TMP Online

As Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) announce quarterly profits of £772 million this week, cleaning workers and their supporters will be demonstrating at their London offices on Friday 12th February.

The demonstration is in protest at attacks on workers’ pay and the dismissal of Alberto Durango, the cleaners’ now former shop-steward.

Alberto and his supporters believe his sacking is directly related to his workplace union organising and campaigning work.

Many of the cleaners – who are members of the Unite trade union and are predominately migrants from West Africa, Latin America and some European countries – were involved in a campaign in 2008 to win the “London Living Wage” at UBS, currently £7.60 per hour.

Despite this victory, most workers still have to work multiple shifts in order to make ends meet. UBS has encouraged a race to the bottom resulting in their cleaning contractors cutting cleaning staff hours – therefore pay – or make redundancies.

This in contrast to UBS’ announcement on 9th February reporting a 34% increase in their bonus pool to £1.72 billion and their decision last year to increase their London banking staff wages by 15% – 20%.

“Maria” has been cleaning desks and toilets at the UBS Lombard Street offices for over 3 years.

She said:

The Company has broken their promise that they would not change our hours or conditions after we won the ‘Justice for Cleaners’ campaign. A year after getting an agreement on the living wage, we are still fighting. I just want to earn enough to be able to spend time with my family during the weekend.

Unite the Union representative Chris Ford said

The public are outraged by the continued and undeserved bankers’ bonuses since banks like UBS, Goldman Sachs and Royal Bank of Scotland have been bailed out by public money across the world.

What’s the bankers’ excuse for attacking the subsistence wages of the people who wipe their computer screens and clean their toilets?

Friday 12th February’s “Defend Living Wage – Justice for UBS Cleaners” demonstration is at 1pm outside UBS Capital, 100 Liverpool Street, London EC2M 2RH.

Hat/tip: Liberal Conspiracy

According to the latest estimates, the earthquake could have caused 100,000 deaths in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

The home of the world’s first and only successful slave revolt and the Western hemisphere’s first post-colonial black nation, Haiti was still struggling to recover from the four hurricanes that hit it in 2008 when around 1,000 people died and 800,000 were left homeless. Reports state that most of those who have escaped with their lives have spent their first night without any shelter, some even sleeping amongst dead bodies and this is likely to continue, whilst hundreds or possibly thousands are buried alive underneath the devastation.

This disaster is not only shocking in scale but especially shocking because of the inability of Haiti to help itself. Haitians have been struggling with chronic unemployment affecting 75% of the population, 70% without adequate access to sanitation; 78% of the population live on a meagre $2 a day (the so-called absolute poverty threshold). All this plus coups and civil wars have brought intermittent political stability since 1990.

Though Obama and many leaders in the international community have pledged emergency rescue assistance, and as I write NGOs and charities descend to deliver most-needed emergency relief. It will take more than this to help Haiti into a stronger nation, but international aid and interference in the past has moved Haiti away from policies that would have delivered a higher minimum wage and agricultural strength to provide food self-sufficiency to the policies of further impoverishment to stimulate “foreign investment”.

These problems however must be tackled another day, for now do we should do all we can to help Haiti.

TMPOnline Editor, Justin Baidoo responds to Rod Liddle’s infamous Spectator blog on Multi-culturalism and claims of Liddle’s racism.

Rod Liddle’s blog post entitled “Benefits of a multi-cultural Britain” attributes most of the high profile social ills (knife and gun crime, violent sexual crimes) to African Caribbean males. Aside from this being factually incorrect, he goes on the next day in response to a post on Diane Abbott’s blog to state that he hates racism and in an attempt to appear non-racist quotes Diane Abbott and Trevor “segregate black boys” Phillips which he portrays that they make similar points to his argument which he says is based on cultural rather than racist values.

Here he is being disingenuous, by deriding and highlighting the only contributions an ethnic group has brought to society as “rap music, goat curry”and laden “us” (read: indigenous whites) with an “alien” culture, it cannot be viewed by the impartial reader that he is giving an honest though brutal critique with problems in a community. He is denigrating the African-Caribbean community and suggesting that London would be better off without them.

Is he entitled to say it? Yes.  But let’s not pretend that it is not racism. You can attack ideas without slandering an entire community, Liddle references to multi-culturalism like many BNP activists often euphemistically describe their racist attacks as an “expose on the benefits of ‘enrichment’ and multi-culturalism” Liddle is neither naive or ignorant, he is forcefully made the point when publishing his post that he believes that London has suffered as a result of the presence of the African-Caribbean community. He is not pandering to the politics of the BNP but rather cheer leading them on, his claims of hating racism is as credible as Nick Griffin’s claims that the British National Party do not “discriminat[e] on grounds of colour”.

Though I am not blind to woefully high numbers of African descendant males involved in violent crime in London (they are not only African-Caribbean, but perhaps Rod couldn’t tell the difference), the answers do not lie in the politics of hate and reactionary anger but in precision and truth. No one is hiding these issues but only honesty will bring us forward not dangerous rhetoric.

If Rod Liddle doesn’t believe that lamenting the presence of a ethnic group and belittling the contributions of generations of Caribbean workers to curry goat isn’t racist then I would suggest he volunteers himself for a diversity course.

It can be frustrating to watch yet another sea of African children being used as window dressing for some other charity drive to guilt-trip the public into diving into their pockets. However last night’s Channel 4’s Dispatches was troubling viewing even for the hardened second generation African immigrant like myself.

Return to Africa’s Witch Children was intriguing follow up to the BAFTA and multi-award winning Saving Africa’s Witch Children. The first programme was harrowing and powerful, it instigated a deluge of international outrage towards the treatment of vulnerable children in Nigeria’s Akwa Ibom State. So much so that the State Government was duly embarrassed into bringing forth a Child Rights Act, which enshrined children’s right to education and criminalising the practice of stigmatising children as a witch. This state law however was 5 years overdue, under the then President Olusegun Obasanjo the federal government in conjunction with UNICEF had passed the Child’s Rights Act 2003 and by 2007 only 15 of Nigeria’s 36 State governments had enacted the Federal law.

It was pleasing to witness the admirable work of CRARN and Stepping Stone Nigeria; especially seeing the director of CRARN Sam Ikpe-Itauma’s struggle not only to provide shelter for the 170 children at his centre but also living with the death threats and alleged attempts made on his life from the hostile church leaders that have physically challenged and intimidated his organisation and partners such as the Nigerian Humanist Movement.

The idea that anyone can be a witch and therefore be bringing bad luck or “curses” upon a community is neither new nor uniquely African. European history has documented the persecution of (mostly) women as witches as far back as 1400s with the infamous witch-hunts. The myth of children witches in Africa is a relatively new and was believed to have been popularised in African communities during 1990s. This was in conjunction however along with Pentecostal or “Charismatic” forms of Christianity and it has grown exponentially and affects across Africa, and even the Diaspora in Europe as shocking demonstrated with Victoria Climbié.

Victoria Climbie was tortured to death partly because of witchcraft (source: BBC News Online)

Undoubtedly these myths fester in the bog of ignorance and poverty that many Africans face, in situations not dissimilar to their 15^th Century European counterparts, but it is not only poverty but also the predatory nature of “Christian” preachers and “prophets” that claim that they can deliver these children through abusive measures. Also bearing responsibility are the Nollywood movies that use the spiritualist themes not as tales of fiction but as propaganda portraying “true stories” of cautionary value. The fight of myth busting and the cultural purging of these attitudes are needed but also the fight for ending poverty is required as these children are not only the victims of superstition but of illiteracy and economic underdevelopment.

Hugh Goulbourne argues that more needs to be done to ensure National Lottery sports funding benefits less affluent urban communities.

Like most other Brits I am clearly delighted at the unprecedented level of success of our Olympians in Beijing this year. But, I am surely also not alone in wondering why, given that this is the Peoples’ games, our medal haul does not reflect the wide ethnic and social mix of our great nation.

Our overall tally of 47 medals, 19 of them Gold and fourth place behind the three world super powers (USA, China and Russia), is clearly a tremendous achievement and the athletes, coaches and other Team GB members deserve a lot of credit.

Credit must also go to the National Lottery, and its founder John Major, which has funded our athletes and coaches over the past decade in the build up to these games. However, our euphoria should not overshadow the unfortunate reality, which even Major himself has admitted, that most of this money is not reaching the communities that are most in need of it.

The national lottery has delivered significant finances to sports. However, as any inner city volunteer can tell you, accessing and sustaining the funding that is distributed through Sports England is an arbitrary and convoluted process. It is a system which unfairly disadvantages those communities without the actors that are able to devote the time and to access the skills needed to construct business plans for the development of the facilitates and programs that will support the sport of choice in their community.

Well versed in the influencing skills need to tease money out of the unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats at Sports England, middle class sports have thrived under this system. Over a third of our Olympic medals have come in sailing, rowing and canoeing, the preserve of the rural middle classes. The vast majority of the rest have come in cycling, again hardly a main stream pursuit in our less affluent urban communities.

This is compared to just seven in athletics and boxing, with Christine Ohuruogu and James Degale left alone to fly the gold medal flag for Team GB. These are sports that demand simply a pair of good lungs, a willing mind and a good coach. They are not therefore closed to the vast majority of our population in the same way as sailing, rowing or canoeing which rely heavily on highly technical and expensive equipment.

None of this should detract from the enormous goodwill created towards Team GB, Sports England and the Olympic Games in 2012. But as the outstanding results of our swimmers demonstrates, it is not impossible to put in place the club structures that offer support to schools and communities in more deprived areas.

The great metropolitan swimming clubs have demonstrated how the injection of a bit of social capital can enable these communities to develop the programmes and plans needed to secure continued Sports England backing. Given the location of the 2012 games in East London, then it is to be hoped that Government can follow this model and work with Sports England, local councils and the third sector to put in place the support mechanisms needed to bring through our own Usain Bolt. That way we will truly make this into the Peoples’ Games.

Hugh Goulbourne is a school governor and community director of a new deal for communities regeneration trust.

Philip Glanville argues that local campaigning is the route to electoral success for Labour.

Following Labour’s losses in Crewe and Glasgow East, barely a day goes by someone or other being accused of plotting. Get any group of activists or wonks together and you’ll hear various ideas to get us out of this mire. Looking back at the successes and failures of the last year, it’s easy to pick out the ‘toffs’ campaign and problems at the top. But what about the deeper, more unsettling questions at the heart of the Labour party’s current problems?

Campaigning in Crewe, I was struck by the lack of long-term organisation. The late, great Gwyneth Dunwoody was a formidable parliamentarian and much-respected MP, but the local party in Crewe seemed moribund at best. Sadly, it was clear that canvassing and campaigning had not taken place for a generation. No historic data, no personal relationships, no record of local campaigning.

In estate after estate, there was no sense that Labour had been talking to local people. We hadn’t fostered a sense that the party was on their side – campaigning for better schools, safer streets and new homes. Ten pence tax and Gordon Brown did not create these problems, they merely exacerbated them.

Oppositions do well in by-elections not only because governments are unpopular mid-term, but because they often take place in the soft underbelly of the thought-to-be-safe seat. Faced with an unfavourable national climate and an ill-judged campaign, there was little we could have done to stave off defeat. Crewe and Glasgow are better after eleven years of Labour Government. Yet, for years it seems nobody has talked to local people about what we are doing and why.

Our supporters don’t need Facebook, they want us to talk face to face: in their local pub, at the church fete, at a residents’ meeting or on the doorstep. It may be old-fashioned or unsexy, but it works. You can’t just turn up every four years (or, even worse, mid-term) and expect people to vote for you.

Clearly being in power is vital. We should never lose sight of that aim or hold the deluded view that we need to be in opposition to renew. Yet being in government can hold the party. Leaders inevitably start to listen to civil servants over party members and citizens. We get caught up in the idea that a good policy and a slick soundbite is all it takes to succeed.

The underreported lesson of the May elections was how local parties up and down the country bucked the losing trend: from Oxford to Hastings, from Haringey to Slough, we held and gained seats from the Lib Dems and the Tories. The common theme? Strong local messages and a strong local campaign.

Party structures are often highlighted as a reason people are turned off by party politics: having sat through many GCs and branch meetings, I agree that it’s not for everyone and shouldn’t be the only form of involvement. Yet it is an important building block from which to sustain a campaigning party. Throwing it overboard to somehow broaden our reach could be as damaging as seeing structures as the be all and end all.

Where I would advocate serious change, however, is from the top down, with MPs, peers, MEPs, AMs, MSPs and councillors.

There are many, many Labour MPs who work all year round, quietly building the party’s presence in their community. Yet, there are many others who haven’t knocked on a door in years – who are happier on TV or in the newspapers criticising the government. We will always have, and need, critical voices. We don’t want an army of nodding dogs in parliament as fodder for the whips. But all Labour MPs have obligations to the party and one of these must be to campaign for its ongoing success.

Contrast this with the local leadership shown by councillors in Hackney, Oxford, and Lambeth and MPs such as Siobhan McDonagh, Jim Knight and Martin Salter; they know that campaigning is at the heart of being a Labour representative. That means MPs doing regular campaigning on top of their representational role. The best MPs are already excellent campaigners, but the NEC and party whips should be less concerned with votes in parliament as a measure of loyalty and more worried about how many voters they have spoken to. If MPs aren’t up for leading from the front they should be out – deselected. As simple as that.

True renewal will only come when we become closer to the people. Let’s take a good look at the Britain we have been a part of creating, look at what works and what doesn’t. Let’s return politics to the people by talking to them about their priorities.

Philip Glanville is Labour councillor for Hoxton.

Ade Sawyerr argues that it is up to us as individuals and members of community organisations to be vocal, to be willing to get involved and to ensure the right political and economic structures are put in place to tackle knife and gun crime.

Youth crime has always been with us in London but has become more topical in recent times because of the increased levels of death and serious injuries involving young people. Youth crime has escalated from the use of fisticuffs to more violent acts of stabbing and shooting as the ‘modus operandi’ to settle most arguments and disagreements. Now the must-have accessories are more often than not, knives and guns and possession is often fuelled by gangs, drugs, honour and respect issues.

The perpetrators of these severe forms of crime are getting younger by the day. Young people are trying to formulate their own ways of dealing with the bullies; they carry knives because they think they will look tough and this will be a deterrent. It is no longer cool to report this to their parents or the right authorities because their perception is that the authorities cannot protect them. Instead they seek protection in gangs where peer pressure is exerted on them through the initiation, honour and loyalty to the gang and end up ready to avenge wrongs done to their collective or prove how tough they are – a vicious herd instinct comes into play.

The problems with carrying guns and knives is that there is a high probability that they will be used and once this happens the problems escalates for all in the community. The irony is that the perpetrators of knife crimes are also more likely to be victims of crime themselves.

The election of a new mayor in the capital presents a real opportunity for past policies to be reviewed, bearing in mind that ‘quick fixes and quick wins’ have not been ineffective in tackling crime. A one size fits all approach will also not work because enduring solutions are needed.

Without the involvement of community groups working in concerted action with public agencies and the young people themselves, the issue will remain topical and more knee-jerk reactions will waste a lot of resources without coming to the crux of the issue.

Past initiatives that concentrated on the criminal justice system, police, prison and probation as tools with which youth crime can be tackled successfully, have not worked. Where people of African Caribbean and Asian descent are concerned they have been detrimental and only succeeded in harassing young people and turning some of the young ones into hardened criminals who will reoffend time and again.

The suggestion that tough sentencing will deter young people from carrying knives is unlikely to work, we must not only be more imaginative but we must seek realistic solutions on prevention. Tough sentencing is a stage too late and will happen when people have already been killed. Besides, Current statistics show that there are as many young black people going to jail as are going into university, a situation that needs to be addressed and redressed.

Traditional faith based organisation that are used for diversion work also have to engage in outreach work to get at the young people. The bad boys are outside the radar of the do good organisations, religion is not a central part of their family lives any longer. Specialist organisations dedicated to diversion, youth offending and rehabilitation are not always successful with prevention work because they are not set up to work with ordinary young people but with young people who are at risk of offending or who have started doing so. Because of the inability of these specialist organisations to resolve the problem, A London wide comprehensive approach using voluntary and community organisations is now being advocated.

Read the rest of this entry »

TMP regular, Tim Caswell ,reviews Saturday’s “Born Free and Equal” Compass conference.

When a young colleague joined the Labour Party last year, bringing down the average age of his constituency party by fifty three years, I wondered if he felt like a rat joining a sinking ship. Obviously a glutton for punishment, he asked my advice recently about whether to join Compass (Direction for the Democratic Left) or the Fabian Society (no slogan on their website, suggestions on a postcard please).

I told him that I thought that Compass was younger, more vital and dynamic but The Fabians where more mature reflective and cerebral, and suggested that you might visualise Compass as an ambitious activist in a linen suit in search of a safe seat and a Latte, compared to a Fabian who is an ambitious policy wonk in a dark suit in search of a safe seat and a library. I may have used the phrase, “complete wonker” but it was said with affection.

Then I suggested that he come with me to the Compass (Born Free and Equal) Conference, by far the biggest gathering on the centre left as a visitor, and decide on the day? His dilemma was postponed as Compass was not accepting new members on the day and The Fabians were too busy wonking when we arrived late to staff their stall.

Our arrival coincided with Harriet Harman’s departure reminding us of Churchill’s joke that an empty Taxi pulled up and Attlee got out, except she got in. We missed Ed “brother of brains” Milliband too, although he stayed all day to listen and talk to people.

At a seminar led by Searchlight’s brilliant editor, Nick Knowles, the audience seemed to think that the rise of fascism in Rome and Denmark is New Labour’s fault. We heard from a prospective parliamentary candidate from the north who still thinks tax and spend is a universal panacea and from a brave activist from Barking. Both illustrated that Labour being an electoral party not a political party limits and defines its response to the BNP and that we are too introspective. The former prevents us from making electoral pacts to defeat them; the latter inspires us to write sad looking leaflets calling for resistance, “by any means necessary” (something the SWP and BNP have in common).

After a bacon Bagel (and Trevor Phillips who was present said that multi culturalism has failed) we went to see a national treasure without walking all the way to the British Museum. Tony Benn was youthful, charming and funny. His supporters are from the “traitors sneer” stanza of the Red Flag and cannot conceal their glee that New Labour is in decline. They have opposed everything for so long that they are very good at it, and together with their principled stand against the war in Iraq and Trident their main distaste for Blair stems from their suspicion that he won three elections. They prefer the good old days when the 1945 Labour government failed to win a second term!

Benn said if two million Trotskyites had really marched through London. “We are in a better position than I thought”, for some reason he did not quote Trotsky saying that he supported Labour, “like a rope supports a hanged man”, but Benn’s representatives on earth, Labour Briefing, are keeping that spirit very much alive. Like us, Tony Benn had obviously not seen the size of the plenary session, when he made the discourteous and sectarian quip that next year Compass might like to hold an event on the fringes of his meeting.

The afternoon concluded with a question time and rapturous applause for the left’s lost and lamented Leader, Ken Livingstone and a keynote address from Polly Toynbee. Nicknamed Polly Technic by Private eye and courted by Cameron, Toynbee is now presumably a new University? If she is, enrol as soon as possible – her evidence based defence of progressive taxation was a masterpiece. How do you follow that? You ask Compass’s patron Saint Jon Cruddus to wind up and he does it so brilliantly it feels like listening to a modern day epic poem, Prometheus unbound in Essex. He is a throwback to the era when Mardy Colliery in Wales had one of the best libraries in the world, a working class intellectual. He mentioned Shumpeter in his manifesto for Labour Deputy Leader last year and got more first preferences than any other candidate. Today he mentions: fair taxation; no age limit to the minimum wage; a level playing field for agency and full time workers and more, with the simple rhetorical flourish before each item of posing the question, “Why don’t we?”

Gordon Brown stands accused amongst other things of flogging off the gold reserves. Jon Cruddus is enlightened social democratic solid gold. Put him in the Cabinet? Why don’t we? If Brown does not do something dramatic soon starting with a major reshuffle, New Labour will be sleep walk into electoral defeat and political oblivion. If he does nothing or too little too late, at least one modern day Fabius has a compass to guide us in opposition.

Tim Caswell is a Labour Party member of over 30 years standing and a writer. His radio play, Extra Time was produced by the BBC and he has written for the film, Nineliveslondon.