The story of a riot foretold

Riots across London are a result of rising anger against the corrupt and repressive Metropolitan Police, and against the poverty and unemployment hitting the poorest first.

The police version of the shooting of Mark Duggan after the Met's CO19 firearms squad fired into the taxi he was riding in is falling apart. They claimed an officer was shot, but was saved by his radio - and then Duggan was shot in self-defence. Now it appears the bullet in the radio may have been police issue.

Duggan’s family was only allowed to see his body 36 hours after he was killed. When they and about 100 supporters stood peacefully outside Tottenham police for four hours on Saturday night waiting for answers, nobody was prepared to talk to them. Police instead formed a confrontational line across the front of the police station.

As the protests escalated across Tottenham, it appears that a 16-year-old girl was beaten when she advanced towards a line of police to remonstrate with them, saying all the community wanted was answers. An extreme sense of injustice rapidly built up, leading to two nights of rioting across London and opportunist looting as well. This fury on the streets shows that the issues behind Britain’s 1985 inner-city riots have never been resolved. The regeneration of estates like Broadwater Farm and other deprived areas is being reversed by the economic crisis.

The Coalition’s slash and burn budget cuts are affecting the poorest boroughs. The London Borough of Haringey slashed its budget for youth services by 75% after the Coalition cut its grant by £41million. Labour Councillors who voted for this must share the blame for the riots.

Eight out of 13 youth clubs in Tottenham – safe havens for youth trying to avoid “post-code wars” and crime – have been closed. Local youth at the end of July warned in a filmed interview that there would be riots. There are currently more than 50 people for each unfilled job in Haringey, and the number claiming jobseekers allowance has risen 10% this year. There are plans to cut as much as 25% from the budget for courses for 16 to 18 year olds at North East London College, with a big campus in Tottenham.

And Tottenham is not an exception. A sense of extreme alienation amongst tens if not hundreds of thousands of youths in London and around the country is simmering and will continue to erupt in explosive ways. Added to the sense of injustice is a lack of trust in the police and the political system as a whole.

Back in 1985 local MP Bernie Grant took the side of the community, when riots broke out after the death of Cynthia Jarrett. Yesterday, slick New Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, condemned the violence and looting and commiserated with injured police. He said nothing about the killing of one of his constituents.

The same political, police and media establishment that colluded to hide the crimes of the News of the World, is coming together to attack the youth. Small wonder that big swathes of the community feel unconnected from any political process.

Now the right-wing media are calling for strong leadership and a strong arm to put an end to the disorder on the streets and in the financial markets. It seems the Coalition is not brutal enough for them.

These are important warning signs. A bold approach to re-shaping society is urgently needed that will unite the youth and communities across the generations to challenge this rule while it is still possible to do so. Democratising the economic and political basis of society through the formation of local People’s Assemblies, which will self-police communities, offers a positive way forward.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

'Well-placed'? Pull the other one

New Labour was always fond of telling anyone who would listen that globalisation dominated by powerful corporations and open markets, worked to everyone’s benefit. We were in a new period of economic history, where old-style capitalism was no more. What then to make of the following: "We are facing a testing period in the economy. We are facing the first real international economic crisis of globalisation."

This admission came yesterday from Lady Vadera, a business minister and former adviser to Gordon Brown (the ex-investment banker was responsible for devising the disaster that is the part-privatisation of London Underground). She was speaking in the House of Lords, as the price of oil experienced its biggest one-day increase in almost 20 years and New Labour headed for its first defeat by the Tories in a by-election in nearly 30 years. The two events are not unrelated – soaring prices and tax increases have hit poorer votes hard and their massive rejection of New Labour in Crewe spells political oblivion for the ruling party.

More on that later. Keeping to the Brown script, in a breathtaking display of national and nationalist self-interest, the Baroness insisted that Britain was “well-placed” to withstand the global turbulence. Never mind the reports from yesterday’s United Nations Human Rights Council which estimates that more than 850 million people worldwide are going hungry, and another two billion are suffering from malnutrition. According to the UN the high prices and shortages of food which jeopardise the well-being and rights of countless people add up to a massive violation of human rights.

In a few short months, a superabundance of apparently ever-cheaper commodities has been replaced by soaring inflation and food shortages on a scale unprecedented in human history. Argentina, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Russia, South Africa and Morocco are among the countries that have seen demonstrations and strikes in response to soaring prices.

These are the consequences of the policies and actions of New Labour’s support for the interests of transnational corporations and the global financial institutions.This year, agribusiness profits, like those of the oil giants are soaring, increasing by anything from 21% to 1200%, while hungry people from Haiti to Egypt to Senegal were taking to the streets to protest against rising food prices.

Just a few companies are the near-monopoly buyers and sellers of agricultural products around the world. Six companies control 85% of the world trade in grain; three control 83% of cocoa; three control 80% of the banana trade. ADM, Cargill and Bunge effectively control the world’s corn, which means that they alone decide how much of each year’s crop goes to make ethanol, sweeteners, animal feed or human food.

A senior editor of Time magazine warned recently: "The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War... And yet, the headlines of the past month suggest that skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world … when circumstances render it impossible to feed their hungry children, normally passive citizens can very quickly become militants with nothing to lose."

Back to New Labour’s prospects, or lack of them, and Vadera’s view that Britain is “well-placed”. Well, she might be “well-placed” but the rest of us aren’t. Unemployment is rising steadily, the house building industry is in a state of collapse and people who are obliged to drive to work cannot afford to do so as the price of petrol has risen by 20% in a year. Millions are in serious debt and large numbers of people face repossession. Her government is on its way out. This is the content of tomorrow’s timely conference, Beyond the Market Economy.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Food prices revolt grows

Governments across the globe are being shaken by mass protests, as people take to the streets demanding lower food prices. According to the World Bank, increases in global wheat prices reached 181% over the 36 months leading up to February 2008, and overall global food prices increased by 83%. The UN says the price of rice has soared by 75% in just two months.

There have been strikes and protests across Africa, in Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea and Mozambique. In Asia, there have been protests in India, Singapore, Philippines, and Bangladesh. In Mexico thousands have marched and people in El Salvador protested outside the state bank. This week alone:

· Protestors in Haiti marched on the presidential palace demanding a cut in food prices; five people were killed, leading to demands for the government to resign.
· in Vietnam, 15,000 workers in a factory making trainers went on strike demanding better to pay to cover higher food prices.
· In Egypt, strikers took to the streets demanding a cut in the cost of bread.

In Europe too, droughts in Spain, France and the Po Valley last year have led to big rises in fresh food prices. With durum wheat up 30% this year, pasta is becoming a luxury product. In Britain, the cost of an average basket of groceries has risen 12% in a year.

World Bank president Robert Zoellick has warned of growing unrest if a solution is not found. And Prime Minister Brown called for food price inflation to top the agenda at the G8 summit in Japan in July. Both Zoellick and Brown called for more aid. But G8 countries are not even meeting their existing promise, made at Gleneagles in 2005, to double aid to Africa by 2010. Aid was lower in 2007 than in 2006, and in fact rich countries gave a higher proportion of their GDP in aid in 1963 than in 2007.

As for “trade not aid”, the International Monetary Fund says more than 20 African countries will see their trade balance worsen by more than 1% of GDP through having to pay more for food. The World Bank among others blames biofuels production for driving up food prices. Brown says he will review the impact of the UK’s biofuels subsidies and opposes further increases in EU subsidies. This is too little, too late. The world is now locked into profit-driven, bio-fuel production at the expense of food production. The market itself is in the driving seat.

The immediate causes of food price inflation are selling food crops at high prices for bio-fuels; switching land from food production to bio-fuels; last year’s drought in food producing areas such as Australia and Central Europe and the increasing cost of oil, leading to higher production and transportation costs.

But the underlying cause is the profit-driven system of food production at the expense of local needs. With the expansion of agri-business in the last three decades of globalisation, food dependency has increased and local systems of food production and exchange have been overturned. Now agri-business is moving into more profitable areas, creating food shortages where there could be plenty for all.

With starvation on a global scale now looming, what is needed is a strategy to wrest control of all land and natural resources from the global corporations (and the governments that support their rule). We could then combine technology with new scientific understanding of agricultural production to create systems of sustainable, dependable local food production.

In two very concise and readable books – Running a Temperature, an action plan for the eco crisis and House of Cards: from fantasy finance to global crash, the members of A World to Win propose a programme of democratisation of both ownership and of the state as the only solution to the growing global crisis. Included in both books are radical proposals for food, agriculture and land use. We call on everyone to join us in developing these ideas further with a view to putting them into practice.

Penny Cole
Environment editor