Corporate lobbyists prepare ground for Heathrow expansion

News that Heathrow is proposing not one, but two new runways in its submission to the Davies Commission on aviation expansion, is the culmination of a crafty lobbying strategy that swung into action as soon as the last election was over.

The Tories and Liberal Democrats won votes in London for their commitment to overturn New Labour's decision to go ahead with a third runway. As soon as David Cameron got his feet under the table, that policy was rolling backwards.

Corporate lobbyists told him he would eventually have to agree and suggested how to do it. Set up an enquiry, they said, shift the debate away from whether new capacity is needed at all, in light of runaway climate change, to be about where in the south-east new capacity will be.

Let everyone put forward their views - even Bonkers Boris and his hair brained island gateway plan.

Get Howard Davies, former head of the Confederation of British Industry – one of the main cheerleaders for airport expansion – to finalise his commission’s report after the next election, so it is not an issue in London. Then whichever party is in power can study it carefully – and then give Heathrow and the airline industry what it wants.

The Financial Times has called the Davies Commission a "battle of ideas", but it is no such thing. It is just underhand chicanery to circumvent popular opposition in London, including in Tory or Lib-Dem strongholds like Richmond and Kingston.

Heathrow made the astonishing claim that by adding a third, and then a fourth, runway they would be able to reduce the noise nuisance. They must think we are plane stupid.

The new runway will increase the number of flights by 54% from 480,000 to 740,000 each year. About 250,000 people are already deemed to be suffering from noise nuisance so how can more than doubling the number of flights make it quieter?

Heathrow runs at 98% capacity, unlike rivals at Paris Charles De Gaulle, Amsterdam Schiphol and Frankfurt which all have spare capacity. They want to use it to add more long-haul flights to the industrial and commercial hubs in India, China, Brazil and Russia. Heathrow does not want to be left behind.

Whilst Heathrow has proposed three possible sites for a third runway - either to the north, northwest or southwest of the existing airport – this may be no more than a trick. The southern route would put wealthy homeowners in Richmond and Twickenham under the flight path. One of the northern routes would require demolition of the village of Harmondsworth.

The second northern route is almost the same as the original proposal and would mean demolition of 2,500 homes in Harlington, Cranford Cross and Sipson and this is the one Heathrow wants.

However,  they were at pains to stress that it is the government that will make the final decision, adding a figleaf of democratic accountability over the whole sordid adventure.

The government's advisory Committee on Climate Change has written to Davies, reminding him that aviation emissions are included in the UK's legally binding emissions reduction targets.

The target, which is to reduce economy-wide emissions by 80% against 1990 levels by 2050, can only be achieved if aviation emissions are reduced to 2005 levels by 2050.

This is totally incompatible with Heathrow's plans for airport expansion. Heathrow Airport Holdings Ltd., which owns Heathrow, Stansted and Aberdeen airports, is itself owned by a holding company called FGP Topco. It is in turn wholly owned by Spanish firm Ferrovial.

This year the Chinese Investment Corporation – aka as the Chinese government – bought a 10% stake in Heathrow and the Qatar government sovereign wealth fund is waiting for European competition regulators to rule on whether it can buy a 20% stake.

These investments are for one purpose only – to get a return on capital that makes it a business proposition. So, in the end, neither the quality of life for Londoners nor the dangers of climate change will be deciding factor. As always, it will be business as usual.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Don't let them kill off the NHS

“As long as you’ve got your health.” It’s a refrain I remember my mother sharing with her friends and relations as we were growing up in the 1950s, in the days when the National Health Service, established in 1948, was new.

Socialised medicine, offering universal access to tax-funded health care, free at the point of delivery was as good as a revolution for the majority in the UK. Well, almost.

The history books show that the NHS, as part of the welfare state, was conceived of partly in response to the revolutionary aspirations brewing amongst the victorious fighters returning from action in the Second World War.

Now at 65, having reached pensionable age, the NHS is itself ailing.

The A&E unit at Trafford General Hospital, from where the NHS was launched in July, 1948, is to shut. Eleven more hospital trusts have joined Mid Staffordshire in “special measures” due to concerns over unusually high death rates and poor care.

From worldwide acknowledgement as the healthcare model to be admired, providing the best care at least cost, the NHS is now falling back in terms international ratings.  

Amongst the biggest and most complex organisations in the world, employing 1.3 million people, the NHS has been through many reorganisations as it grows and changes to meet the needs of the now aging population, and to take advantage of new technologies.

But the causes of its current sickness are more external than internal.

Since its inception the NHS has been subject to exploitation by private sector for-profit suppliers of drugs, medical equipment, information systems, you name it.  The news that Big Pharma company Pfizer is party to a legal price-fixing scam exploiting loopholes in the cosy Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme that has set “acceptable” profits for years, is just the latest example.  

In 1992, Conservative prime minster John Major’s introduction of the Private Finance Initiative into public sector projects was a key moment in the transition from welfare state to market state. This was taken forward after 1997 by Blair’s New Labour.

Through 30-year leasing contracts with private sector developers, the NHS and other public sector services, deliberately starved of direct funding, became saddled with monstrous debts and are now conduits for the transfer of wealth.

Taxes are collected and passed through the public sector to the private sector organisations. On its way through, the labour of those who work in the public sector become the source of the profits distributed to the shareholders in the private corporations.

New Labour’s introduction of business-type foundation trusts, which set hospital against hospital in competition for private patients, leading inevitably to financial calamity in some cases, was another moment in the transition to the market state.

It seems the previous government turned a blind eye to mounting problems. Now the ConDems are opening up whole swathes of the NHS to the private sector in a further twist of the knife.

In the 10 years leading up to the current great recession, health spending in the United Kingdom grew in real terms by 5.7% per year on average. This came to an abrupt halt in 2010 as health spending dropped by 1.9%, in real terms, with a further 0.4% fall in 2011.

Now there’s talk of an end to the ring-fence protection in England, following the example of Wales, where the health budget has already been cut by more than 20%. Hospitals are shutting, jobs being slashed, services disappearing.

Throughout its 65 years, the NHS has co-existed with capitalist social relations. As in most countries, expenditure on health care has been predominantly through the public sector. The deepening global crisis is rapidly undermining that uneasy co-existence.

Socialised healthcare is a model for a society motivated by the needs of the people. Rather than watch the wrangling over the blame for its decline, we should build new forms of democracy that can convert the rest of the economy to its principles. With goods and services like the NHS under the direct control of producers and users, we could achieve the type of society we need.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

'Virtual' Romanistan the way forward

The commemoration of the murder of Romani prisoners by the Nazis in the Auschwitz concentration camp in August 1944 is a chance to reflect on the future of the Romani people in the UK and around the world. But instead of being overwhelmed by their history, Roma campaigners see their history as offering a way forward not only for themselves, but for the world community.

For the first time, the Nazi genocide of their people, the Porajmos (destruction), is being linked to a ceremony in Hiroshima to remember victims of the atomic bomb dropped on the city.The event is timely. It comes just as the European Roma Rights Centre has detailed attacks against Romas in Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech and Slovak Republics.

In these and other EU countries, including Italy, a wholesale suppression is “operated from behind a smokescreen of rules over documentation, planning law and even people trafficking,” says campaigner Grattan Puxon,

Amongst the acts of violence are firebombings, shooting, stabbings and beatings, which have left eight people dead and many others injured. The report says there is an increasingly racist climate and that offenders are not being successfully prosecuted.

And lest we think the UK is exempt from anti-Roma attitudes, prejudice is being fuelled by Channel 4’s “observational documentary” Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, now being marketed around Europe. UK Romani campaigners are rightly enraged by the humiliating depiction of Irish and English Travellers and Romany Gypsies in this crass portrayal of their culture. 

Mike Doherty, of the Irish Travellers Movement, in a penetrating deconstruction of BFGW, describes it as “car-crash television that feeds into - and inflames - the extremely visible political and social conflict around Gypsy and Traveller site provision in the UK and nods towards…the death of the idea of multiculturalism.  in Europe”. He adds:

“It uses sleight of hand to allow the viewer to laugh at cartoonish and seemingly racist representations of some of the most marginalised and persecuted ethnic minorities... the prejudiced tropes fly thick and fast.”   

Romas see the 1971 World Romani Congress, held in Orpington near London, as a key historical moment, which placed their culture on the map. It established April 8 as Roma Nation Day. Then in 2000, the Fifth Romani World Congress put forward a ground-breaking claim: non-territorial nationhood.

An extraordinary statement in 2001 rejected the “consubstantiation” of concepts of state and nation, which, it said “is still leading to tragedies, wars, disasters and massacres”.

The history of the nomadic Roma nation cuts through the merging of state and nation. The Roma nation’s dream, could offer to the world community and individuals belonging to other nations a new way for the “new world” of the 21^st century, it added.

Granting the Roma’s request for nationhood, the statement proposes, could enable all of humanity to make a substantial step forward. “We offer our culture, our tradition, the resource which is in our historic refusal to search for a state: the most appropriate awareness of the contemporary world.”

Puxon, spokesperson for the  April 8 movement, is calling for co-ordinated mass action, voter power and an “upgrade in self-representation”. He notes that anti-Roma injustice and abuse is being confronted by activists in Germany, Paris, Prague and Skopje.

Roma numbers within the European Union are set to double by 2050. Puxon believes this will make their demands irresistible. But, alongside other people’s movements, Roma writer Ronald Lee’s dream of a Romanistan – a nation with or without a token state – is gaining momentum.

As Puxon notes, “long-term survival has been the single greatest achievement of the scattered Romani communities” but now the communities can come together to create a virtual Romanistan.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Bulgarians in revolt against a country 'parcelled out to business interests'

A month of continuous demonstrations against the Bulgarian government has brought the Balkan state’s population alongside struggles in Egypt, Brazil and Turkey that are directly challenging political systems.

Bulgaria is the poorest member of the European Union and heavily dependent on aid from Germany and France. The country which once had a rich agricultural sector is also importing most of its food from the richer EU states.

The Russian newspaper Pravda observed: “There are barely any local products in stores, everything is imported. Meat comes from Germany, tomatoes from Turkey and Greece, garlic from China, potatoes from the Czech Republic. This happens in the country with the annual average of 320 days of sunshine and fertile soil. Bulgarian authorities consider local production unprofitable.”

The crisis is so bad that the country’s health system is on the point of collapse because high numbers of medically-trained staff have quit the country to work in other EU states.

Earlier this year, a mass movement brought down a right-wing government. Now the target is the regime led by the country’s Socialist Party. The party came out of the ruins of the Bulgarian Communist Party which had presided over a Stalinist regime until the revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in 1991 led to its collapse.

Yesterday, the embattled government, which has assumed many characteristics of the old regime, denied speculation that it was about to resign. The foreign minister went on TV to urge protesters to “focus on a more positive direction with specific requests for specific policies, not just calls for resignation of the government."

This pathetic plea is certain to fall on deaf ears, however. The mass of the population is impoverished, cannot afford energy prices and sees the government of prime minister Plamen Oresharski as highly corrupt.

The current round of streets protests was triggered by the decision to appoint media mogul Delyan Peevski as – wait for it – national security chief. The government eventually abandoned the decision, but this only emboldened the protests. Now the opposition nationalist and right-wing parties are threatening to boycott parliament, a move that could force the resignation of the government.

In the last week, demonstrators have once again poured onto the streets of the capital Sofia, with the country’s “corrupt” political system in the firing line. They gathered in front of the parliament chanting “mafia,” “resignation,” “go away with peace.”

The demonstrators clashed with riot police on several occasions as they decided to change tactics and blockade the parliament building. Up to 10,000 people have been out on the streets every evening since June 14.

At the last rally, Viktoria Katova, a 24-year-old protestor, said: “Things can't get any worse. I'd rather go for 10 snap elections in a row than put up with this corrupt, insolent political class that pretends it does not notice us”.

Another 55-year-old protester, physical education teacher Nikolay Staykov, said: “This isn't democracy. Bulgaria has been parcelled out to different business circles... what we have here is a state mafia. All the parties are the same... We must wipe all that out and build the political system up from scratch.”  

The situation has so disturbed the EU bureaucracy that the French and German governments issued an unprecedented joint statement and had it published in the country’s mass circulation paper.

“It is clear that the Bulgarian public insists that the political, administrative, judicial and economic elites subscribe to the principles of public interest. It is obvious that the society fears the penetration of private interests in the public sphere,” the statement said. There was, they added, no room for the “oligarchic model” in the EU.

Yet it is this oligarchic-type of merging between state and corporate interests that is now pretty universal, not just throughout the EU but in most capitalist countries. This is one of the key factors behind a wave of global struggles. Behind them are not only economic demands but aspirations for political democracy. That’s what makes them revolutionary.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

The planet is drowning in waste

The planet is being overwhelmed by waste of all kinds, from plastic bags to throwaway digital devices. Even remote areas such as Alaskan beaches, often refuges for rare species, are increasingly blighted by tonnes of indestructible   objects and harmful and unsightly refuse.

The UK produces some 228 million tonnes of waste a year. In addition to household rubbish, there are growing mountains of agricultural and industrial  waste, as well as by-products from from power generation such as toxic nuclear waste. 

The waste issue has become so serious that the government has been forced to work on a “waste prevention programme”. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is due to publish the result of a consultation this December.

The way in which leading electronic brands brazenly defy the letter and spirit of laws and regulations is a global issue. Over the last decades a new and dangerous situation has arisen as millions of digital devices are used and jettisoned after only months of use.

As electronic waste increases exponentially on a global scale, a new study from India highlights that even where rules and regulations are in place, implementing them is another matter.

The report reveals that state pollution control boards and implementing agencies have failed to put any systems in place in the two years since the rules came into force.

The way in which companies evade regulation in India is naturally as true in other countries, including Bangladesh, China and Pakistan, Ghana and Nigeria which have become dumping grounds, often from richer states, spawning an escalating e-waste crisis. 

Short Circuit, a wide-ranging report by the Gaia Foundation, documents the scale of electronic waste on a global scale. It says that what we see as “re-cycling” is in fact turned into “down-cycling”, and can give people (consumers), a “false sense of security”.

Using a Buddhist term “Bardo”, the report says that humanity is at a critical juncture and that this requires a different view of our relationship with the earth. Amongst other proposals, the report lays down some excellent strategies for “zero waste”.

These are: reducing consumption and discards; reusing discards; extended producer responsibility; comprehensive recycling; comprehensive composting or bio-digestion of organic materials; citizen participation; a ban on waste incineration; effective policies, regulations, incentives and financing

structures to support these systems.

You could add to the list by including a ban on unessential packaging and the use of non-recyclables; including waste products within the production process a whole; the phasing out of landfill as a form of waste disposal; the nature and source of materials to be labelled on all products; products to be vetted for built-in obsolescence; the standardisation of interfaces for all devices and electronic products; the re-use of materials, especially metals and minerals; and resources  allocated for training in up-cycling skills.

The speeding up of built-in obsolescence in order to increase sales is vital for corporations to generate profit as the rate of technological change increases.  It is the system of production for profit – aka capitalism – which is at the heart of the problem.

So, ascribing the root of the eco-crisis to human existence on the planet as Gaia theorists do, is seriously misguided. The capitalist system of production alienates us from nature, not our desire to consume. As the example from India shows, even with laws in place, the needs of corporate profit will trump ecologically desirable ones.

Breaking away from the lethal cycle of production for profit is the great challenge of our time. We are part of this system and consumers within it. But we have the urgent need, the right and the power - collectively to put an end to it before it ends us.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Tennis is a game that's hard to love

Andy Murray, Wimbledon champion. I was there to see it, even if it was just on the big screen inside the grounds, a couple of hundred metres away from the Centre Court. I'd spent the night ill-equipped in a tent to be there, queuing along with a few thousand more.

Cost £8 entry. £7.50 for a watered down Pimms, £2.50 for a water (that HSBC were giving away free in smaller sizes admittedly, with their “literature” in the queue and all in all £100+ to arrive, eat and get home.

I wanted to be a professional tennis player. I wanted to win Wimbledon. Definitely a dream, like many other people. And like many others, I didn't make it. Yes, I was good. I had the physical attributes, but not the mental, strength not as a youngster anyway.    

A big part of the reason I wanted to win Wimbledon was genuinely to give something to those Brits who followed tennis and who had to suffer defeat all too early in the two-week tournament, year, after year, after year. I wanted to make them feel proud to be British. Really.

Andy Murray is a truly amazing tennis player. He's almost the very best on the planet at tennis. He deserves to win Wimbledon. Few have worked harder over the years, with so much talent. Yet for all the patriotism on the hill at Wimbledon, thousands of people celebrating his win, I didn't feel so uplifted by his victory and this feeling, if anything, has got worse since Sunday.

Wimbledon, the tournament for me anyway, got it badly wrong. All these crazy young tennis enthusiasts leaping up and down, shouting and yelling, hugging each other on Murray's victory and yet a few minutes after Murray had left Centre Court, walking around the grounds, life seemed to carry on like any normal Wimbledon day I'd witnessed over the years.  

Lots of us went to the grand entrance at Wimbledon to wait for Murray to appear with the trophy, but the security guards weren't shy, telling us, "He's not coming out, he's busy doing press. There are no plans for an appearance." Yet, soon after we'd left Wimbledon, he did appear on a top balcony, a little remote from the public, like a royal at Buckingham Palace (even if he did do an impressive fist pump and not a royal wave.)

Of course, he's to be knighted soon, an open secret judging by the pictures appearing from Downing Street where all three leaders of arguably the same party took delight in the reflected glory.

What did the papers say about Murray's win? Well, I read it was the highest rating TV programme of the year so far; 17 million viewers had it on. The Independent also reported that Murray stands to earn £100 million winning the crown. The Telegraph, £200 million. In prize money he's worth £18 million already. Plus he already gets a load of money from RBS bank, Adidas and Rado watches.

Indeed ,on winning the US Open last year, Murray can be seen immediately afterwards, not celebrating and letting himself go, but instead searching for his Rado watch within his rackets and stuff, which his girlfriend, Kim Sears helps him locate, so he can be photographed wearing it, whilst holding the trophy aloft.

I believe in sport. It's better than killing each other. It spurs us on to ever higher levels of ability. It keeps us fit. It's entertainment. Patriotism? Well, people who didn't know each other were hardly engaging much in the scheme of things beyond two minutes of Murray's victory. And anyway, who cares what country you're from? People are people now in the 21st century, no?

A top 100 tennis player is worth so much and lives in such a little corporate bubble, that they are hardly in touch with normal people. But maybe they are in touch with modern politicians, (see picture!) just as long as they are successful, God help 'em.

I was therefore wondering why so many still come out and support a multi-millionaire who really is trying to win Wimbledon for himself and those closest to him? Clearly many people are patriotic and they love a winner. Wimbledon would be nothing at all without its tens of thousands who support it each year.

But, to me, the people deserve far better. A game to love? Yes. But those in power make it very hard for me to do so.

Dylan Strain

Global capitalism's new world disorder

Yet again, in its latest world economic outlook the International Monetary Fund has been forced to cut its forecast for growth worldwide. Even as it casts around for signs of optimism in Japan and the UK, there is no hiding the profound corrosion of the global capitalist economy.

As Greek workers take to the streets again protesting against the latest round of slashing cuts in public sector jobs, Athens-based IOBE think tank is predicting that the country’s economy could shrink by as much as another 5% this year.

The Greek economy is now in its sixth year of deepening recession, shrinking 6.4% last year. "Fiscal consolidation and improved competitiveness have not been coupled with successful implementation of the structural reforms programme," said IOBE.

In plain language, it means that cuts in public sector spending, jobs, wages, pensions and working conditions actually have to deepen. They have already reached a point where millions have fallen into deep poverty. Unemployment is set to rise again, from 26.8% at the lat count to nearly 28%.

"As long as the recession persists, the economy isn't only burning fat but also productive tissue," said Nikos Vettas, the new head of IOBE.

But it’s not just Greece. The ongoing contraction in the eurozone is worsening. The forecast for the US economy is for it to slow – especially as the effects of its version of cutting government spending, known as sequestration, is magnified by the slowing down in the central bank’s credit expansion programme. This is expected to begin in September and global markets are already jittery about the consequences.

In summing up its review of country by country and region by region differences Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist concludes:

“But you wonder whether there is not something behind. I think behind this is a slowdown in underlying growth – not the cyclical component but just the average rate,” said Blanchard. “It’s clear that these countries [Brazil, China and Russia] are not going to grow as fast as they did before the crisis.

“A permanently slower growth rate in big developing countries is likely to have profound repercussions for the world economy and translate into weaker growth for advanced countries as well.”

Blanchard’s concern about China, in particular, is well founded. The country’s banks are said to be veering out of control. Bank exposure to corporate debt has reached $4,200bn. It is rising at a 30% rate, even as profits contract at a 35% rate.  Ratings agency Fitch says China's public debt may be as high as 50%-70% of GDP when "correctly counted" and it is unsure whether the authorities can absorb the looming financial crisis.

So we can be sure that a continuation of the existing world disorder will have disastrous consequences for the majority. For the 99%, who have nothing invested in the capitalist way of doing things, and nothing to lose from its replacement, another model, another way of organising society is certain to prove attractive.

Into the breach, with steps the steps the New Economic Foundation  ‘economics as if people and the planet mattered’, which says: “In our model growth is driven by the existence of a gap between the current income levels of firms and their future expenditure plans. Private banks are the only agents capable of filling this gap through the creation of new credit. A confident banking system, willing to grant credit to firms for productive investments, is thus a necessary prerequisite for the economy to prosper.”

But the NEF’s “new model” is the same old credit-and debt fuelled model of capital expansion that opened up the world to rule by global corporations and led to the crash.

What can we learn from the last four decades? Capitalist for-profit production has drawn the world together in an interdependent global network oriented to accumulation and dependent on growth for the benefit of shareholders. By switching to a democratically controlled not-for-profit model of production and distribution we can further develop that interdependence for the benefit of all.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Miliband follows in Tories' footsteps with opt-in plans

Whichever way he dresses it up, Ed Miliband’s plan for trade union members to opt-in to paying a subscription to Labour is an historic break with the organisations that formed the party and have since provided the bulk of its funds.

At present, members of unions affiliated to Labour have a small part of their subscriptions automatically transferred to the party’s coffers. They have to opt-out of paying the political levy if they don’t want to support Labour financially.

Labour was a somewhat reluctant creation in 1900 of a trade union movement that wanted its own representation in parliament. Now Miliband is effectively breaking that link. And he’s not the first to try to impose an opt-in. The Tories did it – over 85 years ago.

In 1927, in a vindictive piece of revenge in the wake of the 1926 General Strike, the Tory government led by Stanley Baldwin enacted just such a law. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act not only made general strikes illegal.

The Act also banned unions from automatically passing subs over to Labour, replacing it with the same opting-in proposal that Miliband is making. So now he is doing the Tories’ dirty work for them after they made hay over the Falkirk selection farrago.

Labour has called in the police following allegations that its main funder, the Unite union, was recruiting members to the party without their knowledge in order to get its nominee adopted as the candidate for the upcoming by-election.

Back in 1927, Labour and the Trades Union Congress fiercely opposed the Tory legislation. On May 2, the shadow leader of the Commons, J.R. Clynes, a former leader of the party, told MPs:

We say that to reduce the trade unions with regard to their political income to the level of making each man initiate the payment of contribution, without the educative effect of any prior collective action—[Interruption]. I know that there are many Members in this House who would not have them educated — without the educative effect of prior organised action, would be to make a mockery of any political liberty whatever, or of the use of any funds for political purposes.

He said attacked the legislation as a  “malignant endeavour on the part of the Government to back up organised capital in the struggles with organised labour” and pledged that Labour would repeal the legislation when in power. The trade unions had to wait nearly 20 years before that could happen.

How times change! Labour has since been transformed into party that embraces corporate-driven globalisation – aka as free-market or neo-liberal capitalism – beginning with the abandoning of the famous socialist Clause 4.  

While the Tories are free to take money from business, the trade unions, by contrast, are viewed by Miliband and those around him as “sectional interests”. Miliband’s party gets £8 million a year from union subs. This will plummet if his plans are adopted.

This is not “mending” the relationship with unions affiliated to Labour. This is not reforming it. Miliband’s proposal is effectively ending it.

However long it takes to get through, Miliband’s declaration of war on the unions is designed to impress the middle-classes and business, to show that  “responsible capitalism” is his only policy. So Labour will go on backing spending cuts and attacks on welfare while offering only token opposition to ConDem attacks on the NHS, education and human rights.

Two things become clearer as a result. Representation of workers’ interests in parliament through the Labour Party is a dead duck. And that’s official. Secondly, parliament itself is an arena now totally dominated by and subordinate in every sense to the requirements of a capitalist system in deep economic and financial crisis.

New democratic forms that go beyond the limitations of representation, that deal with the question of power, of who rules Britain, are therefore urgent questions. We should thank Miliband for prompting us to look beyond Labour and a discredited, corporatist political system.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Labour provides cover for state spies

Labour’s shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, will say today that she is “appalled” by revelations about the Metropolitan Police’s use of undercover agents.

But to what extent are her calls for “scrutiny” a justification for continued snooping on huge numbers of people, as well as a cover for what happened in 13 years of New Labour rule?

High ranking police chiefs are involved in what is no so much a scandal as fairly routine practice. For example, retired deputy assistant commissioner John Grieve has admitted to authorising the bugging of Stephen Lawrence’s friend Duwayne Brooks.

Sir Norman Bettison, former West Yorkshire chief constable, already tarnished over Hillsborough disaster inquiry, is now said to have tried to influence the Lawrence inquiry.

The Met’s image is now so bad that ConDems policing minister Damien Green is calling for the “stables to be cleaned”. He says that recent disclosures are “hugely damaging”.

These “historic scandals”, as Green calls them, come on top of the continuing saga of US whistleblower Edward Snowden who revealed that Britain’s very own spy agency, GCHQ, works hand-in-glove with the American National Security Agency and its internet snooping programme, Prism.

Yesterday Snowden said that GCHQ was even worse than the NSA. It is the only body to operate what he terms a “full take” system of information. That means it  monitors all data crossing its path for a total of 30 days.

Cooper continues to praise parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). So what should we make of her call for more “oversight and scrutiny”? Cooper became a member of the ISC after New Labour won the 1997 election and remained on it until 1999.

So she can’t be unaware that under the Blair governments, there was, according to a new book about undercover police agents, an “unprecedented increase in the undercover infiltration of political activists”.

Authors Rob Evans and Paul Lewis document how in 1999, a new squad of police spies was brought into existence – the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. Its funding was supplied by the Home Office, then under secretary of state Jack Straw.

As the unit expanded, it received more than £30 million of public money. A new definition of who they were to spy on was created: “domestic extremism”. The authors say that the definition went beyond those engaged in criminal actions.

More significantly, it applied to those who “wanted to prevent something from happening or to change legislation or domestic policy”, possibly “outside the normal democratic process”. Such a catch-all phrase covers virtually any form of protest. And funding under New Labour doubled, with animal rights’ surveillance taking the largest amount.

Corporate lobbying by Big Pharma and the banks who wanted the state to protect their nefarious activities led to more funding and a huge growth of surveillance, agent placing and deliberate entrapment. Money was not a problem for police spies like Mark Kennedy who received some £250,000 out of the state’s coffers.

No activist group or organisation – no matter how benign and peace-loving – was (or is) exempt. Climate Camp, anti-G8, anti-roadbuilding and anti-McDonalds’ campaigners, animal rights activists – you name them, they were all in the frame.

As some activists became concerned about individuals who for one reason or another became suspect, they began to uncover some deeply-placed spies, much to their horror. Women victims of undercover spying are being backed by Occupy London to take legal action against the police.

In the recent new round of spending cuts, the secret state bodies were the only agencies whose budget has not been cut, with MI5, MI6 and GCHQ receiving a 3% real terms increase in their annual budget of £2.6 billion.

Protecting citizens’ from criminals and terrorists is not the primary aim of these agencies or their spies in political movements. They are to defend the interests of corporate power, happily lining their own pockets in the process. It’s high time to open all the secret files and disband these spy agencies.

Just don’t expect Yvette Cooper to join such a campaign. She and Labour are part of the problem, not the solution.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Egyptian revolution at the crossroads

The Egyptian revolution has reached a critical point, with the weakness and lack of strategy of the opposition leadership allowing a once-discredited army elite to resume a key role just over a year after it was forced to yield power to civilian authority.

As a result, the growing authoritarianism of the Morsi/Muslim Brotherhood regime has, for the time being, been replaced by an authoritarian military-backed regime. The suspension of the constitution, the arrest of Morsi and the closing down of Muslim Brotherhood media outlets are dangerous signs.

So too is the reinstatement by the Supreme Judicial Council yesterday of Mubarak-era judge Abdel Meguid Mahmoud to the post of prosecutor general months after he was removed by Morsi.

With the liberals in Tamarod, who called for the street campaign to oust Morsi, joining the “interim” regime, the masses have been led up a cul de sac. The new regime has no intention of changing the real power relations in Egypt, whereby the army and the capitalist class between them direct and control the economy. Fresh elections for the presidency will not alter this position.

That explains the muted response to Morsi’s removal by the White House and the ConDem government. Their concern for the democratic process is, of course, hypocrisy writ large after decades of propping up Mubarak. Obama et al simply want the people off the streets as soon as possible in case other people cotton on to how revolutions work.

The Egyptian street was powerful enough to bring down the Morsi government that was increasingly ruling by decree and had failed to address soaring unemployment, rising prices and inequality. In fact, it was negotiating with the International Monetary Fund to end subsidies on key foodstuffs.

But as a situation of dual power developed in a revolution that is striving to go further than democratic reform, the movement was headed off at the pass. Tamarod (Rebel) has affirmed its support for the military’s intervention, as have a number of human rights groups.

Jonathan Steele, the Guardian commentator, is right when he says: “The fact that the army's move has been welcomed by many of the revolutionaries who first had the courage to go into the streets against Mubarak in 2011 is a desperate commentary on their political naivety and shortsightedness.”

No good can ever come of the army’s role. History has shown repeatedly from Chile to Greece that the army is part of the status quo of the capitalist state and will remain so until that state is deconstructed. Declaring that it is “on the side of the people” is what Allende told Chileans shortly before Pinochet seized power in 1973.

What the Egyptian masses have shown is their capacity to become the decisive force in society. That is a lesson that will not be lost on people struggling against austerity and inequality around the globe as the economic crisis deepens.

But what is equally true is that without a plan, without a strategy that is based on actually taking the power away from the ruling elites, the revolution cannot succeed. The reorganisation of the economy along democratically-owned and controlled lines and the guaranteeing of human rights cannot be achieved within the existing political-state framework.

In Egypt, power was up for grabs but the inadequacy of the movement’s leadership saw the ball grabbed by the army as a vacuum emerged. The illusion that power can slip into the hands of the masses by sheer energy and presence alone is just that – an illusion.

The situation remains fluid, with the army balancing between the contending classes. The aspirations of the masses remain unfulfilled while their determination to win is undiminished. To prevent a counter-revolution from taking hold, in Egypt they will need to build a leadership and develop a strategy that actually has power as its goal. In other words, the social and political revolution have to come together. This is actually the challenge in every capitalist country today.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor 

The rise and fall of Brazil's No.1 tycoon tells you a lot about the global economy

Rio’s Maracana stadium was the centre of attention on Sunday, as protestors clashed with police outside over the billions spent on preparations for the World Cup and the Olympics. Behind the very public scenes another drama is playing out.

It’s one that brings together many of the threads of the crisis racking the global economy. Corruption ranks high amongst the issues enraging the protestors who took to the streets more than three weeks ago. And multi-billionaire Eike Batista, owner of the EBX group of companies, is at the centre of it all.

Batista’s property arm IMX has a small stake in the consortium that is leasing the newly-renovated stadium from the state government. IMX pitched the idea for the deal, carried out the financial viability analysis, and then, to nobody’s surprise, since Batista is a friend of Rio’s governor Sergio Cabral, won.

But there’s much more to this than a seedy scandal.

As well as property, Batista has interdependent interests in oil, mining, ports and railways, technology, as well as sports, entertainment and catering. You name it, he’s into it. At the start of 2012 he’d become the seventh richest man in the world. His personal wealth was estimated at $30 billion. He’d set his sights on becoming top of the world’s rich list. King of the 1%.

A year later and the horrible truth is out. None of his companies is making a profit.

On Monday, the oil company OGX called it a day, more or less, telling the world that output from its only producing wells was coming to an end, and would probably close next year, leaving it with one unproved field still under development. 

From 2009, the value of the EBX group soared on the commodity price boom that resulted from global attempts to engineer a credit-fuelled recovery from the 2007-8 financial and economic crash. 

The optimism around Batista reflected a desperate belief – more a baseless fantasy – that Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRICs countries) would drag the battered capitalist world economy back from recession, depression, stagnation – all of those and more.

But it hasn’t turned out like that. China’s manufacturing is shrinking, and its government, risking a credit crunch as it attempts to forestall a renewed credit crash, has now joined others around the world in stemming its supply of the stuff.

Just the suggestion that the US Federal Reserve might soon start reducing its programme of credit expansion sent markets around the world spinning. Now speculators on the commodity and emerging markets are betting that China’s demand for Brazilian or any other country’s commodities will fall.

So the EBX group’s value has dropped by more than 90% compared with its 2011 peak.

On the way down as well as on its way up, Batista’s group of companies sucked in credit, mostly from Brazilian banks. These include state development lender BNDES and Caixa, the nation's largest mortgage lender, as well as private-sector lenders Banco Bradesco SA, and Itaú Unibanco Holding SA.

And, borrowing more to service his debts, Batista tapped into $1 billion in capital from Malaysian oil company Petronas in May, and in March from German utility E.ON SE and fellow Brazilian billionaire Andre Esteves' investment bank, BTG Pactual.

Now with debts far exceeding its value, the group faces restructuring, bankruptcy or both.

Like giant corporations everywhere Batista’s companies are closely enmeshed in the state. As OGX crashed, three of its board members rushed for the exit. The high-profile trio are: Pedro Malan, a former long-serving Brazilian finance minister; Rodolfo Tourinho, a former energy minister; and Ellen Gracie, a former chief justice of Brazil's Supreme Court.

Batista’s rise and fall is a microcosm of a global economy still heavily dependent on and weighed down by debt . Today's early sell-off of shares in London in response to China's slowdown and the political crisis in Egypt are more than straws in the wind.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

He who pays the piper doesn't always call the tune

The unseemly row between the Unite trade union and Labour over the selection of a parliamentary candidate could bring to a head the increasingly frosty relationship between the party and its single biggest funder.

Unite contributes around a quarter of Labour’s funds but is getting precious little return on capital invested. Although Unite was a key financier and organiser of Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign after the 2010 election defeat, its influence has, if anything, diminished since.

Miliband has backed the ConDems’ public sector pay freeze, insisted that Labour councils carry out austerity-driven cuts, refused to back strike action over pensions and declined to oppose a raft of government anti-union policies. Now Labour is committed to the coalition’s 2015-16 spending cuts as well.

Not much for Unite general secretary Len McCluskey to cheer about there!

So the union has turned its attention to the constituency parties in a bid to regain some clout. The Farkirk by-election in Scotland led to a massive recruitment campaign by Unite in an attempt to get their preferred choice, Karie Murphy, adopted as the candidate.

But Unite’s organisers got a little too enthusiastic, it appears, and the whole selection process was halted by Labour headquarters as a result of alleged malpractice in the selection process. Clearly, the finger was pointed at Unite. The constituency party is now under “special measures”, that is under the control of HQ.

This is not what McCluskey anticipated. He surely hoped that his close friend Tom Watson, former hatchet man for Gordon Brown and now Labour’s campaign co-ordinator under Miliband, would get it sorted and land Murphy the relatively safe seat.

So what next for McCluskey and Unite? A couple of weeks ago, McCluskey threatened to make Britain “ungovernable” through strikes and civil disobedience in response to the ConDems’ draconian attacks on jobs, welfare, the NHS and services carried out in the name of austerity.

Miliband must be appalled, although it has to be said McCluskey’s bark is, so far, worse than his bite. Labour is desperately trying to distance itself from Tory accusations that the unions call the party’s tune (were that true!). Labour wants a period of social peace before the general election scheduled for 2015.

Enter Kim Howells, former Blairite minister who was also an official in the mineworkers’ union during their 1985-6 strike for jobs. At that time, Howells was a member of the Communist Party and encouraged a return to work against the policy of the national leadership. Not long after, surprise surprise, he was a Labour MP.

Howells over the weekend described the unions as an “interest group” and said the whole “reputation of the Labour Party” was at stake over the Falkirk row. He told the BBC that it was "absolutely crazy" to let unions pay the party membership fees of their members. Howells is stirring the row quite deliberately.

In the end, however, would it matter if Unite got one of their own into parliament? Not really. Labour from its formation has b een wedded to capitalism and to directing the trade unions to seeking redress through parliament. For guidance on this issue, you can do worse than look to Ralph Miliband, the father of the present leader.

In 1960, he published his book Parliamentary Socialism, which is a study “in the politics of Labour” from its beginning right through to the post-war period. He writes:

The Labour Party has not only been a parliamentary party; it has been a party deeply imbued by parliamentarism. And in this respect, there is no distinction to be made between Labour’s political and its industrial leaders. Both have been equally determined that the Labour Party should not stray from the narrow path of parliamentary politics.

Now, of course, even parliamentarism has run its course. Corporate-driven globalisation has seen to that. We have a corporatocracy in all but name. That’s why Ed Miliband has reduced Labour to the party of “responsible capitalism”.

So Brother McCluskey, he who pays the piper does not always call the tune. Over to you.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Egypt's second revolution for 'bread, freedom, justice'

The second Egyptian revolution which is firmly under way has swept millions into the new uprising against the presidency of Mohamed Morsi, whose regime has patently failed to solve any of the day-to-day problems of the masses.

Viewing the crisis in Egypt primarily as a conflict between the forces of Islam and secularism is mistaken. Like all religions, Islam provides a form of expression for the very poor who are otherwise unrepresented.

Although the target is the Muslim Brotherhood, the central issues are poverty, unemployment, corruption and deepening inequality. The Morsi government has failed on all these counts.

Millions of Egyptians are voting with their feet in every major city to rage against the Morsi government. Like their predecessors in 2011 they vow they will not leave the streets until the regime is gone.

Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, came to power after the 2011 February revolution which saw long-standing dictator Hosni Mubarak toppled. Turnout in the 2012 elections was low. Morsi won only 51% of the votes.

Egyptians are now rallying to the cause of Tamarod or “Rebel”, the newest political campaign to emerge in the country. So far its campaign calling for Morsi’s departure has attracted over 22 million signatures, quickly exceeding its young organisers’ target of 15 million.

Tamarod denounces Morsi as a total failure for not achieving the goals of the 2011 revolution – which were bread, freedom and social justice. He is castigated for “excluding the deprived” and not bringing justice for the revolution’s martyrs.

Economic and social security feature high on the list of grievances. Tamarod says it rejects Morsi “because we are still begging loans from the outside” and “because the economy has collapsed, and depends only on begging”.

Leading Egyptian economists warned in May that the country is suffering its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Egypt’s former finance minister Samir Radwan recently warned of a devastating effect on Egypt’s poorest people.

"You are talking about nearly half of the population being in a state of poverty.  Either in absolute poverty or near-poor, meaning that with any [economic] shock, like with inflation, they will fall under the poverty line," he said.

The value of the Egyptian pound is plummeting as fuel and food prices soar. But taking on a proposed $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund requires political stability and draconian cuts in public spending.

Since Morsi’s election Egypt has seen rampant inflation with even the middle classes finding it impossible to cope economically. A quarter of Egypt’s youth are unemployed.

Thus, the aspirations that lay behind the historic overthrow of Mubarak have not been realised. Indeed, it is clear that neither the democratic nor the economic demands of the revolution can be achieved within the current political framework – in which the army still plays a central role - or by holding fresh elections.  

Looking to Egypt’s armed forces for salvation, as many in Tahrir Square are presently doing is equally a mistaken strategy. Dark forces in the military such as those of General Abdel al-Sisi are waiting in the wings.

Millions are rejecting Morsi because, like the provisional government of February in 1917 in pre-Soviet Russia, it cannot deliver to those who overthrew the autocracy that preceded them. The global economic crisis, which is driving the new Egyptian revolution, makes further reforms impossible.

Liberals and pessimists are warning of the “dangers” of a second revolution. Yesterday’s Observer cautioned that Egyptians, “caught up in a storm of dissent degenerating into outright violence, may lose what gains they have made, and be swept backwards”.

This neo-colonial viewpoint is, as always, a defence of the status quo. Achieving “Bread, freedom and justice” requires revolutionary polices to end capitalism in Egypt. That means uniting poor farmers in the countryside, workers in the urban centres, the unemployed, professional people and respecting the rights of women, religious minorities and to freedom of expression.

A second revolution along these lines would inspire workers fighting capitalist austerity in every country to deal with their own rulers.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

  

Memo to McCluskey: you can't fight the ConDems with hot air

The second wave of austerity without end, if not halted, will mean the end of many public services, a huge increase in unemployment and huge subsidies for big corporations so they can cash in on infrastructure projects.

A continuing massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the private sector is what lies at the heart of the ConDems’ latest budget cuts pencilled in for 2015-16. They are intended to commit the next government to the planned spending cuts.

There won’t be a problem for the Tories. And with Labour pledged to stand by the coalition’s cuts, it means that the general election scheduled for 2015 will be as meaningless as the 2010 one in terms of voter choice.

A vote for any of the mainstream parties will bring massive, sustained cuts in public spending on services provided by local councils, further real wage cuts as well as further attacks on welfare benefits. Your vote will count for very little indeed.

Ed Miliband’s party says it needs “time” to think about its response to chancellor Osborne’s decision to extend the time before unemployed people can lodge a claim to seven days. In other words, Labour supports it, as they do other benefit cuts.

The more you look at Osborne’s plans, the more astonishingly savage it all gets. To finance more roads, nuclear power stations and a railway project designed to favour shareholder dividends, the latest package - £11.5bn of spending cuts for 2015-16 – is in addition to what will have been five years of austerity.

It will lead to the sacking of another 144,000 public sector workers, delivers student debt into the hands of private sector specialists in extortion, ends pay rises for public sector workers and forces millions of unemployed and those in work but dependent on benefits into increased reliance on food banks and payday loans,

There will be a sell-off of publicly-owned land,  social housing rents will rise faster than inflation and vital services provided by local councils will simply cease to exist. And yet, the savagery does not begin to match the scale of the crisis facing capitalism in Britain and globally.

As revised figures revealed by the Office for National Statistics show, the sadistic scale of this new round of slashing cuts in government spending fails by light-years to match up to task set for the coalition by the 2007/8 crash and its aftermath, as  the spending review will have been based on earlier, much more optimistic estimates. The recession was deeper than thought. Compared with the 1997 to 2008 average, output is now 17.7% below that line.

The growth in output that the system requires to expand is simply not coming through. Instead, the crash continues to take its toll. With mountains of debt still in the system – with trillions added by central banks since 2007 through “quantitative easing” – worse is to come.

Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson said the scale of cuts would have caused social unrest in any other era. "At almost any other moment in the past 60 years, announcements of spending cuts of this scale would have created a storm. As would an announcement that 144,000 public sector jobs would go in one year as part of a programme that could see one million jobs lost by 2017-18."

The absence of the “storm” that Johnson refers to is down entirely to the Labour and trade union leaders’ response – or should that be lack of one. Labour has effectively endorsed the government’s plans, including the singling out of benefit claimants.

As for the union leaders, it is hot air all round. Last week, Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union, talking of making Britain “ungovernable” while TUC general secretary Francis O’Grady also made militant noises about resisting the ConDems. Well, Osborne’s new attack is a golden opportunity for them to make good on their rhetoric.

Don’t hold your breath. 

Gerry Gold and Paul Feldman

Obama's greenwash won't wash

President Obama's much-publicised climate change speech this week was simply a smokescreen for the forthcoming decision to allow the second phase of the Keystone tar sands pipeline to go ahead.

Obama claimed to be boldly taking on the climate change deniers in Congress, by issuing a presidential memo instructing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use Clean Air laws to cap greenhouse gas emissions.

But there's little to get excited about here, because the level of the cap is unstated. It won't be announced until next year for possible implementation in 2015. No doubt the level will still be mired in political and legal battles long after Obama has left the White House.

Campaigners are convinced this is a sleazy trade-off to silence opposition to Keystone 2.

And it seems to be working, with the Sierra Club, one of the US's biggest environmental organisations and a key member of the anti-Keystone campaign, issuing a gushing call on its members to "thank the President".

But what Obama actually said was "climate change issues" will be "relevant" to the decision on the pipeline carrying heavy crude tar sand products from Canada to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Relevant maybe, but not decisive. As Tom Steyer, former hedge fund investor turned environmental activist said, curbing emissions will be meaningless if Keystone goes ahead.

Obama made much of the fact that the US is now the world's biggest gas producer. He failed to point out that this "natural gas" (sounds nice doesn't it?) mostly comes from fracking. Across the US, communities are being destroyed by this process, which pollutes water supplies and makes people ill. But he mentioned none of that.

Obama claimed the fact that the US is once again building nuclear power stations as a positive. But given that there are already some 65,000 tons of dangerous nuclear waste in temporary storage throughout the US, it is hard to see how this can be a good thing!

He used this speech to herald federal support for stepping up gas exports, but isn't that just what the Thatcher government did and look where it got the UK. The North Sea gas supplies are all gone, burned up or sold cheap on the world market.

Energy supply relies on Russian imports, pushing prices through the roof. No wonder the state is so excited about shale gas as an alternative. A new survey by the British Geological survey showing there is a greater quantity of shale gas than was previously thought is being presented as some wonderful bonanza.  

The boom in unconventional oil and gas is a mark of how desperate governments are to keep the fossil fuel market stable. The question is, do we want to pay the price in pollution and health risks? The British and US governments say yes, but then they would, wouldn't they?

Obama pointed out that since 2006 the US has made the world's biggest emissions reductions. But just as in the UK, most of this was achieved by switching power stations to natural gas.

He also claimed natural gas is a 'transition fuel' whilst the economy switches to renewables but that will turn out to be as much of a fraud as here in the UK where renewables still amount to just 7% of the UK energy mix. In fact the only fuel that increased its share in 2012 was coal!

What Obama described was a fantasy climate change policy. It delivers big profits, needs no significant public investment, pushes fundamental change far in the future and requires no change in behaviour by companies. This may be the corporate government's dream scenario but for the rest of us, it's a total nightmare.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Food sovereignty goal is a fight for the commons

For humans as for all living beings, nothing is more important than food. So the people who produce it fulfil a supremely important role in any society. They feed humanity and care for nature. Future generations depend on them to protect the earth.

But, they and the safety and nutrition of the food they produce and we all consume, are under attack. The system that exists exclusively to generate profit from every facet of human activity is the problem.

Now, La Via Campesina, a twenty-year-old international peasant movement, is calling rural and urban organisations and social movements to transform and build a new society based on food sovereignty and justice.

La Via Campesina gathers together more than 200 million peasants, small-scale producers, landless people, women, youth, indigenous, migrants, and farm and food workers, from 183 organisations and 88 countries. The Jakarta Call, issued by their sixth conference is as clear as could be: 

We reject capitalism, which is currently characterised by aggressive flows of financial and speculative capital into industrial agriculture, land and nature. This is generating huge land grabs and a brutal displacement of people from their land, destroying communities, cultures and ecosystems. It creates masses of economic migrants, climate refugees and unemployed, increasing existing inequalities.
 Transnational corporations, in complicity with governments and international institutions, are imposing under the pretext of green economy GM monocultures, mega mining, dams and fracking projects, large tree and bio-fuel plantations, or the privatisation of our seas, rivers, lakes and forests. Food sovereignty wrests control over our commons back into the hands of the people. 

In place of the corporate takeover of the food chain by global companies like Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, Syngenta, Nestlé, and McDonalds they are fighting for a system of “agroecology”. This builds on peasant agriculture, artisanal fisheries and herding which still remain the source of most of our food. 

The Jakarta Call explains that peasant agroecology is a social and ecological system encompassing a great “diversity of technologies and practices” and removes “dependencies on agro-toxins, rejects confined industrial animal production”. It also uses renewable energies, and guarantees healthy food. 

“It enhances dignity, honours traditional knowledge and restores the health and integrity of the land. Food production in the future must be based on a growing number of people producing food in more resilient and diverse ways.” Campesina argues that agroecology defends biodiversity and also works towards reducing global warming.

Our agricultural model not only can feed all of humanity but is also the way to stop the advance of the climate crisis through local production in harmony with our forests and waterways, enhancing diversity and returning organic matter to natural cycles.

La Via Campesina is demanding a Comprehensive Agrarian Reform. It would include:

• full rights over land

• recognising indigenous peoples’ legal rights to their territories  

• guaranteeing fishing communities’ access and control of fishing areas and ecosystems, and recognising pastoral migratory routes  

• a massive distribution of land as well as livelihood and productive resources to ensure permanent access to land for youth, women, the unemployed, the landless and displaced.

They insist that land is not a commodity, calling for existing laws and regulations to be reinforced, and new ones introduced to protect against speculation and land grabbing.

They oppose the misappropriation of seeds through various forms of intellectual property and the contamination of stocks with GM technology, insisting on sharing seed, implementing the principle of the Peoples’ Heritage Seeds Serving Humanity.

For this comprehensive programme of demands to be implemented, replacing the rule of capital is a priority. Replacing that with the social stewardship of nature and democratic control over sustainable production will enable us to halt the present destructive processes in their tracks.   

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Secret police show how rotten the state is

The revelation by former Met officer turned whistleblower Peter Francis that he was ordered to find dirt on the Stephen Lawrence family in the wake of their son’s murder is shocking in itself. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the state within the state.

Behind the Special Branch which ran the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) of which Francis was a member, is the internal spy agency MI5 and its operatives who remain in the shadows. And there are undoubtedly other secret units we know nothing about whose job is to “defend the realm” – the ruling classes and their state institutions.

Politicians and senior policemen will disavow their more unsavoury activities, claiming they knew nothing about them, just as former Met commissioner Paul Condon did over the Francis allegations. The SDS made the Lawrence family a target when the regular police themselves were indifferent to catching his killers.

Former Labour home secretary Jack Straw protesteth too much about this particular incident. His regime oversaw secret “extraordinary rendition” – aka kidnapping – flights by way of UK airports, torture authorised by the external spy agency MI6, and a whole series of fabrications that suggested Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Francis revealed on Channel 4 Dispatches that he asked to find anything that could smear the Lawrence family to would weaken support for the family in the wider community. Ostensibly, the police wanted to prevent “public disorder” in the wake of the 1993 killing. In practice, as the Macpherson inquiry reported in 1999, the Met was institutionally racist and botched its investigation from the start. The SDS’s infamous smear attempt was kept away from the inquiry.

Police/MI5 infiltration is as old as the state itself. Before the SDS was created, Special Branch ran agents inside left-wing parties, trade unions, civil liberties groups and other campaigns like CND. Not only did they report their intelligence, they also acted as agents provocateurs.

This can involve suggesting actions that could be illegal, setting people against each other to encourage political division, subverting an organisation’s finances and much more. As recently as 2011, the trial of eco-activists who allegedly tried to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station was abandoned when the role of secret policeman Mark Kennedy in the plans became known.

A number of women are taking action against the police for psychological damage caused by other members of the SDS who befriended them and had sexual relations. In one notorious case, an officer called Bob Lambert had a child with an activist before disappearing back to Special Branch. Another woman told Channel 4 she had been “raped by the state”.

In 2008, the work of the SDS was taken over by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) which is part of the Special Operations directorate of the Metropolitan Police. 

Meanwhile, joke of jokes, the police are investigating the activities of their own undercover agents! The chances of this establishing the truth are less than zero. Nor would a public inquiry demanded by Francis – who himself was psychologically wrecked by his experience – get closer to the truth.

The fact is that the state will do whatever it takes to – as Channel 4 was told – to “prevent change from happening in the world”. That’s the priority. Anyone who thinks the police and other institutions are there to serve the public should put the idea out of their minds.

With the authority and legitimacy of the state increasingly questioned by people all round the world, the lurch towards total surveillance is gathering momentum. In Britain, the government spy station GCHQ in Cheltenham is teamed up with the National Security Agency in the US to track and monitor internet traffic on a global basis.

Ultimately, it won’t do them any good. We, the people, have had enough. Whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Peter Francis are coming out of the state’s woodwork. The edifice is rotten and every day more and more people realise that. So whoever’s reading this on behalf of the state, the game is up. You'd be better off becoming a whilstleblower!

Paul Feldman

Communications editor