A post that has probably been made, in various forms, after every left-wing demonstration in history.

I was on a demonstration this morning, called at two days notice, walking from Bethnal Green to Threadneedle Street in memorial of Ian Tomlinson and other victims of violence by police forces, and pressing for independent investigation and review of police tactics. I haven’t caught up on blogging from other people there, and information about the organisers seemed pretty scanty (of course, I am a comparative outsider here, I wasn’t even at any G20 protests). There were a lot of leaflets from this group being handed out, which emphasised the non-political nature of their aims, but most of the banners were Socialist Worker provided; anyway, I wasn’t sure beforehand exactly who I was getting into bed with, but I thought it was an important enough cause to go along. I’m still glad I did, but I had some fairly massive reservations and some things made me outright angry.

A lot of it was good. It was – at least up to the point at which I left, of which more anon – entirely peaceful as far as I could see, I walked up and down the column of people a bit and didn’t see any clashes with the police escort. Still, my uncharitable cynicism started early, as the leader of the demo made a short speech on the steps of Bethnal Green saying “We want to keep our message focussed”: I looked around, and a Stop The War group were out with an enormous banner. Wow, focussed. Still, at least there weren’t any of the ubiquitous anti-Israel posters, I suppose.

There wasn’t much to report from the walk itself, which I suppose is a good thing in itself. It was sombre, fairly quiet and dignified. It was when we got to the spot where Ian Tomlinson died, where several marchers laid flowers and there were a few short speeches, that I started getting angry. Mostly, there was a case of extreme unpleasantness when the sister of Sean Rigg, a Brixton resident who died in police custody and whose family have been subject to repeated hold-ups in attempting to investigate his death, started to speak about their experiences and the importance of police accountability. Her voice cracked slightly as she said we just want to know the truth, and at that point one guy at the back shouted at her, “Bollocks – the police murdered him and you know it!”. Another man from elsewhere in the crowd started shouting about the “fucking pigs”, and they traded shouts for a short while before either getting bored or being thankfully shushed. Yeah, interrupting a bereaved sister, frickin’ classy.

The speech after that, by one of the organisers, again ran the gamut from “the bankers are the real enemies” to “why aren’t the police arresting war criminals” to “we didn’t vote for Gordon Brown/New Labour!” [there was a fairly loose argument here, so I may have misinterpreted, but the latter seemed intended to invalidate government authority]. Which continued to irritate me: while I presume we can mostly agree on elective dictatorships being Bad, I find the “I didn’t vote for x” argument a deeply self-centred poor replacement for arguments based on, oh, consideration for how policies affect the rest of the population. As the electoral system works at the moment, Labour won a majority, are in government, and have done much (oh, understatement of the year) I consider worth protesting. If (okay, when) the Conservatives win the next election, I will want to cry and stick my head in a bucket of water, and I will doubtless have much to go out and protest against, but I really hope I will be able to formulate better arguments than those based on my own super-special vote.

I left at this point, due to the combination of toe-shattering rage at the hecklers, irritation and weariness at the aforementioned speech and the shouts from all around me about capitalism and warmongers, and a general feeling of discomfort at the inability to articulate a clear, focussed case for what the march was about. The overwhelming feeling that I took away was: would it kill people to just have a demonstration on one thing?

The thing is, I’m a bleeding-heart leftie, but I am some way from being a socialist; maybe this just wasn’t my demo. But at the same time…I respect the organisers for pulling something together at very short notice, but why shouldn’t it have been my demo? Or to rephrase in a less self-centred way: why can a demonstration in favour of the peaceful right to demonstrate and against police violence not be conducted in a focussed manner, without being hijacked by general Marxist talking points? What, there aren’t enough anti-capitalist/anti-government/anti-war demonstrations to go round already? That wasn’t what this was supposed to be about. You don’t need to be a socialist – or hate the “fucking pigs”, for that matter – to think that the emerging allegations from the G20, and the long history previous deaths from police violence or oversight, are horrific. Preaching to the choir only goes so far.

Anyway. I will be interested to see what, if any, coverage it gets. Libellum has made two excellent and detailed posts with more links: tracking the press coverage and eye-witness reports from the G20 protests, and “Ian Tomlinson’s death, while tragic, is not the whole story”.

Insta-reaction post.

Shit.

I just got back from an Indelicates gig, which was not as good as the one I saw last summer, but was at a club night designed to promote disabled access to live music, and therefore among other things had a rather wonderful man on stage signing all the lyrics including the opening lines to New Art For The People. I had a good time.

But.

There’s a video of Ian Tomlinson being grabbed from behind, unprovoked, walking down a relatively quiet street on his own, and beaten by a police officer. God.

You know, the man who died at the G20 protests, when initial reports claimed (without foundation) that protesters had impeded and attacked police medics trying to help. As I said in an email to my parents last week, riffing off a point cannonsatdawn also made: Gosh, the Murdoch press are claiming that the unwashed masses were responsible for their own misfortune by attacking policemen, based entirely on anon police testimony. Where does that sound familiar from…damn, it’s on the tip of my tongue…I just can’t imagine why I have this nagging sense of scepticism!

I wish I hadn’t been right to be cynical. I really don’t want to fall into the trap of making blanket statements about the police any more than the protesters, even if there were clear failures in strategy last week and it is just true that some people will take advantage of a uniform and club. But, ugh. Gods, his poor family.

Another tabloid rant – no! wait! come back!

Oh good, the Mail is being disgusting again. Because for God’s sake, it’s all about the man’s feelings and taking every opportunity to paint the plaintiff as a nasty unreliable slut. This is so depressing.

I’m sure this reporting hasn’t been confined to my least favourite organ of the press, but this particularly sticks in my throat. They, like the rest of the press, vilified (not without good reason) the Met for letting John Worboys go so long without being arrested after multiple reports, but that was just a week-long interlude in their constant repetition of rape myths and victim-blaming that lead to people – including police and juries – not taking women’s, especially women who’d been drinking, testimonies seriously. How dare they cry crocodile tears for one set of rape survivors and whisper “well, what did she expect” behind their hands about another. How dare they.

I wish I didn’t have the urge to read up on this stuff in my lunch hour. At least we have the Daily Quail.

Third-Generation Immigrants Cause Cancer

Wow. Just…wow. We all know the unholy Mail/Express duo are filled with scum-sucking racists who can’t make it two days without creating dichotomies between “immigrants” and “British people”, but they aren’t normally quite so barefaced about it.

However although the figures from the Government’s Office for National Statistics show an increase in numbers of foreign born people they still fail to record the true impact of immigration because they record their children as British rather than second or third generation immigrants.
- Steve Doughty and James Slack, Mail, 25/02/09

So…when, exactly, are people whose families settled here allowed to call themselves British? For a paper that loves to have conniption fits over ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘isolationist communities’ Tearing Britain Apart, it sure does like to promote the idea that there is only one possible way of being British (and that way, dare I say it, is rather easier for those of us from the right places).

Theyorkshergob has dubbed this the Daily Mail Racial Purity Test. I am currently a bit confused, because I pass it but am, as we all know, a migrant. Tough one.

The enemies of reason has also written about this today:
This is the language of the extreme right. Not the ordinary right. Not New Labour. Not the Conservative Party. Maybe not even UKIP. This is much more extreme than that. And this has been written, not in the opinion section under a columnist’s byline, where it can be written off as being part of a ‘broad church’ of opinion. No, this has been written by a journalist, supposedly as a news story.

I would definitely say the language in the article counts as a dog-whistle. The Mail may disavow the BNP, but that doesn’t stop them using their language and opening their comments section as an unmoderated sandpit for their members to play in.

And Sunny Hundal notes that 5cc, sterling chronicler of tabloid bull, has been following James Slack’s anti-immigant scaremongering for some time.

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As an addendum – something that I don’t have much to say about, but wanted to mention, poor poor David & Samantha Cameron (not to mention the other little kids). It’s the sort of thing I can’t imagine ever getting out of bed again after. So far I haven’t seen anyone of any political stripe being crass or partisan, thank goodness, I hope that continues.

Linkspam, aka first ‘real’ post, aka THIS IS THE NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWS.

Stuff I read in lunch break today, with ramblings that make gratuitous use of parentheses and footnotes:

1) I am a bit confused over this story. It made the BBC front page, but the reporting is pretty sketchy, and I am blaming the lack of internet in the flat (a situation, hopefully, soon to be resolved) and the intrinsically limited length of my lunch hour for the difficulty in following regional news in regions that aren’t London (I have a horrible feeling that, after three months of getting my news from a blend of the Guardian, the awful tube freesheets and mostly-London-based political blogs that I have become one of the bloody Londoners who considers anywhere north of Tottenham to be highly suspicious and possibly populated by Reavers). Anyway. Any Sheffield/Yorkshire people able to expand on what the deal was? Was she cancelling the Muslim!religious assemblies and reverting to only having Christian!religious assemblies? Alternating between the two for all the pupils? Either way, I am not quite sure what the backstory is, or how it became a big story…

(NB: my general opinion on such matters is that I wish I did not live in a country with an established religion, and whilst I’m not exercised enough about this to necessarily want religion assemblies to be banned I definitely don’t think of them as Harmless Instruction in Common-Sense British Valuuuues (due, among other things, to personal special-snowflakey experiences) and would be more than happy to see a culture shift that involved them becoming occasional or obsolete. Nonetheless, if we’re going with the idea that kidlets need religious instruction before they’ve digested their breakfast, I think it’s generally a good idea to take steps so minority groups don’t feel excluded or irrelevant. Similar to my views on marriage, in fact. This is the general area I’m coming from. Anyone, for example, from the area of “we must take aggressive steps to defend our cultural heritage so at risk from being SWAMPED BY THE BE-TURBANED HORDES IN OUR NATION IMPOSING THEIR SHARIA LAW” is unlikely to have anything to say I find interesting or helpful.)

2) WHAAAT. My sceptical hackles were raised when I saw who the poll was for* – it doesn’t say anything about their selection, and 2000 is not many – but the questions are well-phrased, as far as methodology goes. Rentoul picks out the slim majority supporting ID, but I think the 32 fucking per cent thinking Young Earth Creation is “definitely or probably true” is far more distressing. It’s polls like this that make me wish I had embarked down a completely different educational and vocational path, and also actually had ‘people skills’, so that I could teach science and do it RIGHT.
* This may well say more about my prejudices than the group in question. I don’t know them, they may be a superlatively progressive and rational group of theologians, but I don’t really have time to check on account of aforementioned No Bloody Internet.

3) Ben Goldacre is being threatened with legal action for putting a radio clip on his website. Entirely not embarrassment at what HORRIBLE ANTI-SCIENTIFIC TOOLS they are.
(This is as good a place as any to mention the minor issues I had with his book, though (my booklog is in still Moleskine form) if I haven’t said already it is very very good and entirely worthy of a place in my Bookshelf Pile of Sanity that I wave at all unfortunate guests with discomfiting and inarticulate enthusiasm. Fellow travellers: this, this and this, to be joined by this when I get round to buying a copy, and probably others I am forgetting offhand.

4) A non-political interlude: an essay on Sandman’s reflection of ethics, adolescence and the 1990s.

5) A review of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism for which I believe the word is ‘pwned’. I have not read this book, but everything I have heard about it makes me disappointed but unsurprised that Nick Cohen is cooing over it. Oh, Nick Cohen. What’s Left? was pretty good, annoying tendency to shoehorn everything he disagreed with into his argument aside! You were supposed to be a reflective leftist conscience! What happened to you? When did you start thinking “well, it’s short for National SOCIALIST, hur hur hur” was a reasonable argument?

6) Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press. US-focussed, not much different to the normal “gives voice and a rallying space to views not politically acceptable/commercially viable enough to be reflected in mainstream media, la la fishcakes” arguments, but well written.

7) An interesting and, so far as it fits with the bits of internal politics I picked up despite not having studied Israel in the depth I would like, IIRC pretty accurate run-down of how social cleavages generally play out in terms of Israeli political divides.

Belatedly: a smashing post on tabloid hypocrisy over Carol Thatcher. (For Americans: a former PM’s offspring who has made a minor celebrity career out of this got ditched from her BBC show after referring to a tennis player as a ‘golliwog’ and refusing to apologise or indicate there was anything wrong with this. Yeah, I know. Most tabloids have lept on this as PC Gone MAAAAAAAAAAAD, the BBC at the last count had far more complaints at the decision than supporting it, and it’s all horribly fail. “But there’s no racism in Britain!”) the_whybird also did a proper post at the time.

9) I will be watching the front pages tomorrow morning eagerly to see if this prediction is accurate. (Background/explanation of a sort)

10) A nice round number: that’s enough politics. Look at New York City in Lego, a clock for geeks or the Baby Animal Alphabet and tell me you don’t feel a bit better.