Aye Right!!

I have just seen the new programme for the 2011 Aye Write! festival that is run every year by Glasgow's Libraries. It has been a welcome development and one that seemed to be going from strength to strength.

It is particularly gratifying to remember that it started as an initiative while Glasgow's Libraries were still run directly by the elected council (in 2006) - thus giving the lie to those who say that this kind of partnership is only possible when our services are hived off from our control.

Is it just me, however, or do this years offerings have a aura of 'haven't we seen this before?' about them? No one has a greater admiration for Polly Toynbee than me, but weren't she and Richard Walker plugging The Verdict at last year's Edinburgh Book Festival? Didn't I see Michael Frayn and Steve Bell there too?

It's also a pity that the series of debates on the future of the economy, public services etc  - a good concept in itself, even if not linked to specific publications - don't include some people directly involved in the services and facilities under threat.

Is this diluted offering a product of the public service cuts beginning to bite? Or is it indicative of more serious problems at senior level in Glasgow Life (as we will never get used to calling it!).

Netrooting around London

On Saturday, hundreds of 'activists' - of a variety of ages, shapes and political creeds - piled into the TUC in Bloomsbury to listen, talk and discuss - as well as tweet, blog and video - the role of 'new media' in building campaigns. Billed as Netroots UK the conference was backed by the TUC as well as a whole range of bloggers and progressive online campaigners - eg Clifford Singer (False Economy and The Other Taxpayers Alliance), Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy, Anna Nolan of the Robin Hood Tax Campaign and Chris Coltrane of UK Uncut among many others.

By the way - if you aren't yet a fan of UK Uncut, have a look at its website, which gives the lie to the theory that if people are on the web, they aren't campaigning in the streets!

I was there, and my pre-event anticipation was evenly balanced. On the one side hoping that this was going to be the beginning of a major drive to use on-line campaigning in the drive against the ConDemNation, and on the other, fearing that it would descend into either futile hand-wringing, or the sectarian infighting so common when the left get together. It was, of course, none of these. Although there were attempts by some to lead us down the road to the People's Front of Judea - the conference sensibly resisted that, and indeed the other option of turning into a 'lefty wankfest' predicted by one of the more cynical of my TU colleagues here in Scotland.

Helped by the aim being more about identifying how different media can assist in campaigns and what they are good for, the conference spent most time in workshops looking at particular campaigns and use of specific tools - the use of Twitter during student occupations to 'widen the room' and deliver information from within the occupations minute-by-minute impressed me greatly, as did the use of Google maps to spread the information on where the police were 'kettling' demonstrators during the tuition fees demos!

Twittering was going on apace during the sessions, and identified strengths and weaknesses. I had a conversation with a friend I hadn't known was at the event Indeed I never actually found him in the flesh!), but it was also used to comment on sessions as we experienced them and often overplayed the 'cynical hack' persona. Why is it the journos too often think that they should be the only ones whose view of issues is valuable?

It also struck me that there is really nothing new under the sun. The session on getting your message across to the wider media was so like a short media training course I expected Mary Maguire to appear! (we got Kevin Maguire instead). Likewise the need to plan your campaign, set your targets and be aware of your weaknesses. Nigel Stanley's (TUC) analysis of arguments we have so far failed to win, was much more useful than Sunder Katwala's (Fabian Soc) superficial  '30% are for us, 30% are against us'.

Ultimately the day also avoided the error of trying to put all our campaigning eggs in the digital basket. On-line is an increasingly important challenge to the mainstream media and should be used more - especially by those of us who don't think that mainstream reports us fairly. But it is not a substitute for face-to-face contact (any more than print is). We need to use it. So why were there so few delegates there from the (UK) Trade Unions - especially their Comms teams?

CBI economics is busted flush

Interesting to read the thoughts of CBIScotland (or at least its Chair - Iain McMillan) in the Herald today (29 December). No doubt this was taken from a ‘end-of-year message’ press release used by many organisations to get some press coverage at a thin time of the year.

You might think that, as the representative body of private sector organisations, including finance companies who bear the responsibility for the economic crisis and the attacks on public funding by the Tories, the CBI might be expressing some contrition for putting us all through this - but no. Mr McMillan has the effrontery to chastise the Scottish Government (and other political parties apparently) for not following the CBI’s preferred course out of the economic crisis!

Just for the record this includes - cutting public spending and so-called ‘red tape’, increased PFI, using more private firms to deliver public services, selling-off Scottish Water, and building more nuclear power plants. (He grudgingly welcomes the council tax freeze - despite the damage that this has already done to local services and indeed local businesses who depend on public work).

Thus the CBI show that they have learned nothing from their members’ failings in too lightly regulated markets. Cut red tape? We should be demanding that banks and other finance companies are penalised for the damage they have done to our economy. Increase privatisation? Far from exposing more services to private sector risk, we should accept that this risk will always lie with the public sector, and supply these services publicly - not via expensive and poor value private companies. 

I hold no brief for the Scottish Government - indeed there are many areas where I could be even more critical than Mr McMillan - but his analysis of the economic situation would lead us even deeper into the mire of stagnation and even recession. Just watch what ConDem policies - slavishly following a big business line - deliver for us at UK level

But apparently defending public services and public funding is ‘populist’. According to oor Iain “...real leadership is about doing the right things for Scotland at the right time and explaining why they are necessary.” Given the track record of the UK business community in losing trillions of pounds and then screaming for a huge public handout, I think we can see why ‘the right things’ are unlikely to be done by the CBI, and why it has forfeited all credibility as a business leader.

And a memo to Iain Gray. Just because someone is having a go at the SNP - it is not always in your (or our) interests to agree with them. The old Maoist doctrine of ‘The enemy  of my enemy, is my friend.” has led China’s leaders into some very strange alliances over the years. In the run up to an election, to be seen to side with the busted flush of big business will not gain support.

The Number One Social event of 2011

At this time of year, people’s thoughts often turn to the potential of next year’s holidays, and an increasing number now plan Southern Africa trips. 

While we often celebrate the success of the Anti Apartheid Movement (AAM) and the African National Congress (ANC) in ridding South Africa of the scourge of apartheid, anyone who has travelled there will tell you that there is still much that needs to be done.

Scotland’s former campaigners against apartheid know this more than most, and formed a successor organisation to AAM, Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA), to work for peace, democracy, reconstruction and development in Southern Africa, and works to increase knowledge and understanding in Scotland of that region, including the legacies of apartheid and its widespread destructive consequences.

ACTSA in Scotland runs an annual event around this time, marking the anniversary of the founding of the ANC in 1912. This is always a very social event and involves a buffet meal, a pay bar and a ceilidh - featuring the toe-tapping tunes of George Reid and his Ceilidh band! And all this for a Fiver!. 

It all takes place at the STUC, on January 15th, 2011 and is usually a great night.

Those of you who know me will, by now, be waiting for the punch line, and in order not to disappoint I have acquired a number of tickets for the number one social event of 2011! 

If you want to go please email me - chrisbartter@btinternet.com. See you there!

Cable gaffe does not mean Coalition in trouble - just the LibDems

Vince Cable’s ‘gaffe’, and those of other LibDem ministers, has - as many commentators have speculated - shone a light onto some deep fissures in the ConDem coalition.

However, it is not between the LibDems and the Tories that this split has widened, but in fact between the social and the economic Liberals - between the ‘Orange bookers’ (including Mr Cable, himself) and the local populists. Now we see why those of us in Glasgow, have little or no memory of Mr Cable’s period as a Cooncillor. He just wasn’t that good!

His excessive outburst about Murdoch -  does he really want to wage war? - means it is the liberal marketeers - in both the LibDems and the Tories - who are rubbing their hands. And it is why they can still support the old buffer. How else could they allow Mr Murdoch to increase his stranglehold on the UK media?

I can’t think of any politician - of the right or the left - that thinks (in public anyway) that News International gaining unfettered control of another major media organ is good news for us or for politics. But to the free marketeers, anything that stands in the way of millionaire businessmen spending their money the way they want, is bad economics. And, despite all the arguments to the contrary, they are predisposed to let Rupert have his way. That is, those who are not already predisposed to suck-up to him anyway. Vince has now allowed this to happen.

To all those who speculate about Vince’s resignation, or enforced reshuffling and any consequent split of the coalition, I would point out the overwhelming desire amongst key LibDems to cling onto power at all costs. Even at expense of the party itself, which is now far more at risk. Don’t overestimate the loyalty of Clegg, Laws, Alexander et al.

Any split will almost certainly not happen for a while if at all. The illusion of power is probably the hardest one to wake up to - particularly if your party hasn’t experienced it in living memory. But this latest affair has exposed the differences between the Orangeers - Nick Clegg, David Laws and Danny Alexander et al - and those party members who grew up during the period of the Liberal (in particular) campaigns on local democratic issues.

The Orange Bookers have far more in common with Cameron and Osborne than their election pronouncements would lead anyone to believe. The BBC  in 2008 reported Clegg as ‘advocating a huge increase in private sector involvement in schools and the health service. "Marrying our proud traditions of economic and social liberalism, refusing to accept that one comes at the cost of the other - on that point, if not all others, the controversial Orange Book in 2004 was surely right."’

He argued for the creation of schools financed by just about anybody - parents, charities or voluntary and private organisations, suggested radical reform of the NHS, allowing patients to be treated free in the private sector and opposed tax increases.

So, don’t be surprised that if splits come, they are in the LibDems, rather than between the LibDems and the Tories. But this will not, of course, mean a split in the government. Nick & Co will be as at home (maybe more so) in the Tory Party than their current abode. 

And don’t think that even this will happen soon. Vince has fed the story that the LibDems are a ‘radical wing’ in the coalition. It may be an illusion, but don’t bank on any LibDems waking up to it soon.  Power is - after all - what all those shiny-faced newbie party workers came to work for the party for!

Zippin' up my boots, goin' back to Netroots!

Recent violence arising from protests against the huge rise in English student tuition fees have served to slightly obscure the positive message that has come from these protests. The message - also commented on by some, not necessarily left-wing columnists - http://www.heraldscotland.com:80/comment/colette-douglas-home/political-awakening-of-a-new-generation-is-a-stirring-sight-1.1072816  is that students are becoming politically active again. This is a most welcome sight, and is paralleled by a reawakening in the Trade Union movement signalled by both increased activity of young members, and attempts by the leadership to reintroduce political awareness training, and to spread the use of new media and new styles of campaigning.

These developments are at early stages, of course, and could still fizzle out. Student politics still has the capability of dropping out of fashion as happened during the post-Thatcher years. And the fact that much of the resentment is down to a rapid disillusionment with Nick Clegg’s LibDems - who promised a radical change in British politics, and then delivered a pit prop for the Tory establishment - means that apathy might still win out. Remember the election lockouts at many uni area polling stations? But it looks more hopeful than for some time. 

The violence will not help the politicisation of the majority of these young people. On one hand it sends the message, that a cause only gets reported when violence flares - but conversely we also see that reports then concentrate on violence and disruption; the personal connections of protestors and targets; anything in fact - apart from the actual issue that caused the protests in the first place!

But there is much imagination tucked away in the protests that have been undertaken by other young campaigners. the use of ‘flashmobbing’ for example, to target businesses who have been in the frontline of tax dodging, or other antisocial activity (see http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/) is derived from art and dance initiatives of ‘spontaneous’ public performance and shows a) the importance that arts can bring to this struggle and b) the need to involve people and the wider community in this campaign. 

Trade unions also, where they still exist, have had too many years of marking time. Those of us who have been active for a while have noticed the absence of a generation or two of activists. In particular, the absence of political activity for at least a generation. We must take much of the blame for this - we didn’t train up our successors politically, concentrating too much on mechanism and process. But now there are strong signs that a new generation IS keen, willing and eager to take on the struggle. 

And political training is beginning once more. But this time it is being linked, not just with public demonstrations and protest, but the use of social networking, the internet, video clips, blogs and other accoutrements of the digital age. UNISONScotland’s recent MOBILISE festival took a weekend to take both trade union and community-based activists through both the politics of the fight, and the variety of avenues available to promote our cause. This not only dealt with media training, economics, and political lobbying, but involved cartooning, comedy and songwriting - not likely to be the Christmas no 1 but check it out !!  BTW the Christmas no 1 should be Captain Ska! 

Another important event is scheduled for the New Year in London. Netroots UK, on the 8 January promises to be the next step in developing campaigning against the ConDemNation. Priced at £5, it must be the best value conference covering a number of key organisations (Obama digital campaigners, anti-cuts websites, thinktanks) on the left. Hopefully it will also spark much new activity, and campaign ideas. Both students and trade unionists need these. 

And more than that, they need to remember that to be successful they need to connect with the community. Tossing fire extinguishers off roofs is unlikely to achieve that at this stage. See you in London.

CBI secrecy demands opening up access to information

A little while ago I wrote in this blog about the need to extend the coverage of Freedom of Information at a time of increasing pressure on public services and the increased arguments for privatisation/outsourcing. I referred to my belief that the private sector would want to hide what they did with our cash as maybe the ravings of an old cynic.

I didn’t expect that my cynicism about private industry’s inherent prejudice against transparency to be exemplified so soon, so I want to thank David Lonsdale of the CBI (Data Chief locked in row over FOI  - The Herald - Nov 8) for demonstrating so succinctly why it is essential that private firms delivering public services must be covered by Freedom of Information Law.

The CBI is a standard bearer in the fight for more and more privatisation - meaning our money is handed to Mr Lonsdale’s members to provide our services - but now they are demanding we shouldn’t be allowed to ask what they do with our cash! What are they trying to hide?

A better case for the need for extending the coverage has rarely been outlined.