Life in Hebron/Al-Khalil
Shop welded closed on Shuhada Street, Hebron.
Hebron, called Al-Khalil by Palestinians, has a reputation for being one of the most difficult cities in the West Bank. It’s true to stay it’s tense, but there’s much more to Hebron. In my latest podcast with colleague Lars, we discuss initial reactions and share our experience of living here over the last two months as international observers for the EAPPI.
Listen to the podcast on This is not BBC Hebron/Al-Khalil.
The BDS movement
Not BBC Hebron/Al-Khalil
There’s plenty of excitement amongst pro-Palestinian activists about the growing BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement. But are activists engaged in the campaign weighing up the pros and cons of using particular tactics or are they hiding behind the “led by Palestinian civil society” banner? Should we be campaigning for a more nuanced form of BDS campaign which takes account of our own countries’ responsibility for upholding the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank? Here I discuss the issue with a fellow EAPPI observer in Hebron as part of a new podcast This is not BBC Hebron/Al-Khalil.
Democracy and Process: The Real Power of Occupy LSX
General Assembly at Occupy LSX
Writing from Occupy LSX, Ian Chamberlain argues the real power of the movement is the new world of possibilities it has created, built on consensus, cooperation and a rejection of the corporate-guided, party-political approach that has dominated the country for generations.
I now know that I’m hardly alone in thinking, and feeling, that for too long the views and needs of ordinary people have been ignored by our “democracy.” The sense of powerlessness that I experienced after I lost my job, when I saw so many opportunities disappear – such as going back to college or university to re-train, as fees tripled beyond my reach and as I struggled to find enough work to pay the rent – I experienced this as an individual, but now I see it throughout my South London community.
Demonstrating the alternative
…on a carpet of shimmering police epaulettes
I started the day with a group of people who practise anarchist principles everyday. We met at 11am in a plain old building just off the Strand in Westminster. As we drank our pre-march coffees with curdled soya milk and ate our home-baked chocolate cup cakes, we discussed plans for the day ahead.
Police barricade Top Shop
A half-hour moment of reflection, we stood in silence on the street outside as confused by-passers, not used to the sight of silent protest, read our banners and slogans. The group’s commitment to equality, autonomy, justice, a mistrust of leaders, icons and concentrations of power, and a long history of confrontation with the state, protest and non-violent direct action for causes ranging from slavery to war, reveals a lot in common with anarchists. They just happen to be called Quakers.
We joined the march at Trafalgar Square, greeted by an enormous, and insanely friendly, Unison contingent high on the delights of whistles, chanting and waving mass-produced union flags and balloons. Standing, as I did, at the front of our block holding a “Quakers for Justice” banner, I enjoyed many frivolous reactions from fellow protesters, from “it must be a bit noisy for you lot” to “the problem with you guys is that you give religion a good name” but also joyous banter as we marched together as one.
Anyone who joined the march on Saturday must surely feel that as far as walking from A to B in front of “important” buildings and the gaze of photographers and TV cameras, it was enormously successful. An impressive turnout (over 500,000), and a sense of inclusiveness and diversity made for a dynamic yet peaceful demonstration. Perhaps not until our group reached Hyde Park could we truly appreciate what we’d been a part of. The park was brimming with hundreds of thousands who had travelled from all over the UK, representing trades unions, churches, women, queers, socialists, anarchists, at least one Daily Mail reader, and many more for whom this was an entirely new experience, both young and old.
I remember almost nothing of the speeches made to the gathering crowds. My pen struggled to move across my notebook’s empty sheet to record their hollow words. They were mediocre and never inspirational. Every time I suspected Ed Miliband might just have built enough momentum to be rewarded with cheers, it bottomed out. But the crowds were good humoured and willed the speakers to succeed as they listened intently and clapped at pregnant pauses. Perhaps the highlight was a brief mention of national strikes when the sound of the masses showed their most audible support.
Running late, I left the park at 3.15pm to get up to Oxford Circus where UK Uncut, a new but highly successful campaigns group focussing on tax evasion, planned a mass direct action after two other events earlier in the afternoon. On my way, a teenage boy, with a black hoodie and young, fearful eyes peering out over a scarf, collided with me. Several imitations ran after him, panic stricken, adrenaline flowing, yelling “go left, they’re behind us!” I asked them who they were running from. One of them angrily replied “the police are charging this way!” whilst avoiding eye contact. I glared back from where they came and saw blue smoke billowing out of a pub, but there were no police in sight. It reminded me of the “knock and run” game I played as a child, where the sense of risk, rebellion and humour of the occasion was exaggerated by the innocence and safety of a small community. Perhaps I’m wrong, but politics didn’t seem to be their game. At the same time I felt sympathy, contemplating the future they might face if we fail to set a new political agenda.
As I walked along Oxford Street, the evidence of previous actions was all around; paint splattered across high street bank windows and my boots crunched on broken glass from the Top Shop frontage. I heard the end of a debrief from my friend when I caught up with her just before the spirited but anxious mob of hundreds, who had gathered at Oxford Circus, ran after the red umbrella which would direct us to the secret “criminal” shop.
Away from the bleeding edge of running activists, I just missed my opportunity to enter Fortnum and Mason. Around three hundred or so occupiers did manage to enter the shop – an icon of remote privilege and corporate tax dodging – before police lines barricaded the entrance. As I stood around for the next twenty minutes, paint bombs were thrown and the usual cramming and pushing ensued. The Tweets that appeared on my mobile reporting the singing and dancing inside – and later hearing that no criminal damage had been administered in the shop – served to inspire but also evidenced how well organized these direct actions are, with there sense of purpose and personal discipline.
Wandsworth epaulette at Trafalgar Square
In the stalemate, my friend and I decided to move down to Trafalgar Square where people planned to camp overnight. We took a break, grabbed some food and followed the direction of the booming samba beats. As Nelson’s Column came in sight, the first thing that struck me was how dark it was. All of the lights that normally point to the square were off and a small number of police surrounded the fountains. Just down from the National Gallery a growing circle of people danced around thumping drums. A sound system could be heard from the crowds moving to the beats at the Column, and people drew murals of peace and protest on the ground with huge pieces of fudge chalk. The numbers were never huge, maybe a few hundred, but it had the atmosphere of a festival; it felt free and safe, like a space we’d won the right to. It was ours.
I should note at this point that I had witnessed almost no police aggression up until now. Whilst legal observers from Liberty milled around earlier in the day, the police were calm and well behaved, and large sections of the march had been unmanned. But as the party people stuck stickers to the Olympic clock, small numbers of police moved quickly to surround the edifice pushing young and old out of their way. Seconds later, huge reinforcements came rushing down the steps from the gallery with batons and shields. The crowds were shoved and pushed around as the police assembled their defence line. The party vibe quickly evaporated as shouting and chaotic running around replaced the music and dancing.
As the batons hit, new police lines emerged around the square preventing quick escape while another line forced people at the fountains towards the column. As the odd idiot or two threw sticks and bottles, protesters stood in front of the police to form a human shield while shouting “no violence!” in a desperate attempt to bring calm but were rewarded by thumping shields on their backs, forcing them to the ground.
Escaping the column kettle, I witnessed a young girl being dragged along at the bottom of the steps by two officers. The space that was now clear revealed a carpet of shimmering police epaulettes. I looked back towards the column, and there they were, a line of unknown police officers without their IDs.
As the kettle was held, I spoke to a police officer as I had done at Parliament Square in December. We discussed politics and police tactics. “I don’t know why we’re ordered to do this” he whispered nervously. “I reckon if we cleared off, and left you to it, you’d all be gone in half an hour cos it’s fucking freezing.”
Creating space for radical thought
How the BBC reminded us how little is questioned
Two weeks ago, Jeremy Paxman interviewed the radical linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky for a highly edited, seven-minute interview on Newsnight. A rare opportunity to hear a radical voice in the mainstream media.
A friend once described Chomsky as a Yoda for peaceniks, conjuring up the comical image of the wise old Jedi master from Star Wars, with his unusual speech pattern and meditative calmness. Indeed, Chomsky’s presentational style is an anachronism in an age where the media expect short, punchy answers. He said himself at the University College of London a day after the Paxman interview – referring to how Twitter sometimes prevented ideas from being understood – it was as though “nothing over 140 characters existed.”
Watching the interview, you’d be forgiven for thinking Paxman was in poor health or perhaps not even in the room while the interview was conducted and pasted in later. Paxman was reduced to complete silence whilst he was assaulted with fact after fact as Chomsky recalled the West’s interventions in the Middle East. This was uncharacteristic behaviour for the BBC’s longest serving Newsnight presenter, with a reputation for aggressive and incisive questioning, and a salary of over £1 million.
Silence was only broken when Paxman asked Chomsky to compare President Obama’s record with George W. Bush’s time in office. When Chomsky suggested that “in many ways it has been worse,” before he could complete his answer, Paxman bellowed “Why!”, struggling to conceal his bewildered astonishment through a snigger. Perhaps Paxman simply reflected how a great deal of the audience felt when they heard those words uttered, but it also demonstrated how rare the occasion was; an apparently well-informed presenter seemed totally ignorant about the views of perhaps one of the most prolific and influential radical intellectuals of our time.
There are signs that consciousness is growing about the institutional characteristics of media organizations which lead to the bland and dreary sea of sameness that BBC news coverage exemplifies. One such sign is found in the work of the web site Media Lens, which applies critical theory to familiar media sources such as the Guardian and Independent. An important question is raised. If radical perspectives are almost uniformly barred, how does the BBC deliver its promise and hold power to account?
When the disaffected question the BBC, they are pointed to guests who are “critical” of government, but this again demonstrates the BBC’s own ignorance. The guests they parade are white men with the same vocabulary and principle beliefs as the white men they criticize. It’s amusing to think that perhaps the BBC’s most radical output is Songs of Praise where we sometimes here about concepts that contradict “free” markets, corporate and military power, and cosy chats with the great and the good, for which Andrew Marr is now infamous.
To address these problems, we must reclaim the word radical.
It’s interesting to note how the media conflates radicalism with extremism. Apparently radical now means Islamic terrorist, the BNP, or some other “extreme” group. Is this not just a mechanism for defending the status quo? The fear then emerges that if you invite more Left radicals on TV, “neutrality” requires that equal representation be given to the Right. This paternalism assumes that the public need to be protected from dangerous ideas and, more importantly, ignores the existing bias that the media self-deceptively calls “balance,” acting as a disguised tyranny. Should we fear school children discussing Nazism because it might lead to fascism and racism?
Forgiving Twitter for a moment, the microblogging site was awash with comments after the Chomsky interview, with people enthusiastically posting about an extended edition. There is, indeed, an enormous appetite for radical thought and we hear a lot about the growth of new media. This is fertile ground for a movement to challenge the mainstream media, and the BBC as a public service broadcaster is surely a prime target? Media Lens’s e-mail campaigns and the Morning Star’s “Get us back on the BBC” campaign have already shown signs of success as journalists have made corrections to articles and at least mentioned an alternative publication on the Today programme a few days ago. But why stop there?
The BBC needs to re-evaluate its naïve belief in neutrality, but it won’t do that without a fight. We need to highlight its inadequacies by defining new principles. For example, is not a better definition of “balance” about providing enough time for ideas to be understood? New ideas, or unfamiliar ideas, would therefore require more time than old, because they refer to concepts that we might never have heard of.
Such a definition of balance would surely turn the BBC on its head, and extend its current news offer to do far more than ‘educate’ and instead allow it to begin to inform.
