want his sentence commuted.

Azaria and his entire family are enjoying themselves hugely at the center of national attention. They believe that he did the right thing, according to an unwritten dictum that no Arab "terrorist" should be allowed to remain alive.

Actually, this was openly pronounced years ago by the then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir (who himself, as a leader of the Lehi underground, was one of the most successful "terrorists" of the 20th century). For that he did not need to be very intelligent.

From Whatever angle one looks at it, the death sentence is a barbaric and stupid measure. It has been abolished by all civilized countries, except some US states (which can hardly be called civilized.)

Whenever I think about this subject, the immortal lines of Oscar Wilde in his "Ballad of Reading Gaol" come to my mind. Observing a fellow prisoner, a convicted murderer, awaiting his execution, Wilde wrote:

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon the little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky...

Moving The Trade Unions Past Fossil Fuels

From People And Nature, Gabriel Levy interviews Samantha Mason of the Public and Commercial Services union about energy matters.



Gabriel Levy (GL). Could you describe the PCS’s long engagement with energy and climate policy, which has culminated in the Just Transition pamphlet?

Samantha Mason (SM). We have been engaged with climate change issues, and increasingly with the whole energy debate, for about ten years. This has in large part been due to motions coming to conference from the grassroots membership, and an assistant general secretary, Chris Baugh, leading on this, which has enabled us to develop our policy and campaigning agenda. We participate in meetings with other industrial and energy unions, mainly through the Trade Unions Sustainable Development Advisory Committee. [Note. This committee was set up as a joint government-union forum after the 1997 Kyoto climate talks, but government participation dried up under the Tories. It is now a meeting place for union policy officers, and latterly, industrial officers.]


Anti-fracking protesters in Lancashire: the PCS is working with them. Photo from Reclaim the Power
Some of the unions there represent workers in the fossil fuel and nuclear sectors, so while we’re supposed to look at sustainable development issues, they have been more concerned with pushing fracking [that is, hydraulic fracturing, a mining technique that has been used to raise natural gas production in the US, and some people think might do so in the UK] as part of the TUC’s so called “balance energy policy” – supporting nuclear, natural gas, Carbon Capture and Storage, and the Heathrow third runway. [Note. See for example the TUC Powering Ahead document.]

We have real problems with this, as PCS is opposed to almost everything in the policy, on the basis of our national conference decisions. We have had a divide opening up between these pro-fracking unions on one side, and the PCS, and other unions who want to develop a policy for both social change and environmental change, on the other. The TUC says their policy is a result of Congress decisions. But they do little or nothing to take the debate forward.

Since 2014 we have been involved with Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, a global initiative that provides space for deeper level policy discussions with other unions confronting similar problems. Their agenda is set out in their founding document “resist, reclaim, restructure” – that is, resist the energy giants, reclaim the energy space, and restructure it. This is about confronting the fossil fuel corporates, transition to 100% renewable energy, and, as part of that, fighting fuel poverty and guaranteeing workers’ rights and conditions too. By “energy democracy”, we mean public ownership and democratic control of our energy system, which will underwrite a just transition away from fossil fuels, that is, a transition in the interests of workers and communities. Some of the big UK unions – the GMB, Unite and Unison – also support TUED but still it has not helped to move the agenda forward.

In May last year, David Hall at the Public Services International Research Unit produced a paper which talks about how we could take back the energy system into public ownership, and how we could afford to do that. David’s paper was responding to a report by Jefferies, a stockbroking firm, that said it would cost £185 million. He debunked that. He said, yes of course it would cost money, but not nearly as much as they are claiming.

We started work on our pamphlet as a response to the unions who say, “you don’t have members in the energy sector. It’s not your members that are affected by this”. David Hall’s paper, which made specific reference to government policy, monitoring and regulatory roles, was a light-bulb moment. The state, and thereby the civil service, have a critical role to play in the energy transition, in terms of these functions. We then moved away from purely energy questions, to considering: what about the civil service context and how could we develop this developing the ideas in the Climate Jobs campaign of a National Climate Service? We spoke to PCS workplace representatives at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, who were very helpful.

One thing we have a consensus on, across all the unions, is nationalisation – although our union prefers to talk in terms of public ownership. But, beyond that, we have never been able to move further.

Energy transition vs jobs: a false choice

GL: It’s difficult to understand unions that so strongly support fracking. Apart from a few jobs in gas field exploration, it may never employ many people in the UK. It has not produced a single cubic metre of gas in this country, and in my opinion may never do so. So why the fierce support?

SM: The support for fracking is mainly from the GMB, who have signed an agreement with the industry body, UK Oil and Gas, that once fracking for shale gas starts, they will be able to organise in the sector. The GMB’s arguments have moved along the way. They argue that we need gas due to large dependency for space heating – and nobody refutes that. Then they say that we have declining reserves in the North Sea, and that these need to be replaced by other indigenous sources, and that fracking is the way to do it. Then there would be jobs in future for their members and – this is where their argument is now shifting – if we don’’t develop a home-grown industry, then we are importing gas from places such as Qatar that have poor human rights records. A more recent argument they have come out with is that importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) has a high environmental cost in terms of methane emissions, and that a home-grown industry would have lower methane emissions.

Our response is that: 1. There is no gas being produced at the moment, and that the investment could be put into renewable energy. In the north west – Lancashire is a big hot spot at the moment – offshore wind is viable and could be an alternative. 2. The claims made about the numbers of jobs that could be created – ranging from 32,000 to more than 70,000 – are false. There have been many articles debunking these claims. 3. There are health and safety risks around fracking, and there are environmental issues with the chemicals used in the fracking process. 4. As for transporting LNG – yes, I agree, there is a significant methane emissions issue. But I’m not sure how that justifies us developing our own indigenous fracking industry.

I have been particularly incensed about the argument about human rights breaches. There is no denying that there are human rights breaches in Qatar – but if you are going to go down that line, then you have to speak also about the human rights breaches in many many other countries with which the UK does trade.

For us, fracking is just a quick profits exercise that will rip up the countryside. There’s no local democracy or consultation. It totally ignores all the other discussion around energy policy more broadly, about the spatial location of energy, solar, renewables, and community energy that would provide thousands of jobs. It avoids doing the demand-side reduction and energy efficiency measures we need, all of which we have been advocating through the “one million climate jobs” campaign.

GL: Is there a discussion more widely in the unions about energy policy?

SM: Yes. At the TUC congress in September last year, the Transport and Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA, a small union representing railway staff) put a very ambitious motion on climate change, basically saying “keep the fossil fuels in the ground”. It also urged an end to airport expansion. With all the other things going on, such as Brexit, the health service cuts, and so on, the only significant debate at the congress was on this motion. Everything else went through on the nod.

The motion was lost in a very binary debate, where it was posed as “jobs vs environment”. Unite, GMB and Prospect, who have members in the fossil fuel and nuclear industries, said they could not support this because it would endanger jobs for their members. Some majored on airport expansion and the Heathrow third runway, which the TUC supports. Others attacked the “keep it in the ground” arguments. By and large, the public sector unions, including Unison, aligned with PCS and TSSA to support transition away from fossil fuels. Unite and the GMB were opposed.

It was disappointing to lose the debate, but it was a salutary lesson in how we need to start developing arguments and engage with the two-thirds of the labour movement that are supporting the fossil fuel agenda. But we also recognise that the fear of losing jobs is also real, so we need to start articulating a credible alternative in the transition to a fossil free economy, and how workers will be protected as part of that process.

Note. It’s well worth reading the verbatim record of the debate, on line here. (See Proceedings Day Two, pages 134-153.)

GL: How does the Hinkley C nuclear power station project fit into the debates that you have mentioned? There are unions, including the GMB, who have attacked Jeremy Corbyn for his unwillingness to support it. Has this formed part of the debate?

SM: Not at the TUC Congress. The PCS is opposed to Hinkley C, and at our last conference we reaffirmed our policy of opposition to nuclear power development. The problem with such sectors is that you tend to get highly-paid, highly-skilled jobs – that are also highly unionised – in them. And so the unions are supporting it particularly as is rightly pointed out, the renewables sector is largely unorganised. GMB, Unite and Prospect are supporting Hinkley C, just as they support Trident. Their arguments are that nuclear is the answer to the intermittency of renewables despite near universal agreement that Hinkley is a bad deal.

GL: Not only is it a bad deal, it’s a complete breach of so-called “market principles”. Everyone else has to sell electricity into a market, but Hinkley C gets a high, fixed price for its electricity, guaranteed by the government for 30 years. The project does not have to compete in the market at all. When the state has to move in, it’s supporting big centralised nuclear, not decentralised renewables.

SM: There has not been a debate – not one that I have heard about – in Unite or the other unions about this, about the costs of investment, about the alternatives. They talk about jobs – but what jobs are being created? How many? Unions often talk in one liners: “jobs”, “highly skilled workers” and so on, and PCS is guilty of this too. We need to do more detailed analysis, to define the jobs that would be needed in a low- or zero-carbon economy.

GL:  I suppose we should all be aiming to bring the debates out from behind closed doors and into the most open possible forums.

SM: Yes. The debate is very limited in big set-piece conferences. There are conversations going on at regional level: for example, the North West regional TUC has a sustainability and environment committee. But rank-and-file fossil fuel workers are only going to have the opportunity to go into discussions on union policy if they happen to be involved in their local trades council, for example. Workers in the energy sector are alienated and isolated from policy discussions. They only get told a limited amount about them. Obviously workers are aware of the issues. They don’t live in a vacuum. But the unions are not bringing them in to policy conversations.

This is why meetings such as the Lucas plan conference are so important. That meeting was held last year, to mark the 40th anniversary of the plan proposed by trade unionists at Lucas Aerospace, an arms manufacturer, to move to socially useful applications of the company’s technology and their skills.

In the PCS we have an annual forum for our environmental workplace reps, we have an E-network and other ways of communicating. People have access to information. Very few unions are doing that. Probably only PCS has a member of staff with a role like mine, working primarily on energy and environmental issues; certainly there is no equivalent in Unite or the GMB. People do it part-time, as part of jobs with wider policy briefs.

GL: What about energy workers, oil workers for example? Obviously, the movement away from fossil fuels will result in these industries going into decline, and the number of people doing these sort of jobs will fall. But right now the big picture is dominated by capitalist companies and capitalist governments. What can the labour movement say to these workers about the transition? There is no easy answer, is there?

SM: No, there’s no easy answer. First, we have to acknowledge that the process of change is going to be slow. Second, we have to acknowledge the difficulties. We have to face the ideological discussions, and the political processes. This is what blocks us in the trade unions. Politics comes down to power, and in trade unions comes down to power. For example marginalisation of public sector unions in sustainability and energy debates. But what everyone struggles with – and this is global, it’s not unique to us here – is that there is fear. How do we overcome that fear?

GL: Fear of what? Please spell it out.

SM. Fear of change, how we move from the fossil fuel world we are in now to the world we need to get to. The problem is – and that’s what we tried to articulate in the pamphlet – it is about a political transition. You have to look at the whole system. This is why we get frustrated with some of the big NGOs, who see it as being about green capitalism. Green jobs are fine, but what is a green job? If the workers are still low paid, and still getting screwed, what progress has been made?

Demonstrators in the Phillipines. Photo by Veejay VillafrancaWe know that the power of fossil fuel companies is enormous. It’s partly having the courage to confront those things, to shift the whole political agenda.

The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn

GL: Is there a shift to the left in the unions, as there has been in the Labour party – and has this made any difference to energy policies?

SM: Since 2010, since the financial crisis, we have in some ways seen the trade union movement shift to the right in the sense there hasn’t seen the rise of a more militant trade unionism. The movement has been on the defensive for some years, and now it seems for many union leaders, it’s about, “let’s just scrabble for the last few fragments, few crumbs we can get from the capitalists’ table”, whereas we can actually have a more confrontational and offensive approach.

Alex Nunns’s book, The Candidate, about Corbyn, makes the point that since 2000 the unions have swung to the left. Well, there have been some individual leaders, such as Mark Serwotka and other senior elected officials in PCS, and Bob Crow of the RMT when he was alive, who have pursued a left agenda, but generally speaking, I don’t see a shift to the left in debates such as the one about energy. I don’t see a grasp of the transformations needed, or the possibilities for unions and workers in the energy transition, particularly linked to a social and economic justice agenda.

And what about the last year and a half, since Corbyn became party leader? Labour published an interesting energy policy document last year.

It has made some difference in putting climate change and energy issues on the agenda but they are still supporting nuclear in their manifesto for example. Although coming out against fracking at the election was a big step. It will be interesting to see whether this arises in debates at the 2017 TUC Congress. At the moment discussion is all on “industrial strategy” and has co-opted the space to discuss sustainability or energy policy issues.

GL: What about the Labour Party itself?

SM: Trade unionists in the UK group of TUED met with Alan Whitehead, the shadow energy minister, in the spring. He had said, let’s keep this up and have monthly meetings, which was really encouraging. Then the election was called. People from a number of unions felt we should try to get the energy democracy agenda reflected in the manifesto. We put in a statement to Alan Whitehead, outlining our views, and, although we can’t claim credit for this, much of that was reflected in the manifesto.

One exciting thing in the Labour Party’s election manifesto are references to democratic control of the energy system. People in the Labour Party are looking at various forms of democratic control. There has been a discussion on co-operatives and other forms, and relevant legal structures such as the Industrial Common Ownership Act of 1976 that promoted an industrial democracy agenda. (Note. On this Act, which provided a legal basis for cooperatives, see this wikipedia article.)

In our pamphlet, we talk about worker-public partnerships – rather than public-public partnership, which has been the subject of a lot of academic debate – and there is a reason that we put it like that. We want to stress that this is about energy democracy, about reframing and revitalising our public services, not just rebuilding them, but doing them differently.

We want to look at the social relations, not to go back to past types of nationalisation, where workers were delivering services, but were still just as alienated from the process as the public, with no processes of democratic control. We want to look at models for example in Barcelona, where they have a different vision, of decision-taking in community assemblies.

GL: What about the Labour election manifesto commitments on public ownership? It refers to “regaining control” electricity distribution networks by changing the licence conditions; supporting “publicly owned, locally accountable energy companies and cooperatives” to compete with the “big six”, and moving the national grid to public ownership “over time”.

SM: The manifesto talks about price caps on energy, does not talk about nationalising the “big six”, although there was some confusion in the media about this. (Note. See an accurate report here.) They are saying, let’s create local energy companies, supported by regional development banks, and let’s develop community energy projects and co-ops.

In terms of public control, the most important thing is to get back the grid – the transmission and distribution. The big six are suppliers, who generate electricity. There is a debate about whether to nationalise generation, but the consensus among those working on energy democracy is that the important thing is the transmission and distribution systems.

Developing strategies

GL: Counterpoising defence of jobs to combating global warming is a false choice. And, as you have said, approaches to the big issues raised have to be holistic, otherwise they are meaningless. So how do we move the discussion further forward?

SM: We have to articulate the alternative or transition in detail, not generalised statements such as “there’s lots of jobs in renewables”. Take the example of Copeland, where there was a by-election shortly before the general election. It is a constituency in which a large number of jobs are dependent on the nuclear industry. This is a big concern locally. It can’t be binary: “good energy policies, or jobs”. I understand the reality. If you’re faced with losing your job in a community like that, it’s a huge issue. If you’re faced with losing your job in London, it’s different. It may not be good or like for like work but there’s work you can find. In Copeland, there is not.

Anti-fracking demonstrators in Lancashire serving each other lunch.Photo from Reclaim the Power.
In some of these areas, the companies have a powerful hold over people. In Barrow in Furness, for example, BAe Systems not only employs thousands of people, but is also involved in education and housing, and is really integrated into the community. It’s similar to communities in other countries where the extractive industries operate – in mining areas in Latin America, for example.

Another example is the North Sea oil and gas industry. Over the last couple of years, when the oil price has dropped, and the companies have used that situation to attack workers’ terms and conditions, health and safety standards, and to cut jobs. The unions have rightly put up a fight against this.

But during such disputes it’s very unusual to hear anything being said about the future of the industry, the future of work in these areas. You have the unions backing government policy on maximising economic recovery of oil and gas resources. These resources are more difficult to recover, and will require more technology. But there is no guarantee that there will be more jobs.

Take another example: we, the PCS, oppose the third runway at Heathrow. That’s a national policy decision. We have members, mainly working in security at Heathrow, who don’t support our position. The big unions at Heathrow are supporting the expansion. Reps say [to us]: “we have to go to meetings with management and say that our union is not supporting this”, and they find it difficult.

We have done many meetings with them down there, to try to align our positions, to give them confidence that the union is not going to walk away from protecting their current jobs in terms of pay and conditions. Obviously, if the Heathrow expansion goes ahead, we expect workers to be organised and their conditions protected. No union is going to abandon them, even if we disagree with the energy policy, or the airport expansion, in which they are working.

Unless we start developing the alternatives – which can not be done by an individual union like the PCS, it has to be done collectively – then we will not shift the debate. We can not just shout into the void, “we could have climate jobs”, because that doesn’t mean anything to someone who feels that their job is in danger, who has to go home, pay their gas bill, pay their mortgage or whatever. They can sit in a meeting and agree with the policy, but we all know the reality when faced with day to day every day life.

We are working with our aviation group and our transport sector group to develop an integrated transport strategy. We have an academic, Roger Seifert at Wolverhampton, who has done alot of work for us on alternative visions. What we have not yet done is to bring the climate change aspects into the transport strategy. We need to ask, what does the strategy really look like? We can talk about electric vehicles, public ownership etc, the transport unions will agree with that, but we don’t have a refined understanding – what does it mean for jobs?

We have an enormous pool of knowledge: six and a half million union members in this country. How do we organise? How do we get those people into discussions? Some of that we are going to try to do through the Lucas plan Just Transition working group, set up after the conference in November last year. One of four working groups, including arms conversion, local planning and automation.

GL: And the idea is to develop a Lucas plan-type discussion about the economy as a whole as of 2017?

SM: Yes. And how we start organising workers. The arms conversion stuff is of course a debate that’s been going on for years. about demilitarisation etc. The automation group is focused on the democratic issues around robotisation in industry. The idea of the Just Transition working group is to start a movement from below, and use the auspices of the Lucas plan to try to involve some of these workers that I have been talking about, that are not being involved in these discussions.


Campaigners from Plane Stupid after a court appearance in February 2016, following their protest against a new runway at Heathrow. Photo from Plane Stupid.
Uniting social and environmental movements

GL: When people, say, in their twenties, start thinking about climate change, and decide to do something about it, their instinct is often to lie down on a runway, occupy a power station, or take whatever form of direct action. Is there a way to brings such people together with trade unionists to discuss the issues? How?

SM: PCS is almost unique among unions, in that we work with those activists. We have a policy of supporting civil disobedience. We are at the moment supporting the action by Reclaim the Power, a direct action group, who are doing a month of rolling action against fracking at Preston New Road. On 14 July they had a day specifically focused on climate jobs, renewables and divestment where PCS had a speaker and encouraged members to get along.

GL: They are campaigning to get the Cuadrilla fracking project mothballed, I think.

SM: Yes. We work closely with groups such as Reclaim the Power. I would not say that that is typical of the environmental movement either. Many of them don’t like trade unionists and don’t understand working-class issues. We need to say that frankly. Alot of the environmental movement is quite middle class. But there are good, progressive groups and we have good relationships with them. At Heathrow, some demonstrators did a sit-down protest on the runway a couple of years ago. For our union, this was a civil liberties issue. We said to the protesters, we are fully backing you; it’s a justice issue; no way should you be sent to prison for taking this action. And they work with us. They wanted, where possible, for what they were saying to resonate with our actions.

In the climate movement, when we were organising the climate march in the UK before the international climate negotiations in Paris in 2015, we had the most difficult debates about the slogans. We argued for a slogan of “climate, justice, jobs” and working class issues. Some of the NGOs said, “we can’t have ‘jobs’ in there, that’s too political, our members won’t like it, they won’t come to the demonstration”.

GL: They really were against using the word “jobs”?

SM: Yes. You wouldn’t believe some of the debates we had. It was a very wide disparate group that included NGOs, some trade unions – very few, PCS, UCU and someone came from the TUC – and smaller groups as well. It was open to anyone to come to the organising meetings. We split into different working groups on communications, logistics and so on. When we looked at communications, we wanted a big banner for the march, saying “climate justice, jobs”. Some of the NGOs – I would call them corporate NGOs – just did not want “jobs” in there. Not all NGOs are the same. On climate change we are working very closely with more progressive groups such as Friends of the Earth.

On the day of the march, there were groups hoping to emphasise the impact of climate change on front-line communities, on communities in the global south. small island nations. We wanted a strong message around this, by having representatives of those people at the front of the march. Although it’s disputed, they were effectively removed, as people dressed as carnival animals crowded them out from the front of the march.

GL: I remember that groups representing the global south were kicked off the front of the march in Paris.

SM: Well the situation in London was the same. Many of us had hoped that a group called Wretched of the Earth would be at the front. They organise around black issues and front-line community issues, and they had hoped to go at the front, to confront the colonialism implicit in the fossil-fuel-based economy. Some people didn’t like the very strong political message that they were sending.

If we’re going to move this campaign, we can not just talk about polar bears stranded on ice caps; we need to talk about millions of working people who have to earn a living, and communities that will be displaced by climate change.

In the US in 2015, prior to the summit that UN general secretary Ban Ki-Moon had called, the same issues had come up. There was a divide between people who just wanted to deal with climate change, and insisted “we’ve got to do something about it”, without considering any of the economic or ideological aspects of it.

We need to link the environmental, economic and social issues. These things are interwoven and can not be separated. 10 August 2017.

More on People & Nature about the energy transition

■ Let’s take Corbyn’s climate proposals seriously (September 2016)

■ Global warming in the Indian context, by Nagraj Adve (May 2016)

■ The Paris climate talks and the failure of states (February 2015)

■ Site contents

East London Mosque’s Incitement To Hate And Murder Of LGBT

Jimmy Bangash 0n Behalf The Council Of Ex-Muslims of Britain maintains that: 
CEMB is merely exposing the East London Mosque’s incitement to Hate and murder of LGBT at Pride in London

Response to East London Mosque Statement dated 20th July 2017 and Muslim Council of Britain Statement, dated 26 July 2017
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) represents former Muslims who are from Muslim-majority countries or diaspora communities. Frequently, these are refugees seeking asylum as they are being persecuted for leaving Islam or for being LGBT. We are committed to calling out oppressive narratives, racism and anti-Muslim hate and homophobia – all of which directly impact our members.
Ironically, CEMB’s presence at Pride in London has been labelled ‘Islamophobic’ by the East London Mosque (ELM), a word we reject as a disingenuous misnomer and which conflates criticism of a set of beliefs (Islam) or the religious-Right (Islamism) with bigotry against a group of people (Muslims). This word is used by religious fundamentalists to silence criticism of Islamic doctrine – even if that doctrine explicitly calls for the death of apostates and homosexuals. Juxtapose it with ‘Christianityphobia’ or ‘Hinduismphobia’ – words which are never used despite ample criticism of both ideologies.
CEMB maintains that its placard accusing the ELM of inciting murder against LGBT was entirely appropriate given that the theme of CEMB’s Pride march was solidarity with LGBT in Chechnya, with an alarming resurgence of concentration camps for gay men, as well as those persecuted and facing execution in 14 states under Sharia (15 if you count ISIS-held territories).
The ELM has hosted a number of speakers who have publicly called for the persecution of homosexuals and apostates and has even been criticised for this in the past by activists such as Peter Tatchell and organisations such as Oxfam. Unbelievably ELM hosted a speaker’s presentation which contained slides titled “Spot the Fag” and hosted Yasir Qadhi who stated on homosexuals:

…I know that his punishment is death. This is all a part of our religion. This doesn’t mean we go and do this in America but I’m saying if we had an Islamic state we would do this.

CEMB maintains that the ELM’s hosting of Islamic preachers that promote the persecution and murder of homosexuals is incitement to harm and murder of LGBT individuals. Furthermore, we highlight the absurdity of ELM’s victim narrative accusing us of incitement against ELM, when in fact we are exposing their incitement to violence against LGBT ex-Muslims and Muslims.
The MCB says our banner “’East London Mosque incites murder of LGBT’ is utterly fictitious and is tantamount to inciting hatred against this religious institution” which apparently “has a track record in speaking out against homophobia”. If this is the case, we look forward to receiving public statements from ELM and MCB, which rejects the execution of gays and apostates under Sharia law in any country, including in an ideal Islamic caliphate.

BBC Money Tree For White Middle Class

Mick Hall writing @ Organized Rage asserts that:

The BBC should be a national treasure but instead it's become one more money tree for white middle class elites.
After the ridiculous high salaries the BBC is paying to what they call "the talent" were reported last week, the MSM have managed to divert the debate into one about gender issues.

   

While gender equality is important there are more important issues. Racism within the BBC is undoubtedly one, 15% of its employees are black, Asian or minority ethnic, yet the number of BAME people responsible for commissioning, producing and directing the programmes the BBC put out is just 1.5%.”
As Joseph Harker reported:

The lack of coverage of the race pay gap goes to a wider problem: the lack of minority voices at senior levels of the media, who can put these issues on the agenda. Race issues are simply not on the radar of most senior journalists; and though sexism is clearly an endemic problem at all levels of society, at least there are now female editors and columnists who can call it out when it happens ... By contrast, black voices in the national media are rare. We have the news and opinion filtered through white mouthpieces, so only the extreme, unequivocal cases of racism are ever given a hearing. We hear of ex-football manager Ron Atkinson calling a player a “fucking lazy thick nigger”, or of the ex-England captain John Terry calling another player a “fucking black cunt”; or even of the excesses of Katie Hopkins or Kelvin Mackenzie, or MPs using the N-word. But the daily, more subtle but far more pernicious racism – of discrimination in housing, in schools, in employment – goes largely uncommented on. It’s as if white editors don’t get racism unless it’s presented to them in sparkling 12-foot-high letters.

As Joseph pointed out you wouldn’t even need two hands to count the number of black columnists in the national press or black presenters and directors at the BBC. For something to be deemed racist therefore requires prior white approval and we all know the white middles class beneath the surface of supposed sophistication is the most racist class within the UK.
The wage rates of BBC talent are undoubtedly in sparkling 12-foot-high letters, whether the BBC will act on its inherent racism and class prejudice we will see.

Why does the BBC pay a disc jockey £2.2 million a year? How can BBC news presenters hope to emphasise with working class people when they receive a pay rate of upwards £0.55 million?

They cannot, and its this which explains the BBC's bias against working class people, whatever their colour or race.
The same goes for News and Current and affairs, the two presenters who over the last two years have attacked Jeremy Corbyn and his policies without mercy have a joint salary of half a million. Is it really a surprise they emphasise with millionaires like themselves? It's almost inevitable given the class prejudiced structure of the UK. They're well aware if they stepped out of their narrow class confines their careers will ultimately suffer, if not whither on the vine.

Some of the pay rates are almost laughable, Danny Dyer probably one the worst actors on TV receives £249K, for a portraying a monkey cockney, the type of which was last seen in the East-end of London circa 1970. Still you cannot blame the Popular boy for taking that lovely lump of wedge, as his Eastenders character Mick Cotton might say.

To justify these inflated salaries Tony Hall, (BBC director general) and the former Blairite minister James Purnell, (Director of Radio and Education), said they had no choice but to pay the market rate. In other words they parrot that old chestnut beloved by Banksters, tax dodgers and corporate chiselers - the market always knows best. Which given events since the great crash of 2008 has worn a tad thin.

If the so called talent were to no longer receiving such inflated salaries it would be impossible for the likes of Hall and Purnell to justify their own inflated salaries. (Hall (£450k, Purnell £300k, plus bungs, sorry gifts and hospitality).

If private media outlets are prepared to pay inflated salaries so what, surely the BBC has a different role to play in society than the Murdoch media and ITV, the more so in an age of austerity. Setting an example would be a start. If the so called talent ups and leaves there are always talented people available to follow in their shoes. Indeed it should be the BBC's raison d'être to nourish new talent not hang on to the old by paying inflated and unjustifiable salaries.

One of the main reasons the BBC is such a maudlin broadcaster is its refusal to experiment and give new comers a chance behind and in front of camera and mic. Thus we end up with the same overpaid faces appearing on our TV and radio.

Take Matt Baker the director general's current golden boy: you can hardly turn the TV on without him appearing. He is a master or everything and nothing. He started out in Blue Peter, presumably because he had a regional accent which were, and still are far and few between on the BBC. He was then fast tracked onto Country File, never mind the only experience he had of the countryside was eating the bacon brought in his dad's shop. Shortly after he became a presenter on the One Show. Then the floodgates opened and he presented The Gift (2015) Big Blue Live (2015 Wild Alaska Live (2017) appeared in Strictly Come Dancing and god know what else. 
It's what the BBC do. Is it any wonder young people only rarely watch it today when front of camera and mic and behind, it's dominated by an elite whose lifestyles are light years away from their own. The BBC should be a national treasure, but instead it's become just one more money tree for the white middle class elites.

It's also worth noting the doyens of the BBC David Dimbleby and David Attenborough, so called national treasures, are not even in the list of top earners. Privatisation or as the BBC calls it outsourcing saw to that. Tony Hall could make this information available in the future by making the companies who are contracted to make shows like Question Time make it public or not gain contracts.

These so called national treasures along with other household names who appear in BBC programmes have set up companies to channel their earnings.

The BBC has admitted dozens of its star presenters are dodging full tax bills with a legal loophole. Thus BBC employees at the lower end of the pay scale in all probability pay a higher percentage of income tax than the national treasures.

Funny how no one in the MSM thought this worth mentioning when the BBC top pay scales were first released. Could it be because they two earn exalted salaries and are up to their necks in tax dodging schemes?


Revealed: how hundreds of BBC employees earn 1% of Chris Evans’s wages.

Canary Dwarf

Sean Mallory sticks on his Curmudgeon hat and goes "Across the water."


Thus, along with other financial institutions also leaving, are beginning to turn London's world financial quarter from Canary Wharf in to Canary Dwarf!

Heading south over an even bigger pool of water, it has been reported that the British tax payer-funded £285m St Helena airport, aka ‘the world's most useless’, is finally going to get a scheduled flight.

What is known is that it will fly from Johannesburg via Windhoek in Namibia to St Helena each Saturday but no-one knows when exactly the flights will start, nor how much flights will cost. But when it does get off the ground it is to be further subsidised by the British taxpayer to the tune of £1.9m per year. A representation of over £36,000 per return flight.
A flight that due to time constraints will take off one hour before connecting flights from London and return too late for passengers to transfer to the five evening departures to London. About as well thought out as the airport itself!

Away from the ludicrous and to the more relevant: Facebook not content with holding billions of people's data, inadvertently and completely unexpectedly almost created its own ‘Skynet’ problem. It set two artificial intelligent chatbots a task to perform, but soon discovered that the chatbots were chatting and communicating in their own English which seemed to make it easier for them to work together. The development remained a mystery to the humans who were attending them but led directly to their intervention to shut them down.

A development that it would seem reflects the beginnings of Artificial General Intelligence and follows what futurist Ray Kurzweil calls human history’s Law of Accelerating Returns – a pattern where human progress moves quicker and quicker as time goes on.

Kurzweil believes that the 21st century will achieve 1,000 times the progress of the 20th century. A progress that by 2060 could lead to the replacement of the human race by Artificial Super Intelligence. Something that Professor Stephen Hawking has alluded to also.

Oh, the chatbots did complete their task!

Out Of The Ashes

From The Transcripts John McDonagh & Martin Galvin speak to Professor Robert White via telephone about his new book, Out of the Ashes An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement.

Radio Free Éireann
WBAI 99.5 Pacifica Radio
New York City
Audio Player
(begins time stamp ~ 20:16)

Martin: Professor White, welcome back to Radio Free Éireann and congratulations on the book.

Robert: Well thank you very much, Martin. And hello, John, I hope all’s going well.

John: Hello, Robert. Yep.

Martin: And this is a book – John said it’s a ‘coffee table book’ – it’s four hundred and eighty-eight pages. It goes through everything and I should ask you first: How long have you been working on this book ’cause I know I met you, I don’t know, it was somewhere around 1990, the early ’90’s…

Robert: …Yes…

Martin: …you were going in…

Robert: …It would have been…

Martin: …Yeah…

Robert: …It would have been ’96, I think, is when we met – up in Monaghan and…

Martin: …That’s correct. You were going in to interview Brian McDonald who was the former Sinn Féin head of publicity. You were doing a first party interview with him, an original research with him, and I don’t know if – we can talk about it in a bit about you had been there in 1984 on the Falls Road, along with John and I, when that was attacked but how long have you been working on this book and how long have you been doing the research that led up to these four hundred and eighty-eight pages?

Robert: Well the research started formally, in terms of interviews, in 1984 when I first arrived in Ireland that January and went to the Sinn Féin head office in Dublin and met a few people. Joe Cahill was very supportive, went up to Belfast, met a few people and pretty much it was from that point on – the journey has not ended. I’ve gone back goodness knows how many times – had a sabbatical leave there, spent extended – I think it was the summer of ’95 – much of that over there, etc…

Martin: …And now…

Robert: …And so, in a sense, since 1984 but to more formally answer the question, I suppose, like in ’96 when we met I would have been doing follow-up re-interviews from the ’84 and that led to a paper that was ultimately published. I did the Ó Brádaigh biography that you’re familiar with; that came out 2006. And then I did a documentary. I got interested in video things and on the Irish Republican Movement Collection there’s the video, Unfinished Business: The Politics of ‘Dissident’ (in quotations) Irish Republicans and that’s open access. And it was around 2012 that I’d realised I had just all this information from all these different perspectives, RSF, (Republican Sinn Féin) 32 County Sovereignty Movement, people who had left plus people who’d stayed with the Provisionals so really I started writing, roughly, 2012 but the research has been going on for a long time as you mentioned.

Martin: Okay, now the book title is Out of the Ashes An Oral History of the Provisional Irish Republican Movement. And of course there’s a famous expression: Out of the ashes of ’69 arose the Provisionals – an area in Belfast was attacked, many homes burned down by Loyalists. The British, the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) did not intervene to protect them and there was a feeling that the IRA had not been there to defend the area and that’s what led to the Provisionals – that’s the title. But when we spoke that it’s actually – the story of how the Provisionals started is much broader than that.

Robert: Yeah, in some way ‘out of the ashes’ is sort of the myth of the Provisionals – now that might not be the right word – but there were Provisionals, people like Joe Cahill who I mentioned, Billy McKee, who I think you mentioned earlier, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh – people like that – they were around long before August of 1969. So what happens in August of 1969 is a major confrontation, major rioting, that leads to a split in the movement and you get the Provisionals vs the Officials but the reality is that the people who created the Provisionals were there for a long time and the younger people, as far as I know, the younger people weren’t in the room, or the rooms shall we say, when let’s say when the Provisional IRA was founded – it was a bunch of middle-aged men.

Martin: Okay. You have a struggle, you talked about it – Seán Mac Stíofain, who was one of the first Chiefs of Staff, left a good job, as you describe it in the book, with the Gaelic language – he had a good job. McKee actually was working – came back to the movement. Other people came forward. What was it – you had a struggle from 1969 to 1998. You had people joining this movement, fighting the British on a massive scale, despite internment, despite being put in jail, despite seeing civil rights marches shot down, despite shoot-to-kill policy, despite – gave up economics, certain jobs and stuff – what is it that sustained that struggle?

To order click: US amazon or UK amazon or Irish Academic Press
Robert: Well you had people like Seán Mac Stíofain, as you mentioned, Joe Cahill, Billy McKee, who returned – and some of them – Mac Stíofain was there the whole way through. I would argue that there was going to be a split in the movement whether or not August of 1969 happened. The Officials, led by Goulding, Cathal Goulding, Tomás Mac Giolla, were going to go their direction and Ruíari Ó Brádaigh, Seán Mac Stíofain, that group, were going to go their direction. And as Ruíari told me once in the middle of that disagreement, political disagreement, The North just, The North blew up and changed everything. And what happened was with August of ’69 – then you get the Falls Road Curfew, the attack at St. Matthew’s – I think the same summer, 1970, then internment in ’71 and especially internment followed by Bloody Sunday – that just sends people to the Provisionals in flocks of them, droves, however you want to say it. And my argument would be that the Provisionals, shall we say, they would have gotten off the ground but they wouldn’t have gone very far without internment and without Bloody Sunday. And what those two events did was they legitimised, or validated, what people like Seán Mac Stíofain and Billy McKee and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and others were saying which was that: We’re not going to get justice from the British. We’re not going to get justice in Northern Ireland. We’re gonna have, you know, we’re gonna face oppression and lo and behold! what happens with internment was they started arresting people and locking them up and throwing away the key, not charging them and it validates the perspective of the senior people. And as I understand it, I mean, after Bloody Sunday the Provisionals were literally signing people up on clipboards.

Martin: Now you are a sociologist. You write about the differences between social movements versus terrorism and you show a lot of statistics, you do a lot of research to say that the Provisionals – that this was a social movement, it’s very different, not terrorism – that label just doesn’t apply. Why is that?

Robert: Well my view would be that if you’re going to call people terrorists then you pretty much need call everybody who engages in that kind of behaviour a terrorist. And as I mention in the first chapter of the book in I suppose it was 1940 Churchill, the Prime Minister Churchill, in response to, I think it was the bombing of Coventry, he, they had come up with a war plan where they’re going to bomb German cities and they want German cities with narrow streets so that would, the rubble would hinder firefighters from putting out fires and you’d cause more damage, kill more civilians, etc. Well is that terrorism? Okay? If you look at what President George W. Bush did with the Shock and Awe treatment of Baghdad – they knew there was civilians there and they dropped all kinds of bombs on them in 2003. So what’s terrorism then? And my issue would be, my issue with many of the terrorism experts or ‘terrorologists’, however you want to describe them, would be that they focus on groups like the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation), Hezbollah, Hamas, the IRA, etc and they don’t focus on state terrorism. And by doing that they miss the fact that state oppression, state repression, state violence, really, is a key factor for getting people to engage in what I call ‘small group political violence’. And instead of the use – instead of the term ‘terrorism’ – I would much prefer ‘political violence’ which can be done by pretty much all kinds of groups – from the United States to Israel to Iran to the Provisional Irish Republican Army. It’s all violence. And I think we do a great disservice to understanding why people engage in violence if we throw in that word ‘terrorism’. It’s, to me, a useless concept or pretty much close to a useless concept.

John: And Professor White, I mean you were talking about the ‘splits’ and about the definition of terrorism – depends on I guess on who’s broadcasting it – but a lot of stuff we do here at Radio Free Éireann is just trying to correct some of the re-writing of Irish Republican history going on particularly now with Gerry Adams – he’s taking a court case that he never really tried to escape from prison – whereas people like Brendan Hughes used to brag and they’re making movies about escapes. How did you find Gerry Adams psychologically? And how was he able, at one stage of his life, be in the IRA and say: We have to bring down the state. We have to smash Stormont to evolving to say: No, in order to get a united Ireland we have to bring back Stormont and not only that I have to administer British rule in Ireland. How was he able to do that psychologically and bring the majority of the movement along with him? I mean you’ve interviewed him and you’ve seen the process and how it’s evolved. How did it all happen? ‘Cause that’s why we’re sitting here – how did it all happen?

Robert: Well I’ve met Gerry Adams and, in fact, and I’ve seen him in action in the sense that one of my most revealing situations watching him was when he introduced you in 1984 at the anti-internment march. I’ve met him a couple of times, etc, seen him in action, shall we say, but I have to point out that I never interviewed him formally. Now, having said that…

Martin: …Just – Professor White, this is Martin Galvin – You do have, for example, quotes from Martin McGuinness let’s say…

Robert: …Sure! Oh yeah, I…

Martin: ….And you start out: ‘I’m a member of the Derry Brigade of the IRA. I’m very proud of it.’ Then: ‘Our position is clear. It’ll never, never changed. The war against British rule must continue until freedom is achieved.’ And then he ends up talking about multi-national companies and the New York Stock Exchange and it’s about jobs and contacts etc which is pretty much the same thing.

Robert: Sure! Martin McGuinness, I would say, changed, okay? In my, from my perspective, having seen him at the 1984 Ard Fheis, seen him do a meet and greet with secondary school students, they looked like, in the Great Hall at Stormont to following him on the presidential campaign trail in, I guess it was 2011. In my opinion the man changed. Going back to Gerry Adams – that’s a really interesting question because if Adams changed – when did he change? And given part, some of what you asked, obviously the guy is just a brilliant strategist and the question really is: At what point did McGuinness and Adams decide that they could get more by disavowing political violence? And arguably it was in the 1990’s but if you look back in the letters, like Alex Reid’s famous letter I think it was 1987, I mean this stuff started much earlier and it may go back all the way to the hunger strike and it’s a really good question. And the issue is: Did Adams change or is he just a very strategic, very political thinker who pretty much everything is on the table all the time? And that’s a hard one to answer.

Martin: Alright. One of the things – Professor White, this is Martin Galvin, again – we had a question from John – one of things that interested me, in your book, in the preface, you actually said that when doing your research you were referred to Denis Donaldson and…

Robert: …Yeah…

Martin: …and your contact information was given to him. And then you later found that, you didn’t contact him at that time, but Denis Donaldson was, of course, sent out here – you later found that you were investigated by the Feds, you found that out through a Freedom of Information Act request that you were investigated by the Feds because he had apparently given your information, your name and information, to him. Now he was somebody – came out here, turned out that that he was a spy and a traitor and had given your information to the federal government and as somebody – I originally just thought he was bad for, just wrongheaded about what he was doing but through a couple of things – what happened after Hugh Feeney was arrested at the Irish People office and one night with him drinking and federal FBI agents coming into The Phoenix – I had actually begun to call Ireland about him and say that I thought he was an agent. But what was your experience with him?

Robert: Well I met him the one time, it was actually in Belfast when I met him, and I think it would have been the mid-90’s and as I said in the preface he just had this sort of wry, snarky, however you want to describe it, grin on his face and at the time, you know, it didn’t click but I did the Freedom of Information request – I got stopped, we missed an airplane and because of it flying into Newark they wouldn’t – customs held us up – and it turned out I had been flagged for and so I started asking questions and sent letters to everybody under the cousins saying: What’s the deal here? And finally (it takes forever as I’m sure you know) you get this information – and I’d been investigated and cleared evidently. But and then when it comes out that Donaldson was an agent it all starts to fit together. I don’t know for sure if he passed my name on but my guess would be that he did because that sort of was – that’s what his job was, right? And I found the whole thing very curious and you start putting two and two together and you wonder if maybe you got four. And clearly, I mean in retrospect and in speaking to you and others about him, there were all kinds of signals being sent and the people in the Belfast leadership apparently knew of those signals, right? You mentioned it, I quote you in the book, you were making phone calls. And nothing was done about it.

Martin: Well, they told me he had impeccable credentials. Okay, why did…

John: …He certainly did.

Martin: That’s what they said. He had impeccable credentials and it must be – you have to work with this guy. Alright. Why do you think this whole peace process began? Why, how did the Provisionals turn out they way they did? The last thing you do in your book is talk about decommissioning.

Robert: Yeah well I think what happened was by 1990 and especially the early – I think there was an election in ’92, a Westminster election, which went very poorly but by 1990 – I have a quotation from Mitchel McLaughlin who’s talking about how much more open minded they were – and I think by that point they were starting to realise they weren’t going win. You’d had disasters like Enniskillen, you had the arms shipment captured from France and they realised, my guess is, that they could go on forever with this small scale war but it wasn’t gonna go anywhere and, in the meantime, their families were suffering. And at the ’86 Ard Fheis John Joe McGirl makes this comments about not wanting to turn the struggle over to yet another generation and that’s what was happening. And I have a quote from a woman who ended up getting arrested and she had like two, single mother – two children – and you know her life is now seriously – is facing serious difficulties and this would have been, I suppose, the third generation if you think Joe Cahill’s group being the first and then Adams and McGuinness and company being the second so it’s being passed again and there were all kinds of things and so there was no single thing but at some point they started checking into, you know: What kind of deal can we get?…

Martin: …Okay, and…

Robert: …and it leads, well it leads to the first ceasefire and I thought, personally, that the British played that very poorly so then you get Canary Wharf and then there’s another couple of elections and you bring in Tony Blair, who’s much more serious, and then then Fianna Fáil comes back and you get the second ceasefire and to me, ultimately, decommissioning. Once you do have the Good Friday Agreement and you have somebody like David Trimble who was willing to…

Martin: …Right. You say in the book David Trimble won the Good Friday Agreement – that’s almost a quote – I took it out. And I’m just coming near the end but why do you think that David Trimble, who was an Official Unionist Party – his party actually went down in terms of the Unionist vote and they’ve now been surpassed by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) led today by Arlene Foster – but why do you think that David Trimble and the Unionists, you know, in the end, won the Good Friday Agreement?

Robert: Well I think he’s the winner of the peace process in the sense that by the time he leaves the stage the stage has been set for Sinn Féin to make some major compromises and fully, become fully constitutional – no army, accepting policing, etc – and it’s because he kept dangling, if you will, or I don’t know how else – there are other ways to phrase it – but he was not going to go into Parliament as long as they had guns and then of course he makes compromises and then you get the – I guess it’s February of ’99 – when it turns out the IRA hadn’t even bothered to consult with the International Arms Commission etc but by doing that dance of ‘no guns no government’ – and then well, maybe a little bit and then no again – he brings them further and further into constitutional politics and the presence of the Provisional IRA becomes more and more of a liability and eventually it became very clear that, you know, the IRA had to go and politics was the future and I would say much of that is because of David Trimble. Because he was willing – if he had just said ‘no’ then nothing probably would have happened, okay? The fact that he was willing to try opens the door to all kinds of political outcomes that would not have been available. And he also, and as a by-product of that, the DUP also gets involved and they also go into Stormont of the Northern Ireland Assembly and so on. So to me, David Trimble is sort of the key person who allows all of this to happen, sets the framework and then, ironically, he gets pushed aside by Paisley and the DUP.

Martin: Right, but his goal of preserving British rule – that’s seems secure and certainly…

Robert: …Exactly!…

Martin: …the goal of Republicans of getting a united Ireland – it doesn’t seem to be any way – we’ve had ten years, for example, in coalition, didn’t unlock Unionism, they’re feeling as strongly as ever so certainly David Trimble’s goal of not having a united Ireland, of continued British rule seems secure. He won in that sense…

Robert: …Oh, yeah…

Martin: …I know that from a Republican perspective. Okay – We’re going to have it quickly: How can people – if you don’t pledge the hundred dollars (Martin provides telephone number for donations). – if you don’t do that how can you get copies of the book?

Robert: Well in the US it’s available at amazon dot com – twenty-six dollars and thirty eight cents apparently and seven ninety-nine as an eBook. If you’re in Ireland apparently it’s available at bookstores all over the place…

John: …Oh! Just walk into Eason’s on O’Connell Street. It’s on the front table, walking in.

Robert: Well that’s very nice to know. I plan to be over later next week and I will definitely do that. If you want to buy it online Irish Academic Press has it for twenty-four ninety-nine euros and amazon dot co dot uk has it for nineteen ninety-nine sterling or six seventy-one Kindle. There are all kinds of ways to get it and you know I very much appreciate the time and I hope everybody enjoys the book.

John: Well, alright. Thank you.

(ends time stamp ~ 41:28)

Republicanism And The Politics Of Prefiguration

Cormac Caulfield continues to discuss modes of political organisation.


Political prefiguration is the practice and belief that the way we organise today, the methods we use have a direct effect on the outcome of socially transformative politics. If we use hierarchical methods or organise with them, then the end results will be hierarchical. It's a materialist concept that is rooted in the assertion that actions and ideas interplay with each other in a process. The degree to which is dependant on circumstances, and that these actions are fundamentally not unconnected from one another. Therefore if we use the organising methods/practices/ethics of capitalist society, the very things we seek to destroy, we are reproducing the forms of oppression and exploitation that have been socialised into us by ourselves and by capitalist society.

Anarchists argue that a very conscious break must be made with the methods of capitalism in order to create a new society and destroy the old. We do not believe in the economic mechanistic determinism of the state, or solely, the forces of production. This is a radical proposal in the most literal sense of the meaning. It demands a commitment for root and tip transformation, from the individual level to the structural, organisational level. It is fundamentally belief that we, and our societal structures, are all formed by capitalist norms and in order to break from the reproduction of capitalist relations, individual and societal transformation must take place, through class struggle.

All strands of radical, revolutionary or transformative politics are Pre-figurative. In the sense that, whether the grouping or individuals within a grouping explicitly accept a pre-figurative analysis and practice they are essentially creating relational forms which will take over the running of society, from the microcosm of their respective movements-if they win that is. All new societies will be stamped with the old society on it to some degree, meaning we can only strive today, as an ongoing process, to create an organisation or movement of equals. If we build hierarchical, unequal organisations those forms will be the forms used, the ready materials, for the next struggle and therefore the methods which will dominate the political landscape after a victory.

Imagine now that a movement which is almost exclusively a highly secret, centralised, unaccountable army, with little to no directly democratic spirit or forms, is in a position to reap the revolutionary gains of a British withdrawal from the North from Ireland. It becomes the shaper of societal norms and structures, only mitigated by the other organisational forces at play. What happens? At best a complete reproduction of the institutions of capitalism and the authoritarian state, probably only much worse in order to keep at bay the loyalist terrorist threat and other counter-revolutionary forces.

This is the best outcome. Listening to many a former POW, they ask the question, quietly and among trusted circles, "what was it all for?" After the destruction of the orange state, a major victory in itself, the answer is not a whole pile at the end of the day. The question they often fail to ask is "would it have being worth it even if we had have forced a British withdrawal?"Another gombeen republic like down south? Well that's up to the individual to decide.

Some have attempted to marry Republicanism with authoritarian Socialism. Natural enough companions, both are believers in anti-imperialism and for revolutionary action. The issue is not the label but the substance. Socialist-Republicanism is largely subsumed to the overall, broad church Republican movement, meaning the efforts of individuals within those movements amounts to little from a socialist perspective. Without an over-arching, specific socialist program, orientated towards action that will lead to the building up working class consciousness and organs of counter-power their efforts simple feed into Capitalist Republicanism.
Just akin to the idealism of the socialists in relation to the withering away for the state, many socialist-republicans believe in practice that without specific socialist organisation, policy and action there will be a working class revolution.

A Lack Of Hot Pursuit

With Stormont in stalemate, commentator Dr John Coulter uses his Fearless Flying Column to call for an all-island security forum to protect Ireland from the threat posed by jihadi cells.
A Fine Gael/Unionist coalition could effectively dominate a badly-needed North/South security forum of TDs and MLAs.

If Fine Gael Taoiseach Leo Varadkar wants to make the most of his forays north of the Irish border, he needs to prepare for the eventuality that the DUP and Sinn Fein will not agree a deal to kick start the Stormont institutions.
Emperor Leo needs to box clever and have a magic security rabbit up his sleeves. With a Dail General Election looming, Big Leo doesn’t want to find himself relying on other parties to prop up a Fine Gael minority government – especially not Sinn Fein.

Big Leo needs a clear FG majority government. He does not want – or need – a mirror image of the hysteria which hit Theresa May when she had to team up with the DUP and many folk on the British mainland reacted as if the Protestant Taliban had swept to power in Downing Street.

Big Leo could face similar street and media hysteria if he had to swallow the bitter medicine that in order to form a stable coalition partnership in Leinster House – especially with the challenges of Brexit looming – he had to climb into bed politically with the Provisional IRA’s apologist wing.

As for the Stormont institutions, why should Arlene Foster’s DUP be in a rush to get devolved government back when Tory PM Theresa May has to rely on the DUP’s 10 Westminster MPs to keep her in power, especially when the seven Sinn Fein MPs don’t take their seats so their Commons presence is totally meaningless.

As for Sinn Fein back home in Ireland, the party has realized that the path to eventual Irish unity lies via Leinster House, not Stormont. Party president and Louth TD Gerry Adams will want all republican resources pumped into guaranteeing that whichever of the two main parties emerges as top dog after the next Dail poll – Fine Gael or Fianna Fail – that Sinn Fein will have enough TDs to make sure it becomes a minority partner in the next coalition.

With the Yanks squaring up to knock seven bells out of North Korea, and the Israelis preparing the kick ass again in Lebanon and Palestine, there a real chance Islamic militants will use Ireland to launch a suicide bomb blitz on Britain, and even Ireland itself.

With the peace honeymoon still in full flow, the Dail and Stormont need to maximise the cross-border luvvy-duvvy mood even if Sinn Fein and the DUP can’t reach a workable Stormont deal.

As an urgent matter, they should set up a joint Leinster House/Northern Assembly all-party security body to combat the threat posed by international terrorist nutters.

There is the danger with all the legal migrant workers and asylum seekers pouring into our island, a few illegal terrorists could slip through the immigration net and use cover of the Celtic Tiger as a training ground for more 9/11s and 7/7s.

What is required is a workable all-island security policy allowing free access for the Gardai, PSNI, Southern special forces, SAS, MI5 and MI6 to roam anywhere in Ireland – north or south – to nab potential suicide bombers.

During the Troubles, because of a lack of ‘hot pursuit’, the Brits could not chase republicans into the South, and the Irish Defence Forces could not pursue loyalists into the North.
How many terrorists could have been caught or shot if Northern and Southern security forces had been allowed to roam the entire island at will, leaving no hiding places for Provo or UDA gunmen and bombers?
Ok, we would have been facing the mother of all diplomatic rows if the SAS had carried out a Gibraltar-style execution of known south Armagh Provos as they shopped in a Cork street.
Not to mention how Unionists would go ballistic if a Gardai undercover unit had wiped out a UVF bomb team as it left the loyalist Shankill Road.
Add to the mix allegations of collusion between the Northern security forces and loyalists, as well as Southern security personnel and the Provos and you have a real argy-bargy international shouting match.
But this is different from the sectarian conflict which gripped Ireland for eight centuries. Modern Middle Eastern suicide bombers don’t care who they kill.
For them, everyone is a target so they can earn their reward of 70 plus virgins waiting to serenade them as they enter eternity.
The mere mention of ‘shoot to kill’ of known terrorist activists, or putting suspects in detention camps will have the human rights lobby down on you like a ton of bricks.
What about the human rights of the island’s innocent citizens going about their business? Surely, Northern and Southern elected representatives have a moral duty to protect us from suicide bombing nutcases?
So as the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland can live in peace, we need an all-island draconian anti-terror policy which is just as effective in Sligo and Wexford as it is in Ballymena and Derry.
And there are enough Right-wing TDs and MLAs to form an effective all-island voting block to ensure such a policy is passed at a future North/South Security Forum.
If Emperor Leo’s Fine Gael group of TDs joined up with Northern Unionism’s MLAs, it would form a united Right of Centre power block of more than 100 politicians.
That’s a slim majority over Fianna Fail linking up with a Northern SDLP/Green coalition to form a 101-strong Left of Centre group. I can’t see Sinn Fein wanting to get involved with any security policy which suggests a ‘shoot to kill’ approach.
Modern Irish politics is full of groups, cabals and coalitions. The bitter medicine is that they don’t have the luxury of time on their side to implement an all-island anti-terror strategy.
Leo and Arlene need to realise that amid all the jolly-making at Pride 2017, the sleeper cells of Ireland’s Middle Eastern terrorists are awake.
They need to be stopped before an unsuspecting Irish town or city wakens to another Omagh or Monaghan – only this time ISIS’s chums will have been responsible. 

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