Woolas Detained

Phil Woolas, the minister ultimately responsible for the inhumane system of detention of asylum seekers was ‘detained’ in his office for half an hour by members of ‘Manchester No Borders’.

I can only commend this action as exactly the kind of non-violent direct action which should be part of the political strategy.

Their excellent statement on the current situation:

2,500 people are currently detained in privately-owned immigration prisons in Britain. They are held for an indefinite period, but a significant number are detained for over 12 months. Never mind the debate on 42 days detention without charge for terror suspects. Here we have 30,000 people every year locked up without trial or sentence; 2,000 of them children.

Why? Because they (or their parents) were born on the wrong side of the border, in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Zimbabwe or DR Congo that are being torn apart by atrocious wars, whose natural resources are being exploited by multi-national corporations, where human rights are a farce, where political activity is punished with torture or death.

It would be too easy to make Phil Woolas the sole responsible for this systematic imprisonment of asylum seekers. For a start there are the corporations that profit from the expansion and privatisation of the prison-industrial complex. The longer G4S, GEO or Kalyx can detain migrants, the more money they make. But the policy of immigration detention is also carried by a dominent nationalist ideology that is carried by all political parties.

As the recession leads to unemployment, forced evictions and community tension, Phil Woolas’s response has been nationalist too, reiterating the British jobs for British workers slogan. Migrants are not to blame for the recession, which has been caused by an economic system of exploitation, facilitated by the current and past political elite, and of which migrants are the first and most vulnarable victims.

We are now at a point in time where it becomes obvious that a response to an international crisis has to be international solidarity and cooperation. While the political elites conveniently blame immigrants for the recession, we take inspiration from the Greek insurgency after the shooting of Alexis, from protests that forced out the Icelandic government, from the student and workers struggles in France and Italy, all of which stood in solidarity with the migrant communities that had come under attack from their governments.

The protests against the G20 London summit at the end of this month are the first testing ground for a non-nationalist, anti-capitalist response to the crisis.

The Power of Renewables

The Scientific American this month includes and article on Alternative Energy, in other words the energy which is soon going to have to become mainstream if we wish to avoid climate breakdown.

It states that currently renewables make up less than 7% of US consumption. Most of the EU is not much better. It’s a very interesting article although it leaves me with frustration about how little has been done so far despite the technology being there. Why should we have to wait for it to become profitable before we do something that is clearly in the interests of humanity?

Given how even moderate voices are expressing frustration and the scary predictions coming out of the Copenhagen conference on global warming, can catastrophe really be averted by capitalist solutions? Is capitalism for taming?

Sean Thompson write in October last year on this very topic and his article continues to be some of the best explanation and analysis I have read in the last few months. The Green New Deal, one of the more radical options on the table when it was written (although even at the time nowhere near radical enough) seems like a real puppy now and is even being touted by Al Gore. At the time, my belief was that although it might have helped solve the immediate crisis, it wouldn’t solve the longer-term one. Now, I am certain that the Green New Deal, which uses the market to provide funding for large renewable projects among other things, cannot solve either.

It is high time nations looked beyond the capitalist mind-set, whose solution is always more of the same. Manufactured wants (do we really need a new phone every year?), the breakdown of communities and the disincentivising of sharing our material needs all contribute to global warming and all are inherent within the unstable system that is capitalism. It really is the end of capitalism or the end of the world as we know it. The market must be overcome and replaced by the needs of humanity and the planet.

The plus side, of course, is that if we do manage to steer an ecosocialist solution to this crisis, we will not only have solved this crisis but will have made a better world for our descendants.

(apologies for incoherency!)

Did anyone say Spring???

St Anne’s Churchyard in Limehouse (East London) today: